To the west, however, where came Negroes fleeing from the persecution of the southern whites, independent churches flourished much better. Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Chicago soon found Baptist as well as Methodist churches common. Some of the pioneers in the group of Baptists were Richard DeBaptiste of Detroit and later of Chicago, and James Poindexter of Columbus. These in the course of time so rapidly increased that the Negro Baptists finally established an independent connection, the Providence Baptist Association, the first Negro body of the kind in the United States, organized in Ohio in 1836. Such was the case in Illinois where the Baptist churches of St. Clair and Madison counties, of Shawneetown, Vandalia, Jacksonville, Springfield, Galena, and Chicago, representing about twelve churches, organized in 1838 the Wood River Baptist Association. Feeling that there was a need for a still larger body, the churches of these parts organized in 1853 the Western Colored Baptist Convention. The progress of these independent churches in the west suffered no interruption until the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, when many Negroes who had escaped from the South and settled in these cities had to flee to Canada for safety. In Canada West, the various settlements saw the influence of the Baptists and Methodists extended, but for a long time there had been a Baptist church in Toronto which under Rev. W. Christian was flourishing in 1846, and the Methodists soon made there a more systematic effort. CHAPTER VI THE SCHISM AND THE SUBSEQUENT SITUATION An important factor in the growth of the Negro Church was that the Negroes found the white churches of their choice less friendly and finally saw them withdrawn from the churches in the North to perpetuate slavery. In the South, the slaves and free Negroes had to accept whatever religious privileges were allowed them; but when the national bodies grew lukewarm on abolition, receded from the advanced position which they had taken in the defense of the Negro, and persistently compromised on the question to placate their southern adherents to maintain intact their national organizations, Negroes forgot the stigma attached to their radical religious bodies and united freely with their brethren who during the first years of their independence found it difficult to secure a following.