onditions which have driven these
people from Mississippi. It would be but a repetition of the
intolerance, persecutions, and violence which have prevailed in
Louisiana. The same Democratic "shot-gun eloquence" which was so
potent for the conversion of colored Republicans in the one has
proven equally powerful in the other. The same "eloquence" which
wrested Louisiana from Republicans also converted Mississippi.
And in both the same results are visible in the determination of
the colored people to get away.

Nearly all the witnesses who were asked as to the causes of the
exodus answered that it was because of a feeling of insecurity
for life and property; a denial of their political rights as
citizens; long-continued persecutions for political reasons; a
system of cheating by landlords and storekeepers which rendered
it impossible for them to make a living no matter how hard they
might work; the inadequacy of school advantages, and a fear that
they would be eventually reduced to a system of peonage even
worse than slavery itself.

On the latter point they quoted the laws of Mississippi, which
authorize the sheriff to hire the convicts to planters and others
for twenty-five cents a day to work out the fine and cost, and
which provide that for every day lost from sickness he shall work
another to pay for his board while sick. Under these laws they
allege that a colored man may be fined $500 for some trifling
misdemeanor, and be compelled to work five or six years to pay
the fine; and that it is not uncommon for colored men thus hired
out to be worked in a chain gang upon the plantations under
overseers, with whip in hand, precisely as in the days of
slavery. And some of the witnesses declared that if an attempt be
made to escape they are pursued by blood-hounds, as before the
war.

Henry Ruby, a witness summoned by the majority of the committee,
swore that in Texas, under a law similar to that in Mississippi,
a colored man had been arrested for carrying a "six-shooter" and
fined $65, including costs, and that he had been at work nearly
three years to pay it. The laws of that State do not fix the rate
for hiring, but "county convicts" may be hired at any price the
county judge may determine. He mentioned the case of a colored
woman