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 ain't no better off than we was when we commenced." This is the
negro version of the trouble, which is elaborated on occasion into a
harrowing story of oppression and plunder.
"I tell you it's all owing to the radical politicians at the North,"
explained a representative of the type known as the Bourbons; "they've
had their emissaries down here, and deluded the 'niggers' into a
very fever of emigration, with the purpose of reducing our basis of
representation in Congress and increasing that of the Northern States."
These are the two extremes of opinion at the South. The first is
certainly the more reasonable and truthful, though it implies that all
the blame rests upon the whites, which is not the case; the second,
preposterous as it will appear to Northern readers, is religiously
believed by large numbers of the "unreconciled." Between these two
extremes there is an infinite variety of theories, all more or less
governed by the political faction to which the various theorizers
belong; there are at least a dozen of these factions, such as the
Bourbons, the conservatives, the native white republicans, the
carpet-bag republicans, the negro republicans, etc. There is a political
tinge in almost everything in the extreme Southern States. The
fact seems to be that the emigration movement among the blacks was
spontaneous to the extent that they were ready and anxious to go. The
immediate notion of going may have been inculcated by such circulars,
issued by railroads and land companies, as are common enough at emigrant
centres in the North and West, and the exaggeration characteristic of
such literature may have stimulated the imagination of the negroes far
beyond anything they are likely to realize in their new homes. Kansas
was naturally the favorite goal of the negro emigre, for it was
associated in his mind with the names of Jim Lane and John Brown, which
are hallowed to him. The timid learned that they could escape what they
have come to regard as a second bondage, and they flocked together to
gain the moral support which comes from numbers.
Diligent inquiry among representative men, of all classes and from
all parts of Louisiana, who were in attendance at the constitutional
convention in New Orleans, and careful observation along the river among
the land owners and field hands in both Louisiana and Mississippi, left
a vivid impression of some material and political conditions which fully
account for the negro exodus. I have dropped the social conditions out
of the consideration, because I became convinced that the race troubles
at the South can be solved to the satisfaction of both whites and blacks
without cultivating any closer social relations than those which now
prevail. The material conditions which I have in mind are less familiar
than the political conditions; they are mainly the land-tenure and
credit systems, and mere modifications (scarcely for the better) of the
peculiar plantation system of slavery days.
The cotton lands at the South are owned now, as they were before the
war, in large tracts. The land was about all that most of the Southern
whites had left to them after the war, and they kept it when they could,
at the first, in the hope that it would yield them a living through the
labor of the blacks; of late years they have not been able to sell their
plantations at any fair price, if they desired to do so. The white men
with capital who went to the South from the North after the war seemed
to acquire the true Southern ambition to be large land owners and
planters; and when the ante-bellum owners lost their plantations the
land usually went in bulk to the city factors who had made them advances
from year to year, and had taken mortgages on their crops and broad
acres. As a consequence, the land has never been distributed among
the people who inhabit and cultivate it, and agricultural labor in the
Southern States approaches the condition of the factory labor in England
and the Eastern States more nearly than it does the farm labor of the
North and West. Nearly every agricultural laborer north of Mason and
Dixon's line, if not the actual possessor of the land he plows, looks
forward to owning a farm some time; at the South such an ambition is
rare, and small ownership still more an exception. The practice of
paying day wages was first tried after the war; this practice is still
in vogue in the sugar and rice districts, where laborers are paid from
fifty to seventy cents per day, with quarters furnished and living
guaranteed them at nine or ten cents a day. In sections where the wages
system prevails, and where there have been no political disturbances,
the negroes seem to be perfectly contented; at all events, the
emigration fever has not spread among them. But it was found
impracticable to maintain the wage system in the cotton districts. The
negroes themselves fought against it, because it reminded them too much
of the slave-gang, driven out at daybreak and home at sundown. In many
cases the planters were forced to abandon it, because they had not the
means to carry on such huge farming, and they could not secure the same
liberal advances from capitalists as when they were able to mortgage
a growing "crop of niggers." Then the system of working on shares was
tried. This was reasonably fair, and the negro laborers were satisfied
as long as it lasted. The owners of the land, under this system, would
furnish the indispensable mule and the farming implements, and take one
half the product. The planters themselves relinquished this system. Some
of them contend that the laziness and indifference of the negro made the
partnership undesirable; many others admit that they were not able to
advance the negro tenant his supplies pending the growth of the year's
crop, as it was necessary they should do under the sharing system.
