The free Negroes of the North, inspired by the mulatto immigrants from the West Indies, began to change the basis of their demands; they recognized the slavery of slaves, but insisted that they themselves were freemen, and sought assimilation and amalgamation with the nation on the same terms with other men.
Du Bois explains how free Black people in the North, influenced by West Indian immigrants, began advocating for assimilation and equal rights as freemen.
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Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.