The Journal of Negro History Volume IV Part 7

REPORT OF THE MINORITY

_The undersigned, a minority of the committee appointed under resolution of the Senate of December 15, 1879, to investigate the causes which have led to the emigration of Negroes from the Southern to the Northern States, submit the following report:_[4]

In the month of December last a few hundred colored men, women, and children, discontented with their condition in North Carolina, and hoping to improve it, were emigrating to Indiana.

This movement, though utterly insignificant in comparison with the vastly greater numbers which were moving from other Southern States into Kansas, seemed to be considered of very much more importance, in certain quarters, on account of its alleged political purposes and bearing. The theory upon which the investigation was asked was that the emigration into the State of Indiana was the result of a conspiracy on the part of Northern leaders of the Republican party to colonize that State with Negroes for political purposes. The utter absurdity of this theory should have been apparent to everybody, for if the Republican party, or its leaders, proposed to import Negroes into Indiana for political purposes, why take them from North Carolina? Why import them from a State where the Republicans hope and expect to carry the election, when there were thousands upon thousands ready and anxious to come from States certainly Democratic. Why transport them by rail at heavy expense half way across the continent when they could have taken them from Kentucky without any expense, or brought them up the Mississippi River by steamers at merely nominal cost? Why send twenty-five thousand to Kansas to swell her 40,000 Republican majority, and only seven or eight hundred to Indiana? These considerations brand with falsehood and folly the charge that the exodus was a political movement induced by Northern partisan leaders? And yet to prove this absurd proposition the committee devoted six months of hard and fruitless labor, during which they examined one hundred and fifty-nine witnesses, selected from all parts of the country, mainly with reference to their supposed readiness to prove said theory, expended over $30,000 and filled three large volumes of testimony.

The undersigned feel themselves authorized to say that there is no evidence whatever even tending to sustain the charge that the Republican party, or any of its leaders, have been instrumental, either directly or indirectly, in aiding or encouraging these people to come from their homes in the South to any of the Northern States. A good deal of complaint was made that certain "aid societies" in the North had encouraged and aided this migration, and a futile attempt was made to prove that these societies were acting in the interest of the Republican party.

Upon inquiry, however, it was ascertained that their purposes were purely charitable and had no connection whatever with any political motive or movement. They were composed almost wholly of colored people, and were brought into existence solely to afford temporary relief to the dest.i.tute and suffering emigrants who had already come into the Northern and Western States.

In the spring of 1879 thousands of colored people, unable longer to endure the intolerable hards.h.i.+ps, injustice, and suffering inflicted upon them by a cla.s.s of Democrats in the South, had, in utter despair, fled panic-stricken from their homes and sought protection among strangers in a strange land. Homeless, penniless, and in rags, these poor people were thronging the wharves of Saint Louis, crowding the steamers on the Mississippi River, and in pitiable dest.i.tution throwing themselves upon the charity of Kansas. Thousands more were congregating along the banks of the Mississippi River, hailing the pa.s.sing steamers, and imploring them for a pa.s.sage to the land of freedom, where their rights of citizens were respected and honest toil rewarded by honest compensation. The newspapers were filled with accounts of their dest.i.tution, and the very air was burdened with the cry of distress from a cla.s.s of American citizens flying from persecutions which they could not longer endure. Their piteous tales of outrage, suffering and wrong touched the hearts of the more fortunate members of their race in the North and West, and aid societies, designed to afford temporary relief, and composed largely, almost wholly, of colored people, were organized in Was.h.i.+ngton, Saint Louis, Topeka, and in various other places.

That they were organized to induce migration for political purposes, or to aid or to encourage these people to leave their homes for any purpose, or that they ever contributed one dollar to that end, is utterly untrue, and there is absolutely nothing in the testimony to sustain such a charge. Their purposes and objects were purely charitable. They found a race of wretched miserable people flying from oppression and wrong, and they sought to relieve their distress. The refugees were hungry, and they fed them: in rags, and they clothed them; homeless, and they sheltered them; dest.i.tute, and they found employment for them--only this and nothing more.

