nd rent was still high; that in the part of the
country where the committee was organized the people were still being
whipped, some of them by their former owners; that they were cheated
out of their crops and that in some parts of the country where they
voted they were being shot.

It was decided about 1877 that all hope and confidence that conditions
could be changed should be abandoned. Members of this committee felt
that they could no longer remain in the South, and decided to leave
even if they "had to run away and go into the woods." Membership in
the council was solicited with the result that by 1878 there were
ninety-eight thousand persons from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and
Texas belonging to the colonization council and ready to move.[5]

About the same time there was another conspicuous figure working in
Tennessee--Benjamin or "Pap" Singleton, who styled himself the father
of the exodus. He began the work of inducing negroes to move to the
State of Kansas about 1869, founded two colonies and carried a total
of 7,432 blacks from Tennessee. During this time he paid from his own
pocket over $600 for circulars which he distributed throughout the
southern States. "The advantages of living in a free State" were the
inducements offered.[6]

The movement spread as far east as North Carolina. There a similar
movement was started in 1872 when there were distributed a number of
circulars from Nebraska telling of the United States government and
railroad lands which could be cheaply obtained. This brief excitement
subsided, but was revived again by reports of thousands of negroes
leaving the other States of the South for Kansas. Several hundred of
these migrants from North Carolina were persuaded en route to change
their course and go to Indiana.[7]

Much excitement characterized the movement. One description of this
exodus says:

Homeless, penniless and in rags, these poor people were
thronging the wharves of St. Louis, crowding the steamers
on the Mississippi River, hailing the passing steamers and
imploring them for a passage to the land of freedom, where the
rights of citizens are respected and honest toil rewarded by
honest compensation. The newspapers were filled with accounts
of their destitution, and the very air was burdened with the
cry of distress from a class of American citizens flying from
persecution which they could no longer endure. Their piteous
tales