The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919

Whereas, it is currently alleged that they are induced to do so by the unjust and cruel conduct of their white fellow citizens toward them in the South; therefore,

Be it Resolved, That a committee of five members of this body be appointed by its presiding officer, whose duty it shall be to investigate the causes which have led to the aforesaid migration, and to report the same to the Senate; and said committee shall have power to send for persons and papers, compelling the defense of witnesses, and to sit at any time.[70 - Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 2d Session, X, p. 155.]

Thereupon Senator William Windom, of Minnesota, offered the following amendment which led to the discussion of all sorts of phases of the race problem and finally to a majority and minority report on the exodus:[71 - Ibid., pp. 155-170.]

And Be it Therefore Resolved, That in case said committee shall find that said migration of colored people from the South has been caused by cruel and unjust treatment or by the denial or abridgement of personal or political rights, have so far inquired and reported to the Senate, first; what, if any, action of Congress may be necessary to secure to every citizen of the United States the full and free enjoyment of all rights guaranteed by the constitution; second; where the peaceful adjustment of the colored race of all sectional issues may not be best secured by the distribution of the colored race through their partial migration from those States and congressional districts where, by reason of their numerical majority, they are not allowed to freely and peacefully exercise the rights of citizenship; and third; that said committee shall inquire and report as to the expediency and practicability of providing such territory or territories as may be necessary for the use and occupation of persons who may desire to migrate from their present homes in order to secure the free, full, and peaceful enjoyment of their constitutional rights and privileges.[72 - Congressional Record, 46th Congress, 2d Session, X, p. 170.]

Report

The Select Committee, appointed by the Senate to investigate the causes which have led to the migration of the Negroes from the Southern States to the Northern States, having duly considered the same, beg leave to submit the following report:[73 - Reports of Committees of Senate of the United States for the First and Second Sessions of the Forty-Sixth Congress, 1879-80, VII, pp. iii-xiii.]

On the 18th day of December, 1879, the Senate passed the following resolution:

Whereas, large numbers of Negroes from the Southern States are emigrating to the Northern States; and,

Whereas, it is currently alleged that they are induced to do so by the unjust and cruel conduct of their white fellow-citizens towards them in the South, and by the denial or abridgement of their personal and political rights and privileges; therefore,

Be it Resolved, That a committee of five members of this body be appointed by its presiding officer, whose duty it shall be to investigate the causes which have led to the aforesaid emigration, and to report the same to the Senate; and said committee shall have power to send for persons and papers, and to sit at any time.

In obedience to this resolution the committee proceeded to take testimony on the 19th day of January, and continuing from time to time until 153 witnesses had been examined, embracing persons from the States of North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri, Kansas, and Indiana. Much of this testimony is of such a character as would not be received in a court of justice, being hearsay, the opinions of witnesses, &c., but we received it with a view to ascertaining, if possible, the real state of facts in regard to the condition of the Southern colored people, their opinions and feelings, and the feelings and opinions of their white neighbors. We think it clearly established from the testimony that the following may be said to be the causes which have induced this migration of the colored people from various portions of the South to Northern States, chiefly to Kansas, and Indiana: That from North Carolina, the State to which we first directed our attention, was undoubtedly induced in a great degree by Northern politicians, and by Negro leaders in their employ, and in the employ of railroad lines.

Examining particularly into the condition of the colored men in that State, it was disclosed by the testimony of whites and blacks, Republicans and Democrats, that the causes of discontent among those people could not have arisen from any deprivation of their political rights or any hardship in their condition. A minute examination into their situation shows that the average rate of wages, according to the age and strength of the hand for field labor, was from eight to fifteen dollars per month, including board and house to live in, garden and truck patches, around the house, fire-wood, and certain other privileges, all rent free.

These, added to the extra labor which could be earned by hands during the season of gathering turpentine and resin, or of picking cotton made the general average of compensation for labor in that State quite equal to if not better than in any Northern State to which these people were going, to say nothing of the climate of North Carolina, which was infinitely better adapted to them.

The closest scrutiny could detect no outrage or violence inflicted upon their political rights in North Carolina for many years past. They all testified that they voted freely; that their votes were counted fairly; that no improper influence whatsoever was exerted over them; and many were acquiring real estate, and were enjoying the same privileges of education for their children, precisely, that the whites were enjoying.