The real origin of the exodus movement and the organizations at the South which have promoted it are very clearly stated by the witnesses who have been most active in regard to it.

Henry Adams, of Shreveport, Louisiana, an uneducated colored laborer, but a man of very unusual natural abilities, and, so far as the committee could learn, entirely reliable and truthful, states that he entered the United States Army in 1866 and remained in it until 1869; that when he left the Army he returned to his former home at Shreveport, and, finding the condition of his race intolerable, he and a number of other men who had also been in the Army set themselves to work to better the condition of their people.

In 1870--

He says--

a parcel of us got together and said we would organize ourselves into a committee and look into affairs and see the true condition of our race, to see whether it was possible we could stay under a people who held us in bondage or not.

That committee increased until it numbered about five hundred and Mr. Adams says:

Some of the members of the committee was ordered by the committee to go into every State in the South where we had been slaves, and post one another from time to time about the true condition of our race, and nothing but the truth.

In answer to the question whether they traveled over various States he said:

"Yes, sir; and we worked, some of us, worked our way from place to place, and went from State to State and worked--some of them did--amongst our people, in the fields, everywhere, to see what sort of a living our people lived--whether we could live in the South amongst the people that held us as slaves or not. We continued that on till 1874. Every one paid his own expenses, except the one we sent to Louisiana and Mississippi. We took money out of our pockets and sent him, and said to him you must now go to work. You can't find out anything till you get amongst them. You can talk as much as you please, but you got to go right into the field and work with them and sleep with them to know all about them."

I think about one hundred or one hundred and fifty went from one place or another.

Q. What was the character of the information that they gave you?

A. Well, the character of the information they brought to us was very bad, sir.

Q. Do you remember any of these reports that you got from members of your committee?--A. Yes, sir; they said in several parts where they was that the land rent was still higher there in that part of the country than it was where we first organized it, and the people was still being whipped, some of them, by the old owners, the men that had owned them as slaves, and some of them was being cheated out of their crops just the same as they was there.

Q. Was anything said about their personal and political rights in these reports as to how they were treated?--A. Yes; some of them stated that in some parts of the country where they voted they would be shot. Some of them stated that if they voted the Democratic ticket they would not be injured.

Q. Now let us understand more distinctly, before we go any further, the kind of people who composed that a.s.sociation. The committee, as I understand you, was composed entirely of laboring people?--A. Yes, sir.

Q Did it include any politicians of either color, white or black?--A. No politicianers didn't belong to it, because we didn't allow them to know nothing about it, because we was afraid that if we allowed the colored politicianers to belong to it he would tell it to the Republican politicianers, and from that the men that was doing all this to us would get hold of it too, and then get after us.

Q. About what time did you lose all hope and confidence that your condition could be tolerable in the Southern States?--A. Well we never lost all hopes in the world till 1877.

Q. Why did you lose all hope in that year?--A. Well, we found ourselves in such condition that we looked around and we seed that there was no way on earth, it seemed, that we could better our condition there, and we discussed that thoroughly in our organization in May. We said that the whole South--every State in the South--had got into the hands of the very men that held us slaves--from one thing to another--and we thought that the men that held us slaves was holding the reins of government over our heads in every respect almost, even the constable up to the governor. We felt we had almost as well be slaves under these men. In regard to the whole matter that was discussed it came up in every council. Then we said there was no hope for us and we had better go.

Q. You say, then, that in 1877 you lost all hope of being able to remain in the South, and you began to think of moving somewhere else?--A. Yes; we said we was going if we had to run away and go into the woods.

Q. About how many did this committee consist of before you organized your council? Give us the number as near as you can tell.--A. As many as five hundred in all.

Q. The committee, do you mean? A. Yes; the committee has been that large.

Q. What was the largest number reached by your colonization council, in your best judgment?--A. Well, it is not exactly five hundred men belonging to the council that we have in our council, but they all agreed to go with us and enroll their names with us from time to time, so that they have now got at this time ninety-eight thousand names enrolled.

