Among the causes of that dissatisfaction of the colored people in the South which has produced the exodus therefrom, there is one that lies beneath the surface and is concealed from even an astute observer, if he is a stranger to that section. This cause consists in certain legislative enactments that have been passed in most of the cotton States, ostensibly for other purposes, but really for the purpose of establishing in those States a system of peonage similar to, if not worse than, that which prevails in Mexico. This is the object of a statute passed by the Legislature of Mississippi, in March, 1878. The title of the act, whether intentionally so or not, is certainly misleading. It is entitled “An act to reduce the judiciary expenses of the State.” But how it can possibly have that effect is beyond human wisdom to perceive. It, however, does operate, and is used in such a way as to enslave a large number of negroes, who have not even been convicted of the slightest offence against the laws.

The act provides that “all persons convicted and committed to the jail of the county, except those committed to jail for contempt of court, and except those sentenced to imprisonment in the Penitentiary, shall be delivered to a contractor, to be by him kept and worked under the provisions of this act; and all persons committed to jail, except those not entitled to bail, may also, with their consent, be committed to said contractor and worked under this act before conviction.” But Sect. 5, of the act provides ample and cogent machinery to produce the necessary consent on the part of the not yet convicted prisoner to work for the contractor. In that section it is provided “that if any person committed to jail for an offence that is bailable shall not consent to be committed to the safe keeping and custody of said contractor, and to work for said contractor, and to work for the same under this act, the prisoner shall be entitled to receive only six ounces of bacon, or ten ounces of beef, and one pound of bread and water.”

This section also provides that any prisoner not consenting to work before his conviction for the contractor, and that too, without compensation, “If said prisoner shall afterward be convicted, he shall, nevertheless, work under said contractor a sufficient term to pay all cost of prosecution, including the regular jail fees for keeping and feeding him.” The charge for feeding him, upon the meagre bill of fare above stated, is twenty cents a day. Now, it cannot be denied that the use made of this law is to deprive the negro of his natural right to choose his own employer; and in the following manner: Let us suppose a case, and such cases are constantly occurring. A is a cotton planter, owns three or four thousand acres of land, and has forty, fifty, or one hundred negro families on his plantation. At the expiration of the year, a negro proposes to leave the plantation of A, and try to better his condition by making a more advantageous bargain with B, or C, for another year. If A can prevent the negro from leaving him in no other way, this statute puts full power in his hands. A trumps up some petty charge against the negro, threatens to have him arrested and committed to jail. The negro knows how little it will take to commit him to jail, and that then he must half starve on a pound of bread and water and six ounces of bacon a day, or work for the contractor for nothing until he can be tried; and when tried he must run the risk of conviction, which is not slight, though he may be ever so innocent. Avarice—unscrupulous avarice—is pursuing him, and with little power to resist, there being no healthy public sentiment in favor of fair play to encourage him, he yields, and becomes the peon of his oppressor.

I found the whipping-post in full operation in Virginia, and heard of its being enforced in other States. I inquired of a black man what he thought of the revival of that mode of punishment. He replied, “Well, sar, I don’t ker for it, kase dey treats us all alike; dey whips whites at de poss jess as dey do de blacks, an’ dat’s what I calls equality before de law.”

A friend of mine meeting a man who was leaving Arkansas, on account of the revival of her old slave laws, the following conversation occurred, showing that the oppression of the blacks extends to all the States South.

“You come from Arkansas, I understand?”

“Yes.”

“What wages do you generally get for your work?”

“Since about ’68, we’ve been getting about two bits a day—that’s twenty cents. Then there are some people that work by the month, and at the end of the month they are either put off or cheated out of their money entirely. Property and goods are worth nothing to a black man there. He can’t get his price for them; he gets just what the white man chooses to give him. Some people who raise from ten to fifteen bales of cotton sometimes have hardly enough to cover their body and feet. This goes on while the white man gets the price he asks for his goods. This is unfair, and as long as we pay taxes we want justice, right, and equality before the people.”

