In order to understand and to gain an adequate idea of what Catholics
and their ancient Church have done for the American Negro, it is
necessary to take into account the facts and testimony of impartial
history in regard to human slavery among the nations, and the
influence which the Roman Catholic Church brought to bear on that
institution. We must study and remember the conditions and customs in
pre-Christian times in regard to slaves, and we should also note the
gradual transition from the state of things existing in the heathen
world to that prevailing in our modern Christian civilization.
The student of history observes that ideas and principles take their
rise and, growing, permeate society, bringing about a change in the
morals and manners of a nation. These changes, which may be for good
or evil, do not come of a sudden. Even during the Christian ages the
principles of the gospel do not always prevail in their fulness and
beauty. At times, through the passions of men, non-Christian and pagan
ideas gain ground and for a time predominate. It is only by dealing
tactfully with human nature and by persistent efforts that the Church
has been enabled to make Christian ideals prevail.
At the dawn of Christianity, slavery was an established institution in
all countries.[478] Some pagan philosophers, like Seneca, maintained
that all men are by nature free and equal, still by the law of nations
slavery was upheld in all lands; and it was an axiom among the ruling
classes, that "the human race exists for the sake of the few."
Aristotle held that no perfect household could exist without slaves
and freemen and that the natural law, as well as the law of nations,
makes a distinction between bond and free.[479] Plato avowed that
every slave's soul was fundamentally corrupt and should not be
trusted.[480] The proportion of slaves to freemen varied in different
countries, though usually the former were largely in excess of the
free population. In Rome for a long time, according to the testimony
of Blair, the slaves were three to one. At one time they became so
formidable there that the Senate, fearing that if conscious of their
own numbers the public safety might be endangered, forbade them a
distinctive dress. Atrocious laws regulated the relations of master
and slaves. The head of the family was absolute master of his slaves,
having over them the power of life and death. Moral and social
degradation was the common lot of slaves. Their wretched condition in
pagan times was often rendered more intolerable by aggravating
circumstances. Many of them had once enjoyed the blessings of freedom,
but had been reduced to bondage by the calamities of war. Unlike the
Negro slaves of America, they were usually of the same color as their
masters; and in some instances, better educated, more refined, and of
more delicate frame, than those whom they served. Epictetus, one of
the ablest of the Stoic philosophers, was a slave. Horace and Juvenal
were the sons of freedmen.[481]
There is something of the ruthlessness of the ancient pagans in the
atrocities practiced in later times, and even in our day, by the
Mohammedans in Africa. Livingstone, Cameron, and still more recently
Cardinal Lavigerie, Archbishop of Carthage, who was furnished with
information by his missionaries, declare that at least 400,000 Negroes
are annually carried into bondage in Africa by Mussulman traders, and
that fully five times that number perish either by being massacred in
the slave hunt, or from hunger and hardship on the journey. Thus the
lives or liberty of an immense number of the human race are each year
sacrificed on the altars of lust and mammon. No pagan government of
antiquity ever framed any law aiming at the immediate or gradual
extinction of slavery. The same is true of modern nations outside the
pale of Christianity.[482]
With the life and teaching of Christ and the preaching of his gospel
by his Apostles, began a new era in the history of slavery. The
Apostles and their successors pursued a policy that without injustice,
violence or revolution, led to the gradual emancipation of the slaves.
The labors and influence of the Roman Catholic Church, which have been
that of organized Christianity, make a long story, reaching through
all the Christian ages. The early Church mitigated the condition of
the slave, by teaching him the consoling doctrines of Christ. She
taught the slave and master reciprocal duties, prescribing laws that
exercised a salutary restraint on the authority of the one, and
sanctified the obedience of the other; she contributed to the moral
elevation of the slave by leveling all distinctions between bond and
free in her temples and religious assemblies.[483] Masters were
encouraged to emancipate their slaves by a public ceremony of
manumission celebrated in the church on festival days. The dignity and
duty of labor for all is inculcated by St. Paul and the early
Christian teachers in opposition to the pagan practice, which scorned
labor as being only fit for slaves. The absolute religious equality
proclaimed in the Church was the negation of slavery as practiced by
pagan society. The Church made no account of the social condition of
the faithful. Bond and free received the same sacraments. Clerics of
servile origin were numerous. The very Chair of St. Peter was occupied
by men who had been slaves--Pius in the second century and Callistus
in the third.[484] The names of slaves are numbered among the martyrs
of the Christian faith and they are inscribed on the calendar of
saints honored by the Church.
