“bred, born, and raised in ole Virginny,” told the writer, that,
when a young woman, she sawed the lumber for the building of the
State University. For that matter, the labor in building the mass
of the literary institutions of the South was performed by the
colored people. It is, then, only a piece of reciprocity that the
several States of that region should now provide public schools
for that class of their citizens. Old Virginia appropriates ten
thousand dollars a year to the Hampton Institute; South Carolina
aids the Claflin University (Methodist), and other States are doing
a like generous thing.
* * * * *
Africa.
—Of the twenty-three new missionaries sent out by the Church
Missionary Society during the last year, three were for West
Africa and five for the Nyanza Mission. Of the eighteen new this
year, two are for West Africa and two for the Nyanza Mission, to
be stationed at Mpwapwa. Mr. Price is, for the present, the only
ordained missionary at the station. Mr. Cole is to devote himself
largely to the industrial interests of the Mission with a view to
its self-support at as early a day as may be found possible. Dr.
Baxter and Mr. Last have already occupied the field for a year. In
the instructions given them at a farewell meeting it was said: “Not
only is it made more and more clear that Mpwapwa is in a sense the
key to the Lake district, and likely to remain so for many years
to come, and hence important with a view to the work carried on in
the interior by other societies as well as the C. M. S., but there
is also no doubt that from it, as a centre, missionary work may be
carried on both among the natives inhabiting the Usagara Mountains
and amid the manly and numerous race inhabiting the Ugogo country.”
—The same Society reports that its work in behalf of the freed
slaves in East Africa is beginning to bear spiritual fruit. The
improved condition of the settlement at Frere Town, materially and
morally, has been reported from time to time; but the spiritual
results hitherto have been comparatively small. Until lately no
mention has been made of the gospel’s taking root among the poor
liberated slaves rescued by Her Majesty’s cruisers, and handed
over to the Mission in the Autumn of 1875, to the number of nearly
300, and perhaps another 100 in smaller detachments since. Mr.
Streeter now reports the baptism of thirty-two of them on their own
confession of faith, besides infants. The Rev. A. Menzies reached
Frere Town June 1st.
—The Free Church of Scotland reports the transfer of Miss Waterston
to the new field at Livingstonia. Miss W. has for seven years been
the successful superintendent of the female seminary at Lovedale.
She is fully qualified as a medical missionary, and carries the
confidence and good wishes of all who know her. Says the _Monthly
Record_: She means to go first to Lovedale, where she will halt
for a short time in order to select coadjutors from among her
former pupils. She hopes to induce some of them to accompany her
to the sphere of her future labors, where they will be employed as
teachers, and in other departments of the work. When Dr. Stewart
first started for Lake Nyassa, so many of the Lovedale young men
volunteered for service under their noble missionary’s banner, that
he found it impossible to accept of half the number. From what we
have heard of the young women, they are not likely to be behind in
courage and zeal, nor is Miss Waterston likely to be disappointed
in her hope of volunteers. Her aim will be now, as formerly, to
blend Christian teaching with efforts to civilize and elevate,
and, as opportunity offers, to gather the young into boarding and
industrial schools. She will also help Dr. Laws in his dispensary
and other medical work among the women.
The only other lady who has gone to Livingstonia is to be the wife
of the well-known missionary, Dr. Laws, who so ably conducts the
Free Church Mission there; and at Blantyre, the station of the
Established Church of Scotland, there already resides the wife of
one of the missionaries—Mrs. Duff McDonald.
—When the missionary steamer owned by the mission of the Free
Church of Scotland was to be placed on Lake Nyassa, the leader
of the expedition applied to the chief of the tribe for reliable
help to carry the craft around the Murchison Cataracts. The chief
responded by sending eight hundred women,—a compliment certainly
to the trustworthiness of the sex. “Some of them came fifty miles,
bringing their provisions with them. These women were intrusted
with the whole, when if a single portion of the steamer had been
lost, the whole scheme would have failed. They carried it in
two hundred and fifty loads in five days, under a tropical sun,
seventy-five miles, to an elevation of 1,800 feet, and not a
nail or screw was lost. They ‘trusted the Englishman,’ asking no
questions of wages, and receiving each six yards of calico; and for
the sake of being liberal, each was given an extra yard.”—_Heathen
Woman’s Friend_.
