Part 6

Kentucky (shame on her!) and Delaware (shame on her!) give to the negro what he pays in taxes, and they are pretty far North; all the rest of the South give of the school fund _per capita_ to the negro and to the white; and the constitutions of the states which enjoin this have been endorsed since the war by conventions in which the majority were white and originally secessionists. Oh yes! we Northerners gave, I know, $500,000 last year to educate the negro; Southern tax payers gave over $4,000,000 to educate him. I am comparing not the spirit in giving, but the amounts actually given. In our 129 schools we have 14,000 scholars. In the 14,000 colored public schools of the South there are nearly 700,000 scholars.

But that is not all. In sixteen years, Northern principle has conquered this and it has conquered Southern approval as well. I know the great bulk do not feel as Orr feels, the Commissioner of Georgia; as Brown feels, Senator and ex-Governor of Georgia; as Curry feels, administrator of the Peabody fund and ex-Senator of the Confederate Congress; as, above all, Haygood feels. I wish every man in this house would read “Our Brother in Black,” by President Haygood, of Emory College, Oxford, Ga., and so learn the true situation. I have been told, since that book was written, that that man went into a colored school in his native place, and leaning on his cane, wept tears during all the examinations, and, rising up, in a trembling voice begged pardon of the colored teacher and the colored scholars because he had misunderstood and opposed a movement so Christian. Ah, friends, let us recognize it to-day. The South is waking up. These are exceptions; they are leaders. But the great masses follow on. There are hundreds of thousands of white Christians in the South who love Christ as you and I do. They have the Bible; they have the Holy Spirit; they have missionary societies. President Haygood says it is absurd, and I say it is impossible, that a man who believes in sending missionaries to Africa should prolong opposition to missionaries for the Freedmen. He says truly that the battle never will be won until Southern white women sit before dusky faces and teach such scholars how to read. A school surrounded by a hostile community is a fortress and not a school, and crippled in all its usefulness.

Under the crape-hung flag of the Union, mourning the loss of a Northern President who set slaves free before the Emancipation Proclamation declared them free, and with his sword helped cut down the Southern cause, ex-Confederate generals have cried out of the South to the North, “He is _our_ President!” O, let us cease the old war cry of ’65; let us wipe out of all our reports and papers, as an Association, everything calculated to excite the old animosities, and cry back in a spirit of full fraternal charity, “Our brethren, by that sign of sorrow.”

Now in view of this work and spirit of the South, what must be done? We, as an Association, must redouble our efforts. There is every reason to help the South trying to help itself. There is only one scholar, in every colored school, supported by the North, and suppose every single one graduates, to supply one teacher for every public colored school in the South. Think of it! And that leaves out of calculation one and one half million of church members pleading for preachers. According to the last report of the Commissioner of Education, the North gave to the higher schools of education at the South in 1879 less than $500,000. It gave to the same schools in the North, benevolently, charitably, about $5,000,000. We hear much about $50,000 given to Berea College. We hear little about $500,000 to the college in Cleveland. One-fortieth of all negroes in the world are in the United States; one-fifteenth are in North and South America.

But I will leave others to speak of that, and pass in closing to speak of what our National Government must do now. Millions of dollars are needed to do it. No agency but the central Government can or should meet this need. It cannot be done by Northern benevolence; that is inadequate, utterly inadequate. The North would only pauperize the South, if it could and did do it. It cannot be done by the Southern states. These Southern states (leaving out Maryland, Missouri, Delaware and District of Columbia) contributed in 1879 to public school education only eight and a half millions. Of the North, Illinois gave eight, Ohio seven, Pennsylvania eight, New York ten millions to their public schools. This contribution of the South seems and is very niggardly, but it is a question how much increase we can expect. The South is loaded down with poverty, debts and heavy taxes. The other day a prominent platform speaker made a comparison between Arkansas and Kansas in order to illustrate the inferiority of Southern education. He said that in 1877 Kansas sent 87 per cent of her children to the schools, and Arkansas 8 per cent. Kansas raised $5.65 for each scholar, and Arkansas raised 50 cents. Then he went on to say that Kansas and Arkansas were in about the same financial condition. I looked that up this morning, and I found that Arkansas had a debt of five millions, and Kansas had a debt of one million; that Arkansas had $87,000,000 taxable property with which to pay her debt of five millions, while Kansas had $160,000,000 to pay her debt of one million; and that Arkansas was paying a state tax of 65 cents on every hundred, and Kansas was paying 55 cents.

