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[Illustration: September, 1887.
VOL. XLI.
NO. 9.
The American Missionary]
[Illustration: CONTENTS]
* * * * *
EDITORIAL.
ANNUAL MEETING, 243
INCREASED SIZE OF THE PRESENT NUMBER, 243
FINANCIAL, 243
PARAGRAPHS, 244
THINGS TO BE REMEMBERED—No. 4, 245
THE SOUTH.
THE GLENN BILL IN THE GEORGIA LEGISLATURE, 247
GEORGIA’S NEED OF TEACHERS, 265
LE MOYNE INSTITUTE, 266
THE CHINESE.
CALIFORNIA AS A MISSIONARY FIELD, 267
GRADUATING ADDRESS OF YAN PHOU LEE AT YALE COLLEGE, 269
RECEIPTS 273
* * * * *
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
Rooms, 56 Reade Street.
* * * * *
Price, 50 Cents a Year, in Advance.
Entered at the Post-Office at New York, N.Y., as second-class
matter.
American Missionary Association.
* * * * *
PRESIDENT, Hon. WM. B. WASHBURN, LL.D., Mass.
_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 Secretary._
Rev. M. E. STRIEBY, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
_Associate Corresponding Secretaries._
Rev. JAMES POWELL, 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.
A. P. FOSTER, Secretary.
_For Three Years._
S. B. HALLIDAY.
SAMUEL HOLMES.
SAMUEL S. MARPLES.
CHARLES L. MEAD.
ELBERT B. MONROE.
_For Two Years._
J. E. RANKIN.
WM. H. WARD.
J. W. COOPER.
JOHN H. WASHBURN.
EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.
_For One Year._
LYMAN ABBOTT.
A. S. BARNES.
J. R. DANFORTH.
CLINTON B. FISK.
A. P. FOSTER.
_District Secretaries._
Rev. C. L. WOODWORTH, D.D., _21 Cong’l House, Boston_.
Rev. J. E. ROY, D.D., _151 Washington Street, Chicago_.
_Financial Secretary for Indian Missions._
Rev. CHARLES W. SHELTON.
_Field Superintendent._
Rev. C. J. RYDER, _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
_Bureau of Woman’s Work._
_Secretary_, Miss D. E. EMERSON, _56 Reade Street, N.Y._
* * * * *
COMMUNICATIONS
Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the
Corresponding Secretaries; those relating to the collecting fields,
to Rev. James Powell, D.D., or to the District 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.
* * * * *
THE
AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
* * * * *
VOL. XLI. SEPTEMBER, 1887. No. 9.
* * * * *
American Missionary Association.
* * * * *
For notice of Annual Meeting see last page of cover.
* * * * *
The present number of the MISSIONARY is eight pages larger than
usual. We devote it chiefly to a broadside on Georgia’s Teachers’
Chain-Gang Bill. The importance of the subject warrants it.
Valuable matter is crowded out in consequence.
* * * * *
We have again reached the last month of our fiscal year. What our
friends do this month will determine whether the year closes with
a debt. The receipts for July, which we publish in this number,
are not pleasant to look at. As compared with the July receipts
last year, they are nearly seventeen thousand dollars less, and
the total receipts for the year from churches and individuals, as
compared with the total receipts at the same time the preceding
year, are nearly twenty thousand dollars less. Dr. Dana’s Fourth of
July appeal, and Miss Auld’s appeal to the ladies last year, will
in part account for the falling off. The excessively warm weather
during July, greatly reducing the congregations, has doubtless
had an influence. But whatever the cause, our receipts are behind
to an extent that threatens injury to our work, and this month is
the last we have in which to ward off the double evil—debt and
curtailment of work. What we do must be done quickly.
We invite our friends to serious thoughtfulness preceding action.
They know better what to do than we can advise. We earnestly plead
for the co-operating help of every one of them.
(1) We solicit a personal contribution from all who are able to
give, and the influence of word and pen from all who can induce
others to make a contribution. Please bring our needs to the
attention of the prayer-meeting, the missionary concert and the
Sabbath congregation.
(2) We request all churches that have made us no contribution
during the year, (and there are some who have made us no
contribution for several years), to be sure and give us a
contribution this month. You see the work of the American
Missionary Association is to be benefited or injured all through
next year by what the churches do this month.
Friends, what answer will you make to this statement of facts we
lay before you? You know that enemies of our work in the South are
proposing the chain-gang for our teachers. They are not satisfied
with ostracizing them from society, they propose to punish them as
criminals because they preach the gospel to the poor and befriend
the oppressed. Will you allow the work to suffer in the day when it
is assailed? Must we retrench, cut down, withdraw, at such a time
as this? We cannot believe that our friends will sanction it. Let
there be this month such a rally to the defense and maintenance of
our God-appointed mission as was never known in all our history.