In giving them a place in religious society, the Church restored to
slaves the family and marriage. In Roman law, neither legitimate
marriage nor regular paternity, nor even any impediment to the most
unnatural unions had existed for the slave. In upholding the moral
dignity and prerogatives of the slave, the Church was striking a blow
for his civil freedom. Though she was not charged with the framing of
the civil laws, she moved the hearts of the slaveowners by moral
suasion, and she moulded the conscience of legislators by an appeal to
the innate rights of men. In the early Fathers of the Church, like St.
Gregory of Nyssa and St. John Chrysostom, the most energetic
reprobation of slavery may be found.
The redemption of captives was another work which engaged the pious
solicitude of the Church. From the fourth to the fourteenth century
Europe was periodically a prey to northern invaders. The usual fate of
the vanquished was death or slavery. They who escaped were carried
into bondage. A more wretched fate awaited the female sex, for they
were reserved to gratify the caprices of their conquerors. Religious
orders were founded to succor and redeem them.[485] "Closely connected
with the influence of the Church," says Mr. Lecky, "in destroying
hereditary slavery, was its influence in redeeming captives from
servitude. In no other form of charity was its beneficial character
more continually and more splendidly displayed."[486]
Among the forces enlisted in the cause of freedom the most potent came
from the Papacy. In every age the voice of the Popes resounded clearly
throughout the world in the interests of human freedom. They either
commended the slaves to the humanity of their masters, or advocated
their manumission, and also condemned the slave trade with all its
abuses. Pope Gregory the Great, who occupied the chair of Peter from
590 to 604, wrote: "Since our Blessed Redeemer, the Author of all
life, in His goodness assumed our human flesh, in order that by
breaking the bond of servitude in which we were held, the grace of His
divinity might restore us to our original liberty, it is a wholesome
deed by the benefits of emancipation to restore the freedom in which
they were born, to men whom nature, in the beginning brought forth
free, and whom the law of nations has subjected to the yoke of
slavery."[487]
On October 7, 1462, Pope Pius II issued a letter in which he reproved
and condemned the slave trade then carried on. Again, a short time
later Leo X denounced slavery in 1537. Paul III forbade the
enslavement of the Indians. In the later centuries on the revival of
slavery by some of the nations, especially among those coming under
the power of Mohammedanism in Persia, Arabia, Turkey and Africa, as
also on account of the enslavement of Negroes and Indians in the
Americas, other Popes proclaimed the Christian law in regard to the
cruelties of the slave trade. Again Urban VIII, in 1639, and Benedict
XIV, in 1741, were defenders of the liberty of the Indians and blacks
even though they were not as yet instructed in the Christian
faith.[488] In 1815, Pius VII demanded of the Congress of Vienna the
suppression of the slave trade. In the Bull of Canonization of St.
