The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1879-04-29 00:00:00

A...NETto. 14XoDUs..

The Daily New New York Gurreepoisdent writes :—The
nsi;rstion of Southern !wines, which has &Limed
within the past month the character of an organised
exodus, is filling planters with dismay and awakening in
the Northern States no little astonishment mid perplexity.
The negroes are anything but a migratory race. They
have strong local attachments. They cling to the
plantations on which they were born, and severe poverty
and ill use will hardly drive them more than a few miles
away. Yet it is now reported that they are forsaking the
fields by thousands and Seeing to the river, where they
word the steamboats for Si, Louis, and thence maks their
way as best they can to Kansas. The movement appears
to have been in contemplation for at least • year or two.
How little confidence there is between vrbite and black in
the Southern States may he judged from the fact that the
scheme was unsuspected until suddenly we heard one day •
cry of alarm from the planters that their labourers had run
off, and their crops were going to ruin, and at the same
time a disquieting report from St. Louis of the arrival of
• boatload of the emigrants, destitute, hungry, and almost
naked. Small parties of the more adventurous and
intelligent field hands had already removed to the north-
west when the general exodus began about the lot of
March. Since that time over three thousand have
reached St. Louis, where a few hundreds still remain foi
lack of mearis to go farther. Most of them are in extreme
poverty. They sold everything to raise four or five dollars
for the river voyage. The advance guard, six hundred
strong, arrived at St. Louis in the midst of • violent
snowstorm. on one of the coldest days of the Inclement
spring, and landed in wretched plight. with only the
vaguest idea of the long route that lay before them.
They comprised whole families, and it is remarked that a
lame proportion of them were the very aged and the very
young. The coloured poop eof the town came to their aid.
Headed by their preachers they went to the levies, and
led the famished and shivering emigrants to the coloured
churches. Beds were made in the pews. Fires for cook-
ing were kindled in the basements. Collections of money
and clothing were made thruugh the city. A lady who
visited the grateful refugees in their places of shelter
writes that the churches rang with cries of " Glory be to
God e. I tole ye de Lord would help us." Every day
brought other crowds, and the churches opened their
holetable doors to so many as 2,learin • single week.
All, without an ex mption, were bound for Kansas.
There can be no doubt that for many years the blacks have
associated the name of that State with the ideas of
political and social equality. They knew something, even
in their bondage, of the famous struggle for freedom
which reddened its soil. They seem to have directed
their steps thither—fir.t, from the conviction that it was
• land where coloured people were "treated just like
white folks." and, secondly, with certain painfully
definite ideas of help from the United States Govern.
moot when they reached there.