{115}
The American Missionary
* * * * *
Vol. XLII. May, 1888. No. 5.
* * * * *
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL.
FINANCIAL
PARAGRAPHS
THE VERNACULAR IN INDIAN SCHOOLS
THE TIME FACTOR IN THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM. By Rev. A.H.
Bradford, D.D.
THE SOUTH.
SOUTHERN TESTIMONY
OUR WORK AS A GRADUATE OF FISK UNIVERSITY SEES IT
A PASTOR'S FIRST VIEW
TALLADEGA FRUIT
THREE PICTURES FROM LE MOYNE SCHOOL
THE EVANGELIST AT WORK
THE CHINESE.
LETTER FROM REV. W.C. POND
FOUR MONTHS OF EVANGELISTIC WORK
CHIN GAING IN CHINA
BUREAU OF WOMAN'S WORK.
SPARE OUR TEACHERS
RECEIPTS
* * * * *
New York.
Price, 50 Cents a Year, in Advance. Published by the American
Missionary Association.
Entered at the Post-Office at New York, N.Y., as second-class matter.
Rooms, 56 Reade Street.
* * * * *
{116}
AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
* * * * *
PRESIDENT,
------ ------
_Vice-Presidents._
Rev. A.J.F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y.
Rev. ALEX. MCKENZIE, D.D., Mass.
Rev. F.A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill.
Rev. D.O. MEARS, D.D., Mass.
Rev. HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., Mo.
_Corresponding Secretaries._
Rev. M.E. STRIEBY, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
Rev. A.F. BEARD, D.D., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
_Treasurer._
H.W. HUBBARD, Esq., 56 Reade Street, N.Y.
_Auditors._
PETER MCCARTEE.
CHAS. P. PEIRCE.
_Executive Committee._
JOHN H. WASHBURN, Chairman.
ADDISON P. FOSTER, Secretary.
_For Three Years._
LYMAN ABBOTT,
A.S. BARNES,[1]
J.R. DANFORTH,
CLINTON B. FISK,
ADDISON P. FOSTER,
_For Two Years._
S.B. HALLIDAY,
SAMUEL HOLMES,
SAMUEL S. MARPLES,
CHARLES L. MEAD,
ELBERT B. MONROE,
_For One Year._
J.E. RANKIN,
WM. H. WARD,
J.W. COOPER,
JOHN H. WASHBURN,
EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.
_District Secretaries._
Rev. C.J. RYDER, _21 Cong'l House, Boston._
Rev. J.E. ROY, D.D., 151 _Washington Street, Chicago_.
_Financial Secretary for Indian Missions._
Rev. CHAS. W. SHELTON,
_Secretary of Woman's Work._
Miss D.E. EMERSON, 56 _Reade Street, N.Y._
* * * * *
COMMUNICATIONS
Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the
Corresponding Secretaries; letters for "THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY," to
the Editor, at the New York Office.
DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
In drafts, checks, registered letters, or post office orders, may be
sent to H.W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when
more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational
House, Boston, Mass., or 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A
payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.
FORM OF A BEQUEST.
"I bequeath to my executor (or executors) the sum of ---- dollars, in
trust, to pay the same in ---- days after my decease to the person
who, when the same is payable, shall act as Treasurer of the 'American
Missionary Association,' of New York City, to be applied, under the
direction of the Executive Committee of the Association, to its
charitable uses and purposes." The Will should be attested by three
witnesses.
* * * * *
{117}
THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
* * * * *
Vol. XLII. May, 1888. No. 5.
* * * * *
American Missionary Association.
* * * * *
Six months of our fiscal year have come to a close. It may be of
interest to our readers to know how our treasury compares with the
same period of time last year. During this half-year, there has been
an increase in _collections_ of $6,250.73, a decrease in the amount
paid in from _estates_ and _legacies_ of $2,880.05, making a balance
in the total receipts, of $3,370.68 in advance of those of the
preceding year for the corresponding period.
This, however, does not mean that we are in advance of our
expenditures. All life predicates growth. When there is no growth, the
body has begun to die. Those who will read the able paper of Dr.
Bradford in this magazine, will doubtless conclude with him, that the
imperative demand is for increased life, and for multiplied efforts to
save those to whom Providence has manifestly called us. The natural
and necessary growth of life has been upon us. While we have cut and
trimmed and pinched with an economy that the most careful might think
an unwise policy, there has yet been growth. Success necessitates
development. Good schools will enlarge. One church creates another.
One foothold secured in a missionary region opens districts to many
who swell the cry of need to the heart of Christian compassion "_come
over and help us_," so that with all our pruning the work has grown
beyond the slight increase of funds from our churches.