Peter Claver, one of the most illustrious adversaries of slavery, Pius
IX speaks of the "supreme villainy" of the slave-traders. Gregory XVI,
in 1839, published a memorable encyclical in which the following
strong language occurs:
"By virtue of our Apostolic office, we warn and admonish in the
Lord all Christians of whatever conditions they may be, and
enjoin upon them that for the future, no one shall venture
unjustly to oppress the Indians, Negroes or other men whoever
they may be, to strip them of their property, or reduce them into
servitude, or give aid or support to those who commit such
excesses or carry on that infamous traffic by which the blacks,
as if they were not men, but mere impure animals reduced like
them into servitude, contrary to the laws of justice and
humanity, are bought, sold and devoted to endure the hardest
labor. Wherefore, by virtue of our Apostolic authority, we
condemn all these things as absolutely unworthy of the Christian
name."[489]
Probably the most memorable statement of the history and Catholic
position on slavery is the beautiful letter which Pope Leo XIII, in
1888, addressed to the Brazilian Bishops, exhorting them to banish
from their country the remnants of slavery--a letter to which the
Bishops responded with their most energetic efforts. Some generous
slave-owners freed their slaves in a body, as in the first ages of the
Church. Catholic Brazil emancipated its slaves without war or
bloodshed. The following are some extracts from the Pope's letter:
"The condition of slavery, in which a considerable part of the
human family has been sunk in squalor and affliction now for many
centuries, is deeply to be deplored; for the system is one wholly
opposed to that which was originally ordained by God and by
nature. The Supreme Author of all things so decreed that man
should exercise a sort of royal dominion over beasts and cattle
and fish and fowl, but never that man should exercise a like
dominion over his fellow-man. * * * * * * * * * Monuments, laws,
institutions, through a continuous series of ages, teach and
splendidly demonstrate the great love of the Church towards
slaves, whom in their miserable condition, she never left
destitute of protection, and always to the best of her power
alleviated. Therefore, praise and thanks are due to the Catholic
Church, since she has merited it in the prosperity of nations,
by the very great beneficence of Christ, our Redeemer and
banisher of slavery, and cause of true liberty, fraternity and
equality among men. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, when
the base stain of slavery was almost blotted out from among
Christian nations, the Catholic Church took the greatest care
that the evil germs of such depravity should nowhere revive.
Therefore, she directed her provident vigilance to the
newly-discovered regions of Africa, Asia and America, for a
report had reached her that the leaders of the expeditions,
Christians though they were, were wickedly making use of their
arms and ingenuity to establish and impose slavery on those
innocent nations. Indeed, since the crude nature of the soil
which they had to overcome, nor less the wealth of metals which
had to be extracted by mining, required very hard work, unjust
and inhuman plans were entered into; for a new traffic was begun,
slaves being transported for that purpose from Ethiopia, which at
that time, under the name of the _slave trade_, too much occupied
those colonies."[490]
The fact that the Catholic Church has been a leader of mankind to
light and Christian liberty is attested by leading non-Catholic
scholars and historians. The historian Lecky, who holds no brief for
Catholicism, says: "The Catholic Church was the very heart of
Christendom and the spirit that radiated from her penetrated into all
the relations of life. Catholicism laid the very foundations of modern
civilization. Herself the most admirable of all organizations,
there was formed beneath her influence, a vast network of
organizations--political, municipal and social--which supplied a large
proportion of the materials of almost every modern structure. In the
transition from slavery to serfdom, and in the transition from serfdom
to liberty, she was the most zealous, the most unwearied and the most
efficient agent."[491] The French Protestant Guizot says: "There can
be no doubt that the Catholic Church struggled resolutely against the
great vices of the social state--against slavery, for instance. These
facts are so well known that it is needless for me to enter into
details."[492]
Speaking of the development of the colored race under Catholic
influence, Dr. Blyden, a noted Negro scholar, wrote in _Frazer's
Magazine_ for May, 1870, the following words, which he afterwards
incorporated into his _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race_:
"The thoughtful and cultivated Protestant Negro, though he may,
_ex animo_, subscribe to the tenets of the particular
denomination to which he belongs, as approaching nearest to the
teaching of God's word, yet he cannot read history without
feeling a deep debt of gratitude to the Roman Catholic Church.
