Book: American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889

V >> Various >> American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889




4. The work of the Association is not a transient one. A New England
pastor at the beginning of our work for the freedmen, gave me a hearty
welcome to present our cause in his pulpit, telling me frankly he did so
the more cheerfully because he thought our work would soon be over--say
in twenty or twenty-five years. Now that good man believed that home
missions in the West, and in some of the older Eastern States, would be
needed well nigh on to the millennium, yet he imagined that the blacks,
just escaped from bondage, utterly poor, ignorant and degraded, would
(perhaps he hardly stopped to think how) rise in twenty-five years above
all need of help from any quarter in their upward struggle! But the
fallacy of such a supposition is realized more since these twenty-five
years have passed than it was then. It is now clearly seen that these
ex-slaves will require for three or four generations the most abundant
help to bring them up to the level of those Western settlers, including
the Swedes, Germans and Norwegians crowding in thither, who are
comparatively well-off and intelligent. And then, after that preparation
of the Negro has been made, the regular work of home missions will only
be fairly begun among them. The work for this people, therefore, is not
transient, and the missionary society that has it in hand has before it
not only a great but long-continued task.

And for that great work the Association has had a manifest call and
preparation, and has gained an experience and an influence of peculiar
value in its further prosecution. The Association has wrought itself
into the schools and churches, into the industries of the colored
people, the improvement of their homes, the preparation of their sons
and daughters for home and business life, and for teachers and preachers
and physicians; it has wrought itself into their better aspirations for
both this world and that which is to come. It has won upon the
confidence and respect of the white people by its unselfish and
Christian work, its kind but firm adherence to principle, and by the
blessing it has conferred upon both races in aiding the South in the
only true solution of its great problem.

The Association has become anchored to this great work by the large
amount of invested funds intrusted to its care. It has received
thousands of dollars from the Freedmen's Bureau, from the Avery estate,
from the gifts of Mrs. Stone and others, and added to all these is the
large sum placed one year ago in its hands by the munificence of Mr.
Hand. These several sums aggregate more than two millions of dollars--an
amount of endowment, we believe, without a parallel among our
Congregational societies for the home field. While no inconsiderable
share of these funds is in plant, and therefore increases instead of
diminishes current expenses, yet the Association is the only legal
custodian of these funds. They constitute, therefore, a strong evidence
of the confidence of large donors in its usefulness and stability and in
the importance of its work, and at the same time they make a strong plea
for current contributions to sustain that work. God has moved the hearts
of noble men and women to lay these firm foundations. Will not others
equally able and far-seeing in their benevolence add to these gifts and
thus extend these foundations, and will not the churches build thereon
with diligent and cheerful hands?

These forty-three years under review have been memorable in the history
of this Nation. They have witnessed the reign of slavery in the height
of its arrogant domination. They have seen the rising protest of
conscience and religion against that domination, with the mad resistance
of slavery, until it culminated in one of the bloodiest wars of modern
times. They have beheld a united Nation emerge from the conflict, and
not a slave in all its broad land. They have seen the uplifted hands and
hearts of the freedmen grasping for knowledge. And, last of all, they
behold the new power seated on the throne vacated by slavery, dooming
the colored man to a position of inferiority scarcely less degrading
than slavery itself.

Along all these lines the sympathies and efforts of the Association have
run. It pleaded for the slave in his bondage, when to do so cost odium
and ostracism; it joined with others in the appeal against slavery, with
the hope that righteousness would avert the calamity of war. When the
slave came forth free, it went with prompt hands to fit him for his new
position, and now, as he enters the long and dark struggle against
poverty, ignorance and race-prejudice, it girds itself for the great
struggle, armed with what have ever been its only weapons, the light of
knowledge and the love of the gospel of Christ. The contest may be long,
the work will be great, but the triumph must be sure. May the church of
Christ, the patriots of the land, and the abundant blessing of the
Almighty God strengthen and help us in this great undertaking!

