THE word “negro” is of Latin origin, derived from niger, which means black. It is applied to the races of the African continent, and to their descendants in the Old and New world.

The Egyptians, Berbers, Abyssinians, and Nubians of Northern Africa are not classed as the negro, though there is a strong admixture of negro blood in most of these. The term negro is not a national appellation, but is applied generally to about one-half of the population of Africa, including the most fertile portion of that continent.

Prof. Willis Boughton, of the Ohio University, in an ably written article, which appeared in the Arena of September, 1896, says:

“The black race has a history. In fact, all history is full of traces of the black element. It is now usually recognized as the oldest race of which we have any knowledge. The wanderings of these people, since prehistoric history began, have not been confined to the African continent. In Paleolithic times the black man roamed at will over all the fairest portions of the Old World. Europe, as well as Asia and Africa, acknowledges his sway. No white man had as yet appeared to dispute his authority in the vine-clad valleys of France or Germany, or upon the classic hills of Greece or Rome. The black man preceded all others, and carried Paleolithic culture to its very height. But the history of all lands has been only a record of succeeding races. Old races have often been supplanted by those of inferior culture, but of superior energy. More often, however, by fusion of different racial types, and by the mingling of various tribes and peoples, have been evolved new races, superior to any of the original types.

“The blacks were a fundamental element in the origin, not only of the primitive races of Southern Europe, but of the civilized races of antiquity as well. History may be said to begin in ancient Egypt, and recede into the dim past, just as far as records and inscriptions lend us light. Still in the Nile valley we find a civilization that has drawn from all succeeding ages expressions of wonder and admiration. Surely these ancient Egyptians were a remarkable people; but who were they? The ruling tribes are called Hamites—the sunburnt family, according to Dr. Winchell; of Nigritic origin, says Canon Rawlinson. But back of these ruling Hamites were a light-headed people— gay, good-natured, pleasant, sportive, witty, droll, amorous—such are the descriptive terms used in telling the story of these primitive tribes, who, Dr. Taylor says, lived peaceably in those regions for two thousand years before the advent of the Asiatic invaders. Suggestive as they may seem, such terms are truly descriptive of the inhabitants whom we would expect to find in the Nile valley in ancient times. They were probably as purely Nigritic as are the great mass of our own Africo-Americans.

“When the Hamites and their children were at the height of their power, their influence extended to far greater limits than is ordinarily supposed. They pressed toward the confines of Europe, they entered and took possession of the land. ‘The Iberians,’ says Dr. Winchell (North American Review), ‘entered by the pillars of Hercules. They came from Northern Africa, at a time when the Hamitic Berbers were gaining possession. They overran the Spanish peninsula, founded cities, built a navy, carried on commerce, extended their empire over Italy, as Sicanes, when Rome was founded, long before the sack of Troy, and from Italy passed into Sicily.’ The Pelasgic empire was at its meridian as early as 2500 B.C. This people came from the islands of the Ægian, and more remotely from Asia Minor. They were originally a branch of the sun-burnt Hamitic stock, that laid the basis of civilization in Canaan and Mesopotamia, destined later to be Semitized. Rome itself was Pelasgian to 428 B.C. But in Greece and Italy the Hamitic stock was displaced by Aryan, as in Asia it had been by Semitic.

“The Hellenes were the Aryans first to be brought into contact with these sun-burnt Hamites, who, let it be remembered, though classed as whites, were probably as strongly Negritic as are the Afro-Americans. These Hellenes were savages or barbarians. But Aryan strength and energy were thus brought into contact with Hamitic culture. Then occurred that great struggle of centuries for social equality between the blond Aryan and the Pelasgian, the dark child of the soil. Had it not been for that mixture of dark blood in the Greek composition, that race of poets, artists, and philosophers would never have existed.”

Thus it is shown that the negro has figured conspicuously in the earlier history of the world, that his blood entered strongly into that of the conquering Roman and the cultured Greek; that even long before Rome was built or Greece flourished, the descendants of Ham in Egypt had given to the world the highest form of civilization it had then known.

How incredible then is it there should be found any who deny to the negro the possibility of high development. For two thousand years, under the repressive conditions of savage life in dark Africa, it is true that he has made but little progress, but this does not show the want of racial capacity for evolution. Who could have foreseen the virile power and strength of the Aryan race? For thousands of years that race was as ignorant and barbarous as the African in the jungles of his native land, but when at length the proper conditions for its development were furnished by Providence, he sprang into splendid development and has since led his fellows in the race of progress and civilization.

When, in the order of God, the same favorable conditions and environments shall be supplied to the descendants of Ham, they too shall respond to the opportunities offered and develop into a gradually progressive race, worthy to stand shoulder to shoulder with their white brothers on any field of enterprise and achievement.

AFRICAN slavery was comparatively a modern institution. Slavery, in some form, has existed from the earliest times of which history gives any record. In the first ages of Greece, before Homer sang or Hesiod wrote, it was already fully established. All the Grecian communities were a slave-holding people. In Athens, Corinth and Sparta the slaves constituted a large portion of the population.

The slaves of that day, however, were not negroes, except as now and then a Nubian or an Ethiopian was captured and sold into slavery, but they were whites, chiefly Thracians, Asiatics and even native Greeks. The sources through which the supply was furnished, were captures in wars, piracy, kidnapping and commerce through a systematic slave trade.

The Romans, according to Blair, were the leaders among the ancient peoples in extending the operations and methodizing the details of slavery. The patricians, who were the wealthy and ruling classes, owned thousands of slaves, whom they reduced to absolute serfdom. They were brought mainly from Spain and Gaul and Asiatic countries. So numerous did they become in Italy that the proportion of slaves to freemen was as three to one. “The entire number of slaves would thus have been in the reign of Claudius, 20,832,000; that of the free population being 6,944,000.”— Encyclopedia Britannica.

No single force, perhaps, contributed more to the final fall and dismemberment of the Roman Empire than slavery. To this evil may be ascribed the degeneracy of the ruling classes who, through the luxury and idleness begotten of it, became sensual and innate, and lost that aggressive and warlike spirit which made Rome the mistress of the world.

With the rise of Christianity to controlling influence in the Roman commonwealth the institution began to wane. The Church protested against the multiplication of slaves and everywhere encouraged emancipation. The humanizing influences of religion were arrayed against the cruelty of man enslaving man, and the enlightened sentiment, wrought through a growing Christianity, worked its slow but final death. Theodosius and Justinian began the legislation which looked to the manumission of all slaves and incorporated laws into the Roman code which finally led to the overthrow of this great evil.

It is not the design of these pages to deal at length with the general history of slavery. It will be enough to say in this connection, that the slaves of the ancient world and of medieval times were chiefly whites, the negro constituting but a small proportion of the immense multitudes who pined and perished amid the cruelties of enforced servitude.