Let everybody have a chance to give, and let everybody give, be it
much or little.
* * * * *
A poor colored woman, living near one of our chartered
institutions, and taking a deep interest in the education of its
students, has recently given her little home, paid for by savings
from small wages, to this institution for the benefit of its
students. This is larger than some of the first ministerial gifts
to Harvard University, and is a good omen and prophecy.
* * * * *
The name of California is so much associated with the idea of gold
that it is easy to imagine that it is a wealthy State. And it _is_
wealthy. How easy to think the next thought; being wealthy it ought
to do more for mission work within its borders. That, however, does
not prove that it will or that it can be reasonably expected to do
more. If only the wealth was in the hands of Christian people—ah,
yes, _if only_. Please find Rev. Mr. Pond’s article on another page
and read it. His facts are unquestioned and his meditations will
bear meditation.
* * * * *
Mr. Yan Phou Lee, the young Chinese gentleman who was graduated
by Yale College in its last class, delivered an address on the
occasion of his graduation that elicited the hearty applause of
those who heard it, and the widespread favorable comment of the
press, secular and religious. Our readers will find this address on
another page. Mr. Lee shows himself thoroughly competent to discuss
the Chinese question. His words should have a wide reading. Mr. Lee
expects to attend our Annual Meeting, at Portland, and we shall
hope to hear from him again.
* * * * *
The _Christian Mirror_, Portland, Me., Rev. I. P. Warren, D.D.,
editor, had in one of its issues not long since a rousing editorial
on the approaching meeting of the A. M. A. in Portland. It predicts
a meeting “of much interest both because of the work itself and
the eminence of many of the persons whom it will bring hither,” and
closes with the earnest advice, “Let all the friends of humanity
lay their plans to attend.”
* * * * *
The _Savannah News_, speaking of the Glenn Bill, has the following
to say:
“Perhaps it may teach a lesson to the over-zealous individuals in
the North who use their money in efforts to bring about social
equality in the South through the schools.”
We regret to have such sentiments promulgated. They are utterly
misrepresentative. The bugbear of “social equality” so distorts the
vision of our Southern friends that they seem incapable of seeing
things as they are. “Over-zealous individuals in the North” have
helped Georgia through their missionary schools in a way that has
given inspiration and progress to education, religion, morality and
industry all over the State, especially among colored people. They
deserve thanks, not misrepresentative sneers.
* * * * *
THINGS TO BE REMEMBERED—NO 4.
_The Duty_: To preach the Gospel to every creature, in the shortest
possible time, is the duty laid upon the church by the last
command of her King. The part of the work assigned to us is to be
determined by our surroundings, and especially by our opportunities
to reach the unsaved races of men. We are bound to put in our labor
where it will go farthest and move greatest masses of men towards
God. If we find that the “dark lands” can best be reached through
their children on these shores, then must we seek and save the
children for the sake of their kindred.
Take now the map of the world and turn to Asia; the merest
glance shows that our nearest point to that greatest of the
World’s divisions is the California coast. On that coast the old
civilization and the new stand face to face. There, too, meet the
old Paganism and the newer Christianity, and there, _emphatically_,
will be the battle-ground between the past and the present, the
false and the true. As Christian men we mean to regenerate the
Asiatic continent, and in particular the Mongolian race. If our
Bibles left us in doubt our geographies would show that the Pacific
coast was the spot on which to initiate a Christian movement
for the capture of China. And anyone can see that Paganism and
Christianity are now in contact on that coast, and one or the
other will soon be master. If only for the honor of our faith,
we must accept the contest and abide the issue. The capture of
the thousands of her children in this land means the capture of
the Empire of China. The stake is too immense to be treated with
indifference. The prize to be won involves mighty races and is
offered to us alone. To secure it is to cover ourselves with glory;
to decline it is to cover ourselves with guilt and shame.
If with united heart and hand we bent ourselves to the task, how
easily we might absorb the Chinese into the life of the nation
and into the faith of the churches. And then, when they all went
back—as they all intend to do—they would bear with them the new
thoughts and the new life to become the regenerating leaven for
their continent. If we give them the Gospel, accompanied by the
renewing energy of the Holy Ghost, they will return in the power of
the Highest to save their people.
And, now, look to Africa—barbarous, wretched, and apparently
hopeless. But, lo, within our own borders are seven millions of her
sons and daughters, born into our civilization, already feeling
the quickening forces of our learning and our faith. Who touches
the African race as we do, or who can so influence the African
mind and heart? Here are the African souls that are best fitted to
regenerate the African race. These young Christian scholars are a
hundred years in advance of anything we can find in Africa. And
are they not the men to be organized into a mission to save their
fatherland? We are related to Africa as no other nation on the
globe is; touch more of its people and control more of the African
heart and mind. This is our special opportunity and puts us under
obligation to move upon the African race with all the forces of
light and truth at our command.