The only Christian Negroes who have had the power to successfully
throw off oppression and maintain their position as freemen were
Roman Catholic Negroes--the Haitiens; and the greatest Negro the
Christian world has yet produced was a Roman Catholic--Toussaint
L'Ouverture. In the ecclesiastical system of modern, as was the
case in the military system of ancient Rome, there seems to be a
place for all races and colors. At Rome the names of Negroes,
males as well as females, who have been distinguished for piety
and good works, are found in the calendar under the designation
of saints."[493]
Coming to America, we find that from the beginning of our history, the
Christian forces, which in the past strove to civilize and
Christianize the old world, have exerted themselves in behalf of the
oppressed in the New World. Catholic missionaries have always felt
constrained to carry out the injunction of the Divine Savior to his
apostles, "Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every
creature."[494] Their object was not to gain gold or worldly fortune,
but to bring the light of Christian truth to the minds of savage
aborigines; to win souls to Christ. To those missionaries, as the
Church teaches, the souls of the children of all races are equally
precious in the sight of God, whatever may be their individual or
racial character. It is for this that they left in young manhood,
their relatives and comfortable homes, with a probability of never
returning. In early ages, they brought Christianity and civilization
to peoples and nations of the lands of the Eastern Hemisphere. After
the discovery of the New World by Columbus, they were with the
explorers of North and South America. From about 1615 we find them
laboring among the Indian tribes from Quebec in Canada to California
in the West. Intrepid apostles like Marquette, Breheuf, Menard,
Millet, Lallemant, Jogues, Le Moyne, Dablon, Garnier, and a host of
others like them blazed the way through the wilderness to labor and
suffer and die for the salvation of the Indians. They made records in
the service of Christ among the Hurons, Algonquins, Iroquois and
Mohawks. To the South, in Florida, Spanish Franciscans fell victims to
the treachery of Creeks and Seminoles. In the middle of the last
century, before the coming of the settlers, Father De Smet spent
nearly forty years among the tribes of the great Western plains and in
the Rocky Mountain region. Other missionaries in Western Canada
penetrated the North as far as the Arctic Circle. In the seventies and
eighties of the nineteenth century, a frail and slender man, in the
person of the learned and saintly Archbishop Charles J. Seghers,
journeyed thousands of miles, to bring the message of the Master to
the red men in the vast territory of distant Alaska. In California,
Arizona and Texas, the traveler meets with many evidences and
monuments of the work of early Spanish Catholic missionaries among the
Indians. The records show that in some instances, the missionaries
were accompanied by Negroes. Probably the first Negro whose name is
recorded in North American history is that of Estevan, or Stephen, who
accompanied Father Marcos de Niza, in 1536, on a missionary
expedition into the territory of the present States of Arizona and New
Mexico.[495]
It is at a later period, however, than that of these early
missionaries, that the coming of the Negro as a notable part of the
population of the American Colonies begins. This growth takes its rise
with the revival of the slave trade in America after the first
importation of slaves brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. There
was long a demand for laborers, and thus an increasing number of
slaves were brought from Africa to the various colonies on the
Atlantic seaboard, from Massachusetts to Louisiana. British ships at
that time supplied not only English colonies with slave labor, but
also those of France and Spain.[496] Catholic colonists were confined
to Maryland and Louisiana. They also had slaves in their homes and on
their plantations, but it is known that they provided for their
religious needs and were obliged by their religion to regard their
slaves as human beings and not as mere chattels. Under Lord
Baltimore's government in the English Colony of Maryland, the Catholic
Proprietary himself tells us in his answer to the Lords in 1676,
concerning the law that had been enacted "to encourage the baptizing
and the instructing of those kinds of servants in the faith of
Christ."[497] There had been remissness towards the slaves in this
respect among other sections of the population, but such denominations
were spurred to action by the example of Catholics. The work of
Spanish and French missionaries, as Dr. Woodson points out, influenced
the education of the Negro throughout America.[498] The freedom and
welfare of the unhappy slaves were especially promoted in the famous
"Code Noir," the most humane legislation in their behalf which had
been devised before the repeal of slavery. In 1724, M. de Bienville
drew up the "Code Noir," containing all the legislation applicable to
slaves in Louisiana, which remained in force until 1803. This code,
signed in the name of the King, and inspired by Catholic teaching and
practice, was probably based on a similar code, which was promulgated
in 1685, in Santo Domingo, by Louis XIV, King of France. The Edict
ordained that all slaves be instructed and that they be admitted to
the sacraments and rites of the Roman Catholic Church. It allowed the
slave time for instruction, worship and rest, not only every Sunday,
but every festival usually observed by the Church. It prohibited under
severe penalties all masters and managers from corrupting their female
slaves, and provided for the Christian marriage of the slave. It did
not allow the Negro, husband, wife or infant children, to be sold
separately. It forbade the use of torture or immoderate and inhuman
punishments. It obliged the owners to maintain their old and decrepit
slaves. If the Negroes were not fed or clothed as the law prescribed,
or if they were in any way cruelly treated, they might apply to the
procurer, who was obliged by his office to protect them. A somewhat
similar edict, known as the Spanish Code, was promulgated in the
Spanish West Indies in 1789.