It is with African slavery, perhaps the most gigantic scheme of traffic in human beings known to the annals of the race, that we are chiefly concerned— an institution that was inaugurated and fostered by the Christian nations of the modern world, and that perished at last through the force of a moral opposition to its continuance, which culminated in one of the most sanguinary conflicts of modern times.

African slavery in North America had its beginning in 1620, when a Dutch ship from the coast of Guinea visited Jamestown and sold a cargo of slaves to the planters of Virginia. From this small beginning commenced a traffic that brought untold wealth to the slave-dealers, and finally resulted in locating millions of the African race on American shores.

England must ever bear a large portion of the odium which mankind will ever attach to the wretched slave traffic, although it is but just to say that she was the first to lead in the fight for its abolition. For centuries, however, she kept this traffic alive by supplying the markets of her colonies and legalizing the traffic among her subjects. She chartered companies with exclusive rights to buy and sell slaves, and, in the reign of William and Mary, she no longer confined it to favored corporations, but authorized every subject of the crown likewise to engage in the inhuman business.

Bryan Edwards estimated that the total import of African slaves into all the British colonies of America and the West Indies between 1680 and 1786, to be 2,130,000, or an average of 20,095 per year for 106 years. It was not until the year 1833 that the English parliament, largely through the life-long efforts of William Wilberforce, passed what is known as the Emancipation bill, putting an end to slavery in the English domains. The bill abolishing the traffic in slaves was passed twenty-six years before, in 1807.

France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark and Holland must share with England the shame of the modern African slave-trade, and of fastening the institution of slavery upon America. In 1791 the number of European factories on the African coast for turning out slaves for the world was forty. Of these fourteen were English, three French, fifteen Dutch, four Portuguese and four Danish.

Thus it is seen that the hunting of human beings in Africa for the slave-markets of the world was legalized by the leading and most civilized nations of the globe less than one hundred years ago. All that power and wealth could do to bring the traffic into existence, and to continue it for over two hundred years, was done. The native African chiefs were bribed by foreign money, and thus induced to capture the wild savages of the forests, sometimes making levies upon their own immediate subjects to exchange them for commodities supplied by European slave trafficers stationed along the coasts. We quote again from the “Britannica” these words: “They often set fire to a village by night and captured the inhabitants while trying to escape. Thus all that was shocking in the barbarism of Africa was multiplied and intensified by this foreign stimulation.”

“To the miseries thus produced, and to those suffered by the captives in their removal to the coast, were added the horrors of the middle passage. Exclusive of the slaves who died before they sailed from Africa, twelve and one-half per cent. were lost during their passage to the West Indies, four and one-half per cent. while in harbors or before their sale, and one-third more in the seasoning. Thus, of every lot of one hundred shipped from Africa, seventeen died in about nine weeks, and not more than fifty lived to be effective laborers in the islands. The circumstances of their subsequent life on the plantations were not favorable to the increase of their numbers. In Jamaica there were, in 1690, forty thousand African slaves. From that year until 1820 there were imported 800,000, yet at the latter date there were only 340,000.” The record does not show such great fatality with those cargoes shipped to what are now the United States, but it was a dark picture of suffering and cruelty.

I have thus briefly alluded to some general facts in the history of the introduction of African slavery into America, now happily abolished both as a traffic and an institution. It was born of the cupidity of mankind and kept alive for centuries for the ends of gain. That it was right, even those who once most heartily approved of and advocated it, would not now contend. It is, indeed, a painful page to look upon, and were it not, that through its dark lines we may now trace the mysterious guidings of Providence, it would be unrelieved by a single alleviating reflection.

The student of history, looking at it in the light of divine direction in the affairs of this world, may discover the purpose of God to accomplish his ends, overruling even the “wrath of man,” and making it contribute to the consummation of his will.

The bondage of the Israelites in Egypt seemed a dark and inexplicable fate for the chosen children of God, but the outcome of it was the founding, forming and cementing of the Jewish nation, which was to play such an important part in all the subsequent history of the human race.

Who can tell, and the dawning light of the Divine purpose begins even now to reveal itself; but that it was to be, through this means, that the Almighty intends to work out the final redemption of the African race in these lands, and the far-off dark continent, which is now offering such fertile and inviting fields for missionary and evangelical effort and enterprise?

The Jewish nation, since its disintegration and scattering abroad, has passed through scarcely a less fiery baptism of suffering and cruelty than has fallen to the lot of the slave exiles from African shores. They have been hunted in all lands, despised, cast out and killed by the Gentiles, with whom they have been forced to dwell. It may be, too, that through their pathetic wanderings the golden thread of Providence runs, and that, redeemed and Christianized, they will some day return to their native land, and build up again the broken foundations of their once splendid kingdom which, in grandeur and glory, shall far surpass the greatness of the old Hebrew monarchy in its palmiest days, when the wealth and power of Solomon excited the admiration and wonder of the queen of Sheba.

At least while we may not approve, but even condemn the cruelty and inhumanity which led to the introduction of African slavery upon this continent, and which marked and marred its continuance, we may yet believe that it was permitted by the Almighty for wise and glorious purposes, and will issue at length in the elevation of the negro race to a condition of enlightened, Christian civilization he could not otherwise have attained. How else can he interpret that Providence, which permitted the existence of slavery so long, and which, at length, as strangely and signally, put an end to its existence, not only in the United States, but in every country of the globe?

IN considering this evil we are not to suppose that the negro was the only sufferer from it. The slave-holder was the victim of the indirect consequences of the system which was fraught with injury to all who were connected with it.

In what I am about to say I am free to admit that there were many humane masters—masters who were kind to their slaves, who afforded them every advantage and consideration possible under the system. But to preserve and perpetuate the system, it was necessary to keep the slave in ignorance and to ever remind him of his menial position. Laws were enacted prohibiting his learning to read or write, and his owner was authorized to inflict the most severe corporal punishment short of death. He could even delegate this authority to an agent, who, having no pecuniary interest in the slave, was often unspeakably cruel in the severity with which he exercised his delegated authority.

Such a system, practically placing no restraint upon the power and rights of the master, could but be abused and to what extent only the secrets of the final day will reveal.

Before pointing out the evils of slavery as it affected the slave himself, let us mention briefly its indirect consequences to the slave-holders.

First, it developed a class of landed gentry in the South, who, while they were so titled, were more absolutely lords than the dukes and earls and barons of England. The immense wealth, wrought for them by slave labor, exempted them from the necessity of toil, and removed all incentives to enter upon those bold enterprises requiring individual effort and push, which have given such distinctive strength and success to the citizenship of the North and West. For them, it was a day of luxurious ease, whiled away in amusement and pleasure, an era of idleness and sensuality, second only to that which marked the Augustan age of Rome when that empire reached the zenith of its wealth and glory, and which was the beginning and the cause of the final downfall of that colossal power. The splendid mansions of the Southern gentry, adorned with Doric columns, majestic and imposing, their rich and fertile fields stretching away in the distance white with the fleecy staple, their hundreds of slaves felling the forests and toiling on the old plantations, present a picture of lordly wealth and splendid ease, without a parallel in the history of the world. The Roman patrician and the English lord were paupers beside this landed aristocracy of the South.

