FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO LEE CRANDALL¹Lee Crandall (1832–1926) was the editor and proprietor of the National View, a weekly political newspaper published in Washington, D.C. Born in New Berlin, New York, Crandall moved to Louisiana and became a merchant and a newspaper editor. He served as a colonel in the Confederate cavalry. After the war, he settled in Washington and edited the National View from 1879 to 1884. Crandall was a Greenback propagandist of some fame. He was the national secretary of the third-party Greenback-Labor movement in the early 1880s. He then moved to Arizona and became a mine operator. A free-silver advocate, Crandall later supported the Populist party. He eventually returned to Washington and worked for the early Internal Revenue Service. Meriden (Conn.) Daily Republican, 15 September 1880; Washington Evening Star, 2 August 1880; Washington National Republican, 16 April 1881; New York Times, 8 June 1881; Bruce S. Allardice, Confederate Colonels: A Biographical Register (Columbia, Mo., 2008), 113. Crew, Centennial History of Washington, D.C., 463–64.

[n.p. 24 May 1879.]

:

SIR: I cheerfully accept your offer of a limited space in your columns, in
which to state the grounds of my opposition to the so-called colored exodus.²In early 1879, waves of African Americans migrated from the South to Kansas, initiating the great Kansas Fever Exodus. This group—known as Exodusters—formed the most significant migration in the United States following the Civil War. Around six thousand Exodusters traveled to Kansas, largely from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, during the course of a few months. Kansas appealed to the Exodusters for a variety of reasons. The state had long been associated with radical abolitionists, such as the militant John Brown, and many viewed it as an ideal refuge to escape the newly enforced Black Codes in the South, which denied blacks civil liberties. There was also an effort by the federal government to populate the prairie states, and advertisements promoting Kansas ran widely in the South. While the harsh climate and lack of jobs in Kansas made life difficult for many of the Exodusters, migration steadily continued well into 1881. Charlotte Hinger, Nicodemus: Post-Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas (Norman, Okla., 2016), 3, 42; Painter, Exodusters, 146, 184, 187, 191, 200; Athearn, In Search of Canaan, 4, 7, 202; John G. Van Deusen, “The Exodus of 1879,” JNH, 21: 111, 124 (April 1936). I am, briefly, opposed to that movement, because it is not the proper
solution of the Southern question. That question will not be solved and
cannot be solved until the constitutional provisions guaranteeing equal
rights shall be peacefully executed in every State of the Union, South
as well as North. I am opposed to this exodus, because it is a wretched
substitute for the fulfillment of the national obligations by which the Government is held and firmly bound to protect every American citizen, of
whatever color, upon any and every part of the American domain. I am
opposed to the exodus, because it is an untimely concession to the idea
that colored people and white people cannot live together in peace and
prosperity unless the whites are a majority, and control the Legislation
and hold the offices of the State. I am opposed to this exodus, because it
will cast upon the people of Kansas and other Northern States a multitude of deluded, hungry, homeless, naked, and destitute people, to be supported in a large measure by alms. I am opposed to this exodus, because it
will enable our political adversaries to make successful appeals to popular

prejudice, (as in the case of the Chinese.) on the ground these people, so
ignorant and helpless, have been imported for the purpose of making the
North solid by outvoting intelligent white Northern citizens. I am opposed
to this exodus, because rolling stones gather no moss, and I agree with
Emerson,³Ralph Waldo Emerson. that the men who made Rome, or any other locality worth going to see staid there. There is in my judgment no part of the U. S. where
an industrious and intelligent colored man can serve his race more wisely
and efficiently than upon the soil where he was born and reared and is
known. I am opposed to this exodus, because I see in it a tendency to convert colored laboring men into traveling tramps, first going North because
they are persecuted, and then returning South because they have been
deceived and disappointed in their expectations: who will excite against
themselves and against our whole race an increased measure of popular
contempt and scorn. I am opposed to this exodus, because I believe that
the condition of existence in the Southern States are steadily improving,
and that the colored man there will ultimately realize the fullest measure
of liberty and equality accorded and secured in any section of our country. It is all nonsense (and perhaps something worse) and almost beneath
contempt to compare the evils (great as they are) from which the colored
man is now fleeing to the North with those endured by colored men in
the time of slavery. The men who make this comparison with a view to
convict me of inconsistency know that there is nothing analogous in the
two situations. There the black man was a chattel; now he is a man and a
man among men. Then the black man was a slave; now he is a free man.
Then the black man had no legal or constitutional rights which anybody
was bound to respect; now he has all the legal and constitutional rights
which are guaranteed to the most exalted citizen of the republic. It is true
that these rights have been in many instances cloven down by violence,
and that for the present the Constitution is inoperative; but shall we, who
have borne so many hardships and outrages and seen so many changes
in our favor, now throw up the sponge, abandon our vantage ground of
possession, which is nine points of the law,⁴The sources for this adage are obscure, but it is often attributed to a Scottish expression “Possession is eleven points in the law, and they say there are but twelve.” It first appeared in print in Colley Cibber’s play Woman’s Wit, or, The Lady in Fashion (1697), act 1. and go among strangers in
pursuit of homes in a cold and uncongenial climate, rather than remain
on the soil of our birth, where we may live down persecution and oppression. If there is any part of the U. S. to which the negro has a stronger
claim for peaceful residence than any other, that part is that lying south
of Mason and Dixon’s line.⁵Disputes between Pennsylvania in the North and Maryland and Virginia in the South were resolved when the English surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon marked the precise borders between these colonies in 1763–67. Hubertis M. Cummings, The Mason and Dixon Line: Story for a Bicentenary, 1763–1963 (Harrisburg, Pa., 1962). Whatever the South is in point of wealth and
civilization the negro has made her. His labor has converted the Southern
wilderness into fruitful fields, and dotted them about with comfortable

