The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919. Various
by military violence, and by every other means that could possibly be resorted to; when we consider these things no philosophical mind can behold their present condition, and the present comparative state of peace and amity between the two races, without wonder that their condition is as good as it is.
No man can behold this extraordinary spectacle of two people attempting to reconcile themselves in spite of the interference of outsiders, and to live in harmony, to promote each other's prosperity in spite of the bitter animosities which the sudden elevation of the one has engendered, without the liveliest hope that if left to themselves, the condition of the former subject race will still more rapidly improve, and that the best results may be reasonably and fairly expected.
Your committee is further of the opinion that all the attempts of legislation; that all the inflammatory appeals of politicians upon the stump and through the newspapers; that the wild and misdirected philanthropy of certain classes of our citizens; that these aid societies, and all other of the influences which are so industriously brought to bear to disturb the equanimity of the colored people of the South and to make them discontented with their position, are doing them a positive and almost incalculable injury, to say nothing of pecuniary losses which have thus been inflicted upon Southern communities.
Your committee is further of opinion that Congress having enacted all the legislation for the benefit of the colored people of the South which under the Constitution it can enact, and having seen that all the States of the South have done the same; that by the Constitution of the United States and the constitutions of the various States these people are placed upon a footing of perfect equality before the law, and given the chance to work out their own civilization and improvements, any further attempts at legislation or agitation of the subject will but excite in them hopes of exterior aid that will be disappointing to them, and will prevent them from working out diligently and with care their own salvation; that the sooner they are taught to depend upon themselves, the sooner they will learn to take care of themselves; the sooner they are taught to know that their true interest is promoted by cultivating the friendship of their white neighbors instead of their enmity, the sooner they will gain that friendship; and that friendship and harmony once fully attained, there is nothing to bar the way to their speedy civilization and advancement in wealth and prosperity, except such as hinder all people in that great work.
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: 74
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 destitute 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 hardships, injustice, and suffering inflicted upon them by a class 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 destitution throwing themselves upon the charity of Kansas. Thousands more were congregating along the banks of the Mississippi River, hailing the passing steamers, and imploring them for a passage 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 destitution, and the very air was burdened with the cry of distress from a class 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 Washington, 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; destitute, 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
Report of the Committee of the Senate of the United States for the First and Second Sessions of the Forty-Sixth Congress, 1879-80, VII, pp. viii-xxv.