Part 8

FELLOW CITIZENS: At that period to which our distinguished chairman has just referred at the close of the late civil war there were presented to this nation a number of great questions, appalling by their magnitude and by the dangers of a wrong decision. Among these I think one was in the hearts of all thinking men foremost: What shall be done with these millions formerly chattels, now citizens, the wards of the nation, the wards of humanity? Two answers were given to that question. Two paths were open to the triumphant nation. The first path laid out before us by many was simply confiscation. It was said: Don’t in Heaven’s name give to this country a great class of agricultural laborers divorced from the soil, with no property in the land upon which they stand, for if you do this you will but have escaped from the black sea of bondage into the red sea of pauperism and of socialism. We were told that right favored such a course. It was declared that these freedmen had a right to the soil which for ages had obtained its only value from the unpaid labor of themselves and of their forefathers for many generations. We were also told that experience favored such a course. We were pointed to Russia, where by the ukase of the despot a vast body of serfs had been set free, and had been endowed from the lands of their former masters. But, thank God, nobler counsels prevailed. The better instincts of the Anglo-Saxon race predominated. May I not say that the rising, the reviving spirit of brotherhood between North and South averted such a catastrophe. Nay, may I not go farther and still more truthfully say that that same hand of the Almighty, which every reverent and thoughtful student of history sees displayed so clearly in the history of our nation from first to last, was never more evident than when we avoided this path to new and deeper wells of bitterness. But on the other hand there was pointed out another path—a path chosen by devoted women, by earnest men, and that path was simply education. It led us at first, no doubt, through thickets of dislike; it led over chasms of hatred; nay, still worse, it led through vast deserts of indifference—but at last it became better and broader. It became better footing; it became more and more paved with the noble deeds of self-sacrificing men and women. It became more and more shaded by noble growths of human self-sacrifice until all could see it as the appointed highway and a better and nobler future for the whole nation.

My distinguished friend who has preceded me has looked at this question from a lofty point of view—the point of view of a statesman—the point of view of one who has been able to survey this and the other questions which naturally connect themselves with it over this entire nation from the highest seat which any loyal son of this Republic recognizes—the Chief Magistracy of the United States. May I be permitted to survey it from a much humbler elevation—from that of a simple instructor of young men, whose duty for years has been to show to young men, and, indeed, I am happy now to say, young women also—to show to them the indications in human history of the great hand of God leading humanity on through all that blooms and decays, through all that struggles and suffers, through all that falters or stands fast, to the great goal which Divine Providence has appointed. And in that view and from that point I do not hesitate to reiterate the assertion that in all our history there is no greater proof of a Divine intelligence which takes an interest in the affairs of this world than in that Heaven-inspired choice of the path of education rather than the path of confiscation.

You will remember, doubtless, fellow citizens, that prophecy of Thomas Jefferson—the greatest political genius whom our country has yet seen—that prophecy which used to ring in the hearts of some of us before the civil war, even into the watches of the night—that famous prophecy which seems to have come from Divine inspiration, beginning with those terrible words: “I tremble when I remember that God is just.” Had Thomas Jefferson foreseen the fulfillment of his prophecy he would have been blasted with horror at the sight of the wrath of the Almighty poured forth over this land, North and South, for, as has so well been observed, whatever sin there was, rested at the doors of the North as at the doors of the South. But had that great political genius looked over and beyond this out-pouring of God’s wrath, he would have seen an out-pouring of mercy which would have led him to kneel humbly in adoration at the blessings lavished upon the future nation. He would have seen the nation welded together into one homogeneous whole as never before. He would have seen prosperity revived as it had never been dreamed of by the most sanguine. He would have seen an enlightenment and civilization taking their roots, which he, with all his optimism, never dared dream of.

