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FROM SLAVE TO COLLEGE PRESIDENT
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| The "Lives Worth Living" |
| |
| SERIES OF POPULAR BIOGRAPHIES. |
| |
| Illustrated. Crown 8vo, Cloth Extra, Gilt Edges, 3s. 6d. per |
| Volume. |
| |
| #1. LEADERS OF MEN.# By H. A. PAGE, Author of "Golden Lives." Sixth |
| Edition. |
| |
| #2. WISE WORDS AND LOVING DEEDS.# By E. CONDER GRAY. Eighth Edition. |
| |
| #3. MASTER MISSIONARIES.# By A. H. JAPP, LL.D., F.R.S.E. Sixth |
| Edition. |
| |
| #4. LABOUR AND VICTORY.# By A. H. JAPP, LL.D. Third Edition. |
| |
| #5. HEROIC ADVENTURE.# Illustrated. Third Edition. |
| |
| #6. GREAT MINDS IN ART.# By WILLIAM TIREBUCK. Second Edition. |
| |
| #7. GOOD MEN AND TRUE.# By A. H. JAPP, LL.D. Second Edition. |
| |
| #8. FAMOUS MUSICAL COMPOSERS.# By LYDIA MORRIS. Second Edition. |
| |
| #9. OLIVER CROMWELL AND HIS TIMES.# By G. HOLDEN PIKE. With 8 |
| Illustrations, including the Bristol Portrait as Frontispiece. |
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[Illustration: BOOKER T. WASHINGTON.]
FROM SLAVE TO
COLLEGE PRESIDENT
BEING THE
LIFE STORY OF
BOOKER T. WASHINGTON
BY
G. HOLDEN PIKE
Author of
"Oliver Cromwell and His Times,"
Etc., Etc.
_With Frontispiece Portrait_
London
T. Fisher Unwin
Paternoster Square
1902
[_All rights reserved._]
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| CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN OF HARPER'S |
| FERRY |
| |
| BY |
| |
| JOHN NEWTON |
| |
| Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s. Fully Illustrated. |
| |
| There are few to whom the lines, |
| |
| "John Brown's body lies a-mould'ring in the grave, |
| But his soul's marching on," |
| |
| are not familiar, but few are now aware that they came into being as |
| the marching song, made and used by the followers of "John Brown of |
| Harper's Ferry," or of "Ossawatomie," after he had been executed. His |
| was a stirring life. Having conceived the idea of becoming the |
| liberator of the negro slaves in the Southern States of North America, |
| he emigrated in 1855 from Ohio to Kansas, where he took an active part |
| in the contest against the pro-slavery party. He gained, in August |
| 1856, a victory at Ossawatomie over a superior number of Missourians |
| who had invaded Kansas (whence the surname "Ossawatomie"). On the |
| night of October 16, 1859, he seized the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, |
| Virginia, at the head of a small band of followers with a view to |
| arming the negroes and inciting an insurrection. He was captured |
| October 18th, was tried by the Commonwealth of Virginia, and was |
| executed at Charlestown, December 2, 1859. |
| |
| Mr Newton has been at pains to inform himself from every available |
| source upon which it was possible to draw for a biography of John |
| Brown. The result is a most exhaustive work, in which the part Brown |
| took in the Kansas border wars, all his preparations for Harper's |
| Ferry and what occurred there, and his trial are fully related. |
| Practically no day between Brown's condemnation and his |
| execution--nearly a month--is ignored, and many most interesting |
| particulars are given of Brown's family. The judgments of his great |
| countrymen, Whittier, Thoreau and Emerson, as well as that of the |
| great romancer, Victor Hugo, are related, and interesting sketches are |
| given of many prominent men of all parties with whom Brown came in |
| contact. |
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CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. WANTED: A MAN--THE MAN FOUND 1
II. THE ERA OF FREEDOM--REALISING THAT KNOWLEDGE IS POWER 16
III. OFF TO HAMPTON--WAS HE A LIKELY CANDIDATE? 32
IV. GENERAL ARMSTRONG--HIS PREDECESSORS AND COLLABORATORS--PIONEERS
OF THE NEW ERA 41
V. UPS AND DOWNS--PROGRESS AS A STUDENT--BEGINNING TO TEACH 49
VI. AMERICAN INDIANS--WORK AT HAMPTON 60
VII. THE BEGINNING OF A LIFE WORK 71
VIII. SOME ACTUAL RESULTS--POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS 85
IX. CONTINUED PROGRESS--POPULARITY AS A SPEAKER 94
X. VISIT TO EUROPE--RETURN TO TUSKEGEE 104
FROM SLAVE TO COLLEGE
PRESIDENT
CHAPTER I
WANTED: A MAN--THE MAN FOUND
Just at the most severe crisis of the war between France and Germany,
over thirty years ago, a London newspaper, in describing the situation,
remarked that France wanted not men, but a Man. During a whole
generation which followed after the close of the gigantic and sanguinary
conflict between the Northern and Southern States of the American
Republic, a similar remark would have applied to the millions of slaves
who, though nominally free, were drifting hither and thither, now
groping in the wrong direction altogether, or missing opportunities they
might have embraced, had there but been one commanding personality in
their midst to give the word and lead the way. There seemed to be too
many negroes, while they were still increasing with a rapidity which
inspired misgiving. The race seemed to be "at sea" for want of a Man. At
length the much-needed chief or leader was found in Booker T.
