University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VII

THE EXODUS TO THE WEST

HAVING come through the halcyon days of
the Reconstruction only to find themselves
reduced almost to the status of slaves, many Negroes
deserted the South for the promising west
to grow up with the country. The immediate
causes were doubtless political. Bulldozing, a
rather vague term, covering all such crimes as
political injustice and persecution, was the source
of most complaint. The abridgment of the Negroes'
rights had affected them as a great
calamity. They had learned that voting is one
of the highest privileges to be obtained in this
life and they wanted to go where they might
still exercise that privilege. That persecution
was the main cause was disputed, however, as
there were cases of Negroes migrating from
parts where no such conditions obtained. Yet
some of the whites giving their version of the
situation admitted that violent methods had
been used so to intimidate the Negroes as to
compel them to vote according to the dictation
of the whites. It was also learned that the bull-dozers
concerned in dethroning the non-taxpaying
blacks were an impecunious and irresponsible

group themselves, led by men of the
wealthy class.[1]

Coming to the defense of the whites, some
said that much of the persecution with which the
blacks were afflicted was due to the fear of
Negro uprisings, the terror of the days of slavery.
The whites, however, did practically nothing
to remove the underlying causes. They did
not encourage education and made no efforts to
cure the Negroes of faults for which slavery
itself was to be blamed and consequently could
not get the confidence of the blacks. The races
tended rather to drift apart. The Negroes lived
in fear of reenslavement while the whites believed
that the war between the North and
South would soon be renewed. Some Negroes
thinking likewise sought to go to the North to be
among friends. The blacks, of course, had come
so to regard southern whites as their enemies
as to render impossible a voluntary division in
politics.

Among the worst of all faults of the whites
was their unwillingness to labor and their tendency
to do mischief.[2] As there were so many
to live on the labor of the Negroes they were reduced
to a state a little better than that of bondage.
The master class was generally unfair to
the blacks. No longer responsible for them as
slaves, the planters endeavored after the war to

get their labor for nothing. The Negroes themselves
had no land, no mules, no presses nor
cotton gins, and they could not acquire sufficient
capital to obtain these things. They were made
victims of fraud in signing contracts which they
could not understand and had to suffer the consequent
privations and want aggravated by robbery
and murder by the Ku Klux Klan.[3]

The murder of Negroes was common throughout
the South and especially in Louisiana. In
1875, General Sheridan said that as many as
3,500 persons had been killed and wounded in
that State, the great majority of whom being
Negroes; that 1,884 were killed and wounded in
1868, and probably 1,200 between 1868 and 1875.
Frightful massacres occurred in the parishes of
Bossier, Catahoula, Saint Bernard, Grant and
Orleans. As most of these murders were for
political reasons, the offenders were regarded by
their communities as heroes rather than as criminals.
A massacre of Negroes began in the
parish of St. Landry on the 28th of September
and continued for three days, resulting in the
death of from 300 to 400. Thirteen captives
were taken from the jail and shot and as many as
twenty-five dead bodies were found burned in
the woods. There broke out in the parish of
Boissier another three-day riot during which
two hundred Negroes were massacred. More
than, forty blacks were killed in the parish of

Caddo during the following month. In fact, the
number of murders, maimings and whippings
during these months aggregated over one thousand.[4]
The result was that the intelligent Negroes
were either intimidated or killed so that
the illiterate masses of Negro voters might be
ordered to refrain from voting the Republican
ticket to strengthen the Democrats or be subjected
to starvation through the operation of
the mischievous land tenure and credit system.
What was not done in 1868 to overthrow the
Republican regime was accomplished by a renewed
and extended use of such drastic measures
throughout the South in 1876.

Certain whites maintained, however, that the
unrest was due to the work of radical politicians
at the North, who had sent their emissaries
south to delude the Negroes into a fever of migration.
Some said it was a scheme to force
the nomination of a certain Republican candidate
for President in 1880. Others laid it to the
charge of the defeated white and black Republicans
who had been thrown from power by the
whites upon regaining control of the reconstructed
States.[5] A few insisted that a speech
delivered by Senator Windom in 1879 had given
stimulus to the migration.[6] Many southerners
said that speculators in Kansas had adopted

this plan to increase the value of their land.
Then there were other theories as to the fundamental
causes, each consisting of a charge of
one political faction that some other had given
rise to the movement, varying according as they
were Bourbons, conservatives, native white Republicans,
carpet-bag Republicans, or black Republicans.