The whole matter is in a nutshell and may be summed up thus: We
have the power to preach the Gospel to every Chinaman, every
Indian, and every Negro in the land, and having the power, we are
in duty bound to use it.
Did we do this, our simplest duty, these people in turn would have
the power to preach the Gospel to all the millions of their own
countrymen. Nothing can be plainer. Then why do we hesitate to
muster the forces and put these races in training for Christ and
the salvation of their own lands? The _opportunity_ to do this
work brings with it the obligation to do it. But when it is added
to this that we _alone_ can do it in the way suggested, and in the
only way that seems to make its near and easy achievement possible,
there is no excuse for a moment’s delay. If we have men and money
enough to go after these races in foreign lands, we certainly
cannot lack means to provide for them here. To us _alone_ is given
this privilege of preaching this Gospel _to the world_ at our own
doors. And while the best statesmanship of the country is tasked to
show how we may deal with these races for _our_ highest good, the
church of God is set to the task of showing how we may deal with
them so as to secure the speediest regeneration of the yet unsaved
continents.
The American Missionary Association believes that this result will
be soonest realized by at once bringing these children of theirs
under the full light and power of the Gospel. And it believes that
the interest of this land and of those lands will be best promoted
by throwing among those populations a Christian force so large
that not one shall fail to hear of Christ. To reach one in twenty
or thirty is to trifle with the whole problem. Nothing short of
reaching every soul, or making it possible for every soul _to be_
reached with the power of the Gospel, will be adequate.
The way is all open; we can see clear through to the end. The
question is pressed upon us and we must answer distinctly whether
we will accept this opportunity to save China and Africa, or
whether we will decline the offer and withhold the bread of life.
C. L. WOODWORTH.
* * * * *
THE GLENN BILL IN THE GEORGIA LEGISLATURE.
This infamous bill was passed by the lower house of the Georgia
Legislature by a vote of 128 (all white) to 2 (colored), the only
colored men in the house. The only speech made in favor of the bill
was by Glenn, its author. The two colored men were the only ones to
speak against it.
TEXT OF THE BILL.
A bill to be entitled, An Act to regulate the manner of conducting
educational institutions in this State and to protect the rights of
colored and white people and to provide penalties for the violation
of the provisions of this act and for other purposes.
Sec. 1.—Be it enacted that from and after the passage of this
act no school, college or educational institution in this State
conducted for the education and training of colored people shall
matriculate or receive as a pupil any white person, nor shall
any school, college or educational institution conducted for the
training of white receive or matriculate any colored person as
pupil, nor shall any school, college or educational institution
receive or matriculate both white and colored persons.
Sec. 2.—Be it further enacted that any teacher or manager or
controller of either of such institutions violating the provisions
of this act shall be punished as prescribed in section 4,310 of the
Code. If such institution be a chartered one, then not only the
teachers thereof but the president, secretary and members of the
board of trustees, or other persons filling corresponding offices,
who shall knowingly permit the same to be violated, shall be
subject to indictment and punishment as aforesaid.
Sec. 3.—Be it enacted that all laws and parts of laws in conflict
with, this act be, and the same are, hereby repealed.
Section 4,310 of the Code is as follows:—
Accessories after the fact, except where it is otherwise ordered
in this Code, shall be punished by a fine not to exceed $1,000,
imprisonment not to exceed six months, to work in a chain-gang on
the public works not to exceed twelve months, and any one or more
of these punishments may be ordered in the discretion of the judge.
WHY THE BILL WAS INTRODUCED.
A correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, states the case as
follows:
“The bill is aimed against Atlanta University. But the University
is not the cause of it. It is merely the occasion. The cause is the
wicked anti-Christian caste-spirit among the white people of the
State. To understand the situation a few facts need to be stated:
“In 1867 the American Missionary Association secured a charter
for the Atlanta University, and founded that institution for the
education of colored youth. But the well-known principles of the
Association, admitting no distinctions on the ground of color,
forbade the closing of its doors to any worthy student who might
apply for admission. The money to start that school, buy the
grounds, erect the buildings, furnish them, and make improvements,
was all contributed by benevolent people at the North. Into the
grounds and buildings as they stand to-day there have been put
something over $150,000—every cent of it contributed by friends
in the North. In addition to this, Northern contributors have
given toward the running expenses of the institution on an average
since 1867 about $10,000 a year. That is to say, Christian people
at the North have given the State of Georgia to help educate her
children in this one institution something over $350,000! But the
money is by far the smallest part of the contribution. The culture,
piety, noble character and consecration of the teachers, graduates
of Northern colleges and normal schools, have made the Atlanta
University a model school to imitate and a constant inspiration to
the development of the educational interest of the State. There
have been, however, for several years past, a few white pupils
in the school. These were the children of the professors and in
one instance a child of a missionary of the American Missionary
Association. The reasons for the presence of these white pupils
were three: (1) The principles on which the institution was
founded; (2) The fact that there was no school in Atlanta where
the children could receive as thorough training and discipline,
and (3) The sentiment of the people against “nigger teachers” was
such that to send the children to the white schools would have been
to subject them to ostracism and insult. If it were not for the
first two reasons, the last would not count for much. Ostracism
and insult are the condemnation of those who inflict; the honor of
those who suffer.
