Part 2

To those who are intent on merely propagating an _ism_, the results up to this time may seem small compared with the outlay of men and money; but to those who look deeper, the results cannot be counted in numbers of schools or churches; the churches founded represent but a part of the spiritual outcome. The old churches have been wonderfully quickened and elevated by the incoming of large numbers of youths brought to Christ under our teaching; these have carried back a more intelligent piety and a severer standard of morals. Such a result was to be expected, and, if the old churches are to be purified and saved, is not to be regretted. In estimating the good done, therefore, we must take into account not merely the new churches planted, but the old ones enlightened and cleansed. Our mission has been, and may be, largely to leaven the old, while we build up, over the South, the churches and schools to serve as lights and guides of the people into the new and nobler future. We oppose nothing that is good; we come with no Northern name to antagonize a Southern one; we come as a new spiritual force to help all true churches, and all good people, in working out the problem of the negro’s salvation. Our right to go, then, is the right to do good as we have opportunity; is to take advantage of most favoring circumstances for enlargement and usefulness.

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GENERAL NOTES.

The Freedmen.

——A National Colored Convention met in Nashville, Tenn., May 6th, and continued in session four days. It was a body thoroughly in earnest and deeply impressed with a sense of the wrongs endured by the people of whom they were the representatives from all parts of the South. In an address to the country, adopted by them, they speak as follows in regard to their political condition: “Wholly unbiased by party considerations, we contemplate the lamentable political condition of our people, especially in the South, with grave and serious apprehensions for the future. Having been given the ballot for the protection of our rights, we find, through systematic intimidation, outrage, violence and murder, our votes have been suppressed, and the power thus given us has been made a weapon against us.” In regard to the recent emigration they say in the same address: “The migration of the colored people now going on has assumed such proportions as to demand the calm and deliberate consideration of every thoughtful citizen of the country. It is the result of no idle curiosity or disposition to evade labor. It proceeds upon the assumption that there is a combination of well-planned and systematic purposes to still further abridge their rights and reduce them to a state of actual serfdom. If their labor is valuable it should be respected. If it be demonstrated that it cannot command respect in the South, there is one alternative, and that is to emigrate.”

At the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, at its recent meeting at Saratoga, the report of the Committee on Missions for Freedmen, contained the following items: receipts from churches, $52,921.93; receipts from the State School funds, $4,246.00; expenditures on account of missions, $40,360.27. There are 48 ordained missionaries (of whom 34 are colored), 9 licentiates, 25 catechists (all colored), and 58 teachers (of whom 36 are colored). Eight churches were organized last year, and 1,215 communicants were received. The whole number of communicants is 10,577. The total amount paid for self-support by churches and schools is $18,611.55. It was determined not to transfer this department to the Home Missionary Board.

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The Indians.

——Judge Dundy, of the U. S. Court at Omaha, has made a decision which, if confirmed by the Circuit Court to which an appeal has been taken, will greatly change the status of the Indians. It declares the reservation plan a nullity, and that Indians cannot be held within certain boundaries. It was made in regard to the Poncas, who were removed two years ago against their will to the Indian Territory. A small number returned this spring to Nebraska, where, though peaceably engaged in agriculture, they were arrested by Gen. Crook and taken back to the Territory. On a writ of habeas corpus, sued out for their relief, the judge decided that the Indian is a “person” within the meaning of the laws of the United States, and has rights under the laws; that Indians possess the inherent right of expatriation, as well as the white race, and have the inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, so long as they obey the laws; that no rightful authority exists for removing by force any of these Poncas to the Indian Territory, as Gen. Crook had been directed to do, and that being unlawfully restrained of liberty, they must be discharged. If this decision be confirmed and the principle established, the results will be far-reaching.

——A prominent citizen of Southern Kansas asserts that not less than 5,000 white persons are now in the Indian Territory. A despatch from Independence, dated May 5, says: “Over 150 wagons passed into the Indian Territory southwest of this point yesterday.”

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The Chinese.

——Gen. Grant, in responding to a cordial reception given him by the Chinese merchants of Penang, said that he never doubted, and no one could doubt, that, in the end, no matter what agitation might for the time being effect at home, the American people would treat the Chinese with kindness and justice, and not deny to the free and deserving people of that country the asylum they offer to the rest of the world.

——The bill introduced into the Senate by Slater, of Oregon, seems to be of some interest to the Chinaman in America. It provides that after July 1, 1880, no Chinaman shall be allowed to “engage in, carry on, or work at any manufacturing or mechanical business, or to own or lease, carry on or work any mine, or to own or lease any real estate for any other purpose than that of lawful commerce and for places of residence.” As if this were not enough, the Chinaman is forbidden to “work or engage to work as mechanic, artisan, laborer, waiter, servant, cook, clerk or messenger, or in any other capacity or at any other kind of labor, skilled or unskilled.” And there is a heavy penalty inflicted upon the Chinaman or American citizen who violates it. If such a bill should become a law there would be nothing left for the Chinaman to do except to climb a tree and stay there.