Now the renting system is almost universal. It yields the land owner a
certainty, endangered only by the death, sickness, or desertion of the
negro tenant; but it throws the latter upon his own responsibility, and
frequently makes him the victim of his own ignorance and the rapacity
of the white man. The rent of land, on a money basis, varies from six to
ten dollars an acre per year, while the same land can be bought in
large quantities all the way from fifteen to thirty dollars per acre,
according to location, clearing, improvement, richness, etc. When paid
in product, the rent varies from eighty to one hundred pounds of lint
cotton per acre for land that produces from two hundred to four hundred
pounds of cotton per acre; the tenant undertakes to pay from one quarter
to one half--perhaps an average of one third--of his crop for the use
of the land, without stock, tools, or assistance of any kind. The land
owners usually claim that they make no money even at these exorbitant
figures. If they do not, it is because only a portion of their vast
possessions is under cultivation, because they do no work themselves,
and in some cases because the negroes do not cultivate and gather as
large a crop as they could and ought to harvest. It is very certain that
the negro tenants, as a class, make no money; if they are out of debt at
the end of a season, they have reason to rejoice.
The credit system, which is as universal as the renting system, is even
more illogical and oppressive. The utter viciousness of both systems in
their mutual dependence is sufficiently illustrated by the single fact
that, after fourteen years of freedom and labor on their own account,
the great mass of the negroes depend for their living on an advance of
supplies (as they need food, clothing, or tools during the year) upon
the pledge of their growing crop. This is a generic imitation of the
white man's improvidence during the slavery times; then the planters
mortgaged their crops and negroes, and where one used the advances to
extend his plantation, ten squandered the money. The negro's necessities
have developed an offensive race, called merchants by courtesy, who keep
supply stores at the cross-roads and steamboat landings, and live upon
extortion. These people would be called sharks, harpies, and vampires in
any Northwestern agricultural community, and they would not survive more
than one season. The country merchant advances the negro tenant such
supplies as the negro wants up to a certain amount, previously fixed
by contract, and charges the negro at least double the value of every
article sold to him. There is no concealment about the extortion; every
store-keeper has his cash price and his credit price, and in nearly all
cases the latter is one hundred per cent. higher than the former. The
extortion is justified by those who practice it on the ground that
their losses by bad debts, though their advances are always secured by
mortgage on the growing crop, overbalance the profits; this assertion is
scarcely borne out by the comparative opulence of the "merchant" and
the pitiful poverty of the laborer. Some of the largest and wealthiest
planters have sought to protect their tenants from the merciless
clutches of the contrary merchant, who is more frequently than not an
Israelite, by advancing supplies of necessary articles at reasonable
prices. But the necessities of the planter, if not his greed, often
betray him into plundering the negro. The planter himself is generally a
victim to usury. He still draws on the city factor to the extent of ten
dollars a bale upon his estimated crop. He pays this factor two and one
half per cent. commission for the advance, eight per cent. interest for
the money, two and one half per cent. more for disposing of the crop
when consigned to him, and sometimes still another commission for the
purchase of the supplies. The planter who furnishes his tenants with
supplies on credit is usually paying an interest of fifteen to eighteen
per cent. himself, and necessarily takes some risk in advancing upon
an uncertain crop and to a laborer whom he believes to be neither
scrupulous nor industrious; these conditions necessitate more than the
ordinary profit, and in many cases suggest exorbitant and unreasonable
charges. But whether the negro deals with the merchant or the land
owner, his extravagance almost invariably exhausts his credit, even if
it be large. The negro is a sensuous creature, and luxurious in his way.
