Part 16

All men were created for a special purpose, and every man who has reached the age of reason knows what that purpose is. It is a law of that man’s nature which he must obey or take the consequences.

It is a law established by God, the Creator, and can not be violated with the same impunity as the laws of man.

For instance: The legislature enacts a law forbidding you to steal. You steal, nevertheless, and you are punished as has been said, being sent to prison. But if you violate a law of God—or a law of nature, which is the same thing, you do not see any prison in sight and you imagine you are going to get off free from punishment. But wait a moment.

A man commits suicide or does other flagrant acts upon himself.

The suicide commits a murder, but if he murdered another he might have an opportunity to repent—to make his peace with God. But by putting an end to himself he cuts off his chance of repentance and appears before his Creator with the blood stains indelibly fixed upon his hands. He is a marked Cain, and he fixes his own punishment to begin immediately.

Any flagrant violation of the laws of nature are an insult to the majesty of the Creator who made all things perfect, and fixes sure punishment upon him who defaces His handiwork.

The Devil’s Work in the Home, in Society, in Business, in Politics, and in Every Walk of Life

THE THIEF

Misrepresentation, Lying, Stealing—Reputation Gone—The Soul Destroyed.

THE MURDERER

Temptation, Drunkenness, Murder—The Trial in Court, the Sentence of the Prisoner, a Life Term in the Penitentiary, or WORSE. After that ETERNAL DARKNESS.

THE SUICIDE

Dissipation, Gambling, Speculation With Other People’s Money—ALL IS LOST. Suicide.

THE PUBLIC PLUNDERER

Intimidation, Bulldozing, Brute Force, Vote Stealing, Ballot Box Stuffing, Bribery, Malfeasance in Office, Embezzlement of Public Funds—Impeachment, Political Death, Moral Debauchery, Disgrace—RUIN.

THE DESTROYER OF HOMES

Intemperance, Ignorance, Deception, Betrayal, Seduction, Adultery, Abortion, Race Suicide, Desertion, Divorce—DEATH.

PROGRESS IN EDUCATION.

Compiled from official figures recently issued by the United States Bureau of Education.—Editor.

INTRODUCTION.

Education is the highest test of a people’s capacity and the best measure of their progress. The ability of the Negro to become educated according to the highest standards of the times is one of the great marvels of the last half century. Never in the history of the world has any people met with such overwhelming opposition against acquiring such training as will fit them for the full duties of citizen, as have the Freedmen in the United States; never before has a people struggled as nobly and succeeded so well in mastering every branch of learning, as this people, practically all of whom were illiterate at the close of the Civil War; but of whom only thirty per cent were illiterate in 1910.

The influences through which the colored people have passed in their quest for learning constitutes one of the most interesting pages of American history. No historian can chronicle the heart throbs, the ambitions and the untiring energy that they have spent, and are still expending, in their education.

The various education processes to which the Negroes of America have been subjected is interwoven with the history of the United States from the year 1619, when the first slaves were landed, to the present moment. The story of the development of the African slave, to the present condition of the American Negro is full of interest and instruction and worthy of much more extended scientific treatment than this chapter can possibly comprehend.

With all the mistakes that have been made by a loose-jointed American democracy in its treatment of the Negroes, both as slaves and as free men, the general movement of the Negro people has been decidedly forward. Even under slavery these people benefited by a contact with civilization that no corresponding groups have had in any other part of the world. They were quick to perceive that the mastery of the white man over them lay in his education. Though crushed to the lowest level, they never lost hope or opportunity to learn the meaning of books and figures. Sometimes through sympathy of a master’s child, sometimes by a kindly stranger from the North, a slave learned the alphabet and a little arithmetic. When the Emancipation Proclamation was sounded the eagerness and determination of the Negro to obtain an education opened into full blossom, and the colored people consecrated themselves to the one great task of educating their children, so that these coming men and women might be able to live happier and better lives. It was here that systematic efforts were undertaken to build schools for the colored and by the colored people. How wonderful has been the result of their effort is revealed by facts which have just been published by the United States Bureau of Education. These figures show:

1. That $5,860,876 is spent annually by the public authorities of Southern States in the wages of teachers in public schools for Negroes.

2. That the Federal State and land-grant schools have an annual income of $963,611, and a total property valuation of $5,727,609.