We ought to push our work. Ignorant millions need the truth which we
have. They need the knowledge which we have. They need salvation, and
if we have it and have the spirit of Christ's compassion, we will see
that they are not left in darkness. There is enough and to spare in
the hands of the disciples of Christ for this vast and increasingly
urgent work. "Why," says George W. Cable, "if you knew the national
value of this work, to say nothing of its gospel value, you would
quadruplicate it before the year is out," He calls it "the most
prolific missionary field that was ever opened to any Christian
people," "right here at your doors."
{118}
While then we have the right to thank God and his people, and reason
to take courage, we should be false to the churches and to ourselves
should we fail to accentuate the necessities of our work, and the
demand upon those in whose name we stand. Brethren, is not ours the
appeal of Christ to you for his neglected and his needy ones? Bring
your thank offerings to God and make enlargement for this enlarging
work.
* * * * *
We are thankful for our receipts from legacies. They are testimonies
that speak, from those whose lips are sealed in death, for the gospel
of Christ and its elevating and saving power when it is applied to the
low-down and the poor and the wronged. In these legacies, those who
are dead yet speak the word of life to those whom they have
remembered.
Our work, however, should be planned, not upon the uncertainties of
legacies, but upon the ability and faith of those who live and give.
It cheers us to know that our living donors are increasing and are
entering with us the doors of opportunity which God has so manifestly
opened and which no man can shut.
* * * * *
We congratulate the American Home Missionary Society that it closes
its year, not having realized its fears even if it has not absolutely
compassed all its hopes. We are grateful, for its success. Our
congratulations also are hearty that our great Foreign Missionary
Society, the A.B.C.F.M., reports itself at the end of its fiscal
half-year $78,000 in advance of what was received for the same period
last year.
* * * * *
But do not forget the great work which the churches have put upon us.
See nearly eight millions who went from barbarism into slavery, and
from slavery came out the poorest of the poor, the most ignorant of
the ignorant, the most dependent of the dependent, without true
religion and with no opportunity to know what true religion is unless
we tell them. Africa is in America, China is in America, the barbarous
heathen Indian is in America, and two millions of white people in the
mountain region in four hundred counties, where ignorance is solid,
are in America. These all look to the American Missionary Association.
Will it not be our turn next to receive from the churches their
increasing Godspeed on this work in such measure that we may carry the
truth and the life to those who ought to have it.
* * * * *
The Connecticut Normal Industrial School previous to the brief spring
vacation was visited by many northern friends at Thomasville, Ga.,
upon the occasion of its closing exercises. The _Thomasville Times_
calls sympathetic {119} attention to the work and adds "That the boys
and girls are being carefully taught and trained will be apparent to
any one who will go to the Institution and see its workings. The
attendance has averaged over two hundred." Thomasville is not far
removed from Quitman geographically but, in point of intelligent
regard for its own interests and the interests of the Negro, the
distance is incalculable. As Joseph said to his brethren, we can say
to the school incendiaries of Quitman, "Ye meant it for evil but the
Lord meant it for good."
* * * * *
An attractive and interesting four-paged weekly journal called the
_Chinese Evangelist_ comes to us. It is the first number of a
curiosity in the way of a newspaper, being printed half in the English
and half in the Chinese language. Its editor is Mr. J.S. Harper, son
of Rev. A.F. Harper, of Canton College, and the manager is Guy Maine,
a Christian Chinaman and member of the Broadway Tabernacle Church. The
address of the editor is No. 117 West 87th St., New York, and of the
manager, No. 15 University Place. It is intended for all workers in
Chinese Sunday-schools, and every teacher of Chinese Sunday-school
scholars would do well to send a dollar and secure this invaluable aid
for a year. Its column of items is named "Tea Leaves." We would
suggest that the motto for this bright little paper be "_Tu doces_."
* * * * *
THE VERNACULAR IN INDIAN SCHOOLS.
BY SECRETARY STRIKEY.
This question is not settled. One thing that has kept it unsettled has
been the uncertain use of the term "missionary schools" in the Orders
of the Indian Department. What is precisely a missionary school? Let
me try to explain. There are three kinds of schools in the
nomenclature of the Indian Office, based on the sources of their
support.
1. _Government_ Schools, supported wholly by Government
appropriations--such as those at Carlisle, Genoa, etc. These may be
left out of the account in this discussion, for no one objects to the
Government's directing the studies in them.
2. _Contract_ Schools, so called because the missionary societies
which sustain them receive under _contract_ with the Government a
certain amount of money in aid of their support. The school at Santee,
Nebraska, and the school at Yankton, Dakota, are specimens of this
class. But these are _mission_ schools, for the societies which
support them would not continue to do so for a day except for their
missionary character; and yet these schools are classed by the
Department not as missionary but as contract schools.
3. _Missionary_ Schools, which are supported wholly by missionary
funds, the Government contributing nothing. Here, again, in the recent
{120} order, the Department employs the confusing use of terms,
speaking in general terms of "missionary schools," and then of
missionary schools under the charge of "native Indian teachers," and
at remote points; the inference being that the white teacher of a
missionary school, though it may be in a place so remote that neither
the pupils nor the people can understand the English language, cannot
teach in the vernacular.