The male is an enormous consumer of tobacco and whisky; the female
has an inordinate love for flummery; both are fond of sardines, potted
meats, and canned goods generally, and they indulge themselves without
any other restraint than the refusal of their merchant to sell to them.
The man who advances supplies watches his negro customers constantly;
if they are working well and their crop promises to be large, he will
permit and even encourage them to draw upon him liberally; it is only a
partial failure of the crop, or some intimation of the negro's intention
to shirk his obligations, that induces his country factor to preach the
virtue of self-restraint, or moralize upon the advantages of economy.
The land owner's rent and the merchant's advances are both secured by a
chattel mortgage on the tenant's personal property, and by a pledge of
the growing crop. The hired laborer (for it is common for negroes to
work for wages for other negroes who rent lands) has also a lien upon
the growing crops second only to the land owner's; but as the law
requires that the liens shall be recorded, which the ignorant laborer
usually neglects and the shrewd merchant never fails to do, the former
is generally cheated of his security. Among those who usually work for
hire are the women, who are expert cotton pickers, and the loss of wages
which so many of them have suffered by reason of the prior lien gained
by landlord and merchant has helped to make them earnest and effective
advocates of emigration. The Western farmer considers it hard enough to
struggle under one mortgage at a reasonable interest; the negro tenant
begins his season with three mortgages, covering all he owns, his labor
for the coming year, and all he expects to acquire during that period.
He pays one third his product for the use of the land; he pays double
the value of all he consumes; he pays an exorbitant fee for recording
the contract by which he pledges his pound of flesh; he is charged two
or three times as much as he ought to pay for ginning his cotton;
and, finally, he turns over his crop to be eaten up in commissions, if
anything still be left to him. It is easy to understand why the negro
rarely gets ahead in the world. This mortgaging of future services,
which is practically what a pledge of the growing crop amounts to, is in
the nature of bondage. It has a tendency to make the negro extravagant,
reckless, and unscrupulous; he has become convinced from previous
experience that nothing will be coming to him on the day of settlement,
and he is frequently actuated by the purpose of getting as much as
possible and working as little as possible. Cases are numerous in which
the negro abandons his own crop at picking time, because he knows that
he has already eaten up its full value; and so he goes to picking for
wages on some other plantation. In other cases, where negroes have
acquired mules and farming implements upon which a merchant has secured
a mortgage in the manner described, they are practically bound to that
merchant from year to year, in order to retain their property; if he
removes from one section to another, they must follow him, and rent
and cultivate lands in his neighborhood. It is only the ignorance,
the improvidence, and the happy disposition of the negro, under the
influence of the lazy, drowsy climate, to which he is so well adapted
physically, that have enabled him to endure these hardships so long.
And, though the negro is the loser, the white man is not often the
gainer, from this false plantation and mercantile system. The incidental
risk may not be so large as the planter and merchant pretend, but the
condition of the people is an evidence that the extortion they practice
yields no better profit in the long run than would be gained by
competition in fair prices on a cash system; and in leading up to a
general emigration of the laboring population the abuses described will
eventually ruin and impoverish those who have heretofore been the only
beneficiaries thereof. The decay of improvements inevitable under annual
rentings, the lack of sufficient labor to cultivate all the good land,
and the universal idleness of the rural whites have kept the land
owners comparatively poor; the partial failure of crops and the
unscrupulousness of the negro debtor, engendered by the infamous
exactions of his creditor, have prevented the merchants, as a class,
from prospering as much as might be supposed; and, finally, the uniform
injustice to the laborers induces them to fly to ills they know not of,
rather than bear those they have. It is a blessing to the negro that
the laws do not yet provide for a detention of the person in the case of
debt, or escape would be shut off entirely; as it is, various influences
and circumstances appertaining to the system in vogue have been used
to prevent the easy flight of those who desire to go, and have detained
thousands of blacks for a time who are fretting to quit the country.