Impartial observers, however, were satisfied
that the movement was spontaneous to the extent
that the blacks were ready and willing to
go. Probably no more inducement was offered
them than to other citizens among whom
land companies sent agents to distribute literature.
But the fundamental Causes of the
unrest were economic, for since the Civil War
race troubles have never been sufficient to set
in motion a large number of Negroes. The discontent
resulted from the lands-tenure and credit
systems, which had restored slavery in a modified
form.[7]

After the Civil War a few Negroes in those
parts, where such opportunities were possible,
invested in real estate offered for sale by the
impoverished and ruined planters of the conquered
commonwealths. When, however, the
Negroes lost their political power, their property
was seized on the plea for delinquent taxes and
they were forced into the ghetto of towns and
cities, as it became a crime punishable by social

proscription to sell Negroes desirable residences.
The aim was to debase all Negroes to the status
of menial labor in conformity with the usual
contention of the South that slavery is the normal
condition of the blacks.[8]

Most of the land of the South, however, always
remained as large tracts held by the planters
of cotton, who never thought of alienating it
to the Negroes to make them a race of small
farmers. In fact, they had not the means to
make extensive purchases of land, even if the
planters had been disposed to transfer it. Still
subject to the experimentation of white men, the
Negroes accepted the plan of paying them
wages; but this failed in all parts except in the
sugar district, where the blacks remained contented
save when disturbed by political movements.
They then tried all systems of working
on shares in the cotton districts; but this was
finally abandoned because the planters in some
cases were not able to advance the Negro tenant
supplies, pending the growth of the crop, and
some found the Negro too indifferent and lazy
to make the partnership desirable. Then came
the renting system which during the Reconstruction
period was general in the cotton districts.
This system threw the tenant on his own
responsibility and frequently made him the victim
of his own ignorance and the rapacity of the
white man. As exorbitant prices were charged

for rent, usually six to ten dollars an acre for
land worth fifteen to thirty dollars an acre, the
Negro tenant not only did not accumulate anything
but had reason to rejoice at the end of the
year, if he found himself out of debt.[9]

Along with this went the credit system which
furnished the capstone of the economic structure
so harmful to the Negro tenant. This system
made the Negroes dependent for their living on
an advance of supplies of food, clothing or tools
during the year, secured by a lien on the crop
when harvested. As the Negroes had no chance
to learn business methods during the days of
slavery, they fell a prey to a class of loan sharks,
harpies and vampires, who established stores
everywhere to extort from these ignorant tenants
by the mischievous credit system their
whole income before their crops could be gathered.[10]
Some planters who sympathized with
the Negroes brought forward the scheme of protecting
them by advancing certain necessities at
more reasonable prices. As the planter himself,
however, was subject to usury, the scheme did
not give much relief. The Negroes' crop, therefore,
when gathered went either to the merchant
or to the planter to pay the rent; for the merchant's
supplies were secured by a mortgage on
the tenant's personal property and a pledge of
the growing crop. This often prevented Negro

laborers in tne employ of black tenants from
getting their wages at the end of the year, for,
although the laborer had also a lien on the growing
crop, the merchant and the planter usually
had theirs recorded first and secured thereby
the support of the law to force the payment of
their claims. The Negro tenant then began the
year with three mortages, covering all he owned,
his labor for the coming year and all he expected
to acquire during that twelvemonth. He paid
"one-third of his product for the use of the land,
he paid an exorbitant fee for recording the contract
by which he paid his pound of flesh; he
was charged two or three times as much as he
ought to pay for ginning his cotton; and, finally,
he turned over his crop to be eaten up in commissions,
if any was still left to him."[11]

The worst of all results from this iniquitous
system was its effect on the Negroes themselves.
It made the Negroes extravagant and unscrupulous.
Convinced that no share of their crop
would come to them when harvested, they did
not exert themselves to produce what they could.
They often abandoned their crops before harvest,
knowing that they had already spent them.
In cases, however, where the Negro tenants had
acquired mules, horses or tools upon which the
speculator had a mortgage, the blacks were actually
bound to their landlords to secure the property.
It was soon evident that in the end the

white man himself was the loser by this evil
system. There appeared waste places in the
country. Improvements were wanting, land lay
idle for lack of sufficient labor, and that which
was cultivated yielded a diminishing return on
account of the ignorance and improvidence of
those tilling it. These Negroes as a rule had
lost the ambition to become landowners, preferring
to invest their surplus money in personal
effects; and in the few cases where the Negroes
were induced to undertake the buying of
land, they often tired of the responsibility and
gave it up.[12]

