control the legislation and hold the offices
of the State. I am opposed to this exodus, because it will pour
upon the people of Kansas and other Northern States a multitude
of deluded, hungry, homeless people to be supported in a large
measure by alms. I am opposed to this exodus, because it will
enable our political adversaries to make successful appeals to
popular prejudice (as in the case of the Chinese) on the ground
that these people, so ignorant and helpless, have been imported
for the purpose of making the North solid by outvoting
intelligent white Northern citizens. I am opposed to this exodus,
because 'rolling stones gather no moss;' and I agree with Emerson
that the men who made Rome or any other locality worth going to
see stayed there. There is, in my judgment, no part of the United
States where an industrious and intelligent man can serve his
race more wisely and efficiently than upon the soil where he was
born and reared and is known. I am opposed to this exodus because
I see in it a tendency to convert colored laboring men into
traveling tramps, first going North because they are persecuted,
and then returning South because they have been deceived in their
expectations, which will excite against themselves and against
our whole race an increasing measure of popular contempt and
scorn. I am opposed to this exodus because I believe that the
conditions of existence in the Southern States are steadily
improving, and that the colored man there will ultimately realize
the fullest measure of liberty and equality accorded and secured
in any section of our common country.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This appeared in _The Vicksburg Commercial Daily Advertiser_, May
7, 1879.

THE SENATE REPORT ON THE EXODUS OF 1879

Hearing of the commotion among the Negroes in Louisiana and
Mississippi in 1879, Senator D. W. Voorhees, of Indiana, offered the
following resolution which was accepted:

Whereas, large numbers of Negroes from the Southern States, and
especially from the State of North Carolina, are migrating to the
Northern States, and especially to the State of Indiana; and,

Whereas, it is currently alleged that they are induced to do so
by the unjust and cruel conduct of their white fellow citizens
toward them in the South; therefore,

_Be it Resolved_, That