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Africa.

——The London Missionary Society has received advices dated Jan. 23d, from Mr. Dodgshun. Preparations for proceeding to the lake from Kirasa were begun in June, 1878. Various delays have made progress very slow, as lack of porters and war between Mirambo and the Arabs, and Mr. D. had only then reached Unyanyembe. Meanwhile, three of the six who set out in August, ’77, were left on the field, and they the juniors of the expedition. Messrs. Hore and Hutley are at Ujiji. Two students of the Society have been appointed to join the force——Rev. W. Griffith and Mr. Southon, M. D. Dr. Mullens, the Foreign Secretary of the Society, offered himself to lead the new expedition. The Directors allowed him to go as far as Zanzibar, hoping that it would not be necessary for him to go farther. Central Africa seems yet to be a great way off.

——The following illustrates the exposure of African missionaries to suspicion and violence: “At Mukondoku in Ugogo we were within an ace of being attacked by over 100 of the natives, fully armed, and thirsting for the blood of the white men. Their only ground of complaint was that M. Broyon’s little child had lost a toy——an indiarubber doll——in our camp, which they found, and persisted in calling ‘medicine to ruin their country!’ When convinced that they were wrong, and that we had not the slightest wish to injure them, they only grew the more violent, and told the pagazi to leave us alone that they might kill us. A heavy payment of cloth smoothed the way for peace, but we fully expected to have to fight for our lives, as we had not a single man to be depended on to stand by us.”

——Mr. Mackay, of the C. M. S., at Lake Nyanza, writes that after his two years’ march he found the goods of the expedition in safety, but mixed in indiscriminate confusion. Ten days brought some order out of this chaos. The engines are complete, and almost everything, though divided into 70 lb. parcels for the journey of 700 miles, is at hand and in place.

——Mr. Mackay speaks thus of the evil of intemperance in Africa: “Oh, how often will I enter in my journal, as I pass through many tribes, Drink is the curse of Africa! Useguha, Usagara, Ugogo, Unyamwezi, Usukuma, Ukerewe, and Uganda too——go where you will, you will find every week, and, when grain is plentiful, every night, every man, woman and child, even to sucking infant, reeling with the effects of alcohol. On this account chiefly I have become a teetotaler on leaving the coast, and have continued so ever since. I believe, also, that abstinence is the true secret of continued and unimpaired health in the tropics. Whoever wishes to introduce civilization into Africa, let a _sina quâ non_ of the enterprise be that its members be total abstainers.”

——The expedition, under Dr. Laus, to explore the west side of Lake Nyassa, returned in December. Livingstonia is proving a city of refuge to natives escaping from slavery. The health record is good.

——“In Western Africa the climate is still our great difficulty. It cripples our work by prostrating our men. The Gambia Mission has been almost entirely deprived of its Missionaries during the year from this cause, and the River Mission has been obliged to be suspended. The Committee would gladly diminish, if possible, these risks, and improve the chances of health, and attention is being given to this subject; but the need is being felt more and more keenly every year of adequate and well-furnished institutions, in which _the African shall be trained to win Africa for Christ._ The education of the girls, the women of the future, is also most desirable here.”——_From the Annual Report of the Wesleyan Missionary Society of Great Britain._

——The Church Missionary Society received last year $935,000, and expended $1,020,000. The Wesleyan Missionary Society reports receipts, $666,000; expenditures, $786,000.

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OUR QUERY COLUMN.

1. How do you prevent truancy?

2. How do you prevent tardiness?

3. Do you allow anything but failures in lessons to be deducted from scholarship?

4. What is your standard in scholarship for promotion?

5. How much time, and in what manner, do you devote to religious exercises in schools wholly attended by resident pupils?

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Answers to Queries in June Missionary.

Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary (Latham’s Edition, 1866-74, 4to, 4 vols.), probably surpasses all others in the English book market. Richardson’s is an accepted standard, especially in matters of definition and derivation. Walker’s is still a standard in pronunciation. Of American dictionaries, Webster’s leads in England.

Khedive is pronounced Kay-deeve.

So far as we know, Beaufort, S. C., alone is pronounced Bew-fort. Other places of the name, Bo-fort.

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THE FREEDMEN.

REV. JOS. E. ROY, D. D.,

Field Superintendent, Atlanta, Ga.

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THE HAMPTON ANNIVERSARY.

