us at this moment? It has been most ably presented by the eminent
gentleman who has just spoken, but you will permit a few words more
upon some aspects of it which especially strike me. The question
simply is, how shall this path which heaven has indicated to us,
how shall this path of education be broadened into a great highway
worthy of the nation, sure to bring it to a worthy future? Now,
there are various agencies which will co-operate in this great
work. The first to which I will allude is the munificence of
public-spirited and devoted men and women. There seems to be no
limit to that. The scene which some of us witnessed this morning,
the giving over of an immense sum to the endowment of a college in
this city, is but the token of a vast outpouring of munificence
for advanced education such as this world never saw before. There
is to be—mark the prophecy, fellow-citizens—great as has been the
outpouring of wealth heretofore, and the statistics show in ten
years, gifts to the amount of $60,000,000, we are told; there is to
be in this time of revived prosperity an outpouring of wealth far
greater, to which all this which we have seen is as nothing. That
will go to build up the high schools and academies, the technical
schools, the colleges, the universities, perhaps. We can rely on
that. But there is another agency. All this mass of education must
be permeated, must be informed by the spirit of morality, which is
bedded in religion. That can only come from the great Christian
sentiment of this country as voiced in the Christian Church, and
if the Christian Church shall rise to the height of the great
argument, if she shall recognize her great mission, and there are
plentiful signs—many of them have been vouchsafed here within the
last three days—there are plentiful signs that she is to do this;
if she shall stand forth in the panoply of her Master, if she
shall catch the spirit of the sermon on the mount, of the first
great commandment and the second which is like unto it, of that
definition of pure religion and undefiled, as given by St. James,
all this mass of education can be permeated, can be informed by
morality based upon religion. We hear alarm expressed in various
quarters at new phases of thought, at what many, not understanding,
have called the dangers of infidelity. Fellow citizens, there is
never any danger of infidelity in any land where the Christian
Church puts herself at the head of the great forces for right and
justice and enlightenment acting upon the civilization of that
country. Danger comes as it came in France, when the church forgot
its mission and sided with despotism. Danger comes as it came in
England two centuries ago and less when the church sided with a
besotted monarchy and aristocracy. Danger comes as it came not so
many years ago in our own country when the church was led, in some
places at least, to make apologies for human slavery; but when
she arrays herself at the head of great movements like this, and
insists on doing works of self-sacrifice, of mercy, of justice,
of right, tell me not of any fears of infidelity. Then I am sure
will come the noblest and the grandest triumphs of Christianity.
But is this sufficient? My friend has already shown you that it
is not. Great as this outpouring of munificence has been and is
to be, it requires even more than that for the great base part,
the fundamental part of the work, and that is the work of bringing
about a state of things under which every child, white and black,
shall be educated suitably to his or her duties. How shall this be
done? Can it be done by private munificence, great as it is? I say
no. The State of New York alone pays for primary education, common
school education, every year, more than ten millions of dollars.
We cannot expect this steady outpouring for this fundamental part
of the system. As my friend has so ably shown, that can only be
undertaken by humanity organized by States, and by the Nation. Can
the States do it alone? Again I say no. It must be done by the
Nation acting in concert with the States. The Nation must plant in
every State which has not an educational system now, or which has
not an adequate educational system, a nucleus of a system around
which State endeavors may crystallize, which shall encourage these
Southern States which have been so discouraged, which have been, as
my distinguished friend has shown, so trodden down—so broken down
I will say, not trodden down—so broken down by the events of the
last twenty years. Now, how shall this be accomplished? There are
two ways. The first is by direct appropriation. That has already
been discussed before you. Fellow citizens, if it were to take
twice or thrice the sum named it would not be felt by any tax-payer
in this land. It would deprive not one man, woman or child in all
this national domain of one single comfort. But suppose we cannot
get Congress up to the mark of making an appropriation in money.
There is another method. It was a method advocated perhaps more
than fifty years ago, by that sainted friend of right and humanity,
William Ellery Channing. That was the consecration—that was his
word, and it was a most happy word—the consecration of the national
domain, all of it that has not been given since by the homestead
act and by various other acts for the promotion of various
commercial enterprises, the consecration of the proceeds of the
sales of the national domain, sacredly, to a fund for the education
of the whole people to their great duties and their great destiny.
