Some had found northern communities so hostile as to impede their progress, many wanted to rejoin relatives from whom they had been separated by their flight from the land of slavery, and others were moved by the spirit of adventure to enter a new field ripe with all sorts of opportunities.

This movement, together with that of migration to large urban communities, largely accounts for the depopulation and the consequent decline of certain colored communities in the North after 1865.
Some of the Negroes who returned to the South became men of national prominence.

William J.Simmons, who prior to the Civil War was carried from South Carolina to Pennsylvania, returned to do religious and educational work in Kentucky.

Bishop James W.Hood, of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, went from Connecticut to North Carolina to engage in similar work.

Honorable R.T.Greener, the first Negro graduate of Harvard, went from Philadelphia to teach in the District of Columbia and later to be a professor in the University of South Carolina.
F.L.Cardoza, educated at the University of Edinburgh, returned to South Carolina and became State Treasurer.