A Century of Negro Migration Part 9

[Footnote 20: _Continental Monthly_, II, p. 193.]

[Footnote 21: _Report_ of the Committee of Representatives of the New York Yearly Meeting of Friends, p. 12.]

[Footnote 23: Eaton, _Lincoln, Grant and the Freedmen_, p. 2.]

[Footnote 23: Eaton, _Lincoln, Grant and the Freedmen_, p. 19. See also Botume's _First Days Amongst the Contrabands_. This work vividly portrays conditions among the refugees a.s.sembled at points in South Carolina.]

[Footnote 24: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, p. 15.]

[Footnote 25: Williams, _Negro in the Rebellion_, pp. 90-98.]

[Footnote 26: _Official Records of the War of the Rebellion_, VII, pp. 503, 510, 560, 595, 628, 668, 698, 699, 711, 723, 739, 741, 757, 769, 787, 801, 802, 811, 818, 842, 923, 934; VIII, pp. 444, 445, 451, 464, 555, 556, 564, 584, 637, 642, 686, 690, 693, 825.]

[Footnote 27: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, pp. 34-35.]

[Footnote 28: Ames, _From a New England Woman's Diary_, pa.s.sim; and Pearson, _Letters from Port Royal_, pa.s.sim.]

[Footnote 29: Ames, _From a New England Woman's Diary in 1865_, pa.s.sim.]

[Footnote 30: _Special Report_ of the United States Commissioner of Education on the Schools of the District of Columbia, p. 217.]

[Footnote 31: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, p. 37.]

[Footnote 32: Eaton, _Grant, Lincoln and the Freedmen_, p. 38.]

[Footnote 33: _Ibid._, p. 39.]

[Footnote 34: Starr, _What shall be done with the People of Color in the United States_, p. 25; Ward, _Contrabands_, pp. 3, 4.]

[Footnote 35: It is said that Lincoln suggested colonizing the contrabands in South America.]

[Footnote 36: _Atlantic Monthly_, XII, p. 308.]

[Footnote 37: Levi Coffin, _Reminiscences_, p. 671.]

[Footnote 38: _Atlantic Monthly_, XII, p. 309.]

[Footnote 39: _Ibid._, XII, pp. 310-311.]

[Footnote 40: _Ibid_., p. 311.]

[Footnote 41: Hamilton, _Reconstruction in North Carolina_, pp. 156, 157.]

[Footnote 42: Eckenrode, _Political History of Virginia during the Reconstruction_, p. 43.]

[Footnote 43: Hall, _Andrew Johnson_, p. 258.]

[Footnote 44: Thompson, _Reconstruction in Georgia_, p. 44.]

[Footnote 45: Davis, _Reconstruction in Florida_, p. 341.]

[Footnote 46: Ficklen, _History of Reconstruction in Louisiana_, p.

118.]

[Footnote 47: Fleming, _The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama_, p. 271.]

[Footnote 48: Thompson, _Reconstruction in Georgia_, p. 69.]

[Footnote 49: _Ibid._, p. 69.]

[Footnote 50: This exodus became considerable again in 1888 and 1889 and the Negro population has continued in this direction of plent.i.tude of land including not only Arkansas and Texas but Louisiana and Oklahoma, all which received in this way by 1900 about 200,000 Negroes.]

[Footnote 51: _American Journal of Political Economy_, XXII, pp. 10, 40.]

[Footnote 52: _Ibid._, XXV, p. 1038.]

[Footnote 53: Mecklin, _Black Codes_.]

[Footnote 54: Dunning, _Reconstruction_, pp. 54, 59, 110.]

[Footnote 55: DuBois, _Freedmen's Bureau_.]

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 _bulldozers_ concerned in dethroning the non-taxpaying blacks were an impecunious and irresponsible group themselves, led by men of the wealthy cla.s.s.[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 cla.s.s 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 ma.s.sacres 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 ma.s.sacre 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 Bossier another three-day riot during which two hundred Negroes were ma.s.sacred. 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 ma.s.ses 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 land-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 acc.u.mulate 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 cla.s.s 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 the 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 mortgages, 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]