ison with
the vastly greater numbers which were moving from other Southern
States into Kansas, seemed to be considered of very much more
importance, in certain quarters, on account of its alleged
political purposes and bearing. The theory upon which the
investigation was asked was that the emigration into the State of
Indiana was the result of a conspiracy on the part of Northern
leaders of the Republican party to colonize that State with
Negroes for political purposes. The utter absurdity of this
theory should have been apparent to everybody, for if the
Republican party, or its leaders, proposed to import Negroes into
Indiana for political purposes, why take them from North
Carolina? Why import them from a State where the Republicans hope
and expect to carry the election, when there were thousands upon
thousands ready and anxious to come from States certainly
Democratic. Why transport them by rail at heavy expense half way
across the continent when they could have taken them from
Kentucky without any expense, or brought them up the Mississippi
River by steamers at merely nominal cost? Why send twenty-five
thousand to Kansas to swell her 40,000 Republican majority, and
only seven or eight hundred to Indiana? These considerations
brand with falsehood and folly the charge that the exodus was a
political movement induced by Northern partisan leaders? And yet
to prove this absurd proposition the committee devoted six months
of hard and fruitless labor, during which they examined one
hundred and fifty-nine witnesses, selected from all parts of the
country, mainly with reference to their supposed readiness to
prove said theory, expended over $30,000 and filled three large
volumes of testimony.

The undersigned feel themselves authorized to say that there is
no evidence whatever even tending to sustain the charge that the
Republican party, or any of its leaders, have been instrumental,
either directly or indirectly, in aiding or encouraging these
people to come from their homes in the South to any of the
Northern States. A good deal of complaint was made that certain
"aid societies" in the North had encouraged and aided this
migration, and a futile attempt was made to prove that these
societies were acting in the interest of the Republican part