“But the answer is not yet complete. In the distribution of a
national grant of public lands for education in the several States
made by Congress in 1862, under the lead of Senator Morrill, of
Vermont, Georgia received 270,000 scrip, the interest on which
amounts to something over $16,000 a year. And what did the State of
Georgia do with it? Appropriated it to its white State University
at Athens. With nearly one-half of its population colored, it
took the Nation’s gift for the benefit of the whole State and put
it where the colored people could have no share in it whatever.
Somebody discovered that this was clearly a misappropriation of
funds, and that if the United States Congress should learn of
it there would probably be ‘music in the air’ of a kind Georgia
would not like to hear, and so the State Legislature ‘generously’
voted that it would appropriate $8,000 a year for the education of
colored youth in the State! And this money, the gift of the United
States to Georgia, was always spoken of as a State appropriation
and quoted as an evidence of the wonderful interest the State
takes in negro education. But what would $8,000 a year accomplish
for the training of teachers to supply the wants of the 725,000
colored people in Georgia? How far would it go in the purchase of
grounds, erection and equipment of buildings and the salaries of
teachers? It is simply laughable to ask the question. But here was
an institution at hand, grounds, buildings, equipments, teachers,
everything in operation. Having been placed by the American
Missionary Association in the hands of its own Board of Trustees
and being undenominational and unsectarian in all respects, why
not appropriate the money to this school? The State Legislature
appointed a committee to look into the matter. The committee
visited the school, were profoundly impressed with its excellence,
and unanimously reported in favor of having the appropriation go to
the school. Every year since then the appropriation of that $8,000
has gone to the University. Every year since then the reports
of the State Examiners have been highly eulogistic. They have
admitted, often with astonishment, the splendid educational work
done there. The admission was forced that this was, on the whole,
the best school in the State. The contrast between the discipline
and training in it, and that found in the white State University,
was too great not to be noticed.
“But this year the Examiners discovered that there were a few
white children, the children of the professors, and the child of
the missionary already referred to, in the school, and they have
become righteously indignant over their presence. The money, say
they, was given exclusively for the education of colored pupils,
and behold, some white pupils are receiving benefit from it!
Besides it is co-education of the races, and that the State of
Georgia will not tolerate! It will introduce ‘Social Equality’ and
‘Miscegenation,’ and ‘Miscegenation of Ideas!’ And these are the
reasons why this bill has been brought forward. Strange that they
were not discovered before, for they have all been in existence
ever since the appropriation was first made, and they were known to
be existing by every State committee that has visited the school.”
_The Reasons are only Pretenses._
A correspondent in the _Advance_ handles these reasons as follows:
“1. As to ‘misappropriation.’ The last Legislative committee
noticed, with feigned horror, that there were among the students
in the Atlanta University three or four of the children of the
professors, who recited in Geometry, Greek, Latin, etc., in the
same classes with colored pupils. But while the Atlanta University
receives $8,000 a year from the State, it receives $19,000 a
year from Northern sources. When a mal-administrator wishes to
save his mal-administration from coming under legal courts, it is
an interesting spectacle to see him pose, on the point of honor,
crying out, ‘Misappropriation!’ to the men who not only administer
every dollar to the purpose for which it was given, but add to
every dollar two dollars more, kindly given them by benevolent
friends for that purpose! Misappropriation, indeed!
“2. ‘Social Equality.’ There is no such thing, as the Southerners
define it, outside their own imaginations. It is the biggest
bugbear that ever frightened respectable minds. If it be a fact
that God has made of one blood all mankind, and that Jesus
Christ is our common Elder Brother, and we all are, or may be,
the children of God, then this caste-mania, which dominates the
Southern mind so like an unclean spirit, is something as idiotic as
it is unchristian.
“3. ‘Miscegenation.’ It is time, we admit, that Georgia wake
up to this evil. She ought to have wakened to it more than a
hundred years ago. Atlanta University is not the offender. Had
the principles of that school always been regnant in Georgia,
there never would have been the evil. Georgians themselves are
the sinners. Their witnesses walk before them and are seen every
day. A hundred thousand light-colored negroes in Georgia proclaim
a hundred thousand white transgressions. It is high time Georgia
awoke on the subject of miscegenation. A colored transgressor is
quickly strung up to a tree. Why not hang the white transgressor?
