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JOHN JASPER
The Unmatched Negro
Philosopher and Preacher
By
WILLIAM E. HATCHER, LL. D.
[Illustration: logo]
NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO
Fleming H. Revell Company
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
Copyright, 1908, by
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 7
I. JASPER PRESENTED 15
II. JASPER HAS A THRILLING CONVERSION 23
III. HOW JASPER GOT HIS SCHOOLING 30
IV. THE SLAVE PREACHER 36
V. “WHAR SIN KUM FRUM?” 47
VI. JASPER SET FREE 58
VII. THE PICTURE-MAKER 65
VIII. JASPER’S STAR WITNESS 72
IX. JASPER’S SERMON ON “DEM SEBUN WIMMIN” 89
X. JASPER GLIMPSED UNDER VARIOUS LIGHTS 94
XI. SERMON:--THE STONE CUT OUT OF THE MOUNTAIN 108
XII. FACTS CONCERNING THE SERMON ON THE SUN 121
XIII. THE SUN DO MOVE 133
XIV. ONE JASPER DAY IN THE SPRING TIME OF 1878 150
XV. JASPER’S PICTURE OF HEAVEN 174
INTRODUCTION
Reader; stay a moment. A word with you before you begin to sample this
book. We will tell you some things in advance, which may help you to
decide whether it is worth while to read any further. These pages
deal with a negro, and are not designed either to help or to hurt
the negro race. They have only to do with one man. He was one of a
class,--without pedigree, and really without successors, except that he
was so dominant and infectious that numbers of people affected his ways
and dreamed that they were one of his sort. As a fact, they were simply
of another and of a baser sort.
The man in question was a negro, and if you cannot appreciate greatness
in a black skin you would do well to turn your thoughts into some other
channel. Moreover, he was a negro covered over with ante bellum habits
and ways of doing. He lived forty years before the war and for about
forty years after it. He grew wonderfully as a freeman; but he never
grew away from the tastes, dialects, and manners of the bondage times.
He was a man left over from the old régime and never got infected with
the new order. The air of the educated negro preacher didn’t set well
upon him. The raw scholarship of the new “ish,” as he called it, was
sounding brass to him. As a fact, the new generation of negro preachers
sent out by the schools drew back from this man. They branded him as
an anachronism, and felt that his presence in the pulpit was a shock
to religion and an offense to the ministry; and yet not one of them
ever attained the celebrity or achieved the results which came to this
unlettered and grievously ungrammatical son of Africa.
But do not be afraid that you are to be fooled into the fanatical camp.
This story comes from the pen of a Virginian who claims no exemption
from Southern prejudices and feels no call to sound the praises of the
negro race. Indeed, he never intended to write what is contained within
the covers of this book. It grew up spontaneously and most of the
contents were written before the book was thought of.
It is, perhaps, too much to expect that the meddlers with books will
take the _ipse dixit_ of an unaccredited stranger. They ought not to do
it: they are not asked to do it. They can go on about their business,
if they prefer; but if they do, they will miss the story of the
incomparable negro of the South. This is said with sobriety and after a
half century spent in close observation of the negro race.
More than that, the writer of this never had any intention of
bothering with this man when he first loomed up into notoriety. He got
drawn in unexpectedly. He heard that there was a marvel of a man “over
in Africa,” a not too savoury portion of Richmond, Virginia,--and one
Sunday afternoon in company with a Scot-Irishman, who was a scholar
and a critic, with a strong leaning towards ridicule, he went to hear
him preach. Shades of our Anglo-Saxon fathers! Did mortal lips ever
gush with such torrents of horrible English! Hardly a word came out
clothed and in its right mind. And gestures! He circled around the
pulpit with his ankle in his hand; and laughed and sang and shouted
and acted about a dozen characters within the space of three minutes.
Meanwhile, in spite of these things, he was pouring out a gospel
sermon, red hot, full of love, full of invective, full of tenderness,
full of bitterness, full of tears, full of every passion that ever
flamed in the human breast. He was a theatre within himself, with the
stage crowded with actors. He was a battle-field;--himself the general,
the staff, the officers, the common soldiery, the thundering artillery
and the rattling musketry. He was the preacher; likewise the church
and the choir and the deacons and the congregation. The Scot-Irishman
surrendered in fifteen minutes after the affair commenced, but the
other man was hard-hearted and stubborn and refused to commit himself.
He preferred to wait until he got out of doors and let the wind blow
on him and see what was left. He determined to go again; and he went
and kept going, off and on, for twenty years. That was before the negro
became a national figure. It was before he startled his race with his
philosophy as to the rotation of the sun. It was before he became a
lecturer and a sensation, sought after from all parts of the country.
Then it was that he captured the Scot-Irish and the other man also.
What is written here constitutes the gatherings of nearly a quarter
of a century, and, frankly speaking, is a tribute to the brother in
black,--the one unmatched, unapproachable, and wonderful brother.