The consequence to these wealthy slave-holders was the dwarfing of the spirit of enterprise and genuine, robust manhood, of that strong self-assertive individuality which is the first requisite of a freeman. The Southern planter grew to be a pleasure lover, a dreamy epicurean, a worshipper at the shrine of ease and sensuality. His children grew up in the same atmosphere—strangers to toil and self-reliance. In tranquil languor they passed their lives, never having to strike one blow in the struggle for existence. For this condition slavery was responsible, and they reaped from it the harvest of a dwarfed physical development, and of a deadening industrial paralysis from which their descendants have not recovered to this day.

Even the poor whites, who owned no slaves, had to pay the penalty of their proximity to slavery. The slave-holder bought up as rapidly as he could the lands of the South, and the landless white denizen was elbowed off to the barren sections, or else forced to remain where the competition with slave labor was so sharp that he could scarcely find employment, or if he did, the wages he received were so scanty that he could barely subsist. In the race of life he had the smallest chance of success, and was doomed to live and die where the conditions of his environment were well-nigh fatal to his betterment.

Under the institution of slavery, the South was limited in her industrial development to the single line of agriculture. Slave labor was most profitable in the cotton fields and on the sugar plantations. Here no skilled artisans, no trained mechanics were needed; only muscle and brawn were required to till the soil, and gather its products. As fast as wealth grew it was converted into more slaves, and thus the industry and capital of the South were confined to agriculture. But few factories were built. Manufacturing was at a discount. No great cities were founded and populated. Commerce was neglected, shops, furnaces, mills, and, indeed, every branch of industrial enterprise was largely, if not wholly, neglected. These establishments were left to Northern money and Northern enterprise. And, as history has not furnished a single instance of a people, devoted solely to agricultural pursuits, rising to commanding and permanent place and power, the logical inference is that, under slavery, the South would have been eventually the least prosperous section of the Union, if the abolition of slavery had never been effected. This fact made the South almost helpless at the close of the war between the States. She will rise to industrial prosperity, now, only as she diversifies her enterprises. This she is doing rapidly, and this is one of the good results flowing from the abolition of slavery.

Time would fail us to enumerate the evils resulting to the moral character and social well-being of the Southern people from the presence of African slavery in their midst. The influence of this institution, in every moral view of it, was bad, and only bad. It developed a race of masters—a relation out of place in a world the Almighty intended to be free. Ownership in flesh and blood was never a right designed by God to be conferred on any man. It is fatal to him who exercises it, as well as to him upon whom it is exercised It creates a spirit of authority and of imperious haughtiness that destroys that brotherhood of men, which the Almighty made to be the relation of men.

The violence done to himself by the ownership of his human brother was one of the greatest evils the Southern slave-holders reaped from slavery. The involuntary servitude of the man whom God made as free himself, the groans and cries of human beings evoked by the lash in hands that wielded it only by the right of power, the appropriation of the products of toil not his own, the abasement and degradation of human souls for selfish aggrandizement—this was the spectacle the Southern slave-holder had daily to behold, and it was enough to blight his sense of moral responsibility, and destroy the God-given instinct of right as between man and man.

We might allude to the evil of miscegenation, an evil which began in slavery, and which is still going on with shameful flagrancy. It is not a matter of conjecture or supposition, but of history and fact, that the fairest and most comely negro girls were appropriated by the young white men of the South, and devoted to the ends of unholy lust; and to the family domestics thousands of mulatto children were born. This was bad enough, but, when to this was added the fact that these children were born slaves, and herded with slaves, and that these white fathers had to witness their own offspring growing up to lives of bondage, and subject to the whip of the overseer, it was enough to harden and blunt the sensibilities of their souls.

But why multiply arguments to show the evils of slavery upon the slave-holders themselves, when the white people of the South have long since seen and admitted them. Slavery, in its effects upon the white man, was scarcely less injurious than it was upon the slave himself.

The direct consequences of slavery upon the negro (none but God can estimate the ultimate outgrowth of it) were evil, and only evil.

First, in his case, as in the case of all slaves, it repressed all real manhood, and destroyed that individuality and aspiration of spirit, which are the first conditions of self-respecting character, either in an individual or in a race. Taught and compelled to obey, he could but walk in the marked-out path of another's will, and, hence, all independence and self-active power were denied him. He was simply a machine, a mere automaton, a tethered ox in a tread-mill, going the weary rounds of an appointed path, which he could not leave or change.

The thought of a life in which volition played a part was foreign to him, chained as he was to the will of a master. History furnishes no instance of individual or race elevation without the boon of personal liberty. Moral and intellectual advancement is as impossible to the slave as the sight of the sun is to the man without eyes. This was one of the most potent, as well as one of the most pathetic, evils incident to slavery, and the memory of it still brings tears to the eyes of those to whom the benighting influences of the system left sensibility sufficient to estimate the force of such deprivation.

The evils of slavery were augmented further by the ignorance it entailed. Enlightenment of the slave meant menace to the institution, and the Southern slaveholder was consistent when he enacted legislation forbidding the instruction of his slaves in the rudimentary branches of education. And so his lot was not only that of absolute servitude but also of absolute ignorance. What argument could be made for an institution, the strongest pillar of which was ignorance? Is it possible that the Divine Being ever intended any of his creatures to live under conditions, the preservation of which demands the total and continual benightment of their minds and souls? The great mass of the negroes of the South grew up in dense ignorance, and the race to-day, though struggling up to some degree of knowledge, is suffering from the effects of that enforced ignorance.

It would be a work of unnecessary expense both of time and material, to enlarge upon the moral and religious injury the system of slavery inflicted upon the negro. In many instances, and we record it gratefully, religious instruction was afforded to the slave. Such men as Bishop Capers and Rev. William J. Sasnett, D.D., of the Southern Methodist Church, and Jesse Murcer and Dr. Mallory, of the Baptist Church, gave of their strength and money to preach and send the gospel to the benighted slaves of the South. But taking into the account all that was done by the pious ministers and laymen among the whites, the fact still remains that the multitudes of Southern negroes grew up, lived and died without adequate religious or moral instruction.

As a consequence, those moral principles and qualities which are the requisites of virtuous life, were dwarfed or wholly eradicated for the time. Many have harshly judged the colored race for the want of moral purity. They do not take into consideration their condition and environment for more than two hundred years. I believe it to be a fact, that no race, similarly situated, can show any better moral record than my own.