3. That the private schools have an annual income of $3,026,460, and a property valuation of $28,496,946.

4. That eight educational funds are devoting part or all of their income for the improvement of Negro schools.

5. That the Negroes themselves are contributing an increasing share to the support of their schools.

6. That Negro illiteracy is now only thirty per cent.

7. That Negro farm laborers and Negro farmers cultivate at least a hundred million acres of land, of which forty-two and a half millions are in farms owned or rented by Negroes.

8. That Negroes own twenty million acres of land, an area equal to that of Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.

These facts are indisputable evidences of progress in the past and afford great promise for the future.

HISTORY OF NEGRO EDUCATION.

Into the struggling life of the pioneers of America came the first Negroes landed in this country; brought out of African savagery and sold in Virginia as slaves; set down side by side with indentured bondmen from England, whose lot was little better, to be taught civilization. How soon they learned to talk the English language; to copy the kindlier manners of their new neighbors; to fulfill the duties laid on them; to put their mind upon their tasks; and to lose their native traits in the happier faith of Christianity. It was all as unlike the valley of the Congo from which they came as one could well imagine. People were clothed instead of going naked; they could not live on uncultivated fruits; but had to dig that they might enjoy the harvest; there were better enterprises to undertake than to hunt for men and to fight with other tribes on the chance of catching slaves from them or being caught themselves; it was a condition of order and of law, of homes and housekeeping, or community life and neighborly usages, with prizes of a hundred kinds for good behavior and the habit of fidelity. Of course, there was a great deal that was rough and hard; sometimes there were cuffs and blows, curses and the driver’s lash for any lagging in the work required; often injustice and cruelty; but in contrast with Africa, it was a land of golden opportunity.

In the two hundred years and more that preceded the great emancipation, the number of people of African descent grew to be about 4,000,000. The processes of these 200 years are profoundly significant as a preparation for the responsibilities of freedom that came so suddenly at the close of the war. The training of the Negro during this period, and the attitude of the thoughtful people of the country toward his training, are deserving of treatment separate from that given to the development of the school system as it is known today. The difference in attitude brought on by the fear of so-called slave uprising and by the pre-Civil War debates, divides this period rather clearly into two parts.

The first extends from the landing of the slaves in 1619, to about 1830; the second, the pre-Civil War period, extending from about 1830 to 1860.

THE EARLY TEACHING OF SLAVES.

There is striking proof of the high estimate which the more enlightened people of the country put upon the Negro’s character and capabilities in the enterprises for African colonization which were made so much of in the first half of the last century. An interesting feature of this movement was the union of benevolent people in the South with those of like mind in the North, and the harmony of spirit which long prevailed. With the teachings of the Declaration of Independence dominant everywhere, thinking people felt that slavery could not be countenanced forever in a free country; and the practical way to deal with the Negroes seemed to be to set them off in colonies by themselves. Jefferson suggested that there might be such a colony in some part of the region northwest of the Ohio or that a retreat be found for them in the West Indies; and, later, in 1811, after the colony of Sierra Leone had been planted by the British Government, he wrote that nothing was more to be wished than that the United States should undertake to make such an establishment on the coast of Africa. In 1816, the Legislature of Virginia took action to the same end, and a year later, the American Colonization Society was organized at the Capital of the Nation, with Justice Bushrod Washington as president and distinguished men from all parts of the land in the list of vice presidents. During the following 15 years, until 1832, vigorous efforts were made for the support of this society in all the different States. State societies, county societies, church societies and local bands, auxiliary to the national organization, were started; in 1832, a list was printed of 231 such auxiliaries, of which 127 were in the slave States and 104 elsewhere. In the lists of their presidents, secretaries, and treasurers are found the names of John Marshall and James Madison, of Virginia; Charles Carroll, of Maryland; Charles C. Pinckney, of South Carolina; Theodore Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey; Edward Everett, of Massachusetts; Gerrit Smith and Arthur Tappan, of New York; Jeremiah Day and Leonard Bacon, of Connecticut, with others of similar standing in the North and South alike, governors, judges, ministers of the gospel, and prominent business men. The purpose on which the country was thus united was the building up of Liberia, the establishment in Africa of a Republic upon the pattern of the United States, to be made up of freed slaves from America. That shows what was thought of the Negroes at that time; how the ablest men believed in them as equal to grave civil responsibilities. However wild the project looks today, the very launching of it was a significant tribute to these people.