But possibly the reader is of the practical sort. He would like to
get the worldly view of this African genius and to find out of what
stuff he was made. Very well; he will be gratified! Newspapers are
heartlessly practical. They are grudging of editorial commendation, and
in Richmond, at the period, they were sparing of references of any kind
to negroes. You could hardly expect them to say anything commendatory
of a negro, if he was a negro, with odd and impossible notions. Now
this man was of that very sort. He got it into his big skull that the
earth was flat, and that the sun rotated;--a scientific absurdity! But
you see he proved it by the Bible. He ransacked the whole book and got
up ever so many passages. He took them just as he found them. It never
occurred to him that the Bible was not dealing with natural science,
and that it was written in an age and country when astronomy was
unknown and therefore written in the language of the time. Intelligent
people understand this very well, but this miracle of his race was
behind his era. He took the Bible literally, and, with it in hand, he
fought his battles about the sun. Literally, but not scientifically, he
proved his position, and he gave some of his devout antagonists a world
of botheration by the tenacity with which he held to his views and the
power with which he stated his case. Scientifically, he was one of the
ancients, but that did not interfere with his piety and did not at all
eclipse his views. His perfect honesty was most apparent in all of his
contentions; and, while some laughed at what they called his vagaries,
those who knew him best respected him none the less, but rather the
more, for his astronomical combat. There was something in his love of
the Bible, his faith in every letter of it, and his courage, that drew
to him the good will and lofty respect of uncounted thousands and,
probably, it might be said, of uncounted millions.
Now when this man died it was as the fall of a tower. It was a crash,
heard and felt farther than was the collapse of the famous tower at
Venice. If the dubious, undecided reader has not broken down on the
road but has come this far, he is invited to look at the subjoined
editorial from _The Richmond Dispatch_, the leading morning paper of
Richmond, Va., which published at the time an article on this lofty
figure, now national in its proportions and imperishable in its fame,
when it bowed to the solemn edict of death.
(From _The Richmond Dispatch_)
“It is a sad coincidence that the destruction of the Jefferson
Hotel and the death of the Rev. John Jasper should have fallen
upon the same day. John Jasper was a Richmond Institution, as
surely so as was Major Ginter’s fine hotel. He was a national
character, and he and his philosophy were known from one end
of the land to the other. Some people have the impression that
John Jasper was famous simply because he flew in the face of the
scientists and declared that the sun moved. In one sense, that is
true, but it is also true that his fame was due, in great measure,
to a strong personality, to a deep, earnest conviction, as well as
to a devout Christian character. Some preachers might have made
this assertion about the sun’s motion without having attracted
any special attention. The people would have laughed over it,
and the incident would have passed by as a summer breeze. But
John Jasper made an impression upon his generation, because he
was sincerely and deeply in earnest in all that he said. No man
could talk with him in private, or listen to him from the pulpit,
without being thoroughly convinced of that fact. His implicit
trust in the Bible and everything in it, was beautiful and
impressive. He had no other lamp by which his feet were guided.
He had no other science, no other philosophy. He took the Bible
in its literal significance; he accepted it as the inspired word
of God; he trusted it with all his heart and soul and mind; he
believed nothing that was in conflict with the teachings of the
Bible--scientists and philosophers and theologians to the contrary
notwithstanding.
“‘They tried to make it appear,’ said he, in the last talk we
had with him on the subject, ‘that John Jasper was a fool and a
liar when he said that the sun moved. I paid no attention to it
at first, because I did not believe that the so-called scientists
were in earnest. I did not think that there was any man in the
world fool enough to believe that the sun did _not_ move, for
everybody had seen it move. But when I found that these so-called
scientists were in earnest I took down my old Bible and proved
that they, and not John Jasper, were the fools and the liars.’ And
there was no more doubt in his mind on that subject than there
was of his existence. John Jasper had the faith that removed
mountains. He knew the literal Bible as well as Bible scholars
did. He did not understand it from the scientific point of view,
but he knew its teachings and understood its spirit, and he
believed in it. He accepted it as the true word of God, and he
preached it with unction and with power.
“John Jasper became famous by accident, but he was a most
interesting man apart from his solar theory. He was a man of deep
convictions, a man with a purpose in life, a man who earnestly
desired to save souls for heaven. He followed his divine calling
with faithfulness, with a determination, as far as he could, to
make the ways of his God known unto men, His saving health among
all nations. And the Lord poured upon His servant, Jasper, ‘the
continual dew of His blessing.’”
I
JASPER PRESENTED
John Jasper, the negro preacher of Richmond, Virginia, stands
preëminent among the preachers of the negro race in the South. He was
for fifty years a slave, and a preacher during twenty-five years of
his slavery, and distinctly of the old plantation type. Freedom came
full-handed to him, but it did not in any notable degree change him in
his style, language, or manner of preaching. He was the ante bellum
preacher until eighty-nine years of age, when he preached his last
sermon on “Regeneration,” and with quiet dignity laid off his mortal
coil and entered the world invisible. He was the last of his type, and
we shall not look upon his like again. It has been my cherished purpose
for some time to embalm the memory of this extraordinary genius in some
form that would preserve it from oblivion. I would give to the American
people a picture of the God-made preacher who was great in his bondage
and became immortal in his freedom.
