for circulars.  In Louisiana alone 70,000 names were taken of those who wished to better their condition by removal; and by 1878 98,000 persons in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas were ready to go elsewhere.  A convention to consider the whole matter of migration was held in Nashville in 1879.  At this the politician managed to put in an appearance and there was much wordy discussion.  At the same time much of the difference of opinion was honest; the meeting was on the whole constructive; and it expressed itself as favorable to “reasonable migration.”  Already, however, thousands of Negroes were leaving their homes in the South and going in greatest numbers to Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana.  Within twenty months Kansas alone received in this way an addition to her population of 40,000 persons.  Many of these people arrived at their destination practically penniless and without prospect of immediate employment; but help was afforded by relief agencies in the North, and they themselves showed remarkable sturdiness in adapting themselves to the new conditions.

[Footnote 1:  Emmett J. Scott:  Negro Migration during the War (in Preliminary Economic Studies of the War—­Carnegie Endowment for International Peace:  Division of Economics and History).  Oxford University Press, American Branch, New York, 1920.]

Many of the stories that the Negroes told were pathetic.[1] Sometimes boats would not take them on, and they suffered from long exposure on the river banks.  Sometimes, while they were thus waiting, agents of their own people employed by the planters tried to induce them to remain.  Frequently they were clubbed or whipped.  Said one:  “I saw nine put in one pile, that had been killed, and the colored people had to bury them; eight others were found killed in the woods....  It is done this way:  they arrest them for breach of contract and carry them to jail.  Their money is taken from them by the jailer and it is not returned when they are let go.”  Said another:  “If a colored man stays away from the polls and does not vote, they spot him and make him vote.  If he votes their way, they treat him no better in business.  They hire the colored people to vote, and then take their pay away.  I know a man to whom they gave a cow and a calf for voting their ticket.  After election they came and told him that if he kept the cow he must pay for it; and they took the cow and calf away.”  Another:  “One man shook his fist in my face and said, ‘D——­ you, sir, you are my property.’  He said that I owed him.  He could not show it and then said, ’You sha’n’t go anyhow.’  All we want is a living chance.”  Another:  “There is a general talk among the whites and colored people that Jeff Davis will run for president of the Southern states, and the colored people are afraid they will be made slaves again.  They are already trying to prevent them from going from one plantation to another without a pass.”  Another:  “The deputy sheriff came and took away from