Now we must remember that the South is bitterly taxed, awfully in debt, and very poor. I will read one more statistic and stop. Louisiana has 330,930 school children (those who ought to be); Massachusetts, 303,836. The school income in Louisiana is $613,453; in Massachusetts, $4,399,801. The value of school property in Louisiana is $700,000; in Massachusetts you cannot estimate it; it is not estimated. You say Louisiana is not doing anything for her children as compared with Massachusetts. True; but carry the comparison farther. The whole taxable property of Louisiana is not $150,000,000; and the whole taxable property of Massachusetts is $1,500,000,000. The debt of Louisiana is about $16,000,000; your debt, deducting the sinking fund, is $21,000,000. The amount raised by taxes in Louisiana is half that raised in Massachusetts. You pay 3½ cents state tax on every $100, and Louisiana pays 60 cents. Have you, paying 3½ cents, the face to ask her to increase her 60 cents, when this evil at the South springs out of a national sin and involves a national peril? Not one million of the Southern population are in cities. The problem is one of educational facilities in poor sparsely settled agricultural districts. The South unquestionably needs a different spirit in educational matters; but even with the best spirit, it needs national aid.

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ADDRESS OF REV. J. R. THURSTON.

MR. PRESIDENT AND FRIENDS: We have six and a quarter millions of Freedmen at the South and three-quarters of a million at the North. They belong to a strong and prolific race that does not waste at the contact of civilization, neither does it waste under oppression. They numbered but four millions in 1860, and have increased 55 per cent. in the past twenty years. Since 1870, if the statistics are correct, they have increased 33 per cent. If this rate of increase goes on at 55 per cent. for twenty years, in 1900, which many of us expect to see, they will be nearly ten millions; and if the increase of the last ten years continues, they will be more than eleven millions.

It becomes, then, a matter of exceeding moment for us, as a nation, to consider their condition and their future. Several things are at least now clear: that for a long series of generations they are to remain a distinct people. They will not amalgamate so much at the South, Dr. Haygood and others say, as they did before the war. The other elements that come to us from abroad—the German, the Celtic and all—we expect soon to be lost, and they will not retain their individuality; but this race will for generations remain a distinct colored race; so that it becomes a problem of peculiar difficulty to deal with them. We may think we are strong enough to throw them off. We cannot. God Almighty is on their side, and with the welfare of these growing millions our welfare is interlocked.

Again, they will remain, too, doubtless, at the South. We thought that they might scatter over the North. The failure of the migration to the North last year does not favor that theory. What is to bring them up to a Christian civilization? We all say at once a Christian education.

There are 700,000 in their common schools. I will simply give the outlines as to the higher schools. Of higher schools there are 45, scattered in different parts of the South; 42 normal schools, four of them state institutions, the rest under the auspices of religious organizations like this. There are 21 colleges, 21 schools of theology, four of medicine and three of law. That sounds well; but it would be wise to ask what these colleges are, scattered over the South. I asked an officer of one of these institutions this afternoon, “Is Talladega a college? It was referred to as such, but was not reported by the Commissioner of Education in 1879 as a college.” “O yes, it is a chartered institution, and soon they expect to have a college curriculum.” Many of these 21 colleges at the South are much in the same condition. They are high and normal schools, with possibly a theological school, which, however, is not as high as a college class.

Now the question is, what are we to do with them?—what are we expecting to accomplish by them? Several things are manifest. First, that this higher education at the South is to be dependent upon benevolence for its continuance and success. Nor is this any exception to the case of higher education at the North. We little realize that all our colleges have been founded by benevolent men, and have been continued in their endowments by benevolent men. We little realize that our young men who attend our colleges do not pay for their education, in many cases not one-half of the expense of it. Secondly, it is manifest that this work must be very largely a denominational work. Now this morning we had a presentation of what it would be well for us to have at the South—denominational unity. That cannot be. Men will not work upon any principle of that kind. If ever there was a time when we might say we had a clean slate, we had that time when we began our work. All united in support of this Association; but very soon we found our Baptist friends, our Methodist friends, our Presbyterian friends and our Episcopal friends withdrawing. Nor could we complain. The Baptists had thousands of colored people in their churches there and the Methodists had hundreds. To-day the Baptists report 800,000 in their colored churches, and the Methodists report 412,000. These colored churches said to them, “You must educate ministers for us;” and hence they have established their schools and higher schools. The Presbyterians had churches among the whites, and those churches, waking up, said, “You must help us in our work for the colored people;” and so they went into the work.