Washington, whose distinguished work on behalf of the race at the great
institution which he has founded at Tuskegee has given him a world-wide
reputation. As a negro, his mission is to the men and women of his own
nation.
In regard to this man with his commanding personality, the
_International Monthly_ of New York says:--"At the present time he is
universally recognised as the foremost representative of his race. He is
eagerly sought after as a speaker. Whatever he chooses to write
immediately finds a willing publisher. Newspaper eulogy declares him to
be a remarkable orator. He is often spoken of as of solid, and even
brilliant, intellectual attainments. How much of all this vogue and of
this unusual reputation is based upon the fact that he is a negro, and
how much upon his native merit when weighed and judged without regard to
any other consideration whatsoever? Has he, in fact, done that which,
had he been a white man, would have given him a solid and substantial
claim to the esteem that he now enjoys?"
Mr Harry T. Peck, who writes thus, ventures the opinion that the
estimate of the public in regard to Booker Washington is exaggerated.
"There is no evidence that his mind is in any way exceptional," he
adds.... "Were he a white man, he never would be singled out for
eminence.... He is not an orator; he is not a writer; he is not a
thinker. He is something more than these. He is the man who comes at the
psychological moment and does the thing which is wanting to be done, and
which no one else has yet accomplished." This can hardly be accepted as
genuine criticism. Just as we judge a tree by its fruits, so we measure
capacity, and even genius, by its results. If, as is generally
acknowledged to be the case, Booker Washington has practically solved
that Race Problem which American politicians have hardly dared to face
since the close of the Civil War, it is only fair that we accord him the
distinction of possessing that original shrewdness which may even be
called genius. When an idea of exceptional value is given forth, one
that is all the greater on account of its simplicity, people seem to be
naturally disposed to underrate the power which gave it utterance.
Booker Washington may merely be following in the footsteps of Adam Smith
when, instead of regarding the negro population as an evil or a
grievance, he prescribes that their labour, as a source of vast wealth,
be utilised for the national advancement. Viewed from any other
standpoint, there can be no doubt that the rapidly-increasing negroes
inspire some disquieting apprehensions as a possible source of
inconvenience or of actual danger. Once get the coloured race well under
control, however, and the result would be all-round satisfaction.
Thus Booker Washington is not only the man of the hour to his own
people; in him the Man who has been wanted for forty years has been
found. Being somewhat over forty years of age, he was born in those
portentous times towards the end of the sixth decade of the last century
when the political horizon of the Republic was darkening and showing
symptoms of the coming Civil War. Virginia, his native State, was the
most populous and wealthy of the original thirteen, which, as colonies,
separated from Great Britain after the War of Independence. In the days
of his childhood, before the Civil War actually broke out, his
surroundings were those of the cabin standing amid the squalor of
slavery. All the sad, as well as the comic, phases of life on the
Southern plantations, as they then existed, are vividly remembered by
Booker Washington. Of course, to the slaves themselves very much
depended on the disposition of their owners, or on the character of the
overseers which those planters employed. The lot of Booker Washington
was what may be called an average one. It was not so bad as that of many
others who were less fortunate; nor was it so good as the exceptional
experience of the few who were born amid the most favourable
surroundings. It was, of course, a sad childhood, unrelieved by anything
like what we should in Great Britain call the comforts of life. He was a
keen-witted lad; but the shrewdest of seers could not have foreseen that
he would develop into the man of hope whom the negroes, after their
coming emancipation, would most sorely need.
