bound to their landlords to secure the property.  It was soon evident that in the end the white man himself was the loser by this evil system.  There appeared waste places in the country.  Improvements were wanting, land lay idle for lack of sufficient labor, and that which was cultivated yielded a diminishing return on account of the ignorance and improvidence of those tilling it.  These Negroes as a rule had lost the ambition to become landowners, preferring to invest their surplus money in personal effects; and in the few cases where the Negroes were induced to undertake the buying of land, they often tired of the responsibility and gave it up.[12]

There began in the spring of 1879, therefore, an emigration of the Negroes from Louisiana and Mississippi to Kansas.  For some time there was a stampede from several river parishes in Louisiana and from counties just opposite them in Mississippi.  It was estimated that from five to ten thousand left their homes before the movement could be checked.  Persons of influence soon busied themselves in showing the blacks the necessity for remaining in the South and those who had not then gone or prepared to go were persuaded to return to the plantations.  This lull in the excitement, however, was merely temporary, for many Negroes had merely returned home to make more extensive preparations for leaving the following spring.  The movement was accelerated by the work of two Negro leaders of some note, Moses Singleton, of Tennessee, the self-styled Moses of the Exodus; and Henry Adams, of Louisiana, who credited himself with having organized for this purpose as many as 98,000 blacks.

Taking this movement seriously a convention of the leading whites and blacks was held at Vicksburg, Mississippi, on the sixth of May, 1879.  This body was controlled mainly by unsympathetic but diplomatic whites.  General N.R.  Miles, of Yazoo County, Mississippi, was elected president and A.W.  Crandall, of Louisiana, secretary.  After making some meaningless but eloquent speeches the convention appointed a committee on credentials and adjourned until the following day.  On reassembling Colonel W.L.  Nugent, chairman of the committee, presented a certain preamble and resolutions citing causes of the exodus and suggesting remedies.  Among the causes, thought he, were:  “the low price of cotton and the partial failure of the crop, the irrational system of planting adopted in some sections whereby labor was deprived of intelligence to direct it and the presence of economy to make it profitable, the vicious system of credit fostered by laws permitting laborers and tenants to mortgage crops before they were grown or even planted; the apprehension on the part of many colored people produced by insidious reports circulated among them that their civil and political rights were endangered or were likely to be; the hurtful and false rumors diligently disseminated, that by emigrating to Kansas the Negroes would obtain lands, mules and money from the government without cost to themselves, and become independent forever."[13]