The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1890-04-16
4 NEGRO EXODUS.
WHOLE SECTIONS c? NORTH CARO-
LIMA WITHOUT cOLOREO LABOR.

Tho Emigration Agents have Almost De
| populated the Eas.orn Section of the State
Scenes of DeStituT;1ii Along the Country
Roads.
Letter to The New York san.
The emigrant agent has had his
day in North Carolina Like plague
| of devastating insects he has swept
over the entire eastern section OF
, the State, leaving nought behind but
wide waste places, desolated planta-
tions, and malodorous memories.
Breaking levees and an unprecedented
overflow in the Mississippi Valley
put IN effectual check upon the opera
tions. but, alas. too late to save the
poor negroes already gathered into
his net from untold hardships and
cruel deprivations.
It is q curious fact that every great
movement Of the negroes in the dl-
rection of seeking to better their ma
terial condition by removal from their
native soil has has resulted disas-
trously to them. Take, for example,
the great exodus into Kansas some
ten years ago, which resulted in a
call for Government aid to succor the
unfortunate creatures and save them
from starvation and freezing during
an unusually hard winter inmedl-
ately following. Then, later on, when
there was 4 great ind1x of negroes
into Arkansas and Texas from Cen
tral Georgia and Western South
Carolina, State and private aid had
TO be furnished to save the ill-advised
and over-sanguine blacks from dire
want. So now, scarcely have the
emigrants from this State been safely
landed in the Mississippi region be-
fore an unprecedented overflow en-
sues. inundating almost the entire
section into which they have removed,
and precluding all likelihood Of
making crop this season.
Already the apparently inevitable
cry Of distress has been sounded, and
it's reverberations are echoing now
from every village and hamlet
throughout the deserted districts in
this State. At Goldsboro, Winston,
Tarboro, Halifax, Scotland Neck,
Snow Hill, Plymouth and various
other towns and settlements visited
in the last few days, letters the most
urgent are shown from negroes who
have but recently gone from these
vicinities, begging for money to bring
them back. And yet in the face Of all
this there are 400 deluded blacks at
Scotland Neck, 600 at Plymouth and
800 in Beaufort county, packed and
encamped, awaiting agents to come
and remove them. But up to this
writing no agent has appeared, and
from the present demoraized state OF
the traffic there is small likelihood
that those $500 negroes @l tnd
means of exit for time some to come, II
at all.
In addition to the check put upon
the movement by the overflow IN the
Southwest, the planters and clt21sns
generally have combined to stop the
operations of the emigant agents:
and have been moved so to do as
much out OF consideration Tor the
welfare OF the negroes themselves as
to retain what available farm labor
there is left in the country. An IN
stance of this occurred few days
since at Scotland Neck, where a Nh.
Mcneil, of the firm Of Mcneil 4 Pax
ton, Josselyn, Ga, turpentine and
naval stores producers, who had gone
to that point to secure laborers, was
met by a committee of citizens and
quietly but firmly admonished to
desist from interfering with the ne
groes thereaoouts, and advised to
take himself of: which ne did with
celerity.
Just here it is proper to cite the
distinction between the exodus emil
grants and the tu1pentine emigrants,
the difference being that the former
60 to stay, and the latter-who are
taken to Central and Southern Geor-
gia-only go for the season, It being
expressly Stipulated in their contracts
that when their services are no longer
required they shall be furnished
transportation back to their homes.
Geo. W. Price, Jr., o representa-
tive negro, who has become an emil
grant agent, returned dfrom the Iazoo
Mississippi delta on Monday, having
gone thither with about two hundred
families. He tells me that the en-
tire region is now under water, and
that in consequence there is great
decentralization and dissatisfaction
among the emigrants. It is hoped.
however, that the food will yet sub
side in time for the making Of a crop,
but he is not sufficiently well assured
OF this to venture forth with my more
Of his people.
To get an accurate idea OF the desc
late condition of the counties from
which so many OF the exodusters
have gone one must leave the rail-
roads-m the vicinity of which there
is always more OF less Gfe-and by
horseback OF vehicle traverse the
country roads. As a general thing
the country roads in Eastern North
Carolina are not inviting to travellers
familiar with and accustomed to hard.
| smooth-srufaced pixies, OF even clay
bedded wagonways. Through the
piney woods these rural thorough
fares wind and twist about in the
| most bewildering and provoking fash
ion, while your steed OF span OF horses
struggle through the sand: varying
from one to ten inches III depth. col,-
| shutting the roadbed.
The eastern counties of this State
have been, up to the time Of the negro
| exodus, the most populous. and there
| are still people enough in them to
till and make productive almost every
acre of farming lands. But the labor