At the time of the Revolutionary War such Catholic patriots as Charles
Carroll, of Carrollton, the Polish General Kosciuszko, and General
Lafayette, of France, gave evidence of their interest in the
improvement of the Negro. Kosciuszko provided in his will that the
property which he acquired in America should be used for the purchase
of slaves to be educated for higher service and citizenship.[499]
Lafayette persistently urged that the blacks be educated and
emancipated.[500]
The impression seems to prevail in some quarters that the Catholic
Church in the United States has been indifferent to the welfare of the
Negro. Sir Harry H. Johnston in his work, _The Negro in the New
World_, rather unjustly asserts that the Church maintains "nothing in
the way of Negro education and has never at any time shown particular
sympathy or desire to help the Negro slave." At the same time he
acknowledges that the Roman Catholic Church in the West Indies and
South America has been the great opponent of slavery. Johnston states
"that the infractions of the Code Noir," and the increased
mal-treatment of slaves and free mulattoes did not take place until
the Catholic order of Jesuits had been expelled from Saint Dominique
about 1766. Here, as in Brazil, and Paraguay, they had exasperated the
white colonists by standing up for the natives or the Negro slaves;
and in Hispaniola they had endeavored to exact from the local
government a full application of the various slave-protecting edicts.
Whatever faults and mistakes they may have been guilty of in the
nineteenth century, the Jesuits played, for two hundred years, a noble
part in acting as a buffer between the Caucasian on the one hand, and
the backward peoples on the other.[501]
Before the emancipation of the slaves in the United States, great
difficulties prevented the Catholic Church from benefiting the slaves,
especially in those parts where the Church had no adherents and no
freedom to act. The Church had but a limited number of clergy and
small means. The most of the South was predominantly Protestant and in
some sections, penal laws were in force against Catholics. In many
States laws were enacted against the instruction of slaves in any
manner whatever.
Notwithstanding these obstacles, we find Catholic schools in
Washington and Baltimore educating Negro children as early as
1829.[502] The Rt. Rev. John England, the first Catholic Bishop of
Charleston, South Carolina, who held his office from 1820 until his
death in 1842, cared much for the poor friendless slaves. He began to
teach them, founding a school for males under the care of a priest,
and a school for girls under the care of the Sisters of Mercy. He was
compelled to suspend the slave schools by the passage of a law making
it criminal to teach a slave to read and write, but he continued the
schools for emancipated blacks.[503] After the Civil War, the
authorities of the Church were better enabled to take an active part
in meeting the religious needs of the Negro. The Plenary Councils of
Baltimore invite the colored people of our country to enter the
Catholic Church. To her pastors the Negro is a man with an immortal
soul to save. Rome, writing to the Bishops of the United States, on
January 31, 1866, in preparation for the Second Plenary Council of
Baltimore, declares: "It is the mind of the Church that the Bishops of
the United States, because of the duty weighing upon them of feeding
the Lord's flock, should take council together, in order to bring
about in a steady way the salvation and the Christian education of the
lately emancipated negroes." When assembled in Council the Bishops of
the United States cordially seconded the wishes of Rome by quoting the
very words in an entire chapter devoted to the question of the
salvation of the colored race. The Council declares: "This is true
charity, if not only temporal prosperity of men be increased, but if
they are sharers in the highest and inestimable benefits, namely, of
that true liberty by which we are called and are sons of God, which
Christ, dying on a cross and smiting the enemy of the human race,
obtains for all men without any exceptions whatsoever."[504] Eighteen
years later, in 1884, the Third Plenary Council, in the same city,
renewed the exhortations of the preceding council. Among other things
it states: "Out of six millions of colored people there is a very
large multitude who stand sorely in need of Christian instruction and
missionary labor; and it is evident that in the poor dioceses, in
which they are mostly found, it is most difficult to bestow on them
the care they need without the generous cooperation of our Catholic
people in more prosperous localities.... Since the greatest part of
the Negroes are as yet outside the fold of Christ, it is a matter of
necessity to seek workmen inflamed with zeal for souls, who will be
sent into this part of the Lord's harvest."[505]
With the encouragement of the higher authorities of the Church, who
sought the spiritual welfare and progress of the race, religious
orders and missionary associations took up the work for the Negro. The
first of these was the Fathers of the Society of St. Joseph, founded
by Cardinal Vaughan, of England. They are known as the Josephites and
now have priests and missionaries in nearly all Southern States and
dioceses. There are also laboring in this field Fathers of the Holy
Ghost, as also members of the Society of the African Missions, and the
Society of the Divine Word. Furthermore, there are a number of colored
and white Sisterhoods conducting orphanages, academies and Christian
Schools for colored children.
