PROSPECTS OF THE FREEDMEN.
Our last chapter contains the dark side of our picture. In this we
present the brighter prospects for a long and sorely oppressed race. We
first note what has been and is being done for the fifty thousand who
have emigrated to Kansas As I have been a co-laborer with Elizabeth L.
Comstock more than two years in rescuing the perishing in their new
homes, I speak from personal knowledge.
During the first Winter--1879-80--as mild as it was, more than one
hundred refugees were found with frozen feet fingers. Five were frozen
to death coming through the Indian Territory with their teams. Through
faithful agents, with supplies forwarded from other States, and even
from friends in England in response to appeals sent out by Elizabeth L.
Comstock, very many sufferers were relieved. The goods from England
were forwarded mostly by James Clark, of Street. Over seventy thousand
dollars' worth of supplies have passed through my hands for the relief
of the refugees between September, 1879, when I commenced working for
them, and March, 1881 Thirteen thousand dollars of this amount came
from England, having been sent by Friends or Quakers Besides money, we
received new goods, as follows,
Warm, new blankets, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000
New garments for women and girls, . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,000
New garments for men and boys, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
New garments for babies and small children, . . . . . . . 5,000
New knitted socks and hose, five hundred dozen pairs, . . 6,000
Large quantity of sheets, pillow-cases, bed-quilts,
towels etc, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000
Queensware--Six large crates, one hundred and nineteen
dozen plates in each, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,568
Cups and saucers, nearly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000
Bowls and mugs, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000
Platters, pitchers, and chamber wares, . . . . . . . . . . 3,500
Scissors, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000
Sets of knives and forks, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,000
Spoons, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8,000
Needles, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15,000
Knitting needles, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,500
Rags, with sewing materials, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,500
Papers of pins, six hundred and fifty dozen, and tape, 350, 1,000
Tin-cups and basins, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6,000
Bed-ticks, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,500
Wash-dishes and pans, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000
Woolen dresses for women and girls, valued at . . . . . . $1,680
New overcoats for men and boys, valued at . . . . . . . . $650
Three whole bolts of Welch flannel (seventy-two yards each) $150
Two bolts heavy broadcloth, for overcoats, valued at . . . $144
Women's cloaks and shawls, valued at . . . . . . . . . . . $2,250
New red flannel, valued at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $150
Muslins, valued at . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $150
Gray flannel and three hundred pairs mittens, valued at . $500
Buttons, hooks and eyes, cotton thread, silk, etc., . . . $500
New pieces goods, chiefly cotton, valued at . . . . . . . $5,000
Over ninety thousand dollars in money and supplies were distributed by
the Kansas Relief Association, until it was disbanded in May, 1881, and
its head-quarters removed to Southern Kansas, where thousands of these
Southern emigrants are congregated. That locality is more favorable to
cotton raising. Many of the refugees know but little of other business;
hence the necessity for an agricultural, industrial, and educational
institute, of which Elizabeth L. Comstock is the founder. At the
present date (August, 1881) eight thousand dollars are invested. This
includes the Homestead Fund. To meet the crying need of this people
she, in connection with her daughter, Caroline DeGreen, are untiring in
their efforts to establish a permanent or systematized work. They have
established this much needed institution on four hundred acres of good
land, which is tilled by colored people, who receive pay for their work
in provision, clothing, or money until they can purchase cheap land for
their own homes.
It has been no small task to disburse wisely the large supplies sent
from every Northern State and England in various portions of the State
of Kansas. It has been done through the instrumentality of
self-sacrificing men and women. The noble women of Topeka did their
full share. They districted the city, appointed a large investigating
committee, and gave tickets calling for the articles most needed in the
families found in a suffering condition. By this plan impositions were
avoided.