There began in the spring of 1879, therefore,
an emigration of the Negroes from Louisiana
and Mississippi to Kansas. For some time
there was a stampede from several river parishes
in Louisiana and from counties just opposite
them in Mississippi. It was estimated that
from five to ten thousand left their homes before
the movement could be checked. Persons
of influence soon busied themselves in showing
the blacks the necessity for remaining in the
South and those who had not then gone or prepared
to go were persuaded to return to the
plantations. This lull in the excitement, however,
was merely temporary, for many Negroes
had merely returned home to make more extensive
preparations for leaving the following
spring. The movement was accelerated by the

work of two Negro leaders of some note, Moses
Singleton, of Tennessee, the self-styled Moses
of the Exodus; and Henry Adams, of Louisiana,
who credited himself with having organized for
this purpose as many as 98,000 blacks.

Taking this movement seriously a convention
of the leading whites and blacks was held at
Vicksburg, Mississippi, on the sixth of May,
1879. This body was controlled mainly by unsympathetic
but diplomatic whites. General N.
R. Miles, of Yazoo County, Mississippi, was
elected president and A. W. Crandall, of Louisiana,
secretary. After making some meaningless
but eloquent speeches the convention appointed
a committee on credentials and adjourned
until the following day. On reassembling
Colonel W. L. Nugent, chairman of the
the committee, presented a certain preamble
and resolutions citing causes of the exodus and
suggesting remedies. Among the causes,
thought he, were: "the low price of cotton and
the partial failure of the crop, the irrational system
of planting adopted in some sections
whereby labor was deprived of intelligence to
direct it and the presence of economy to make it
profitable, the vicious system of credit fostered
by laws permitting laborers and tenants to mortgage
crops before they were grown or even
planted; the apprehension on the part of many
colored people produced by insidious reports
circulated among them that their civil and political

rights were endangered or were likely to be;
the hurtful and false rumors diligently disseminated,
that by emigrating to Kansas the Negroes
would obtain lands, mules and money
from the government without cost to themselves,
and become independent forever."[13]

Referring to the grievances and proposing a
redress, the committee admitted that errors had
been committed by the whites and blacks alike,
as each in turn had controlled the government
of the States there represented. The committee
believed that the interests of planters and laborers,
landlords and tenants were identical;
that they must prosper or suffer together; and
that it was the duty of the planters and landlords
of the State there represented to devise
and adopt some contract by which both parties
would receive the full benefit of labor governed
by intelligence and economy. The convention
affirmed that the Negro race had been placed by
the constitution of the United States and the
States there represented, and the laws thereof,
on a plane of absolute equality with the white
race; and declared that the Negro race should
be accorded the practical enjoyment of all civil
and political rights guaranteed by the said constitutions
and laws. The convention pledged
itself to use whatever of power and influence it
possessed to protect the Negro race against all
dangers in respect to the fair expression of their

wills at the polls, which they apprehended might
result from fraud, intimidation or bulldozing
on the part of the whites. And as there could
be no liberty of action without freedom of
thought, they demanded that all elections should
be fair and free and that no repressive measures
should be employed by the Negroes "to deprive
their own race in part of the fullest freedom in
the exercise of the highest right of citizenship."[14]

The committee then recommended the abolition
of the mischievous credit system, called
upon the Negroes to contradict false reports as
to crimes of the whites against them and, after
considering the Negroes' right to emigrate,
urged that they proceed about it with reason.
Ex-Governor Foote, of Mississippi, submitted a
plan to establish in every county a committee,
composed of men who had the confidence of both
whites and blacks, to be auxiliary to the public
authorities, to listen to complaints and arbitrate,
advise, conciliate or prosecute, as each
case should demand. But unwilling to do more
than make temporary concessions, the majority
rejected Foote's plan.[15]

The whites thought also to stop the exodus
by inducing the steamboat lines not to furnish
the emigrants transportation. Negroes were
also detained by writs obtained by preferring

against them false charges. Some, who were
willing to let the Negroes go, thought of importing
white and Chinese labor to take their places.
Hearing of the movement and thinking that he
could offer a remedy, Senator D. W. Voorhees,
of Indiana, introduced a resolution in the United
States Senate authorizing an inquiry into the
causes of the exodus.[16] The movement, however,
could not be stopped and it became so
widespread that the people in general were
forced to give it serious thought. Men in favor
of it declared their views, organized migration
societies and appointed agents to promote the
enterprise of removing the freedmen from the
South.

