to take some humble part in these events. The wisdom of its
existence was recognized at the outset by the few only; by the
many—even of good men—it was regarded with indifference or
hostility. We that took part in those stirring times find it
difficult now to recall their intense earnestness—the inexorable
control exercised by slavery over the pulpit, the press and the
forum, the unbounded anxiety of conservative people to avoid or
to crush the agitation, and their utter impatience with those
who persisted in it. On the 7th of March, 1850, Daniel Webster
made his famous speech in support of the Fugitive Slave Law, and
it is humiliating to recall the fulsome eulogies of that speech
that came from pulpits and theological seminaries, as well as
from politicians and merchants, and it arouses anew a sense of
indignation to think of the intimidation attempted toward those
who opposed that infamous law. But there _were_ men in all the
churches and in both political parties who were fully aroused to
the guilt and danger of slavery—who felt that the hour had come
when, through all opposition and danger, they must press for its
overthrow. Among these persistent agitators were not only such
stalwart leaders as John Quincy Adams and William Lloyd Garrison,
but a large number who may be represented by our late and honored
brother, Rev. Simeon S. Jocelyn, who, though one of the gentlest,
most amiable and most cautious of men, yet possessed a conscience
so unclouded, and a sympathy with the slave so strong, that no
fear of consequences could deter him.
Such God-fearing men had no commission merely to denounce and
destroy. Their call was to aid in spreading a Gospel untinctured
with the guilt of slavery, polygamy or caste prejudice. They
strove earnestly to induce the most honored and loved of
missionary boards, with which they had heretofore co-operated, to
throw off all responsibility for slavery and its attendant vices.
In this they were unsuccessful, and as they could neither cease
to labor and contribute for missions, nor work with societies
which they believed to be chargeable with that responsibility,
they could do no otherwise than form one that should be free from
it. In this way, and from this motive, the American Missionary
Association came into existence. It was formed in no spirit of
captiousness or fault-finding; not for discussion, but for work
in the Master’s vineyard. Hence it soon established missions
abroad—in Africa, Siam and among the recently emancipated slaves
in the West Indies; at home—among the white population of the
West, the Indians, and, even at that early date, among the
Chinese in California, the refugees from slavery in Canada, and
in the Slave States themselves.
Among the dark memories of those early days were the infidel
tendencies in the anti-slavery ranks. The reformers were so
goaded by the indifference and opposition of the orthodox
churches that some of them retaliated with bitter denunciations
against Christianity itself. From the outset the American
Missionary Association took decided ground against this tendency
and in favor of evangelical religion, and this not vaguely nor
without temptation to swerve. At the convention in Albany in
which the Association was organized, an influential Unitarian
suggested the probable sympathy and aid of that wealthy
denomination if the platform could be made sufficiently broad and
“liberal” to admit of co-operation. Its response was given in
its constitution, which required “Evangelical sentiments” as a
condition of membership; and that there might be no mistake as to
what it meant by “evangelical,” a star note was appended giving
its explicit definition—a creed as commendable for its brevity
as its sound orthodoxy. The elder Dr. Tyng once said: “I love the
American Missionary Association because it is true to Christ as
well as to the slave.”
Thus launched, and with this flag at its mast-head, the
Association responded to its first call, and sped on its way,
till from the terrific storm-cloud of war there sounded forth its
second call. That next providential call was to the work among
the Freedmen. It was so recent, and the response is so fresh in
mind, that a brief rehearsal will suffice. Abraham Lincoln voiced
the sentiment of the North when he said that the war was carried
on to save the Union. God revealed His own purpose to be not that
only, but also to free the slave. It was not two months after the
first cannon shot fell on Fort Sumter till the escaping slaves
found their way to Fort Monroe, and the force of circumstances,
in spite of all reluctance, compelled their recognition as free
men. Those escaping fugitives began their march from Egypt to
Canaan. A few scattered bands headed the column, but soon its
numbers swelled till the proclamation of emancipation, like the
words of God to Moses at the banks of the Red Sea, said to four
and a half millions of people, “Go forward.” When the sea opened
to them and closed upon the armies of their oppressors, they
were free; but they were, and are still, in the wilderness. Yet
two lines of spontaneous enthusiasm broke forth—that of the
ex-slaves for learning, and that of the North to supply it.
In that day there was no longer a question as to the need of
the American Missionary Association, or of the wisdom of its
existence. It was complimented with having “builded wiser than
it knew.” Churches and individuals chose it as their channel for
reaching this new field of patriotic and Christian labor. The
Boston Council of Congregational Churches of 1865 recognized it
as having been providentially raised up for the hour, and voted
a call to the churches to give it $250,000 for the year. The
Association promptly met this new responsibility, and organized
the necessary measures for collecting funds at home and abroad,
and with so much success that when the year was ended its
treasury had received a little more than the great sum named. It
has since moved forward with larger resources and a larger work.
