The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1879-04-05


The flight OF the negroes from the South to
the unoceupied lands of the West affords
strong corroborative evidence of the truth of
the charges made by Republicans that the
freedmen are terribly oppressed in the South.
So great has been their suffering that they
are eager to forsake their homes and the
land where they were born and bred, and
Try their fortunes in strange country. Mi
grafton is not unusual with the adventurous
white man. But the timid and indolent ne
groes can only be brought to undertake it by
terrible suffering. They often hesitated and
not seldom refused to seize upon the chances
that came to them to escape from the horrors
of slavery. How great then, must be the
misery that induces them to forsake their
honestly thousands and make their way into
unfamiliar lands!
The Chicago Tribune has been at pains to
ascertain through its correspondents the rea-
sons tor the negro exodus from the South;
and on every hand it hears the same story
told. The blacks say that they are ill-treated
at the South, prosecuted on account of their
political opinions, and hunted down if they
attempt to exercise the right of suffrage ac-
cordiDg to their convictions. Some say they
fled to save their lives; some because they
want to vote but cannot without being shot; (;
same because they are forb idden to educate
their children; some because they feared ac-
tual starvation. But all aver that their con-
dition was one OF extreme misery, that they
were not suffered to live in peace nor to ex-
ercise the rights of freemen, and that if they
voted against the wishes of their old masters
and late employers they were either hunted
down or starved out. AS long as there was
Republican party at the South, and Feder-
al authority to afford them some protection,
however inadequate, they endured their
sufferings. But now that they are left wholly
alone and thrown entirely upon their own
feeble resources, they have abandoned all
hope and are fleeing by thousands to lands
where they have been taught to expect the
regard of kindly faces and the help OF BROTH
erly hands.
1t seems that the unscrupulous agents of
NCetCl IL iaiiiOauo dafC eid1hCheu III tuc His
cry of these poor creatures, and lured them
to sections of the country where there is lit
tie work for them 10 do or small chance for
them to secure the modest and peaceable
homesteads they had set their hearts upon.
They have heen cruelty deceived by those
who seek to make profit out of the necessi-
ties of the freedmen, and find themselves in
condition, better to be sure than the condi-
tion from which they have escaped, but yet
far from comfortable and in many particulars
forbidding. Still they unhestatingly prefer
the privations and scanty prospects of the
new country into which they have strayed to
return to their old homes aud the persecu-
tion they there SO long endured. In Kansas
they do not at least stand daily in peril
of their lives, and they accept any pros
pect, however dark, as better than the horri-
BILE life from which they have escaped.
The eagerness of the negroes to leave their
old bones, and their readiness to accept
penury, privation, starvation even, rather
than remain under the rule of the bulldozer,
is sad commentary upon their life at the
South, and terrible indictment against the
cruelty and injustice of the Southern people,
Only persistent and most unendurable perse-
cution could have driven these poor, simple,
indolent folk from their homes.