While we have entered bitter complaints against our Southern ex-slave
States, we ought to call to mind many persecutions endured by the
opponents of slavery in our own States of the North. I have still in
remembrance the many mobs to which abolitionists were exposed for
discussing their views. I have not forgotten the burning shame and
disgrace upon our whole North because of the treatment it allowed to an
earnest Christian philanthropist, Prudence Crandall, of Windham County,
Connecticut. She opened a school in Canterbury Green for girls, and was
patronized by the best families, not only of that town, but of other
counties and States. Among those who sought the advantages of her
school was a colored girl. But Prudence was too thorough a Quaker to
regard the request of bitter prejudice on the part of her other patrons
to dismiss her colored pupil. But she did not wait for them to execute
their threat to withdraw their children. She sent them home. Then she
advertised her school as a boarding school for young ladies of color.
The people felt insulted, and held indignation meetings and appointed
committees to remonstrate with her. But she stood by her principles
regardless of their remonstrance. The excitement in that town ran high.
A town meeting was called to devise means to remove the nuisance. In
1833 Miss Crandall opened her school against the protest of an
indignant populace. Another town meeting was called, at which it was
resolved, "That the establishment of a rendezvous, falsely denominated
a school, was designed by its projectors as the theater to promulgate
their disgusting theory of amalgamation and their pernicious sentiments
of subverting the Union. These pupils were to have been congregated
here from all quarters under the false pretense of educating them, but
really to scatter fire-brands, arrows, and death among brethren of our
own blood."
I well remember the voice of more than seven thousand, even at that
day, who had never bowed the knee to the Baal of slavery that was
raised in favor of the course pursued by the noble woman. Against one
of these young colored girls the people were about to enforce an old
vagrant law, requiring her to give security for her maintenance on
penalty of being whipped on the naked body. Thus they required her to
return to her home in Providence. Canterbury did its best to drive
Prudence from her post. Her neighbors refused to give her fresh water
from their wells, though they knew their own sons had filled her well
with stable refuse. Her father was threatened with mob-violence. An
appeal was sent to their Legislature, and that body of wise men devised
a wicked enactment which they called law, which was brought to bear
upon her parents on this wise: An order was sent to her father, in
substance, as follows: "Mr. Crandall, if you go to visit your daughter
you are to be fined one hundred dollars for the first offense, two
hundred dollars for the second offense, doubling the amount every time.
Mrs. Crandall, if you go there you will be fined, and your daughter,
Almira, will be fined, and Mr. May,--and those gentlemen from
Providence [Messrs. George and Henry Benson], if they come here, will
be fined at the same rate. And your daughter, the one that has
established the school for colored females, will be taken up the same
way as for stealing a horse or for burglary. Her property will not be
taken, but she will be put in jail, not having the Liberty of the yard.
There is no mercy to be shown about it."
Soon after this Miss Crandall was arrested and taken to jail for an
alleged offense. Her trial resulted in an acquittal, but her
establishment was persecuted by every conceivable insult. She and her
school were shut out from attendance at the Congregational Church, and
religious services held in her own house were interrupted by volleys of
rotten eggs and other missiles. At length the house was set on fire,
but the blaze was soon extinguished.
In 1834, on September 9th, just as the family was retiring for the
night, a body of men with iron bars surrounded the house, and
simultaneously beat in the windows and doors. This shameful outrage was
more than they could endure. Prudence Crandall was driven at last to
close her interesting school and send her pupils home. Then another
town meeting was held, a sort of glorification, justifying themselves,
and praising their Legislature for passing the law for which they
asked. All this abominable outrage I well remember, and am glad to see
it called up in _Scribner's Magazine_ for December, 1880. A scathing
denunciation of the outrage was published in the Boston Liberator,
edited by William Lloyd Garrison.
Prudence Crandall did more for the cause of freedom by her persistence
in the "Higher Law" doctrine of eternal right than the most eloquent
antislavery lecturer could have accomplished in molding public
sentiment of the whole North. Her name became a household word in
thousands of Northern homes. When we see the changes forty and fifty
years have wrought in the North, surely we may look forward in strong
faith for like changes to take place over the South. It may take
longer, but come it will.
