32.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 32 and 37.]
The role played by the Negroes in this migration exhibited the
development of sufficient mental ability to appreciate this truth.
It was chiefly through their intelligent fellows that prior to the
reaction ambitious slaves learned to consider the Northwest Territory
the land of opportunity. Furthermore, restless freedmen, denied
political privileges and prohibited from teaching their children, did
not always choose to go to Africa. Many of them went north of the Ohio
River and took up land on the public domain. Observing this longing
for opportunity, benevolent southerners, who saw themselves hindered
in carrying out their plan for educating the blacks for citizenship,
disposed of their holdings and formed free colonies of their slaves in
the same section. White men of this type thus made possible a new era
of uplift for the colored race by coming north in time to aid the
abolitionists, who had for years constituted a small minority
advocating a seemingly hopeless cause.
A detailed description of these settlements has no place in this
dissertation save as it has a bearing on the development of education
among the colored people.
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