nd were denied the right to sue for their liberty in the courts.
When there arose many abolitionists who encouraged the coming of the
fugitives from labor in the South, one element of the citizens of Illinois
unwilling to accept this unusual influx of members of another race passed
the drastic law of 1853 prohibiting the immigration. It provided for the
prosecution of any person bringing a Negro into the State and also for
arresting and fining any Negro $50, should he appear there and remain
longer than ten days. If he proved to be unable to pay the fine, he could
be sold to any person who could pay the cost of the trial.[35]

In Michigan the situation was a little better but, with the waves of
hostile legislation then sweeping over the new[36] commonwealths, Michigan
was not allowed to constitute altogether an exception. Some of this
intense feeling found expression in the form of a law hostile to the
Negro, this being the act of 1827, which provided for the registration of
all free persons of color and for the exclusion from the territory of all
blacks who could not produce a certificate to the effect that they were
free. Free persons of color were also required to file bonds with one or
more freehold sureties in the penal sum of $500 for their good behavior,
and the bondsmen were expected to provide for their maintenance, if they
failed to support themselves. Failure to comply with this law meant
expulsion from the territory.[37]

The opposition to the Negroes immigrating into the new West was not
restricted to the enactment of laws which in some cases were never
enforced. Several communities took the law into their own hands. During
these years when the Negroes were seeking freedom in the Northwest
Territory and when free blacks were being established there by
philanthropists, it seemed to the southern uplanders fleeing from slavery
in the border States and foreigners seeking fortunes in the new world that
they might possibly be crowded out of this new territory by the Negroes.
Frequent clashes, therefore, followed after they had passed through a
period of toleration and dependence on the execution of the hostile laws.
The clashes of the greatest consequences occurred in the Northwest
Territory where a larger number of uplanders from the South had gone, some
to escape the ill effects of slavery, and others to hold slaves if
possible, and when that seemed impossible, to exclude the blacks
altogether.[38] This persecu