Part 1

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EDITORIAL.

THIS NUMBER PORTLAND MEETING, 335 SUBSCRIBERS FOR THE “MISSIONARY,” 336 PARAGRAPHS, 337 STUDENT AID, 338 MORE ABOUT THE JOHN BROWN SONG, 339 MISSISSIPPI CONVICT SYSTEM, 341

ANNUAL MEETING.

PROCEEDINGS OF ANNUAL MEETING, 343 SUMMARY OF TREASURER’S REPORT, 352 REPORTS OF COMMITTEES, 354 DR. BUCKINGHAM’S MEMORIAL ADDRESS, 361 THE MISSIONARY INFLUENCE OF A LIFE, AND THE LIFE OF A MISSIONARY INFLUENCE. By Secretary Beard, 365

THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. By Secretary Strieby, 372

NEED OF INTELLIGENCE IN BENEVOLENCE. By Secretary Powell, 379

BUREAU OF WOMAN’S WORK.

REPORT OF SECRETARY, 387

RECEIPTS, 390

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NEW YORK:

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.

Rooms, 56 Reade Street.

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Price, 50 Cents a Year, in Advance.

Entered at the Post-Office at New York, N.Y., as second-class matter.

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American Missionary Association.

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PRESIDENT, —— ——

_Vice-Presidents._

Rev. A. J. F. BEHRENDS, D.D., N.Y. Rev. ALEX. MCKENZIE, D.D., Mass. Rev. F. A. NOBLE, D.D., Ill. Rev. D. O. MEARS, D.D., MASS. Rev. HENRY HOPKINS, D.D., Mo.

_Corresponding Secretaries._

Rev. M. E. STRIEBY, D.D., _56 Reade Street, N.Y._ Rev. JAMES POWELL, D.D., 56 _Reade Street, N.Y._ Rev. A. F. BEARD, D.D., 56 _Reade Street, N.Y._

_Treasurer._

H. W. HUBBARD, Esq., 56 _Reade Street, N.Y._

_Auditors._

PETER MCCARTEE. CHAS. P. PEIRCE.

_Executive Committee._

JOHN H. WASHBURN, Chairman. A. P. FOSTER, Secretary.

_For Three Years._

LYMAN ABBOTT, A. S. BARNES, J. R. DANFORTH, CLINTON B. FISK, A. P. FOSTER,

_For Two Years._

S. B. HALLIDAY, SAMUEL HOLMES, SAMUEL S. MARPLES, CHARLES L. MEAD, ELBERT B. MONROE,

_For One Year._ J. E. RANKIN, WM. H. WARD, J. W. COOPER, JOHN H. WASHBURN, EDMUND L. CHAMPLIN.

_District Secretaries._

Rev. C. L. WOODWORTH, D.D., 21 _Cong’l House, Boston_. Rev. J. E. ROY, D.D., 151 _Washington Street, Chicago_.

_Financial Secretary for Indian Missions._

Rev. CHAS. W. SHELTON.

_Field Superintendent._

Rev. C. J. RYDER.

_Bureau of Woman’s Work._

_Secretary_, Miss D. E. EMERSON, 56 _Reade Street, N.Y._

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COMMUNICATIONS

Relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretaries; those relating to the collecting fields, to Rev. James Powell, D.D., or to the District Secretaries; letters for “THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY,” to the Editor, at the New York Office.

DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS

In drafts, checks, registered letters or post-office orders, may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or, when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., or 151 Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.

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.

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THE

AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

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VOL. XLI. DECEMBER, 1887. No. 12.

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American Missionary Association.

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This is the Annual Meeting number of THE MISSIONARY. It is twice the usual size, and more than twice the usual value. Addresses omitted for lack of space will appear in subsequent numbers. Dr. Behrends’s sermon will be printed in the Annual Report.

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THE PORTLAND MEETING was one of the best in the history of the Association. The intellectual and spiritual power of all the sessions was marked and sustained throughout. The attendance was large. The churches provided right royally for those who attended. The ministers and those associated with them worked night and day. They anticipated every want. They made themselves the servants of all. We cannot thank them as we ought. We cannot reward them as they deserve. They have done the cause a noble service.

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An enthusiastic, profitable, inspiring meeting was anticipated, and that expectation was more than fulfilled. There was no debt to mourn over, and no question of administration to dispute about. The one object in coming together was to get a bird’s-eye view of the field, and to crystalize the aroused enthusiasm in the form of increased contributions, exertions and prayers for the society’s work.