The Negro and the Indian——Co-Education of the Races——Addresses by the Rev. Dr. Hoge, of Richmond, and Secretary Carl Schurz, of Washington.

By the Editor.

More than the ordinary interest attaches this year to the anniversary exercises of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural School, just held. The experiment of negro education has been tried for the last 16 years, until it is no longer an unsolved problem, but one of which the once unknown quantities have come to have an ascertained value. But the question of the educability of the red man has been one not so conspicuously settled. What has been accomplished in that direction has been done so far away as not to have made much impression on the American people. This year, the institution which has done so much to prove the responsiveness of the negro to educational training has been engaged in its first experiment with the Indian. Of its success thus far there can be no shadow of a doubt. The Indian boys are contented and making progress, and coming steadily up to a plane on which they can pursue the regular courses of study. It was said by many at the outset that the negro and Indian races would not associate with each other, but the case is as contrary to this as can be. The Indian boys at first seemed to be somewhat discontented, and Gen. Armstrong found that they wanted most of all to learn English. “Too much Indian talk,” they said. He asked them in class one day how many of them would like to room with the negro boys; every hand went up. He then went to his senior class and asked them how many of them would be willing to take in an Indian as a roommate, to help and teach him. A larger number than was needed of his very best young men expressed their willingness, and so, instead of standing aloof, the two races are completely mixed in their rooms and at table, to their mutual satisfaction. This is a notable element in the experiment. Some 12 of the Indian boys have joined the church connected with the Institute.

Is it needful to say a word about the Hampton Institute itself? Beautiful for situation it certainly is, with its front on the creek, and only a narrow point of land separating it from the famed Hampton Roads. Its buildings are simple but effective in their outline and grouping. Virginia and Academic Halls, and the new wigwam——the quarters prepared for the 70 Indian students; the cottages in which the boys live, in families of 30 or more, largely self-governed; the residences of the Principal and his assistants; and not least, the great barn, sheltering a fine collection of blooded stock——and all this on a farm of some 200 acres. It is but a few years since there were only small and temporary barracks to accommodate the applicants for admission; now about 200 negro and 70 Indian students are well provided with dormitories, recitation-rooms and workshops.

A creditable brass band, composed of students, greeted the visitors with their cheering strains, well rendered, considering the short time since practice was begun. Capt. Romeyne keeps the boys, both black and red, in good military drill, and under firm, though kind, government, and in their gray uniforms, cheap but comely, they presented no mean appearance. Work and study are the order of every day. The brightest and most inspiring teaching the writer ever saw wakens the intellect to an eager activity; and work on farm and in shop for the boys, in kitchen and laundry and with the knitting machine for the girls, both teaches them how to labor, and enables them to pay a considerable part of the expenses of their living.

The examinations, except of the graduating class, were not written, but were oral, and on the plan of the daily recitations. The Indians attracted perhaps the greatest attention from the many visitors, in the conversation classes, which were conducted with rare tact and skill. On a table was placed a mass of common plants and flowers. One of the band of Indians brought only a few months ago by Capt. Pratt was called up and asked to pick out some grass; its uses brought out the words eat and horse, and sentences were formed of these words. Beet, onion, potato and clover were selected in turn, and their uses brought out by skillful questioning. Then, in another lesson, working and earning money and spending it were illustrated, and the language taught necessary to express these ideas. At the other end of the gradation of studies were the very creditable recitations of the graduating class of colored students in algebra, history, physiology and other higher branches; nor would it do to omit the class in teaching, where the seniors showed their skill in interesting and instructing the little children of the Butler Normal School.

In the afternoon the public exercises were held in Virginia Hall, which was crowded to overflowing. The addresses were manly and earnest; some of them quite forcible and free in thought and expression, and dealing with questions affecting their race. It was quite touching to see a black boy pleading for the extension of the privileges of education to the Indian, and one of the features of interest was a simple story of his home life in Indian Territory by an Indian youth. Music by the band, by a select few, and by the whole school, relieved the speaking.