At the time of his birth, some forty-three or forty-four years ago--the
exact place or time being alike unknown--the public sentiment in regard
to emancipation had made great advances, and this had been effected
chiefly through the diffusion of millions of copies of Mrs H. B. Stowe's
_Uncle Tom's Cabin_. Among those in this country who believed the
descriptions in that work to be exaggerated, and that Legree was a
non-existent character, we have to include Charles Dickens. At the same
time, that famous novelist, in common with some others, probably
clearly saw that the days of slavery were numbered. "In truth, it must
be so," remarked one journalist at the time when _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was
the most popular book both in the Old and the New World. "In truth, it
must be so, for the very laws of population forbid the permanence of
slavery in America. The black man thrives where the white man decays,
and it is the knowledge of this very remarkable fact that in great part
accounts for the dislike to the coloured population which is everywhere
expressed in the United States." The social inequality of the negroes
and the whites struck people then, as it does to-day in this country, as
being one of the most marked features of American society. There is
probably no remedy for that state of things, and it is partly through
his recognising this fact, and knowing that the negroes must continue to
be a race by themselves, that Booker Washington's success has been what
it is.
Meanwhile, what kind of existence was the everyday life on a plantation
"down South" in the days of Booker Washington's childhood? By way of
reply, take this vivid word-picture from Mr Casey's _Two Years on the
Farm of Uncle Sam_, which was published in the decade of our hero's
birth:--
"The slaves are all that I had imagined, coming up to the dark outline
of fancy with a terrible precision. We put in to wood at one of these
places, and for the first time I saw these hewers of wood and drawers of
water. A party of us went on shore to shoot; some distance in the wood
we found two men, three women and two boys; there were twenty in all on
this farm. The women were dressed in a rough, shapeless, coarse
garment, buttoned at the back, with a sort of trousers of the same
material, rough shoes and stockings, the upper garment reaching nearly
to the ankle; a kind of cloth, like a dirty towel, was wound round the
head. One of the women drove an ox-team; she had a large and powerful
whip, with which, and a surprising strength, she belaboured and tugged
the unwieldy team with great dexterity. The other woman had five
children, and assisted in loading the wood; the younger, about sixteen
years of age, had one child, and appeared to do nothing. The women, it
seemed to me, worked harder than the men. I observed the almost complete
absence of memory in the elder woman; she could not remember where she
had left the link-chain or goad-whip, though but a few minutes out of
her hand. I must confess that, looking on that labour-crooked group, I
felt a dislike, strong and definite, to that system which takes away
even the hope of improvement, crushing down the principle of self-esteem
in the man, until it reaches the passive and unambitious existence of
the oxen which he drives. And looking on those women, negroes though
they were, so unnaturally masculine, so completely unsexed, so far
removed from all those attributes with which the name of woman is
associated, I felt that no reason based on an asserted right, no fiction
of argument, could stand in my judgment but as dust in the balance when
the question is whether a human being--no matter of what colour, whether
an Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him--should possess the
liberty or right of securing his own happiness to the extent of his
ability. Then their state, their look, bodies, mind and manner were so
many self-evident arguments against the system, which no
representations, however plausible, could refute; and all that I had
listened to from Southerners on the voyage disappeared like gossamer in
the tempest before the mute, living picture of wretchedness presented by
that group."
Brought up amid such surroundings, one would not know much about his
ancestry, if anything at all. A great planter gave no more heed to the
pedigree of his slaves than he did to that of his cattle; all alike were
bought and sold in the open market, and neither one nor the other had
any rights or privileges apart from the will of their owners. The cabin
of the slave family was, in a very literal sense, what its name
implied--a cabin and nothing more. The household was not supposed to
need more than one room; the furniture was, of course, as rude as the
hovel itself, and, though the apartment would be well ventilated, glass
windows were not considered necessary. A pallet on the earthern floor
was the only sleeping accommodation. It was one-room life under one of
its worst phases; and, in addition to other drawbacks, the inmates
suffered from cold and draughts in winter and from heat in summer. It is
almost needless to say that under such conditions and amid such
surroundings a lad like Booker Washington fared neither better nor worse
than tens of thousands of his fellows; his earliest days were not
cheered by any of the sunshine of childhood. As a rule, the children of
the slave-cabin knew nothing of those ordinary sports and pastimes which
relieve and give variety to the early days of the young under happier
circumstances. Of course, he was not more than a child when slavery came
to an end, but in the case of such a child slave, at a very early age
indeed, his possible service was found to be commercially too valuable
to be altogether dispensed with. He could do duty as a messenger or as a
porter between the great house--a sumptuous palace in comparison with
the slave-cabins--and the fields where his elders were at work. With a
horse he could also go on more distant errands, some of which, along
lonely roads, were not unattended with danger. Thus the dense, dark
woods through which he might have to pass, when taking corn to be ground
at a distant mill, would be haunted by imaginary spectres; and, besides,
there were said to be deserters from the Confederate Army hidden in
those recesses who, by way of sport, would relieve any negro lad of his
ears if they chanced to meet with him. Such were the last repellent
phases of that phase of that now obsolete world of slavery in Old
Virginia as Booker Washington remembers them.
