The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919

Several witnesses were called from Saint Louis and Kansas, who had conversed with thousands of the refugees, and who swore that they all told the same story of injustice, oppression and wrong. Upon the arrival of the first boat-loads at Saint Louis, in the early spring of 1879, the people of that city were deeply moved by the evident destitution and distress which they presented, and thousands of them were interviewed as to the causes which impelled them to leave their homes at that inclement season of the year. In the presence of these people, and with a full knowledge of their condition and of the flight, a memorial to Congress was prepared, and signed by a large number of the most prominent and most respectable citizens of Saint Louis, embracing such names as Mayor Overholtz (a Democrat), Hon. John F. Dillon, judge of the United States circuit court, ex-United States Senator J.B. Henderson and nearly a hundred other leading citizens, in which the condition and grievances of the refugees are stated as follows:

The undersigned, your memorialists, respectfully represent that within the last two weeks there have come by steamboats up the Mississippi River, from chiefly the States of Louisiana and Mississippi, and landed at Saint Louis, Mo., a great number of colored citizens of the United States, not less than twenty hundred and composed of men and women, old and young, and with them many of their children.

This multitude is eager to proceed to Kansas, and without exception, so far as we have learned, refuse all overtures or inducements to return South, even if their passage back is paid for them.

The condition of the great majority is absolute poverty; they are clothed in thin and ragged garments for the most part, and while here have been supported to some extent by public, but mostly by private charity.

The older ones are the former slaves of the South; all now entitled to life and liberty.

The weather from the first advent of these people in this Northern city has been unusually cold, attended with ice and snow, so that their sufferings have been greatly increased, and if there was in their hearts a single kind remembrance of their sunny Southern homes they would naturally give it expression now.

We have taken occasion to examine into the causes they themselves assign for their extraordinary and unexpected transit, and beg leave to submit herewith the written statements of a number of individuals of the refugees, which were taken without any effort to have one thing said more than another, and to express the sense of the witness in his own language as nearly as possible.

The story is about the same in each instance: a great privation and want from excessive rent exacted for land, connected with murder of colored neighbors and threats of personal violence to themselves. The tone of each statement is that of suffering and terror. Election days and Christmas, by the concurrent testimony, seem to have been appropriated to killing the smart men, while robbery and personal violence in one form and another seem to have run the year round.

We submit that the great migration of Negroes from the South is itself a fact that overbears all contradiction and proves conclusively that great causes must exist at the South to account for it.

Here they are in multitudes, not men alone, but women and children, old, middle-aged, and young, with common consent leaving their old homes in a natural climate and facing storms and unknown dangers to go to Northern Kansas. Why? Among them all there is little said of hope in the future; it is all of fear in the past. They are not drawn by the attractions of Kansas; they are driven by the terrors of Mississippi and Louisiana. Whatever becomes of them, they are unanimous in their unalterable determination not to return.

There are others coming. Those who have come and gone on to Kansas must suffer even unto death, we fear; at all events more than any body of people entitled to liberty and law, the possession of property, the right to vote, and the pursuit of happiness, should be compelled to suffer under a free government from terror inspired by robbery, threats, assaults, and murders.

We protest against the dire necessities that have impelled this exodus, and against the violation of common right, natural and constitutional, proven to be of most frequent occurrences in places named; and we ask such action at the hands of our representatives and our government as shall investigate the full extent of the causes leading to this unnatural state of affairs and protect the people from its continuance, and not only protect liberty and life, but enforce law and order.

It is intolerable to believe that with the increased representation of the Southern States in Congress those shall not be allowed freely to cast their ballots upon whose right to vote that representation has been enlarged. We believe no government can prosper that will allow such a state of injustice to the body of its people to exist, any more than society can endure where robbery and murder go unchallenged.

The occasion is, we think, a fit one for us to protest against a state of affairs thus exhibited in those parts of the Union from which these Negroes come, which is not only most barbarous toward the Negro, but is destructive to the constitutional rights of all citizens of our common country.

Accompanying this memorial are numerous affidavits of the refugees fully confirming all its statements.

As to the future of the exodus we can only say that every witness, whose opinion was asked upon this point, declared that it has only begun, and that what we have seen in the past is nothing compared to what is to come, unless there shall be a radical change on the part of Democrats in the South. They say that the Negro has no confidence in the Democratic party, and that if a Democratic President shall be elected there will be a general stampede of the colored race.

There is but one remedy for the exodus—fair treatment of the Negro. If the better class of white men in the South would retain the colored labor, they must recognize his manhood and his citizenship, and restrain the vicious and lawless elements in their midst. If Northern Democrats would check the threatened inundation of black labor into their States, they must recognize the facts which have produced the exodus and unite with us in removing its causes.

We present in conclusion the following brief summary of the results of the investigation:

First: This movement was not instigated, aided or encouraged by Republican leaders at the North. The only aid they have ever given was purely as a matter of charity, to relieve the distress of the destitute and suffering emigrants who had already come to the North.

