Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1879-04-02
Emigration Of the Freedmen.

We last week alluded to the extensive
exodus of the colored people inhabiting the
lower Mississippi, with view to lettering
their condition in Kansas. This unexpected
movement seems to be more extensive and
less visionary than that which fired the
negro heart, a year or so since, with pur-
pose TO return to the land Of their fathers.
The Western papers describe this move
ment as very considerable. Seven thousand
have already reached st. Louis by steamer,
and the excitement is spreading and the tide
increasing. Although the general destina-
ton is Kansas, several hundreds remain in
st. Louis and have become objects of charity.
The colored population of st. Louis imme-
diately took up their case, quartered them in
two churches and Union Hall, and set about
raising money for them. A committee of fif-
teen was chosen by the St. Louis negroes to
attend to their wants. All of them, especially
among the later arrivals, are not equally
destitute. Many of them have brought
money and household goods with them, and
homemade wagons and scrubby little mules
with rope harness.
Accounts from the South state that all
along the river in Louisiana and Mississippi
there are great hustle and commotion. The
steamboat landings are crowded with men,
women and children eager to take passage
to st. Louis on their way to Kansas. But
Al. 81 ,,,tH tba fara 10
paid by themselves, we may dismiss as an
idle rumor that the statement that outside
parties are back of the movement. Ex-
Governor Pinchback, himself Of African
blood, has been among them and tried in
vain to cool down their determination to
turn their backs upon their old homes and
seek new ones elsewhere. He had heard of
the Kansas fever before leaving New Or
leans, but says he was surprised to find so
large crowds awaiting transportation. Mr..
Pinchback was at pains to investigate the
causes of this remarkable exodus, and
while he found several, which were put
forward, he thinks the real cause is an APP
prehension of underlined danger in the near
future. He says they religiously believe
the Louisiana Constitutional Convention,
which is to meet soon, bodies them no good,
and that it has been ordered for the ex-
press purpose of abridging their rights and
liberties. They verify believe they are flee
ing from fresh wrath which the Bourbons
and bulldozers are preparing for them. They
are panic-stricken. Roads leading to the
steamboat landings are crowded with the
people and their teams. The Ex-Governor
fully satisfied himself from what he saw and
heard that the movement has assumed for
midable shape, and that unless means are
devised to arrest it, a large portion of the
state will soon be entirely destitute of its
laboring classes.
In one section every member of two Of the
leading Baptist churches has left, and the
excitement is said to be spreading rapidly
in nearly all directions. While greatly de-
ploring this condition Of things as likely to
result in more or less distress and suffering,
Mr.. Pinchback discovers some possible good
in it after all. He thinks it may teach re-
lentless, arrogant and bulldozing South that
there is a point beyond which even negro
endurance cannot go. Efforts are already
making to check the emigration and secure
better understanding between the blacks
and planters. This is bad season of the
year for laborers in the lower Mississippi
valley to leave in multitudes and the alarm
among the cotton growers and sugar pro.
ducers may lead to salutary results.