Prior to 1830 the thoughtful people of the South were not opposed to the education of their slaves. There was a special recognition of the need of teaching reading as a means of becoming familiar with the Bible and the doctrines of Christianity. It was necessary for practical reasons that some of the slaves on a large estate should know how to read. Some of the house servants who were depended on for the care of the masters children, aided them in their lessons, and for this reason needed to have some knowledge of reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. The history of the South in early times tells of men and women, here and there, who interested themselves particularly in the welfare of the slaves and in teaching them to read as a prerequisite for religious training and membership in the church. In 1695 the minister of Goose Creek Parish, near Charleston, gathered a class of Negroes and gave them a course of systematic instruction in Christian truth. Before 1700 the Friends of North Carolina were especially active in similar efforts. In 1744 two young colored men, who had received a special education for the purpose, were set over a school in Charleston which opened with some sixty pupils and was continued for a number of years. Later the free colored people of Charleston, who were prosperous and had ample means, maintained their own schools; and in the early part of the nineteenth century, when the law forbade Negroes to teach, white teachers were employed in their schools. Particularly interesting is the story of the Mood brothers, the eldest of whom began to teach Negro children in 1638, and was followed by his three brothers and a brother-in-law, one after another, till they had together given instruction to some 1,200 pupils.

Carter Goodwin Woodson’s book, The Education of the Negro, gives an impressive array of historical illustrations. Dr. Woodson relates briefly how more than fifty Negroes of some distinction severally received in slavery days the beginnings of their education, usually by the favor of some one who was personally interested in their improvement. He estimates that in 1863 some ten per cent. of the adult Negroes in the United States had the rudiments of education, to which he adds the opinion that the number was much less than it had been about 1825.

It seems open to question whether there were more educated Negroes in 1825 than in 1863. Undoubtedly there were more in some cities where the harsh measures used against them led to a flight to more favorable abodes. But the removal, for example, of Frederick Douglass, from Baltimore to New York, or of Daniel A. Payne from Charleston to Gettysburg, or of the Quakers in North Carolina to a freer air in Ohio, did not by any means eliminate them from the Negro ranks; but rather set them in positions where their own education could go on by leaps and bounds, and their inspiring personality become a ten-fold greater force in promoting the educational ambition of their comrades. In 1825 education for the Negro was undoubtedly more in honor among the white people than afterwards. The advertisements of the time show that it was sometimes regarded as adding to the market value of a slave, so as to be put forward to help the sale. By the middle of the century all this was changed; the schools of free Negroes were frowned upon and teaching slaves was under the ban; an intelligent Negro became an object of suspicion, and it was not politic for one to be known as able to read and write. On this account the estimate of their number was likely to be much below what is actually was.

PRE-CIVIL-WAR PERIOD.

Although some of the early State legislatures passed laws providing for the supervision of meetings of slaves by white men, the more stringent laws prohibiting the assembling and teaching of Negroes were not passed until the period between 1830 and 1935. The immediate cause of the passage of these laws was a series of uprisings of slaves. The laws were enacted to prevent the slaves from reading the literature of the French and Haitian Revolutions and the writings of the abolitionists.

While these laws were a natural expression of the highly wrought emotional excitement that prevailed after the disturbance headed by Denmark Vesey and the more serious affair of Nat Turner, it is probable that such laws were not rigidly enforced. It is more likely that the effect of the law was to make the slaves value the ability to read all the more, and to incline them in quiet ways to impart the precious gift to their friends.

It seems likely, too, that the more liberal-minded masters and mistresses, out in the open country over the vast regions of the South, thought nothing whatever of such a law and paid no attention to it, in any instructions they wished to impart to favorite servants in their houses. As bearing on this point, some weight may be given to words uttered about 1840, by the Hon. J. B. O’Neil, a distinguished jurist of South Carolina, at one time Speaker of the House of Representatives, and in his later years the chief justice of the State:

“It is in vain to say there is danger in it. The best slaves of the State are those who can and do read the Scriptures. Again, who is it that teaches your slaves to read? It is generally done by the children of the owners. Who would tolerate an indictment against his son or daughter for teaching a slave to read? Such laws look to me rather cowardly.”

Perhaps it is not a bold conclusion that this kindly and reasonable usage in a great many homes was one of the things that bound the slaves so closely to their master’s families as to hold them fast in all the vicissitudes of the war.

It may safely be concluded, therefore, that a great many more Negroes were able to read and write in the period just preceding the Civil War than was generally thought to be the case, either in the South or the North. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that the intellectual enlightenment which was beginning to have so many expressions in the earlier years of the century grew on and steadily became wider in its quiet pervasiveness, notwithstanding the many adverse conditions with which it had to contend.

