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Although
the majority of citizens in Indiana had arrived in Indiana only a
few decades earlier, response to immigration grew increasingly ambivalent
by the mid nineteenth century. Certain ethnic groups - especially
people
of African descent - were not equally welcome. After the American
Revolution, northern states began abolishing slavery; it was outlawed
in Indiana by 1808. Arriving from the southern states, hundreds of
free Black families established several small, dynamic communities
such as Lick Creek in Orange County. This village, founded in 1817,
had its population peak in 1855 with 16 families living on more than
1,500 acres. Wayne County also had a very large Black population that
was not settled into segregated communities; instead, they lived for
the most part on land owned by sponsoring or sympathetic Quakers.
However, in 1831 new legislation stated that free Blacks entering Indiana had to post a bond of $500.00 with local authorities to guarantee that they would not "become a burden upon the public treasury". This was an enormous amount of money in that era. The bond was forfeited should the person be convicted of a crime and authorities could expel Blacks who failed to pay the bond. The Fugitive slave law of 1850 provided that anyone harboring a slave was subject to a fine up to $1000 and imprisonment of six months; fugitive slaves were denied the right of a jury trial.
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