In the Second and Third Plenary Councils, the Bishops of the Catholic
Church in the United States as a body took up the cause of the Negro
race. The Bishops have when occasion offered, by word and deed, shown
their friendship and zeal in behalf of the Negro. They have
individually raised their voices for humanity and the black man.
Cardinal Gibbons, who has long been the leading prelate among the
American Bishops, has not only often spoken a good word for the Negro,
when the occasion called for it, but has proved by actions his
Christian spirit and heroic charity. Among the many instances of his
zeal and self-sacrifice, it is related that when he was a young priest
in charge of the parish of Elk Ridge, near Baltimore, smallpox broke
out in the village, and a general exodus at once followed. One old
Negro man, lying at the point of death, had been abandoned by his
family and was left alone in his cabin, without food or medicine.
Father Gibbons, hearing of the case, hastened to the old man's relief;
he procured everything necessary for him, and stood by and tended him
until he died. He then procured a coffin and having placed the corpse
in it, carried it to the graveyard and buried it with his own
hands.[506] A similar incident is told of Rev. J. A. Cunnane, of Upper
Marlboro, Maryland, now a pastor in Baltimore. When stationed in
Charles County he attended an old colored man during an epidemic of
smallpox, "took the body to the grave on a wheelbarrow, and with his
own hands buried it."[507]
Cardinal Gibbons, some years ago, wrote a letter in which occur the
following sentiments:
"What then is the first need of the colored people? A sound
religious education; an education that will bring them to a
practical knowledge of God, that will teach them their origin and
the sublime destiny that awaits them in a better world; an
education that will develop their superior being, that will
inspire them with the love of wisdom and hatred for sin, that
will make them honest, moral and God-fearing men. Such an
education will elevate and ennoble them and place them on a
religious footing with the white man.
"And secondly, it is a matter of observation that few colored
people are mechanics. Now, to be a factor in their country's
prosperity, to make their presence felt and to give any influence
whatever to their attempts to better their status, it is
absolutely necessary that, besides a sound religious training
they should be taught to be useful citizens; they should be
brought up from childhood to habits of industry. They should be
taught that to labor is honorable, and that the idler is a menace
to the commonwealth. Institutions should be founded wherein the
young men may learn the trades best suited to their inclinations.