A few hundred ‘white’ hangings would wonderfully clear up the
moral atmosphere down there and get things in good shape for a
thorough-going, anti-miscegenation law. Now that Georgia forces
herself under the gaze of the civilized world through this action
of her Legislature, the decent opinion of mankind calls on them
to put a stop to this wickedness within her borders. Make every
colored woman who gives birth to a light-colored child disclose the
father, and then hang him. Enforce this law as faithfully against
the offender of one color as the offender of the other. It is
always well to shoot in the direction of the game.
“4. ‘Miscegenation of Ideas.’ The sagacious patriots of the
Georgia Legislature speak of ‘miscegenation of ideas’ as something
particularly horrible; something almost as bad as the other kind.
What they mean by this they do not explain; should they attempt to
explain it, all the world outside the white South would laugh them
to scorn. They will themselves live to grow ashamed of it. It is
too stupid to awaken any mirth, too ridiculous for sober answer,
too essentially mean in the spirit and motive of it for anything
but contempt and pity. That such a measure as this chain-gang law
for Christian teachers could be received with such favor in a
State like Georgia, is one of the most dismal signs of the time,
or rather signs of the place, that has come to light during the
past ten years. But it will fail; yet the curse and stigma of it
will long remain to plague those in that State who have any moral
sensibility left.
“At the bottom of this miserable and cruel caste-prejudice is
jealousy—jealousy of the rising colored man.”
THE CHAIN-GANG.
It is a singular coincidence that this very Legislature, whose
lower house has passed this bill to punish Christian teachers
for allowing their own children to recite with colored children
in the class-room by putting them into the chain-gang, is by a
committee investigating the State penitentiary system, pronounced
by competent prison reformers to be “perhaps the vilest on earth.”
There are some good people in Georgia who want to see the barbarous
system exposed and abolished. On the other hand, the supporters
of the system are numerous and influential. The Georgia papers do
not have much to say about this subject, and probably for the same
reason that Russia don’t want the civilized world to know about
what is going on in Siberia. The people are afraid to have their
deeds of darkness brought to the light, but they are not all silent.
An Atlanta correspondent of the _New York World_, writing under
date of July 22d, describes the system as follows:
“The convicts of Georgia, numbering about sixteen hundred, the
negroes largely predominating over the whites, are confined in
no regular penitentiary. They are worked under State direction
and control, but are divided into three companies, known as
“Penitentiary Company No. 1,” etc. These companies take all
the convicts under a twenty years’ lease, the good, bad and
indifferent. The Lease Act originally prescribed certain work that
these convicts should do, the intention being to so regulate their
employment as to prevent them from being brought into competition
with free labor. Now, however, there is no class of work that the
convicts are not called upon to do. They work on railroads and
in coal mines; they cut pine timber for the saw mills; they are
employed about the mills in those places where skilled workmen are
generally employed; they make brick; they operate iron furnaces;
they constitute the labor in various manufactories; they work
upon plantations, and in every possible way they compete in every
industry with free labor.
“The lessees of the convicts change from time to time, men
selling their interest in the lease just as they would dispose
of their property in anything else. The lessees to-day are not
wholly and entirely the same lessees as operated the system at
the beginning. Senator Joseph E. Brown is one of the few original
lessees who still holds his interests. The changes have been many
and various, and so are the stories of outrages. Several years
ago children began to make their appearance in the penitentiary,
not because of any due process of law, but because of shocking
immoralities on the part of lessees and their subordinates. In one
camp where the principal lessee was a man named Alexander, since
dead, these scandals mostly originated. It was a difficult thing
to substantiate the charges, and the Legislature never made any
investigation. There were no white women in the penitentiary in
Georgia at the time, and perhaps the affair alluded to was not so
shocking to public opinion as it would otherwise have been.
“To-day there is only one white woman in the penitentiary in this
State. She is confined at the camp of the Chattahoochee Brick
Company, Penitentiary Company No. 3, about six miles from this
city. This poor woman, weak in intellect, untutored and unfamiliar
with the wickedness of the camps, has to be locked up and kept in
close confinement day and night, to prevent her being ruined. Since
the Legislature has shown a disposition to look into these matters,
the lessees of the camp at the brickyard have given the strictest
orders about this woman. Her door is constantly locked and the key
kept by the good wife of the principal boss, who allows no man to
cross her threshold, ‘Great heavens!’ ejaculated a member of the
House, when this circumstance was told him, ‘what sort of a system
must this be when such measures have to be devised?’”
“The lessees at various camps have been from time to time charged
with cruelty to their prisoners. A common charge has been working
them on Sunday; so it is common to hear of whipping them to death
for refusing to work on Sunday, or when they have been worn out
with fatigue. The charge of favoritism is so well established and
so generally admitted that it has ceased to be urged.