We note with pleasure the rapid strides of education among the colored
people in sixteen years. In 1864-5 I visited large schools in
slave-pens that had become useless for the purposes for which they were
designed. The stumps of their whipping-posts and the place of the
dreaded auction block was vacated. Although many of their public
schools are not all that could be desired, yet they have them, and they
are doing a good work. In Virginia, beginning with 1871, the colored
children enrolled for successive years numbered as follows: 38,554;
46,736; 49,169; 54,945; 62,178, 65,043; 61,772; and 35,768. In South
Carolina the enrollment from 1870 was, 15,894: 38,635; 46,535; 56,249;
63,415; 70,802; 55,952; 62,120; and 64,095. In Mississippi, beginning
with 1875, the enrollment was 89,813; 90,178; 104,777; and 111,796. At
the present we foot up the astonishing number of 738,164 pupils.
Maryland has appropriated two thousand dollars per annum for the
support of normal schools for the training of colored teachers. An
ex-Confederate and ex-slave-holder of high degree subscribed five
thousand dollars toward a college for colored people under the
patronage of one of the colored Churches in the State of Georgia. All
honor is due such noble deeds. May there be more to follow his good
example.
From the best authorities we have the figures of over a million
communicants among the colored people in the United States. Of those in
the Southern States we have as follows, at this date, 1881:
African Methodists, . . . . . . . . . . 214,808
Methodist Episcopal Church (Colored), . 112,000
Colored Baptist Church, . . . . . . . . 500,000
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, . . . 190,000
Methodist Episcopal Church, . . . . . . 300,000
Almost every Church in the North has contributed to educational
purposes in the South, but they are doing none too much. The Friends
have done much toward supporting a school in Helena, Arkansas, under
the supervision of Lida Clark, an untiring worker for that people. But
we have not the figures of amounts. But the Methodist Episcopal Church
has done, and is still doing, a great work, as our figures will show,
in building commodious schoolhouses in various States.
Schools of the Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church
for 1880-81:
CHARTERED INSTITUTIONS.
TEACHERS. PUPILS.
Central Tennessee College, Nashville, Tenn., . . . 12 433
Clark University, Atlanta, Ga., . . . . . . . . . . 7 176
Chiflin University, Orangeburg, S. C., . . . . . . 9 388
New Orleans University. New Orleans, La., . . . . . 4 200
Shaw University, Holly Springs, Miss., . . . . . . 8 277
Wiley University, Marshall, Texas, . . . . . . . . 6 323
THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS.
Centenary Biblical Institute, Baltimore, Md., . . . 4 118
Baker Institute; Orangeburg, S. C., . . . . . . . . ... .....
[Footnote: Pupils enumerated in the other schools]
Thompson Biblical Institute, N. Orleans, La., . . . ... .....
[Footnote: Pupils enumerated in the other schools]
MEDICAL COLLEGE.
Meharry Medical College, Nashville, Tenn., . . . . . 8 35
Institutions NOT CHARTERED.
Bennett Seminary, Greensburg, N. C., . . . . . . . . 5 150
Cookman Institute, Jacksonville, Fla., . . . . . . . 5 166
Haven Normal School, Waynesboro, Ga., . . . . . . . . 2 60
La Grange Seminary, La Grange, Ga., . . . . . . . . . 2 96
Meridian Academy, Meridian, Miss., . . . . . . . . . 3 100
Rust Normal School, Huntsville, Ala., . . . . . . . . 2 112
Walden Seminary, Little Rock, Ark., . . . . . . . . . 2 60
West Texas Conf. Seminary, Austin, Tex., . . . . . . 3 101
La Teche Seminary, La Teche, La., . . . . . . . . . . 3 100
West Tennessee Seminary, Mason, Tenn., . . . . . . . 2 75
We must here put in our claim for the fifty thousand emigrants in
Kansas from the South. The Freedmen's Relief work in Kansas has been
thoroughly organized and officered, and the contributions received for
the refugees judiciously distributed. An agricultural and industrial
school was established some time ago, and is meeting, so far, with good
success. It will, if properly sustained, prove to be a blessing not
only to the colored race, but to the State. From a circular issued in
June last, by Elizabeth L. Comstock, one of the superintendents of this
work, I extract the following paragraphs:
"Our first object is to employ those who come for work or for aid. We
are strongly advised by their best friends, and the kind donors both
sides the Atlantic, not to give any thing (except in return for labor)
to those who are able to work, especially during the warm weather.