homes. His arm has leveled her forest, extracted the stumps, reclaimed
her waste places, graded her roads, supported her commerce, developed
her resources; in a word tilled her soil with his hard hands moistened with
sweat, and enriched it with his blood, and has a claim to remain on her
soil against all comers.

Armed as the negro is now with legal and constitutional guarantees,
and being the muscular and laboring arm of the South, I cannot yet believe that with these advantages he is so destitute of mutual power, that
he cannot make living terms with those who want his labor, and who
must have it or accept poverty and ruin instead. My counsel to him, therefore, is to bide his time to labor and wait, in the full assurance time and
events will sooner or later, establish his rights in the South upon enduring
foundations.

I have seen many attempts to lash colored men into schemes of emigration. I am old enough to remember the Haytian emigration scheme
fifty-four years ago;⁶Two events can be considered catalysts for the Haitian emigration scheme of the 1820s. First, when Haiti won its independence from France in 1804, its constitution abolished slavery. Second, discussions regarding colonization were amplified following the founding of the American Colonization Society in 1816. While a large majority of whites in the society promoted Africa as the ideal African American colony, many free blacks viewed Haiti as the preferable location for migration. Haiti was closer to the United States, and its revolution had established it as a black republic, which many viewed as a country where they could find true freedom and equality. Supported by prominent black church leaders and endorsed by the Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer, who pledged financial aid to immigrants, six thousand to eight thousand African Americans immigrated to Haiti during the early 1820s. Problems soon arose. Social differences between African Americans and Haitians became insurmountable, especially regarding religion and language. Furthermore, rural life in a tropical climate proved difficult for many new settlers. After the Haitian government ended financial support to the immigrants in May 1825, thousands returned to the United States. Chris Dixon, African America and Haiti: Emigration and Black Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century (Westport, Conn., 2000), 15–52; Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Setting Down the Sacred Past: African-American Race Histories (Cambridge, Mass., 2010), 110–11, 119–123, 126; Eric Anderson, “Black Émigrés: The Emergence of Nineteenth-Century United States Black Nationalism in Response to Haitian Emigration and Colonization, 1816–1840,” 49th Parallel, 1: 1–8 (Winter 1999) (online). another to the British West Indies forty years ago⁷Douglass perhaps alludes to proposals made in the late 1830s by the Reverend Lewis Woodson of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In a series of letters to the New York Colored American, Woodson denounced the racism that free blacks as well as slaves endured in the United States. He endorsed African American immigration to Canada and the British West Indies, declaring, “I had rather be a living freeman, even in one of these places, than a ‘dead nigger’ in the United States.” Woodson denied that such emigration would mean abandoning brethren trapped in slavery, but rather promoted it as an effort to undermine that institution by demonstrating the productive potential of free black labor “in a colony of our choice.” Woodson’s proposal set off a debate among African American leaders of that era and influenced the next generation of emigrationists, including Henry Highland Garnet and Martin R. Delany. Miller, Search for a Black Nationality, 94–105.
another still to Central America sixteen years ago;⁸In August 1862, President Lincoln—who had entertained the idea of black colonization during his entire public career up to that time—met with a committee of black leaders at the White House to discuss potential colonization projects. He understood that some might be hesitant to settle in Africa and instead offered a site in the Chiriquí province of Panama, which was still part of Colombia at the time. Ambrose Thompson, a speculator who wished to sell this bit of land to the U.S. government, promoted it as an area rich in coal. Lincoln and others promoted the Chiriquí province as a desirable location where colonists would quickly establish themselves economically, based on coal production. By September 1862, five hundred blacks had signed up for this colonization plan, with another four thousand on the waiting list. Ultimately, it was discovered that the coal in the province was nearly worthless, leaving Lincoln to distrust Thompson altogether. Also, several Central American countries protested against the Chiriquí project, and by October the plan had been abandoned. Paul D. Escott, “What Shall We Do with the Negro?”: Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America (Charlottesville, Va., 2009), 53, 58; Richard Striner, Lincoln and Race (Carbondale, Ill., 2012), 41–42; Warren A. Beck, “Lincoln and Negro Colonization in Central America,” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly, 6: 166, 169, 171–74, 180–81 (September 1950); Paul J. Scheips, “Lincoln and the Chiriquí Colonization Project,” JNH, 37: 416–19 (October 1952). and they only served
to unsettle the minds of the colored people, deranging their plans of enterprise for home improvements, and were transient, as I believe this one
will be. The hundreds may go, but the millions will stay behind, and will
finally have their wisdom in so doing rewarded with peace and prosperity.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

PLSr: Fort Scott (Kans.) , n.d.