Never did the magnitude of its field and the complex character of its labors appear in such startling lines. Either one of the four principal departments of labor demands the money and the force which is distributed among all. But, in the providence of God, this society is called upon to prosecute this fourfold work. It cannot abandon a single field, and it must not be asked to. It can do in the next five years a work for Christianity and for Congregationalism in the South and West which will tell on the coming century. As Christians, and as Congregational Christians, we must see that it be not obliged to pinch its workers, and to turn away from promising openings in order to keep free from debt the coming year.

In two respects the deliberations are likely to issue in action which will affect the other societies as well. The strong sentiment in favor of a consolidation of the missionary publications will probably take form in some definite action ere long, and the frequent and prolonged laments over the scanty gifts of Christians for missionary operations indicate a determined effort on the part of pastors and leaders to induce a revival of giving.

The American Missionary Association has a united constituency at its back, and a boundless field before its face. In the solving of the problems which confront American Christianity, it is to have a glorious share.

_The Congregationalist._

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REV. DR. ROY, our Western District Secretary, has secured a number of stereopticon-views illustrative of our work in all its departments. By aid of the stereopticon he tells his story in a way that keeps both eyes and ears of his audience engaged. The venture is highly praised. The overflow meeting, Wednesday evening, in Portland, were treated to a part of the lecture and exhibition. People who say missionary meetings are dull, make themselves conspicuously scarce when Dr. Roy comes round.

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Now is a good time to induce our friends, not subscribers, to subscribe for THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY. With January a new volume of the magazine begins. The price is only 50 cents. The reading matter will be found interesting and profitable. There is a prejudice against missionary literature. It is unjust. Will our friends aid us by trying to destroy that prejudice? We cannot offer premiums to induce formation of clubs. It is a _missionary_ magazine that we publish. We invite _missionary_ effort to enlarge its paying circulation.

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That word paying makes us think. We have a large number of life members, to all of whom we send THE MISSIONARY free. We also send it to pastors and Sunday-school superintendents of contributing churches free. By so doing we do not mean to debar them from the privilege of paying. Many of these, knowing that they will receive the magazine anyway, put their subscription into their annual donations. Better send the subscriptions separately. It would enable us, by entering the subscriptions upon our books where they belong, to lower the expense of publication. Of course, in the result it is as broad as it is long. We have so much receipts and so much expenses, but it is well to give credit where credit is due, and our magazine should have its credits acknowledged. Where subscriptions are put in with the general contribution, they go into the general treasury. They do not appear in the specific magazine account, and we have no means of knowing exactly what the magazine costs the general treasury. It is very certain it costs _no where near_ what we are obliged to report. We respectfully ask the attention of our friends to this point.

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A PASTOR writes us: “If pastors would take a little pains to have THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY sent to carefully selected persons in their communities, it would bring large returns, I am sure.” This is a very important statement, if true. We believe it is true. What have pastors to say about it? They are most earnestly requested to express their opinions. The question is open.

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This is the way the editor of a colored religious paper in the South puts it to the ministers:

“If the Lord called you to preach, he also calls you to subscribe for our paper, so that you may be cut and qualified to preach. It is just so, and you had better believe it. Send in your money.”

And then he goes for delinquents after this fashion:

“How can you call yourself honest while you are indebted for your paper? The Lord will not hold you guiltless unless you pay what you owe. Pay up! Pay up!! Pay up!!!”

We hasten to add, we were not thinking of subscriptions for THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY when we made the above clippings.

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The special attention of pastors is called to the resolution presented by the Committee on Secretary Powell’s paper and adopted by the Annual Meeting. Will they please see to it that this resolution is brought to the notice of the local conferences with which they are connected. Nothing goes in this world unless there are earnest souls behind it pushing. If that resolution is translated into action by all the local conferences, it will bring thousands of dollars into our treasury.

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The Georgia Legislature has adjourned and gone home. The Chain-Gang Bill of the House was too barbarous for the Senate to follow. The more refined, though not less cruel Bill of the Senate, the House would not accept. A Committee of Conference failed to find ground for common standing. Thus it was at the time of adjournment. Pending, however, these considerations, another Bill was passed which has taken from Atlanta University the State appropriation of $8,000, and this is all the legislation enacted on the subject.