“The ‘Old Town Camp’ has a very bad reputation. Here most of
the serious charges have been laid, and here it was proved that
whipping-bosses positively whipped men to death.
“Another camp prolific of charges is that of State Senator Smith
in Oglethorpe County. He has been accused of working convicts on
Sunday, of shooting them down in cold blood, and an affair of honor
is now pending between Smith and Principal Physician Westmoreland,
of the penitentiary. Westmoreland accuses Smith of gross inhumanity
to the poor creatures under his charge, and dares him, or rather
invites him, to meet him on the field of honor for the various
false accusations and scandal that Smith has made against him.”
_Another Account._
Here is a part of the account which a reporter of the Augusta
_Chronicle_ gives of a convict camp, in Richmond County, which he
has recently visited on a tour of investigation for his paper.
“Leaving the hospital the reporter went into a barn 80 by 20,
divided into two compartments, and they divided by a 10 foot alley.
The barn would not be given as a resting-place to a beast that is
prized by its owner, as the rain or sun could easily gain admission
through the top, and the openings in the sides so affected the
house that it gave no protection from the weather. On looking into
this place it was horrible to realize that a commonwealth like the
State of Georgia would allow the offenders against her laws to be
kept in so dirty and filthy a place as that in which the eighty
convicts at the camp of the A. and K. Railroad are placed. Along
the narrow aisles in the barn smouldering fires were burning, and
on the beds sat the prisoners. All of the convicts were seen.
They begged that their names would not be used, for they would be
lashed if it were known that they told of the treatment. They state
that Captain Starns uses the lash freely. Several testify that,
overcome with the heat, they stopped to rest and were taken out
and whipped. Attention was called to the cruel whipping of Chuck
Cooper, a mulatto about twenty-five years old, who was quartered
in the hospital. The reporter, without being noticed, repaired to
the hospital, and, being assured that the guards were not near at
hand, Chuck Cooper disrobed himself and showed huge scars left from
the lash, the skin being badly lacerated. Returning to the barn
the reporter inquired of Mr. Smith the cause of the filthy beds on
which the convicts slept. They were caked in dirt and as black and
as filthy as could be imagined. Mr. Smith, the guard, admitted that
the blankets and bedding had not been washed for several months,
although Mr. Shubrick had notified Captain Starns, and he had
promised two months ago to have new straw put in the beds and have
them washed. ‘It is seven months,’ Smith said, ‘since we left the
brick-yard, and the bedding has not been touched since.’”
And this is the kind of place to which the Georgia Legislature is
ready to send the trustees and teachers of Atlanta University!
WHAT THE PRESS HAS TO SAY.
The press North and South has been roused by the introduction of
this bill as we have never known it to be before by the action of
any State Legislature. In the North it is practically unanimous in
condemnation, and for the most part in denunciation. Republican,
Democratic and Independent papers are, in this instance, found
united. They differ somewhat about the constitutional right of
a State to pass such a bill, but they all unite in pronouncing
the punishment attached to the Glenn Bill as “disgraceful,”
“outrageous,” “infamous,” “wicked.” In the South the colored papers
are all against the bill; the white papers, outside of Georgia,
somewhat divided, but in the main, so far as we can learn, for the
bill. In Georgia the white papers are for it. Were the editorials
on this subject by the press of the United States compiled and
published they would fill several large volumes. We quote from as
many as our space allows:
THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE.
When Mr. Grady made his glowing speech last winter to the Sons
of New England at Delmonico’s assembled, he probably did not
imagine that such a delightful illustration of the paternal
solicitude which the whites feel for the blacks in the Empire
State of the South was in store for us. What a pity he was
not aware of the boon in preparation! What sweet flowers of
rhetoric he would have twined around it! It would have made his
nomination for the Vice-Presidency certain.
It is possible that when the facts are known public sentiment
will make it appear advisable to drop this cheerful measure,
but we are assured upon excellent authority that at the present
moment the Georgia Legislature is disposed to pass it; and,
moreover, that Governor Gordon’s approval of a recent report
connected with the subject indicates a willingness on his
part to sign it. Many interesting points are involved in the
introduction of this measure, including its constitutionality,
and it is safe to say that they will all be discussed with
considerable animation before it takes its place on the
statute-book.
THE NEW YORK TIMES.
It is very hard to understand the animus of the recent attempts
to cripple or destroy this noble school (Atlanta University)
by Gov. Gordon and his followers. They have threatened to take
away the $8,000 a year of United States money, and a bill is
before the Legislature and has been reported favorably from
committee to punish with a year of the infamous chain-gang of
Georgia and with a fine of $1,000 the crime of some of the
white teachers in allowing their own children to enter the
classes they instruct. This has been a characteristic feature
of the school, and one that has contributed materially to its
phenomenal success in putting and keeping the negroes on their
best behavior. If some of the most intelligent and refined
white people are willing to face the bitter ostracism of the
South and work for their benefit to the utmost limit of their
strength—and sometimes, as in the case of the late lamented
President Ware, far beyond it—and besides all this put their
own children into the same classes with them, the negroes must
indeed be vile and thankless if it did not stimulate all that
is good and repress all that is bad in them.
