634 



MISSISSIPPI. 



ployees. The manufactured goods are sent to every 

 part of the known world, creating a trade reciprocal 

 business that can hardly be estimated, but without 

 doing which, as can easily be seen, it will reach into 

 the billions. 



Early in the year a convention was called at 

 Vicksburg to assemble on May 5th. The ob- 

 ject as expressed in the call was "to take into 

 consideration the present agitation of the labor 

 question." The proceedings of this conven- 

 tion are noticed elsewhere (see EXODUS). The 

 signers believed that, by united action, " they 

 might be able to adopt such measures as would 

 allay the excitement prevailing, or which at 

 least would enable them to supply the places 

 of those laborers who had gone, or who might 

 hereafter go, to the Western States." 



For a short time previous considerable num- 

 bers of the colored population had been selling 

 their effects and emigrating to Kansas, under 

 the ostensible anticipation of improving their 

 condition. An emigration so unusual and so 

 extensive had attracted the attention of the 

 people in all parts of the country, and excited 

 some apprehensions of a scarcity or loss of 

 laborers among the producers of cotton and 

 sugar. For full details, see EXODUS, and KAN- 

 SAS. 



The views entertained in Mississippi relative 

 to the effects of this emigration on the plant- 

 ing interest are very calmly and fully set forth 

 in the following extract from a memorial to 

 the people of the Northern States by the cot- 

 ton-planters of Washington County, assembled 

 in convention at Greenville en May 28th : 



Contracts with the laborers are almost universally of 

 three kinds : 1. Leases for rent payable in cotton or in 

 money ; 2. Contracts for work on shares, the landlord 

 supplying land, team, tools, and forage, the laborer 

 supplying his own subsistence and the labor only, 

 with an equal division of the crop to be made ; 3. For 

 wages to the laborer. In all cases a free election was 

 given to the laborer as to the class of contract under 

 which he would work. In no known instance was he 

 put under compulsion as to contracting, or as to change 

 from one plantation to another, or as to migration m 

 any direction whatever. Whether the negro elects to 

 rent ground or work upon shares, he always demands 

 and receives from his landlord or his merchant such 

 supplies as he may require during the year. At this 

 season of the year the laborer has generally obtained 

 nearly his year's supply, and the planters are depen- 

 dent wholly upon the completion of the crop, both for 

 the rents or shares and payment for supplies advanced. 

 It will thus be seen that the loss of even one crop 

 would in all cases seriously injure, and probably in a 

 majority of instances wholly ruin, the sugar and cot- 

 ton planters, and bankrupt the commercial and busi- 

 ness interests of the entire country that are dependent 

 upon the prosperity of those planters. Thus much is 

 embarked upon the faith of the negro's fidelity to his 

 contract, which it is idle and preposterous to assert 

 the planter would impair by unkindly treatment. 



In this condition of our planting interests comes this 

 last fearful menace. We do not fear so much the loss 

 of the few hundreds or thousands of negroes who may 

 be carried away by the boats of your benevolent soci- 

 eties, but we know and fear the consequences of the ap- 

 pearance of a single boat dispatched for such purposes. 

 The great body of the colored people have been led to 

 believe by secret emissaries that the United States 

 Government would now make good the hope which 

 they indulged soon after their emancipation, that they 



would each be provided with permanent homes upon 

 well-improved farms, equipped with the necessary 

 stock and material, and they would be transported to 

 them in the State of Kansas free of charge ; placards 

 and chromos have been freely but secretly distributed 

 among the negroes, designed to influence their imagi- 

 nation and seduce them from their contracts by im- 

 mediate migration. So successful have such efforts 

 been that in a great many instances negroes who were 

 well established for planting, owning their teams, 

 material, etc., and with their crops in fine condition, 

 and others who were owners of lands nearly paid for, 

 seized with the belief thus impressed upon them that 

 the present opportunity to emigrate might be their 

 only one, have sold their horses and mules for $8 or 

 $10 per head, sacrificed their other property, aban- 

 doned their lands and crops, and congregated upon 

 the river-bank to await the coming of the Government 

 boat. 



Many, and we fear most of the emigrants, exhibit 

 the delusion of a religious mind, and, either of their 

 own conceit or under the machinations of the emissary, 

 believe that the Almighty has called them to go to a 

 "land of Canaan." Added to this the wonderful 

 credulity of the negro ever ready, as he is, to listen 

 to the marvelous, and hopeful to an absurd degree 

 it is not surprising that he should be demoralized, en- 

 ticed from his contracts and crop, and crazed with the 

 fever of emigration. The fact that our crops for several 

 years past nave brought low prices, and would not 

 justify the accustomed prodigality of the negro, has, it 

 is true, furnished a pretense to the emissary to assist 

 in discouraging and unsettling the laborers. At this 

 season the loss of ten days' labor would irretrievably 

 injure, if it did not wholly destroy the crop. No sub- 

 stituted labor could be procured. 



In view of these facts, we now further state that, if 

 a single boat should make its appearance along our 

 borders and proclaim a free passage to but one load of 

 emigrants, it would confirm the negroes in their de- 

 lusion, and depopulate every plantation accessible to 

 the river. The Northern philanthropists, whose large- 

 hearted generosity we have had such recent cause to 

 appreciate, can hardly estimate the effect upon the 

 emotional, excitable, and credulous negro of the ap- 

 pearance on the Mississippi Kiver of a single boat 

 whose mission would be to give transportation to the 

 negro Kansasward. While such a steamer could, at 

 the utmost, carry off only a few hundred, the whole 

 country on both sides of the river would become in- 

 stantaneously aflame with excitement, crowing crops 

 would be abandoned, houses left tenanfless, the com- 

 forts of the laboring man's life would be spurned, the 

 small gatherings of years of labor in the shape of stock 

 and poultry sold for a trifle or thrown away, and the 

 entire negro population would collect on the river- 

 banks, destitute of provisions, means, or the common- 

 est necessaries of life, firmly convinced that the prom- 

 ised day had arrived at last ; that the Government was 

 at length coming up to its promises, and that a life of 

 ease and plenty was to be theirs in the future. A fleet 

 of transports and months of time would be necessary 

 to effect their removal. In the mean time the loss of 

 the bulk of the cotton-crop and bankruptcy of all de- 

 pendent on it would result. The final destruction, 

 pilfering, and violence that would ensue can better be 

 imagined than described. 



No true friend of the negro could desire such a fear- 

 ful result, and hence we invoke the true philanthro- 

 pist to pause and investigate and consider well the 

 effect of this effort before adopting the proposed rem- 

 edy for an unreal, fanciful wron^ ; and we invoke the 

 fair-minded, honest people of the North and West, 

 whence this danger emanates, to interpose their con- 

 demnation and power to prevent the destruction of 

 the industrial interests of the white and black alike of 

 the Mississippi Valley. It is not true that the negro 

 in the valley of the Lower Mississippi is subjectedto 

 the prejudice of race, any personal aouse, any extor- 

 tion, any denial of political, legal, or social rights, any 

 personal discomforts or want, to which he would not 



