The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study

Chapter IV. The Negro in Philadelphia, 1820-1896

CHAPTER IV. THE NEGRO IN PHILADELPHIA, 1820-1896. 10. Fugitives and Foreigners, 182o-I840.-Five social developments made the decades from 1820 to 1840 critical for the nation and for the Philadelphia Negroes; first, the impulse of the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century ; second, the reaction and recovery succeeding the War of 1812; third, the rapid increase of foreign immigration; fourth, the increase of free Negroes and fugitive slaves, especially in Philadelphia; fifth, the rise of the Abolitionists and the slavery controversy. Philadelphia was the natural gateway between the North and the South, and for a long time there passed through it a stream of free Negroes and fugitive slaves toward the North, and of recaptured Negroes and kidnapped colored persons toward the South. By 1820 the northward stream increased, occasioning bitterness on the part of the South, and leading to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1820, and the counter acts of Pennsylvania in 1826 and 1827.1 During this time new installments of Pennsylvania freedmen, and especially their children, began to flock to Philadelphia. At the same time the stream of foreign immigration to this country began to swell, and by 1830 aggregated half a million souls annually. TIle result of these movements proved disastrous to the Philadelphia Negro; the better classes of them-the Joneses, AlIens and Fortens-could not escape into the mass of white population and leave the new 1 These laws were especially directed against kidnapping, and were designed to protect free Negroes. See Appendix B. The law of 1826 was declared unconstitutional in 1842 by the U. S. Supreme Court. See 16 Peters, 500 ff. Negro in Phztadelphia , I820-I896. [Chap. IV. Negroes to fight out their battles with the foreigners. No distinction was drawn between Negroes, least of all by the new Southern families who now made Philadelphia their horne and were not unnaturally stirred to unreasoning prejudice by the slavery agitation. To this was added a fierce economic struggle, a renewal of the fight of the eighteenth century against Negro workmen . The new industries attracted the Irish, Oermans and other imrnigrants ; Americans, too, were flocking to the city, and soon to natural race antipathies was added a determined effort to displace Negro labor-an effort which had the aroused prejudice of many of the better classes, and the poor quality of the new black immigrants to give it aid and comfort. To all this was soon added a problem of crime and poverty. Numerous complaints of petty thefts, house-breaking, .and assaults on peaceable citizens were traced to certain classes of Negroes. In vain did the better class, led by men like Forten, protest by public meetings their condemnation of SUCll crime 2;the tide had set against the Negro strongly, and the whole period from 1820 to 1840 became a time of retrogression for the mass of the race, and of discountenance and repression from the whites. By 1830 the black population of the city and districts had increased to 15,624, an increase of 27 per cent for the decade 1820 to 1830, and of 48 per cent since 1810. Nevertheless , the gro\vth of the city had far outstripped this; by 1830 the county had nearly 175,000 whites, among whom was a rapidly increasing contingent of 5000 foreigners. So intense was the race antipathy among the lower classes, an.l so much countenance did it receive from the middle and upper class, that there began, in r829, a series of riots directed chiefly against Negroes, which recurred frequently until about 1840, and did not wholly cease until 2 A meeting of Negroes beld in 1822, at the A. M. E. Church, denounced crime and Negro criminals, 1.193.158] Project MUSE (2024-04-18 04:44 GMT) Sect. 10.] Fugitives and Foreigners, I820- I 8 40. 27 after the war. These riots were occasioned by various incidents, but the underlying cause was the same: the simultaneous influx of freedmen, fugitives and foreigners into a large city, and the resulting prejudice, lawlessness, crime and poverty. The agitation of the Abolitionists was the match that lighted this fuel. In June and July, 1829, Mrs. Fanny Wright Darusmont, a Scotch woman, gave a number of addresses in Philadelphia, in which she boldly advocated the emancipation of the Negroes and something very like social equality of the races. This created great excitement throughout the city, and late in the fall the first riot against the Negroes broke out, occasioned by some...