Their departure, however, threatened the existing order and was resisted not just by landowners and employers, but also by established black ministers and Republican leaders—the “representative colored men.” Many of them, like Frederick Douglass, lived in the North or in the smaller Southern bastions where blacks retained political influence. The debate about immigration deeply split black leaders, for what seemed at stake was less tactics than the whole meaning of the past fifteen years. Migration meant Reconstruction had been a failure, and escape was the only hope.