Political oppression has contributed largely to the discontent which
is the prime cause of the exodus. "Bulldozing" is the term by which
all forms of this oppression are known. The native whites are generally
indisposed to confess that the negroes are quitting the country on
account of political injustice and persecution; even those who freely
admit and fitly characterize the abuses already described seek to deny,
or at least belittle, the political abuses. The fact that a large number
of negroes have emigrated from Madison Parish, Louisiana, where there
has never been any bulldozing, and where the negroes are in full
and undisputed political control, is cited as proof that political
disturbances cut no figure in the case. But the town of Delta, in
Madison Parish, is at once on the river and the terminus of a railroad
that runs back through the interior of the State; thus Madison Parish
would furnish the natural exit for the fugitives from the adjoining
counties, where there have been political disturbances. It would be just
as reasonable to contend that the plundering of the negroes has had no
influence in driving them away, since many of those who have emigrated
were among the most prosperous of the blacks, as to deny the agency
of political persecution. Families that had been able to accumulate
a certain amount of personal property, in spite of the extortionate
practices, sold their mules, their implements, their cows, their
pigs, their sheep, and their household goods for anything they would
bring,--frequently as low as one sixth of their value,--in order that
they might improve an immediate opportunity to go away; it is evident
that there must have been some cause outside of extortion in their case.
There are candid native whites who do not deny, but justify, the violent
methods which have been employed to disfranchise the negroes, or compel
them to vote under white dictation, in many parts of Louisiana and
Mississippi, on the ground that the men who pay the taxes should vote
them and control the disbursement of the public moneys. The gentlemen
who advance this argument seem to ignore the fact that the very
Northerner whom they are seeking to convert to "the Mississippi plan"
may himself be a taxpayer in some Northern city, where public affairs
are controlled by a class of voters in every way as ignorant and
irresponsible as the blacks, but where bulldozing has never yet
been suggested as a remedy. For the rest, the evidences of political
oppression are abundant and convincing. The bulldozers as a class are
more impecunious and irresponsible than the negroes, and, unlike the
negroes, they will not work. There has been more of the "night-riding,"
the whippings, the mysterious disappearances, the hangings, and the
terrorism comprehended in the term bulldozing than has been reported
by those "abstracts and brief chronicles of the time," the Southern
newspapers, which are now all of one party, and defer to the ruling
sentiment among the whites. The exodus has wrung from two or three of
the more candid and independent journals, however, a virtual confession
of the fiendish practices of bulldozing in their insistance that these
practices must be abandoned. The non-resident land owners and the
resident planters, the city factors and the country merchants of means
and respectability, have taken no personal part in the terrorizing of
the negro, but they have tolerated it, and sometimes encouraged it, in
order to gratify their preference for "white government." The negroes
have suffered the more because they have not resisted and defended
themselves; now they have begun to convince those who have persecuted
them that, if they will not strike back, they can and will run away.
No one who is at all familiar with the freedman can doubt that the
abridgment of his political rights has been one of the main causes of
the exodus. Voting is widely regarded at the North as a disagreeable
duty, but the negro looks upon it as the highest privilege in life; to
be frightened out of the exercise of this privilege, or compelled to
exercise it in conflict with his convictions and preferences, is to
suffer from a cruel injustice, which the negro will now try to escape,
since he has learned that escape is possible. The women, though free
from personal assaults, suffer from the terrorism that prevails in
certain districts as much as the men. "We might as well starve or freeze
to death in Kansas," they say, "as to be shot-gunned here." If they talk
to you in confidence, they declare that the ruling purpose is to escape
from the "slaughter-pens" of the South. Political persecution, and not
the extortion they suffer, is the refrain of all the speakers at negro
meetings that are held in encouragement and aid of the emigration. It is
idle to deny that the varied injustice which the negroes have suffered
as voters is accountable for a large part of their universal yearning
for new homes, and it will be folly for the responsible classes at the
South to ignore this fact.
