y.
Upon inquiry, however, it was ascertained that their purposes
were purely charitable and had no connection whatever with any
political motive or movement. They were composed almost wholly of
colored people, and were brought into existence solely to afford
temporary relief to the destitute and suffering emigrants who had
already come into the Northern and Western States.

In the spring of 1879 thousands of colored people, unable longer
to endure the intolerable hardships, injustice, and suffering
inflicted upon them by a class of Democrats in the South, had, in
utter despair, fled panic-stricken from their homes and sought
protection among strangers in a strange land. Homeless,
penniless, and in rags, these poor people were thronging the
wharves of Saint Louis, crowding the steamers on the Mississippi
River, and in pitiable destitution throwing themselves upon the
charity of Kansas. Thousands more were congregating along the
banks of the Mississippi River, hailing the passing steamers, and
imploring them for a passage to the land of freedom, where their
rights of citizens were respected and honest toil rewarded by
honest compensation. The newspapers were filled with accounts of
their destitution, and the very air was burdened with the cry of
distress from a class of American citizens flying from
persecutions which they could not longer endure. Their piteous
tales of outrage, suffering and wrong touched the hearts of the
more fortunate members of their race in the North and West, and
aid societies, designed to afford temporary relief, and composed
largely, almost wholly, of colored people, were organized in
Washington, Saint Louis, Topeka, and in various other places.
That they were organized to induce migration for political
purposes, or to aid or to encourage these people to leave their
homes for any purpose, or that they ever contributed one dollar
to that end, is utterly untrue, and there is absolutely nothing
in the testimony to sustain such a charge. Their purposes and
objects were purely charitable. They found a race of wretched
miserable people flying from oppression and wrong, and they
sought to relieve their distress. The refugees were hungry, and
they fed them: in rags, and they clothed them; homeless, and they
sheltered them