Year: 1873

Macon Telegraph and &essenger.l


The story comes By a score of avanU
pilgrim couriers from Arkansas, that
several hundred negroes are slowly
working their way on foot back to
Georgia from that State, whittier they
were seduced last winter and spring by
the Vaccinations OF sPeculatOrs who
were employed as their paid agents in
the business leading negro politicians in
various counties of middle and south
western Georgia. These negro fugle-
men raised great excitement among
the credulous colored people. They
made the inevitable results of their own
bad advice and turbulent and domineer-
ing spirit, the reason why these Geor-
gia negroes should abandon the land Of
their birth and all the comforts and
security of home, for the un-
certainties of a new and untried
country. They got up meetings, by
handbills, bonfires, cannon and music,
and made infiammatory speeches to
their credulOus hearers, telling them
that here, in Georgia, they must always
be under white rule, and would never
get justice or fair treatment. That if
they even attempted to vote against the
whites they were liable to be shot down,
as they were at Macon, in the attempt
to capture the pOHs-that wages would
be kept down to q low point, and there
was no chance for them. That in Ar
kansas they would find not only bet
ter and more prosperous country, but a
State where the blacks were largely in
the majority-where they could protect
themselves and be sure of high wages
and rich crops.


MISLED BY THESE REPRESENTATIONS
somewhere from three to six thousand,
and perhaps a good many more, left
home and employment in Georgia and
started off for Arkansas during the rig
ors of the last hard winter, or the terri
bly, iDclement weather of the early
spring. The story of their sufferings
and disappointments, as it came backin
casual and rude letters to relatives and
friends here, has borne 8 piteous uni
formity. Probably from twenty to fifty
per cent. have perished from exposure
to bad weather, smallpox contagion,
bad water and unwholesome and in
sufficient food. The mortality among
them has been


FRIGHTFUL,


and the swindling to which they have
been exposed well nigh universal. Great
numbers of them have addressed NOV
ing appeals to their old employers and
masters to send on money to pay their
way back, and this has been done in
some cases; but the risk of remittance
has been so great, and money SO scarce,
that no great amount of relief has been
afforded in this way. At last, driven
to desperation, many of the more hardy
emigrants begin to Tetrace, in a weary
pilgrimage on foot, the ill-judged emil
grafton, and, as we have said, some
twenty have got back, reporting four or
five hundred more on the way in vari-
Gus stages of the toilsOme journey.
They have had severe lesson,
but with some it may perhaps be use
full and eventually profitable one. If
it shall have taught them that all the
real friends they have, who can be of
any substantial service to them, are
numbered among the southern white
owners of the SOil-that all their true
interests, as well as those of the whites,
lie in the maintenance of an intelligent,
just and responsible government by the
taxpayers of the State, and that the ras-
eals-black, cOpper-colored and white
who are trying to put them at logger
heads with the planters, are their most
deadly enemies, ready, as they have
soen, to sell their lives and comfort for a
few dollars a head-if it shall induce
them to shun these villains hereafter
buckle down to sturdy work and save
their earnings, their bitter experience
will not have been in vain. They can
soon regain comfort and prosperity, and
we trust they will do it.


THE AWFUL AND FATAL swINDLE
Of the deluded blacks by their trusted
negro leaders cannot be punished by
law. 1t has murdered many hundreds,
but it is a murder which must 30 unpun-
ished except by mere public reprobation.
If hereafter shall see these same negroes
rallying in crowds to the drums and
flies of the men who have sold them out
into worse than slavery, it will at least
illustrate want of sense below that Of
the brute.