Part 1

VOL. XXXII. No. 1.

THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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“To the Poor the Gospel is Preached.”

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JANUARY, 1878.

_CONTENTS_:

EDITORIAL.

1877-1878. 1 LARGE GIFTS AND LARGE GIVERS 2 CHANGES IN THE MAGAZINE 3 WOMAN’S WORK FOR WOMAN 4 THE JUBILEE SINGERS—A GOOD USE OF NEGRO SUFFRAGE 5 PARAGRAPHS 6 NEWS FROM THE CHURCHES—SOUTHERN EXODUS NOTES 7 INDIAN NOTES 8 CHINESE NOTES 9 BOOK NOTICE 10

THE FREEDMEN.

NORTH CAROLINA: Revival in Church and School. GEORGIA: Revival in Atlanta University 11 ALABAMA: Church Organized—A New Pastorate 12 TENNESSEE: Le Moyne Normal School 13 “ State Teachers’ Institute 14 TWO SIMPLE RULES. J. P. Thompson, D. D. 15 DR. PATTON’S INAUGURAL 16

THE INDIANS.

FORT BERTHOLD, D. T. 17

THE CHINESE.

ANNUAL MEETING—GENERAL ASSOCIATION—THE WORK 18

COMMUNICATIONS.

PROTECTION BY DEVELOPMENT. Rev. C. H. Richards 19 EDUCABILITY OF THE BLACKS. A Virginia School Superintendent 21 CAMPAIGN IN CONNECTICUT. Dist. Sec’y, Powell of Chicago 22

THE CHILDREN’S PAGE 24

RECEIPTS 24

CONSTITUTION 27

WORK, STATISTICS, WANTS, &c. 28

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NEW YORK:

Published by the American Missionary Association,

ROOMS, 56 READE STREET.

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Price, 50 Cents a Year, in advance.

_American Missionary Association_,

56 READE STREET, N. Y.

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PRESIDENT.

HON. E. S. TOBEY, Boston.

VICE PRESIDENTS.

Hon. F. D. PARISH, Ohio. Rev. JONATHAN BLANCHARD, Ill. Hon. E. D. HOLTON, Wis. Hon. WILLIAM CLAFLIN, Mass. Rev. STEPHEN THURSTON, D. D., Me. Rev. SAMUEL HARRIS, D. D., Ct. Rev. SILAS MCKEEN, D. D., Vt. WM. C. CHAPIN, Esq., R. I. Rev. W. T. EUSTIS, Mass. Hon. A. C. BARSTOW, R. I. Rev. THATCHER THAYER, D. D., R. I. Rev. RAY PALMER, D. D., N. Y. Rev. J. M. STURTEVANT, D. D., Ill. Rev. W. W. PATTON, D. D., D. C. Hon. SEYMOUR STRAIGHT, La. Rev. D. M. GRAHAM, D. D., Mich. HORACE HALLOCK, Esq., Mich. Rev. CYRUS W. WALLACE, D. D., N. H. Rev. EDWARD HAWES, Ct. DOUGLAS PUTNAM, Esq., Ohio. Hon. THADDEUS FAIRBANKS, Vt. SAMUEL D. PORTER, Esq., N. Y. Rev. M. M. G. DANA, D. D., Ct. Rev. H. W. BEECHER, N. Y. Gen. O. O. HOWARD, Oregon. Rev. EDWARD L. CLARK, N. Y. Rev. G. F. MAGOUN, D. D., Iowa. Col. C. G. HAMMOND, Ill. EDWARD SPAULDING, M.D., N. H. DAVID RIPLEY, Esq., N. J. Rev. WM. M. BARBOUR, D. D., Ct. Rev. W. L. GAGE, Ct. A. S. HATCH, Esq., N. Y. Rev. J. H. FAIRCHILD, D. D., Ohio. Rev. H. A. STIMSON, Minn. Rev. J. W. STRONG, D. D., Minn. Rev. GEORGE THACHER, LL. D., Iowa. Rev. A. L. STONE, D. D., California. Rev. G. H. ATKINSON, D. D., Oregon. Rev. J. E. RANKIN, D. D., D. C. Rev. A. L. CHAPIN, D. D., Wis. S. D. SMITH, Esq., Mass. Rev. H. M. PARSONS, N. Y. PETER SMITH, Esq., Mass. Dea. JOHN WHITING, Mass. Rev. WM. PATTON, D. D., Ct. Hon. J. B. GRINNELL, Iowa. Rev. WM. T. CARR, Ct. Rev. HORACE WINSLOW, Ct. Sir PETER COATS, Scotland. Rev. HENRY ALLON, D. D., London, Eng. WM. E. WHITING, Esq., N. Y. J. M. PINKERTON, Esq., Mass.

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY.

