law. One of her neighbors carried an act through the Legislature making it a penal offence to establish a school for the instruction of colored persons not inhabitants of Connecticut, or to harbor or board any such persons, without the written consent of the select-men of the town.* When news of its passage reached Canterbury, bells were rung for joy and cannon fired.

On the 27th of June, Miss Crandall was arrested and bound over to appear at the August term of court. Would Connecticut send a woman to jail for daring to teach a negro girl to read? She was placed in a cell just vacated by a murderer. Here she spent one night. In the morning bond was given, and she was free. Her imprisonment wrote the infamous law on the public conscience-if such thing there be—and soon was verified the truth of a later and now famous saying, "The best way to get rid of a bad law is to execute it." She was tried, and the jury brought in a verdict against her. But this was not the end. She again attempted to resume her work, but persecutions redoubled. One midnight her house was attacked by a mob and left a ruin. Then, and not till then, did she abandon her work -the benevolent undertaking of teaching a few negro girls the elements of knowledge, that they might teach free negroes.†

*Act of 1833, in Connecticut Public Statutes, 1835, Title 53, p. 321.

+ Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America. Vol. i., p. 237.

Discrimination Against the Free Negro

The attitude of the North towards free people of color became more and more favorable, however, as the designs of slavocracy to extend its power over Texas and California were disclosed. Remonstrance against slavery extension began in 1820, when Missouri sought admission, and was renewed when the question of the reannexation of Texas was proposed-the time of Miss Crandall's persecution in Connecticut. From about this time slave laws became more severe in the South, but the treatment of the free negro in the North became more humane. The changes are illustrated by the laws of Ohio. In 1804 a free negro was required to record his certificate of emancipation in the office of the county clerk. No man could hire one unrecorded. In 1807 the law forbade any negro to settle in the State without giving bond for five hundred dollars to the county clerk. A free negro could not give testimony when one party was white. By the act of 1829 negroes were specially prohibited from attending free white schools in Cincinnati. Taxes paid by negroes were to be expended, at the discretion of the school trustees, for the education of black children, but they were not taxed for the support of the schools for whites. At this time a black man. could not gain a legal settlement in the State. Ten years passed, and an elaborate fugitive-slave law was enacted, "to secure the protection pledged by the Constitution to the South." It was on the statute-books only four years and then repealed. Ohio was becoming slightly antislavery. Its Legis

lature sent forth a joint resolution in 1847 favoring the exclusion of slavery from Oregon, and one in the next year demanding its exclusion from whatever territory might be acquired from Mexico. It claimed that Congress had power to do this. In 1849* the Legislature sent forth a truly penitent resolution. As free persons of color had long been degraded and oppressed, Congress ought to give each of them eighty acres of land in some part of Mexico, set apart for these people without a country. On the next day the Legislature declared that Congress ought to abolish the slavetrade in the District of Columbia.

That this repentance was genuine was proved, now, by the establishment of separate free schools for them, by the repeal of several discriminating acts,† and, further, by the passage of a law providing, mirabile dictu, that when fewer than twenty black children resided in the school-district they might attend the white school, unless objection in writing should be made by a patron of the school or by a voter in the district.

About this time the people of the State decided to call a convention to revise the constitution of 1803. It was a liberal-minded body of men in many ways, and its handiwork, completed in March, 1851, continues to be the supreme law of the State; but it limited the suffrage to white men.

* March 23d.

+ February 10, 1849, repeal of acts of 1804, 1807, 1834, except the act excluding negroes from service on juries.

See also the act of February 24, 1848.

California and the Free Negro

To extend it to free negroes, as some proposed, was thought both dangerous and degrading. It would convert Ohio into an asylum for free blacks and runaway slaves. But, while the convention was in session, an incident occurred which suddenly sharpened public sentiment. On the 6th of June, 1850, seven children and one grandchild of a free negro woman, named Peyton, were abducted into Kentucky. Nine months later the Legislature instructed the Governor, Reuben Wood, to inquire into the crime and restore the children at the expense of the State.

As the admission of California grew into a national question, the State Legislatures divided-the Northern, like Wisconsin, demanding the extension of the Ordinance of 1787 over it; the Southern, like Alabama, declaring that the State would make common cause with other slave-holding commonwealths for the defence of the institution of slavery, because Congress had no power whatever over it.* Though California came in as free soil, its constitution excluded free persons of color from the franchise and barely missed containing an article

* Resolutions favoring the admission of California and the limitation of slavery were passed by the Legislatures of-Maine, July 27, 1849; New Hampshire, January 4, 1849, July 10, 1846; New York, December 7, 1847, January 13, 1848, January 4, 1849; Ohio, February 25, 1848; Michigan, January 13, 1849, February 23, 1850; Wisconsin, February 8, 1849, June 21, 1848. Counterresolutions were passed by the Legislatures of—Virginia, January 20, 1849; South Carolina, December 20, 1850; Georgia, February 8, 1850; Florida, January 13, 1849; Texas, February 11, 1850; Alabama, March 6, 1848; Mississippi, March 5, 1850 (the most elaborate report on the subject by a Southern Legislature).

wholly excluding them from the State. Confident that public sentiment would regulate the matter, and that no free negro would travel so far, the proposition was allowed to fall through. The attitude of California towards the free negro, in 1850, was typical of the attitude of the North. As slavery was forbidden there, the free negro was not a subject for legislation. A few soon found their way into the new State, chiefly as stewards on the Pacific passenger - ships and steamers. Gradually they established themselves on shore as servants, barbers, and occasionally as valets, but they did not venture into the mining-camps. Their appearance there would have started a white insurrection.

The story of the struggles of the free negro is a painful one, yet he steadily gained ground during this half-century. This class multiplied so rapidly in Maryland that its presence-some seventy-five thousand-in the State became a most vexatious problem. problem. The number of free negroes fell short of the number of slaves in the State only by fifteen thousand, and the two parts of the black population were within ten years of equality in numbers. The constitutional convention of 1850 was called, largely to solve the problem. It made no provision on the subject other than to forbid the Legislature to abolish the relation of master and slave. An effort was made, though unsuccessful, to incorporate a clause like that in the Virginia constitution of the same year, empowering the Legislature to relieve the common