With these explanations we present, under date of Feb. 11, 1888,
THE LATEST ORDERS OF THE DEPARTMENT.
1. No text-books in the vernacular will be allowed in any school where
children are placed under contract or where the Government
contributes, in any manner whatever, to the support of the school; no
oral instruction in the vernacular will be allowed at such schools.
The entire curriculum must be in the English language.
2. The vernacular may be used in missionary schools only for oral
instruction in morals and religion, where it is deemed to be an
auxiliary to the English language in conveying such instruction; and
only native Indian teachers will be permitted to otherwise teach in
any Indian vernacular; and these native teachers will only be allowed
so to teach in schools not supported in whole or in part by the
Government and at remote points, where there are no Government or
contract schools where the English language is taught. These native
teachers are only allowed to teach in the vernacular with a view of
reaching those Indians who cannot have the advantage of instruction in
English, and such instruction must give way to the English-teaching
schools as soon as they are established where the Indians can have
access to them.
3. A limited theological class of Indian young men may be trained in
the vernacular at any purely missionary school, supported exclusively
by missionary societies, the object being to prepare them for the
ministry, whose subsequent work shall be confined to preaching unless
they are employed as teachers in remote settlements, where English
schools are inaccessible.
4. These rules are not intended to prevent the possession or use by
any Indian of the Bible published in the vernacular, but such
possession or use shall not interfere with the teaching of the English
language to the extent and in the manner hereinbefore directed.
The gravamen of the objections urged in all this controversy is that
the _Government has no right to interfere with these mission schools_;
in the first place, in excluding all use of the vernacular in contract
schools, even for religious instruction, and in the next place, in
controlling the studies of the mission schools _supported wholly by
missionary money_ and in excluding white teachers from vernacular
schools. The missionary societies have found by long experience that
these mission schools in which the vernacular is taught, especially in
remote places, are the most effective, and in many cases the only
modes by which the people can be reached by the Gospel. The pupils are
taught to read the Bible and it is carried by them to their homes. Now
we ask, is it the function of the Government of the United {121}
States to dictate in matters so purely religious and to override the
Christian churches in the choice of their most approved methods of
disseminating the Gospel?
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND'S LETTER.
The President, under date of March 29, 1888, in response to some
resolutions adopted by the Philadelphia M.E. Conference, writes a
letter on this subject, which deserves careful and candid
consideration, both for what it concedes and for what it does not
concede. We present the portion of the letter bearing upon the points
at issue.
"Secular teaching is the object of the ordinary Government schools,
but surely there can be no objection to reading a chapter in the Bible
in English, or in Dakota if English could not be understood, at the
daily opening of those schools, as is done in very many other
well-regulated secular schools. It may be, too, that the use of words
in the vernacular may be sometimes necessary to aid in communicating a
knowledge of the English language, but the use of the vernacular
should not be encouraged or continued beyond the limit of such
necessity, and the "text books," the "oral instruction" in a general
sense, and the curriculum certainly should be in English. In
missionary schools moral and religious instruction may be given in the
vernacular as an auxiliary to English in conveying such instruction.
Here, while the desirability of some instruction in morals and
religion is recognized, the extreme value of learning the English
language is not lost sight of. And the provision which follows, that
only native teachers shall "otherwise" (that is, except for moral or
religious instruction) teach the vernacular, and only in remote places
and until Government or contract schools are established, is in exact
keeping with the purpose of the Government to exclude the Indian
languages from the schools as far as is consistent with a due regard
for the continuance of moral and religious teaching in the missionary
schools, and except in such cases as the exclusion would result in the
entire neglect of secular or other instruction."
On this letter let me remark:
1. That it concedes what has not heretofore been granted, the reading
of the Bible in the vernacular in contract schools and its use in
explaining the English. We accept this concession with gratification.
2. But it makes no concession whatever (beyond that made in the order
of the Commissioner) in regard to the use of the vernacular in schools
supported wholly by missionary funds, or in the employment of white
teachers in vernacular schools in remote districts. Until concessions
are made on these points, the controversy will go forward.
The aim of the Government is _expedient_, in trying to secure
ultimately the use of the English language among the Indians. The aim
of the missionary societies is to fulfil an imperative _duty_, in
trying to reach the Indians with the Gospel in the most effective
methods. There should be mutual respect for these aims; the Government
should yield to the conscientious conviction of the missionary
societies as to methods for giving religious {122} instruction, and
the missionary societies should co-operate with the Government in
introducing the English language as rapidly as possible consistently
with their higher aim. I venture to suggest an outline of Regulations
that would probably attain both these objects and meet other
objections to the ruling of the Department that are not removed by the
President's letter.
DETAILS OF PROPOSED REGULATIONS.
1. No text-books in the vernacular will be allowed in any Government
school, supported wholly by the Government; no oral instruction in the
vernacular will be allowed at such schools. The entire curriculum must
be in the English language.