Thus equipped--on the one hand well-instructed Christians, on the
other skilled workmen--our colored people may look forward
hopefully to the future. I am happy to bear testimony from
personal observation to the many virtues exhibited among so many
of the colored people of Maryland, especially their deep sense of
religion, their gratitude for favors shown, and their
affectionate disposition."[508]
The Cardinal used his great influence against the lynching evil and
in an article in the _North American Review_ for October, 1905,
pronounced lynching "a blot on our American civilization."[509] It
should be stated too that in Catholic countries of Central and South
America we rarely ever hear of lynching nor of unnatural crimes which
provoke it. In an address announcing "Colorphobia" as a "malignantly
unchristian disease," Mr. John C. Minkins, a journalist, not long ago
told a Baptist Ministers' Conference of Providence, Rhode Island, that
the lynchings in the United States are nearly all in States where
there are scarcely any Catholics. He based his statements on figures
from the Research Bureau of the Negro Industrial Institute at
Tuskegee, Alabama.[510]
In March, 1904, Cardinal Gibbons wrote the following letter to the
Rev. George F. Bragg, of Baltimore:
"In reply to your letter of yesterday, I hasten to say that the
introduction of the 'Jim Crow' bill into the Maryland Legislature
is very distressing to me. Such a measure must of necessity
engender very bitter feelings in the colored people against the
whites. Peace and harmony can never exist where there is unjust
discrimination, and where the members of every community must
constantly strive for its peace, especially now in the hour of
our affliction. While calamity and disaster are frowning upon our
city, mutual helpfulness should be the common endeavor and no
action should be lightly taken which would precipitate enmities,
strife and acrimonious feelings. The duty of every man is to
lighten the burdens that weigh heavily upon his neighbor to the
full extent of his power. It is equally the duty of every member
of a community to avoid any action which is calculated to make
hard and bitter the lot of a less fortunate race. Furthermore, it
would be most injudicious to make the whole race suffer for the
delinquencies of a few individuals, to visit upon thousands who
are innocent that punishment and chastisement which should be
meted out to the guilty alone."
Hostile legislation to the colored people was opposed by a noted
Catholic layman of Maryland, the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, Attorney
General of the United States, under President Roosevelt. Mr.
Bonaparte rendered service and wrote sympathetic words to Mr. Bragg,
in 1904, concerning the proposed restriction of the elective
franchise. He said: "Whatever the restrictions imposed, they should be
the same for all citizens; there should not be one law for white men
and another law for black men, one law for Americans of two
generations and another for Americans of three."[511]
The distinguished Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, John Ireland, a
man of wide influence, on May 5, 1890, spoke on the race problem in a
sermon delivered at St. Augustine's Church, Washington, D. C.
Secretary Windom, Recorder Bruce, the whole Minnesota delegation to
Congress and many Senators and others prominent in public life were
among the congregation. The bold and outspoken stand of the Archbishop
on this occasion created somewhat of a sensation throughout America.
Among other things he said:
"It make me ashamed as a man, as a citizen, as a Christian, to
see the prejudice that is acted against the colored citizens of
America because of his color. As to the substance, the colored
man is equal to the white man; he has a like intellect, the same
blood courses in their veins; they are both equally the children
of a common Father, who is in heaven. A man shows a narrowness of
mind and becomes unworthy of his humanity by refusing any
privilege to his fellowman because he is colored. Every prejudice
entertained, every breach of justice and charity against a
fellow-citizen because of color is a stain flung upon the banner
of our liberty that floats over us. No church is a fit temple of
God where a man, because of his color, is excluded or made to
occupy a corner. Religion teaches that we cannot be pleasing to
God unless we look upon all mankind as children of our Father in
heaven. And they who order and compel a man because he is colored
to betake himself to a corner marked off for his race,
practically contradict the principles of justice and of equal
rights established by the God of Mercy, who lives on the altar.
Let Christians act out their religion, and there is no more race
problem. Equality for the colored man is coming. The colored
people are showing themselves worthy of it. Let the colored be
industrious, purchase homes, respect law and order, educate
themselves and their children, and keep insisting on their
rights. The color line must go; the line will be drawn at
personal merit."[512]
There may be cited other instances of the friendly interest of leading
prelates and Bishops of the Church in the welfare of the Negro and of
care for their spiritual interests. They have ever been anxious that
justice be done to the race. The late Pope Pius X, sometime before his
death, wrote a letter through his secretary to the Rt. Rev. Thomas S.
Byrne, Bishop of Nashville, Tennessee, saying that he "most earnestly
wishes that the work of the Apostolate to the colored people, worthy
of being encouraged and applauded beyond any other undertaking of
Christian civilization, may find numerous and generous contributors."