“What taxes do you pay?”

“A man that owns a house and lot has to pay about twenty-six dollars a year; and if he has a mule worth about one hundred and fifty dollars they tax him two dollars and a half extra. If they see you have money—say you made three thousand dollars—you’d soon see some bill about taxes, land lease and the other coming in for about two thousand of it. They charge a black man thirteen dollars where they would only charge a white man one or two. Now, there’s a man,” pointing to a portly old fellow, “who had to run away from his house, farm, and all. It is for this we leave Arkansas. We want freedom, and I say, ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ We took up arms and fought for our country, so we ought to have our rights.”

“How about the schooling you receive?”

“We can’t vote, still we have to pay taxes to support schools for the others. I got my education in New Orleans and paid for it, too. I have six children, and though I pay taxes not one of them has any schooling from the public schools. The taxes and rent are so heavy that the children have to work when they are as young as ten years. That’s the way it is down there.”

“Did you have any teachers from the North?”

“There were some teachers from the North who came down there, but they were run out. They were paid so badly and treated so mean that they had to go.”

“What county did you live in?”

“Phillips County.”

“How many schools were in that county?”

“About five.”

“When do they open?”

“About once every two years and keep open for two or three weeks. And then they have a certain kind of book for the children. Those that have dogs, cats, hogs, cows, horses, and all sorts of animals in them. They keep the children in these and never let them get out of them.”

“Have you any colleges in the State for colored men?”

“No, they haven’t got any colleges and don’t allow any. The other day I asked a Republican how was it that so many thousands of dollars were taken for colleges and we didn’t get any good of it? He said, ‘The bill didn’t pass, somehow.’ And now I guess those fellows spent all that money.”

“As a general thing, then, the people are very ignorant?”

“Yes, sir; the colored man that’s got education is like some people that’s got religion—he hides it under a bushel; if he didn’t, and stood up for his rights as a citizen, he would soon become the game of some of the Ku-Klux clubs.”

Having succeeded in getting possession of power in the South, and driving the black voters from the polls at elections, and also having them counted in National Representation, the ex-rebels will soon have a power which they never before enjoyed. Had the slaveholders in 1860 possessed the right of representing their slaves fully instead of partly in Congress and in the Electoral College, they would have ruled this country indefinitely in the interest of slavery. It was supposed that by the result of the war, freedom profited and the slaveholding class lost power forever. But the very act which conferred the full right of representation upon the three million freedmen, by the help of the policy, has placed an instrument in the hands of the rebel conspirators which they will use to pervert and defeat the objects of the Constitutional amendments. Through this policy the thirty-five additional electoral votes given to the freedmen have been “turned over to the Democratic party.” Aye, more than that; they have been turned over to the ex-rebels, who will use them in the cause of oppression scarcely second in hatefulness to that of chattel slavery. In a contest with the solid South, therefore, the party of freedom and justice will have greater odds to overcome than it did in 1860, and the Southern oligarchs hold a position which is well nigh impregnable for whatever purpose they choose to use it.

Of the large number of massacres perpetrated upon the blacks in the South, since the ex-rebels have come into power, I give one instance, which will show the inhumanity of the whites. This outrage occurred in Gibson County, Tennessee. The report was first circulated that the blacks in great numbers were armed, and were going to commit murder upon the whites. This created the excitement that it was intended to, and the whites in large bodies, armed to the teeth, went through Gibson, and adjoining counties, disarming the blacks, taking from them their only means of defence, and arresting all objectionable blacks that they could find, taking them to Trenton and putting them in jail.

