EXTRAORDINARY EXODUS.

Timaru Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 1467, 4 June 1879, Page 3

EXTRAORDINARY EXOD US.

A large migration of colored people from the Southern States, particularly from Mississippi, to the new regions of the West and North, has been recently going, on. This movement is depriving the South of large numbers of its working population, and is proving a source of irritation and alarm to the planters. A letter from St. Louis describes the scenes attending the arrival of thousands of the colored men m the city. The refugees were quartered m the basements of the colored churches, and otherwise provided for by their race. The majority of them are bound for destinations m Kansas. A A gentleman: who owns property m Mississippi, and has spent the last year m that State, has recently arrived at Washington. He says that the condition of affairs m that state is deplorable. Bankers refuse to lend any more money on real estate security. Merchants find it impossible to make advances to planters, taking crops as security. In effect, he Bays, the entire credit system of the State has been destroyed. There is little ready money, distress and ruin stare all classes m the face. The political disturbances have driven away the investments of Northern capital, and enterprise, and the pestilence of last summer has finished the work that the bulldozers beganfour years ago. A return of the yellow fever m the coming summer is generally expected. He says that m Vicksburg there have been sporadic cases of the fever all winter ; that nothing whatever has been done to improve the sanitary condition of that city. From the river counties of Mississippi below Yicksburg alone more than 2000 colored persons have removed to the Northern States since the Ist January last, most of them bound for Kansas, but many of them settling m Illinois and Indiana. He says that the negroes who thus remove take almost as many precautions to get away as they formerly did to escape from slavery. Part of a family will board a boat at one landing and part at another, to avoid suspicion. He says the excitement of the planters on this subject is so great that they have been trying to induce Governor Stone to convene the Legislature and secure the enactment of some legislation to prevent the exodus of their laborers, but the Governor has thus far declined to do as desire. The planters, too, are beginning to see that m order to keep their laborers they must allow them to think and vote as they choose, and he remarks that some of them already begin to say openly that the moat important matter to them is to have labor to cultivate their lands, and that politics must give way to this ; the negroes must be allowed to vote and to have their votes fairly counted. The chief interest of the State — planting — is beginning already to suffer from the natural reaction from the bulldozing. The following is the description of the arrival of a steamer with five hundred negroes at St. Louis, on March 23rd : — About noon on Sunday the steamer arrived. It was a very cold day ; a heavy snow storm was prevailing, and tho wind blew a perfect gale. The negroos were unloaded at the wharf, and their miserable stores of household goods and bundles of baggage were set down m tho snow. A more truly pitiable spectacle titan they were, men, women, and children, wretchedly clad, and looking starved and desperate, it would be difficult to imagine. To the everlasting credit of the colored people of St. Louis, let it be said that the news of their arrival and miserable condition having been made known at the different colored churches, it was decided to invite these wretched refugees to a shelter m the basements of three large churches m the lower part of the city. The pastors of the churches, accompanied by others, went down to the wharf, extended the invitation, and soon a motley procession wa3 filing through the streets, following these truly Christian leaden. The expressions were numerous and loud on the part of the refugees that God had sent them deliverers, and many were the hallelujahs and cries of " Glory to God," " I told ye de Lord would help us," that arose from hundreds of grateful hearts. In the basements of these churches all who arrived during the past week, numbering over 2500, were temporarily accommodated. Beds were made m the pews and on the floor, and conveniences for cooking were improvised. Here they were visited by a very few white people and by hundreds of their colored brethren from tho city. Daring the week a great majority of those who arrived were sent on to Kansas. Most of them went to Topeka. It remains to be seen whether Kansas will prove herself to be all that orators have spoken and poets have sung of her, as the refuge of the oppressed and the home of the slave. She has broad acres that need cultivation ; it i 3 to be hoped she will give the poor negro fleeing to her borders a fair chance m the struggle for a living. The opinion generally expressed here by those who have talked with the refugees is that they left the South because they had grown desperate, and were hopeless of bettering their condition. The fear of personal danger, also, evidently had much influence with them. That an immense emigration is coming from the South seems most evident. Hundreds more are expected this week. They have evidently grown tired of waiting for the " year of jubilee," for which they prayed so fervently m their little rude churches m the woods. The "good time coming" seems, alas, just as far off as ever. They want to be treated like white folks, but they do not see that any progress is being made m that direction. t They work hard, but the white people seem to get the profit of their labor just as m the days of slavery, leaving to them barely enough to support life. They have nominally the rights of citizens, but if they attempt to elect anybody to office they incur the wrath of the whites and run the ritk of cruel persecutions from organised bands of bull-dozers. If they assemble to discuss their grievances they are accused of malicious designs, and are lucky if they escape an attack from the nearest rifle-club. Any retaliation for gross outrages, or even resistance for self-protection, causes the whites to raiae the hue and cry of "nigger insurrection," and they are shot down like wild beasts, or hunted to the swamps and canebrakes.