This is not to be done in biographic form, but rather in vagrant
articles which find their kinship only in the fact that they present
some distinct view of a man, hampered by early limitations, denied the
graces of culture, and cut off even from the advantages of a common
education, but who was munificently endowed by nature, filled with
vigour and self-reliance, and who achieved greatness in spite of almost
limitless adversities. I account him genuinely great among the sons of
men, but I am quite sure that the public can never apprehend the force
and gist of his rare manhood without first being made acquainted with
certain facts appertaining to his early life.
Jasper was born a slave. He grew up on a plantation and was a toiler in
the fields up to his manhood. When he came to Richmond, now grown to
a man, he was untutored, full of dangerous energies, almost gigantic
in his muscle, set on pleasure, and without the fear of God before his
eyes. From his own account of himself, he was fond of display, a gay
coxcomb among the women of his race, a fun-maker by nature, with a
self-assertion that made him a leader within the circles of his freedom.
We meet him first as one of the “hands” in the tobacco factory of
Mr. Samuel Hargrove, an enterprising and prosperous manufacturer in
the city of Richmond. Jasper occupied the obscure position of “a
stemmer,”--which means that his part was to take the well-cured tobacco
leaf and eliminate the stem, with a view to preparing what was left to
be worked into “the plug” which is the glory of the tobacco-chewer.
This position had one advantage for this quick-witted and alert young
slave. It threw him into contact with a multitude of his own race, and
as nature had made him a lover of his kind his social qualities found
ample scope for exercise. In his early days he went at a perilous pace
and found in the path of the sinful many fountains of common joy.
Indeed, he made evil things fearfully fascinating by the zestful and
remorseless way in which he indulged them.
It was always a joy renewed for him to tell the story of his
conversion. As described by him, his initial religious experiences,
while awfully mystical and solemn to him, were grotesque and ludicrous
enough. They partook of the extravagances of the times, yet were so
honest in their nature, and so soundly Scriptural in their doctrines,
and so reverential in their tone, that not even the most captious
sceptic could hear him tell of them, in his moments of exalted
inspiration, without feeling profoundly moved by them.
It ought to be borne in mind that this odd and forcible man was a
preacher in Richmond for a half century, and that during all that
time, whether in slavery or in freedom, he lived up to his religion,
maintaining his integrity, defying the unscrupulous efforts of jealous
foes to destroy him, and walking the high path of spotless and
incorruptible honour. Not that he was always popular among his race. He
was too decided, too aggressive, too intolerant towards meanness, and
too unpitying in his castigation of vice, to be popular. His life, in
the nature of the case, had to be a warfare, and it may be truly said
that he slept with his sword buckled on.
Emancipation did not turn his head. He was the same high-minded,
isolated, thoughtful Jasper. His way of preaching became an offense to
the “edicated” preachers of the new order, and with their new sense
of power these double-breasted, Prince-Albert-coated, high hat and
kid-gloved clergymen needed telescopes to look as far down as Jasper
was, to get a sight of him. They verily thought that it would be a
simple process to transfix him with their sneers, and flaunt their
new grandeurs before him, in order to annihilate him. Many of these
new-fledged preachers, who came from the schools to be pastors in
Richmond, resented Jasper’s prominence and fame. They felt that he was
a reproach to the race, and they did not fail to fling at him their
flippant sneers.
But Jasper’s mountain stood strong. He looked this new tribe of his
adversaries over and marked them as a calcimined and fictitious type
of culture. To him they were shop-made and unworthy of respect. They
called forth the storm of his indignant wrath. He opened his batteries
upon them, and, for quite a while, the thunder of his guns fairly
shook the steeples on the other negro churches of Richmond. And yet it
will never do to think of him as the incarnation of a vindictive and
malevolent spirit. He dealt terrific blows, and it is hardly too much
to say that many of his adversaries found it necessary to get out of
the range of his guns. But, after all, there was a predominant good
nature about him. His humour was inexhaustible, and irresistible as
well. If by his fiery denunciations he made his people ready to “fight
Philip,” he was quite apt before he finished to let fly some of his odd
comparisons, his laughable stories, or his humorous mimicries. He could
laugh off his own grievances, and could make his own people “take the
same medicine.”
Jasper was something of a hermit, given to seclusion, imperturbably
calm in his manner, quite ascetic in his tastes, and a cormorant in
his devouring study of the Bible. Naturally, Jasper was as proud as
Lucifer,--too proud to be egotistic and too candid and self-assertive
to affect a humility which he did not feel. He walked heights where
company was scarce, and seemed to love his solitude. Jasper was as
brave as a lion and possibly not a little proud of his bravery. He
fought in the open and set no traps for his adversaries. He believed in
himself,--felt the dignity of his position, and never let himself down
to what was little or unseemly.
The most remarkable fact in Jasper’s history is connected with his
extraordinary performances in connection with his tersely expressed
theory,--THE SUN DO MOVE! We would think in advance that any man who
would come forward to champion that view would be hooted out of court.
It was not so with Jasper. His bearing through all that excitement was
so dignified, so sincere, so consistent and heroic, that he actually
did win the rank of a true philosopher. This result, so surprising,
is possibly the most handsome tribute to his inherent excellence and
nobility of character. One could not fail to see that his fight on
a technical question was so manifestly devout, so filled with zeal
for the honour of religion, and so courageous in the presence of
overwhelming odds, that those who did not agree with him learned to
love and honour him.