Becoming a national measure, therefore, the
migration evoked expressions from Frederick
Douglass and Richard T. Greener, two of the
most prominent Negroes in the United States.
Douglass believed that the exodus was ill-timed.
He saw in it the abandonment of the great principle
of protection to persons and property in
every State of the Union. He felt that if the
Negroes could not be protected in every State,
the Federal Government was shorn of its rightful
dignity and power, the late rebellion had
triumphed, the sovereign of the nation was an
empty vessel, and the power and authority in
individual States were supreme. He thought,

therefore, that it was better for the Negroes to
stay in the South than to go North, as the South
was a better market for the black man's labor.
Douglass believed that the Negroes should be
warned against a nomadic life. He did not see
any more benefit in the migration to Kansas
than he had years before in the emigration to
Africa. The Negroes had a monopoly of labor
at the South and they would be too insignificant
in numbers to have such an advantage in the
North. The blacks were then potentially able
to elect members of Congress in the South but
could not hope to exercise such power in other
parts. Douglass believed, moreover, that this
exodus did not conform to the "laws of civilizing
migration," as the carrying of a language,
literature and the like of a superior race to an
inferior; and it did not conform to the geographic
laws assuring healthy migration from
east to west in the same latitude, as this was
from south to north, far away from the climate
in which the migrants were born.[17]

The exodus of the Negroes, however, was
heartily endorsed by Richard T. Greener. He
did not consider it the best remedy for the lawlessness
of the South but felt that it was a
salutary one. He did not expect the United States
to give the oppressed blacks in the South the
protection they needed, as there is no abstract

limit to the right of a State to do anything. He
would not encourage the Negro to lead a wandering
life but in that instance such advice was
gratuitous. Greener failed to find any analogy
between African colonization and migration to
the West as the former was promoted by slaveholders
to remove the free Negro from the country
and the other sprang spontaneously from
the class considering itself aggrieved. "One
led out of the country to a comparative wilderness;
the other directed to a better land and
larger opportunities." He did not see how the
migration to the North would diminish the potentiality
of the Negro in politics, for Massachusetts
first elected Negroes to her General
Court, Ohio had nominated a Negro representative
and Illinois another. He showed also that
Mr. Douglass's objection on the grounds of migrating
from south to north rather than from
east to west was not historical. He thought
little of the advice to the Negroes to stick and
fight it out, for he had evidence that the return
of the unreconstructed Confederates to power
in the South would for generations doom the
blacks to political oppression unknown in the
annals of a free country.

Greener showed foresight here in urging the
Negroes to take up desirable western land before
it would be preempted by foreigners. As
the Swedes, Norwegians, Irish, Hebrews and
others were organizing societies and raising

funds to promote the migration of their needy
to these lands, why should the Negroes be debarred?
Greener had no apprehension as to the
treatment the Negroes would receive in the
West. He connected the movement too with the
general welfare of the blacks, considering it a
promising sign that they had learned to run
from persecution. Having passed their first
stage, that of appealing to philanthropists, the
Negroes were then appealing to themselves.[18]

Feeling very much as Greener did, these Negroes
rushed into Kansas and neighboring
States in 1879. So many came that some systematic
relief had to be offered. Mrs. Comstock,
a Quaker lady, organized for this purpose
the Kansas Freedmen's Relief Association, to
raise funds and secure for them food and clothing.
In this work she had the support of Governor
J. P. Saint John. There was much suffering
upon arriving in Kansas but relief came
from various sources. During this year $40,000
and 500,000 pounds of clothing, bedding and the
like were used. England contributed 50,000
pounds of goods and $8,000. In 1879, the refugees
took up 20,000 acres of land and brought
3,000 under cultivation. The Relief Association
at first furnished them with supplies, teams and
seed, which they profitably used in the production
of large crops. Desiring to establish homes,
they built 300 cabins and saved $30,000 the first

year. In April, 1,300 refugees had gathered
around Wyandotte alone. Up to that date
60,000 had come to Kansas, nearly 40,000 of
whom arrived in destitute condition. About
30,000 settled in the country, some on rented
lands and others on farms as laborers, leaving
about 25,000 in cities, where on account of
crowded conditions and the hard weather many
greatly suffered. Upon finding employment,
however, they all did well, most of them becoming
self-supporting within one year after their
arrival, and few of them coming back to the Relief
Association for aid the second time.[19]
This was especially true of those in Topeka,
Parsons and Kansas City.