Second. Not one dollar has ever been contributed by anybody at the North to bring these people from their homes. On the contrary, the only contributions shown to have been made for such purpose were made by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, a Democratic corporation which employed agents to work up the emigration from North Carolina, paying $1 per head therefor.

Third. It is not proven that the emigrants are dissatisfied in their new homes and wish to return to the South. On the contrary, a standing offer to pay their expenses back to the South has not induced more than about three hundred out of thirty thousand to return.

Fourth. It is not proven that there is no demand for their labor at the North, for nearly all those who have come have found employment, and even in Indiana hundreds of applications for them were presented to the committee.

Fifth. It is not proven that there is any sufficient reason for the grave political apprehensions entertained in some quarters, for it was shown by Mr. Dukehart, who sold all the tickets to those who came from North Carolina, that not more than two hundred voters had gone to Indiana.

Sixth. The exodus movement originated entirely with the colored people themselves, who for many years have been organizing for the purpose of finding relief in that way, and the colored agents of such organizations have traveled all over the South consulting with their race on this subject.

Seventh. A long series of political persecutions, whippings, maimings and murders committed by Democrats and in the interest of the Democratic party, extending over a period of fifteen years, has finally driven the Negro to despair, and compelled him to seek peace and safety by flight.

Eighth. In some States a system of convict hiring is authorized by law, which reinstates the chain-gang, the overseer, and the bloodhound substantially as in the days of slavery.

Ninth. A system of labor and renting has been adopted in some parts of the South which reduces a Negro to a condition but little better than that of peonage and which renders it impossible for him to make a comfortable living, no matter how hard he may work.

Tenth. The only remedy for the exodus is in the hands of Southern Democrats themselves, and if they do not change their treatment of the Negro and recognize his rights as a man and a citizen, the movement will go on, greatly to the injury of the labor interests of the South, if not the whole country.

    William Windom.
    Henry W. Blair.

SOME UNDISTINGUISHED NEGROES

Mr. J. H. Latrobe, corresponding secretary of the Maryland Colonization Society and later President of the American Colonization Society, has left the following story:

"It was while I was reading in the same room with General Harper that there entered one day a tall, gaunt, square-shouldered, spare, light mulatto, who announced himself as Abel Hurd. He was a Bostonian by birth, and a seaman by profession. In a voyage to the East his vessel had been captured by the Malays, and he alone, if I recollect rightly, escaped death, owing to his complexion. He had a varied fortune; had at one time been in Cochin-China, again in Tibet, and, after passing some twenty years in the East, had returned to America, and was looking out for employment. Some one had heard how deeply interested General Harper was in Africa and African colonization, and had sent Hurd to him. About this time there was a great doubt as to the mouth of the Niger; whether it was to be found at the bottom of the Bight of Benin, and whether it was not identical with the Congo, or Zaire, south of the line. This was a question in which General Harper was interested, and he determined to fit out Hurd and send him northward from Liberia until he struck the river, which he was then to follow to its mouth, and I was deputed to superintend the outfit.

"Hurd's idea was to take as little baggage with him as possible, and to rely upon the resources of his wit and ingenuity in making his way among the interior tribes. He had had a vast experience, and he directed his own equipment. I do not recollect all that he was furnished with, but I recollect having devised a hollow cane, in the top of which was a compass and the tube of which contained papers and pencils. These were to be resorted to when the compass and materials openly were lost. I think I wrote, at General Harper's dictation, a letter of instructions. Had Hurd lived and succeeded, he would have anticipated the Landers, Richard and John, who explored the Niger in 1832-34. He arrived safely in Liberia, and made several short excursions into the interior, but he had a theory that it was necessary to train himself for the great journey. Abstinence was a part of his training. It was a mistake. He took the acclimating fever, and, although he recovered from the first attack, he had a relapse brought on by some imprudence and died."[75 - Semmes, John H. B. Latrobe, pp. 140-142.]

Charles H. Webb.—During the years when the American Colonization Society was preparing to establish a colony of freedmen in Africa, it early became evident that the mere transportation of the blacks to their native home would mean little in establishing them in life. It was, therefore, necessary to organize schools in which Negroes desiring to be colonized could be trained in agriculture, mechanical arts and even in the professions. Among the first to qualify in the field of medicine was Charles H. Webb. In his examinations he exhibited evidences of ripe scholarship and much proficiency in his chosen field. He set sail for Liberia in 1834, after having completed his medical studies, which he had pursued under the direction of the American Colonization Society for a number of years. In the following autumn, however, he fell a victim to the local fever aggravated by some imprudence on his part and died before he could render his people much service.[76 - The African Repository, X, 104, and XII, 18.]