It seems to me that this movement can still be pressed. Congress
can still be made to see that something must be done by the
Government of the United States to open up this great path of
education in the interest of the entire nation; but, fellow
citizens, I am aware that some objections are made. Let me refer
to them very briefly. The first is what may be called a political
objection. It is said, leave this matter to time, leave it to the
people, leave it to take care of itself. I have always noticed that
when a political man wants to evade a question, wants to evade any
trouble in the matter, he always says leave it to time, leave it
to the natural forces, leave it to itself. Now, in addition to the
argument that has already been so ably presented to you, let me
say that the greatest apostle of the “laissez faire” system, the
system under which everything is to be left to the natural course,
John Stuart Mill, has expressly and in terms made an exception
as regards popular education. This, he says, must be dealt with
by organized humanity. This must be planned and carried out by
the comparatively small number of men who see at the first the
importance of it, and by that vast force which government alone
can exercise. My friends, if it is left to time and chance, what
is likely to follow? You can see as well as I. There comes first
indifference. The great population concerned sinks back first into
indifference and then into a sort of complacency, and finally into
self-congratulation that somehow they are better than communities
that are educated. There is nobody after all quite so conceited,
I think you will find that the world over, as the man who is
ignorant. He sees that educated men make certain mistakes. He
makes no such. Therefore, he at last arrives at the point, he very
often does, and especially when his ignorance is shared by a great
population, that somehow he is superior to those who are educated.
Then comes the greatest of all dangers. Then comes the danger of
despotism, the despotism of an unenlightened mob of millions; and
of all despotisms, fellow citizens, this, all history proves, is
the very worst. Give me an autocrat, give me a despot the worst
in history, and I will take him cheerfully rather than that
many-headed despot, an unenlightened, uneducated democracy. Ah!
my friends, you can make one despot see that his interest lies in
the interest of his country. You can bring home to a single despot
a sense of shame, a sense of honor, a sense of responsibility.
You can never bring that home to a mob. It was said that the old
Bourbon despotism of France was a despotism tempered by epigrams;
but what wit, what wisdom shall temper a mob of uneducated
millions, extending over thousands and thousands of square miles of
territory. There is also a not often stated, generally unavowed,
but none the less strong on that account, there is what may be
called a social objection. It is freely avowed in Europe; I have
often heard it. It is sometimes sneakingly avowed in our own
country, and that is this: Is it not after all better that this
lower class should not know much? Is it not much better to keep it
so that it will feel its dependence on the upper class? My friends,
of all mistakes all history proves that is the most fatal, for
when you pursue that policy which seems so easy at first you find
that you have at last divided a nation into two strata—the upper
a thin stratum of pride and arrogance sustained by terrorism, the
lower a thick stratum of class ignorance which may at any moment be
inflamed by fanaticism or exploded by unrest. No, fellow citizens,
the only course is so to educate the whole mass that it will see
that its interest is on the side of law and order, so that it
will be able to understand the simple presentation of rudimentary
political truths.
* * * * *
ADDRESS OF THE REV. A. G. HAYGOOD, D.D.
President of Emory College, Oxford, GA.
Mr. President: I never saw the day since Christ converted me that
my heart did not warm toward any good cause that, in its plans and
efforts, took in the whole human race. This American Missionary
Association represents such a cause, and I am grateful for the
privilege of taking some small part in this anniversary meeting.
And I am the more glad because this meeting is held in the city
where Garfield, our President, awaits the resurrection of the just.
President Hayes did good work for the South, for which history
will give him due credit. It was this: he let the South alone that
the storm-rocked sea might calm itself. President Garfield—living,
dying, and dead—awoke within the hearts of the masses of the
Southern people the throbs of a profounder national sentiment than
they had felt in twenty years.
It is becoming that I speak this evening of that part of your work
which I understand best, your work in the Southern States; and of
that part of it which I know best, your work for the negroes. Any
work of importance, as to its extent, methods, or designs, done
among the negroes must arouse interest in all thinking minds.
The negro has been in America 260 years; there are not far from
7,000,000 of them here to-day; nearly all of them are in the
Southern States. At the close of our war for independence there
were in the United States about 700,000 negroes. Within a century
they have multiplied ten times. How many will they be by 1982?
