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 exodusfair 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.