, when they
began to engage themselves in the suppression of recruiting agents,
succeeded in scattering them to other fields where their mere
presence, preceded as it was by the news of their mission in the
South, was sufficient to attract, first, all of the landless labor,
then to loosen the steady workman wedded to the soil, and finally
to carry away the best of the working classes. Quite naturally
southeastern Georgia was the second district to feel the drain of the
exodus. These workers were carried into Pennsylvania, New York and New
Jersey for the maintenance work of the roads. North Carolina was next
entered; then finally Virginia which had been sending many negroes
into New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey for a number of years.[45]

Numerous illustrations show the popular state of mind at the
beginning, when every one was feverish. Men would loudly decry the
folly of breaking up their homes, the result of years of unrelenting
toil, and venturing into the unknown North, and within less than
twenty-four hours, would leave themselves. A good citizen would talk
with another about the apparent insanity of those negroes who had
"contracted the northern fever." They would condemn their acts with
their strongest words. Hardly before another day could pass, one of
the two would disappear, having imitated the recklessness of the very
people he had so recently condemned.

One man in telling of how they acted, asserts "You could see a man
today and he would be calling the people who were leaving all kinds of
names; he could even beat you when it came to calling them fools for
going north. The next day when you met him he wouldn't talk so loud
and the next day he wouldn't let you see him. That would be the last
of him, because, unless you went to the depot, you wouldn't see him
again. Whenever I saw them shying off from me, I always knew what they
had up their sleeves." It was "just naturally fashionable" to
leave for the North. A man would make up his mind to go and proceed
forthwith to persuade his friends. If they refused, they no longer had
any interests in common. In talking with a man who had persistently
refused to leave, he declared that he had lost practically every
friend he had, simply because he did not agree with them on "the
northern question." For the pastors of churches it was a most trying
ordeal. They must watch their congregations melt away and could say
nothing. If they spoke in favor of the movement,