Q. Then through that council, as sort of subscribers to its purpose and acts and for carrying out its objects, there were ninety-eight thousand names?--A. Yes; ninety-eight thousand names enrolled.

Q. In what parts of the country were these ninety-eight thousand people scattered?--A. Well some in Louisiana--the majority of them in Louisiana--and some in Texas, and some in Arkansas. We joins Arkansas.

Q. Were there any in Mississippi?--A. Yes, sir; a few in Mississippi.

Q. And a few in Alabama?--A. Yes, sir; a few in Alabama, too.

Q. Did the organization extend at all into other States farther away?--A. O, yes, sir.

Q. Have you members in all the Southern States?--A. Not in every one, but in a great many of the others.

Q. Are these members of that colonization council in communication as to the condition of your race, and as to the best thing to be done to alleviate their troubles?--A. O, yes.

Q. What do you know about inducements being held out from politicians of the North, or from politicians anywhere else, to induce these people to leave their section of country and go into the Northern or Western States?--A. There is n.o.body has written letters of that kind, individually--not no white persons, I know, not to me, to induce anybody to come.

Q. Well, to any of the other members of your council?--A. No, I don't think to any of the members. If they have, they haven't said nothing to me about it.

It appears also from the evidence of Samuel L. Perry, of North Carolina, a colored man, who accompanied most of the emigrants from that State to Indiana, and who had more to do with the exodus from that quarter than any other man, that the movement had its origin as far back as 1872, as the following questions and answers will show:

Q. You have heard a good deal of this testimony with reference to this exodus from North Carolina. Now begin at the beginning and tell us all you know about it.--A. Well, the beginning, I suppose, was in this way: The first idea or the first thing was, we used to have little meetings to talk over these matters. In 1872 we first received some circulars or pamphlets from O. F.

Davis, of Omaha, Nebraska.

Q. In 1872?--A. Yes, sir; in 1872--giving a description of government lands and railroads that could be got cheap; and we held little meetings then; that is, we would meet and talk about it Sunday evenings--that is, the laboring cla.s.s of our people--the only ones I knew anything about; I had not much to do with the big professional Negroes, the rich men. I did not a.s.sociate with them much, but I got among the workingmen, and they would take these pamphlets and read them over.

Mr. Perry says that the feeling in favor of migrating subsided somewhat, but sprung up again in 1876. From that time down to 1879 there were frequent consultations upon the subject, much dissatisfaction expressed respecting their condition, and a desire to emigrate to some part of the West. He says about "that time I was a subscriber to the New York Herald, and from an article in that paper the report was that the people were going to Kansas, and we thought we could go to Kansas, too; that we could get a colony to go West. That was last spring. We came back and formed ourselves into a colony of some hundred men." They did not, however, begin their westward movements until the fall of 1879, when it being ascertained by the railroad companies that a considerable number of people were proposing to migrate from North Carolina to the West, several railroad companies, notably the Baltimore and Ohio, offered to certain active and influential colored men $1 per head for all the pa.s.sengers they could procure for the respective competing lines.

By reference to this evidence, part 3, page 136, it will be seen that the emigration movement in Alabama originated as far back as the year 1871, when an organization of colored people, called the State Labor Union, delegated Hon. George F. Marlow to visit Kansas, and other parts of the West, for the purpose of examining that country and reporting back to a future convention his views as to the expediency of removing thereto. A convention of colored people was held again in 1872, at which Mr. Marlow made the following glowing report of the condition of things in Kansas and the inducements that State offered to the colored people. He said:

In August, 1871, being delegated by your president for the purpose, I visited the State of Kansas, and here give the results of my observations, briefly stated.

It is a new State, and as such possesses many advantages over the old.

It is much more productive than most other States.

What is raised yields more profit than elsewhere, as it is raised at less expense.

The weather and roads enable you to do more work here than elsewhere.