Part 1

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CONTENTS.

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EDITORIAL. PAGE. A FINANCIAL APPEAL 97 PARAGRAPHS 98 AN OLD-TIME MIDNIGHT SLAVE FUNERAL (cut) 99 PARAGRAPHS 100 DEATH OF EDGAR KETCHUM 100 GOVERNMENTAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS, BY REV. C. C. PAINTER 101 BENEFACTIONS‒GENERAL NOTES‒Africa, Indians, Chinese 103

FIELD WORK.

WORTHY OF RECORD 104 CHURCH, HOME AND SCHOOL, WILMINGTON, N.C. (cut) 105 A WEEK AMONG THE WORKERS‒AT ATLANTA, GA.; TALLADEGA, ALA.; FISK UNIVERSITY; LE MOYNE INSTITUTE, NEW ORLEANS, LA.; SAN FRANCISCO; HAMPTON, VA. 106 REVIVAL IN CENTRAL CHURCH AND STRAIGHT UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS 113 HOW THE FREEDMEN CHILDREN DO IT 114 CHURCH AT LITTLE ROCK, ARK.; CHURCH AT LULING, TEX. 115

AFRICA.

REV. MR. LADD AT KHARTOUM 115

CHILDREN’S PAGE.

CHING LING’S PASSPORT, BY MRS. HARRIET A. CHEEVER 117

RECEIPTS 119

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American Missionary Association,

56 READE STREET, NEW YORK.

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PRESIDENT, HON. WM. B. WASHBURN, Mass.

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY.

Rev. M. E. STRIEBY, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._

TREASURER.

H. W. HUBBARD, Esq., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._

DISTRICT SECRETARIES.

Rev. C. L. WOODWORTH, _Boston_. Rev. G. D. PIKE, D.D., _New York_. Rev. JAMES POWELL, _Chicago_.

COMMUNICATIONS

relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretary; those relating to the collecting fields, to the District Secretaries; letters for the Editor of the “American Missionary,” to Rev. G. D. Pike, D.D., at the New York Office.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, Rev. C. L. Woodworth, Dist. Sec., 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., or Rev. James Powell, Dist. Sec., 112 West Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member. Letters relating to boxes and barrels of clothing may be addressed to the persons above named.

FORM OF A BEQUEST.

“I BEQUEATH to my executor (or executors) the sum of ‒‒ dollars, in trust, to pay the same in ‒‒ days after my decease to the person who, when the same is payable, shall act as Treasurer of the ‘American Missionary Association’ of New York City, to be applied, under the direction of the Executive Committee of the Association, to its charitable uses and purposes.” The Will should be attested by three witnesses.

The Annual Report of the A. M. A. contains the Constitution of the Association and the By-Laws of the Executive Committee. A copy will be sent free on application.

THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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VOL. XXXVI. APRIL, 1882. No. 4.

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American Missionary Association.

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A FINANCIAL APPEAL.

In the last number of the MISSIONARY we stated that our receipts for the four months of the fiscal year to January 31 had been $83,893.39, or an advance over last year of only 19 per cent., instead of $100,000, or the advance of 23 per cent. asked for at the Annual Meeting.

Special calls for finishing new buildings, useless unless finished, necessary repairs on old buildings, etc., compelled us to make appropriations to the amount of the 23 per cent., but the falling off in anticipated receipts left a deficit of $16,107.

We had hoped that February would show an improvement, but, with regret, we are compelled to say that the receipts for that month are about $1,000 less than for February, 1881. We needed $125,000 to meet the total demands due February 28, and our receipts at that date are $100,045.97, a deficiency of about $25,000.

To us there is the choice between a _debt_ and _retrenchment_; with our patrons, whose servants we are, is the opportunity of relief. We dare not make a debt; we are held to this by our pledge to our friends, and by our past bitter experience. Retrenchment is a distressing alternative. It will check the progress along the whole line of our work. The increased receipts of the past two years have given to the colored people a new impulse of hope and activity. New buildings have been erected, schools have been enlarged, new churches formed, and the spirit of self-help has been awakened in an unwonted degree in the schools and the churches. Retrenchment will check all this. Years may be required to regain it. Importunate calls for the continuance of the extended work crowd upon us, and denial must create discouragement, and this will be intensified by the disasters of the late floods. To a struggling people, such a drawback is an incalculable evil. In their behalf we appeal‒yes, earnestly and importunately we appeal‒to our friends to come forward to their aid promptly and generously.

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We give place in this number of the MISSIONARY to communications relating to a week’s work among the workers, which we believe will be of special interest to our readers.