To speak in round numbers, the increase of the total population
of this country from 1870 to 1880, as the last census shows was
30 per cent; the increase of the white population, aided largely
as it was by immigration, was 28 per cent.; the increase of the
negro population, unaided by immigration, was 34 per cent. It is
only very foolish people who can be indifferent to such facts;
thoughtful men will consider them.
Visionaries and cranks may dream and declaim of solving the problem
of our future and theirs by getting them somehow out of this
country. But, if it were desirable or practicable to transport
them, they are born faster than whole navies can move them, and it
is as undesirable as it is impracticable. They are here to stay,
and so far as men can see, for the most part where they now are, in
the Southern States of this Union.
They are now nearly one-seventh of our population, and by the
providence of God they are free men and voters. The time has about
passed, Mr. President, for the North to please itself with eloquent
speech concerning their emancipation and for the South to fret
itself with fervent denunciation concerning their enfranchisement.
It were wiser and more profitable for the people of both sections
to accept the facts of a difficult question, to discuss the issues
of 1882, and in a business like way, to do our best to make the
most of them. As to the now dominant sentiment in the South, nobody
who has good sense wants them back in slavery, and the South, you
may depend upon it, will never consent for the ballot to be taken
from them.
Everybody knows that when they received the ballot _en masse_ they
were utterly unprepared for it. As a class they had just three
ideas concerning the ballot when it was given to them. First. They
looked upon it as a symbol of their freedom; this, I believe did
them good. Second. They received it as a special mark of the love
borne to them by the people of the North; this made them vain of
it, and alienated them from their white neighbors. Third. Their
predominant notion was that it was given them to “keep the old
rebels down;” this spoiled them for fair-minded politics. But as a
class they lacked conscience in the use of it.
You will pardon a single illustration of their capacity for
enlightened politics. For nearly eight years I have had in my
employment a colored man, Daniel Martin by name. He is about my own
age. I trust him fully in all matters for which he has capacity. We
are much attached to each other, and, the truth is, we have been
taking care of each other for a good while. He gets better wages
than ordinary colored men in our community, and is much above the
average of his race in character and common sense. He can read
“coarse print,” and can sign his name imperfectly. You will miss
the point of my illustration unless you bear in mind that he had
steadily voted the Republican ticket from the beginning of his
citizenship to the date of my story. And he so votes till this day.
The day before the Hayes and Tilden election he was plowing in a
little field near my house. One of our students quizzed him about
his views and intentions: “How are you going to vote to-morrow,
Uncle Daniel?” It is a peculiarity of the Southern negro that he
never delivers a solemn judgment on any subject without coming to
a full halt in whatever engages him. One consequence is, he comes
to a great many halts in his work. Another peculiarity of at least
the Southern negro is, that he thinks in metaphor and speaks in
parables. So Daniel, stopping his horse and sticking his plow
deeper into the ground, delivered himself as follows: “Now, Mr.
Longstreet, you see I is plowin dis furrow. If I only plow dis
furrow I makes dis furrow too deep and I don’t plow de balance of
de patch.” Mr. Longstreet admitted the force of the statement.
Daniel continued in answer to the young man’s question: “I think
things is ben gwine on in one way long enough; I think dere
ought to be a change. Wherefore I is gwine to vote for Mr. Hayes
to-morrow—git up, Bill.”
Next day he and I went to our county town; he voted for Hayes that
there might be a change; I voted for Tilden that there might be
a change; he killed my vote—or possibly one of yours—and we were
“equal before the law.”
But few of them are now prepared to vote intelligently, and
ballots, whether cast by fair or dark hands, in the hands of
ignorance are dangerous to free institutions. Are not you of the
North nearly as much concerned in the quality of the negro’s
ballot as we of the South are? Till recently, they voted “solid”
for the Republican ticket. A few weeks ago, in Georgia, the
majority of them voted for an ex-Confederate Brigadier General, who
fought bravely at the first Manassas, and who ran for Governor as
an Independent Democrat, receiving, however, the whole Republican
vote; and thousands of them voted for the nominee of the Democratic
party, the ex-Vice-President of the Confederacy. No white man
running for any office in the South will refuse their votes, and,
so far as I know, their votes are always sought when there is any
chance to get them. I am not sure but that his ignorance makes him
more dangerous as a voter when both parties seek his vote than
when it is given solid to one. In your work in the South, Mr.