But, fellow-citizens, what is the especial question which confronts us at this moment? It has been most ably presented by the eminent gentleman who has just spoken, but you will permit a few words more upon some aspects of it which especially strike me. The question simply is, how shall this path which heaven has indicated to us, how shall this path of education be broadened into a great highway worthy of the nation, sure to bring it to a worthy future? Now, there are various agencies which will co-operate in this great work. The first to which I will allude is the munificence of public-spirited and devoted men and women. There seems to be no limit to that. The scene which some of us witnessed this morning, the giving over of an immense sum to the endowment of a college in this city, is but the token of a vast outpouring of munificence for advanced education such as this world never saw before. There is to be—mark the prophecy, fellow-citizens—great as has been the outpouring of wealth heretofore, and the statistics show in ten years, gifts to the amount of $60,000,000, we are told; there is to be in this time of revived prosperity an outpouring of wealth far greater, to which all this which we have seen is as nothing. That will go to build up the high schools and academies, the technical schools, the colleges, the universities, perhaps. We can rely on that. But there is another agency. All this mass of education must be permeated, must be informed by the spirit of morality, which is bedded in religion. That can only come from the great Christian sentiment of this country as voiced in the Christian Church, and if the Christian Church shall rise to the height of the great argument, if she shall recognize her great mission, and there are plentiful signs—many of them have been vouchsafed here within the last three days—there are plentiful signs that she is to do this; if she shall stand forth in the panoply of her Master, if she shall catch the spirit of the sermon on the mount, of the first great commandment and the second which is like unto it, of that definition of pure religion and undefiled, as given by St. James, all this mass of education can be permeated, can be informed by morality based upon religion. We hear alarm expressed in various quarters at new phases of thought, at what many, not understanding, have called the dangers of infidelity. Fellow citizens, there is never any danger of infidelity in any land where the Christian Church puts herself at the head of the great forces for right and justice and enlightenment acting upon the civilization of that country. Danger comes as it came in France, when the church forgot its mission and sided with despotism. Danger comes as it came in England two centuries ago and less when the church sided with a besotted monarchy and aristocracy. Danger comes as it came not so many years ago in our own country when the church was led, in some places at least, to make apologies for human slavery; but when she arrays herself at the head of great movements like this, and insists on doing works of self-sacrifice, of mercy, of justice, of right, tell me not of any fears of infidelity. Then I am sure will come the noblest and the grandest triumphs of Christianity. But is this sufficient? My friend has already shown you that it is not. Great as this outpouring of munificence has been and is to be, it requires even more than that for the great base part, the fundamental part of the work, and that is the work of bringing about a state of things under which every child, white and black, shall be educated suitably to his or her duties. How shall this be done? Can it be done by private munificence, great as it is? I say no. The State of New York alone pays for primary education, common school education, every year, more than ten millions of dollars. We cannot expect this steady outpouring for this fundamental part of the system. As my friend has so ably shown, that can only be undertaken by humanity organized by States, and by the Nation. Can the States do it alone? Again I say no. It must be done by the Nation acting in concert with the States. The Nation must plant in every State which has not an educational system now, or which has not an adequate educational system, a nucleus of a system around which State endeavors may crystallize, which shall encourage these Southern States which have been so discouraged, which have been, as my distinguished friend has shown, so trodden down—so broken down I will say, not trodden down—so broken down by the events of the last twenty years. Now, how shall this be accomplished? There are two ways. The first is by direct appropriation. That has already been discussed before you. Fellow citizens, if it were to take twice or thrice the sum named it would not be felt by any tax-payer in this land. It would deprive not one man, woman or child in all this national domain of one single comfort. But suppose we cannot get Congress up to the mark of making an appropriation in money. There is another method. It was a method advocated perhaps more than fifty years ago, by that sainted friend of right and humanity, William Ellery Channing. That was the consecration—that was his word, and it was a most happy word—the consecration of the national domain, all of it that has not been given since by the homestead act and by various other acts for the promotion of various commercial enterprises, the consecration of the proceeds of the sales of the national domain, sacredly, to a fund for the education of the whole people to their great duties and their great destiny.

