From the book
Slaves Without Masters: the Free Negro in the Antebellum South by Ira Berlin; sorry for typos:
Pages 54-55: This concerns African-Americans who were freed from slavery from the 1790s-1810s; speaks to the desire to stay near loved ones:
Fleeing the memory of servitude, looking for new opportunities, searching for loved ones, free Negros moved in all directions. Many went to the north, some immigrated to Canada or Haiti, and a few found their way back to Africa. Yet, most of those who abandoned the place of their enslavement remained in the South. Lonely and fearful, some returned to their old neighborhoods, where they had friends and relatives. Others continued to wander aimlessly, living off the land while searching for a new life...
Most migrating free Negroes chose their destination with care. Many sought out loved ones in the hope of reconstructing shattered families and sharing the exhilaration of liberty. Some free blacks, like whites, search for new opportunities in the west, but more often free Negroes look to the expanding urban frontier...
Cities, where the relative anonymity of urban life added and provided an added measure of liberty, were the most important refuge from the memory of plantation slavery... Although cities added police and passed special ordinances to curb this unwanted migration, urban free Negroes increased in numbers more rapidly than did the free Negro caste generally. While the free Negro population of Virginia more than doubled between 1790 and 1810, that of Richmond increased almost fourfold and that of Norfolk tenfold. Similar tales could be told of Charleston and Savannah, but the rise of Baltimore is free Negro cast was the most spectacular.
Migration, no matter how tempting, was never easy. For many newly freed blacks it meant abandoning enslaved loved ones. The bonds of kinship made newly liberated blacks reluctant to leave without their families and friends.
- Alan