Delaware gazette. [volume] (Delaware, Ohio) 1855-1886, 1863-06-12
slave Exodus from nTissouri:

The Hannibal Courier, one of the leading
journals of Missouri, and published in what
was formerly not only a pro-slavery but
thickly slave populated section, gives the fol-
lowing as the situation of matters touching
the peculiar institution in the State at this
time. Immediate emancipation appears to be
the motto Of both whites and blacks. Says
the Courier:
81 Since the hegira Of the children of Israel
from the land of Egypt. we believe history re-
cords no such wholesale exodus Of slaves from
the land of their bondage into freedom as that
now going on in the State Of Missouri. II is
really one of the wonderful phenomena, Of this
wonder-producing rebellion. Our exchanges
from every part Of the State come interlarde1
with paragraphs Announcing the departure
from their respective districts and neighbor-
hoods. of squads, of scores. of hundreds of
slaves, embracing not only families. but carry
iFg away with them horses, wagons, and even
the trumpery that pertains to their domestic
establishments Like the children Of. Israel.
they are in many instances, despoiling their
masters and mistresses by the Wholesale ap-
propriaiion of goods and chattles.
Within two weeks we have seen certainly
not less than a score and a half Of separate
and distinct notices of the departure of as
many parties of slaves from various portions
of the State. where the bulk of the remainder
of the "institution" was to be found. Two
hundred went from Boone and Galloway coun
ties few DAYS since One hundred and ten
assembled in this city from the interior, appro-
priated to their own use a capacious barge,
and padded their own canoe to the Illinois
shore, where we learn that forty of the able
bodied among them enlisted in the first Massa-
chusetts colored regiment.
Three car loads, embracing 200 or more
men, women and children, were recently con-
veyed from Jefferson City to St. Louis, under
supervision of the "contraband coinmissary,"
and were subsequently shipped to Minnesota,
to be there employed by Gen Pope in the ca
pacity of cooks, teamsters, etc. Six more,
Eve in one assemhlage, with ten boys bade
farewell to their dear homes in the vicinity of
Lexington, and started to the inhospitable
shores of Kansas Seventy-fve or more
gathered themselves together in the vicinity Of
Palmyra, and shaking off the dust of their
feet, wended their way freedom-wards, We
have neither time nor space to recite the nu-
merous instances in which fves, and tens, and
fifteens, and twenties, have gathered up their
truck, girded up their loins, taken up their
beds, and declared themselves free.
And it is reasonable to suppose, that while
these moving bodies are attracting public at
tention, there are hundreds of instances in
which single slaves, couplets, trios and quar-
tetts. are quietly, silently and surreptitiously
exercising their selEussumed rights to pass
acts of selfemancpation. Thus in large
streams and in little streams, the institution OF
slavery in Missouri is rushing and tricking
out. and spreading over the free fields around
us.
But what is, if possible, even more strik-
ing phenomenon than this. we perceive an ap-
athy exhibited by the. .sIaveholdere themselves
-by the very men who hold the title papers
to this same itinerating ptoperty-w which un-
mistakably says: 1--WE do not care fartbiug
whether you go or stay; in fact you are worth
less properly, and we would little rather you
would be gone than not" Such may not be
the sentiment of every individual who holds
slave property ia Missouri, but the faot that
no adequate efforts are made for the recama-
tion of these fugilives, and that their escape
excites, ouly a passing remark, cor firms tbs
belief that he Shareholders of Missouri, as
mass. consider their property in human fest
and blood as absolutely worthless