If the estimate is correct that some ten per cent. of the adult Negroes at the time of the war had the rudiments of education, or if even only five per cent. of the Freedmen had this knowledge, the task of the hour for the teachers was quite different from what has usually been supposed. To bring the chance for an education to a people of whom five out of every hundred have the habit of learning is another thing from dealing with those who have none of them taken even the first steps. It is all the difference between taking them at the lowest stage and meeting them after they have mastered the earlier lessons. It must have meant very much to the teachers if there were a few of their pupils who were above the primary grade. This goes far to explain the demand that came so soon for secondary schools and those of a more advanced grade. There were some of the pupils whose education had begun long before these teachers saw them; had begun in their old slave environment and with their own parents or some fellow slave, or perhaps their master’s children, for teachers, and so they were the more ready for new privileges.

It may well be supposed that these men and women of greater intelligence, as soon as opportunities began to open, were especially ambitious for the superior education of their children and that the pupils of most promise in all the schools were largely drawn from their ranks. This is the ready explanation of the swift development of these schools and of the necessity for classes above the primary grade. Here, too, is the explanation of certain unlooked for manifestations of a scholarly spirit and intellectual aptitude that early surprised the teachers. Actually their pupils, many of them, had a good deal more back of them than they ever imagined. They were of parentage that was by no means to be despised. They had been tenderly watched over from infancy and received a careful training in manners and behavior. As servants in their master’s house they had been daily observers of the life going on there; breathing its atmosphere of elevation; seeing the able men and cultivated women that were entertained at its table; listening often to superior conversation, and catching many a strong impression to stay with them.

The colored men who escaped into the Union lines were of a different type. They were hungry, ragged, ignorant, confused by their wretched plight and begging for protection. The first necessity was food, shelter, clothing; in some cases immediate medical attendance; and the pitiable creatures were to be counted by hundreds and thousands. The appeal that went up to the people of the North, was not altogether unlike that which has come from the stricken and homeless sufferers in the European war. And the response at that time was similar to the generous relief provided for the people of Belgium, Serbia and Poland.

But in one respect the need of the these Negroes was peculiar. They were escaped slaves, and it was decided that they were not to be returned to slavery; so it was a question, not merely of present relief; but of how they could be provided for permanently. Something had to be done that they might be prepared to take care of themselves eventually and make an honest living. In the new life of independence they were entering they had everything to learn; therefore they had to be taught. In a word, those who were dealing with them had about the same problem to handle that the old Virginia settlers had when the first cargo of Negroes was landed there from Africa. These sorry creatures must be taught to behave; to mind what they were about; to work and do their work well; to use good English and to play the part of men. It was the teacher’s job and a hard job for any who were bold enough to try it.

But the teachers were forthcoming; hundreds of them; cultivated, and high-minded. They could see no way to make these fugitive slaves into decent, law-abiding, industrious people, but to give them a new character, a changed life. They must be led into an intelligent religion that should govern the whole round of their conduct. And for this they must be brought to the Bible. Therefore they must learn how to read it at the very start. And so they went to teaching grown up men and women their letters. Perhaps it looks odd to us; but there was good sense in it. This was the way of opening the Bible to these groping men; the way of leading them to an intelligent acquaintance with Jesus Christ, the hope of lost men always and everywhere.

It was a noble service. There were aspects of sublimity about it; and any who are disposed to belittle it or to speak lightly of the results that flowed from it show that they do not understand the tremendous interests at stake in that critical hour of the Nation’s life; that hour of destiny, too, for these many thousand Negroes “scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd” and faint-hearted for a friendly voice and some word of encouragement.

While such efforts were made to teach the Negroes to read, those engaged in this work did not by any means stop here; they set about every sort of teaching that might be of practical use. They did their best to improve the habits of the people; influencing them to be cleanly and orderly; calling them to promptness and regularity in their attendance on appointed exercises; giving the men work to do of various kinds and looking out to see that it was done properly; showing the women how to cook their food so as not to spoil it, how to mend and make garments and to be good housekeepers. The Boston Educational Commission in 1862 laid it down as a foremost object to bring about the “industrial improvement” of the Negroes, and it was in the very make-up of these thrifty New England men and women, and those from other parts of the North, to be a vital force in behalf of general efficiency wherever they took up a work like this.

EDUCATION AS A SOLDIER.

The training which the Negroes received during the Civil War as soldiers should not be overlooked. It represents his first opportunity for real manhood training in an effective way. The training of the military camp is no less important than the training of the school-room in the development of good habits and manners.