It is certain that the sort of people sent out by the American
Missionary Association will not be deterred by ruffianism of
this sort from doing what they believe Christian duty requires.
What object Gov. Gordon and his abettors—and it looks very
much as if the silver-tongued Grady is among them—can have in
stirring up sectional bitterness in this way it is hard to see.
But the fact that such an outrage should be even proposed is
evidence that the awful lesson of the war as to the impolicy
of treating men and women as if they were mere animals has not
yet been learned by some who boast that they belong to the new
South. That it can be helpful to industrial development and
render a residence in Georgia inviting to the most desirable
Northern people no one who knows the facts can believe.
THE NEW YORK HERALD.
The Glenn Bill, which passed the Georgia House of
Representatives, has caused a great deal of hot-tempered
discussion. The constitution of the State is opposed to the
co-education of black and white children. All right. The people
of Georgia are on the ground and ought to know what is for
their best interest. If they see fit to afford educational
facilities to colored children in one school and the same
facilities for white children in another school, well and
good. And if they decree that white teachers shall teach white
children and colored teachers shall teach colored children,
nobody will shrug his shoulders. The object, which is to offer
a good common-school education to every child in the State,
will be attained.
To enact a law, however, that the white teacher who admits
to his class a colored boy or girl shall be punished in the
chain-gang for a period of twelve months, as related elsewhere,
is decidedly drastic. That seems to be a pretty heavy penalty
for a rather light offence. With a strong public opinion
opposed to co-education, such a desperate resort would seem to
be hardly necessary.
Colonel Glenn probably had some motive in the introduction of
the bill which is not visible to the naked eye. At any rate,
he committed a grave blunder, which in this case is almost
equal to a crime. The bill has gone to the Senate and will be
smothered there.
THE NEW YORK EVENING POST.
There is something very peculiar about the presentation of
a bill in the Georgia Legislature, making it a misdemeanor,
punishable with a fine of $1,000 and the chain-gang for one
year, for any teacher or trustee of any public or private
school in the State to allow any white pupils to attend a
colored school, or any colored pupils to attend a white school.
Georgia, like every other Southern State, and like many
Northern States until recent years, has always maintained
separate schools for the two races. The Constitution provides
for “a thorough system of common schools,” which “shall be
free to all citizens of the State, but separate schools shall
be provided for the white and colored races.” The wisdom of
this policy, in the present condition of public sentiment on
the race question throughout the South, is not doubted by any
intelligent man at the North. Public education could never
have been established if the attempt had been made by force to
bring the two races into the same school-room, and it would be
overthrown in a moment if mixed schools were to be ordered now.
The legality and the advisability of separate school systems
are, therefore, not to be questioned. But it is one thing to
provide that the races shall not mix in schools supported
by public taxation, and quite another thing to declare that
no school, however supported, shall teach whites and blacks
together without subjecting everybody responsible for this
policy to the risk of a year in the chain-gang. This is an
outrage of the very worst sort, for which no defense that is
even plausible has been made or can be made. It is simply an
outburst of race prejudice in its most offensive form.
* * * * *
The odd feature of the incident is that it occurs in Georgia,
which is in many respects one of the most progressive States
of the South, while Kentucky, which is in many respects one of
the most backward, has already conquered this silly prejudice.
When Berea College in Kentucky opened its doors to whites and
blacks alike, there was bitter local opposition, which went
beyond hard words, and it was as much as a man’s life was
worth, politically speaking, for him to show the slightest
favor to the institution. But as the years passed and none
of the threatened evils came to pass, Kentuckians gradually
concluded that they had been worrying themselves unnecessarily,
and at last a progressive Democrat was ready to take a part in
its anniversary exercises, as Judge Beckner did two years ago.
“Already in Kentucky,” says Prof. Wright of the College, in
his article on “Southern Illiteracy” in the last _Bibliotheca
Sacra_, “the former detestation of Berea has so far yielded
that Democratic aspirants for the Governorship speak on its
commencement platform.” No member of the Kentucky Legislature
in the year 1887 would venture to suggest the chain-gang for
teachers in a school which admitted pupils of both races, and
it is most anomalous to find the proposition seriously urged in
Georgia.
THE NEW YORK WORLD.
Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, the well-known Southern Methodist
preacher, who is now the manager of the Slater Fund, declares
himself opposed to the Educational bill of William C. Glenn.
He says the bill is unwise because it is unnecessary. People
vote for such bills not because they favor them, but because
they fear being charged with a leaning towards social equality.
