Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1880 — SENATE EXODUS INVESTIGATION. [ARTICLE]

SENATE EXODUS INVESTIGATION.

Synopsis of tho Testimony Elicited by the Vooirhee* Committee. Warren C. Fearing, colored, employe of ono of the executive departments at Washington, and Secretary of the Emigrant Aid Society, testified that he had received letters from his relatives in North Carolina reporting that the colored people of that State received very low wages, and were dissatisfied with their treatment and wanted to emigrate. Charles N. Otuy, colored, editor es the Washington Argus, a weekly paper devoted to the interests of the colored race, and Principal of the Howard University school, testified that he is a native of North Carolina, graduate of Oberlin College and of Howard University; that he has visited his native State -every year since he left it, and has made a careful study of her peo51e. He said he was one of the founders of the lational Emigrant Aid Society, but when he became satisfied that it was being used as a political machine he withdrew from it The witness did not know but the exodns from other Southern States would be a blessing to the colored race, but from North Carolina, where ho was well acquainted, he was satisfied that “it was a fraud and a curse.” Every intelligent colored man in the State, and the six colored newspapers in North Carolina, were fighting it There was an adequate motive, he said, for the colored people of that State to abandon their homes, and the delusion under which they now labor was attributed to deceitful agents from the North.

Charles H. Otuy was cross-examined by the Re; üblican members of the committee, and acknowledged that Mendenhall was the only Republican in Washington who advised colonizing Indiana with negroes from the South: said that Perry Williams and Evans wore the only colored men he knew to be engaged in indnoirg colored men to leave North Carolina. Otuy also stated his belief that the Balcimore and Ohio Railroad Company were furmshiDg money to pay the traveling expenses of these men.’ He believed the intelligent people of North Carolina, black and white, Democrats and Republicans, were opposed to this exodus. F. A. Bointz, of Goldsboro, N. C., said it was difficult to aseign a reason for the exodus of the colored people from North Carolina. It certainly was not on account of oppression. M. T. Lewman, Sheriff of Putnam county, Ind., and a resident of Greencastle, Ind., was sworn, and produced a printed circular which he obtained from one of the North Carolina emigrants after he had arrived at Greencastle. This circular, which had boen circulated quite extensively among the colored people ot North Carolina, urged them to come' to Indiana, setting forth the attractions of that State.

Sheriff Lewman, of Greencastle, Ind., in his cross-examination, stated that ho met and had an interview with a colored man named Heath, who came on a mail-car from Washington to Greencastle. He had letters to Judge Marti ndale and Col. Holloway, promiuent Indiana Republicans. One reason for the colored people leaving North Carolina was to better their condition, and another reason was that their friends in Washington desired as many of them as possible to get out of North Carolina and into Indiana bofore the census was taken, abont May 1, so as to decrease the representation of North Carolina and increase that of Indiana. Ten thousand intended to come. Heath supposed when he was making these statements he (Lewman) was a Republican. He said the Republicans had proposed to‘pay half the expenses of the trip. The Sheriff stated that the negroes overstocked the labor market of Greencastle, and, therefore, created ill-feeling. One man had his barn burned for hiring some of these immigrants. He thought no objection would be made to immigrants who could support themselves.