As it is the negroes who are fleeing from the South, it is natural to
look among the dominant class for the injustice which is driving them
away; but it would be unfair to conclude that the blame rests entirely
upon the whites, and still more so to leave the impression that there
is no extenuation for the mistakes and abuses for which the whites are
responsible. Much of the intimidation of the blacks has been tolerated,
if not suggested, by a fear of negro uprisings. The apprehension is a
legacy from the days of slavery, and is more unreasonable now than
it was then; but still it exists. This is not an excuse, but an
explanation. The Pharaohs of the time of Moses were in constant dread
lest the Hebrews under their rule should go over to their enemies, and
their dread doubtless increased the cruelty of the Egyptians; but, while
this dread was an extenuation in the eyes of the persecutors, it did
not prevent the Hebrews from fleeing the persecution. So the blacks are
going without regard to the justification which the whites may set up
for their treatment; the only difference between the old and new exodus
is that, as the writer heard one negro speaker express it, "every black
man is his own Moses in this exodus." The negro may be lazy; it seems
impossible to be otherwise in the Southern climate. He may not be
willing to work on Saturdays, no matter how urgent the necessity; the
indulgence in holidays is said to be one of the chief drawbacks to the
advancement of the emancipated serfs of Russia. The blacks are certainly
extravagant in their way, though the word seems to be almost misused in
connection with a race who live largely on pork and molasses, and rarely
wear more than half a dollar's worth of clothes at one time. They have
not the instinct of home as it prevails among the whites, but incline
to a crude and unsystematic communism; the negro quarters of the old
plantations are all huddled together in the centre, and, except where
the land owners have interfered to encourage a different life, there is
still too much promiscuousness in the relation of the sexes. The negro,
as a rule, has no ambition to become a land owner; he prefers to invest
his surplus money, when he has any, in personal and movable property.
In most cases where the blacks have been given the opportunity of buying
land on long time, and paying yearly installments out of the proceeds of
their annual crops, they have tired of the bargain after a year or two,
and abandoned the contract. The negro politicians and preachers are not
all that reformers and moralists would have them; the imitative faculty
of the African has betrayed the black politician into many of the
vicious ways of the white politician, and the colored preacher is
frequently not above "the pomps and vanity of this wicked world." All
this is the more unfortunate, as the blacks have a child-like confidence
in their chosen leaders, founded partly on their primitive character,
and partly on their distrust of the native whites. Both their
politicians and their preachers have given abundant evidence of their
insincerity during the excitement of emigration by blowing hot and
blowing cold; by talking to the negroes one way, and to the whites
another; and even to the extent, in some instances, of taking money to
use their influence for discouraging and impeding emigration. These are
some of the faults and misfortunes on the part of the blacks which enter
into the race troubles. The chief blame which attaches to the whites
is the failure to make a persistent effort, by education and kind
treatment, to overcome the distrust and cure the faults of the
negroes. The whites control, because they constitute the "property and
intelligence" of the South, to use the words of a democratic statesman;
this power should have been used to gain the confidence of the blacks.
Had such a course been taken, there would not have been the fear of
reenslavement, which actually prevails to a considerable extent among
the negroes. So long as a portion of the whites entertain the conviction
that the war of the sections will be renewed within a few years, as is
the case, the negroes will suspect and dread the class who would treat
them as enemies in case the war should come, and will seek to escape to
a section of the country where they would not be so treated. Perhaps,
too, there would have been a voluntary political division among the
black voters, had the whites used more pacific means to bring it about,
and had they themselves set the example. And last, but not least, in
making up the sum of blame that the whites must bear, is their own
unwillingness to labor, which gives the rural population too much time
for mischief and too little sympathy with the working classes.