Its income for the fourteen years from its organization till the
war began averaged $40,810.57 per annum; for the fourteen years
since the war, $279,269.18 per annum.
A third call comes to the Association—the call of this hour. The
early enthusiasm in the Freedmen work subsided. This new call
springs from no sudden revival of that enthusiasm, but rather
from that “sober second thought” that follows the reaction from
it, and which comes from the pressure of hard, stern facts. I
cannot, therefore, explain the present aspect of affairs without
reverting to the cause of that decline of interest. The zeal of
Christian people slackened when they found the work among the
Freedmen could not all be finished in fifteen or twenty years.
This was the general expectation at the outset, strange as it
may seem—nay, amusing, if the mistake were not so serious. The
orthodox and well-ordered Christian man has no doubt of the need
of _perpetual_ help for the West, and he cheerfully aids it
through the accredited channels, the Bible, Tract, Sunday-school,
Education, College and Church Building Societies, and especially
the honored Home Missionary Board; though those Western settlers
have behind them the culture of more than a thousand years,
with the personal education of New England homes, schools and
churches, and also the business training among the shrewd and
thrifty people. But these Negroes, who have behind them only
untold ages of barbarism and oppression, and whose homes are
huts, whose schools are few, whose ministers are ignorant, who
have no capital and no business training—when these people loom
up before this good Christian man, he is amazed and discouraged
if a few years, a few books and a few teachers do not end all
responsibility for them. His creed in regard to them is as brief
as his patience, and may be given in the words of the poet:
“They need but little here below,
Nor need that little long.”
In like manner the well-ordered citizen lost his enthusiasm for
the Freedmen. He had been so long under the strain of anxiety
about the war that he was weary of it and of everything that
reminded him of it. Then there followed a succession of events in
regard to the Freedmen that played upon his hopes and fears till
he was doubly weary of them.
First came the accession of Andrew Johnson to the Presidency
on the death of President Lincoln. Bright hopes arose. Lincoln
was too mild; but the stalwart war-Governor of Tennessee, the
unflinching Union man, the Moses of the colored people, as he
styled himself, he would do what Lincoln’s amiability would
have left undone. What a Providential ordering it was; the
silver lining on the black cloud of the assassination. But alas,
how soon the change! This Moses led the colored people not to
Canaan, but delivered them over to the murderous bands of the Ku
Klux; and the North, who again found the whole affair lying at
loose ends, was very much discouraged. Then General Grant was
elected, and hope again sprang up. The soldier-President would
take care of the Freedmen. He did; but the troops stationed at
the State houses of Columbia and New Orleans became at length
an intolerable vexation to the South and an utter weariness to
the again discouraged North. President Hayes brought again “the
era of good feeling.” The troops were removed. There was a time
of quiet for the colored people. Wade Hampton and Lamar pledged
the reciprocal good will of the South. I believe that these
leaders were sincere, but they little understood the import of
their pledge, or the mighty power that slumbered in the elements
beneath their feet, “We now witness the upheaval of that power,
the sweeping away of those pledges like the chaff of the summer
threshing-floor, the crushing again of the Negro, his relief
by flight to Kansas, and the symbols of Southern methods and
purposes revealed in the Chisholm murder and the Yazoo tragedy.”
These facts, this serious aspect of affairs, and the palpable
inefficiency of temporary remedies, are awakening the North
to a fresh sense of responsibility and to the use of thorough
remedies. One evidence of this is found in the turning tide of
political affairs. A still more ominous one is foreshadowed
in the enthusiasm gathered around the flag of the Union. In
1872 Charles Sumner—zealous Union man as he was—moved in the
Senate that the names of victories in our civil war should
not be inscribed on our national regimental flags, and in the
decline of public interest those flags lay neglected in the cases
where they were deposited. But a few weeks since the State of
Connecticut removed her flags from the State Arsenal to the new
Capitol in Hartford, when, lo, ten thousand veteran survivors
and one hundred thousand spectators, making the grandest popular
demonstration ever witnessed in the State, assembled to bear
those flags with honor to their new resting place. I believe in
the power of the ballot, and I revere the flag, but I want to
raise my humble voice in warning against expecting too much from
elections, and against the terrible effects of an appeal to arms.
Has not the nation awaited with anxiety many times for election
returns only to be disappointed in the permanent effects, and
have we not felt enough of the dread evils of war to stand aghast
at the thought of its renewal? Let me use the words of Paul and
say, “Behold, I show you a more excellent way.”
