ARMSTRONG
Armstrong was a man of action, and of words only as far as they helped
action. He reached the starting of his school in 1868, within two years
after he was assigned to duty at Hampton. For external help he had first
the countenance and support of the Freedmen's Bureau. He was in its
service and pay until 1872. He had the warm and practical friendship of
General Howard, who, after inviting him to take charge of the new
university in Washington bearing his own name, skilfully gained for his
Hampton enterprise a moderate appropriation from Congress. If the
Freedmen's Bureau had accomplished nothing else,--and it did accomplish
much, especially in education--it would have been justified merely by
giving Armstrong his opportunity. Next he turned to private benevolence.
Of the various organizations, church and secular, that were devising and
doing for the freedmen, perhaps the most efficient was the American
Missionary Association. From its officers Armstrong won response,
sympathy, contributions. He had to face the difficulties of a pioneer.
There were precedents against him. Experiments somewhat similar had been
tried and failed. At Mount Holyoke seminary for women, created by the
genius and devotion of Mary Lyon, and at Oberlin college, where the best
New England tradition had been transplanted--there had been long and
earnest trial of giving the students work by which to partially pay
their expenses. But it had been given up,--the women students were taxed
beyond their strength; the farmers complained that the boys were
thinking of their books, and the teachers said their pupils came with
half strength to their lessons. But Armstrong knew the material he was
dealing with, and how different from the nervous, high-strung pupils of
Oberlin and Mount Holyoke was the vigorous, sensuous material he was to
mold.
He began in April, 1868, with small things,--a matron, a teacher,
fifteen pupils and buildings worth $15,000. In a month there were thirty
pupils. Things moved straight on,--they were moved by the assiduity, the
enthusiasm, the inspiration, of Armstrong, and the answering temper
which he woke in pupils, teachers, contributors, observers. Presently a
special effort, an appeal to friends, solicitude, students zealously
making bricks and laying them, help from General Howard--and so, in
1870, a noble building, Academic Hall, and presently again, Virginia
Hall,--and the school kept growing.
Its moral success was promptly won. The subject answered to the
experiment,--those dark-skinned boys and girls came eager to learn. No
one had believed in them, and they had not believed in themselves, but
they speedily learned self-respect and gained the respect of others.
They did what was asked of them, earned most of their support, showed
good workmanship and scholarship, were blameless in morals, caught the
spirit of the place, and went out to carry light into the dark places.
No holiday task was set them. There was a working day of twelve hours,
between the class-room, the work-shop, the drill-ground and the field,
with rare and brief snatches of recreation. They met the demand with a
resource inherited from their ancestors' long years of patient labor.
The hard toil was a moral safeguard. The African race is sensuous, and
co-education might seem perilous. The danger was completely averted by
the influence of labor, strenuous and constant, but diversified and
interesting. The essentials of character,--industry, chastity, truth and
honesty, serviceable good-will,--were the aim and result of the Hampton
training; and all ran back to the homely root that man should be trained
to earn intelligently and faithfully his daily bread.
The story of Hampton is a theme not for a chapter but for a volume. How
its founder won favor and friendship by his tact and large-mindedness;
how he established good relations with the Virginians; how the Institute
became the parent of other schools; how Booker Washington was there
fitted for the founding of Tuskegee and the leadership of his race; how
the work was extended to the Indians; how Armstrong's spirit and example
gathered and inspired a company of teachers perhaps unsurpassed,--mostly
women, whose refining influence on the pupils he specially valued; how
he dreamed of what he never reached, some day to give industrial
education at Hampton to the whites; how a worthy successor took his
place, efficient and self-effacing; how deeply the Hampton idea has
permeated the education of the Southern negro, and is coming to
influence white education North and South,--all this can here be
recalled but by a word.