The following account of the wanton massacre, is from the Memphis Appeal:—

“About four hundred armed, disguised, mounted men entered this town at two o’clock this morning, proceeded to the jail, and demanded the keys of the jailor, Mr. Alexander. He refused to give up the keys. Sheriff Williams, hearing the noise, awoke and went to the jail, and refused to surrender the keys to the maskers, telling them that he did not have the keys. They cocked their pistols, and he refused again to give them the keys, whereupon the Captain of the company ordered the masked men to draw their pistols and cock them, swearing they would have the keys or shoot the jailor. The jailor dared them to shoot, and said they were too cowardly to shoot. They failed to do this. Then they threatened to tear down the jail or get the prisoners. The jailor told them that rather than they should tear down the jail he would give them the keys if they would go with him to his office. The jailor did this because he saw that the men were determined to break through. ‘They were all disguised. Then they came,’ says the Sheriff, ‘and got the keys from my office, and giving three or four yells, went to the jail, unlocked it, took out the sixteen negroes who had been brought here from Pickettsville (Gibson), and, tying their hands, escorted them away. They proceeded on the Huntingdon road without saying a word, and in fifteen minutes I heard shots. In company with several citizens I proceeded down the road in the direction taken by the men and prisoners, and just beyond the river bridge, half a mile from town, I found four negroes dead, on the ground, their bodies riddled with bullets, and two wounded. We saw no masked men. Ten negroes yet remain unaccounted for. Leaving the dead bodies where we found them, we brought the two wounded negroes to town, and summoned medical aid. Justice J. M. Caldwell held an inquest on the bodies, the verdict being in accordance with the facts that death resulted from shots inflicted by guns in the hands of unknown parties. The inquest was held about eight o’clock this morning. These are all the facts relative to the shooting I can give you. I did my duty to prevent the rescue of the negroes, but found it useless to oppose the men, one of whom said there were four hundred in the band.’

“Night before last the guard that brought the prisoners from Pickettsville remained. No fears or intimations of the attempted rescue were then heard of or feared. This morning, learning that four or five hundred armed negroes, on the Jackson road, were marching into town to burn the buildings and kill the people, the citizens immediately organized, armed, and prepared for active defence, and went out to meet the negroes, scouted the whole country around but found no armed negroes. The citizens throughout the country commenced coming into town by hundreds. Men came from Union City, Kenton, Troy, Rutherford, Dyer Station, Skull Bone, and the whole country, but found no need of their services. The two wounded negroes will die. The bodies of the ten other negroes taken from the jail were found in the river bottom about a mile from town.

“We blush for our State, and with the shame of the bloody murder, the disgraceful defiance of law, of order, and of decency full upon us, are at a loss for language with which to characterize a deed that, if the work of Comanches or Modocs, would arouse every man in the Union for a speedy vengeance on the perpetrators. To-day, we must hold up to merited reprobation and condemnation the armed men who besieged the Trenton Jail, and wantonly as wickedly, without anything like justification, took thence the unarmed negroes there awaiting trial by the courts, and brutally shot them to death; and, too, with a show of barbarity altogether as unnecessary as the massacre was unjustifiable. To say that we are not, in any county in the State, strong enough to enforce the law, is to pronounce a libel upon the whole Commonwealth. We are as a thousand to one in moral and physical force to the negro; we are in possession of the State, of all the machinery of Government, and at a time more momentous than any we ever hope to see again have proved our capacity to sustain the law’s executive officers and maintain the laws. Why, then, should we now, in time of profound peace, subvert the law and defy its administrators? Why should we put the Government of our own selection under our feet, and defy and set at naught the men whom we have elected to enforce the laws, and this ruthlessly and savagely, without any of the forms, even, that usually attend on the administration of the wild behests of Judge Lynch? And all without color of extenuation; for no sane man who has regard for the truth will pretend to say that because the unfortunate negroes were arrested as the ringleaders of a threatening and armed band that had fired upon two white men, they were, therefore, worthy of death, and without the forms of law, in a State controlled and governed by law-abiding men.”

No one was ever punished, or even an attempt made to ferret out the perpetrators of this foul murder. And the infliction of the death punishment, by “Lynch Law,” on colored persons for the slightest offence, proves that there is really no abatement in this hideous race prejudice that prevails throughout the South.