It seems to me that this movement can still be pressed. Congress can still be made to see that something must be done by the Government of the United States to open up this great path of education in the interest of the entire nation; but, fellow citizens, I am aware that some objections are made. Let me refer to them very briefly. The first is what may be called a political objection. It is said, leave this matter to time, leave it to the people, leave it to take care of itself. I have always noticed that when a political man wants to evade a question, wants to evade any trouble in the matter, he always says leave it to time, leave it to the natural forces, leave it to itself. Now, in addition to the argument that has already been so ably presented to you, let me say that the greatest apostle of the “laissez faire” system, the system under which everything is to be left to the natural course, John Stuart Mill, has expressly and in terms made an exception as regards popular education. This, he says, must be dealt with by organized humanity. This must be planned and carried out by the comparatively small number of men who see at the first the importance of it, and by that vast force which government alone can exercise. My friends, if it is left to time and chance, what is likely to follow? You can see as well as I. There comes first indifference. The great population concerned sinks back first into indifference and then into a sort of complacency, and finally into self-congratulation that somehow they are better than communities that are educated. There is nobody after all quite so conceited, I think you will find that the world over, as the man who is ignorant. He sees that educated men make certain mistakes. He makes no such. Therefore, he at last arrives at the point, he very often does, and especially when his ignorance is shared by a great population, that somehow he is superior to those who are educated. Then comes the greatest of all dangers. Then comes the danger of despotism, the despotism of an unenlightened mob of millions; and of all despotisms, fellow citizens, this, all history proves, is the very worst. Give me an autocrat, give me a despot the worst in history, and I will take him cheerfully rather than that many-headed despot, an unenlightened, uneducated democracy. Ah! my friends, you can make one despot see that his interest lies in the interest of his country. You can bring home to a single despot a sense of shame, a sense of honor, a sense of responsibility. You can never bring that home to a mob. It was said that the old Bourbon despotism of France was a despotism tempered by epigrams; but what wit, what wisdom shall temper a mob of uneducated millions, extending over thousands and thousands of square miles of territory. There is also a not often stated, generally unavowed, but none the less strong on that account, there is what may be called a social objection. It is freely avowed in Europe; I have often heard it. It is sometimes sneakingly avowed in our own country, and that is this: Is it not after all better that this lower class should not know much? Is it not much better to keep it so that it will feel its dependence on the upper class? My friends, of all mistakes all history proves that is the most fatal, for when you pursue that policy which seems so easy at first you find that you have at last divided a nation into two strata—the upper a thin stratum of pride and arrogance sustained by terrorism, the lower a thick stratum of class ignorance which may at any moment be inflamed by fanaticism or exploded by unrest. No, fellow citizens, the only course is so to educate the whole mass that it will see that its interest is on the side of law and order, so that it will be able to understand the simple presentation of rudimentary political truths.

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ADDRESS OF THE REV. A. G. HAYGOOD, D.D.

President of Emory College, Oxford, GA.

Mr. President: I never saw the day since Christ converted me that my heart did not warm toward any good cause that, in its plans and efforts, took in the whole human race. This American Missionary Association represents such a cause, and I am grateful for the privilege of taking some small part in this anniversary meeting. And I am the more glad because this meeting is held in the city where Garfield, our President, awaits the resurrection of the just. President Hayes did good work for the South, for which history will give him due credit. It was this: he let the South alone that the storm-rocked sea might calm itself. President Garfield—living, dying, and dead—awoke within the hearts of the masses of the Southern people the throbs of a profounder national sentiment than they had felt in twenty years.

It is becoming that I speak this evening of that part of your work which I understand best, your work in the Southern States; and of that part of it which I know best, your work for the negroes. Any work of importance, as to its extent, methods, or designs, done among the negroes must arouse interest in all thinking minds. The negro has been in America 260 years; there are not far from 7,000,000 of them here to-day; nearly all of them are in the Southern States. At the close of our war for independence there were in the United States about 700,000 negroes. Within a century they have multiplied ten times. How many will they be by 1982? To speak in round numbers, the increase of the total population of this country from 1870 to 1880, as the last census shows was 30 per cent; the increase of the white population, aided largely as it was by immigration, was 28 per cent.; the increase of the negro population, unaided by immigration, was 34 per cent. It is only very foolish people who can be indifferent to such facts; thoughtful men will consider them.

Visionaries and cranks may dream and declaim of solving the problem of our future and theirs by getting them somehow out of this country. But, if it were desirable or practicable to transport them, they are born faster than whole navies can move them, and it is as undesirable as it is impracticable. They are here to stay, and so far as men can see, for the most part where they now are, in the Southern States of this Union.

They are now nearly one-seventh of our population, and by the providence of God they are free men and voters. The time has about passed, Mr. President, for the North to please itself with eloquent speech concerning their emancipation and for the South to fret itself with fervent denunciation concerning their enfranchisement. It were wiser and more profitable for the people of both sections to accept the facts of a difficult question, to discuss the issues of 1882, and in a business like way, to do our best to make the most of them. As to the now dominant sentiment in the South, nobody who has good sense wants them back in slavery, and the South, you may depend upon it, will never consent for the ballot to be taken from them.

Everybody knows that when they received the ballot _en masse_ they were utterly unprepared for it. As a class they had just three ideas concerning the ballot when it was given to them. First. They looked upon it as a symbol of their freedom; this, I believe did them good. Second. They received it as a special mark of the love borne to them by the people of the North; this made them vain of it, and alienated them from their white neighbors. Third. Their predominant notion was that it was given them to “keep the old rebels down;” this spoiled them for fair-minded politics. But as a class they lacked conscience in the use of it.