* * * * *


THE MISSIONARY VIEW OF THE SOUTHERN SITUATION.

BY SECRETARY A.F. BEARD.

The Southern problem is a National peril. Problems are not always
perils. This is a problem large with political and religious perils, and
whether political or religious it can not be ignored, nor can its
consideration be postponed. It is here. It is our problem. It is nearer
to the South, and more immediate, than to the North, but it is ours. We
are not foreigners in any part of this country. It has been settled once
for all that we are to be fellow citizens in a common country when we
come from Boston to Chicago and when we go from New York to New Orleans.
The problem which belongs to a country to which we belong, is ours. This
might as well be understood. We have no right to take our hands off from
that of which we are a part and which is a part of us. No part can say
to another, it is not your concern.

This is true politically. Thrice true is it religiously--Christian faith
is not confined to State boundaries. It belongs everywhere. The problem
is not a new one. It has its roots bedded deep in history. When years
ago it began to be discussed by a few they were called agitators, as if
the discussion of right and wrong were itself a wrong, as if the letting
in of light upon the darkness were a deed of darkness. Nevertheless, the
Nation became thoughtful over the question of the rights of man. While
it was musing the fire burned, and an irrepressible conflict came. In
the issue it was settled that no man should be held by another man in
involuntary servitude in this common and inseparable country.

A quarter of a century has elapsed since this settlement of a problem
which involved the destiny of two races, and of our whole country. The
question now before the Nation and before the churches is a corollary
of slavery. It is the second section of the first chapter. The first
question was: How shall liberty be proclaimed to the captive and the
enslaved become free? The second is: Being free, how can the two
races--as distinct and separate as are the white and black races of
the South--now equal before the law, live side by side under the same
government, and live in Christian truth and peace? This is the
problem, and, like the first, it is irrepressible.

In one sense it is a new question--that is, a new generation of white
people has in part come forward to participate in the duties of
citizenship, since all men became men in the law of the land. To them
the question is practically new. The situation as they find it, is this:
The Negroes, who, twenty years ago, were four millions, are now eight
millions. The increase of the blacks above the increase of the whites in
the period of twenty years, is fourteen per cent. In his work on the
African in the United States, Professor Gilliam, having in hand the
figures of our Census Bureau, forecasts with the demonstration of
mathematics our population one century hence. We do not know what may
modify his figures, but he computes that at the present rate of increase
there are to be in the old slave States in one hundred years,
ninety-five millions of whites and double this number of African
descent. Therefore, whatever may modify, it is probable that before one
half an hundred years are over, the numbers of the blacks will furnish
them sufficient guarantee for their legal rights.

There are those in this presence who have seen the population of this
republic multiply itself nearly three times. Our childhood's geography
taught us that twenty-three millions of people lived in the United
States. Now our children learn that there are sixty millions. Twenty
years ago four millions of Negroes and eight millions to-day. Therefore,
as large as the problem now is to us, it will be greater for our
children if we err in our solution of it.

This race of African descent has been declared by constitutional
enactment to be entitled to whatever privileges belong to man, as man.
Standing on this, and beginning with nothing but the heredity of
hindrances, with the brand of color and the prejudice of race against
them, this people have climbed up from their low estate with a
remarkable progress. They have applied themselves to take hold of
knowledge as no other people ever did in the annals of history. They
have made great inroads upon their previous illiteracy. They have
rapidly acquired property. They have developed industrial skill, and
established the evidences of business facility. They have shown
themselves capable of good citizenship, both in the understanding of its
duties and the practice of them. They have vindicated the act of
emancipation and the decrees of citizenship.

Yet to-day their standing both as citizens and as Christians is opposed.
The question of their rights is discussed as if it were an open one, and
in the South it is coming to be increasingly denied. Under the plea that
it is unsafe for the black man to exercise his civil rights, there
arises a condition of affairs that can have no standing under our
government except a revolutionary standing. And the question whether the
rights of man as man shall be regarded, is to-day a more pressing
question than it has been at any previous time since the slaves were
declared to be men.