—The sudden death of Rev. Dr. Mullens, of peritonitis, at Aden,
is announced. He has been for some years a Christian leader
in Great Britain, and his opinions have had great weight with
intelligent Christians throughout the world. He has been the chief
Corresponding Secretary of the great London Missionary Society
during about twenty years—a position of great responsibility and
usefulness, and one of the most influential in the Church of
Christ. Before he was called to this service he had been for many
years a successful missionary in India. Two or three months ago, by
his own request—if memory serves us faithfully—he was appointed by
the Society to accompany a band of young missionaries to Zanzibar,
and to go on, if necessary, if his judgment so decided, to Lake
Tanganyika, in the heart of Southern Africa. It was expected
that his strong sense and remarkable executive ability would see
and organize some method to overcome the serious obstacles and
difficulties which lie in the path of missions to Central Africa.
On arriving at Zanzibar, Dr. Mullens decided, in the exercise
of the discretion given him by the Board, to proceed onward, in
company with Messrs. Griffith and Southon, to Lake Tanganyika. The
party left Zanzibar on the afternoon of Friday, June 13th, and
having landed at Saadani, started for the interior. Letters dated
Ndumi, June 16th, report that all the members of the expedition
were in excellent health, and were well on their way westward.
News of his death on the 10th of July has brought sadness to many
hearts outside of the circle who will most deeply miss his counsels
and mourn his loss. He was not yet fifty-nine years of age, and was
one of the foremost men of the present time in foreign missions,
having been, perhaps, the most prominent leader in the Basle
Missionary Conference held in October last.
—There is now an unbroken chain of communication by steam from
England to the northern end of Lake Nyassa in Central Africa,
excepting seventy miles of the Murchison Cataracts in the Shire
River; and it is ascertained that Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika are
but 130 miles apart, instead of 250.
—The London _Daily Telegraph_ says: Among many interesting
particulars of discoveries brought from Africa by the gallant
Portuguese explorer, Major Serpa Pinto, none is more absorbing
than his story of the white people encountered between the rivers
Cubango and Cuando. Serpa Pinto found in these districts a tribe
absolutely European in tint, yet nowise of the Albino type, for
the hair was black and woolly. He described them as uglier than
the plainest negroes, and lower in civilization than any race met
with, having receding foreheads, slanting eyes like the Chinese,
prominent cheek-bones, and hanging lower lips. The appearance fails
to do much credit to the white men whom they resemble. Who, then,
and whence, are these people, so strangely recalling the tribe
spoken of by Mr. Stanley between the equatorial lakes?
—Late news from Bishop Crowther’s mission, on the Niger River,
Africa, states that one of the chiefs, Captain Hart, who had been
most active at Bonny in the persecution of Christian converts,
is dead. On his death-bed he commanded that all his idols be
destroyed, warning his followers to have nothing more to do with
idol worship. The next day after his death the heathen fell upon
the collection of idols with a will. Archdeacon Crowther writes:
“Early this morning they began to destroy the jujus. The work of
destruction is great. The poor gods and goddesses are having very
hard times in late Captain Hart’s quarters now. They are handled in
a most unceremonious and rough manner. Two canoe-loads, it is said,
have found their resting-place in the deepest part of the river,
and those that float and will not sink are broken into ever so many
pieces. Floating wrecks of idols made and worshiped since the days
of Captain Hart’s father are to be seen dotted all over the creek
to the river in the shipping. Imprecations and abuses have taken
the place of worship.”
Bishop Crowther reports that, after a long season at Bonny, in
which, owing to persecution, there were no converts, eight persons
have been baptized.
—Dr. John Kirk, the British Consul-General at Zanzibar, Africa,
writes that Keith Johnson, the leader of the expedition to explore
the head of Lake Nyassa, died of dysentery on the 27th of June,
at Berobero, 130 miles inland from Dar-es-Salaam. The expedition
will be continued by Mr. Thomson, the scientific assistant of Mr.