You will pardon a single illustration of their capacity for enlightened politics. For nearly eight years I have had in my employment a colored man, Daniel Martin by name. He is about my own age. I trust him fully in all matters for which he has capacity. We are much attached to each other, and, the truth is, we have been taking care of each other for a good while. He gets better wages than ordinary colored men in our community, and is much above the average of his race in character and common sense. He can read “coarse print,” and can sign his name imperfectly. You will miss the point of my illustration unless you bear in mind that he had steadily voted the Republican ticket from the beginning of his citizenship to the date of my story. And he so votes till this day. The day before the Hayes and Tilden election he was plowing in a little field near my house. One of our students quizzed him about his views and intentions: “How are you going to vote to-morrow, Uncle Daniel?” It is a peculiarity of the Southern negro that he never delivers a solemn judgment on any subject without coming to a full halt in whatever engages him. One consequence is, he comes to a great many halts in his work. Another peculiarity of at least the Southern negro is, that he thinks in metaphor and speaks in parables. So Daniel, stopping his horse and sticking his plow deeper into the ground, delivered himself as follows: “Now, Mr. Longstreet, you see I is plowin dis furrow. If I only plow dis furrow I makes dis furrow too deep and I don’t plow de balance of de patch.” Mr. Longstreet admitted the force of the statement. Daniel continued in answer to the young man’s question: “I think things is ben gwine on in one way long enough; I think dere ought to be a change. Wherefore I is gwine to vote for Mr. Hayes to-morrow—git up, Bill.”

Next day he and I went to our county town; he voted for Hayes that there might be a change; I voted for Tilden that there might be a change; he killed my vote—or possibly one of yours—and we were “equal before the law.”

But few of them are now prepared to vote intelligently, and ballots, whether cast by fair or dark hands, in the hands of ignorance are dangerous to free institutions. Are not you of the North nearly as much concerned in the quality of the negro’s ballot as we of the South are? Till recently, they voted “solid” for the Republican ticket. A few weeks ago, in Georgia, the majority of them voted for an ex-Confederate Brigadier General, who fought bravely at the first Manassas, and who ran for Governor as an Independent Democrat, receiving, however, the whole Republican vote; and thousands of them voted for the nominee of the Democratic party, the ex-Vice-President of the Confederacy. No white man running for any office in the South will refuse their votes, and, so far as I know, their votes are always sought when there is any chance to get them. I am not sure but that his ignorance makes him more dangerous as a voter when both parties seek his vote than when it is given solid to one. In your work in the South, Mr. President, I rejoice, for many reasons. The reason I now mention is this: That work is helping to prepare the negro for his duties as a citizen. I can well understand how the best and wisest people in the North feel most deeply and solemnly their obligation to do this work. For you gave him the ballot, and history will not justify that gift unless you do all that you can do to prepare him for its intelligent use. Not now, nor during the next generation, can the South do this work alone. Unless you continue to help, and to help mightily, it cannot be done. As to primary education, many in the South—and I, for one, agree with them—believe with our Senator Brown, of Georgia, that the national government should come to the rescue and help the States in this work—distributing its aid on the basis of illiteracy. This would give the South a large share of “appropriations under the old flag.” What if it does? The South is part of you, and you are part of the South—if this is a Union and a Nation. Slowly but surely, as it seems to me, we are beginning to understand our relations to each other. Some day we will, it is to be hoped, understand one another so well and agree so amicably that the phrases “the North” and “the South” shall have only geographical meaning. President Arthur, many thanks to him for this, made no allusion to “the South” in his first message to Congress.

If the general government gives this needed help, it will be in the interest of the whole country, although the Southern States may get, for once, the lion’s share. For we are a large part of this country; we are in the Union and intend to stay there—if we have to whip somebody in order to do it. But, in the nature of things, this sort of help must be temporary, and, as I suppose, should, like the educational work of the State governments, be carried on, for the most part, in the common schools. The thing that must be done, if our work is to stand, is to train up among the negroes, as well as among the whites, men and women who can teach the children of their race—teach them in homes, in school-houses and in churches. This cannot be done by the State as it should be done. For if, as one has said, the “negroes need educated Christianity,” it is also true that they must have Christianized education in order to get it. This the State does not and cannot give. To achieve this most desirable and necessary result the school-house and the church must work together. There must be Bibles in the schools that are to train teachers among this people, and there must be Christian men and women in them who both teach and practice religion.