The sensation which he awakened fairly flew around the country. It is
said that he preached the sermon 250 times, and it would be hard to
estimate how many thousands of people heard him. The papers, religious
and secular, had much to say about him. Many of them published his
sermons, some of them at first plying him with derision, but about
all of them rounding up with the admission of a good deal of faith in
Jasper. So vast was his popularity that a mercenary syndicate once
undertook to traffic on his popularity by sending him forth as a public
lecturer. The movement proved weak on its feet, and after a little
travel he hobbled back richer in experience than in purse.
As seen in the pulpit or in the street Jasper was an odd picture to
look upon. His figure was uncouth; he was rather loosely put together;
his limbs were fearfully long and his body strikingly short,--a sort
of nexus to hold his head and limbs in place. He was black, but his
face saved him. It was open, luminous, thoughtful, and in moments
of animation it glowed with a radiance and exultation that was most
attractive.
Jasper’s career as a preacher after the war was a poem. The story is
found later on and marks him as a man of rare originality, and of
patience born of a better world. He left a church almost entirely
the creation of his own productive life, that holds a high rank in
Richmond and that time will find it hard to estrange from his spirit
and influence. For quite a while he was hardly on coöperative terms
with the neighbouring churches, and it is possible that he ought to
share somewhat in the responsibility for the estrangement which so
long existed;--though it might be safely said that if they had left
Jasper alone he would not have bothered them. Let it be said that the
animosities of those days gradually gave away to the gracious and
softening influence of time, and, when his end came, all the churches
and ministers of the city most cordially and lovingly united in
honouring his memory.
It may betoken the regard in which Jasper was held by the white people
if I should be frank enough to say that I was the pastor of the Grace
Street Baptist Church, one of the largest ecclesiastical bodies in the
city at the time of Jasper’s death, and the simple announcement in
the morning papers that I would deliver an address in honour of this
negro preacher who had been carried to his grave during the previous
week brought together a representative and deeply sympathetic audience
which overflowed the largest church auditorium in the city. With the
utmost affection and warmth I put forth my lofty appreciation of this
wonderful prince of his tribe, and so far as known there was never an
adverse criticism offered as to the propriety or justice of the tribute
which was paid him.
It is of this unusual man, this prodigy of his race, and this eminent
type of the Christian negro, that the somewhat random articles of this
volume are to treat. His life jumped the common grooves and ran on
heights not often trod. His life went by bounds and gave surprises with
each succeeding leap.
II
JASPER HAS A THRILLING CONVERSION
Let us bear in mind that at the time of his conversion John Jasper
was a slave, illiterate and working in a tobacco factory in Richmond.
It need hardly be said that he shared the superstitions and indulged
in the extravagances of his race, and these in many cases have been
so blatant and unreasonable that they have caused some to doubt the
negro’s capacity for true religion. But from the beginning Jasper’s
religious experiences showed forth the Lord Jesus as their source and
centre. His thoughts went to the Cross. His hope was founded on the
sacrificial blood, and his noisy and rhapsodic demonstrations sounded a
distinct note in honour of his Redeemer.
Jasper’s conviction as to his call to the ministry was clear-cut
and intense. He believed that his call came straight from God. His
boast and glory was that he was a God-made preacher. In his fierce
warfares with the educated preachers of his race--“the new issue,”
as he contemptuously called them--he rested his claim on the ground
that God had put him into the ministry; and so reverential, so full of
noble assertion and so irresistibly eloquent was he in setting forth
his ministerial authority that even his most sceptical critics were
constrained to admit that, like John the Baptist, he was “a man sent
from God.”
And yet Jasper knew the human side of his call. It was a part of his
greatness that he could see truth in its relations and completeness,
and while often he presented one side of a truth, as if it were all
of it, he also saw the other side. With him a paradox was not a
contradiction. He gratefully recognized the human influences which
helped him to enter the ministry. While preaching one Sunday afternoon
Jasper suddenly stopped, his face lighted as with a vision, a rich
laugh rippled from his lips while his eyes flashed with soulful fire.
He then said, in a manner never to be reported: “Mars Sam Hargrove
called me to preach de Gospel--he was my old marster, and he started
me out wid my message.” Instantly the audience quivered with quickened
attention, for they knew at once that the man in the pulpit had
something great to tell.
“I was seekin’ God six long weeks--jes’ ’cause I was sich a fool I
couldn’t see de way. De Lord struck me fus’ on Cap’tal Squar’, an’ I
left thar badly crippled. One July mornin’ somethin’ happen’d. I was a
tobarker-stemmer--dat is, I took de tobarker leaf, an’ tor’d de stem
out, an’ dey won’t no one in dat fac’ry could beat me at dat work.
But dat mornin’ de stems wouldn’t come out to save me, an’ I tor’d up
tobarker by de poun’ an’ flung it under de table. Fac’ is, bruthr’n,
de darkness of death was in my soul dat mornin’. My sins was piled on
me like mount’ns; my feet was sinkin’ down to de reguns of despar, an’
I felt dat of all sinners I was de wust. I tho’t dat I would die right
den, an’ wid what I supposed was my lars breath I flung up to heav’n
a cry for mercy. ’Fore I kno’d it, de light broke; I was light as a
feather; my feet was on de mount’n; salvation rol’d like a flood thru
my soul, an’ I felt as if I could ’nock off de fact’ry roof wid my
shouts.