President, I rejoice, for many reasons. The reason I now mention
is this: That work is helping to prepare the negro for his duties
as a citizen. I can well understand how the best and wisest people
in the North feel most deeply and solemnly their obligation to
do this work. For you gave him the ballot, and history will not
justify that gift unless you do all that you can do to prepare him
for its intelligent use. Not now, nor during the next generation,
can the South do this work alone. Unless you continue to help,
and to help mightily, it cannot be done. As to primary education,
many in the South—and I, for one, agree with them—believe with our
Senator Brown, of Georgia, that the national government should come
to the rescue and help the States in this work—distributing its
aid on the basis of illiteracy. This would give the South a large
share of “appropriations under the old flag.” What if it does? The
South is part of you, and you are part of the South—if this is a
Union and a Nation. Slowly but surely, as it seems to me, we are
beginning to understand our relations to each other. Some day we
will, it is to be hoped, understand one another so well and agree
so amicably that the phrases “the North” and “the South” shall have
only geographical meaning. President Arthur, many thanks to him
for this, made no allusion to “the South” in his first message to
Congress.
If the general government gives this needed help, it will be in the
interest of the whole country, although the Southern States may
get, for once, the lion’s share. For we are a large part of this
country; we are in the Union and intend to stay there—if we have to
whip somebody in order to do it. But, in the nature of things, this
sort of help must be temporary, and, as I suppose, should, like
the educational work of the State governments, be carried on, for
the most part, in the common schools. The thing that must be done,
if our work is to stand, is to train up among the negroes, as well
as among the whites, men and women who can teach the children of
their race—teach them in homes, in school-houses and in churches.
This cannot be done by the State as it should be done. For if, as
one has said, the “negroes need educated Christianity,” it is also
true that they must have Christianized education in order to get
it. This the State does not and cannot give. To achieve this most
desirable and necessary result the school-house and the church must
work together. There must be Bibles in the schools that are to
train teachers among this people, and there must be Christian men
and women in them who both teach and practice religion.
This, as it appears to me, is what you and others like you are
trying to do for the negroes. Your annual reports show that your
Association is doing successfully, and on a very broad scale, this
most necessary work. I do not particularize; your Secretaries have
covered all that ground.
You are raising up in these schools men and women who, in the years
to come, can, will and must teach the children of their people.
Hundreds of them are doing it now. I say must; for Christianized
education must, by its instinctive and divine impulses, perpetuate
itself and diffuse itself. Christian education, whether in
Christian or heathen lands, is the most aggressive and formative
influence that is now shaping the destiny of the human race. When
you send out from Nashville, from Berea, from Atlanta and New
Orleans young men and women who are both educated and religious,
you send into the very masses of these untaught millions those who
must teach what they have learned both from books and from Christ.
Again I say must, for the spirit that is in an educated Christian
man or woman is, as the old Methodist preacher used to say, “a fire
in the bones,” and it will blaze out.
The author of the Declaration of Independence wrote, it is said, in
1782, this prediction: “Nothing is more certainly written in the
book of fate than that these people are to be free; nor is it less
certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same
government.”
It does not surprise me that Mr. Jefferson made both of these
predictions. As to the first, there was at that time in Virginia
and other Southern States a strong party that favored the
emancipation of the slaves. As to the second prediction, he had
studied French philosophy more than he had studied Christianity.
If this country were pagan Rome, or infidel France, the first
prediction would have failed—they would not have been set free by
the will of men. Had they been set free, the second prediction
would have been fulfilled, for in a pagan or infidel country,
the two races could not be equally free “and live in the same
government.” They would not have been set free had this not been
a Christian country; as it is a Christian country, the two races,
equally free before the law, can live in the same government and
the problem of their citizenship can be solved.
But this problem cannot be solved by legislation alone. Time
has proved the truth of the weighty words delivered at your
anniversary in 1875, by that venerable and great man who was taken
to heaven last winter. At that time the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon
wrote these words: “I come to this conclusion, legislation on the
part of the national government is no longer to be invoked in aid
of fundamental reconstruction. Attempts by Congress to employ
force for the abolition of prejudices and antipathies in social
intercourse do not help the cause in which the American Missionary
Association is at work. I used the word force, because law enforced
is force, and law not enforced is not law. The more completely
our cause can be henceforth disentangled from all connection with
political parties and agitators, the better for its progress.