It was also disclosed by the testimony that there existed aid societies in the city of Washington, in the city of Topeka, Kans., Indianapolis, and elsewhere throughout the West, whose avowed object was to furnish aid to colored men migrating to the West and North; and notwithstanding that the agents and members of these societies generally disclaimed that it was their intention to induce any colored men to leave their homes, but only to aid in taking care of them after they had arrived, yet it was established undeniably, not only that the effect of these societies and of the aid extended by them operated to cause the exodus originally, but that they stimulated it directly by publishing and distributing among the colored men circulars artfully designed and calculated to stir up discontent. Every single member, agent, friend, or sympathizer with these societies and their purposes were ascertained to belong to the Republican party, and generally to be active members thereof. Some of the circulars contained the grossest misrepresentation of facts, and in almost all cases the immigrants expected large aid from the government of clothes, or land, or money or free transportation, or something of that kind. Hundreds of them, on given days at various points in the South, crowded to the depots or to the steamboat landings upon a rumor that free transportation was to be furnished to all who would go. It was also disclosed by the testimony on the part of some very candid and intelligent witnesses that their object in promoting this exodus of the colored people was purely political. They thought it would be well to remove a sufficient number of blacks from the South, where their votes could not be made to tell, into close States in the North, and thus turn the scale in favor of the Republican party.

Wages, rents, method of cropping on shares, &c., were inquired into in all of the Southern States mentioned, and the fact ascertained that the aggregate was about the same as in North Carolina. In most of the Southern States, where wages were higher than in North Carolina, expenses were also higher, so that the aggregate, as before stated, was about the same.

One cause of complaint alleged as a reason for this exodus of the colored people from the South was their mistreatment in the courts of justice. Directing our attention to this the committee have ascertained that in many of the districts of the South the courts were under entire Republican control—judges, prosecuting attorneys, sheriffs, &c., and that there were generally as many complaints from districts thus controlled as there were from districts which were under the control of the Democratic officials; and that the whole of the complaints taken together might be said to be such as are generally made by the ignorant who fail to receive in courts what they think is justice.

Your committee found no State or county in the South, into which this investigation extended, where colored men were excluded from juries either in theory or in practice; they found no county or district in the South where they were excluded, either in theory or practice, from their share in the management of county affairs and of the control of county government. On the contrary, whenever their votes were in a majority we found that the officers were most generally divided among the black people, or among white people of their choice. Frequently we found the schools to be controlled by them, especially that portion of the school fund which was allotted to their race, and the complaints which had been so often made of excessive punishment of the blacks by the courts as compared with the whites upon investigation in nearly all cases, proved to be either unfounded in fact or that if there was an apparent excess of punishment of a black man the cause was ascertained to be in the nature of the crime with which he was charged, or the attendant circumstances.

The educational advantages in the South, the committee regret to say, were found to be insufficient, and far inferior to those of most of the States of the North, but such as they were we found in every case that the blacks had precisely the same advantages that the whites enjoyed; that the school fund was divided among them according to numbers; that their teachers were quite as good, and chosen with as much care; that their schools existed as many months in the year; in short, the same facilities were afforded to the blacks as were to the whites in this respect; and that these schools were generally supported by the voluntary taxation imposed by the legislatures composed of white men, levied upon their own property for the common benefit.

With regard to political outrages which have formed the staple of complaint for many years against the people of the South, your committee diligently inquired, and have to report that they found nothing or almost nothing new. Many old stories were revived and dwelt upon by zealous witnesses, but very few indeed ventured to say that any considerable violence or outrage had been exhibited toward the colored people of the South within the last few years, and still fewer of all those who testified upon this subject, and who were evidently anxious to make the most of it, testified to anything as within their own knowledge. It was all hearsay, and nothing but hearsay, with rare exceptions.