In our common, everyday talk we are accustomed to say that the darkest
hour of night precedes the dawn of day. It was so in this instance. The
time of Booker Washington's birth, and for some years after, was
apparently the darkest period in the history of the slaves of the
Southern States. For long the negroes of the plantations not only grew
up quite illiterate--it was a punishable offence for them to make any
endeavour to learn to read, or for anyone to attempt to teach them. Not
very long before the Fugitive Slave Law had found a place in the Statute
Book of the Republic, and this Act made it illegal for any fugitive
slave to find either shelter or aid in any State of the Union. Then,
just about the same time, the American Chief-Justice had, in his
official capacity, declared that nowhere in any one of the States had a
slave any rights of citizenship. In a word, the slaves on a plantation
were simply on a level, in a legal sense, with the cattle they tended or
used in their everyday work. For example, the mere children had no
regular meal times in the conventional sense as we understand things;
and there was little or nothing of what we should recognise as family
life. Thus when, after the era of emancipation, Booker Washington came
to the experience of sleeping in an ordinary bed and sitting down at
table to partake of a family meal, both were a revelation of civilised
existence which were quite new to him.
In a sense the very denial to the slave population of their educational
rights would seem to have had something like the effect of sharpening
their wits, until they became not only interested in what was happening
around them, but the shrewdest observers of the signs of the times. Like
other boys of his race, Booker Washington ran wild when he was not
engaged in his customary errands, and without so much as learning even
the English alphabet. But this compulsory ignorance seems to have
intensified that ardent desire for knowledge which was part of his
nature. Among his errands he might have to go to a schoolhouse where
companies of happy young people were engaged over their books, and he
was naturally much affected by what he saw and heard. Why was not he
privileged in a similar way? Tens of thousands of negro boys may have
asked themselves that same question in the generations that preceded
him, and in every instance the answer would be the same--schools are
forbidden to the slave. The coloured population was fast increasing, and
the planters believed that the public safety could only be guaranteed by
compelling them to remain illiterate.
In point of fact, however, the slaves on the plantations were not as
ignorant as their too sanguine owners supposed them to be. In a secret
way one here and there may even have learned to read; and, in regard to
what was going on in the outside world, they were oftentimes hardly less
well informed than their masters and mistresses. As Booker Washington
remembers it, the time of his childhood was a wonderful era of
transition. None more fully realised than the slaves themselves that the
bone of contention which occasioned the Civil War was the question of
slavery. Thus, to them, the period of conflict was a time of wild, but
still subdued, excitement, for fear their sentiments should be detected
and be followed by pains and penalties. The traffic on "the underground
railroad" was probably for the time suspended; but what was called "the
grapevine telegraph" was in full operation, and on every plantation and
in every planter's palatial mansion the slaves looked for its messages
with that ardent interest which cannot be described. They could not read
newspapers, and would have been forbidden to do so had they been able,
but whenever a messenger was sent to a neighbouring town he took care to
linger about the post-office, or elsewhere where persons conversed on
the current news, and everything that entered the coloured messenger's
sharpened ears soon became generally known to every soul on the
plantation. There were masters who professed to believe that their
people would fight for them; but in secret nocturnal meetings these
slaves congratulated one another on every Northern victory, while they
prayed with pathetic ardour for the success of Lincoln and his armies.
At the same time, when they were tolerably well used by their owners,
there was a good deal of sympathy binding together the coloured race and
the white people. Booker Washington does not think that his race have
ever betrayed any trust that has been reposed in them. Being born into
slavery, they grew up without being acquainted with any other condition
of life, so that it must have appeared quite natural to them for the
dominant whites to live in the great house and for themselves, who were
merely niggers, to herd in the cabins. But while they never undervalued
freedom, and, personally, ardently longed for it, there were certain
things which exercised influence over them of a softening kind, despite
the master grievance of hard bondage and its occasional cruel hardships.