Again, the question is asked, why so many of these higher educational institutions?—why so many colleges?—why need of anything higher than the normal and high school? And this question is asked by people who have given largely for this work and who love it. Now what is the object—to educate all the colored people in colleges? No; but to educate those who have a desire for it and a profound capacity for it. We have graduated probably less than five hundred from all the colleges at the South so far, so there isn’t much danger of an over-supply at present of teachers and preachers. But isn’t there need of a revision of our idea of this whole matter of what the negro is to be? Let us not make at present an ideal, but ask rather what we can do for and with the negro; and as we do this, let us remember what material we have to work with, and how he has been educated by two hundred years of slavery.

In the first place, where did he come from? Not from Northern Africa; not from Southern Africa; but from the negro belt of Africa where is found the most degraded condition of the human race on the face of the globe.

He has been educated two hundred years in slavery, and not without influence upon his mental make-up. The day that the first colored regiment went from Boston in the war to the front, there was a convention of anti-slavery friends in Music Hall. There had been very severe criticism upon our Gov. Andrews because he had not put more black officers in that regiment. As Frederick Douglass was about leaving the hall, they called him back. He stood with his crumpled hat and leaned upon a chair, and talked more sense in five minutes than his white brethren had in all those hours. He said: “Gentlemen, I have as much interest in that regiment as any one here, for I have two sons in it; but I am glad that Gov. Andrews has not put more black officers into it. Here you have educated us for two hundred years for the position of servants. You have taught us that we could not guide our own steps, much less rule our fellow-men. You have wrought into the very fibre of our being a servile spirit, so that we are not fit for rule. All I ask is that when a man proves his capacity to rule, then he shall have an opportunity.”

Now, I say, in reference to the negro, let us see what we can do with him without reference to an ideal. Let us not only remove his restrictions, so that he can rise all that his upward force will impel him to rise, but put into him the mighty forces of a Christian education for forty or fifty years—several generations, in fact—and then see what we can make of the negro.

Especially do we need this higher education in order that we may train preachers. We do not want to send a man with an imperfect education as a missionary to Africa. Why should we send to their black brethren in this country men imperfectly educated as preachers to them? They, surrounded as they are by all the stimulating influences of our modern civilization, need all of this higher education which we can possibly induce them to take on. Doing this for a series of years, we may at last realize the triumph of Christianity among them. The greatest problem of Christianity which our generation sees is the question how these two races, so linked together, shall treat each other; but I believe that the time is to come when we shall see them living together in perfect harmony; when we shall see the blacks supplying their peculiar elements to a higher civilization, and we, the white race, shall have risen to a position exercising a true Christian spirit, which, without the negro linked with us, we never shall find; and then shall we see the triumph of Christianity dealing with this now dark problem, but then showing the glory of a grand success.

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CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.

PROF. CYRUS NORTHROP.

Great battles sometimes settle the fate of a country, and transfer in a day whole provinces from one dominion to another. There are no such decisive battles in the struggle for the intellectual and moral elevation of man. By no stroke of policy and by no combination of forces can you revolutionize the individual character of a whole people at once. It happens occasionally, however, in the contest between good and evil, that some convulsion occurs which in its influence on the mental and moral condition of a whole people is hardly less decisive than those political contests by which provinces are transferred from the control of one nation to that of another. Such a convulsion was our late civil war. It left the States where it found them, parts of the Union. It left all races morally and intellectually where it found them. But for the colored people of the South it had swept away in every direction, from zenith to horizon, the impenetrable clouds of more than Egyptian darkness which had brooded over them, and it had made it possible for the light of the sun to reach even these slaves. Then, indeed, the people which sat in darkness saw a great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, to them did light spring up.

The civil war made it possible for us to educate and Christianize the colored race at the South. It remained for us to take up the burden which the providence of God had laid upon us, and to do what we could to lift up these people to our level of civilization.

But need this education be _Christian_ education? I answer emphatically, yes. The world undoubtedly is making great progress in thought, in discovery, in invention. More and more the dominion of nature is being conquered and her methods understood. Education is not the same as it was a century ago. Even religion is not to us quite the same that it was to our fathers. But whatever discoveries may be made or whatever progress attained, there are some things which the world can never advance so far as to be able to do without, and I but voice the sentiment of this audience when I say that one of these is Christianity.

