Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1879 — The Flight of the Colored People. [ARTICLE]

The Flight of the Colored People.

The patience and endurance of the colored people seem to bare reached a limit at last. Whipped, scourged, persecuted and robbed, they have final* ly taken the one course left so them, and are fleeing opt of the South as the Israelites fled out of EgyptThere has been no more important, movement for years than this Colored exodus, that threatens to strip the Southern section, of its laborers. Thousands of colored men and women are leaving their old homes and seeking new places in the West —seeking them blindly, ignorantly, but as resolutely as ever a people fled from a pestUence or an escaped prisoner rushed from the scene of his imprisonment and suffering. To those who have accumulated a few hundred dollars this migratory scheme is, perhaps, an excellent one; but to those who start without means and without friends, and who require assistance before they succeed in halfway reaching their destination,. there can. be.JMe exps&tecje? oqptsufferLng. - More particularly will this be true in ease the seeming stampede that has set ip be not regulated or directed in some manner so as to prevent multitudes

from flocking West in great bodies, or in rapid succession. If these people were to move in comparatively small numbers each year, and under proper leadership, we wbuld not regard the emigration as unfortunate, but rather as a blessing, both to them and the people among whom thoy might settle. The danger is from overdoing it. The Southern plantation negro can li?e as'cheap, barring his family expenses, as a Chinamen. Give him corn bread and bacon, and he will fatten on it. Bnild him a cabin, and he will look upon it with the satisfaction of a Prince in a palace. The, great West has corn and bacon in plenty.- Not only that, but it has land in plenty, and a decent respect for honest, hard-working men women, whatever the color of their skins. These emigrants may experience many hardships, much suffering and bitter disappointments in their new homes, but their lot can scarcely be worse than that which they have forsaken. And this is true without reference to the political complexion of the case. Negroes working under contract in the cotton States are frequently paid from stores, the planters having no money until the crop is gathered. They have been paying as high as sixty cents a pound for bacon, thirty cents for sugar, thirty-five for calicoes, and so on. At the end of the contract year they are generally in debt, and this is not surprising when these prices are taken into account. In some portions of South Carolina they have been working for $6 per month and taking their pay in county scrip, payable in 1880, and this scrip they nave of course been compelled to dispose of at a sacrifice. Prof. Greener, of Harvard University, in a late interview published .in the New York Herald, expresses great satisfaction with the emigration movement, and entertains confident expectations of its beneficial results. He says: Before the war the negroes in the Southern cities and larger towns were the carpenters, brick-layers, stone-masons, and, in some instances, manufacturers on a small scale. 1 have often thought it one of the evils of the present condition of the negro at the South that he is now mainly confined to the cultivation of cotton and sugar. Send him West, and open up to him the life of an agricultural laborer, a small farmer, a worker in the mine or on the great lines of railways, and you will soon see what a steady, cheerful worker he is, and what a peaceful citizen and desirable acquisition he will become. No one expects the negro to become a capitalist and land-owner without effort. All we ask is, that he go to some place where his labor will have effect in improving his own status. In pursuit of freedom years ago we entered the cold of Canada, the rigor of the Northwest and New England. 1 see no reason to fear the effect of any climate on our race now. Eor the better, healthier and sure development of our race. 1 would gladly Bee them leave en ma«se, even the Northern cities. 1 believe in twenty years we should be a hundred per cent, better Off. ~y-" T~|— * ' —"™— —Speakmg~6f"tlie probabilities of the negro making himself useful in the North, Prof. Greener says: Wherever the negro goes in the West he will be found a desirable acquisition. The statistics of> the cotton crop since the war have forever disproved the charge of negro laziness, and Bhows him to be not a vagabond, but a thrifty and skilled cultivator wherever he has half a chance. Examine the tax-lists in any Southern State; read the educational advancement made by onr race during the past decade, then think of the political turmoils through which we have passed and the bitter persecutions we have endured for no crime except that of being black and professing Republican principles, and the cause of the present movement is not far to seek. 1 consider it the most hopeful evidence of the manhood of the negro we have yet had, and trust the work will go bravely on, guided, however, by sensible, practical men.

It must be borne in mifld that Prof. Greener is not speaking at random merely. A colored man himself, he is familiar with life in the South, and competent to judge without undue prejudice. He declares that the persecution and outrage which the colored people arfe compelled to endure in the South for political reasons are not the only grounds of complaint, but that there fs-w’practical ignoring of their rights in all sorts of transactions. ‘‘ He is completely at the mercy of his landlord and the local storekeeper—the one rents him land at exorbitant rates, attempts to dictate his political opinions, find evicts in the most approved Irish landlord fashion if the negro does not acquiesce; the other demoralizes the negro by offering credit, obtaining extortionate contracts and cheating him roundly in trade.” The case of Henry Jackson, which Prof. Greener adduces as a specimen, tells the story: 'i I left the South because I could not make a living. Year before last I made ten bales of ootton, and never got a cent for it; the man of whom 1 rented said he would ship it, and when he was paid for it he would pay me; but he never paid me anything; for it. I sued "ten it, but could not get anything. They wanted mfi to pawn my horse and begin over again, but I told them 1 would not do it, and they asked me what I was going to do. and I told them I was going to sell my horse and go away. I would not go back to the South again, beoause I could not live; cannot live there and give sll for meal, and S3O for a barrel of pork, and $lO for an acre of land, and $5 for ginning cotton, and then being cheated out of everything after 1 have made it. Summing up the whole case, the Inter-Ocean must again express the opinion that the greatest danger lies in the movement being too sudden and becoming too large. The various societies organizing to aid and direct the exodus in intelligent channels, should guard particularly against this. If necessary they should send agents into the South to dissuade the people from leaving, except in limited numbers, and with well-defined ideas of where they are going, and what they are going to do. With these precautions, we shall look for few evil results from the movement, and many advantages. The prospective loss of labor will awaken the South to the necessity of fairer dealing with the colored men, and do more to adjust the problem of equal rights than the wisest legislation that could be devised. Meantime these people, flocking in such great droves to the West, need help—not charity, but assistance to reach the localities where work can be obtained. They come to the North with that same blind but trusting faith with which they used to follow the soldiers of “Massa Linkum,” perfectly confident that the country where those soldiers lived, and where the great emancipator died and lies buried, must be the promised land to them. We cannot drive them back if we would; we would not if we could. In its effort to make good the largeness df its promise to them the Government has been thwarted. It has not earned out the sabred obligations of the Constito- 1 tion. Why it has not is unnecessary to discuss here but these people* inspired by their unbounded faith in the North, seem to feel instinctively that it |s through no fault of the men who gave them their freedom that they are not protected in its exercise —Chicago Inter Ocean. - ; —A woman started to carry her twin babies five miles through the woods in Sand Hill, S. C., but lost her way, and was'found almost dead at Hie end of ten days, with the infants lying lifeless beside her. ! * —lt is said that Surgeon-General Woodworth waa-ap poor when ho died, that a oollection was taken among the heads of bureaus in the Treasury De- , partment to defray the expenses of his funeral.