REV. M. E. STRIEBY, _56 Reade Street, N. Y._

DISTRICT SECRETARIES.

REV. C. L. WOODWORTH, _Boston_. REV. G. D. PIKE, _New York_. REV. JAS. POWELL, _Chicago, Ill._

EDGAR KETCHUM, ESQ., _Treasurer, N. Y._ H. W. HUBBARD, ESQ., _Assistant Treasurer, N. Y._ REV. M. E. STRIEBY, _Recording Secretary_.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

ALONZO S. BALL, A. S. BARNES, EDWARD BEECHER, GEO. M. BOYNTON, WM. B. BROWN, CLINTON B. FISK, A. P. FOSTER, AUGUSTUS E. GRAVES, S. B. HALLIDAY, SAM’L HOLMES, S. S. JOCELYN, ANDREW LESTER, CHAS. L. MEAD, JOHN H. WASHBURN, G. B. WILLCOX.

COMMUNICATIONS

relating to the business of the Association may be addressed to either of the Secretaries as above.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the branch offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., 112 West Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. Drafts or checks sent to Mr. Hubbard should be made payable to his order as _Assistant Treasurer_.

A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.

Correspondents are specially requested to place at the head of each letter the name of their Post Office, and the County and State in which it is located.

THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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VOL. XXXII. JANUARY, 1878. No. 1.

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_American Missionary Association._

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1877-1878.

Year after year the work of the American Missionary Association goes on with steady increase. We glide from one year to another noiselessly, and take up on the New Year’s Day the same tools we dropped when the signal came that the working hours of the old year were ended. One seems very much like the other, and yet, as we look back, we find that each year has, to some extent, a character and a work of its own. Changes come unheralded, proportions vary; each phase is now conspicuous and now in almost eclipse, while the whole work goes on.

A few years ago it was the large number of our common school teachers sent from the North to the just-opened Southern field; then came the era of Normal instruction, as the States opened schools for the colored children, but could not furnish schoolmasters fit to teach them. The facilities for higher education, and, especially, for training for the ministry, came in then for our care—1877 saw what seemed to be the beginning of the end in this direction, in the sending of three men, trained in our schools, for missionary work to Africa.

What shall be the peculiar work of 1878? There is no portion of the whole which those who work through us are willing to have dropped. Among the Indians, what little we have done we must continue to do, until some Providence as plain as that which gave it to our hands shall discharge us from the duty. We cannot withdraw our help from the churches on the Pacific Coast, in their endeavors to lead the Chinaman through the knowledge of the English language to the God of the English-speaking people. We cannot close the Normal school, for the intelligent Christian teacher is yet the greatest want of the Southern Freedmen. To the young men who desire to preach Christ Jesus and Him crucified to their own people, we cannot deny the instruction in the word of God and in the truths of religion which they ask of us. All these, which are distinctively departments of Christian effort, must be kept up, and, especially, this work among the negro youth of the great South.

What we should be glad to make the great and characteristic work of the new year, is the Southern church work. We have now more students in our three theological schools than we have churches in the entire South. Of course, this does not limit the opportunity of these young men. It does not altogether destroy our influence through them. They will go out and preach the Gospel, but they must go into other ecclesiastical relations to fill churches of other orders, and, as we feel, many of them to do far less telling work for God and good than they might in churches founded anew by them under our care. This direct evangelizing and church work is very dear to those to whom the management of this Association is entrusted. Shall 1878 be for us the year of church extension?

There are favoring conditions in more respects than one. The comparative freedom of the South from political agitations gives the opportunity for undisturbed effort for the enlargement of this work. The impulse given by the Syracuse meeting will be felt long by us and by all connected with the Association. The diminution of the debt already relieves for use in active service nearly $3,000 a year, which was absorbed by its imperative demands.

If this debt can be wholly put behind us we may add this to the achievements of the coming year.

It is easier to write prophecy than history, and yet the pen will glide lightly over the paper, and the press will resound with a more cheery clatter than in other days, if a year from now, they shall be able to make it known that the churches in the South have been largely increased in numbers and efficiency, and that the debt of the Association has every cent of it been paid.

With a “happy new year” all round the circle, officers, missionaries, teachers, contributors, let us to the work!

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In the fall of 1866, Mr. Warren Ackermann gave to the Foreign Board of the Reformed Church of America $55,000 in one gift, thus entirely extinguishing its debt, and leaving it a fund of nearly $10,000 for expenditure upon the field.

Last spring the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions was on the point of reporting a debt of $50,000, when a like gift, by the liberality of Mrs. John C. Green, of New York, freed them from that necessity, and enabled them to close the year without a deficit. The Methodist Episcopal Missionary Committee, by special effort during the last year, paid off over $100,000 of their large indebtedness. None of us have forgotten the noble spontaneity of the successful movement this fall at Providence, resulting in the complete liberation of the American Board from their debt of nearly $50,000, and we cannot fail to notice with rejoicing every success of “the finangelist” (as he has been called), Mr. Kimball, in casting the mountains of church debt into the sea of solvency.