The Southern press, which both creates and voices public opinion,
reveals an attitude of mind increasingly hostile to the equal civil
rights of the black man, for the simple reason that he is not white,
which is calculated to fill the friends of American institutions with
gravest apprehensions, and which demands the serious attention of us
all. Almost every week discloses to us the fact that intimidation,
oppression and violence do override the government of the land, in its
application to the Negro people. Influential Southern journals have
pronounced the Fifteenth Amendment a living threat to the civilization
of the South, and declare that Christian statesmanship demands its
abrogation.

A thoughtful book published in New York, written in a calm and judicial
tone by an able lawyer in Virginia, in its chapter upon the future of
the Negro, says: "The social aspect of the Negro suffrage is certain to
_grow more_ threatening as the blacks increase. The motives which have
led the great body of whites to vote together in this age, must augment
in force in the age to follow. To day the rapid increase of the black
population constitutes a greater danger to the stability of our
government than any that is sapping the vitality of the European
monarchies. The partial disfranchisement of the Negro in the future
would appear to be inevitable, essential, if not to the existence of the
South, then to the prosperity of the Union." This is a temperate
expression of much Southern opinion.

Not a few hold the view that the education and advancement of the Negro
tends to create the race problem, and do not hesitate to say that if the
Negroes could only be kept as laborers in the cotton and rice and sugar
fields, in the furnaces and mines of the South, aspiring to nothing
higher and not antagonizing the whites in political matters, there would
be no race problem.

Six months ago we could quote from an editorial column written by an
ex-Confederate officer for an influential Democratic paper in the South
these words: "The duty of the white people of the South is plain. In the
spirit of _noblesse oblige_ we must sympathize with those who are
fitting the colored people for the duties of life, remembering what the
Negroes were to our forefathers and what our forefathers were to them.
No one can doubt that a Negro has a soul to save. That admitted, he is
as much entitled to the benefits of salvation as the white man. But", he
adds, "what do we see? Nearly all the bodies of Christians even, except
the Roman Catholics, shuffling to set the Negro apart and leave him
largely to his own ways, shuffling out of their responsibility according
to the gospel which they profess as their guide, and putting the Negro
apart in spite of the word of God, whom they worship, that he is no
respecter of persons. The Negro was brought over here by theft and
outrage. He is here to stay, and we must deal with him according to the
golden rule, and as we would wish to be done by if we were similarly
placed."

This is not a quotation from the National Council of Congregational
Churches, where such an utterance would both by nature and by grace find
expression, but it is from the pen of an officer of the Southern
Confederacy, who knows the light when he sees it, who keeps open an
honest eye, and who does not hesitate to speak from an honest mind. This
sentiment balances somewhat of that which pleads against the black man,
and not a few friends of this kind has the American Missionary
Association won to itself throughout the South. It never had so many who
are saying: "Yours is the most practical missionary work ever undertaken
by a Christian body." "You have won our confidence by your spirit and
your methods; you have our cordial sympathy." At the same time we
recognize the fact that both prejudice and partisanship are now making
strenuous efforts to create the judgment that the Negro should be
stripped of his civil rights and that his education is going on too
rapidly. For example, the _Southern Journal_, whose Christian sentiments
of six months ago, just quoted, with another editor to-day, comes to us
with another deliverance, probably nearer to the heart of most of its
constituency, saying: "The Negro is not a fit subject for Northern
missionary effort. Northern money is not wanted to build him schools,
and Northern teachers and preachers are not wanted to improve his mind
nor to save his soul. He should be let alone. He is out in the water:
let him swim. He should be left alone to work out his own salvation."
The editor who says we must save him is an ex-Confederate officer who
has always lived in the South. The editor who says he should be left
alone is a Northern man who has gone South to live. The first writes,
_noblesse oblige_. The second does not understand the language. He,
doubtless, has the largest constituency.