Doubtless there will be more legislation by the several States,
especially in behalf of the great interest of public schools for
all, before the consummation that we hope for shall have been
attained; but the legislation, must be the effect and not the cause
of that fundamental reconstruction which we desire to work for.
It will exhibit and record, more than it can inspire or control,
the progress of reformed opinions and better sentiments among the
people.”
When the law gives equal opportunity and guarantees equal rights
to all (and this it must do to be worthy of respect), it has done
all it can do. Foundation work means character-building, and this
goes on in individuals. Law has its educative force; but to lift
up a race whether white, yellow, black, or red, there must be
character-building in individual men and women, and to do this
work right we must have the church and the school-house. And these
two must work together and not against each other. This sort of
foundation work you are trying to do and others are trying to do.
It has not failed; it cannot fail; it has life in itself.
Mr. Jefferson’s second prediction will fail—it is failing now.
These two races are both equally free, and they are living
together in the same government with less and less difficulty and
misunderstanding each year. Disturbances here and there, conflicts,
acts of violence there have been, there are, and there will be
for a time. The wonder is not that there was a period of disorder
in the Southern States after the war. The true wonder is that
there is now so little of it, and that between 1865 and 1870 the
South did not rush into final and utter chaos. There was never in
any country such a state of things—so provocative of universal
and remediless anarchy. What is it that saved us? Not the troops;
not acts of Congress. Christian schools and the church of God. It
was the Protestant religion that dominated the majority—both of
the negroes and the Southern white people. I grant you that the
conservative influences that the churches in the South brought out
of the war have been greatly aided by the work done by your society
and others like it; but it is also true that, but for the work the
church in the South did before your coming, you could have done
next to nothing, by this time, in the experiment. As to this whole
subject, full of difficulties as those know best who have personal
relations to it, there is just one platform on which Christian
people can stand. Our problem with these millions of negroes in our
midst can be happily solved—not by force of any sort from without
the States where they live; no more can it be solved by repression
within those States. It can be worked out only on the basis of the
Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount. On this platform
we can work out any problem whatsoever—whether personal, social,
political, national or ethnical—that Providence brings before us.
On any lower or narrower platform we will fail, and always fail.
We have learned—you of the North and we of the South—many things
in the last ten years. Among other valuable discoveries, we have
learned that the people of neither section are either all good
or bad. As to this race question, we of the South have learned,
and we are learning, that we can’t manage our problem by any mere
repressive system; you have learned, and are learning, that it
can’t be solved by any sort of force from without, whether force of
law, force of troops, or force of denunciation. Such knowledge is
precious; alas! that it cost us so much.
May I quote at this place one other paragraph from the words of
Dr. Leonard Bacon? It is at the close of a letter dated “New
Haven, October 22, 1875,” and is in these words: “May I be allowed
to say one word concerning the future of this society? That word
is conciliation—conciliation by meekness, by love, by patient
continuance in well-doing. The field is wide open for schools
and for the preaching of the Gospel, two great forces operating
as one for fundamental reconstruction. In both these lines of
effort the work of the society must be more and more a work of
conciliation—conciliation of the South to the North and to the
restored and beneficent Union; conciliation of races to each other,
white to black and black to white; conciliation of contending
sects oppressed with traditional bigotries to the simplicity of
the truth as it is in Jesus.” Thomas Jefferson was not a prophet:
Leonard Bacon was. And, thank God! so much has been done by this
Association to incarnate the truth that was in his great thoughts
and to fulfill his hopes and predictions as to its own future.
But this work of “fundamental reconstruction” is a slow process,
suggests the impatient one. That is true; character-building,
whether in a man or in a nation or in a race, is always a slow
process. And it must be slower in a nation or in a race than in
a man. There was never any great work done in the uplifting or
training of a race in a day or in a year. It takes generations.
How slowly our own race has risen out of its original savagery;
how unfit we still are to fulfill our mission to the world. We
have small cause for boasting when white men’s votes—sometimes
enough of them to turn the scale in great elections—can be bought
cheap in the open streets. Lifting up a nation or a race is a slow
process; wherefore the greatest necessity for zeal, for wisdom, and
for patience in our work. Whenever a great and necessary work that
requires a long time and much labor is to be done, we should begin
at once and do our best.