Some, who were willing to let the Negroes go, thought of importing white and Chinese labor to take their places.

Hearing of the movement and thinking that he could offer a remedy, Senator D.W.Voorhees, of Indiana, introduced a resolution in the United States Senate authorizing an inquiry into the causes of the exodus.[16] The movement, however, could not be stopped and it became so widespread that the people in general were forced to give it serious thought.

Men in favor of it declared their views, organized migration societies and appointed agents to promote the enterprise of removing the freedmen from the South.
Becoming a national measure, therefore, the migration evoked expressions from Frederick Douglass and Richard T.Greener, two of the most prominent Negroes in the United States.

Douglass believed that the exodus was ill-timed.

He saw in it the abandonment of the great principle of protection to persons and property in every State of the Union.