In 1850 there were 238,187 free Negroes in the slave States. Their freedom was merely nominal. They were despised beneath the slaves, and were watched with suspicious eyes, and disliked by their brethren in bondage.
In 1850 there were 196,016 free Negroes in the Northern States. Their increase came from [chiefly] two sources, viz.: births and emancipated persons from the South. Fugitive slaves generally went to Canada, for in addition to being in danger of arrest under the fugitive-slave law, none of the State governments in the North sympathized with escaped Negroes. The Negroes in the free States were denied the rights of citizenship, and were left to the most destroying ignorance. In 1780, some free Negroes, of the town of Dartmouth, petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for relief from taxation, because they were denied the privileges and duties of citizenship. The petition set forth the hardships free Negroes were obliged to endure, even in Massachusetts, and was in itself a proof of the fitness of the petitioners for the duties of citizenship.
"_To the Honorable Council and House of Representatives, in General Court Assembled, for the State of Massachusetts Bay, in New England_:
"The petition of several poor negroes and mulattoes, who are inhabitants of the town of Dartmouth, humbly showeth:
"That we being chiefly of the African extract, and by reason of long bondage and hard slavery, we have been deprived of enjoying the profits of our labor or the advantage of inheriting estates from our parents, as our neighbors the white people do, having some of us not long enjoyed our own freedom; yet of late, contrary to the invariable custom and practice of the country, we have been, and now are, taxed both in our polls and that small pittance of estate which, through much hard labor and industry, we have got together to sustain ourselves and families withall. We apprehend it, therefore, to be hard usage, and will doubtless (if continued) reduce us to a state of beggary, whereby we shall become a burthen to others, if not timely prevented by the interposition of your justice and power.
"Your petitioners further show, that we apprehend ourselves to be aggrieved, in that, while we are not allowed the privilege of freemen of the State, having no vote or influence in the election of those that tax us, yet many of our color (as is well known) have cheerfully entered the field of battle in the defence of the common cause, and that (as we conceive) against a similar exertion of power (in regard to taxation) too well known to need a recital in this place.