But on the personality of its leader we must for a moment linger, to
note one or two of its traits. His splendid vitality overflowed at times
in frolic and extravagance. He never lost the spirit of the boy. He
would come into a group of his serious-minded teachers and say, "Oh!
what's the good of saving souls if you can't have any fun?" and start a
frolic or organize an all-day picnic. In his home he introduced "puss in
the corner" and "the Presbyterian wardance" among the very elect. He
delighted his children with romances. "Like Dr. Hopkins, he believed
that the class-room should be a jolly place, and used to say that no
recitation was complete without at least one good laugh. 'Laughter
makes sport of work,' he said." His teaching sometimes came in a droll
story. "Once there was a woodchuck.... Now, woodchucks can't climb
trees. Well, this woodchuck was chased by a dog and came to a tree. He
knew that if he could get up this tree the dog could not catch him. Now,
woodchucks can't climb trees, but he had to, so he did."
His devotion to his work was so whole-souled that it was joyous and
seemed unconscious of cost. In the touching pages he wrote when death
impended, he said, "I never gave up or sacrificed anything in my life."
Yet he constantly made what most men count heavy sacrifices. His work
involved frequent and laborious trips to the North to arouse interest
and raise money. He did it in as gallant a fashion as he had led a
charge, or as he made appeal to the students hanging reverently on his
words. A glimpse of him on one of these begging tours is given by
Professor Francis G. Peabody:
"I suppose that every lover of General Armstrong recalls some special
incident which seems most entirely typical of the man's life and heart.
For my part, I think oftenest of one of those scenes in his many begging
journeys to the North. It was at a little suburban church far down a
side street on a winter night in the midst of a driving storm of sleet.
There was, as nearly as possible, no congregation present; a score or so
of humble people, showing no sign of any means to contribute, were
scattered through the empty spaces, and a dozen restless boys kicked
their heels in the front pew. Then in the midst of this emptiness and
hopelessness up rose the worn, gaunt soldier, as bravely and gladly as
if a multitude were hanging upon his words, and his deep-sunk eyes
looked out beyond the bleakness of the scene into the world of his
ideals, and the cold little place was aglow with the fire that was in
him, and it was like the scene on the Mount, that was not any less
wonderful and glistening because only three undiscerning followers were
permitted to see the glory."
Those frequent and long journeys went far to break up the happy home
life in which he delighted, with the wife whose congenial and intimate
companionship was his for nine years and the little girls to whom he was
the most delightful of fathers. Then for twelve years, until his second
marriage, he was almost a homeless man. He wore out his wonderful
constitution; he suffered from dyspepsia and sleeplessness; a paralytic
stroke crippled him; but for a year and a half he struggled on,
cheerful, self-forgetful,--then the end.
His countrymen scarcely yet realize all that he was. He was the
successful leader in that real emancipation of the American negro to
which the legal emancipation was but a prelude. Beyond that, it would
hardly be too much to say that he did more than any other man in either
hemisphere to rationalize and Christianize our still half-medieval
system of education. The working ideals of Hampton are to-day higher
than those of Yale and Harvard. It may be questioned whether any
professed preacher has done so much to develop the best modern type of
religion; centered in daily work, reaching out into all human service,
and consciously inspired by the divine life. It would not be extravagant
to say that in the little group--perhaps half a dozen in all--whom
America has contributed to the world's first rank of great men, not one
stands higher in heroic manhood and far-reaching service than Samuel
Armstrong.
But any comparison seems almost unworthy of his lofty spirit. There is
no rivalry among the saints. Would that Armstrong could here be
portrayed as he appeared in life. The outer man spoke well the inner. To
look upon, he was a thoroughbred; of soldierly bearing, alert, vivid,
noble; with the twinkle of mirth, the flash of resistless purpose,--a
man to love, to revere, to follow. As a sort of mental portrait-sketch,
we may glean a few of his sayings. It was as true of him as of Luther
that his words were half-battles. They were flashed out like sparks
struck from action. As to his special work, these:
"The North thinks that the great thing is to free the negro from his
former owner; the real thing is to save him from himself."
On the dissolution of the American Anti-slavery Society, (because
nothing remained for it to do): "It failed to see that everything
remained. Their work was just beginning when slavery was abolished."
"I cannot understand the prevailing views of the war among pious and
intelligent Americans. It is simply barbaric--to whip the South and go
home rejoicing, to build monuments of victory, leaving one-third of
their countrymen in the depths of distress."