How could there be a moral atmosphere amidst the miasmatic surroundings of slavery? There could be no home in the true sense of that word, and hence no home instruction. There was no lawful wedlock. Husband and wife they were only in name, and these were separated at the caprice, cupidity or misfortune of their owner. Virtue was an impossibility when maternity in or out of wedlock was encouraged by the master and a premium put thereupon. The wonder is, that under such a system there could be found a single instance of moral purity among the whole race.

The physical evils of slavery were great. Punishment was meted out by the law of will, and stripes were the daily portion of the negro. No good can be accomplished by recalling the sufferings of that bondage time. Rather would we draw the veil of oblivion over it and forget it as we march on to the destiny of an enlightened, educated and useful citizenship.

I believe there are but a few among the whites of the South who would claim now that slavery was a blessing to either race. On the other hand the great masses of the Southern whites recognize what a tremendous injury it was to them as well as the slaves, and would not re-enact it if they could.

The time for its extinction had come in the order and by the will of Providence. That God will ultimately bring good out of this mighty evil, which pressed so long upon the South like a terrible incubus, I can but believe. When we as a race can stand upon the green fields of our appointed Caanan, emancipated not only from political bondage, but free from the shackles of vice and ignorance, we may be permitted to see that through all the dark way we came God was leading to final happiness and real freedom.

WILLIAM WILBERFORCE, statesman, philanthropist and orator, is entitled to the first place among the great English leaders in the struggle for emancipation. In every place and on every occasion his eloquent voice was lifted against slavery. In parliament, on the hustings, on the rostrum he plead for the freedom of the negro. His pen, too, was enlisted in the cause he so much loved, until at length he literally created a moral sentiment in England which was resistless in its sweep and which ultimated at last in the complete triumph of abolition. Through his efforts, backed by many noble spirits, the Emancipation Bill, as has been already stated, was passed in August, 1833, one month after his death. He had given a lifetime to the work of lifting from his country the stigma of slavery, and died just as the accomplishment of his mission was in sight. Like Lincoln and John Brown, he was permitted to catch a view of the promised land, to the borders of which they had led the oppressed and down-trodden sons of Ham, but was not permitted to enter with them and behold their joy as they rested in the fertile fields and vine-clad hills of freedom. The name of William Wilberforce will live as long as liberty is prized and philanthropy is honored.

In America Wm. Lloyd Garrison stands at the head of the long list of agitators who finally triumphed against slavery. Many distinguished men, however, even before Garrison was born, are on record in American history as against the institution of slavery. George Washington was opposed to it, and in his last will inserted a clause providing for the manumission of his slaves. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, recognized its evils, and no abolitionist ever used stronger language in condemning it. In speaking of the slaves he used the expression “our brethren,” showing his recognition of the bond of a common humanity with the meanest slave that toiled in the tobacco fields of Virginia. But, notwithstanding the influence of these and other great names, slavery grew and spread in the South and Southwest, until at the beginning of the war between the states there were more than four millions of slaves in the United States.

To combat this growing evil Providence seemed to have raised up Wm. Lloyd Garrison, who was born at Newburyport, Mass., December 10th, 1805. His profound belief in his mission, his untiring devotion to it, his adaptation by nature for leadership in a great reform movement, his peculiar gifts as a writer, all conspired to make him an agitator and a leader of wonderful power.

It was in the Genius, a paper published in Baltimore, that he first began to espouse, publicly, the cause of immediate emancipation. His fiery denunciation of the system of slavery provoked at once the bitter resentment and opposition of the slaveholders of the South. A vessel, owned in Newburyport, transported a shipload of slaves from Baltimore to New Orleans. This procedure he characterized as an act of “domestic piracy,” and declared his design to “cover with infamy” the participants in this shameful affair. He was prosecuted by the owner of the vessel, convicted, fined fifty dollars and costs of trial, and in default of payment thereof, was committed to jail. His conviction and imprisonment produced great excitement at the time throughout the whole country. The poet, John G. Whittier, interceded with Henry Clay, then a pro-slavery advocate, to pay the fine and secure the release of Garrison, but before Mr. Clay had time to comply, as he had consented to do, Mr. Arthur Tappan, a merchant of New York, discharged the fine and the costs, and Mr. Garrison was liberated after seven weeks of imprisonment.

Seeing the difficulty in prosecuting his crusade in an atmosphere so hostile, he at once dissolved his connection with the Genius, and established in Boston a paper, which he named the Liberator.

THE day of deliverance was now approaching. The crisis in the irrepressible conflict was near at hand. The South would listen to no compromise, and the Abolition party at the North was equally determined. God has decreed that there is to be no “let up” in the conflict between right and wrong, no cessation of hostilities between truth and error, no armistice in the battle between liberty and oppression. The struggle is on to the finish, and he is no part of a prophet that does not see in right, truth, and liberty, the conquering forces. Events may delay, but cannot finally defeat the triumph of these principles, anchored, as they are, to the throne of God. In the language of the poet: Truth crushed to earth will rise again,The eternal years of God are hers,But error wounded writhes in pain,And dies amid her worshippers.

From the bleak hills of the North and from the wide, flower-crowned plains of the West the bugle notes of freedom were sounded. The champions of liberty lifted aloud their clarion voices from the forum, the hustings and in the Senate halls of the nation. “In thoughts that breathed and words that burned,” the giants of freedom's cause uttered their anathemas against a system which had long been a blot on American civilization and a reproach to the Christian world. In song and oratory the sufferings and pains and wrongs of slavery were trumpeted forth to the world, that men might read and hear the pitiful story of the slave, and, impelled by the power of human sympathy, rally to the deliverance of the oppressed and down-trodden millions of the Southern negroes.

The first guns that were sounded were heard on the soil of Kansas. John Brown, born in Connecticut May 9th, 1800, was the revolutionary spirit that led the van of armed resistance against the growing pro-slavery spirit.

His four sons, residents of Ohio, moved to Kansas in 1854. They settled near the Missouri border in Lykins county. Partaking strongly of the anti-slavery views of their father, they were insulted, threatened and plundered by lawless bands of pro-slavery men from Missouri, and, at length, they invited their father to come to their aid, and to bring supplies of guns and ammunition. He was glad to obey the summons. For more than fifteen years he had been actively planning to overthrow and destroy the slave power, and now he deemed the set time had come to begin his work, to strike the blow which would unify the North and lead to a concerted, armed resistance against the growing pro-slavery power.