“But I sez to mysef, I gwine to hol’ still till dinner, an’ so I cried,
an’ laffed, an’ tore up de tobarker. Pres’ntly I looked up de table,
an’ dar was a old man--he luv me, an’ tried hard to lead me out de
darkness, an’ I slip roun’ to whar he was, an’ I sez in his ear as low
as I could: ‘Hallelujah; my soul is redeemed!’ Den I jump back quick
to my work, but after I once open my mouf it was hard to keep it shet
any mo’. ’Twan’ long ’fore I looked up de line agin, an’ dar was a good
ol’ woman dar dat knew all my sorrers, an’ had been prayin’ fur me all
de time. Der was no use er talkin’; I had to tell her, an’ so I skip
along up quiet as a breeze, an’ start’d to whisper in her ear, but just
den de holin-back straps of Jasper’s breachin’ broke, an’ what I tho’t
would be a whisper was loud enuf to be hearn clean ’cross Jeems River
to Manchester. One man sed he tho’t de factory was fallin’ down; all I
know’d I had raise my fust shout to de glory of my Redeemer.
“But for one thing thar would er been a jin’ral revival in de fact’ry
dat mornin’. Dat one thing was de overseer. He bulg’d into de room, an’
wid a voice dat sounded like he had his breakfus dat mornin’ on rasps
an’ files, bellowed out: ‘What’s all dis row ’bout?’ Somebody shouted
out dat John Jasper dun got religun, but dat didn’t wurk ’tall wid
de boss. He tell me to git back to my table, an’ as he had sumpthin’
in his hand dat looked ugly, it was no time fur makin’ fine pints,
so I sed: ‘Yes, sir, I will; I ain’t meant no harm; de fus taste of
salvation got de better un me, but I’ll git back to my work.’ An’ I
tell you I got back quick.
“Bout dat time Mars Sam he come out’n his orfis, an’ he say: ‘What’s de
matter out here?’ An’ I hear de overseer tellin’ him: ‘John Jasper kick
up a fuss, an’ say he dun got religun, but I dun fix him, an’ he got
back to his table.’ De devil tol’ me to hate de overseer dat mornin’,
but de luv of God was rollin’ thru my soul, an’ somehow I didn’t mind
what he sed.
“Little aft’r I hear Mars Sam tell de overseer he want to see Jasper.
Mars Sam was a good man; he was a Baptis’, an’ one of de hed men of
de old Fust Church down here, an’ I was glad when I hear Mars Sam say
he want to see me. When I git in his orfis, he say: ‘John, what was de
matter out dar jes’ now?’--and his voice was sof’ like, an’ it seem’d
to have a little song in it which play’d into my soul like an angel’s
harp. I sez to him: ‘Mars Sam, ever sence de fourth of July I ben
cryin’ after de Lord, six long weeks, an’ jes’ now out dar at de table
God tuk my sins away, an’ set my feet on a rock. I didn’t mean to make
no noise, Mars Sam, but ’fore I know’d it de fires broke out in my
soul, an’ I jes’ let go one shout to de glory of my Saviour.’
“Mars Sam was settin’ wid his eyes a little down to de flo’, an’ wid a
pritty quiv’r in his voice he say very slo’: ‘John, I b’leve dat way
myself. I luv de Saviour dat you have jes’ foun’, an’ I wan’ to tell
you dat I do’n complain ’cause you made de noise jes’ now as you did.’
Den Mars Sam did er thing dat nearly made me drop to de flo’. He git
out of his chair, an’ walk over to me and giv’ me his han’, and he
say: ‘John, I wish you mighty well. Your Saviour is mine, an’ we are
bruthers in de Lord.’ When he say dat, I turn ’round an’ put my arm
agin de wall, an’ held my mouf to keep from shoutin’. Mars Sam well
know de good he dun me.
“Art’r awhile he say: ‘John, did you tell eny of ’em in thar ’bout your
conversion?’ And I say: ‘Yes, Mars Sam, I tell ’em fore I kno’d it,
an’ I feel like tellin’ eberybody in de worl’ about it.’ Den he say:
‘John, you may tell it. Go back in dar an’ go up an’ down de tables,
an’ tell all of ’em. An’ den if you wan’ to, go up-stars an’ tell ’em
all ’bout it, an’ den down-stars an’ tell de hogshed men an’ de drivers
an’ everybody what de Lord has dun for yor.’
“By dis time Mars Sam’s face was rainin’ tears, an’ he say: ‘John,
you needn’ work no mo’ to-day. I giv’ you holiday. Aft’r you git thru
tellin’ it here at de fact’ry, go up to de house, an’ tell your folks;
go roun’ to your neighbours, an’ tell dem; go enywhere you wan’ to, an’
tell de good news. It’ll do you good, do dem good, an’ help to hon’r
your Lord an’ Saviour.’
