, old, middle-aged, and young, with common consent
leaving their old homes in a natural climate and facing storms
and unknown dangers to go to Northern Kansas. Why? Among them all
there is little said of hope in the future; it is all of fear in
the past. They are not drawn by the attractions of Kansas; they
are driven by the terrors of Mississippi and Louisiana. Whatever
becomes of them, they are unanimous in their unalterable
determination not to return.

There are others coming. Those who have come and gone on to
Kansas must suffer even unto death, we fear; at all events more
than any body of people entitled to liberty and law, the
possession of property, the right to vote, and the pursuit of
happiness, should be compelled to suffer under a free government
from terror inspired by robbery, threats, assaults, and murders.

We protest against the dire necessities that have impelled this
exodus, and against the violation of common right, natural and
constitutional, proven to be of most frequent occurrences in
places named; and we ask such action at the hands of our
representatives and our government as shall investigate the full
extent of the causes leading to this unnatural state of affairs
and protect the people from its continuance, and not only protect
liberty and life, but enforce law and order.

It is intolerable to believe that with the increased
representation of the Southern States in Congress those shall not
be allowed freely to cast their ballots upon whose right to vote
that representation has been enlarged. We believe no government
can prosper that will allow such a state of injustice to the body
of its people to exist, any more than society can endure where
robbery and murder go unchallenged.

The occasion is, we think, a fit one for us to protest against a
state of affairs thus exhibited in those parts of the Union from
which these Negroes come, which is not only most barbarous toward
the Negro, but is destructive to the constitutional rights of all
citizens of our common country.

Accompanying this memorial are numerous affidavits of the
refugees fully confirming all its statements.

As to the future of the exodus we can only say that every
witness, whose opinion was asked upon this point, declared that
it has on