The
transplanting of these people to the Northwest took place largely
between 1815 and 1850. They were directed mainly to Columbia and
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Greenwich, New Jersey; and Boston,
Massachusetts, in the East; and to favorable towns and colored
communities in the Northwest.[1] The fugitives found ready helpers
in Elmira, Rochester, Buffalo, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
Gallipolis, Portsmouth, Akron, and Cincinnati, Ohio; and Detroit,
Michigan.[2] Colored settlements which proved attractive to these
wanderers had been established in Ohio, Indiana, and Canada. That most
of the bondmen in quest of freedom and opportunity should seek the
Northwest had long been the opinion of those actually interested in
their enlightenment. The attention of the colored people had been
early directed to this section as a more suitable place for their
elevation than the jungles of Africa selected by the American
Colonization Society. The advocates of Western colonization believed
that a race thus degraded could be elevated only in a salubrious
climate under the influences of institutions developed by Western
nations.
[Footnote 1: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p.
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