“Oh, dat happy day! Can I ever forgit it? Dat was my conversion
mornin’, an’ dat day de Lord sent me out wid de good news of de
kingdom. For mo’ den forty years I’ve ben tellin’ de story. My step is
gittin’ ruther slo’, my voice breaks down, an’ sometimes I am awful
tired, but still I’m tellin’ it. My lips shall proclaim de dyin’ luv of
de Lam’ wid my las’ expirin’ breath.
“Ah, my dear ol’ marster! He sleeps out yonder in de ol’ cemetery, an’
in dis worl’ I shall see his face no mo’, but I don’t forgit him. He
give me a holiday, an’ sent me out to tell my friends what great things
God had dun for my soul. Oft’n as I preach I feel that I’m doin’ what
my ol’ marster tol’ me to do. If he was here now, I think he would
lif’ up dem kin’ black eyes of his, an’ say: ‘Dat’s right, John; still
tellin’ it; fly like de angel, an’ wherever you go carry de Gospel to
de people.’ Farewell, my ol’ marster, when I lan’ in de heav’nly city,
I’ll call at your mansion dat de Lord had ready for you when you got
dar, an’ I shall say: ‘Mars Sam, I did what you tol’ me, an’ many of
’em is comin’ up here wid da’ robes wash’d in de blood of de Lam’ dat
was led into de way by my preachin’, an’ as you started me I want you
to shar’ in de glory of da’ salvation.’ An’ I tell you what I reck’n,
dat when Mars Sam sees me, he’ll say: ‘John, call me marster no mo’:
we’re bruthers now, an’ we’ll live forever roun’ de throne of God.’”
This is Jasper’s story, but largely in his own broken words. When he
told it, it swept over the great crowd like a celestial gale. The
people seemed fascinated and transfigured. His homely way of putting
the Gospel came home to them. Let me add that his allusions to his old
master were in keeping with his kindly and conciliatory tone in all
that he had to say about the white people after the emancipation of
the slaves. He loved the white people, and among them his friends and
lovers were counted by the thousand.
III
HOW JASPER GOT HIS SCHOOLING
These chapters disclaim outright any pretension to biography. They
deal with a weird, indescribable and mysterious genius, standing out
in gloomy grandeur, and not needing the setting forth of ordinary
incidents. At the same time, when an extraordinary man comes along and
does masterful things, there be some who are ready to ask questions.
Was he educated? Well, yes, he was. He had rare educational advantages,
not in the schools; but what of that? A genius has no use for a school,
except so far as it teaches him the art of thinking. If we run back to
the boyhood of Jasper and look him over we find that he had, after all,
distinct educational advantages.
It is another case of a good mother. We know that her name was Nina,
and that she was the wife of Philip Jasper, and if tradition tells the
truth she was the mother of twenty-four children--a premature applicant
for the Rooseveltian prize. John was the last, and was not born until
two months after his father’s death. Truly grace as well as genius was
needed in his case, or he would have struck the wrong road.
That mother was the head of the working women on the Fluvanna farm and
learned to govern by reason of the position she held. Her appointment
bespoke her character, and her work improved it. Later on, she became
in another home the chief of the servant force in a rich family. It was
quite a good place. It brought her in contact with cultivated people
and the imitative quality in the negro helped her to learn the manners
and to imbibe the spirit of the lady. Later on still, she became a
nurse to look after the sick at the Negro Quarters. There she had to do
with doctors, medicines and counsellors and helpers. Add to all this,
she was a sober, thoughtful, godly woman, and you will quite soon reach
the conclusion that she was a very excellent teacher for John; and John
coming latest in the domestic procession found her rich in experience,
matured in motherliness, and enlarged in her outlook of life.
John’s father was a preacher. Harsh things, and some of them needlessly
false, are said of the fact that there were no negro preachers in the
times of the slaveholding. It is true, that the laws of the country did
not allow independent organizations of negroes, and negro preachers
were not allowed, except by the consent of their masters, to go abroad
preaching the Gospel. They could not accept pastoral charges, and were
hampered, as all must admit, by grievous restrictions, but there were
negro preachers in that day just the same,--scores of them, and in one
way and another they had many privileges and did good and effective
service. One thing about the negro preacher of the ante bellum era was
his high character. It is true that the owner of slaves was not in
all cases adapted to determine the moral character of the slave who
wanted to preach, and too often, it may be admitted, his prejudices
and self-interest may have ruled out some men who ought to have been
allowed to preach. It is a pity if this were true. But this strictness
had one advantage. When the master of a negro man allowed him to preach
it was an endorsement, acceptable and satisfactory, wherever the man
went. If they thought he was all right at home, he could pass muster
elsewhere.
Now, concerning John’s father, tradition has proved exceedingly
partial. It has glorified Tina the mother with fine extravagance,
but it has cut Philip unmercifully. John could get little out of his
father, for they were not contemporaries, and as his brothers and
sisters seemed to have been born for oblivion, we can trace little of
his distinction to the old household in Fluvanna.
But we dare say that Philip, the preacher, remembered chiefly because
he was a preacher, had something to do in a subtle way with John’s
training. Nor must we fail to remember that Jasper himself grew up
in contact with a fine old Virginia family. Fools there be many who
love to talk of the shattering of the old aristocracy of Virginia. The
“F.F.V.’s”[1] have been the sport of the vulgar, and their downfall
has been a tragedy which the envious greedily turned into a comedy.
