n every State, the Federal
Government was shorn of its rightful dignity and power, the late rebellion
had triumphed, the sovereign of the nation was an empty vessel, and the
power and authority in individual States were supreme. He thought,
therefore, that it was better for the Negroes to stay in the South than to
go North, as the South was a better market for the black man's labor.
Douglass believed that the Negroes should be warned against a nomadic
life. He did not see any more benefit in the migration to Kansas than he
had years before in the emigration to Africa. The Negroes had a monopoly
of labor at the South and they would be too insignificant in numbers to
have such an advantage in the North. The blacks were then potentially able
to elect members of Congress in the South but could not hope to exercise
such power in other parts. Douglass believed, moreover, that this exodus
did not conform to the "laws of civilizing migration," as the carrying of
a language, literature and the like of a superior race to an inferior; and
it did not conform to the geographic laws assuring healthy migration from
east to west in the same latitude, as this was from south to north, far
away from the climate in which the migrants were born.[17]

The exodus of the Negroes, however, was heartily endorsed by Richard T.
Greener. He did not consider it the best remedy for the lawlessness of the
South but felt that it was a salutary one. He did not expect the United
States to give the oppressed blacks in the South the protection they
needed, as there is no abstract limit to the right of a State to do
anything. He would not encourage the Negro to lead a wandering life but in
that instance such advice was gratuitous. Greener failed to find any
analogy between African colonization and migration to the West as the
former was promoted by slaveholders to remove the free Negro from the
country and the other sprang spontaneously from the class considering
itself aggrieved. "One led out of the country to a comparative wilderness;
the other directed to a better land and larger opportunities." He did not
see how the migration to the North would diminish the potentiality of the
Negro in politics, for Massachusetts first elected Negroes to her General
Court, Ohio had nominated a Negro representative and Illinois another. He
showed also that Mr. Douglass's objection on the grounds of migrating from
south to north rather than from east to west was not histor