I present three pictures:
The _first_ shows a gathering of colored people peacefully
assembled to promote their political welfare. But see that rush
of armed men, the brief unequal struggle, and the flight of
those who met only to exercise a constitutional right. In the
background of the picture is a jail broken open and the venerable
Judge Chisholm and his little son clinging to his knees, and his
heroic daughter endeavoring to shield her father, all butchered
in cold blood. In that background is another scene. That strong
man, the leader of Ku Klux bands, whose hands are dyed with the
blood of innocent colored men, and who could show the medal which
the grateful South had given him, is himself murdered in open
day, because he dared to announce himself not as a Republican,
but as an independent candidate for office. The worst of all is
that there is no legal remedy for these crimes. The National
Government cannot reach them with punishment, and the State
governments will not. They can only be tried in Southern courts
and before Southern juries, and these have acquitted the murderer
of the Chisholm father and children and refuse to try Barksdale
for the Yazoo murder. Thus does the South make itself solid, and
wipe out in blood the least traces of dissent from its supremacy.
The North is moved by all this—indignant, determined, and well
it may be; for what now avails the four years of war and the
fourteen years of attempt at justice and conciliation?
But I show you _another_ picture. It carries us back a few years.
The Legislature of South Carolina is in session. Its members are
mostly black men. They have generally no property and pay no
taxes, yet they have taxed that already impoverished State to the
verge of destruction, not for public improvement, but to lavish
it upon themselves, in suppers, wines, personal perquisites, in
jobs and in railroad schemes. No more scandalous or reckless
plundering of a public treasury has ever been practiced in
America, and that is saying a great deal. Why is this little
handful of mock legislators allowed to do this? Why do not the
people rush in upon them and hurl them from the places they so
dishonor? Why? Simply because there stands as a guard a file of
United States soldiers—not themselves sufficient in numbers to
be formidable, but representing the National Government, and to
touch them is to touch it. The South is indignant, determined,
and do you wonder? The troops are now gone, the black legislators
are dispersed and white taxpayers are in their places; and rising
above all other considerations is the purpose of these taxpayers
that, at whatever cost, and by whatever needed methods, be it by
tissue ballots or by shotguns, those irresponsible plunderers
shall never come back again into power. You blame them; but I
fear you would do the same yourselves under like provocation.
If the General Government, by means of a bloody war, should
subdue the Western States, and then enfranchise in any one State
enough Indians to outvote the whites, and those Indians should
re-enact the plunderings of the Columbia Legislature, how long
would the West bear it? I suspect that very quickly every Indian
would be converted into a good Indian; but it would be in the
Western sense—he would be a dead Indian. Brethren of the North,
make the case your own. Put yourself in your Southern brother’s
place, and judge him by your own impulses. What, then, is the
true remedy for this great evil? To answer this we must honestly
consider what the real evil is. These South Carolina taxpayers do
not crush these black voters because they are black. They would
do the same to the “poor whites” if they, having the numerical
force, should enact the same wrongs. Nor is it because they are
Republicans. It would be the same if they called themselves
Democrats and did the same things. The trouble, therefore, is not
with the man’s color or party, but with the man himself—with his
ignorance, his degradation and his facility in being used as the
tool of designing men. _The remedy, then, is not to change his
color or his party, but his character._ All other remedies are
delusive, and it is a national folly and crime to tamper longer
with them. We have tried them; and to try them over again will
be but to swing like a pendulum between the soldiers in front
of the State house and the bulldozers at the elections. It is a
shame and a grievous wrong to leave matters as they are. It is a
wrong to the blacks to compel them to suffer in the South or flee
to Kansas. It is unfair to the South to put them to the dreadful
alternative of suffering or doing such great wrongs. It is a
shame for an enlightened nation to keep itself thus embroiled, to
the hindrance of its prosperity and the jeopardy of its peace.
Let me show you my _third_ picture, which presents “the more
excellent way.” In the foreground is a school-house and near by
is a church. Around and in the distance are pleasant little homes
and well cultivated lands. These are the instruments for working
the needed change; they will make the Freedman intelligent,
virtuous and industrious; will give him property and responsible
interest in the welfare of the State. But you say this is a
long process. Admitted; but what if there is no other? A slave
can be changed into a freeman in an hour, but to change him
into an intelligent man will take years; to transform millions
of ignorant, cringing and penniless men into intelligent and
responsible citizens and Christians will require generations.
The acorn favorably planted will germinate into an oak in a few
days, and though small, it is a real oak; but it will be many
years before its broad branching arms will give wide shelter, or
its girth and strength of stem will yield heavy timber. A few
such plants started in good soil and carefully tended will come
forward rapidly, but the wide growth on arid plains or in cold
swamps will long remain dwarfs. The rapid progress of some of
these colored people under adequate training shows what _can_ be
done; the backwardness of the mass shows what _must_ be done.
