[Transcriber's Note: This footnote appeared in the text
without a footnote anchor: "Census of 1860."]
The colored people of the North in 1860 numbered 237,283,
Pennsylvania having the largest number, 56,849; then came New York
with 49,005; Ohio, 36,673; New Jersey, 25,318; Indiana, 11,428;
Massachusetts, 9,602; Connecticut, 8,627; Illinois, 7,628; Michigan,
6,799; Rhode Island, 3,952; Maine, 1,327; Wisconsin, 1,171; Iowa,
1,069; Vermont, 709; Kansas, 625; New Hampshire, 494; Minnesota, 259;
Oregon, 128.
Considerably more than one-half of this population was located within
the States along the Atlantic Coast, viz.; Maine, New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York,
Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Here were to be found 154,883 free
colored people. Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey took the lead in
this population, with Massachusetts and Connecticut coming next, while
Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont had but few. The cities, Boston, New
York and Philadelphia, were the largest cities of free colored people
then in the North. In Boston there were 2,261; New York City, 12,574,
while in Philadelphia there were 22,185
As early as 1787 the free colored people of Philadelphia, through two
distinguished representatives, Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, "two
men of the African race," as the chroniclers say, "saw the irreligious
and uncivilized state" of the "people of their complexion," and
finally concluded "that a society should be formed without regard to
religious tenets, provided the persons lived an orderly and sober
life," the purpose of the society being "to support one another in
sickness and for the benefit of their widows and fatherless children.
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