Many of the witnesses before us were colored politicians, men who make their living by politics, and whose business it was to stir up feeling between the whites and blacks; keep alive the embers of political hatred; and were men of considerable intelligence, so that what they failed to set forth of outrages perpetrated against their race may be safely assumed not to exist. Many, on the contrary, were intelligent, sober, industrious, and respectable men, who testified to their own condition, the amount of property that they had accumulated since their emancipation, the comfort in which they lived, the respect with which they were regarded by their white neighbors. These universally expressed the opinion that all colored men who would practice equal industry and sobriety could have fared equally well; and in fact their own condition was ample proof of the treatment of the colored people by the whites of the South, and of their opportunities to thrive, if they were so determined. Some of these men owned so much as a thousand acres of real estate in the best portions of the South; many of them had tenants of their own, white men, occupying their premises and paying them rent; and your committee naturally arrived at the conclusion that if one black man could attain to this degree of prosperity and respectable citizenship, others could, having the same capacity for business and practicing the same sobriety and industry.

Your committee also directed their attention to the complaints frequently made with regard to the laws passed in various States of the South relating to landlord and tenant, and to the system adopted by many planters for furnishing their tenants and laborers with supplies. We found, upon investigation of these laws, and of the witnesses in relation to their operation, that as a general rule they were urgently called for by the circumstances in which the South found itself after the war. The universal adoption of homestead and personal property exemption laws deprived poor men of credit, and the landlord class, for its own protection, procured the passage of these laws giving them a lien upon the crop made by the tenant until his rents and his supplies furnished for the subsistence of the tenant and his family had been paid and discharged; and while upon the surface these laws appeared to be hard and in favor of the landlord, they were, as was actually testified by many intelligent witnesses, quite as much or more in favor of the tenant, as it enabled him to obtain credit, to subsist himself and his family, and to make a crop without any means whatsoever but his own labor. It was alleged also that in many instances landlords, or if not landlords then merchants, would establish country stores for furnishing supplies to laborers and tenants, and the laborer, having no money to go elsewhere or take the natural advantages of competition, was forced to buy at these stores at exorbitant prices.

Your committee regret to say that they found it to be frequently the case that designing men, or bad and dishonest men, would take advantage of the ignorance or necessity of the Negroes to obtain these exorbitant prices; but at the same time your committee is not aware of a spot on earth where the cunning and unscrupulous do not take advantage of the ignorant; and cannot regard it as a sufficient cause for these black people leaving their homes and going into distant States and among strangers unless they had a proper assurance that the State to which they were going contained no dishonest men, or men who would take such advantage of them. Your committee feel bound to say, however, in justice to the planters of the South, that this abuse is not at all general nor frequent; and that as a general rule while exorbitant prices are exacted sometimes from men in the situation of the blacks, yet the excuse for it is the risk which planter and merchant run. Should a bad crop year come, should the Army worm devour the cotton, or any other calamity come upon the crop, the landlord is without his rent, the storekeeper is without his pay, and worse than all the laborer is without a means of subsistence for the next year. It is hoped and believed that when the heretofore disturbed condition of the people of the South settles down into regularity and order, the natural laws of trade and competition will assert themselves and this evil will be to a great extent remedied, whilst the diffusion of education among the colored people will enable them to keep their own accounts and hold a check upon those who would act dishonestly towards them.

On the whole, your committee express the positive opinion that the condition of the colored people of the South is not only as good as could have been reasonably expected, but is better than if large communities were transferred to a colder and more inhospitable climate, thrust into competition with a different system of labor, among strangers who are not accustomed to them, their ways, habits of thought and action, their idiosyncrasies, and their feelings. While a gradual migration, such as circumstances dictate among the white races, might benefit the individual black man and his family as it does those of the white race, we cannot but regard this wholesale attempt to transfer a people without means and without intelligence, from the homes of their nativity in this manner, as injurious to the people of the South, injurious to the people and the labor system of the State where they go, and, more than all, injurious to the last degree to the black people themselves. That there is much in their condition to be deplored in the South no one will deny; that that condition is gradually and steadily improving in every respect is equally true. That there have been clashings of the races in the South, socially and politically, is never to be denied nor to be wondered at; but when we come to consider the method in which the people were freed, as the result of a bitter and desolating civil war; and that for purposes of party politics these incompetent, ignorant, landless, homeless people, without any qualifications of citizenship, without any of the ties of property or the obligations of education, were suddenly thrown into political power, and the effort was made not only to place them upon an equality with their late masters, but to absolutely place them in front and hold them there by legislation, 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.

    D. W. Voorhees.
    Z. B. Vance.
    Geo. II. Pendleton.

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:[74 - 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.]

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 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 association. 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.