By 1860 more than forty-five thousand African Americans lived in
the countryside of the five states of the Old Northwest. Together, they
represented nearly one-tenth of the nation's free black population and
one-fifth of all blacks in the North. Professional historians have generally
shown only a dim awareness of this collectively large group and even less
understanding of its broader dynamics. This paper represents an attempt
to begin to redress these limits to our understanding by offering a preliminary
composite portrait of free blacks in the rural Northwest, one that focuses
specifically on the group's origins and the structure of economic opportunity
available to them..
The basic argument is that the region's African-American pioneers were a varied people both in their origins and in their economic progress over time. Some, perhaps even most, fared no better than the majority of blacks in the urban North. At the same time, however, a large and significant portion experienced a much more favorable fate. Aided by some combination of modest economic resources, the timing of their move, and settlement near non-hostile whites, they were able to acquire land of their own and, with others, create largely autonomous, stable, and often quite prosperous farm communities. To a large extent the varying fates of African Americans in the rural Northwest reflected the settlers' premigration backgrounds. A disproportionate number of the most successful were tri-racial people from families with longstanding heritages of freedom and landownership in the Old South. Those who faced the most difficult fate, in contrast, were often either former slaves who had been recently emancipated or slaves who were sent to the Northwest to be freed .