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Rev. A. E. Winship, of Somerville, Mass., who was the author of the first concert exercise in behalf of the American Missionary Association, has just prepared a second exercise on the same subject. The exercise can be had gratuitously, with Jubilee Songs to accompany it, on application to Rev. C. L. Woodworth, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass. We can assure Sunday-schools and churches that the exercise is one of the best, and that its use can hardly fail to awaken new interest in the concert.

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On another page will be found a very interesting letter from Mr. Ladd, giving an account of a rebellion among the tribes in the vicinity of Khartoum that threatens to hinder his progress. A letter of more recent date says that he and Dr. Snow have relinquished the hope of reaching Fatiko at present, but that they have made arrangements with the Government for passage on one of its smaller steamers that will enable them to visit the region of the Sobat. Our explorers manifest both caution and courage, and we commend them to the prayers of God’s people.

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A Northern man now resident in Florida, and always, both North and South, a warm friend of our work among the colored people, after reading in our notice of the Nashville Conference, the appeal for another Theological Seminary further South, gives the whole matter not only a most cordial, but practical, indorsement by pledging himself “to be one of ten or twenty or fifty to contribute $1,000 each to make a beginning in the good work.” With thanks to our friend for his liberality, we send forth the question, Where are the nine, the nineteen or the forty-nine?

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“In those portions of the South where the plantations were largest, and the slaves the most numerous, they were very fond of burying their dead at night, and as near midnight as possible. In case of a funeral, they assembled from adjoining plantations in large numbers, provided with pine knots and pieces of fat pine called lightwood, which, when ignited, made a blaze compared with which our city torchlight processions are most sorry affairs. When all was in readiness, they lighted these torches, formed into a procession, and marched slowly to the distant grave, singing the most solemn music. Sometimes they sang hymns they had committed to memory, but oftener those more tender and plaintive, composed by themselves, that have since been introduced to the people of the North and of Europe as plantation melodies. The appearance of such a procession, winding through the fields and woods, as revealed by their flaming torches, marching slowly to the sound of their wild music, was weird and imposing to the highest degree.”‒From “In the Brush,” by Rev. H. W. Pierson, D.D.

Two or three second-hand communion sets will be very gratefully received by as many of our needy young churches in the South. Churches at the North changing from their present to better will please take note.

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There were twins in this country. One was slavery and the other polygamy. One is dead and the other is threatened as never before. This Association is proud of the part it took in the extinction of the former. It now extends its heartiest sympathies to those who are determined upon the destruction of the latter.

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A postal from one of our schools at the South says: “We received recently a good-sized box of books and only a few of any value. Latin books of ancient date, German, French, Spanish, and Patent Office Reports are of no use to us. Please ask our friends not to send such, as they are only a bill of expense.” We have had, heretofore, to make statements of this sort in the MISSIONARY. We are always thankful for the liberality of our friends, but we invoke their discretion in giving.

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The Congregational Year Book, just issued by our British brethren, is a document well worthy of study on this side of the water. Besides the usual statistics of ministers and churches, it makes mention of 19 colleges, 31 new schools, 37 missionary and other societies, 41 Congregational institutions, 48 periodicals, published by Congregationalists. It also gives the statistics of 16 non-conformist institutions, one of which is a Ministers’ Seaside Home‒a species of benevolence that would be invaluable to our missionary laborers at the South. The record of so much enterprise and work qualifies the reader to appreciate Dr. Henry Allon’s eloquent and powerful discourse on “The Church of the Future,” which is printed in the same volume.

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The death of Edgar Ketchum, Esq., which occurred March 3, removes from us a philanthropist and Christian; it diminishes the rapidly thinning ranks of earnest Christian Abolitionists, and it takes one who had long been an officer of the American Missionary Association. Mr. Ketchum was admitted to the bar in 1834; in 1841 he was made Commissioner of Public Funds for this State; in 1861 he was appointed by President Lincoln Collector of Internal Revenue for the Ninth District of New York; and in 1867 he was made a Register in Bankruptcy by Chief-Justice Chase, which position he held till the time of his death. Mr. Ketchum early identified himself with the anti-slavery cause, and was ardent and constant in his endeavors to promote it. His house was fired by the rioters in 1863. He was for a long time President of the Board of Managers of the House of Refuge, on Randall’s Island, to whose interest he gave untiring and uncompensated time and attention. He was Treasurer of this Association from 1865 to 1879, a position of responsibility and supervision, but not of active duty, and without salary. He was also the legal counsellor of the Association for many years. Mr. Ketchum was a man of fine personal presence, of very genial manners, of active business habits, and a devoted Christian.