Wages are paid regularly every Saturday, and they come with their money
to buy and select from the stock on hand what will suit themselves.
Second-hand clothing and bedding have a price affixed almost nominal.
Coats, 10 cents each to $1, very few at $1; pants, drawers, shirts, and
vests, 5 cents each; shoes, 5 cents a pair; stockings and socks, two
pairs for 5 cents; women's dresses, 10, 20, 30, and 40 cents each;
children's clothes, 5 to 10 cents a garment; bed-quilts, comforters,
and blankets, 20 to 50 cents; new ones, $1 each, if very good. New
shoes and other articles, provisions, etc., that we have to purchase we
buy at wholesale, and try to supply them below the market price, some
of them at half the retail price. Thus what little is gained on the old
clothes makes up in part what we lose on the new. We could employ more
laborers if we had more money. The state of the treasury is low now. It
seems hard to turn away any poor people who want to work. We should be
very glad of help just now in the way of seed for sowing, money to
provide food and shelter, and to finish up our buildings. We greatly
desire to start several industries before Winter, as blacksmith's shop,
carpenter's shop, broom factory, etc., etc., that they may have work
during the cold weather. We hope to have our school-house soon ready
and to educate the children, and have an evening school for adults.
"An important part of our work will be to train the women and girls in
the various branches of household work, and sewing, knitting, etc. Nor
do we lose sight of the spiritual garden while providing for the
intellectual fields and the physical wants. We greatly desire that this
long-oppressed race, who have been kept in darkness and ignorance,
should have the light of the glorious Gospel, and should have the Bible
put into their hands, and be taught to read and understand it. Of
course we meet with some opposition in our work, as many a brave
soldier has done before us, in battling for the right and for the
colored race."
We extract an item from the Columbus _Courier_ (Kansas): "We are proud
of the work of the 'Agricultural, Industrial, and Educational
Institute,' and earnestly desire its success, and we feel proud of
these good men and women who are led on by Mrs. Elizabeth L. Comstock
at their head, and Mrs. Laura 8. Haviland, their secretary.
Characteristic spirits of the broad philanthropy of our beloved land,
they need no commendation to sustain them. This has been their
life-work, and they now select our State for their field of labor. J.
E. Picketing was chosen from a body of eighteen directors as its
president, because of his experience in this kind of work, having at
one time been a conductor on the 'Under Ground." He does not receive or
ask for salary. He only presides at meetings of the Board of Directors,
and has general oversight of the work in progress. His son, Lindly, was
selected by the Board according to the expressed wish of Mrs. Comstock
as superintendent. His wife is acting in the capacity of matron, but
neither of them receives a salary, and they are to be paid by some
friends of the work when it is established. But now pay is a matter of
no consideration. Charity does not require that these people should
leave their comfortable homes and devote their time and energies to the
laborious duties of their positions without some reward. "Forty acres
of the four hundred upon which the institute is located was purchased
of Lindly M. Pickering, at one hundred dollars less than he could
otherwise have obtained for it. It was selected for its improvements
and its fine location, unsurpassed in the country. In conclusion, we
desire to refer to the good management with which without ostentation
its affairs are vigorously pushed forward, believing that the
ever-living, ever-aggressive principle of right will sustain them and
secure the success which so commendable an enterprise deserves. May
heaven prosper the work of the nation's truest spirits and best and
most respected citizens!"
From the financial statement from April 15th to June 13, 1881, we find
that there has been received fur this industrial institute, in cash,
$6,931.96. Two large consignments of goods were received about the last
date at Columbus by Elizabeth L. Comstock for the same object. We
appeal to the Christian public to give us at least one school in Kansas
for the refugees.
"Sow thy seed in the morning, and in the evening withhold not thy hand,
for thou knowest not whether this or that will prosper."
"Sowing the seed with an aching heart
Sowing the seed while the tear-drops start,
Sowing in hope till the reapers come,
Gladly to welcome the harvest home.
O what shall the harvest be?"
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's A Woman's Life-Work, by Laura S. Haviland