He was supposed by his
example to contribute to the discontent of the slave, and laws were
passed restricting his priveleges so as to induce him to leave.
Between 1850 and 1860 this question reached a crisis and free colored
people from the South were to be seen taking up their homes in the
Northern States and in Canada. (Many of the people, especially from
Charleston, carried with them all their belittling prejudices, and
after years of sojourn under the sway of enlightened and liberal
ideas, proved themselves still incapable of learning the new way or
forgetting the old.)
There were, then, three very distinct classes of colored people in the
country, to wit: The slave in the South, the free colored people of
the South, and the free colored people of the North. These were also
sub-divided into several smaller classes. Slaves were divided into
field hands, house servants and city slaves. The free colored people
of the South had their classes based usually on color; the free
colored people of the North had their divisions caused by differences
in religion, differences as to place of birth, and numerous family
conceits. So that surveyed as a whole, it is extremely difficult to
get anything like a complete social map of these four millions as they
existed at the outbreak of the Civil War.
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