All these things encourage us to hope and pray and labor for great things. Our debt is diminished already from $93,232.99 to $57,816.90. This is quite within the average of the sums named above. Not one of these societies or churches but will say: “These gifts, to deliver us from the bondage of debt, have proved the grandest helps to our forward work.” Let no one think that money thus given does not tell upon the work. It does tell: not this year alone, but every year it puts money in our purse to be expended in the directest furtherance of our mission to carry the Gospel of light and love to the poor and neglected races. It is in effect a permanent fund, the interest of which we have for yearly use.

Is there not some one, or may there not be more far-sighted men, to whom the Lord has entrusted a liberal share of His gold and silver, whom these examples and this opportunity may stimulate?

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In accordance with the decision at the last Anniversary Meeting of the American Missionary Association, the printing of this paper will be done hereafter in New York City.

In parting with General Armstrong and his printers at Hampton, it gives us pleasure to bear our warmest testimony to their uniform courtesy and to their untiring efforts to relieve, as far as possible, the unavoidable difficulty of printing at so great a distance from these rooms. Of the excellence of the work done at the Hampton office, we need use no words of commendation, for each successive number has carried to our readers its best evidence.

During the past year, as we learn from General Armstrong, it has given help to eight young colored girls who, as folders, have been able to earn enough to materially assist them in meeting their school bills; it has given steady employment to two young men who, twelve years ago, were enrolled in the first schools opened at Hampton by the Association. From little bright-eyed pickaninnies they have grown to be competent printers; they are now a help to their parents and are growing up to be among the solid men of Hampton.

Extra help being needed, a very worthy colored mechanic in Litchfield, Conn. was engaged. He not only worked on the MISSIONARY, but having rented a house in a region destitute of workers, he at once gathered the young and the old, and every Sunday morning during the summer a motley crowd of about fifty in number was collected in his verandah. Seated on boxes, tubs, pails, etc., they received excellent instruction from Mr. Rowe, through whose good work we hope that some who were blind can now see.

The officers of the Hampton Institute bear testimony to the decided benefits received from the printing of the MISSIONARY at Hampton. It has been of no small advantage as an aid to the Industrial Department there, which is the peculiar and difficult feature of the Institute.

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With this number, then, the MISSIONARY returns wholly to this office and its vicinity for preparation. As our readers have already noticed, the advice of the Annual Meeting has been followed in restoring it to its old form, which many of its familiar friends think more becoming than the perhaps sprightlier, but less dignified manner of the last year. We trust they will not like it less because it has a little more of body than formerly, and is attired in a new, and, we trust, not inappropriate dress. A few of its additional pages are given to advertisements by the same advice. We shall be glad to serve and be served by our friends, who know our circulation and constituency, in opening to them this channel of communication with one another.

It is our hope to make the MISSIONARY of certainly as much, and, if possible, of more value than in former years. We should be glad to do what we can to dissipate the impression that an exposition of Christian opportunity and a record of Christian work is of necessity dry reading—of use mainly by way of fitting preparation for a Sunday afternoon nap. We know that the opportunities, if realized, are full of encouragement and stimulus, and that the work itself is intense in its earnestness and interest. We know that the considerations which enforce its claims are among those which appeal most irresistibly to thoughtful men, and stir their deepest feelings. If the presentation, then, be dry, it must be the dulness of those who write, or the indifference of those who read. We will try to prevent this at one end if our friends will at the other.

We shall try to procure the freshest and most recent news from the field, in regard to the general progress and the particular incidents of the work, by diligent application to our missionaries and teachers—remembering ourselves, and reminding others, that they are busy men and women, far more intent on doing the work than in telling about it. We shall endeavor to give, in condensed form, a record of the current events, religious, social and sometimes political, which affect the various departments of our work. We hope to arrange for special presentation of the nature and needs of our larger institutions in successive numbers. So we shall try to bring within the range of our readers’ vision the stars of larger and of lesser magnitude which gem our Southern and Western sky, only regretting that our, like other telescopes, can only bring far-off things a little nearer—can by no means reveal them as they are.

With the old form we return, of necessity, to the old subscription price—50 cents a year. Will our good friends remember that if each of our 25,000 magazines should bring us in a half a dollar, they would be a source of income to the Association, beside the valuable service which it does us indirectly? If this suggestion impresses any one favorably, please let the money be inclosed, and the letter sealed and directed at once before it can be forgotten.

In accordance with the further recommendation of the Annual Meeting, Rev. George M. Boynton, of Newark, N. J., who, as a member of the Executive Committee, is familiar with the work, and whose pen has contributed freely to our columns during the last year, has been associated with us in the editorial charge of the MISSIONARY.

