Excerpt 1 - Testimony of Benjamin Singleton before the Senate Select Committee Investigating the "Negro Exodus from the Southern States" 1880

Q. When did you commence the formation of that (settlement in Kansas)
A. It was in 1875, perhaps.
...
A. I have been fetching out people; I believe I fetched out 7,432 people.
...
Q. That is, they came out to Kansas under your influence?
A. Yes, sir; I was the cause of it.
Q. How long have you been doing that -- ever since 1869?
A. Yes, sir; ever since 1869.
….
Q. Tell us how these people are getting on in Kansas?Have they any property now?
A. Yes; I have carried some people in there that when they got there they didn't have fifty cents left, and now they have got in my colony -- Singleton colony -- a house, nice cabins, their milk cows, and pigs, and sheep, perhaps a span of horses, and trees before their yards, and some three or four or ten acres broken up, and all of them has got little houses that I carried there. They didn't go under no relief assistance; they went on their own resources; and when they went in there first the country was not overrun with them; you see they could get good wages; the country was not overstocked with people; they went to work, and I never helped them as soon as I put them on the land.

Analysis
What is the author’s purpose for writing this?
What does this excerpt tell you about the costs and benefits of African Americans taking part in the “Exodus” after the Civil War?