The pulpit also creates and voices public opinion. Our work is coming to
get many a good word from the Southern pulpit. But a Southern white
bishop--Bishop Pearce--did not write to unwilling ears when he said: "In
my judgment higher education would be a calamity to the Negroes. It
would elevate Negro aspirations far above the station which the Negro
was created to fill. The whites can never tamely, and without protest
submit to the intrusion of colored people into places of trust, profit,
and responsibility." This, you will observe, is from a minister of
Christ. It is from a bishop of a church. It is from one who prays our
Lord's prayer, given alike to white and black. "After this manner,
therefore, pray ye." "Our Father." This is from one who believes in the
baptism at Pentecost, when devout men from every nation under heaven
received the impartial benedictions of God. This from one who read the
story of Peter and the sheet. "Alas, my brother."

All this, then, is the atmosphere of the situation. Some prophetic souls
are looking out upon a most perplexing and perilous problem with
profound solicitude, and extending to us their sympathy and prayers for
our work. More, many more, are teaching and preaching that God has
created the Negro race to fill forever a place of inferiority, and that
he must stay down in the bog or in some way be destroyed. It is not
surprising, therefore, that ignorant white people should give form and
substance to these hostile opinions in scenes of violence and cruelty.
They believe in the inherent inferiority of the blacks, and have a
mighty fear lest this doctrine should prove to be untrue. The Negro,
twenty-five years ago in absolute poverty and illiteracy, has been
greedy for education, and has seriously thought of nothing but to rise
from his low condition.

The intelligent white man now, and to his great surprise, is all at once
confronted by the intelligent black man. They are not so numerous now as
to be an element to fear, but the whites are foreseeing the not distant
day when they can not be relegated to inferiority because of their
color. The calamity that Bishop Pearce deplores and would prevent is not
far away--educated Negroes with aspirations, in other words, men.

The general Negro illiteracy is gaining fast upon the white ignorance,
and the despised Negro is found to be living above many of his
illiterate white neighbors. This makes it easy work for designing men to
sharpen race prejudices, which by force and fear shall keep the Negro
down.

On the Negro side, he has been patient and forbearing. With these
outbreaks of persecution some are discouraged, and are ready to
surrender their manhood. On the other hand, some are no longer patient,
but are enraged. They would retaliate. They feel that defense against
wrongs is right. An influential Negro paper says, "EDUCATE, AGITATE,
RETALIATE. Does one strike me? With the power of God on high, back also
will I strike him." This feeling grows. Add to it the fact that the
Negro is developing the power of organization. There are leaders. They
are in their councils and conventions. They are feeling deeply, speaking
plainly, and organizing efficiently.

This is the situation! "How shall this problem be solved? How shall we
prevent the conflict between races?" A Southern author says: "These
problems have been solved in the past in four ways. By reducing the
weaker race to slavery, or by expulsion, or by extermination, or by the
amalgamation of the races. Slavery is out of the question--that is
settled. Equally repugnant is expulsion or extermination. Amalgamation
is abhorrent." Therefore, the problem will not be solved by any
historical precedents. The two races must live here in the same
sections, equal before the law, with mutual rights, and all rights must
be sanctioned and confirmed.

The American Missionary Association is living with this problem day by
day. It is trying to see it with the look of Christ. This Association
foresaw this question forty years ago. It took on itself the preparation
for it. It guided itself to meet the problem in the fields before the
armies in the South were disbanded. It went with its distinctive and
unpopular principles. It went in the patience and love of Christ. For
the most part it met a natural and unconcealed hostility. It did not
retaliate even in spirit, but it stood firm in spirit and in truth. It
has lived on in the South, and taught the same ever-living and
everlasting gospel for all men, of whatever race or color. Its record is
before the churches. They have never had reason to feel other than
grateful to God for its work. Beginning with a great number of little
primary schools, and with thousands of beginners in the alphabet of
learning, it has gradually passed into larger and more far-reaching
influences by teaching teachers and preachers, who shall go, and who do
go out and reach multiplied thousands.

