admission into our body politic. It
comes now in shape of a denial of political rights to four million loyal
colored people. The South does not now ask for slavery. It only asks for
a large degraded caste, which shall have no political rights. This
ends the case. Statesmen, beware what you do. The destiny of unborn and
unnumbered generations is in your hands. Will you repeat the mistake
of your fathers, who sinned ignorantly? or will you profit by the
blood-bought wisdom all round you, and forever expel every vestige of
the old abomination from our national borders? As you members of the
Thirty-ninth Congress decide, will the country be peaceful, united, and
happy, or troubled, divided, and miserable.

THE NEGRO EXODUS by James B. Runnion

A recent sojourn in the South for a few weeks, chiefly in Louisiana and
Mississippi, gave the writer an opportunity to inquire into what has
been so aptly called "the negro exodus." The emigration of blacks to
Kansas began early in the spring of this year. For a time there was a
stampede from two or three of the river parishes in Louisiana and
as many counties opposite in Mississippi. Several thousand negroes
(certainly not fewer than five thousand, and variously estimated as high
as ten thousand) had left their cabins before the rush could be stayed
or the excitement lulled. Early in May most of the negroes who had quit
work for the purpose of emigrating, but had not succeeded in getting
off, were persuaded to return to the plantations, and from that time on
there have been only straggling families and groups that have watched
for and seized the first opportunity for transportation to the North.
There is no doubt, however, that there is still a consuming desire among
the negroes of the cotton districts in these two States to seek new
homes, and there are the best reasons for believing that the exodus will
take a new start next spring, after the gathering and conversion of the
growing crop. Hundreds of negroes who returned from the river-banks for
lack of transportation, and thousands of others infected with the ruling
discontent, are working harder in the fields this summer, and practicing
more economy and self-denial than ever before, in order to have the
means next winter and spring to pay their way to the "promised land."

"We've been working for fourteen long years," said an intelligent negro,
in reply to a question as to the cause of the prevailing discontent,
"and we