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tion. He published frequent appeals in Kansas and eastern news- papers asking that aid be sent to the Kansas Freedmen's Relief Association, not only for the relief of the refugees in Kansas, but also for the purpose of assisting more negroes from Egypt to Canaan. But the whites of Kansas wanted no more; the Demo- crats were accusing the Republicans of stirring up the migration for political purposes, that is, to lessen the southern representation in Congress and to make Kansas safely Republican ; and the relief association was trying to close up its work. Hence the numerous appeals for assistance signed by Singleton, DeFrantz, and other negroes, were embarrassing, because it seemed that they were acting under authority.^^ The association on the contrary was doing all in its power to check the migration. The "exodus" was not well supported by public opinion in Kansas even among the blacks. The whites and resident blacks of Kansas helped the "exodusters" much, but they wanted no more of them; the labor- ing-class of whites threatened violence if more negroes should come.
This larger "exodus," like Singleton's original one, met oppo- sition from the leading negroes like Fred Douglass, Pinchback, and Bruce, who objected to any scheme of moving masses of negroes into the North. Against these race leaders Singleton spoke with considerable feeling. "They had good luck," he said, "and now are listening to false prophets; they have boosted up and got their heads a whirlin', and now they think they must judge things from where they stand, when the fact is the possum is lower down the tree — down nigh to the roots ;" they either "saw darkly" or were playing into the hands of the southern planters who feared a scarcity of labor. To those who objected that negroes without means should not come to Kansas he replied that "it is because they are poor that they want to get away. If they had plenty they wouldn't want to come. It's to better their condition that they are thinking of. That's what white men go to new countries for, isn't it? Who was the homestead law made for if it was not for poor men?" ^"^
- • Topeka Capital, June 19, 1879.
" Singleton's Scrapbook, p. 21 ; interview with reporter of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 1879; Douglass, Life and Times.