Tough in sinew, athletic in build, of stern Puritan ancestry, deeply religious in spirit, he was singularly adapted to become a leader and a martyr in the holy cause. In 1855, leaving his family behind, he went to join his sons in Kansas, prepared to join battle with the pro-slavery forces, and if it were God's will, to perish in the struggle. In November of the same year the citizens of Lawrence, the rallying point of the free-state men, armed themselves to repel the attack of a large body of Missourians, who, organized as Kansas militia, had laid siege to the town. John Brown received a command, took charge of his men and counselled an immediate movement upon the Missourians. The leaders of the free-state men, unwilling to bring on a collision, endeavored to adjust matters by negotiation. This disgusted Brown, who, in reply to an invitation from Gen. J. H. Lane to attend a council of war, said: “Tell the General when he wants me to fight to say so, but that is the only order I will ever obey.” Thenceforth his operations were of an irregular character and were conducted exclusively by himself. In May, 1856, at the head of a small body of determined men, he went into camp on the Pottawatomie, near the residence of his sons. A few days later he was engaged in what was known as the Black Jack fight, which resulted in the capture of a superior force of Missourians, with a considerable amount of goods which had been plundered on their marauding expedition.

In the latter part of August a fresh force of Missourians poured into Kansas, numbering nearly two thousand men. A part of this force was driven back by General Lane, while another body of five hundred marched upon the town of Osawatomie, near which Brown was encamped with about thirty men. In this encounter one of Brown's sons was killed. Soon after this, Brown, seeing that he could do little more in the West at that time, left for the East.

In February, 1857, he addressed a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature, and in Boston and other cities he had frequent interviews with anti-slavery sympathizers. His mission proved to be an unsuccessful one, so far as securing substantial help. The North was not yet ripe for the commencement of the great conflict. Years of accumulating sentiment were yet necessary to precipitate the great national struggle, in which heroes like John Brown were to press on in the agitation, and die as martyrs to the cause.

With a small body of men John Brown repaired to Iowa, where he passed the winter of 1857-58 in practicing military exercises. He now commanded his followers to go with him to Virginia, instead of Kansas, where, as they had supposed, he intended to commence his military operations. Omitting intermediate events, we find him beginning the Harper's Ferry campaign, in June, 1859 The “American Encyclopedia” furnishes the following account of that memorable historic chapter in the anti-slavery movement:

“In the latter part of June, 1859, John Brown appeared at Hagerstown, Md., where he represented himself to be a farmer, named Smith, from Western New York, in search of a cheap farm adapted to wool growing. He finally rented for a few months a farm in Virginia, about six miles from Harper's Ferry, which he occupied with several of his party early in July. Others joined him from time to time, including his three sons, until the force numbered twenty-two persons, of whom seventeen were white, and the remainder negroes. Boxes of guns, ammunition, and other supplies, which had been shipped to Chambersburg, Pa., were gradually removed to the farm in Virginia, without exciting the suspicion of the neighbors. In selecting this place for the first attack, he had for his purpose the capture of the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, where were usually stored from one to two hundred thousand stands of arms. This building, with its contents, once in his possession, he expected to rally to his support the slave population of the neighborhood. When his forces were sufficiently recruited and equipped, he proposed to convey them into the free States, or if that should prove impossible, to retire to the mountains, and inaugurate a general civil war.

“The night of October 24, 1859, was originally fixed for the attack upon the arsenal, but at a council called by Brown on Sunday, the 16th, it was determined to begin their operations that very evening. The presence of so large a body in the neighborhood, with no ostensible object, had begun to arouse the suspicions of the Virginians, and further delay was considered dangerous. About 10 o'clock on Sunday night, Brown and his men entered the village of Harper's Ferry, and, having extinguished the lights on the streets, took possession of the arsenal, overpowering and making prisoners of the watchmen, who formed the sole guard of the building. The watchman at the bridge across the Potomac was next captured, and the railroad train from the West, which arrived there shortly after 1 A.M., on the 17th, was stopped. During the night the houses of Colonel Washington and other citizens in the neighborhood were visited, and stripped of whatever arms they contained. The owners were imprisoned in the arsenal, and their slaves were freed. At daylight, on the 17th, the train was allowed to proceed toward Baltimore, Brown freely informing every one who questioned him that his object in seizing the arsenal was to free the slaves, and that he acted by the authority of God Almighty. As the morning advanced, he gathered in prisoners, principally from the male citizens, who appeared upon the streets, and the workmen, as they approached the arsenal to assume their daily avocations. By 8 o'clock the number exceeded sixty. Heywood, a negro porter at the railroad depot, was ordered by Brown's followers to join them. He refused, and, attempting to escape, was shot dead.

“The citizens by this time began to recover from the stupor into which the audacity of Brown's attack had plunged them. A desultory firing was opened upon the arsenal, and several persons were killed and wounded upon either side, including the mayor and one or two other prominent citizens and one of Brown's sons, but until noon Brown virtually held possession of the town. Up to that time his force had increased only by the accession of six or eight negroes, who were compelled by threats to join him.

“As the day advanced opposing forces gathered around him. The military from the neighborhood marched into the town, and the capturers of the arsenal soon found themselves closely besieged in the building. Of the two insurgents guarding the bridge, one was killed and the other was captured. Five men who occupied the rifle-works were driven out, and all were killed or captured. The arsenal was now surrounded on all sides by armed Virginians, who poured ceaseless volleys upon it, which were returned by Brown's men in the garrison. So greatly were the attacking forces incensed by the shooting of the mayor and other popular citizens, that when Aaron D. Stephens, one of Brown's most trusty followers, was sent out with a flag of truce, he was instantly shot down, receiving six balls in his body, and Thompson, the prisoner captured at the bridge, was put to death.

“By nightfall of the 17th the arsenal was completely invested by the military, and Brown retired with such of his prisoners as had not escaped to the engine-house, an attack upon which he repulsed with a loss of two killed and six wounded. Soon after this the firing ceased for the day. The situation was then desperate for Brown. His forces had dwindled down to three uninjured white men beside himself, and a few negroes from the neighborhood. The remainder were killed or mortally wounded with the exception of a half dozen who had been sent out in the morning to liberate slaves, and could not rejoin their chief. Brown nevertheless displayed, during the night, a coolness and self-control which extorted the admiration of his prisoners. “With one son dead by his side,” says Col. Washington, “and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand, held his rifle in the other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure, encouraging them to be firm, and to sell their lives as dearly as possible. He offered to release his prisoners provided his men were permitted to cross the bridge in safety.” This offer having been rejected by the besiegers, the last avenue of escape was closed to him. During the night Col. Robert E. Lee, afterwards General Lee, of Confederate fame, with a body of United States marines and two pieces of artillery, arrived and took post near the engine-house.