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GOVERNOR GORDON, of Georgia, has been making political speeches in Ohio. Of course he had a good deal to say about the colored people, and as might be expected he told his Northern audiences that the charges about their being oppressed at the South were all false. In this opinion the colored people do not agree with the Governor. They assert the opposite with vehemence and persistence. The man who lays on the lash affirms that the strokes do not hurt. The poor victim cries out in pain; but we must not believe the victim. Oh, no! He is merely crying for political effect. Indeed, he is not being whipped at all. He only imagines it, or he has been worked up by Northern emissaries to make all this outcry about nothing! The testimony of the colored people is against the Governor. The Legislation of his own State, with its story of colored code laws, political disability laws, and Glenn Bills, is against him. The inexpressibly infamous Penitentiary system of his State, which, if the victims of its inhuman cruelties were white as they are colored people, would not be tolerated for a moment, is against him. Northern people read and think. Up this way, assertions do not stand against facts.

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STUDENT AID.

To help a needy and worthy student is a delightful way of doing good. Men eminent for usefulness in all parts of the land acknowledge their indebtedness to aid given them when in want and discouraged. Without such aid they never would have gained the training which now is bearing blessed and abundant fruit. The experiences of the past are repeated in the South, and promising youths, weighted by the entailments of slavery, must have help or they will never reach their greatest possibilities and largest usefulness.

In this beneficence, however, there is need of abundant wisdom; for there is a risk, lest in helping, self-help may be repressed and thus harm be done rather than good. It is one thing to carry a child till he is grown and then lay down at the highway of life one large enough and old enough to be a man, but still a baby; and another, to so hold the hand in difficult places as to develop the ankle bones and finally send into the world a man who can not only stand alone, but also help others. The wolf’s milk seems still necessary to make a Roman, but the modern Romulus does not cry for it. Indeed, he often cries when it is given him. There are risks in helping, just as surely as it is wrong not to help at all. Tramps are numerous where warm breakfasts are given to any who come to the door; and aid too easily or too abundantly obtained lessens self-reliance, makes muscle flabby, bone cartilage, and heart pusillanimous. Where, however, aid received is earned by work, when it is given so sparingly as to allow no surplus for jewelry, or for clothing other than the plainest, the results of its bestowal are good, and only good. Such giving is always to be encouraged.

But it should be remembered that a semi-tropical climate has its liabilities, and that where the north wind seldom cuts, men dread the storm and love to be coddled. “Excelsior” is oftenest found on banners planted amid snow and ice. Besides, slavery pricked the ham-strings of endeavor, and naturally the young among the freed people are not inclined to say, “I will either find a way or make one.” Hence the need of tonics, and tonics are proverbially bitter. In general, it is better to give plain cloth to a girl and teach her to make her clothing, than to send her stitched and embroidered apparel; better to equip a workshop than to pay a student’s board bill; better, for instance, to give a plough to our Talladega farm and put a boy at the handle, than to set before him cooked rations. It is a wiser benevolence to furnish industrial appliances, or to support a self-denying teacher, hardened in adversity and skilled to harden others, than to profusely aid the student whom only work and self-denial can make heroic. The petted are apt to be spoiled, and those helped the most are usually foremost in fault-finding.

H. S. DE FOREST.

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MORE ABOUT THE JOHN BROWN SONG.

When at my house, and talking over Mr. Jerome’s account of the origin of the John Brown song (printed since in your July number of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY), you intimated that it might be of interest to your readers to know of my own relation to it. Since that conversation I have received letters on the same subject, and have had an interview with a reporter for the Chicago _Tribune_, who called to make inquiries. After the latter had left, I instituted a search among my papers, and found some additional memoranda on the matter, made at the time, which enables me to give the account a little more minutely and with a slight correction on one point.

On the 23d of October, 1861, I started on a visit to our army, in behalf of the Chicago Sanitary Commission, of which I was a member. Taking the train at Chicago for Cairo, Ill., I meditated, during the long hours, on the bearing of the war upon the emancipation of the slaves, and was saddened by the indisposition of the Government, the army, and the leading politicians to connect that object with the preservation of the Federal Union. I had been preaching and writing on that point with great earnestness, and was inwardly inquiring what else I could do in behalf of the slave. Just then the John Brown song, which had recently become somewhat popular, and the tune of which—apparently taken from the revival melody, “Say, brothers, will you meet us?”—pleased me much as admirably effective for use among the people, occurred to my mind. It was sung to a ridiculous string of words about “We’ll hang Jeff Davis on a sour apple tree,” etc., but had a good chorus: “Glory, hallelujah! His soul is marching on.” Why not have some better stanzas, with a proper rhythmical swing and a good anti-slavery moral, yet based on John Brown’s history? The more I meditated on it, the stronger grew the impulse to do something of the kind, till, to while away the tedium of the journey, I pulled out the back of a letter or something similar, and wrote a set of rhymes. When I saw the Chicago _Tribune_ reporter, I thought that this occurred on my return journey, and so stated to him. But my original memorandum showed that it was on the day of starting, as given above. I went to Paducah, Ky., to inspect certain camps, and found there an Illinois regiment, under command of Col. McArthur. The chaplain was my old friend, Rev. Joel Grant, to whom I read my rhymes. He was so struck with their adaptedness to convey anti-slavery sentiment, that he insisted on my giving him a copy, that he might set the soldiers to singing them, which I did. On my return home to Chicago, I concluded to insert them in the Chicago _Tribune_, as Mr. Medill’s family attended my church, and I knew his sympathy with the anti-slavery cause. But as I did not claim to be a poet, and felt shy of seeming to appear as one, I used the signature of “Plebs” for that and for two other pieces of rhyme, called “The Old Fogy’s Lament,” and “The Warning,” both also on the slavery question. I gave the title as “The New John Brown Song,” retaining the first line and the chorus of the early version. There were six stanzas, which were as follows, adding a single omitted word:

I.

Old John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, While weep the sons of bondage, whom he ventured all to save; But though he lost his life in struggling for the slave, His soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!

II.

John Brown he was a hero, undaunted, true and brave, And Kansas knew his valor, where he fought, her rights to save, And now, though the grass grows green above his grave, His soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!

III.

He captured Harper’s Ferry with his nineteen men, so few, And he frightened “Old Virginny,” till she trembled through and through; They hung him for a traitor, themselves a traitor crew, But his soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!

IV.

John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see— Christ who of the bondman shall the Liberator be; And soon throughout the sunny South the slaves shall all be free, For his soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!

V.

The conflict that he heralded, he looks from heaven to view— On the army of the Union, with its flag, red, white and blue; And Heaven shall ring with anthems o’er the deed they mean to do, For his soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!

VI.

Ye soldiers brave of freedom, then strike, while strike ye may, The death-blow of oppression, in a better time and way, For the dawn of Old John Brown has brightened into day, And his soul is marching on! O Glory! Hallelujah!

These stanzas were published in the Chicago _Tribune_ of Nov. 16th, 1861, and were at once issued also in sheet music by Root & Cady, the principal music firm of the West at that time. It thus went all over the West and into the army at the South. When the “Jubilee Singers” prepared a version of “John Brown” to sing, they adopted the second and third stanzas of my song, and perhaps others, and carried them still more widely. Wendell Phillips used to quote the third stanza with great effect at times.

WM. W. PATTON.

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MISSISSIPPI CONVICT SYSTEM.

The horrid barbarity of the State convict-system in Georgia is paralleled by Mississippi. The moral sense of the people in these States is waking up and public attention is being called to the cruelty and inhumanity on the part of those who have prisoners in charge. It seems incredible that such things can be so. What a disgrace to our country and our civilization! Here is a report recently made by the Grand Jury of Hinds County, Mississippi:

_To the Hon. T. J. Wharton, Judge_:

After a most arduous session of eleven days we, the Grand Jury of the First District of Hinds County for this the June term of the court, having completed our labors, beg to submit our final report. We have examined 220 witnesses and have found and returned into court thirty-eight true bills, of which six have been for murder, eight for grand larceny, and the remainder for minor offenses.

We find, with the exception of murder, there is very little crime in this district; but we are compelled to deplore the fact that homicide seems to be on the increase. We feel we have discharged our duty toward the suppression of this crime as best we were able, leaving the court to carry on the work.

We have examined the public officers’ accounts and settlements and find everything in good shape. We have examined the jail, and find the roof and floors in bad condition and the bedding and covering of the prisoners insufficient and in a bad condition. We recommend that proper and clean bedding be furnished the prisoners and that the roof be repaired or replaced by a new one.

We felt it our duty to inspect the penitentiary, and we report the result of our inspection as follows: We find comparatively few prisoners in the walls of the penitentiary, most of them being out on the Gulf and Ship Island Railroad and elsewhere. We found nothing to complain of in the walls. The yard seemed to be clean, and the building, so far as we could judge, in a safe and cleanly condition, and those immediately in charge polite and accommodating in showing us around. But we feel constrained by a sense of public duty to call attention to the hospital there, the manner in which it is kept and the condition of its occupants. _We found twenty-six inmates, all of whom have been lately brought there off_ the farms and railroads, many of them with _consumption and other incurable diseases_, and _all bearing on their persons marks of the most inhuman and brutal treatment_; most of them have their backs _cut in great wales, scars and blisters_, some _with the skin peeling off in pieces as the result of severe beatings_.