Johnson.
—Mr. John S. Hartland reports his arrival at Bonny, and Mr. W. H.
Bentley at Sierra Leone, on the West Coast of Africa. They are
both on their way to the English Baptist Mission on the Congo or
Livingstone River.
* * * * *
The Indians.
The following paragraph from the _Independent_ so fully expresses
our view of the matter of the Ponca Indians, that we both copy and
endorse it:
The story which Secretary Schurz tells about the Ponca Indians,
while it corrects some misapprehensions in regard to the case,
nevertheless confesses that the Government has treated the Indians
very unjustly. This the Secretary said in his first annual report.
After securing to the Poncas 96,000 acres of land in South-eastern
Dakota by the treaties of 1817, 1826 and 1858, the Government in
1868 granted this very land to the Sioux Indians, without any
reference to the rights held therein by the Poncas, both by treaty
and occupancy. The Sioux Indians were unfriendly to the Poncas,
and the collision between these tribes made it necessary for
the Government to seek the removal of the Poncas to the Indian
Territory. All this was done before the present Administration
came into power, and hence it has no responsibility for the wrong
done. Secretary Schurz says that “no effort has been spared by
the Executive branch of the Government to rectify all the wrongs
that the Poncas have suffered, so far as these wrongs can be
rectified.” He also says that “a bill for their relief, providing
for payment for their lands in Dakota, and also providing for
the payment for their new reservation, with an appropriation of
$58,000 to reimburse them for their losses, has been sent to
Congress by the Interior Department.” We are glad to learn from so
good an authority that the Executive Department of the Government
recognizes the wrong which has been done to these Indians, and
shows a disposition to make an honorable _amende_ therefor. It is
to be hoped that Congress will sustain and concur with its efforts.
* * * * *
THE FREEDMEN.
REV. JOS. E. ROY, D.D.,
FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.
* * * * *
NORTH AND SOUTH.
Some Things in Common.
In efforts to promote the spirit of Christian union, it is always
advised that we look for the things that we hold in common—the
things that make us Christians, rather than those which make us
of this or that church party. In seeking to advance national good
feeling, may we not wisely pursue something of the same course? If
any persons can take up this line of talk without being accused
of having been bulldozed by Southern blandishment, it may be those
who were the early abolitionists, and especially those who endeavor
to prove their faith by their works in going down among the lowly
and despised ex-slaves to try to raise them up by the appliances of
education and of the Gospel.
1. One such common possession is that of our English inheritance.
We are, characteristically, of the Anglo-Saxon stock. We speak
the English language from South to North. We have that glorious
speech that swallows up and overmasters the Babel of tongues that
fall upon our ears. We think that, led by our incomparable Webster
and Worcester, we use our English with even more of correctness
than does the mother country. We inherit the great principles of
constitutional government, of trial by jury, habeas corpus, and of
civil and religious liberty. We are joint heirs to the matchless
English literature, and to a history that has made England the
leading nation of Christendom.
2. We hold in common the glories of our Revolutionary period. We
share in the joys of the birth of a new nation. We have the same
traditions of patriotism. We are mutually proud of the memory of
Washington and Jefferson and the Adamses, and of the other fathers
of the Republic. Our National Centennial gave occasion for a
revival of our national feeling. Masses of our brethren who had
been estranged were glad of the opportunity thus afforded to share
in the thrill inspired by the world’s recognition of our national
greatness.
3. We share in the essentials of the Reformed Church life. The
Pilgrims and the Puritans settled in New England. Much of the blood
by which the Southern States were stocked was of the Reformed
quality. In the celebration, at Chicago, of the two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims, Dr. Bacon said
that the Presbyterians were Puritans. The South has had a large
portion of this moral and theological leavening. The Scotch and
the Scotch-Irish element in that region has been large and largely
influential. Through them Puritan notions have been planted and
propagated. The Huguenots, who were the contribution of France to
the Reformation, have had a large representation in the South.
