Mississippi River, from chiefly the States of Louisiana and
Mississippi, and landed at Saint Louis, Mo., a great number of
colored citizens of the United States, not less than twenty
hundred and composed of men and women, old and young, and with
them many of their children.

This multitude is eager to proceed to Kansas, and without
exception, so far as we have learned, refuse all overtures or
inducements to return South, even if their passage back is paid
for them.

The condition of the great majority is absolute poverty; they are
clothed in thin and ragged garments for the most part, and while
here have been supported to some extent by public, but mostly by
private charity.

The older ones are the former slaves of the South; all now
entitled to life and liberty.

The weather from the first advent of these people in this
Northern city has been unusually cold, attended with ice and
snow, so that their sufferings have been greatly increased, and
if there was in their hearts a single kind remembrance of their
sunny Southern homes they would naturally give it expression now.

We have taken occasion to examine into the causes they themselves
assign for their extraordinary and unexpected transit, and beg
leave to submit herewith the written statements of a number of
individuals of the refugees, which were taken without any effort
to have one thing said more than another, and to express the
sense of the witness in his own language as nearly as possible.

The story is about the same in each instance: a great privation
and want from excessive rent exacted for land, connected with
murder of colored neighbors and threats of personal violence to
themselves. The tone of each statement is that of suffering and
terror. Election days and Christmas, by the concurrent testimony,
seem to have been appropriated to killing the smart men, while
robbery and personal violence in one form and another seem to
have run the year round.

* * * * *

We submit that the great migration of Negroes from the South is
itself a fact that overbears all contradiction and proves
conclusively that great causes must exist at the South to account
for it.

Here they are in multitudes, not men alone, but women and
children