2. In contract schools supported in part by missionary societies, the
vernacular may be used only for the reading of the Sacred Scriptures,
and for oral instruction in morals and religion and where it is deemed
to be an auxiliary to the English language in conveying such
instruction.
3. In all "missionary schools" supported entirely by missionary or
benevolent funds, no restrictions will be put upon the use of the
vernacular, with the understanding, however, that the English language
shall be introduced as rapidly as those conducting these schools shall
deem compatible with the higher aim--religious teaching; and that when
these schools shall be prepared to use the English language wholly,
the Department will give them a place on the list of contract schools
rather than to establish others in their stead. If new mission schools
are established they must be so located as not to interfere with
existing Government or contract schools.
4. That any religious denomination shall, at its discretion and
entirely at its own cost, be allowed to conduct special classes in the
vernacular for the training of teachers and preachers. As it is
desirable that those teachers and preachers should be taught in
English studies as well as in the vernacular, these classes may be
conducted in connection with contract schools, yet so as not to
interfere in any way with the regular curriculum in the English
language.
* * * * *
"Ramona Days," is the title of a neatly printed pamphlet of
forty-three pages, being the January number of a quarterly, published
by the Indian Department of the University of New Mexico. This Indian
school is named in honor of Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson, who has rendered
such valuable services to the Indians in setting forth in thrilling
terms their wrongs, and in pleading so pathetically for their rights.
The Ramona school is under the efficient supervision of Pres. H.O.
Ladd, and is aided in part by the American Missionary Association.
The pamphlet is not a catalogue of the school, but contains a variety
of interesting matter on Indian affairs, the titles of some of the
articles being; "Wiser Methods," "Famous Apache Chiefs," "Treaty
Obligations to the Navajoes," "A Recent Movement Toward Indian
Civilization," "Ramona Memorial," etc., etc. There are also letters
from the teachers, and two cuts, one representing the proposed
Memorial Building, Ramona. Mr. Ladd's {123} work lies largely among
that remarkably promising race of Indians, the Apaches, and those who
wish to know more about them would do well to have the pamphlet. It
can be had by addressing Rev. H.O. Ladd, Santa Fe, New Mexico;
subscription price, 50 cents for the four numbers.
* * * * *
THE TIME FACTOR IN THE SOUTHERN PROBLEM.
BY REV. A.H. BRADFORD, D.D.
The supreme question in English politics is the unity of the empire.
The problem of the mother country is, How may the scattered colonies
be joined in one body whose heart shall be London? All the other
questions of the island-empire are but parts of this. This in turn is
forced into prominence by the under-current of the world's aspiration
for larger liberty. "The world no longer for the few, but for the
many," is the watchword of an increasing number in all the nations.
How to maintain the manhood of her subjects, and yet not to force the
dismemberment of the empire, is the question uppermost in old England.
With us, the problem is not one of scattered colonies but of divergent
people. There is in the United States the double problem of how to
consolidate and preserve the interests of a nation with a long area
north and south, and with the most diverse elements of population ever
gathered under one flag. This is complicated by other factors. Our
study is confined to those which touch what is known as the Southern
question. The problems of English and American political and religious
life are identical in that both are inspired by the watchword of the
rising multitudes, "The world for the many."
The Southern problem is but part of the larger one of area and races.
Consider a few facts. The South is peopled chiefly by two classes,
native whites and native blacks. Both whites and blacks are there to
remain. More whites leave the South than blacks, and the population is
increasing. Emigration avoids the States chiefly inhabited by blacks.
It is not probable that the exodus of whites will be very great. The
population of the future will probably be of the same classes,
although the proportion is rapidly changing. Native whites and native
blacks, unless signs fail, will possess the land.
The Negro race is appallingly fertile. It shows no sign of decadence.
It is multiplying faster than any other. The number of blacks in the
United States has risen from four millions to nearly eight millions
since the war. That has been entirely by natural reproduction. The
increase of whites during the decade from 1870 to 1880 was twenty-nine
per cent.; of blacks thirty-five per cent. If, now, we allow nine per
cent. for the increase of the whites by immigration, we find that the
increase of blacks over the whites by natural order is about fourteen
per cent. Here, then, is a {124} simple problem in arithmetic. If the
blacks increase on an average fourteen per cent. faster than the
whites, and to the South there is little immigration, how long will it
be before the blacks preponderate? They will go neither to Africa, to
Mexico, nor to the West Indies. They are here to stay. They are
multiplying faster than their white neighbors. They are growing in
consciousness of power faster than in intelligence. What is the sure
result of conscious but blind power? The story of Samson answers. The
problem is the new-birth of a rapidly increasing race. How long it
will take may possibly be imagined from the questions which follow.
I. How long will it require for race-prejudices to go? I put that
question to an intelligent colored man who had been a slave. His
answer was, "Until the present generation is dead."
