what were known as the "Black Laws."[7]

Up to 1826, however, the Negroes of Cincinnati had not become a cause of
much trouble. Very little mention of them is made in the records of this
period. They were not wanted in this city but were tolerated as a
negligible factor. D. B. Warden, a traveler through the West in 1819,
observed that the blacks of Cincinnati were "good-humoured, garrulous,
and profligate, generally disinclined to laborious occupations, and
prone to the performance of light and menial drudgery." Here the
traveler was taking effect for cause. "Some few," said he, "exercise the
humbler trades, and some appear to have formed a correct conception of
the objects and value of property, and are both industrious and
economical. A large proportion of them are reputed, and perhaps
correctly, to be habituated to petit larceny." But this had not become a
grave offence, for he said that not more than one individual had been
corporally punished by the courts since the settlement of the town.[8]

When, however, the South reached the conclusion that free Negroes were
an evil, and Quakers and philanthropists began to direct these
unfortunates to the Northwest Territory for colonization, a great
commotion arose in Southern Ohio and especially in Cincinnati.[9] How
rapid this movement was, may be best observed by noticing the statistics
of this period. There were 337 Negroes in Ohio in 1800; 1,890 in 1810;
4,723 in 1820; 9,586 in 1830; 17,342 in 1840; and 25,279 in 1850.[10]
Now Cincinnati had 410 Negroes in 1819;[11] 690 in 1826;[12] 2,255 in
1840;[13] and 3,237 in 1850.[14]

It was during the period between 1826 and 1840 that Cincinnati had to
grapple with the problem of the immigrating Negroes and the poor whites
from the uplands of Virginia and Kentucky. With some ill-informed