He thanks God that he knows the white teachers whose children
attend the negro college, and he honors them fully as much as
he does his own sister, who is now engaged in missionary work
in China. There are only fourteen white children in colored
schools, and Georgia has no reason to be scared. He winds up
by saying: “There is a law in Georgia against intermarriage,
a law more violated, ten to one, if not in the letter in the
reality and spirit of it, than the law against mixed schools.
If now the Legislature will give us a law placing the parents
of mulatto children in the chain-gang it would be worth while.”
HARPER’S WEEKLY.
Such leaders as this school provides for their race cannot
be trained elsewhere in the State. The maintenance of the
University in full vigor is therefore for every reason, for
the common interest of the 817,000 white and of the 726,000
colored citizens, one of the most vitally desirable objects in
the State. The proposition to send the teachers and managers
to the chain-gang unless they expel their own children from
their schools is preposterous. The good sense of the State
should prevent the further prosecution of the scheme. Every
sensible citizen of Georgia would admit that nothing could
be more unwise than to stimulate hostility of race in the
same population by means of penal laws. Each race in Georgia
undoubtedly prefers separate schools for the present, but to
punish and disgrace the few persons who are indifferent to the
separation, and by that course to retard the indispensable
education of half the population, would be an unspeakable folly.
THE JERSEY CITY EVENING JOURNAL.
In Georgia there is still existing, as we read, a dread that
white people may be forced into miscegenation with negroes in
spite of themselves. The Georgian ought to know himself, and
it is droll to hear him pleading that some one will save him
from “marrying a nigger,” in spite of himself. The principal
objection to public or private schools, in which the two races
should be together, is that this would lead to intermarriages
of the races. Under pressure of this argument, the Georgia
House of Assembly has passed the bill making the teaching of
colored persons by white persons a penal offence. A State law
already forbids mixed public schools. The new law is intended
to prohibit white persons from teaching colored persons in
Sunday-schools and private educational institutions. The
condition of the Georgia white, liable at any moment to run
off and marry a negro, is indeed lamentable. And, joking
aside, does not such a state of things show how completely
uncured, how woefully unreconstructed are the average ex-rebel,
ex-slaveholding people of Georgia? Such a state of things as
this proves, that wise were those men who years ago urged
that only territorial government should be given to the
States just conquered from rebellion, and that they should so
remain governed until time sufficient should have elapsed to
eradicate all traces of the old semi-barbaric habits of their
people. A community which adopts such a law as that mentioned
is decidedly unfit to bear a State’s part in the general
Government of the Republic.
THE SPRINGFIELD REPUBLICAN.
The Glenn Bill in the Georgia Legislature, to impose a penalty
commensurate with a felony upon the teaching of persons of
the two races in any public or private school in the State,
is an outburst of barbaric sentiment which will do a vast
deal of harm. We may as well say at the outset that we do not
favor co-education of the races at the South, so long as the
people there do not want it. In Massachusetts, white and black
children attend the same school, and are treated just the same.
If half or more of our population were colored, we do not
doubt it would be a different question, but we do not see that
the mingling of youth at school produces any social mixing,
or mixture of races. At the South, where there is a large
body of each race, separate schools and institutions are well
enough, but separate streets, railroad cars, ferry-boats and
other public utilities would be a ridiculous and uncalled-for
extension of the effort to separate the races.
While a State may plainly indicate its policy by providing
separate schools for the two races, and assigning the colored
youth to one and the white to the other, to make it a felony
for any person to teach youth of different races together, is
essentially barbarous, more barbarous than Turkey.
The great Southern excuse for such doings is that the social
intercourse of the races is against nature. Very well; if it
is against nature, let nature take care of the problem. But
the bald and naked fact is that while the South is dreadfully
sensitive about the appearance of the two races in the same
parlor, or school-room, or opera house, or in the same
Episcopal Convention, it is profoundly indifferent to their
association together immorally.
Now if the State of Georgia proposes to condemn the Northern
men who have gone there to teach, to the chain-gang, for
instructing their own children in the classes, it will be
guilty of a ridiculous display of race feeling and petty
insularity, of a fine exhibition of ingratitude, and of a
political blunder of some magnitude. We trust Gov. Gordon, who
has been about the world a little, may be able to view this
matter in a broader light than the backwoods members of the
Legislature.
THE BOSTON EVENING TRAVELLER.
It is possible that the aroused public sentiment of the nation
may force the Legislature to drop this shameful, barbarous
measure, but nothing short of this will. This is the Empire
State of the South—the New South which Editor Grady so
eloquently described last Forefathers’ Day in New York, about
which so much gush and sentiment have been spoken and written.
The question cannot help suggesting itself, whether a little
less of boastful sentiment and a little more of civilized
humanity would not become the much-talked-of New South.
THE PHILADELPHIA PRESS.