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GOVERNMENTAL AID TO COMMON SCHOOLS.

WHAT CONGRESS MAY DO AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE.

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_Rev. C. C. Painter._

Education by the State rests upon the sole basis of self-protection.

A despotism must stand impregnable, if at all, in the strength of its armament. But not so with a republic. It must stand in the intelligence and virtue of its citizens. It were a solecism in logic and common sense to admit the nation’s right to manumit the slave as a war measure, and equip him with the ballot as a reconstructive measure necessary to the safety of the republic, but deny at once the right and the duty of qualifying him for the duties of citizenship when an understanding of these duties is also essential to that safety. The constitutional right to use the same power, which is now invoked to qualify the voter for the duty with which the general government has charged him, has been exercised so many times in regard to less important matters that precedents are not wanting to justify this application of it, even to one who wishes to know that a thing has been done before he will believe it can be done.

Whatever criticism may be made upon the use which some of the States made of their share of the $28,000,000 of money distributed from the surplus funds of the Treasury by the Act of June 23, 1836, no one can doubt that it was constitutionally done, and done by the same discretion and power which would be used in giving aid now to the States. And it may be said that the use of this fund so largely by the States at their discretion for school purposes legitimates the confident assurance that a fund now given specifically for schools would be wisely and conscientiously devoted to that object.

As to the present needs look at the facts:

There are in the United States 6,239,958 persons, ten years of age or over, who cannot write their names. More than three-fourths of these are found in the old slave States. More than one-half of the whole number are colored. If the general government should provide means to sustain a school for this class alone for three months in the year, at a salary for the teachers of $30 per month for a school of 30 pupils, it would require the sum of $18,719,958. Of this $14,449,579 would go into the old slave States, $9,187,922 because of colored illiterates, leaving $4,961,657 for the whites, and $4,579,439 would go to the other States for both black and white illiterates.

In 1879 North Carolina raised for common schools a sum which would give $20 per annum to each school of 30 illiterates (not school children). How long it would take that State to make intelligent and safe voters of her citizens at that rate is matter for sober reflection, not alone to the politician, who remembers what the electoral vote of that State is for President, but to every citizen.

If the government should enable North Carolina to keep up her schools for four months at fair wages, instead of one month, as at present, at such a salary as can secure only an inferior teacher, it would be something, but not all that is needed. If such a sum should be given, Mississippi would receive as her share of it $1,119,603; New Jersey, with nearly exactly the same population, would receive $159,747. But $959,529 of Mississippi’s share would be because of colored illiteracy, leaving nearly exactly the same amount for white illiterates which New Jersey would receive, which shows conclusively that it is because of the negro chiefly this help is needed, and for him, as a voter, the nation at large is responsible. In considering the disparity between the sum that would go to the South and the new States of the Northwest respectively, not only must we remember the negro as a factor in the problem, but also these facts: By the ordinance of 1787, by which Virginia ceded the great northwest territory to the general government on such terms‒Mr. Webster said, in his great speech on the Foote resolution‒as “fixed forever the character of the population of the vast regions northwest of the Ohio by excluding from them involuntary servitude, and impressed on the soil itself, while it was yet a wilderness, an incapacity to sustain any other than freemen.” And six days after, in his reply to Hayne, he said, also, that “it set forth and declared it to be a high and binding duty of the government itself to support schools and advance the means of education on the plain reason that religion, morality and knowledge are necessary to good government.” By this ordinance of cession, Virginia stipulated that the proceeds from this vast territory should be considered as a common fund for the use and benefit of such as have become or may become members of the confederation or federal alliance of States. The other States claiming unsettled lands within their territory also ceded their titles to the general government, which became possessed of the whole. From time to time Congress has made most liberal grants of this land to the new States for school purposes, so that Minnesota, for example, has realized from her share, or has the land from which, at the same rate of sale, she can realize a fund of $20,000,000 for educational purposes, while the old States have not had a dollar, excepting their share in the grant for the endowment of agricultural colleges by Act of 1862, in which the new States as well as the old shared ratably. It may be truly said, then, that every instinct of self-preservation demands that the unquestionable right of the general government shall be exercised in using the means at its disposal to meet the great danger which threatens us from the presence and power of ignorant voters; and that every sentiment of justice to the negro himself as the subject of many wrongs and the possible avenger of them, and to the States themselves, requires that governmental aid shall be given to the common schools of the country.

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BENEFACTIONS

Ex-Gov. Colby has made a conditional pledge of $10,000 to the trustees of the Maine Agricultural College.

