ain't no better off than we was when we commenced." This is the
negro version of the trouble, which is elaborated on occasion into a
harrowing story of oppression and plunder.

"I tell you it's all owing to the radical politicians at the North,"
explained a representative of the type known as the Bourbons; "they've
had their emissaries down here, and deluded the 'niggers' into a
very fever of emigration, with the purpose of reducing our basis of
representation in Congress and increasing that of the Northern States."

These are the two extremes of opinion at the South. The first is
certainly the more reasonable and truthful, though it implies that all
the blame rests upon the whites, which is not the case; the second,
preposterous as it will appear to Northern readers, is religiously
believed by large numbers of the "unreconciled." Between these two
extremes there is an infinite variety of theories, all more or less
governed by the political faction to which the various theorizers
belong; there are at least a dozen of these factions, such as the
Bourbons, the conservatives, the native white republicans, the
carpet-bag republicans, the negro republicans, etc. There is a political
tinge in almost everything in the extreme Southern States. The
fact seems to be that the emigration movement among the blacks was
spontaneous to the extent that they were ready and anxious to go. The
immediate notion of going may have been inculcated by such circulars,
issued by railroads and land companies, as are common enough at emigrant
centres in the North and West, and the exaggeration characteristic of
such literature may have stimulated the imagination of the negroes far
beyond anything they are likely to realize in their new homes. Kansas
was naturally the favorite goal of the negro emigre, for it was
associated in his mind with the names of Jim Lane and John Brown, which
are hallowed to him. The timid learned that they could escape what they
have come to regard as a second bondage, and they flocked together to
gain the moral support which comes from numbers.

Diligent inquiry among representative men, of all classes and from
all parts of Louisiana, who were in attendance at the constitutional
convention in New Orleans, and careful observation along the river among
the land owners and field hands in both Louisiana and Mississippi, left
a vivid impression of some material and political conditions which fully
account for the negro exodu