The conflict between classes in the South will last until they
recognize that they have an identity of interests, or that they are
brethren. Prejudice is neither dead nor fast dying. There is a change
in the cities, but it does not reach far inland. In how many Southern
States are the same privileges extended to both races in schools? in
cars? in hotels? in churches? This prejudice is in the blood. Heredity
and training have both fostered it. Race prejudices die slowly. For
centuries the contest between Patrician and Plebeian was carried on in
ancient Rome. The subject-class never affiliated with the
master-class. Two or three hundred years ago a new people was
introduced into the north of Ireland. The north is essentially
Scottish. Its inhabitants are Protestant and phlegmatic. In the south,
the religion is Romanist, and the people are mercurial. They are of
the same color. They have had the same history for centuries. For
nearly five hundred years, the Turk has been a disturbing factor in
Europe. The Turk is Asiatic. He is surrounded by European life. How
rapidly has the antipathy between races disappeared where the Turk has
power? The race-lines are as distinct as if the waters of a white
river and a black ran in the same channel. The Hebrews are found in
all parts of the world. They are industrious, and as decent as the
average man; they mingle with other people, and yet almost everywhere
the prejudice against them is constant and bitter. How long before
Protestant Orangemen and Catholic Irishmen will walk arm and arm in
the same procession? How long before the German and Russian and
Englishman will recognize the Jew as a brother? In the South, the
antipathy is between black and white, between a master-class and a
subject-class, between oppressed and oppressor. How long before this
prejudice will disappear?
II. How much time will be required for the consciousness of having
been wronged to wear from the breast and the blood of the black man?
This consciousness of having been wronged is not a race-prejudice, and
yet it may become one. It is hard to eradicate. It is aggravated when
the same feelings are in many hearts. This is a complicated factor.
Some of {125} the blacks seem incapable of sentiments of revenge. They
are too lighthearted to cherish grievances. But all are not so. The
pure blacks who carry with them the consciousness of having been
deeply injured, are many. What will you say of the mulattoes? A man
who knows his father, and knows that his father ignores his existence,
may keep it to himself, but he cannot smother his feeling. He who sees
his brothers and sisters pass him on the street in carriages, living
in comfort and honor, while he is poor, and nothing to them, will, in
proportion as he is a man, hate the social order in which they live.
Until this consciousness of having been injured and degraded vanishes,
the Southern question will disturb political and social life.
III. Closely allied to the consciousness of degradation is the lack of
manly feeling. Appreciation of manhood is a condition of improvement.
He who thinks himself only an animal will live like one. Does this
condition exist at the South? It could not be otherwise. Any one who
has travelled there must have his faith in the evolution of some men
from the lower animals immeasurably strengthened. Rev. Dr. Taylor, of
New York, has said that he knows that the Darwinian theory cannot be
true, because, if it were, "an Englishman's right arm would have
developed into an umbrella long ago." But Dr. Taylor would find faces
in the South which, from their resemblance to lower orders of life,
might weaken his faith in his demonstration.
The black race is no more degraded than our own would be under similar
circumstances, but its condition is appalling. How long will it take
to develop the consciousness of manhood where all the tastes, and all
the tendencies, and almost all the environment, are low and in the
opposite direction? The colored people have not the help of higher and
refining influences. Their tendencies have been downward, and present
environment increases the tendency. Regeneration or reform is not the
work of a year or a generation. The change will come only by the
creation of new and higher conditions, and with the birth of a more
self-respecting stock.
IV. How long will be required for the education of the colored people
and the poor whites?
The author of "An Appeal to Caesar" says, "The Southern man, black or
white, is not likely to be greatly different to-morrow from what he
was yesterday. Generations may modify; years can only restrain. The
question is not whether education, begun to-day and carried on however
vigorously and successfully by the most approved agencies, would
change the characteristics of to-day's masses. Not at all. The
question is whether it would so act upon them _as they are_, would so
enlighten and inform their minds, as to convince them of the mutual
danger, peril, disaster, that must attend continual oppression or
sudden uprising. We cannot expect to make intelligence instantly
effective in the elevation of individual citizenship, or the exercise
of collective power. Little by little that change must come."
{126}
About ninety per cent, of the whole colored population of the South,
and about forty-five per cent. of those above ten years of age, are
illiterate. In 1880, nineteen per cent., or about one in every five,
of the white people of the South, and seventy-three per cent. of the
colored people, could neither read nor write; and this estimate is far
too large. After fifteen years of the ballot, seventy-three per cent.
of the colored race of the South could neither read nor write. Much is
being done to promote education by schools and charities, but what are
these among so many? To meet the ignorant condition of things, the
Government is doing nothing. The State governments are doing only a
little. In the Southern States previous to the war there was no system
of common schools. After the war there were not even old foundations
to build upon. Everything had to be started _de novo_ by those who had
nothing with which to start. "We must remember," said Dr. Mayo, "that
nine men out of ten of the South never saw what we call a good public
elementary school. It has been said that the public school-buildings
of Denver alone exceed in value all the public school-buildings of the
State of North Carolina."
