"Black Pioneers Found Freedom on the Frontier Long Before" Topic

… Civil War

"Who were these pioneers? Most came as free people, some from families that had been free since the 1600s. A relative few came on the Underground Railroad. By 1860, well over 300 settlements, from southeastern Ohio to Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, were home to African American farmers working land they owned. Evidence is growing that there is no place in the Northwest Territory states in which free people of African descent were not trying to live and work before the Civil War.

Some were "freedom entrepreneurs." These were formerly enslaved people who had worked to earn money to purchase their freedom, often paying dearly—in some cases $1,000 USD, at a time when $900 USD could buy a farm in Massachusetts. They are truly some of America's superheroes. Imagine negotiating a price for yourself with someone the law says owns you—and, not infrequently, who is your kin—a white father, half-brother, or cousin! In Bone and Sinew, I tell the story of many of these freedom entrepreneurs, including Major James Wilkerson, whose family in Virginia sold him "down the river" to New Orleans. He still managed to purchase his and his mother's freedom, moved to Cincinnati, and then led a black militia that defended their neighborhood against armed attacks by whites in 1841…"
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Escaped slaves and indentured servants escaping to the frontier goes back to the 1600s.

That cannot be denied …

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