consequences. Since the people of Indiana derived no advantage from
slavery, he begged that they be excused from its inconveniences. Most of
the blacks that migrated there, moreover, possessed, thought he, "feelings
quite unprepared to make good citizens. A sense of inferiority early
impressed on their minds, destitute of every thing but bodily power and
having no character to lose, and no prospect of acquiring one, even did
they know its value, they are prepared for the commission of any act, when
the prospect of evading punishment is favorable."[46]

With the exception of such centers as Eden, Upper Alton, Bellville and
Chicago, this antagonistic attitude was general also in the State of
Illinois. The Negroes were despised, abused and maltreated as persons who
had no rights that the white man should respect. Even in Detroit,
Michigan, in 1833 a fracas was started by an attack on Negroes. Because a
courageous group of them had effected the rescue and escape of one
Thornton Blackburn and his wife who had been arrested by the sheriff as
alleged fugitives from Kentucky, the citizens invoked the law of 1827, to
require free Negroes to produce a certificate and furnish bonds for their
behavior and support.[47] The anti-slavery sentiment there, however, was
so strong that the law was not long rigidly enforced.[48] And so it was in
several other parts of the West which, however, were exceptional.[49]


[Footnote 1: _The New York Daily Advertiser,_ Sept. 22, 1800; _The
New York Journal of Commerce,_ July 12, 1834; and _The New York
Commercial Advertiser,_ July 12, 1834.]

[Footnote 2: Hart, _Slavery and Abolition,_ pp. 53, 82.]

[Footnote 3: Goodell, _American Slave Code,_ Part III, chap. i; Hurd,