The average school year throughout the South, in 1880, was less than
one hundred days; the average attendance less than thirty per cent. of
those within school age. In a belt of States where seventy-three per
cent., and probably ninety per cent., of the population are
illiterate, where they are too poor to do much except keep up the
struggle for existence, where there are no traditions of culture,
where it has been a crime for a black man to read, where the Nation is
doing nothing, and where the State, when it does its best, provides
instruction which reaches only thirty per cent. of those of school age
for one hundred days in a year, and where the population is increasing
so rapidly that in 1900 the blacks will be in a decided majority,
charity and religion are doing--what? The progress under the
circumstances is amazing, but how long will it take to educate the
nineteen per cent. of Southern whites, and seventy-three per cent., of
Southern blacks? There is more illiteracy now than at the close of the
war, because education has not kept pace with the increase of the
race.
V. How long will be required for the _moralizing_ of the lower classes
of the South? Ability to make moral discriminations grows slowly.
Ability to appreciate moral motives grows still more slowly. These
people were trained in a school in which virtue was ignored. They have
lived under conditions which have put a premium on theft. Slavery
always makes thieves. The heredity of the passion for stealing is just
as clearly marked as the heredity of the Roman nose or the faculty for
music. The transmission of the tendency toward the gratification of
the animal propensities is as definite as, and stronger than, the
tendency for insanity and consumption to reproduce themselves. These
people come into life blind, {127} and find little but darkness around
them. Here you have about eight millions with an ancestry which began
in heathenism and has had two centuries of slavery--a people
inheriting all the evils of slavery; a people who have never been
trained to make moral discriminations, and whose ancestors for unknown
generations have been trained still less than they; a people who have
none, or at least but little, of the inspiration toward a higher moral
life which comes from a healthy environment; a people whose religion
is almost all emotional; who can soar on the wings of imagination and
enthusiasm to heights which would make an archangel dizzy; who from
paroxysms of anguish at the condition of those whose burning bodies
are lighting the fires of hell, will go off and commit adultery or rob
a hen-roost as complacently as if to do so were a part of their
religion. This is not fiction. Religion has not meant chastity, for
slavery made that impossible; it has not meant justice, for injustice
forged their chains; it has not meant generosity, for they had
nothing; it has been simple emotion. The ethical element has been
absent, and it was through no fault of the black man.
In 1860, President Hopkins said that a greater proportion of the
Sandwich Islanders could read than of the people in New England. They
were educated but not moralized. There were three hundred thousand of
them a century and a half ago; in 1883, there were forty-nine
thousand. Education without morality is no safeguard.
Prof. Gilliam shows, from census reports, that if the population of
the Southern whites increases for a century, as at present, in 1985,
there will be ninety-six million whites in the Southern States, and in
1980, one hundred and ninety-two million blacks. Statistics may lie;
but there is enough truth in these to give terrible emphasis to the
inquiry, How long before the colored people will be sufficiently
educated to need no help? How long before they will have sufficient
moral discrimination to know what the commandments require? When we
realize how difficult is the task of inducing men with the environment
of Christian influence at the North, and in England, to live even
decent lives, the wonder is that the freedmen do as well as they do.
How long before we can expect a race with such antecedents and
environments to be fitted to be left to themselves? What answer must
be given? I am not exaggerating the picture. I am only hinting at
conditions of heathenism which exist. I am least of all blaming these
poor and needy people; but none the less clear and strong comes the
appeal for their moral and intellectual emancipation. The moralizing
of a race which has such a history, how long will that require? No
people ever rose more rapidly in the world's history. That shows what
is possible. It does not tell us when our work will be finished. So
long as one-half of the American republic is inhabited by those whose
interests are alien to the other half, there can be no permanent
prosperity. It has been said that there are three essentials to the
{128} permanent unity of a nation; viz., unity of language, unity of
interest and unity of religion. There is a common language between the
blacks and whites, but the unity of interest is not recognized, and
agreement in religion is only in name. The religion of the poor whites
in the South is mechanical, and unintelligently doctrinal; the
religion of the blacks is emotional and fantastic; and the religion of
both blacks and whites is lacking in the ethical element. The process
of political reconstruction has been progressing for twenty years and
more, and is still incomplete. That is an easy work compared with what
must be created intellectually, and socially, and morally. Before the
Southern problem will be solved, a new stock must take the place of
those who were reared in slavery; the old traditions must fade, and
education, and an ethical type of Christianity, must do their work.
How long will be required for that, none can tell. In the meantime,
new complications may arise. The principles of socialism and anarchy
are not unlikely to pervade the South, and if the masses of blacks are
ever exploited by a central, unknown and irresponsible committee of
agitators, the results must be a new reign of terror. The labor
agitators are moving southward. It has been said that colored people
have no tendencies toward socialism and anarchy. I am no prophet, but
I will hazard the prediction that it will not be long before the
socialistic agitator will stir up a commotion at the South that will
make employers of labor and people of wealth tremble.