But people ought to have some sense. They ought to see things in
their proper relation. They ought to know that in the atmosphere of
the old Virginia home the negroes, and especially those who served in
person the heads of the family, caught the cue of the gentleman and
the lady. I can stand on the streets of Richmond to-day and pick out
the coloured men and women who grew up in homes of refinement, and who
still bear about them the signs of it. Bent by age, and many of them
tortured by infirmity, they still bear the marks of their old masters.
They constitute a class quite apart from those of later times and
are unequalled by them. I rejoice in all the comforts and advantages
which have come to the negroes,--most heartily I thank heaven for
their freedom and for all that freedom has brought them; but I do not
hesitate to say that one of the losses was that contact with courtly,
dignified, and royal people which many of them had before the Civil
War. And even those on the plantations, while removed farther from the
lights of the great castles in which their masters lived, walked not in
darkness entirely, but unconsciously felt the transforming power of
those times.
John Jasper was himself an aristocrat. His mode of dress, his manner
of walking, his lofty dignity, all told the story. He received an
aristocratic education, and he never lost it. Besides this, he had a
most varied experience as a slave. He grew up on the farm, and knew
what it was to be a plantation hand. He learned to work in the tobacco
factory. He worked also in the foundries, and also served around the
houses of the families with whom he lived; for it must be understood
that after the breaking up of the Peachy family he changed owners and
lived in different places. These things enlarged his scope, and with
that keen desire to know things he learned at every turn of life.
After his conversion he became a passionate student. He acknowledges
one who sought to teach him to read, and after he became a preacher
he spelled out the Bible for himself. He was eager to hear other men
preach and to talk with those who were wiser than he. And so he kept on
learning as long as he lived, though of course he missed the help of
the schools, and never crossed the threshold of worldly science in his
pursuit of knowledge.
It may be well to say here that Jasper never lost his pride in white
people. He delighted to be with them. Thousands upon thousands went
to hear him, and while there was a strain of curiosity in many of them
there was an under-note of respect and kindliness which always thrilled
his heart and did him good. Time and again he spoke to me personally
of white people, and always with a beautiful appreciation. It is
noteworthy that the old man rode his high horse when his house was
partly filled with white people, and it would be no exaggeration to say
that not since the end of the war has any negro been so much loved or
so thoroughly believed in as John Jasper.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] First Families of Virginia.
IV
THE SLAVE PREACHER
It is as a preacher that John Jasper is most interesting. His
personality was notable and full of force anywhere, but the pulpit
was the stage of his chief performance. It is worth while to bear in
mind that he began to preach in 1839 and that was twenty-five years
before the coming of freedom. For a quarter of a century, therefore,
he was a preacher while yet a slave. His time, of course, under the
law belonged to his master, and under the laws of the period, he could
preach only under very serious limitations. He could go only when his
master said he might, and he could preach only when some white minister
or committee was present to see that things were conducted in an
orderly way. This is the hard way of stating the case, but there are
many ways of getting around such regulations. The man who could preach,
though a negro, rarely failed of an opportunity to preach. The man who
was fit for the work had friends who enabled him to “shy around” his
limitations.
There was one thing which the negro greatly insisted upon, and which
not even the most hard-hearted masters were ever quite willing to
deny them. They could never bear that their dead should be put away
without a funeral. Not that they expected, at the time of the burial,
to have the funeral service. Indeed, they did not desire it, and it
was never according to their notions. A funeral to them was a pageant.
It was a thing to be arranged for a long time ahead. It was to be
marked by the gathering of the kindred and friends from far and wide.
It was not satisfactory unless there was a vast and excitable crowd.
It usually meant an all-day meeting, and often a meeting in a grove,
and it drew white and black alike, sometimes almost in equal numbers.
Another demand in the case,--for the slaves knew how to make their
demands,--was that the negro preacher “should preach the funeral,” as
they called it. In things like this, the wishes of the slaves generally
prevailed. “The funeral” loomed up weeks in advance, and although
marked by sable garments, mournful manners and sorrowful outcries,
it had about it hints of an elaborate social function with festive
accompaniments. There was much staked on the fame of the officiating
brother. He must be one of their own colour, and a man of reputation.
They must have a man to plough up their emotional depths, and they must
have freedom to indulge in the extravagancies of their sorrow. These
demonstrations were their tribute to their dead and were expected to
be fully adequate to do honour to the family.
It was in this way that Jasper’s fame began. At first, his tempestuous,
ungrammatical eloquence was restricted to Richmond, and there it was
hedged in with many humbling limitations. But gradually the news
concerning this fiery and thrilling orator sifted itself into the
country, and many invitations came for him to officiate at country
funerals.
He was preëminently a funeral preacher. A negro funeral without an
uproar, without shouts and groans, without fainting women and shouting
men, without pictures of triumphant deathbeds and the judgment day, and
without the gates of heaven wide open and the subjects of the funeral
dressed in white and rejoicing around the throne of the Lamb, was no
funeral at all. Jasper was a master from the outset at this work.
One of his favourite texts, as a young preacher, was that which was
recorded in Revelations, sixth chapter, and second verse: “And I saw
and beheld a white horse; and he that sat upon him had a bow, and a
crown was given unto him, and he went forth conquering and to conquer.”