The people of Kansas did not encourage the
blacks to come. They even sent messengers to
the South to advise the Negroes not to migrate
and, if they did come anyway, to provide themselves
with equipment. When they did arrive,
however, they welcomed and assisted them as
human beings. Under such conditions the
blacks established five or six important colonies
in Kansas alone between 1879 and 1880. Chief
among these were Baxter Springs, Nicodemus,
Morton City and Singleton. Governor Saint
John, of Kansas, reported that they seemed to
be honest and of good habits, were certainly industrious
and anxious to work, and so far as
they had been tried had proved to be faithful

and excellent laborers. Giving his observations
there, Sir George Campbell bore testimony to
the same report.[20] Out of these communities
have come some most progressive black citizens.
In consideration of their desirability their white
neighbors have given them their cooperation,
secured to them the advantages of democratic
education, and honored a few of them with some
of the most important positions in the State.

Although the greater number of these blacks
went to Kansas, about 5,000 of them sought
refuge in other Western States. During these
years, Negroes gradually invaded Indian Territory
and increased the number already infiltrated
into and assimilated by the Indian nations.
When assured of their friendly attitude
toward the Indians, the Negroes were accepted
by them as equals, even during the days of slavery

when the blacks on account of the cruelties
of their masters escaped to the wilderness.[21]
Here we are at sea as to the extent to which this
invasion and subsequent miscegenation of the
black and red races extended for the reason that
neither the Indians nor these migrating Negroes
kept records and the United States Government
has been disposed to classify all mixed
breeds in tribes as Indians. Having equal opportunity
among the red men, the Negroes easily
succeeded. A traveler in Indian Territory in
1880 found their condition unusually favorable.
The cosy homes and promising fields of these
freedmen attracted his attention as striking evidences
of their thrift. He saw new fences, additions
to cabins, new barns, churches and schoolhouses
indicating prosperity. Given every privilege
which the Indians themselves enjoyed, the
Negroes could not be other than contented.[22]

It was very unfortunate, however, that in 1889,
when by proclamation of President Harrison
the Oklahoma Territory was thrown open, the
intense race prejudice of the white immigrants
and the rule of the mob prevented a larger
number of Negroes from settling in that promising
commonwealth. Long since extensively
advertised as valuable, the land of Oklahoma
had become a coveted prize for the adventurous
squatters invading the territory in defiance of

the law before it was declared open for settlement.
The rush came with all the excitement
of pioneer days redoubled. Stakes were
set, parcels of land were claimed, cabins were
constructed in an hour and towns grew up
in a day.[23] Then came conflicting claims as to
titles and rights of preemption culminating in
fighting and bloodshed. And worst of all, with
this disorderly group there developed the fixed
policy of eliminating the Negroes entirely.

The Negro, however, was not entirely excluded.
Some had already come into the territory
and others in spite of the barriers set up
continued to come.[24] With the cooperation of the
Indians, with whom they easily amalgamated,
they readjusted themselves and acquired sufficient
wealth to rise in the economic world. Although
not generally fortunate, a number of
them have coal and oil lands from which they
obtain handsome incomes and a few, like Sara
Rector, have actually become rich. Dishonest
white men with the assistance of unprincipled
officials have defrauded and are still endeavoring
to defraud these Negroes of their property,
lending them money secured by mortgages
and obtaining for themselves through the
courts appointments as the Negroes' guardians.
They turn out to be the robbers of the Negroes,

in case they do not live in a community where
an enlightened public opinion frowns down upon
this crime.

During the later eighties and the early nineties
there were some other interstate movements
worthy of notice here. The mineral wealth of
the Appalachian mountains was being exploited.
Foreigners, at first, were coming into this country
in sufficiently large numbers to meet the demand;
but when this supply became inadequate,
labor agents appealed to the blacks in the South.
Negroes then flocked to the mining districts of
Birmingham, Alabama, and to East Tennessee.
A large number also migrated from North Carolina
and Virginia to West Virginia and some
few of the same group to Southern Ohio to take
the places of those unreasonable strikers who
often demanded larger increases in wages than
the income of their employers could permit.
Many of these Negroes came to West Virginia
as is evidenced by the increase in Negro population
of that State. West Virginia had a Negro
population of 17,980 in 1870; 25,886 in 1880;
32,690 in 1890; 43,499 in 1900; and 64,173 in
1910.[25]