Here is the call to this Association to bear its part in this
great work in America. It is no light task and no short work.
The North is once more aroused to its magnitude as well as its
necessity, and in that great effort the better portion of the
South is ready to join us. God forbid that any delusive scheme or
guilty indifference should hinder its steady progress.
The wide Atlantic rolls between America and Africa, but a strange
connecting wire links the two together. The battery at yonder end
was charged with the dreadful electricity that arose from burning
villages, slaughtered people and captured slaves. The sounds that
swept along that wire were the wails of the “middle passage.”
The delivery at this end was the toil, the tears, and the blood
of the slave plantation. That connection is now broken. Does God
mean to establish no other? Yes, the battery is to be placed in
America, charged with the light of its learning and religion; the
hum of the wires will be the song of the returning heralds of
salvation, and the delivery will be the breaking forth of Gospel
light in benighted Africa. Such a change is worthy of God’s
wonder-working grace, and, thanks to His name, it has begun.
Converging lines of providential purpose have met. In 1856
Burton and Speke began the first movement in the great line
of modern discovery in tropical Africa; in 1858 they first
sighted Lake Tanganyika. In 1860 Speke and Giant set out on
the second expedition from Zanzibar; in 1862 they caught their
first glimpse of the Victoria Nyanza. Thence onward moved the
heroic procession—Sir Samuel Baker, Winwood Reade, Col. Gordon,
Livingstone and others, till last of all Stanley emerged at the
mouth of the Congo in August, 1877. A marked line of American
convergence also began in 1856 with the first shedding of blood
in the struggle with the slave power in Kansas. John Brown’s
raid came in 1859. The rebellion began in 1861; the slaves
were proclaimed free in 1863, and their education began almost
with the war. Other societies have their own coincidences in
this great work, but this Association having the distinction
of opening the first school among the Freedmen, it is a matter
of special interest with us that about one month after Stanley
reached the mouth of the Congo, we sent out our first company of
_colored_ missionaries to Africa, all of whom had been born in
slavery, were educated since emancipation, and, moved by the love
of Christ and of their fatherland, had gone thither to preach
the Gospel. This is to us the beginning of the other part of the
great work to which this Association is called, for Africa and
for America.
We have the appliances for the work in our schools, our theological
departments and in our churches; in our experiences in tropical
Africa of the terrible death-rate of white missionaries, and in
the comparatively good health of the colored. Moreover, our decks
are cleared for action by the removal of the debt that has so long
hampered us. We can now handle our sails and our guns. May the
winds of heaven waft us on our course! Then again we see a way of
relief from the retrenchment enforced upon us by the debt and the
hard times. Buildings were needed—some to be enlarged, others to
be newly erected—but all such claims had to be sternly denied,
much as it cost us to deny; but now, in the good providence of
God, the generous benefaction of Mrs. Stone comes to our relief to
supply just such buildings. The return of prosperity to the country
encourages us to hope that the added expense in sustaining the
enlarged work will be met. That return of prosperity—shall it be
a curse or blessing? Shall it be the mad rush of muddy waters urged
on by avarice and ambition, and bearing on its turbulent surface
only reckless adventure, wild speculation, extravagant personal
expenditure, unscrupulous public plunderings, ending at last and
again in the dead sea of stagnation, bankruptcy, and, worst of all,
in the wrecking of character, imprisonment, insanity, or suicide?
Shall it not rather be consecrated, that it may be sanctified and
perpetuated—like the beneficent waters of the Nile carried out
into channels of benevolence, purified as it is quietly borne
along and broken in smaller rills, bearing everywhere over this
sin-parched earth the streams of salvation, making it to bloom with
the beauty and fragrance of holiness and to bear fruit to the glory
of God? Christian people ought to begin with the rising tide of
this prosperity to enlarge the streams of their benevolence, lest,
before they are aware, they be swept into the irresistible current.
Especially do we ask the friends of this cause to recognize this
auspicious era and plan to meet in some adequate measure the vast
work before us.
The hour and the call have come. The nation is re-awakened to
its great duty to the late slaves; they are themselves awaking
to the glorious opening for them as citizens and Christians in
America, and they are enthusiastic to aid in redeeming the land
of their fathers. The possibilities of African regeneration are
enkindling the hearts of Christians in Germany, in Great Britain
and in America. God’s providence is opening the way and sending
His commands along the lines. Well may it be said to the Church
of Christ in America as Mordecai said to Esther, “Who knoweth
whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
* * * * *
THE PROVIDENTIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NEGRO IN AMERICA.
REV. E. H. MERRELL, PRESIDENT OF RIPON COLLEGE.