"The reconstruction measures were a bridge of wood over a river of
fire."
(In 1878): "Hereafter it will be seen that negro suffrage was a boon to
the race, not so much for a defense, but as a tremendous fact that
compelled its education. There is nothing to do but attempt its
education in every possible way. In their pinching poverty the Southern
States have seized the question of negro education with a vigor that is
the outcome of danger."
(In 1887): "The political experience of the negro has been a great
education to him. In spite of his many blunders and unintentional crimes
against civilization, he is to-day more of a man than he could have been
had he not been a voter."
"The war was the saving of the South. Defeat and ruin brought more
material prosperity to the South than to the North, and the future has
untold advantages in store. Education is part of it, but capital and
enterprise, which make men work, are the greater part. The negro and
poor white, and, more than all, the old aristocrat, are being saved by
hard work, which, next to the grace of God, saves our souls."
"We hew from the raw material, men who have come out of deep darkness
and wrong, without inheritance but of savage nature, the best product we
can, and care as much to infuse it with a spiritual life and divine
energy as with knowledge of the saw, plane, and hoe."
And, of his broader outlook on life, these: "I am convinced of the
necessity of organizing pleasure as well as religion in order to sustain
Christian morality."
"The chief comfort in life is babies."
"Politics and philanthropy are a grind; only when one is at the post of
duty and knows it, there is a sensation of being lifted and lifting (_et
teneo et teneor_) which sometimes comes gradually over one. Detail is
grinding, the whole inspiring. God's kings and priests must drudge in
seedy clothes before they can wear the purple."
"From the deep human heart to the infinite heart there is a line along
which will pass the real cry and the sympathetic answer--a double flash
from the moral magnetism that fills the universe. Its conditions are not
found in theological belief, but in the spirit of a little child. We can
no more understand our human brother than our Father in heaven without
bringing faith--the evidence of things unseen, the substance of things
hoped for--to our aid."
"All progress of strong hearts is by action and reaction. Human life is
too weak to be an incessant eagle flight toward the Sun of
Righteousness. Wings will be sometimes folded because they are wings....
The earthly struggle must be enduring--that is all. There must be no
surrenders; we can't expect much of victory here."
"The longer I live, the less I think and fear about what the world calls
success; the more I tremble for true success, for the purity and
sanctity of the soul, which is as a temple."
"Doing what can't be done is the glory of living."
"What are Christians put into the world for but to do the impossible in
the strength of God?"
In the contemplation of such a spirit we rest for a little from the
turmoils of politics, the mixture of motives, the half-successes. Here
is what glorified the whole business,--the development of souls like
this; and in such is the promise of the future. Fitly to Armstrong
belongs what Matthew Arnold has written of his father, a kindred soul:--
Servants of God!--or sons
Shall I not call you? because
Not as servants ye knew
Your Father's innermost mind,
His, who unwillingly sees
One of his little ones lost--
Yours is the praise, if mankind
Hath not as yet in its march
Fainted, and fallen, and died!
See! In the rocks of the world
Marches the host of mankind
A feeble, wavering line.
Where are they tending?--A God
Marshal'd them, gave them their goal--
Ah, but the way is so long!
Years they have been in the wild!
Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks,
Rising all round, overawe;
Factions divide them, their host
Threatens to break, to dissolve--
Ah, keep, keep them combined!
Else, of the myriads who fill
That army, not one shall arrive;
Sole they shall stray; on the rocks
Batter forever in vain,
Die one by one in the waste.
Then, in such hour of need
Of your fainting, dispirited race,
Ye, like angels, appear,
Radiant with ardor divine.
Beacons of hope, ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.
Ye alight in our van! at your voice,
Panic, despair, flee away.
Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, re-inspire the brave.
Order, courage, return;
Eyes rekindling, and prayers,
Follow your steps as ye go.
Ye fill up the gaps in our files,
Strengthen the wavering line,
Stablish, continue our march,
On, to the bound of the waste,
On, to the City of God!