The sentiment has sometimes been whispered, that the work of this
Association, and those akin to it, was about accomplished. That
sentiment has selfishness or ignorance at the bottom of it. How long
must this work be kept up? Until all that mass of darkness which fills
the Southern horizon be shot through and through with shafts of light.
How long must it be kept up? Until the last trace of prejudice that
separates brother from brother shall have been removed. How long will
this thing be kept up? Until the black man feels that he is a man;
until he can vote intelligently, and live wisely, and until he has the
ability and the will to discriminate carefully in matters of morals.
How long must it be kept up? Until no man can plead ignorance, or want
of opportunity, for rejecting the Lord Jesus Christ. The Eastern
question has been a live question in European politics for more than
four centuries. It is no more puzzling than the Southern question is
with us. There is an experiment in physics that is typical of this
work. An iron bar is suspended in the air and then a tiny cork, hung
from a string, is thrown against it. At first no impression is made,
but the blows are repeated, until, by and by, the bar begins to
tremble, then to vibrate, then to swing to and fro. The repeated
impacts of the little cork at last move the mass. It will not be by
any great rush that the Southern problem will be solved. It will yield
at last to the constancy, and fidelity, of the great multitude of
those who love their brother because they love their Lord; who are
content to work in secret, {129} and many of whom already rest in
unmarked graves. That mass of ignorance, wretchedness and wrong will
swing and disappear at last before the multitudinous strokes of
individual gifts and individual prayers.
All the problems which are vexing the older nations are essentially
social problems, and the watchword of all the movements that are
undermining thrones and caste, and the wicked social order, is, "The
world no longer for the few, but for the many." In America the _many_
are already in possession, and the problem with us is, How may our
rulers--the people who can never be dethroned--be rendered competent
to rule? That is the question to which the American Missionary
Association is devoting itself; and its answer is the only true one:
By making the people intelligent, and Christian. And how long before
that will be accomplished? A Scotchman once asked an Irishman, "Why
were half-farthings coined in England?" Pat instantly replied, "To
give Scotchmen an opportunity of contributing to missions." When will
this problem be solved? Never, if the Christians of America are like
Pat's Scotchman, but quicker than any of us dream, if all the
Christians of America are like that woman in the New Testament who put
into the treasury two mites.
* * * * *
THE SOUTH.
SOUTHERN TESTIMONY.
We insert the following from the _Southern Presbyterian_, as a recent
testimony to the views, principles and work of the American Missionary
Association. It will be all the stronger from the fact that it was not
written for a testimony, but as a setting forth of facts by a
Southerner to Southerners.
The old masters and the old slaves are now rapidly passing into
eternity. In ten years more no one of our people, white or black,
under _forty years_ of age, will know personally anything of
slavery. It then comes to this, that now and from this time
forward, we white Christians must be impressed with the fact that
we have here at our doors, in our houses, offices, stores and
kitchens, and on our farms, not slaves, but a race of people,
three-fourths of whom are but a little removed from savages in so
far as their knowledge of religion is concerned. They have among
them those whom they call preachers; they hold meetings, they
halloo, they shout, but no _saving truth_ is preached or heard from
that source. The result is great animal excitement, but no moral
elevation. Then many of them are receiving secular education. That
sharpens their intellects but gives no Christian character. It does
just the opposite; it fits them for rascality. They are increasing.
There are probably eight millions of them now, and there will be
many millions more. Those who are dying without Christ are dying
here in a Christian land without hope.
The statement of a Congregational missionary recently made, is
probably true, viz.: that "one-fourth of the race is improving
rapidly," yet much the larger part of them are almost, if not
altogether, _heathen_. They are not across the ocean; under God's
providence they are here, where you can touch them with your
finger. Why here? {130} It will not do to say that nothing can be
made out of them. Go to Texas, to Tennessee, and come right here to
Atlanta now, and our most intelligent white men will tell you that
on the prohibition question, negroes, educated, smart and very
eloquent, have made, and are making, _ringing_ speeches. There have
been smart speakers on both sides. Some of their speeches would do
credit to any white orator in the South. Dr. Sanderson, our late
Professor at Tuskaloosa, stated on the floor of the Synod of
Alabama last week, that he had taught a good deal, and that a young
negro, twenty years of age, one of our divinity students at
Tuskaloosa, was as smart a pupil as he had ever seen; that if he
were in the State University he would be in its first rank of
students, and that he heard him recently preach a sermon on the
mediatorial work of Christ, such that he (Dr. Sanderson) would not
undertake to make a better one on that majestic theme. * * *
In Dallas Presbytery, Texas, recently, a black man was examined for
two days on Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and on all that is required by
our Book of Government for ordination, and he did not falter once.
So the brethren there testify.