“At seven o'clock on the morning of the 18th these troops battered in the door of the building, and in an instant overpowered the small garrison. Brown, fighting desperately to the last, was struck down by a sabre stroke, and while prostrate on the ground was twice bayonetted. Although grievously wounded, he preserved his undaunted bearing. When questioned as to his object in seizing the arsenal and imprisoning citizens, he answered with perfect frankness, but refused to compromise persons still at liberty. Governor Wise and Senator Mason, of Virginia, and Hon. C. L. Vallandigham, of Ohio, cross-examined him closely, but failed to elicit any other than a simple statement of his motives and personal acts. He declined to answer no reasonable question, asserting that he had only done his duty in attempting to liberate the slaves of Virginia, and that he had nothing to regret save the failure of the enterprise. He, however, expressed great solicitude for his son Watson, who was captured in a dying condition, and who died on Wednesday, the 19th. On the same day Brown and his surviving comrades were conveyed to the jail in Charlestown, Va. They were indicted a few days later for conspiring with negroes to produce insurrection, for treason against the commonwealth of Virginia, and for murder.

“On October 27th Brown was brought to trial. His request for a brief delay on the ground that he was mentally and physically unable to proceed with his trial, and that he wished to confer with counsel of his own choice instead of them assigned to him by the court, was denied. He was laid upon a cot within the bar, being too feeble to stand or even to sit, and in the presence of a court, violently prejudiced against him, conducted himself with singular calmness. He repelled with indignation the plea of insanity attempted to be urged in his behalf, and even offered, in order to save time and trouble, to identify papers in his own handwriting, which afforded strong evidence against him. Counsel meanwhile arrived from the North, and the trial went on. On the 31st he was found guilty on all the counts in the indictments, and on the succeeding day he was sentenced to be hanged on December 2nd.

“In the speech which he addressed to the court on this occasion, he disavowed any intention of committing murder or treason or the willful destruction of property. His ‘prime object,’ he said, ‘was to liberate the slaves, not excite them to insurrection, and he therefore felt no consciousness of guilt.’ He laid considerable stress upon his kind treatment of his prisoners in the arsenal, and he also expressed himself satisfied with the treatment he had himself received on the trial. During his imprisonment he received visits from his wife and a number of his Northern friends, and held arguments on the slavery question with Southern clergymen who attempted to offer him the consolations of religion.

“On the day appointed for his execution he left the jail, an eye-witness said, with a radiant countenance and the step of a conqueror, pausing for a moment by the door to kiss a negro child, held up to him by its mother. On the scaffold he was calm, gentle and resigned, and warmly thanked all who had been kind to him during his imprisonment. Noticing that none but troops were present at the place of execution, he remarked that the citizens should not have been denied the privilege of coming to see him die. He met his death with perfect composure, and was apparently the least concerned of all present over the tragic events of the day.”

Such is the brief account of the tragic part which this patriot and hero performed in the drama which is now forever historic. He, perhaps, did more than any other one man to crystallize sentiment and precipitate the conflict which at length resulted in the freedom of the negro. Some have classed him with zealots and fanatics, the victim of a mad enthusiasm. If this be so, Providence has indicated in a thousand ways His need of men of such order of mind and temperament. With a love of liberty which was unquenchable, and a courage which prompted him to follow his conviction to martyrdom itself, he was the one man of America to light the first torch of freedom which was at length to blaze into the light of liberty, in the beauty and splendor of which the darkness of slavery was to vanish forever. With the prejudices of the past left behind them, men of all sections are beginning to attribute to this long-despised man the high qualities of the philanthropist, the hero and the martyr, and to give him the bright place in history his sublime devotion to the right, as God gave him to see it, entitles him to fill. The colored people of the South should revere his memory and wreathe it with the laurels of honor and fame.

During the bloody war which soon followed his death, millions marched to the music of his name, and wherever the legions of Grant, and Sherman, and Sheridan pressed on to victory might be heard the martial and inspiring strains of that now world-famed song, “John Brown's body lies mouldering in the ground,John Brown's body lies mouldering in the ground,As we go marching on.”

THE Abolition movement had many distinguished leaders. To Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fred. Douglas, and others must ever belong the honor of inaugurating it at a time when there were but few, even in the North, to favor it. At a later period in the agitation, however, many bold and powerful champions entered the lists, and did national and heroic service in the cause of freedom.

Among these, Abraham Lincoln was perhaps the most conspicuous. Not because he was the most ardent and enthusiastic, for there were thousands at the North who espoused the Abolition movement as heartily as did he, but because, by virtue of his official character and position, he was the representative leader in the struggle.

Lincoln was a Kentuckian by birth, but emigrated to Illinois in 1830, when he was twenty-one years of age. It was a strange, yet significant, circumstance that the great Moses of the new exodus should have been born and reared in a slave-holding State. It took a man strong enough to rise above the prejudice of birth and his earlier environments to head a movement which demanded, for its successful accomplishment, the sternest and most heroic qualities of soul.

His early advantages were meagre indeed, having never received but one year's schooling. Inured to a life of toil and poverty, he knew from actual experience the sufferings and trials of the poor. To this experience, perhaps more than to all else, may be attributed those warm and tender sympathies, which so marked and beautified his character, and made him the friend of the down-trodden and oppressed.

On a trip to New Orleans in a flat-boat in 1831, he saw for the first time slaves chained and scourged, and from that moment dates his life-long detestation of slavery. In 1837, when he was a member of the Legislature in Illinois, the Democratic majority passed some pro-slavery resolutions, against which he, and a member named Stone, entered a protest on the journal of the House. Thus, in the very outset of his political career, he recorded his opposition to slavery, and allied himself with the movement, of which, in subsequent years, he was to become the loved and immortal leader. Eleven years later, in 1848, while a member of the Lower House of Congress, he voted for the reception of anti-slavery petitions, inquiring into the constitutionality of slavery in the District of Columbia. On January 16, 1849, he introduced a bill abolishing slavery in the District, and compensating the slave-holders, provided the majority of the citizens should vote for it. In his speeches in the memorable contest with Stephen A. Douglas, his competitor for the United States Senate in 1858, he always stood for the prohibition of slavery in all the territories of the United States.

He was elected President of the United States in November, 1860, and on March 4, 1861, he entered upon the duties of that high and honorable position. It is due to the truth of history to say that Mr. Lincoln did not, in the outset of his official career as the great head and leader of the Republican party at the North, contemplate the unconditional emancipation of the Southern slaves. The South knowing that his election to the Presidency meant at least the prohibition of slavery in the territories, for Mr. Lincoln by every token had committed himself against its extension beyond its then recognized bounds, seceded at once from the union of states, and set up an independent government of its own, styled the “Confederate States.” It was to preserve the Union that the North appealed to arms. Could this have been done without the abolition of slavery, doubtless slavery would have yet been in existence in the Southern States, or, at least, gradual emancipation, including compensation to slaveholders, would have been the tardy solution of the slavery question. But Providence had a hand in the revolution and events, over which human agencies had no control, rapidly hurried on the hour when the fate of the Union cause itself involved the emancipation of the negro.

