upposed; and, finally, the uniform
injustice to the laborers induces them to fly to ills they know not of,
rather than bear those they have. It is a blessing to the negro that
the laws do not yet provide for a detention of the person in the case of
debt, or escape would be shut off entirely; as it is, various influences
and circumstances appertaining to the system in vogue have been used
to prevent the easy flight of those who desire to go, and have detained
thousands of blacks for a time who are fretting to quit the country.

Political oppression has contributed largely to the discontent which
is the prime cause of the exodus. "Bulldozing" is the term by which
all forms of this oppression are known. The native whites are generally
indisposed to confess that the negroes are quitting the country on
account of political injustice and persecution; even those who freely
admit and fitly characterize the abuses already described seek to deny,
or at least belittle, the political abuses. The fact that a large number
of negroes have emigrated from Madison Parish, Louisiana, where there
has never been any bulldozing, and where the negroes are in full
and undisputed political control, is cited as proof that political
disturbances cut no figure in the case. But the town of Delta, in
Madison Parish, is at once on the river and the terminus of a railroad
that runs back through the interior of the State; thus Madison Parish
would furnish the natural exit for the fugitives from the adjoining
counties, where there have been political disturbances. It would be just
as reasonable to contend that the plundering of the negroes has had no
influence in driving them away, since many of those who have emigrated
were among the most prosperous of the blacks, as to deny the agency
of political persecution. Families that had been able to accumulate
a certain amount of personal property, in spite of the extortionate
practices, sold their mules, their implements, their cows, their
pigs, their sheep, and their household goods for anything they would
bring,--frequently as low as one sixth of their value,--in order that
they might improve an immediate opportunity to go away; it is evident
that there must have been some cause outside of extortion in their case.
There are candid native whites who do not deny, but justify, the violent
methods which have been employed to disfranchise the negroes, or compel
them to vote under white dictation, in many parts of