What was not done in 1868 to overthrow the Republican regime was accomplished by a renewed and extended use of such drastic measures throughout the South in 1876.
Certain whites maintained, however, that the unrest was due to the work of radical politicians at the North, who had sent their emissaries south to delude the Negroes into a fever of migration.

Some said it was a scheme to force the nomination of a certain Republican candidate for President in 1880.

Others laid it to the charge of the defeated white and black Republicans who had been thrown from power by the whites upon regaining control of the reconstructed States.[5] A few insisted that a speech delivered by Senator Windom in 1879 had given stimulus to the migration.[6] Many southerners said that speculators in Kansas had adopted this plan to increase the value of their land.

Then there were other theories as to the fundamental causes, each consisting of a charge of one political faction that some other had given rise to the movement, varying according as they were Bourbons, conservatives, native white Republicans, carpet-bag Republicans, or black Republicans.
Impartial observers, however, were satisfied that the movement was spontaneous to the extent that the blacks were ready and willing to go.
Probably no more inducement was offered them than to other citizens among whom land companies sent agents to distribute literature.

But the fundamental causes of the unrest were economic, for since the Civil War race troubles have never been sufficient to set in motion a large number of Negroes.