; destitute, and they found employment for
them--only this and nothing more.

The real origin of the exodus movement and the organizations at
the South which have promoted it are very clearly stated by the
witnesses who have been most active in regard to it.

Henry Adams, of Shreveport, Louisiana, an uneducated colored
laborer, but a man of very unusual natural abilities, and, so far
as the committee could learn, entirely reliable and truthful,
states that he entered the United States Army in 1866 and
remained in it until 1869; that when he left the Army he returned
to his former home at Shreveport, and, finding the condition of
his race intolerable, he and a number of other men who had also
been in the Army set themselves to work to better the condition
of their people.

In 1870--

He says--

a parcel of us got together and said we would organize ourselves
into a committee and look into affairs and see the true condition
of our race, to see whether it was possible we could stay under a
people who held us in bondage or not.

That committee increased until it numbered about five hundred and
Mr. Adams says:

Some of the members of the committee was ordered by the committee
to go into every State in the South where we had been slaves,
and post one another from time to time about the true condition
of our race, and nothing but the truth.

In answer to the question whether they traveled over various
States he said:

"Yes, sir; and we worked, some of us, worked our way from place
to place, and went from State to State and worked--some of them
did--amongst our people, in the fields, everywhere, to see what
sort of a living our people lived--whether we could live in the
South amongst the people that held us as slaves or not. We
continued that on till 1874. Every one paid his own expenses,
except the one we sent to Louisiana and Mississippi. We took
money out of our pockets and sent him, and said to him you must
now go to work. You can't find out anything till you get amongst
them. You can talk as much as you please, but you got to go right
into the field and work with them and sleep with them to know all
about them."

I think about one hundred or one hundred and fifty went from one
place or another.

Q. Wh