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WOMAN’S WORK FOR WOMAN.

Specific missionary work by devoted women, among the colored women and girls in the South, is one of the many interesting departments of our enterprise. “Woman’s work for woman” has not been neglected, although it has not been made prominent before the public by the Association. It is enough to say that more than three-fourths of our missionaries have been women, and the majority of our church members and pupils, females, to make it evident that much work of this kind must have been done; still it has not been singled out and magnified as _the_ work to which, as an association, we had given ourselves. It has all along been a matter of deep regret that we could not make more of this branch of our work. We have noted the inexpressibly sad condition of the colored woman in the South—no future before her, public opinion giving her no recognized standing of respectability, dooming her to an evil reputation, whether in character she was deserving it or not, and this, too, in a Christian country—these things we have noted and felt; but our receipts were all swallowed up in the current demands of our general work. We are glad to be permitted to record that a step has recently been taken, promising relief in this direction. A lady in one of the Western States, who has been for years known as an indefatigable worker for Christian missions, has had the elevation and salvation of the colored women of our country on her heart and mind for years. She has made herself thoroughly acquainted with the fact that if anything is done, it must be _in addition_ to what the ordinary receipts of the American Missionary Association would warrant. Self-moved, she said to our Executive Committee a few months ago, “If you will commission a competent and devoted woman missionary and assign her to one of your mission stations, to give herself _entirely_ to the work of visiting the homes of the colored women, for the purpose of saving them by the use of every method her enlightened judgment may suggest as wise, I will become personally responsible for her support, and will pledge that what I do shall not in any way interfere with the general receipts of the Association.” The Executive Committee thankfully accepted the proposition. A lady missionary was appointed and sent to Memphis, Tenn., in November. She entered at once upon the field, and the beginnings of her work are full of promise, and already assure us of the usefulness of her mission.

We hear from Memphis the week after her arrival of the favorable impression made, and of the rejoicing on the part of our teachers that there is help for them in the homes of their pupils and in mothers’ meetings, etc. One teacher says, “I hope to visit with her a little, especially to take her to the homes of our girls.” Another writes, “We regard her being sent here as a special Providence in our favor. I think there is no place where she could do more.”

We trust that many such workers may be sent by the Christian women of the North to these their needy sisters in the South.

The _Advance_ mentions the Church Sewing Circle as the medium, and the spring as the most convenient time, to carry out the following suggestion. In this way, it says, there need be no friction between what is done for the A. M. A. and other missionary work:

“There was a time, directly following the war, when the American Missionary Association was wonderfully aided in its work by the special efforts of the philanthropic women. There has been nothing finer done in the way of immediately urgent but far-reaching influence, by the Christian women of America, either before or since. Every one rejoices in the helpfulness of the Woman’s Boards, creating and fostering as they do a mighty interest on behalf of their benighted sisters in heathen lands, and we will not believe the Christian women in our American churches incapable of again inaugurating some similar work, equally worthy of them, toward meeting the inexpressibly urgent moral necessities of their sadly darkened and depressed sisters nearer home.”

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THE JUBILEE SINGERS AT THE IMPERIAL COURT OF GERMANY.

The Jubilee Singers have recently gone to Germany to continue the work they have for the last six years been so successfully doing in the United States, Great Britain and Holland, in the interests of the education of their race at Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.

Within a few days of their arrival at Berlin, they had the honor of appearing before the Imperial family of Germany under circumstances of peculiar interest. They were invited by their Imperial Highnesses, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess, to sing some of their slave songs at the New Palace, Potsdam, on Sunday afternoon, Nov. 4, and on presenting themselves at the appointed hour they found, to their joy, that they stood in the presence of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Germany, as well as in the presence of the Crown Prince and Princess, with their children gathered around them. Thus three generations stood together in the home circle, listening to this little company of emancipated slaves from the United States, as they sang the songs of the days of their bondage. And never did their strange, touching songs produce a deeper impression, or call forth heartier expressions of sympathy for, and interest in, the work they are laboring to do for their race in America and in Africa.

His Majesty, the Emperor, made many inquiries of the President of the University respecting the Singers, and their personal history, and the work they had accomplished, while the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess conversed freely with the Singers, making inquiries, and expressing great delight in the singing. It was especially gratifying to learn from the Crown Princess that four years ago, when the Jubilee Singers had the honor of singing before her Royal Mother, the Queen of England, she had received a long letter speaking of the Singers and their mission. The Crown Prince said, “These songs, as you sing them, go to the heart—they go through and through one.”

The first public concert was given in Berlin, at the Sing Academy, on the 7th of November, and was greeted with such hearty demonstrations of approval, that success in Germany seems quite well assured.

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A GOOD USE OF NEGRO SUFFRAGE.