]
These discriminations, along with the many private rebuffs and oppressions
which they met, greatly complicated the problem of social adjustment which
colored freemen everywhere encountered. It is not to be wondered that some
of them developed criminal tendencies in reaction and revolt, particularly
when white agitators made it their business to stimulate discontent.
Convictions for crimes, however, were in greatest proportionate excess
among the free negroes of the North. In 1850, for example, the colored
inmates in the Southern penitentiaries, including slaves, bore a ratio
to the free colored population but half as high as did the corresponding
prisoners in the North to the similar population there. These ratios were
about six and eleven times those prevalent among the Southern and Northern
whites respectively.[81] This nevertheless does not prove an excess of
actual depravity or criminal disposition in any of the premises, for the
discriminative character of the laws and the prejudice of constables,
magistrates and jurors were strong contributing factors. Many a free negro
was doubtless arrested and convicted in virtually every commonwealth under
circumstances in which white men went free.
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