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.html.2.Section 2 of Article VIII (Bill of Rights) contained this statement: Nor shall any inden-ture of any negro or mulatto, hereafter made and executed out of the State, or if madein the State, where the term of service exceeds one year, be of the least validity, exceptthose given in the case of apprenticeships. 149 Race to the Frontiering the alternative route down the Ohio also seemed improbable, since anti-black hostility was strong along this river.So, at the start of the 19th century, plain folk farmers who had resettled in Ohio had little reason to worry aboutfree blacks sweeping northward into their backyards.But this sanguine outlook would soon change.Around the time Ohio joinedthe Union, the free black population in nearby slave states began to increasesharply.In neighboring Kentucky, more surplus slaves were being given theirfreedom by hard-strapped masters no longer able to pay for their upkeep.Conse-quently, by 1810, enclaves of 100 or more free blacks could be found in four Ken-tucky counties Fayette, Bourbon, Logan, and Jefferson and the state s totalnumber had reached 1,713.Indeed, Kentucky s free black population was multi-plying at a faster rate than either its slave or free white populations.Between1800 and 1810, the number of free blacks rose by over 131 percent, to 2,759, whilethe comparable figures for whites and slaves were approximately 80 and 100 per-cent, respectively.Over the next decade, there was a 61 percent increase in thefree black population, versus 55.6 percent for slaves and 34 percent for whites.During the 1820s, the free black population grew by 120 percent, while the num-ber of slaves rose by 31.7 percent, and that of whites by only 19 percent.1 Still, as aproportion of the Bluegrass State s overall population, free blacks remained anexceedingly small minority: at its peak, in 1850, these blacks accounted for only2.3 percent of the total.2And this phenomenon was not limited to Kentucky.Unwanted slaves werebeing given their freedom in many of the older slave states, as the need for theirlabor decreased.The number of free blacks was growing in Delaware, Maryland,Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and, most of all, Virginia, whereemancipated slaves made up six percent of the state s black population in 1800.Thirty years later, nearly one in ten blacks living in the South was free.3 Con-cerned about their security, white Southerners put pressure on manumittedslaves to leave their states.Black freemen were subjected to various discrimina-tory laws designed to restrict their rights and push them out.As early as 1783,Virginia had prohibited the entry of free blacks, and in 1806, the state requiredall newly freed slaves to leave within a year or else face re-enslavement.At thesame time, legal barriers erected in other slave states compelled these newlyemancipated blacks to seek new homes outside the South.4 Delaware also1.These census data are found in Cramer, Black Demographic Data, 131.2.Stabilization of the free black population after 1850 suggests that many were leaving thestate.Between 1850 and 1860, the number of free blacks in Kentucky rose by only 573.3.Hart, Slavery and Abolition, 91.Nationally, the population of free blacks surpassed300,000 during the 1820s and reached an antebellum peak of 487,970 in 1860.4.In addition to Kentucky and Virginia, Delaware also banned the entry of free blacks, in1811.Those who violated this law were subject to a fine of $10 per week.150 V.Holding the Color Line in the Old Northwestbanned the in-migration of free blacks, in 1811.Those who violated this law weresubject to a fine of $10 per week.The following year Maryland prohibited freeblacks from growing or selling crops.Such discriminatory measures had theintended effect.Many of these manumitted slaves opted to migrate north andwest out of the slave states.This relocation, coupled with natural increase, caused the black population inthe Old Northwest to shoot upward.In Illinois, the number of free blacks nearlyquadrupled between 1820 and 1830.It tripled in Indiana, reaching 3,629, or overone percent of the population.And, in Ohio, where the existence of Quaker com-munities, a more racially humane state constitution, and a higher proportion ofNortherners indicated a greater white receptivity, the free black population prac-tically doubled every ten years between 1810 and 1840, when it reached 17,342.Asthis flow across its borders continued to swell, white Ohioans began to worry thattheir state was becoming a dumping ground for discarded Southern slaves.1 Thisproblem was most acute in the southern half of the state, where virtually all of theincoming blacks took up residence.(The northern counties including theWestern Reserve, which favored emancipation and which contained such aboli-tionist strongholds as Oberlin had negligible black populations.2) The samedemographic pattern was apparent in the other butternut states as well.In theOhio Valley, most of this one-way movement took place between northern coun-ties in Southern border states and adjacent free ones.Census data reveal a muchsteeper decline in slave and free black populations in counties along the OhioRiver than in other parts of the Upper South.3Ironically, former slaves from the South seeking a more hospitable localeended up living in counties dominated by Southern plain folk migrants.Forexample, in 1830, 64.2 percent of Indiana s free blacks resided in just 12 of thestate s 52 counties.All but three of these were located in the southernmost partof the state.4 And here the numerical superiority of Upland Southerners was the1.Wilson, Negro in Early Ohio, 720, 754.Cf.Berwanger, Frontier Against Slavery, 21.2.Lorain County, which included Oberlin, had only three free blacks in 1830 out of apopulation of 5,696, according to federal census figures.A decade later, this numberhad only risen to 62.3.See Table 2, Discrepancies in Negro population changes in border counties of borderstates as compared with other counties, 1850-60, Zelinsky, Population Geographyof the Free Negro, 399.4.The exceptions were Wayne and Randolph counties on Indiana s eastern border, andVigo, adjacent to Illinois in the west.Wayne County contained the largest concentra-tion of Quakers in the state, based largely in the city of Richmond.Their presenceaccounts for the settlement of so many free blacks in this county.By 1820 there werealso a number of Quaker families in Randolph County
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