Sixty years before the Pilgrims landed, they made, on the Carolina
coast, two settlements, which were annihilated by the persecuting
power of Rome that followed them to the wilderness continent. They
tried again and made a lodgment where Charleston now stands, and to
this day “The Huguenot Church” abides in its integrity of language
and of character. From this same source that city has received a
large infiltration of blood and of principle. Out in the State,
and at other places in the South, the Huguenots have given names
to towns and tone and caste to society. The South has had but a
small portion of the foreign emigration, and so has felt less the
influence of the Continental views as to the Sabbath. One of our
professors, who has been many years in the South, says that the
Holy Day is more strictly observed in that part of the country
than at the North. The intellectual orthodoxy of the South is well
known. It may be because of the lack of activity in theological
discussion, but the fact is apparent to such a degree that a more
ethical and practical preaching is what the Christian people are
hungering for thereaway.
4. We have a common sympathy in Protestantism. The early Spanish
and French occupation in Louisiana and in Baltimore has made
those strong Catholic centres. But Romanism is not so generally a
prevailing power in the South as in the North. The drift of foreign
emigration has made this difference. Rome’s chance at the South is
now not with immigrants, but with natives, Africo-Americans; and
she is bound to make the most of it. But just here comes out our
unity in Protestant views. Southern Christians are anxious lest
the display and the mystery of the Roman system should captivate
these simple children of nature. They are as solicitous as we
that the same Providence which delivered our land from the early
domination of Romish nationalities, may save it from coming under
the supremacy of that spiritual despotism. When the Catholic bishop
at Richmond opened his cathedral, Sunday nights, to a free service
in behalf of the colored people, it made a tremendous stir among
white as well as colored Protestants.
5. Have we not had a common responsibility for the existence of
slavery? Striking in its upas roots at Jamestown, it was allowed
to spread over all the colonies. Samuel Hopkins, thundering at
the gates of the pens of the slave-trade in Newport, must yet
reverberate among those empty dens still standing. In 1872 I saw
in Connecticut an aged disciple who had once been a slave in that
State. My childish ears tingled with my father’s stories of slave
life as known to him in New Jersey. The system, by implication,
was recognized in the Federal Constitution. The Government allowed
it to sweep out over yet other empire areas at the South and West.
We had Federal laws, resting upon Northern public sentiment, to
protect the institution. We allowed our churches and our literary
institutions and our benevolent societies to come under the common
paralysis of conscience. Without any interest in slaves as personal
property, we allowed our great commercial affairs to be brought
under bondage to that system. Our measure of complicity in that
national wrong was indicated in part by the awful retribution meted
out in the sacrifice of half a million of precious lives and by the
offering of billions of treasure. We have had occasion to join our
brethren at the South and say, “We are verily guilty concerning our
brother.”
6. Have we not now a common obligation to make restitution to these
new-made citizens? We are not only by legislation to recognize
their rights of manhood and of citizenship, but to uphold them in
the same. We are to secure them in the enjoyment of the blessing
of our American educational system and of the best Christianizing
processes. As we have endowed them with the sacred elements of
citizenship, we must help them to the means of making them citizens
worthy of the nation. This common duty was indicated by Hon. John
Goode, of Virginia, when he said, in Congress, “Can the Government
bestow civil and political rights upon these wards of the nation,
and at the same time avoid the solemn obligation to provide for
their mental and moral improvement?” That is the responsibility
of citizens, North and South, as well as of the Government. And
so let the people join hands, irrespective of sectional lines, in
doing the just, the right thing by these native Americans, the
providential significance of whose existence in our country is a
problem calling for solution.
* * * * *
REMINISCENCES.
“It’s the color that tells”—“Jes hear dem niggers read”—Candle
and half-bushel—“Age up country,” &c.—Sad words making
glad—“Frosty arms.”
After the full accounts you have been giving your readers of late
of the Commencement Exercises, with their attendant essays and
orations, brief reminiscences of a few years ago, when the Freedmen
knew little of Greek and Latin, but were intent upon “blue-back”
spellers and the easy parts of the Bible, may not come amiss.