Gen. E. W. Leavenworth, of Syracuse, N.Y., has recently given $10,000 to Hamilton College to found a scholarship.

Of the £265,000 endowment secured last year for the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Joseph A. Wharton gave £100,000.

Newton Case, of Hartford, Conn., has offered to give $100,000 for the library of Hartford Theo. Sem., provided an equal amount is raised.

By the sale of the Williston Mills at Easthampton, Williston Seminary comes into possession of $200,000 and Amherst College of $100,000.

Over $100,000 has been raised for land and a new dormitory at Williams College. The fund for the Garfield Professorship amounts to $42,000.

The late Joseph E. Sheffield gives $100,000 to the Berkeley Divinity School, Middletown, Conn. His gifts to Yale College will probably aggregate from half a million to a million and a half.

University College, Liverpool, England, is to receive £105,000 from different individuals. Lord Derby, the Rathborne family, Mrs. Grant and the trustees of the late R. L. Jones have _subscribed_ £10,000 each of the amount.

“_The colored people are too poor to endow their schools. Their very existence is endangered so long as they are made to depend upon the yearly gifts of the churches. To endow is to carry a magnificent beginning to completion._”‒Rev. T. J. Morgan, D.D.

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GENERAL NOTES.

AFRICA.

‒It is reported that Piaggia, the Italian explorer, who purposed penetrating the Galla country in Southern Abyssinia, is dead.

‒Col. Mills, who formerly occupied the post of Consul-General and English Political Agent at Mascate, has been appointed to succeed Dr. Kirk at Zanzibar.

‒M. Maspéro, director of the Egyptian museum, has succeeded in discovering the opening of the pyramid of Meydoum which has passed until now as impenetrable.

‒M. Tagliabue, correspondent of the _Exploratore_, has made from Massaoua an excursion among the Bogos, where he has specially studied the tobacco plantations.

‒M. Godfrey Roth, who gave proof of so much zeal at the time of the arrival of the caravans of slaves at Siout, has been attached to Giegler Pasha, at Khartoum, for the suppression of the slave trade.

‒Rohlfs has written the Secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society that he hoped to return to London in January, and go from thence to Cairo, to negotiate peace with the Khedive on the part of the King of Abyssinia, under the auspices of the English government, from which he beseeches aid in favor of the Emperor of Abyssinia.

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THE INDIANS.

‒The London Missionary Society has furnished their Indian missions on the North Pacific Coast with a small steamer. The Baptists also have one on Puget Sound.

‒The Protestant Episcopal Church sustains 394 missionaries in its home field, of whom 52 labor among the Indians.

‒The Presbytery of West Virginia, although itself a weak Home Missionary Presbytery, has ordained three ministers for Alaska.

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THE CHINESE.

‒The Chinese government has decided to increase the tax on foreign opium and impose a tax on native opium.

‒A Chinese ship loaded with tea recently arrived in London. It is the first that ever reached that port.

‒Rev. H. V. Noyes, of the Presbyterian mission at Canton, has prepared a Concordance of the New Testament in Chinese.

‒There were 18 graduates of the Scientific Department of the Training School at Kioto, Japan, and all remained to pursue the study of theology.

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WORTHY OF RECORD.

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In the May number of the magazine for 1881, was a picture and a description of Christ’s Church, in Wilmington, N.C. We intimated at that time that the same generous friend who had built the church intended still larger outlays and improvements at the same point, an account of which might be expected at a future time. That time has come, and we proceed to complete the picture and the description of Hon. James J. H. Gregory’s noble gift to the Wilmington mission.

_First, the School-House._‒This was, originally, a wooden two-story building, 84 × 30 feet, one end of which was occupied by the mission family, and the other by the schools. It would accommodate, by crowding, 150 pupils. This building has now been completely remodeled, and the whole of it devoted to schools and mission work. It has been flanked by two wings, each 54 × 16, two stories high, having a front of 116 feet, with room for 300 or 350 pupils. The lower story contains three school rooms, first and second primary and grammar; also room for lady missionary, in which she holds sewing classes, prayer-meetings, and deals out books, papers and clothing to the needy.

The upper story contains high-school room, principal’s room, assistant’s recitation room, and a hall capable of seating between three and four hundred, and which can be used, if necessary, for a still higher grade of school in the future.

_Second, the Mission House._‒The house is a wooden frame in a brick “jacket,” the main part three stories high, and each story containing four rooms fifteen feet square, with an open fire-place in each. The L has nine rooms, exclusive of storeroom, pantry and wash-room, the latter of which is in the basement.