On January 1, 1863, nearly two years after his inauguration, Mr. Lincoln issued his celebrated Emancipation Proclamation. It was as follows:

“Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for repressing said rebellion, do on this first day of January, 1863, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days from the day of the above first-mentioned order (alluding to his pronunciamento of September 1, 1862, in which he declared his purpose of issuing an emancipation proclamation unless the South laid down her arms and returned to the Union), and designates as the states and parts of states the following, to wit: Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, except the parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquimine, Jefferson, St. Charles, St. John, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terra Bonne, La Fourche, St. Mary, St. Martin and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth, and which excepted parts are for the present left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued, and by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within such designated states, on and henceforward shall be free, and that the executive government of the United States, including the military and the naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence, and I recommend to them in all cases, when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages; and I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. And upon this, sincerely believed to be an act of justice warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

MANY people are ignorant of the part the negro took in the late Civil War in which his own freedom was the issue at stake. The records, so far as we can secure them, will be given in this chapter. They show that he was not altogether a passive looker-on, but that he did take an active part whenever and wherever he was free to do so.

Many reasons can be assigned to show why he could not as a race join the armies that were battling for his freedom and demonstrate that his conduct during that memorable conflict was not only commendable, but in the highest degree heroic.

If any are disposed to charge him with cowardice, let them consider first his helplessness. He was both ignorant and poor. He had no arms or munitions of war. The scene of the actual combat was as a rule distant from those sections in which the negro population was most dense. Many of the most populous sections were never reached by the Union armies, and even in those sections reached, the Federal authorities advised them against leaving their helpless wives and children, who had to be maintained by their labor.

The Southern slaves were very ignorant. They knew nothing of the use of arms or the art of war. They were as children when it came, to battle in the science of modern warfare. How helpless are that people who know nothing, not only of the elements of knowledge but have no acquaintance even with the geography of the country in which they live?

The negro is by nature docile and kind-spirited. Active participation on the part of the negroes, as a whole people, meant internecine strife, meant insurrection, meant untold suffering to helpless women and children. Such conduct would not only not have been heroic, but would have been barbarous and cruel. It would have been equivalent to the desertion of their wives and children, and to plunging the country into a scene of massacre and butchery that would have shamed the bloody cruelties of the French revolution.

Again, even if he had been sufficiently enlightened, and there had been no domestic reasons for his keeping aloof from the conflict, the scattered condition of the negro would have rendered it impossible for him to have engaged in it as a race. The slave population extended from Maryland to Texas. Guarded and watched with sleepless vigilance, there was no opportunity for concerted action. Any effort at co-operation could have been easily thwarted. It was simply impossible to bring such a large number of people together under the circumstances of their situation.

It is not a matter of surprise, then, when we consider these things, that the negro, as a race, made no concerted effort to assist in securing his own freedom. It would have been the most disastrous step he could have taken.

Not only so, but it will be to his everlasting credit that he did not—that he stood still and waited for the “salvation of God.” While the flower and chivalry of the South were away from their homes, their families were treated with kindness and even tenderness, and no acts of violence can be charged to the negroes during that terrible time. There was no incendiarism, no murdering of the innocent, no deflouring of the virtuous, no pillage and plundering. I know of no crimes of rape or arson or massacre charged to the colored people during the four years of that bloody Civil War. The negro had no disposition to commit crimes like these, and this same disposition prompted him, as a race, to be quiet while God and his friends fought his battles for him. The Southern white man who can charge the negro with cowardice because he chose not to rise up as a whole race under all the circumstances of his condition and kill and slay, is heartless and ungrateful. History presents no sublimer spectacle than the patience and non-resistance of this race who, though smarting under the wrongs of more than two hundred years, refused to take revenge into their own hands and rebel with violence and bloodshed against their oppressors. No race ever acted more like Jesus Christ, whose life was one long, patient non-resistance to wrong.

While all this is true, yet it is fair to the colored race that they should have due credit for the honorable part they took in the Civil War. It is not generally known, though the record is open to the inspection of all, that the negro did take an active and honorable part in the war for his freedom. “Appleton's American Encyclopedia,” page 494, contains the following:

“Colored soldiers were first enlisted into the Federal service in January, 1863, and within the year their number reached 100,000—about 50,000 actually bearing arms. Before the close of the war, they numbered about 170,000. These were not assigned as State troops, though credited to the quotas of the States from which they enlisted, but mustered in as United States Colored Volunteers.”

Lieutenant Chas. A. Totten, of the United States Army, quotes from the Surgeon-General of the United States Army in 1870, to show that there were killed in battle, and died by disease or from wounds, 33,380 colored troops during the war between the States. This record speaks volumes for the courage and fidelity of the colored troops.

This is, indeed, a creditable showing, and demonstrates that the negro was not averse to fighting for his own freedom, when the opportunity was given him to honorably do so. He was not willing to butcher and slay, to be guilty of murder, rapine and arson, even to secure his own freedom; but he was willing to go forth as a soldier, and fight in honorable, open warfare. And this he did when he had the opportunity. As a soldier, the record shows that he was brave and chivalrous, and that he went gallantly into the thickest of the battle when duty called.

That the colored man not only makes a good citizen when properly educated, but that he makes a good soldier, is further shown by the fact that the United States has in its service at the present time the following efficient and well-trained colored troops:

Three colored men have graduated from the West Point Military Academy, and there is one colored officer in the United States Army, Charles Young, first lieutenant. There are three colored chaplains at present in the United States Army, viz.: Allen Allensworth, chaplain of the Twenty-fourth Infantry; Geo. W. Prioleau, chaplain of the Ninth U. S. Cavalry, and Theophilus G. Stewart, chaplain Twenty-fifth U. S. Infantry. Each of these chaplains have the rank of captain.

Thus it will be seen that the negro is coming to the front as a soldier, as well as a citizen.

It must not be thought that the colored people, who were not enlisted in the service during the late war, were passive and uninterested spectators of that mighty struggle waged for their freedom. They would have been less than human had they not been profoundly interested. Their prayers ascended for their deliverance, and their hearts yearned for the success of their friends. They fondly hoped for the hour of victory, when the night of slavery would end, and the day-dawn of freedom appear. They often talked to each other of the progress of the war, and conferred in secret as to what they might do to aid in the struggle, but they always decided it was the will of Providence that they should stand still, and see the salvation of God.

That they were right in their attitude, subsequent events have abundantly proved. God had determined to deliver them in a way which would exclude all boasting and self-gratulation. The negro was to achieve his freedom, not by his own exertion and strength, but by the power of the Lord God Almighty. Just as the Israelites were liberated by the special interposition of Providence, so was the negro. And that negro is indeed blind to the facts of history and ungrateful to the God of battles, who does not recognize the hand of Jehovah in his emancipation.

