gan. At the time of the fire in 1805 there were six colored men and
nine colored women in the town of Detroit. In 1807 there were so many of
them that Governor Hull organized a company of colored militia. Joseph
Campan owned ten at one time. The importation of slaves was discontinued
after September 17, 1792, by act of the Canadian Parliament which provided
also that all born thereafter should be free at the age of twenty-five.
The Ordinance of 1787 had by its sixth article prohibited it.]

[Footnote 49: In 1836 a colored man traveling in the West to Cleveland
said:

"I have met with good treatment at every place on my journey, even better
than what I expected under present circumstances. I will relate an
incident that took place on board the steamboat, which will give an idea
of the kind treatment with which I have met. When I took the boat at Erie,
it being rainy and somewhat disagreeable, I took a cabin passage, to which
the captain had not the least objection. When dinner was announced, I
intended not to go to the first table but the mate came and urged me to
take a seat. I accordingly did and was called upon to carve a large saddle
of beef which was before me. This I performed accordingly to the best of
my ability. No one of the company manifested any objection or seemed
anyways disturbed by my presence."--Extract of a letter from a colored
gentleman traveling to the West, Cleveland, Ohio, August 11, 1836.--See
_The Philanthropist_, Oct. 21, 1836.]

CHAPTER IV

COLONIZATION AS A REMEDY FOR MIGRATION

Because of these untoward circumstances consequent to the immigration of
free Negroes and fugitives into the North, their enemies, and in some
cases their well-intentioned friends, advocated the diversion of these
elements to foreign soil. Benezet and Brannagan had the idea of settling
the Negroes on the public lands in the West largely to relieve the
situation in the North.[1] Certain anti-slavery men of Kentucky, as we
have observed, recommended the same. But this was hardly advocated at all
by the farseeing white men after the close of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century. It was by that time very clear that white men would
want to occupy all lands within the present limits of the United States.
Few statesmen dared to encourage migration to Canada because the large
number of fugitives who had already escaped there had attached to that
region the stigma of being an asylum for fugitives from the slave