(06-18-2019, 04:55 PM)L Verge Wrote: Speaking of free blacks - in the process of looking up something at work, I ran across these statistics that break down the number of free blacks in various sections of the country, according to the 1860 Federal Census. Please note how far behind the abolitionist stronghold of New England lagged:
New England 24,711
Mid-Atlantic 131,272
Mid-West 65,719
Upper South 183,369
Lower South 67,418
Far West 4,259
TOTAL FREE 476,748
Mention was also made in another section of this article about the poor reception that free blacks received in the North -- discrimination, job refusals, living conditions, both before, during, and after the CW. Out of the frying pan and into the fire??
Still better than having your family broken up and sold off to new owners. This is among the many disadvantages of being a slave.
Instead of referring to freed slaves by saying that they were "out of the frying pan and into the fire," I would say that free blacks were "out of the frying pan and into the world of hard knocks" with the choices of where to go and how to live limited by lesser injustices.
"So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history." -- Plutarch
Lincoln's loss in 1864
