Definition of "exoduster"

Ingalls [John James Ingalls?] wants congress to appropriate money for the colored exodusters. It strikes us that for a man who is holding on by a strip of his eye-brow, Ingalls is a little too unanimous.

1879 April 25, “Georgia in Congress”, in The Daily Constitution, volume XI, number 278, Atlanta, Ga.: Constitution Pub. Co., page 2, column 3

Q [by Zebulon Baird Vance]. Goldsboro is about the center of this movement of the colored people to the West?—A. Yes, sir; a large number of ‘exodusters’ have left my section.

1880 January 30, Julius A. Bonitz, witness, “Testimony of Julius A. Bonitz”, in Report and Testimony of the Select Committee of the United States Senate to Investigate the Causes of the Removal of the Negroes from the Southern States to the Northern States. […], part I, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, page 133

Kansas was diligently searched to find, if possible, some dissatisfied "exoduster," who, for the sake of his witness fees and mileage to Washington, would swear that he was dissatisfied with his new home, and wished himself back in Dixie. Perhaps a half dozen such were found, and their testimony has been paraded before the Senate with tremulous emotion by the Senator from Indiana.

1880 June 14, [William] Windom, “Emigration of Negroes to Northern States”, in Congressional Record: Containing the Proceedings and Debates of the Forty-sixth Congress, Second Session (United States Senate, 46th Congress, 2nd session), volume X, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, page 4519, column 1

In the spring of 1879 occurred the rush from the South, to which was given the name of the "Exodus," and the "Exoduster" for a time became a prominent figure in Kansas. Great numbers of black people, men, women, and children, arrived by rail at Parsons, from Texas, and on steamboats at Wyandotte and Atchison. The later comers represented the ex-slave population of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana. […] In the late fall of 1877, "Exodusters" gathered from Topeka and other points, and founded the town of Nicodemus, in Graham county.

1899, Noble L[ovely] Prentis, “The Centennial Year”, in A History of Kansas, Topeka, Kan.: Caroline Prentis, paragraphs 234–235, page 153

For perhaps ten seconds John contemplated a sudden and complete exodus with himself as the exoduster.

1921 March 12, Octavus Roy Cohen, “Oft in the Silly Night”, in George Horace Lorimer, editor, The Saturday Evening Post, volume 193, number 37, Philadelphia, Pa.; London: Curtis Publishing Company, page 85, column 1

After the Civil War, Kansas became home to many African-American settlers, who were known as the "black exodust" and were described as having "Kansas fever." These exodusters established the first black settlement in Kansas in 1877 in Nicodemus, which is west of Topeka. This is the last survivor of a dozen all-black Kansas settlements and was declared a national historical landmark in 1974. […] Our heritage of early child education for the exoduster children calls to mind the words of Carl Becker's book "Kansas," published in 1910: […]

1993 June 16, [James Charles] Slattery, “100th Anniversary of the First Black Kindergarten Established West of the Mississippi River”, in Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 103d Congress, First Session (United States House of Representatives), volume 139, part 9, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, page 130893

Etcheson has written a remarkably thorough social and political history of the Kansas conflict, from the debates over the Kansas-Nebraska Act to the Exoduster migration in the decades after the war.

2004 August, Andrew J. Wagenhoffer, “Briefings: Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era by Nicole Etcheson (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2004. Pp. 327, $35.00, hardback, map, notes, photos, illustrations. ISBN 0-7006-1287-4). [book review]”, in Keith Poulter, editor, North & South, volume 7, number 5, Tollhouse, Calif.: North & South Magazine, page 93, column 1

Hoping to escape poverty and discrimination, some former slaves moved west. One group, the Exodusters, moved to the Kansas prairie during the mid-1870s. […] Like white farmers, the Exodusters fought with cattlemen.

2017, James Oakes [et al.], “Reconstructing a Nation, 1865–1877”, in Of the People: A History of the United States with Sources, 3rd edition, volume 2 (Since 1865), New York, N.Y.; Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, page 497