Before the torrent of his florid and spectacular eloquence the people
were swept down to the ground, and sometimes for hours many seemed to
be in trances, not a few lying as if they were dead.
Jasper’s first visit to the country as a preacher of which we have any
account was to Hanover County. A prominent and wealthy slaveholder
had the custom of allowing his servants to have imposing funerals,
when their kindred and friends died; but those services were always
conducted by a white minister. In some way the fame of Jasper had
penetrated that community, and one of the slaves asked his master to
let Jasper come and attend the funeral. But to this the master made
an objection. He knew nothing about Jasper, and did not believe that
any negro was capable of preaching the Gospel with good effect. This
negro was not discouraged by the refusal of the proprietor of the great
plantation to grant his request. He went out and collected a number
of most trustworthy and influential negro men and they came in a body
to his master and renewed the plea. They told him in their way about
what a great man Jasper was, how anxious they were to hear him, what a
comfort his presence would be to the afflicted family, and how thankful
they would be to have their request honoured. They won their point in
part. He said to them, as if yielding reluctantly, “very well, let him
come.” They however had something more to say. They knew Jasper would
need to have a good reason in order to get his master’s consent for
him to come, and they knew that Jasper would not come unless he came
under the invitation and protection of the white people, and therefore
they asked the gentleman if he would not write a letter inviting him to
come. Accordingly, in a spirit of compromise and courtesy very pleasing
to the coloured people, the letter was written and Jasper came.
The news of his expected coming spread like a flame. Not only the
country people in large numbers, but quite a few of the Richmond
people, made ready to attend the great occasion. Jasper went out in
a private conveyance, the distance not being great, and, in his kind
wish to take along as many friends as possible, he overloaded the
wagon and had a breakdown. The delay in his arrival was very long and
unexplained; but still the people lingered and beguiled the time with
informal religious services.
At length the Richmond celebrity appeared on the scene late in the
day. The desire to hear him was imperative, and John Jasper was equal
to the occasion. Late as the hour was, and wearied as were the people,
he spoke with overmastering power. The owner of the great company of
slaves on that plantation was among his hearers, and he could not
resist the spell of devout eloquence which poured from the lips of the
unscholared Jasper. It was a sermon from the heart, full of personal
passion and hot with gospel fervour, and the heart of the lord of
the plantation was powerfully moved. He undertook to engage Jasper to
preach on the succeeding Sunday and handed the blushing preacher quite
a substantial monetary token of his appreciation.
The day was accounted memorable by reason of the impression which
Jasper made. Indeed, Jasper was a master of assemblies. No politician
could handle a crowd with more consummate tact than he. He was the king
of hearts and could sway throngs as the wind shakes the trees.
There is a facetious story abroad among the negroes that in those days
Jasper went to Farmville to officiate on a funeral occasion where
quite a number of the dead were to have their virtues commemorated
and where their “mourning friends,” as Jasper in time came to call
them, were to be comforted. The news that Jasper was to be there went
out on the wings of the wind and vast throngs attended. Of course, a
white minister was present and understood that he was the master of
ceremonies. The story is, that he felt that it would not be safe to
entrust an occasion so vastly interesting to the hands of Jasper, and
he decided that he would quiet Jasper and satisfy the public demands
by calling on Jasper to pray. As a fact, Jasper was about as much of
an orator in speaking to heaven as he was in speaking to mortal men.
His prayer had such contagious and irresistible eloquence that whatever
the Lord did about it, it surely brought quite a resistless response
from the crowd. When the white preacher ended his tame and sapless
address, the multitude cried out for Jasper. Inspired by the occasion
and emboldened by the evident disposition to shut him out, Jasper took
fire and on eagle wings he mounted into the heavens and gave such a
brilliant and captivating address that the vast crowd went wild with
joy and enthusiasm.
There is yet another story of a time when Jasper was called into the
country where he and a white minister were to take part in one of the
combined funerals so common at that time. Upon arriving at the church
the white minister was unutterably shocked to find that his associate
in the services was a negro. That was too much for him, and he decided
on the spot that if he went in, Jasper would have to stay out, and he
decided that he would go in and would stay in until the time was over
and leave Jasper to his reflections on the outside. For two hours the
white brother beat the air, killed time, and quite wearied the crowd
by his lumbering and tiresome discourse. After he had arrived at the
point where it seemed that no more could be said, the exhausted and
exhausting brother closed his sermon and was arranging to end the
service. But the people would not have it so. Tumultuously they cried
out for Jasper,--a cry in which the whites outdid the blacks. It was
not in Jasper to ignore such appreciation. Of all men, he had the least
desire or idea of being snubbed or side-tracked. With that mischievous
smile which was born of the jubilant courage of his soul, Jasper
came forth. He knew well the boundaries of his rights, and needed no
danger signals to warn him off hostile ground. For fifteen or twenty
minutes he poured forth a torrent of passionate oratory,--not empty and
frivolous words, but a message rich with comfort and help, and uttered
only as he could utter it. The effect was electrical. The white people
crowded around him to congratulate and thank him, and went away telling
the story of his greatness.