And now who are these that in our Southern States are stretching forth their hands and begging us to come over and help them? They are those whose minds and hearts are not pre-occupied, but like those of children, receptive, ready for the seed which may be sown, and promising, if good seed is sown, a bountiful harvest at no distant day. They are placed, in the providence of God, at our very door, and are made a part of the governing force of this great republic. For them Christian education cannot be secured through the family, for there is little Christian family life; the father and the mother are as ignorant as the child; all are children. It cannot be secured through the State, for the State has no business to teach religion as these millions need to have it taught. It can be secured only through organized charity—by the help of such agencies as the American Missionary Association. What the fathers and mothers of New England have done for the Christian education of their children, the American Missionary Association must do for the South.

I have emphasized the word Christian as I have spoken of Christian education. Let me not in any less degree emphasize _education_. Matthew Arnold is not far wrong when he says that the object of religion is conduct, and that conduct is three-fourths of life. It is simply doing what we ought. But one of the things which a man ought to do is to make the most of himself as a power for good in the world, and that he cannot do without education. Man, without education, is a clumsy machine. The educated man is force which drives machines. This force, if uncontrolled, becomes destructive. The educated man, without principles, is more dangerous than the uneducated. The latter may become at the worst a brute; it takes the former to be a demon. But we do not on this account think less of education; we only insist that the force it generates shall be controlled by Christian principle. Thus controlled it is always beneficent, like fire and water and air, which, nevertheless, when uncontrolled, may become agents of the most fearful destruction.

The necessity for Christian education at the South may be looked at and clearly seen from two different points of view. To the Christian, these millions of the South are human beings, for whom Christ died and to whom He has commanded us to carry the Gospel. Properly developed, intellectually, morally and spiritually, they will be a part of the Kingdom of God, and will become powerfully influential in establishing that kingdom throughout the world. They are accessible, eager for knowledge, ready to accept the truths of Christianity, peculiarly impressible, lacking stability only because undeveloped, and they offer to us an assured hope of a more complete, immediate and glorious harvest than seems likely to be gathered in any other part of the world. Nowhere else on the round globe will your money or your efforts bring such returns as they will at the South. You have not to contend with an impregnable hostile faith, as among the Mohammedans or Buddhists. You have only to lift the clouds of ignorance, and to overcome the natural depravity of man—a depravity greater, perhaps, than in some other places, but on that very account more easily recognized, felt and repented of.

Nor can the necessity for Christian education at the South appear less imperative to the patriot. There is no element so dangerous to the stability of the republic as ignorance and its associated lack of principle. It is by votes that rulers are elected, laws made and the country governed. Just so long as we have a large element of ignorance in the republic, whose votes can be bought at the caucus or at the polls, will the most unscrupulous men rise to prominence in our politics, for they are the only men who will utilize this ignorance.

And now what of the future? We have tried all sorts of reconstruction measures with the South and all kinds of policies with the South, and all have proved in a greater or less degree failures. They stand as monuments of our lack of the keenest foresight. The best reconstruction measure which we can now adopt is to fill the treasury of the American Missionary Association full to overflowing, that it may carry forward at once and triumphantly this work of Christian education in the South. What it has done is sufficient assurance of what it will do, if the means are placed in its hands. It cannot establish throughout the South a common school system like that which blesses the North; it cannot carry education to every cabin in the South, nor open college halls, free of expense, to all who may desire a liberal education; but it can and will qualify large numbers of these people to carry education and Christianity to the rest; and that, after all, is the best thing possible, for no lesson is more needed by these people than that of self-reliance. Teach them to take care of themselves in the best way, and we shall have done for them the best that is possible. The day will not be far distant, then, when the common schools of the South will provide education for the white and the black alike as at the North, and when the church of God in the South shall hear the voice of God saying, “All souls are mine. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones.”

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HIGHER EDUCATION.

PRES. E. A. WARE.

This paper, recognizing the importance of normal and industrial education, claims for higher education simply the place accorded to it in other sections in the educational system for the South. Its right to that place is widely questioned. The _Journal of Education_ recently had the following: “In spite of the youthfulness of colored education, some of their schools are graced with a reprint of a Northern College curriculum. What nine-tenths of the pupils in these classes want of Latin and Greek, fails of our comprehension.” We are constantly hearing about “educating them out of their place.” It will hardly be claimed that the colored man _cannot_ be educated, when several have graduated with honor from Northern colleges; when one has passed the fiery ordeal of West Point; when one, below the middle of a class of six in a Southern school, graduated above the middle of a class of thirty at Andover Seminary; and when a Southern examining board say: “We were impressed with the fact that the colored people, whether of pure or mixed blood, can receive the education usually given in such schools.”