Primary Source Documents

Recollections of a Black Migrant to Kansas^*

Bill Simms was not, strictly speaking, one of the "Exodusters" described in the introduction because he came to Kansas earlier. But his recollections, given in the mid-1930s, vividly detail his experience heading west after the Civil War.

My name is Bill Simms. I was born in Osceola, Missouri, March 16, 1839.

I lived on the farm with my mother, and my master, whose name was Simms. I had an older sister, about two years older than I was. My master needed some money so he sold her, and I have never seen her since except just a time or two.…I had a good master, most of the masters were good to their slaves. When a slave got too old to work they would give him a small cabin on the plantation and have the other slaves to wait on him. They would furnish him with victuals, and clothes until he died. Slaves were never allowed to talk to white people other than their masters or someone their master knew, as they were afraid the white man might have the slave run away. The masters aimed to keep their slaves in ignorance and the ignorant slaves were all in favor of the Rebel army, only the more intelligent were in favor of the Union army.

When the war started, my master sent me to work for the Confederate army. I worked most of the time for three years off and on, hauling canons, driving mules, hauling ammunition, and provisions.…When the Union army came close enough I ran away from home and joined the Union army…until the war ended. Then I returned home to my old master, who had stayed there with my mother. My master owned about four hundred acres of good land, and had had ten slaves. Most of the slaves stayed at home. My master hired me to work for him. He gave my mother forty acres of land with a cabin on it and sold me a [sic] forty acres, for twenty dollars, when I could pay him.…My master's wife had been dead for several years and they had no children. The nearest relative being a nephew. They wanted my master's land and was afraid he would give it all away to us slaves, so they killed him, and would have killed us if we had stayed at home. I took my mother and ran into the adjoining, [St.] Claire County. We settled there and stayed for sometime, but I wanted to see Kansas, the State I had heard so much about.

I couldn't get nobody to go with me, so I started out afoot across the prairies for Kansas. After I got some distance from home it was all prairie. I had to walk all day long following buffalo trail. At night I would go off a little ways from the trail and lay down and sleep. In the morning I'd wake up and could see nothing but the sun and prairie. Not a house, not a tree, no living thing, not even could I hear a bird. I had little to eat, I had a little bread in my pocket. I didn't even have a pocket knife, no weapon of any kind. I was not afraid, but I wouldn't start out that way again. The only shade I could find in the daytime was the rosin weed on the prairie. I would lay down so it would throw the shade in my face and rest, then get up and go again. It was in the spring of the year in June. I came to Lawrence, Kansas, where I stayed two years working on the farm. In 1874 I went to work for a man by the month at $35 a month and I made more money than the owner did, because the grasshoppers ate up the crops. I was hired to cut up the corn for him, but the grasshoppers ate it up first. He could not pay me for sometime. Grasshoppers were so thick you couldn't step on the ground without stepping on about a dozen at each step. I got my money and came to Ottawa in December 1874, about Christmas time.

1		What was the primary reason Simms decided to leave for Kansas? He also notes that he has "heard so much about" Kansas. What might he have heard?
2		What was Simms' opinion of most masters when slavery was permitted in Missouri? What examples does he give to support his views? Are there other examples in the narrative that might suggest that he was not being entirely candid in giving his opinion? If he was not being candid, why not?
3		How was Simms' experience similar to that of the Exodusters? How did it differ?