But we must not forget to give the prominence due them to the visitors of the day. Most conspicuous among them was the delegation of Indians, in blankets and feathers, from Washington. Little Chief and six warriors with him of the Northern Chippewas were persuaded to come down to see what was being done for the boys of their own race. Just how they were impressed by it all, it is impossible to say, as their faces were covered with their blankets most of the time, and they acted like a group of shy old women. Probably they were a good deal bored, though they gave signs of occasional amusement. But there were other visitors of note. Chief among these were Secretaries Schurz and McCrary, of the President’s Cabinet; Senator Saunders and Representative Pound, of Wisconsin; ex-President Mark Hopkins, of Williams College; the Rev. Dr. Plumer, of Charleston, S. C., and the Rev. Dr. Hoge, of Richmond; the Rev. Dr. Armstrong of Norfolk, Va., and Judge Lafayette S. Foster, of Connecticut. After the diplomas had been presented to the graduating class by the Rev. Dr. Strieby, of this city, President of the Board of Trustees, Dr. Hoge was called upon to address the graduating class, and among other things said:

“It has been my lot to attend a good many college commencements, but I never attended one in all my life where so much honor and encouragement were given to those connected with an institution as to-day. Two members of the Cabinet of the United States, the President of the youngest university of the United States, and which bids fair to be one of the grandest (President Gilman, of the Johns Hopkins University), judges of our courts, eminent professional men, and two of the most venerable gentlemen on this continent, Dr. Plumer and Dr. Hopkins——Massachusetts and South Carolina uniting to-day to give encouragement to this institution and to the labors of those who are so nobly carrying out its objects.

“I cannot stand here to-day in this historic latitude without some profound emotions. I should not be a Virginian if I did. I cannot stand in sight of Fortress Monroe without remembering our fallen fortunes. The last two summers I have been abroad, and I have come back believing that there is no land which God has so smiled upon as this country. We have no need so great as of a stable government. I do not mean of force. No government can be stronger than the love of the people for it. You may put great iron bands upon it, but there will be a centrifugal power which will burst them. There must be centripetal force powerful enough to attract the people together in it. If our Government is to be like that, may the Lord smile upon it and perpetuate it to the last syllable of time.

“All my life long I have been a friend to one of the classes represented here, and now I am grateful that this institution has extended its protecting wing over another. I have been something of a student of races. I could occupy the remainder of the day in telling you of the good qualities of the African race; and there has always been a great deal that has touched my heart in the character of the Indian people——their love for their ancestral lands, their reverence for the bones of their forefathers, that decorous reserve which gives such dignity to their bearing. One thing which I have always admired in them is this, that when a war is over, they never talk about the war that is fought. It is not considered magnanimous in an Indian to taunt a fallen foe. It seems to me that in our popular assemblies and in other assemblies it might be well to imitate the Indian, and not talk too much about the war.

“The Indian who told us the story of his life at home said something that went straight to my heart. He didn’t say it very forcibly, but the force was in the thing he said. Time was, he told us, when he did not know anything about his soul or his salvation. One end of this institution is to make the poor Indian acquainted with the things which shall help him see God, not in the clouds, but in the face of Jesus Christ; and to hear him, not in the winds, but in the still small voice of the Spirit, speaking peace to his soul.”

The Doctor closed with calling attention to goodness as the greatest element of success; that no man can afford to succeed by sacrificing it; illustrating it by reference to a humble girl who came during the yellow fever scourge to nurse the sick, and who died a victim to its poisons, and by the life of a colored Baptist minister who recently died in Richmond.

The Hon. Carl Schurz, Secretary of the Interior, was called upon to follow. He began thus:

“I respond to this call not to prolong the exercises of the day, nor for purposes of debate. I do not intend to discuss the war. I am glad it is over. I only desire to bear testimony that of all the speakers of the day, not one has alluded to the war save in a most innocent way, and they were the Indian and the reverend gentleman who is, I am sure, a most peaceable member of the church militant. As to the manner in which civil wars should be treated, he and I do not disagree.

“My heart is elated with this spectacle to-day. Reference has been made to the fact that two Cabinet officers are present. I assure you that we did not come here for purposes of amusement, but to witness elements in the solution of one of the most difficult and dangerous problems of our day——the problem of blending two races, one of which has been in subjection and the other in hostility. We are all filled with feelings of admiration and gratitude to Gen. Armstrong and his co-workers here; to the State of Virginia, which, by its generous aid, renders a service to itself not only and to the colored people, but to this whole country; and to the benevolent people North and South, in Massachusetts and in South Carolina. In this I see the real end of the war and the inauguration of true peace. If I look back with satisfaction on anything in my official career, it is that I have been instrumental in aiding such a work. I am happy to know that the experiment is a success; and I assure you that so far as the means and power of my department go, nothing shall be left undone to strengthen and enlarge the experiment. The time has gone when the Indian can live on buffalo meat and give himself to the chase. The time has come when every man must work. All the information which comes to us tends to show that not only these but other tribes desire education, and that the attempt to give it to them is successful.

“The question is often asked, Will they not relapse into barbarism on returning among their own tribes? I am inclined to think that this danger is real, unless the education be extended to a much larger number of Indians——enough to support each other, and so resist the pressure. This is the object to be held in view, and which I hope, in part, may be accomplished before my term of office expires.