It happened once that in a dimly-lighted school-house, about nine
o’clock at night, filled with men and women of various hue, from
white through brown to black, there was one class of nine young
men spelling words of three syllables. They were very earnest, and
in real old-fashioned way were going “up and down” in the class.
At the head stood Joseph, very black; then three nearly as dark,
followed by four light ones, with the very darkest of the whole
class at the foot. All went well till the upper light one missed
and the word passed down; Joseph, seeing it likely to pass from the
light ones to the very dark face at the foot, in excitement and joy
burst forth with, “Spell it, Dave, and cut up here; _it’s the color
that tells_.” Dave spelt it, and the color did tell.
One man who made his appearance in night-school about the middle
of the winter, I shall never forget. His entrance was quite
overpowering—a big man, big cane, big hat, and a big shawl thrown
over his shoulder, Arab style. I happened to be at leisure, so I
went at once to ask him if he intended coming regularly to school.
Saying that he did, my next question was, “What’s your name?” “I’m
Lucy’s husband, over there.” As I didn’t know Lucy, I was not much
the wiser, and had to repeat the question with the emphasis on the
_your_. Wishing to classify him, I asked, “What book do you read
in?” “The Bible mostly, ma’am.” “Can you read in the First Reader?”
“Yes, first, second, third, fourth and all the other elementary
books.” Thinking I might gain some information where to assign him,
I looked at the books he had brought with him. There were four: a
large family Bible; another book of some size, but very fine print,
on “Presbyterian Ordination Refuted;” a “Child’s Scripture Question
Book,” and a small geography.
But if the night-schools were amusing, the afternoon schools for
the women were not less so. Old women and young women, many of them
in fantastic attire, with hats, caps and dresses that would have
been considered prizes by an antiquary; the dark faces peering
from under the white or speckled turban; old women wiping their
spectacles, vainly endeavoring to get “more light” on the subject,
while picking away at the letters in some old Primer, as if they
were to be transferred bodily to the head. Aunt Chloe Fisher
must have been seventy-five or eighty years old, but still she
was bright and original. She came into school one afternoon very
anxious to learn to read “de way, de troof, and de life.” Seeing
some women in another part of the room reading, she exclaimed, “Jes
hear dem niggers read! If dis nig can’t read, too, won’t she fight
’em?” and then she vigorously applied her finger to the pages of
the Gospel of John which she had with her, finding the words Lord
and God, which were about all she knew. She believed in both faith
and works, for she used to pray most earnestly that God would help
her know the words, and then get up in the middle of the night and
light a pine knot to see if she had a word right. Old Aunt Chloe
was always happy. I never saw her otherwise but once, and then she
was greatly troubled for fear she should lose her place in the
grave-yard. One special place she had chosen, and young people were
dying so fast she was afraid she should not die soon enough to lie
there. She would get happy over her wash-tub or anywhere else, and
her hands and her feet would keep time with some negro hymn in a
most amusing manner.
One old Aunty was reading the fifth chapter of Matthew,
when she came to a passage, which she read thus;
“Neither—do—men—light—a—half-bushel—and—put—it—under—a—candle-stick.”
On being stopped and told to look again, pointing with her finger
all along the lines of the page, with a look of half despair she
said, “Bress you, honey, I can’t find either candle or half-bushel
now.” Those simple words were quite a sermon for me, and I’ve
thought of them many a time since. Are not we, as Christians, in
danger of losing our candles? Our good Aunty’s candle was soon
found for her; but will ours, once lost, be as easily recovered?
In those days, even in the day-schools, there were many
difficulties that could hardly be encountered now. I remember
hearing one teacher say that it was almost impossible to get the
ages of her scholars. They would say, “My age is up country;” or
“Ole missis has my age in the Bible, and she’s gone away.” The
trick of giving one name to one teacher and another to the next
was practiced. On giving a second name once, one little fellow was
brought up with, “Why, I thought your name was George Johnson?” “I
done got tired of that name,” was his cool reply.