A Shrewd Negro.—A Kentucky slave, named Jim, with the humiliation of slavery rankling in his breast, resolved to make an effort to gain freedom. At last the opportunity came and he started for the Ohio River. There he told his story to a sympathetic member of his race, offering him a part of his money, if he would row him across to the Indiana shore. He was directed to George De Baptist, a free man of color, who was then living in Madison but removed soon afterwards to Detroit, Michigan. The master of the slave arrived in town with a posse and diligently searched it for the Negro. His sympathizers contrived, however, to avoid the slave hunters and the fugitive was conducted through the corn fields and byways to a depot of the Underground Railroad. He rested a few days at the station kept by William Byrd, of Union County, Indiana. From that point he was speedily forwarded northward until he reached Canada.

Appreciating as he had never done before the real value of freedom, he longed to do something to confer this great boon upon his wife and children whom he left behind him in Kentucky. He soon found a way to solve this problem. He said to himself, "I'll go to old Massa's plantation, and I'll make believe I am tired of freedom. I'll tell old Massa a story that will please him; then I will go to work hard and watch for a chance to slip away my wife and children."

His master was greatly surprised one morning to see Jim return home. In answer to the many questions propounded to him, he gave the explanation which he had planned. He told his master that he found that Canada was no place for Negroes, and that it was too cold and that they could not earn any money there. He spoke of how the Negroes were cheated by the whites and subjected to other humiliations, which made him tired of his freedom. His master was very much pleased with the story, spoke pleasantly to him and permitted him to work among his slaves and those of his neighbors as a missionary to convince the blacks of the folly of escaping to Canada.

The slave resumed his usual labor, working during that fall and winter but planning at the same time a second flight. In the spring he succeeded in bringing together his wife and children and a few of his slave friends on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. He reached the first station of the Underground Railway with his party numbering fourteen and hurried them from point to point until they reached the home of Levi Coffin in Indiana. They were hotly pursued and had narrow escapes, but by wise management they made their way through Spartansburg, Greenville and Mercer County, Ohio, to Sandusky, from which they crossed over to Canada.[77 - Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 139-144.]

B. F. Grant.[78 - This personal narrative was secured from B.F. Grant, of Washington, D. C., by Miss Mary L. Mason.]—I was born in the State of Pennsylvania, Little Britain Township, Lancaster County, Sunday morning, August 12, 1838. I am the son of the late Henry and Charlotte Grant.

My father was born a slave in the State of Maryland in Cecil County. He was freed at the age of nineteen, upon the death of his master. My mother was born of free parents in Harford County, Maryland. Both came in their youth to Pennsylvania, where they were married. Of that union there were born twelve children, eight boys and four girls. The subject of this sketch was the fifth son of the family.

In 1844 my father moved with his family from Lancaster to York County, across the Susquehanna River. I was then between five and six years old.

The first political event that I remember was the Presidential campaign of Henry Clay and James K. Polk in 1844. In the fall of that year each party had a pole raising at Peach Bottom, York County, Pennsylvania. Mother took us to see the pole raising and then the people were all shouting for Henry Clay, but soon after that I remember hearing them singing a song::

"Oh poor cooney Clay,
The white house was never made for you
And home you better stay."

Polk was elected, and soon after the inauguration of President Polk in 1845 the great controversy over the Mexican War and Negro slavery arose. The Negro question was the topic of the day, both in and out of Congress and among all classes. This continued until in 1846, when the war broke out between the United States and Mexico, and lasted two years.

When it was over the United States had the victory. Then the slaveholders of the South, with the copperheads of the North, tried to force their slaves or their slave influence into every State and territory of the United States. So great became the agitation and excitement that the poor slaves became restless and uneasy over their condition, and they commenced to run away by the thousands from the Southern States. They made for the free States and Canada. This gave rise to what was known as the Underground Railroad.

This brings me to consider what I call my boyhood days. Having passed my childhood, I now began to think, feel and consider that I was a human being as well as the white boys who surrounded me, living on farms just as I lived. Therefore I began to believe that I had the same God-given rights that they had, and was not born to be kicked around like a dog any more than they were.

About this time I began to attend the so-called public school. I well remember those school days, for they made a lasting impression upon my mind. If God had not had mercy on the poor little Negro who attended the public school of Pennsylvania in those days, I know not what would have become of me; for the poor white trash from the teacher down had no mercy upon him. They were upon him like vultures upon their prey, ready to devour him at any time for any cause.

I will mention only a few things which the little Negro had to endure, simply because he was a Negro. He was not permitted to drink from the same bucket or cup as the white children. He was compelled to sit back in the corner from the fire no matter how cold the weather might be. There he must wait until the white children had recited. If the cold became too intense to endure, he must ask permission of the teacher, stand by the fire a few minutes to warm and then return to the same cold corner. I have sat in an old log school house with no chinking between the logs until my heels were frost-bitten and cracked open. Sometimes we had a poor white trashy skunk that would sit in the school room and call us "niggers" or "darkeys." If the little Negro got his lesson at all, he got it; if not, it was all the same.