In order that applied Christianity may have the power of self-help and
self-care, industries are introduced. In that the people are being
fitted to save themselves. All of our work from first to last is
missionary, and instinct with the motive of salvation; our schools are
means to an end; fitting preachers, teachers, mechanics, home makers to
meet the problem and the peril. It is not by education that the question
is to be solved. The missionary view is not simply the educational view.
This society is not an educational society. Education is not the panacea
for the ills of man. Ignorance is a great evil, but it is not the worst
one; sinfulness is worse and more difficult to cure. The one who is
educated may make trouble and not heal it; secular education can not
meet the problem; State education can not protect against the peril, but
sanctified education can, for it has in it the power of God. This
society is a missionary society which, like the American Board, teaches
in order to save. You can scarcely save ignorance. This means Christian
schools not only full of ethics, but vital with faith. It means also the
twin life of school work and church work. To put these factors apart
would be a great disaster to each; nay, it would put away from the only
society that can effectively, and we believe effectually, meet this
problem, the chief factor in the solution of the impending and serious
question. Education alone is not equal to this question, and those who
have won the ear and the sympathy of those who need to come under the
power of the gospel, who have been their friends and teachers, who have
their confidence and trust, are the ones to take this gospel to them and
show them how to take it to others. The schools reach parents, the
schools reach pastors, the schools reach the people, the schools are
intertwined with all the church life that has any hope in it. This is
the missionary view. When this people in the wilderness cried out in
their distresses, "Who will speak for us?" the Association spoke for
them. When they needed sympathy, sympathy it gave. When they needed
instruction, it went to them in the name of Christ. In his name it stood
for the Negro. In his name it stood by the Negro. In his name it stood
with him. It stands there to-day. It is his friend and counselor. When
the Negro is cast down, the churches will hear one voice and they will
wish their own society to be found faithful in this.

With this charter as a missionary society for schools and churches, we
present to the Negro race continually the personal hope of souls not
only, but the hope of the race. When they think that the progress is
slow we tell them that Christianity is sure. When they tell us that they
can not wait, but must organize and retaliate, we tell them to wait upon
God. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." We ask them to remember that a
quarter of a century, or a century, is a short time in the history of a
people. We point to a million--a round million--of Negro children in the
schools to-day. We are teaching them to be men. We are saving them to be
Christians. We teach them not to remain down and not to be put down.
Being men, they are to stand like men, but like Christian men, to
conquer prejudices by worthiness, to meet race hatred with only a
stronger purpose to command respect, not to render evil for evil, but
contrariwise, blessing; not blow for blow, but to go on upbuilding
themselves, deserving their rights, and remembering that a great element
in the solution of this problem must be an intelligent faith in God.
With this missionary view we stand firm. We have learned that the
Southerners of our own race, even when they hold their prejudices
against our principles, respect those who stand in a Christian way for
their principles; and that these principles will never be accepted in
the South by our holding them loosely, or in suspense, or in any sort of
abeyance. They respect us when we teach our people that they have all
the rights of manhood and womanhood; that they are to respect themselves
and to be worthy of self-respect; that they are not to consent in their
own minds to any assertion of superiority based upon the tint of the
skin, and that they are never to feel guilty for being black. We are
teaching the colored people to hold honor with themselves.

What this Association and other missionary forces have done and are
doing--this Association more than others--will be the balance of power
to prevent the dreaded conflict of races; _the balance of power_ to
settle the question; How can the two races live in the same section with
mutual respect for each other's civil and Christian rights? This may
take time. Christianity takes time. It is ours to take Christianity to
teach that the beginning of Christianity was the death blow to wrong
principles and evil practices of men, however well intrenched and
fortified these forces may be.

It is this which gives us courage to grapple with centuries of wrong and
to undertake the slow reduction of these evils. When Christianity came,
the era of conscience came, and in His gospel is the power of
intelligence and moral determination that shall not be overcome of evil,
but shall overcome evil with good.

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