Then it comes to this: this race of people is here; the great body
of them are heathen. Can anyone doubt that it is the purpose of the
Almighty to prepare a large number of them, converted, educated and
civilized, to go back to Africa to redeem that continent for
civilization and for Christ? We are commanded to preach the Gospel
to every creature, to teach it to all nations.
* * * * *
OUR WORK, AS A GRADUATE OF FISK UNIVERSITY SEES IT.
BY WILLIAM A. CROSTHWAITE.
The American Missionary Association is doing more to quicken the hopes
and aspirations of the Southern Negro, more toward arousing the
Southern white man to educate himself, and more toward bringing the
two races to an acknowledgment of each other's rights, than any other
similar institution in the country.
In the summer of 1884, near Leesburg, Texas, a well-appointed Negro
school was burned by the whites of that community. The colored people,
seeing their hope of years in ashes, advertised their little holdings
for sale, and prepared to leave in a body. But the whites offered to
supplement the insurance on the former building and to re-build the
school, if the colored people would remain in the community. The terms
were accepted, and now _West Chapel_, which is the name of the school,
is excellently furnished and has a $200 bell upon it, and is the best
known school in Northeast Texas. Previous to the burning of West
Chapel, the whites were continually distracted by factional fights.
There was general apathy with regard to improvement in any way
whatever. Their teachers were always of the inferior class. But, when
they found that the colored people would have a school, they decided
to have one also. The colored people bought a bell. So did they. The
colored people had a foreign teacher. So must they have one, and they
paid $750 a year for him. One of the white citizens of the locality
summed the situation up thus:--"West Chapel is to the whites what a
coal of fire is on the back of a terrapin." This school was organized
by a Fisk student and has ever {131} since been taught by students of
Fisk. Thus is the A.M.A. lifting up the Negro directly and the whites
indirectly, and establishing friendly relations between the two.
But this is no isolated case. The story is the same wherever the
educated Negro comes in contact with the whites. At one time, our
school was so far in advance of the white school, that I was told by
my school director that "no high-learnt teacher was wanted to teach
'Nigger Schools,'" and I was actually driven from my school by threats
of violence.
The North can better understand the work of the American Missionary
Association, when it is fully understood that the presence of Fisk
University in Nashville brought about the existence of Vanderbilt
University. When Fisk began to send out her graduates as refined and
upright gentlemen, and the newspapers were enthusiastic in their
accounts of its literary and musical exhibitions, the white people
said; "We must have a university in Nashville also."
In the recent Prohibition campaign in Tennessee, the students of Fisk
were one of the chief factors. In the beginning of the movement, the
cry; "Where does Fisk stand on this question?" went up from the good
people all over the State. Fisk was the first college to declare in
favor of the proposed Amendment, and one hundred young men and women
went from her walls and fought valiantly for the cause.
It is due the profound Christian spirit that characterizes the work of
the Association to say, that every student and alumnus of Fisk in the
State of Tennessee was an ardent supporter of the cause, save two.
During the campaign the most cordial feelings existed between the
better elements of both races. Heretofore these things were almost
unheard of.
There was a time when policy or political expediency had no effect
upon the prejudices of the Southern whites, but the educational
process inaugurated by the North is elevating a class of colored
people to a plane where they are respected as never before. No State
or Federal aid can do for us what the A.M.A. is doing. Such aid as the
Blair Bill proposed would meet a certain need, and enable the men that
are educated by the A.M.A. to get at the masses; but the peculiar work
of preparing honest and devout Christian leaders must be otherwise
provided for. The complete regeneration of the South is a thing of the
future. The A.M.A. must remain among us to hasten on "the harvest of
the golden year."
That the Christianization of the Negro must come from without his own
institutions, will be clearly seen by looking at his present religious
condition. The new life that is developing cannot be crowded into the
narrow limits of his church. The moral element is almost entirely
wanting in his creed and doctrine. Such is the condition of the church
that moral and spiritual growth are impossible. He must be educated
away from the institutions that attended his enslavement; as far from
them as Canaan is from Egypt. Again, the pulpit, with comparatively
few honorable exceptions, {132} is filled with adventurers and impure
ministers. To a great extent this is true. But signs of a spiritual
and moral exodus are everywhere manifest. The judgment of God rests
heavily upon the Negro's temple-worship and the structure tumbles to
the ground. Within the last two years I have seen six of the largest
colored churches in Tennessee split on moral grounds, and the
discontent with what is bad, grows among them. The old associations
are losing their power over the rising generation. Intelligent men are
seeking to supply their spiritual and moral wants. The A.M.A. has but
to persist in the establishment of its school and church work among
the colored people, with good strong men as ministers, and it is sure
to be the leaven of the church of the future for the Negro people.
Last summer an old father, who had educated four children at Fisk
University and had himself been there on one Commencement occasion,
said to me:--"That Fisk school is the _buildin'-up-est_ place to our
people in the world. I never expect to have such a good time and
treatment again until I get to heaven." Thus are our hopes quickened
and our aspirations for nobler things awakened.