As we have traced the causes that have led to the exodus, and described
the conditions which warrant the belief that there will be a renewal of
the emigration on a more extended scale next spring, and endeavored to
distribute the responsibility for the troubles equitably among whites
and blacks, remedies have naturally suggested themselves to the reader;
in fact, they are more easily to be thought out than accomplished. A
few general reflections may be added, however, in order to indicate
the probable solution of the race troubles that have brought about the
exodus, if, indeed, the whites and blacks of the South are ever going to
live together in peace.
(1.) It is certain that negro labor is the best the South can have, and
equally certain that the climate and natural conditions of the South
are better suited to the negro than any others on this continent.
The alluvial lands, which many persons believe the negroes alone can
cultivate, on account of climatic conditions, are so rich that it might
literally be said it is only necessary to tickle them with a hoe to make
them laugh back a harvest. The common prosperity of the country--the
agricultural interests of the South and the commercial interests of the
North--will be best served, therefore, by the continued residence and
labor of the blacks in the cotton States.
(2.) The fact stated in the foregoing paragraph is so well understood at
the North that the Southern people should dismiss the idea that there is
any scheming among the Northern people, political or otherwise, to draw
the black labor away from its natural home. The same fact should also
influence the people at the North not to be misled by any professional
philanthropists who may have some self-interest in soliciting aid to
facilitate negro emigration from the South. The duty of the North in
this matter is simply to extend protection and assure safe-conduct
to the negroes, if the Southern whites attempt to impede voluntary
emigration by either law or violence. Any other course might be cruel
to the negro in encouraging him to enter on a new life in a strange
climate, as well as an injustice to the white land owners of the South.
(3.) There is danger that the Southern whites will, as a rule,
misinterpret the meaning of the exodus. Many are inclined to underrate
its importance, and those who appreciate its significance are apt to
look for temporary and superficial remedies. The vague promises made at
the Vicksburg convention, which was controlled by the whites, and called
to consider the emigration movement, have had no influence with
the negroes, because they have heard such promises before. Had the
convention adopted some definite plan of action, such as ex-Governor
Foote, of Mississippi, submitted, its session might not have been in
vain. This plan was to establish a committee in every county, composed
of men who have the confidence of both whites and blacks, that should
be auxiliary to the public authorities, listen to complaints, and
arbitrate, advise, conciliate, or prosecute, as each case should demand.
It is short-sighted for the Southern people to make mere temporary
concessions, such as have been made in some cases this year, for that
course would establish an annual strike. It is folly for them to suppose
they can stem the tide of emigration by influencing the regular lines of
steamboats not to carry the refugees, for the people of the North will
see that the blacks shall not be detained in the South against their
will. It is unwise for them to devise schemes for importing Chinese,
or encouraging the immigration of white labor as a substitute for negro
labor, when they may much better bestir themselves to make the present
effective labor content.
(4.) Education will be the most useful agent to employ in the permanent
harmonizing of the two races, and the redemption of both from the faults
and follies which constitute their troubles. It is not the education of
the negro alone, whose ambition for learning is increasing notably with
every new generation, but the education of the mass of the young whites,
that is needed to inculcate more tolerance of color and opinion, to give
them an aspiration beyond that of riding a horse and hanging a "nigger,"
and to enable them to set a better example to the imitative blacks in
the way of work and frugality. The blacks need the education to protect
them from designing white men; the whites need it to teach them that
their own interests will be best served by abandoning bulldozing of all
kinds.
(5.) Reform in the land tenure, by converting the plantation monopolies
into small holdings; abolition of the credit system, by abandoning the
laws which sustain it; a diversification of crops; and attention to
new manufacturing, maritime, and commercial enterprises,--these are the
material changes that are most needed. They can be secured only through
the active and earnest efforts of the whites. The blacks will be found
responsive.
(6.) The hope of the negro exodus at its present stage, or even if it
shall continue another season, is that the actual loss of the valuable
labor that has gone, and the prospective loss of more labor that is
anxious to go, will induce the intelligent and responsible classes
at the South to overcome their own prejudices, and to compel the
extremists, irreconcilables, and politicians generally, of all parties,
to abandon agitation, and give the South equal peace and equal chance
for black and white.