For example, Booker Washington, at a very early age, undertook such
service as he could perform in his master's house; and it was not only a
possibility, it frequently happened, that a young servant, whether a lad
or a girl, became a favourite with the members of the family. The
younger white people would sometimes favour or protect a slave when he
got into trouble, and thus something like genuine affection would be
kindled in the hearts of the subject race. What animated conversations
respecting the two great armies in the field such a boy as Booker
Washington would hear at his master's table while he was engaged in
keeping the room as clear as possible of flies! This was another way of
getting the current news by those who did not form any part even of the
fringe of the newspaper constituency. Then, of course, there was the
constant occurrence of the usual casualties of war. Bitter sorrow and
mourning, like angels of darkness, would steal into the luxurious homes
of the planters when the master himself, or a son of the household, was
returned invalided or so sorely wounded as to be maimed for life. It was
still worse when, as it actually happened, one or another of these chief
people of the Southern Confederacy was killed. There was then the
anguish of mourning in the household akin to that which afflicted the
people of Egypt when the first-born of each family was slain. In many
cases, whether the fallen or the wounded might belong to the older or
the younger generation, the slaves themselves were touched by the
affliction of the family, because they never forgot the good deeds of
those who had befriended them. It seems to be the belief of Booker
Washington that, in any case, if, as trusted servants, they had been
left in charge of a house by night or day, they would never have
surrendered to the enemies of their owners, even though the invaders
might have been men of the Northern battalions who were practically
fighting for the freedom of the oppressed race. Still, it is thought
with good reason that both the white and the coloured races were losers
by slavery. As was inevitable, it turned out that one race cannot
oppress another without being affected for the worse. Over the best of
the plantations there seemed to hover a shadow, as though something were
wanting to make the prosperity complete, when wealth was amassed by
doubtful means. Instead of being a pleasure and honourable, labour was
looked upon as something which had degradation associated with it. The
planters and their families held aloof from it because it was the badge
of slavery. The slaves themselves disliked it because it belonged to
their condition of bondage.
As it has been shown, slavery reached its darkest phase in the years
which immediately preceded the era of emancipation, during Booker
Washington's childhood. Many telling illustrations might be given to
show that this was actually the fact. I am personally well acquainted
with an ex-slave, who is also a native of Virginia, who vividly
remembers those days. At the time of his birth his mother was hardly
more than sixteen years of age; but, notwithstanding, this girl had
already tasted enough of the anguish and bitterness of slavery which
might more than have sufficed for a long lifetime. She was so roughly
treated by her owner that for some little time preceding her child's
birth she remained concealed in a neighbouring wood, where the only diet
procurable was berries or wild fruit. In this case the painful anomaly
was that the slave-girl's husband was a free man who, loving his wife
and child, made strenuous efforts to purchase them, but did so quite
unsuccessfully. The master even moved away to another place, where the
mother did the work of a domestic servant, and during this time her son
experienced something of the gaiety of childhood while playing in the
yard with coloured juveniles of his own age, who, like himself, were as
young cattle in a pen growing up for a sad destiny.
In those days, as Booker Washington himself would be aware,
slave-mothers would at times speak to their children of Georgia, or
going "down South," in order to inspire terror. Going to Georgia meant
to pass on into a land without hope, of darkness and death. Occasionally
a hard-featured stranger would appear on the scene, and, while leaning
on the fence with folded arms, he would watch the boys at play in the
yard with the interested glances of a trader. Then, as must have
appeared mysteriously to the boys themselves, after the stranger had
gone away, one or another of the boys would be missing. Then it would be
whispered, as though some horror had overtaken them, the missing boy had
been taken "down South"--into Georgia.
Booker Washington is certainly one of the most extraordinary examples on
record of the successful pursuit of knowledge under difficulties; but
there have been many striking examples among slaves of lads showing this
mettle. My ex-slave friend, to whom reference has been made, is
certainly to be reckoned as one of these. It is probable that his mother
may have passed as a woman of education, seeing that she knew the
English alphabet and was able to count a hundred. Be this as it may,
however, like a genuine Christian mother, she determined that, in spite
of planters and their laws, her child should learn whatever she could
teach him. In due course the boy himself showed a flaming desire to
learn. By dint of remarkable diligence and perseverance, he got ahead of
his mother in knowledge. If learning was carried on in secret, there had
rarely been found a more ardent pupil. Without inconvenient questions
being asked, he succeeded in purchasing a copy-book and spelling primer,
which were well used on all possible occasions. He actually went through
the whole of the Bible when he could not master more than one in eight
of the words. This man afterwards enjoyed the benefit of a college
education in England, so that his case is worthy of being mentioned as
being similar to that of Booker Washington. Both instances alike show
that negroes may not only have good intellectual endowments, but may
also succeed in high aims by dint of unflagging energy and perseverance.
At length the era of freedom came; and although at that time Booker
Washington was still too young to realise what all the excitement and
commotion portended, those who looked upon him saw the child who would
develop into a benefactor of his race and the most distinguished negro
of his time. The Man who was wanted was found.