I think it due to the people of the North to say that there was little effort on their part to stir the passion of hatred and bloodshed in the heart of the negro during the war. While they encouraged every legitimate and honorable effort of the colored people to forward the cause of their freedom, they did not counsel riot and insurrection, and I believe it is true, that during the four years of that bloody conflict, there was not a single thoroughly-organized and executed insurrectionary uprising.

Many liberal-hearted Southerners have spoken eulogies upon the conduct of the negroes during that time. They have recognized the fact of their splendid behavior to their defenceless wives and children, and given this sentiment voice in poetry as well as prose. It should not be forgotten by the white people of the South, and they should ever remember with grateful affection the people who bore so patiently their wrongs, and waited so unresistingly the result of that memorable struggle. They should raise their voices now in protest in return for the kindness shown their wives and children in that perilous time, against the heartless mobs that often take up innocent negroes upon mere suspicion or for some fancied insult, and hang them from the nearest tree.

The negroes, as a race, not only took no part in any insurrectionary uprising during the war, but they quietly worked along in the fields, raising food supplies for the people. Left almost alone on the plantations, they protected the wives and children of their enslavers, and saw that they were done no violence. Though the wrong of two hundred years were fresh in their memories, they had no heart to avenge them. They felt kindly to their owners in most instances, and were willing to leave the issue in the hands of heaven. They cared not to purchase their freedom by deeds of cruelty and wicked violence.

When in after years the full history of that great struggle shall be written in the calm and dispassionate light of truth and time, it will be the judgment of mankind that no grander spectacle is presented in human history than the attitude of the colored race during that stormy period. With a patience that never wearied, and a faith that never faltered, they awaited the will of heaven. Worn with long bondage, yearning for the boon of freedom, longing for the sun of liberty to rise, they kept their peace and left the result to God.

Here is a field for the epic poet, a theme for the lyrist and the psalmist. No stain of blood is on the fair escutcheon of the Southern slave. No chapter, crimsoned with blood and violence, tells the history of that terrible time. No property was burned, no maidens defloured, no murders committed. Neither the hope of liberty, nor the successes of the Northern army, could tempt the negro to rapine, arson, or murder. God be thanked that we can point to such a record, and that we can boast such a history. As we march on to triumph over ignorance, prejudice, oppression, and sin, we can ever carry in our bosoms the consciousness of having been merciful to those who were our captors, and, above all, of having done our duty as God gave us to see it.

Let our brothers in white remember these things in our favor, and, when tempted to be cruel and harsh with us, listen to the whisperings of gratitude, and extend to us that mercy and love we showed to them. Oh! ye Southern whites! among whom we live, and with whom in the same soil we expect to lie at last, let your hand of love go out to your poor, struggling brother in black, who has toiled so long through the weary night of ignorance and servitude, and help to lift him to the same heights of knowledge and virtue upon which you so proudly stand.

THE first breath of liberty to the colored man was like the intoxicating odors of Eden to our first parents. For two hundred years he had known nothing but toil and the self-abasement of the slave. In the cotton fields, and on the rice plantations of the South, he had worn his life away. In vain he looked through the sorrows of the night for joy to come in the morning. Stripes and the stocks were familiar to him, for even under the most humane master he was still subject to the lash.

But now the dawn of a new day had come, and the light of liberty was more welcome to him than the sunrise to the weary pilgrim of the night. As it broke over the hill-tops of the South, its splendid beams well-nigh dazzled his eyes, and he could scarcely believe that the night was gone, and the glorious day of freedom was at hand.

I shall never forget the moment when I heard the first tidings proclaiming liberty to the captive. Memory holds that hour as the most beautiful and enrapturing in all the history of a life which has alternated between the experience of a debasing servitude and that of a joyous and unfettered freedom.

I was ploughing in the fields of Southern Georgia. The whole universe seemed to be exulting in the unrestraint of the liberty wherewith God has made all things free, save my bound and fettered soul, which dared not claim its birthright and kinship with God's wide world of freedom. The azure of a Southern sky bent over me and the air was fragrant with the fresh balm-breathing odors of spring. The fields and the forests were vocal with the blithe songs of birds, and the noise of limpid streams made music as they leaped along to the sea.

Suddenly the news was announced that the war had ended and that slavery was dead. The last battle had been fought, and the tragedy that closed at Appomattox had left the tyrant who had reigned for centuries slain upon the gory field.

In a moment the pent-up tears flooded my cheek and the psalm of thanksgiving arose to my lips. “I am free,” I cried, hardly knowing in the first moments of liberty what and how great was the boon I had received. Others, my companions, toiling by my side, caught up the glad refrain, and shouts and rejoicings rang through the fields and forests like the song of Miriam from the lips of the liberated children of Israel.

Oh! the rapture of that hour! the bewildering joy of that happy day! I would not say one word to wound my white brethren in the South, with whom I live and among whom I expect to die, but to my dying day I can never forget the delight of that, the first draught of freedom.

I felt the chains fall from my limbs, the gloom lift from my soul, the manacles drop from my hands. I heard the bolts break and saw the prison door fly open. I caught the hands of the angel and walked forth to the beautiful light. I gazed upon the hills of freedom and breathed the health-giving air. I snatched up the flowers blooming at my feet, pressed them to my heart and then kissed their scented lips in return for their welcoming smiles. I ran, I leaped for joy. I saw the smile of God. I heard the anthems of the angels. A new world was at hand, and I walked it, I imagine, with something of the rapture with which the angels walk the streets of gold. Oh! never till I enter the gates of the city of the New Jerusalem and wander along by the river of life, purling through the gardens of God, can I be happier than in that first hour of freedom.

I realized that all that life meant was mine at last. Before it had been one long nightmare, one dark journey of weariness and woe. From my prison bars I had caught glimpses of the world of liberty without, but now I could see it, bathe my spirit in its sunshine and bask in its unobstructed and unclouded splendor. Surely it was enough to inspire and transport the heart, and make it beside itself with the very delirium of joy.

This picture is not overdrawn. Thousands whose minds had not been wholly benighted by the repressing influences of slavery, and whose natures still possessed the capability of responding to the blessed boon of freedom felt as I did. I have often thought of the joy that thrilled the Greeks when the victory at Marathon had delivered them from the Persian power, which meant their enslavement and ruin, and later, of their triumph at Salamis, when, for the second time, the same power strove to subdue them and blot Greek civilization from the world. I have often pictured in imagination the joy of the inhabitants of France, when Joan of Arc, mounted on a snow-white charger, routed the veteran columns of England and led the trembling king to his coronation. But the rejoicings of these delivered people were not greater than the exulting happiness of the four millions of Southern slaves in the first days and months of their newly-acquired freedom.

But as men get accustomed even to happiness, and lose the intense delight of joy itself when they get used to such an experience, it was not long before the freedmen began to find out that even freedom was not an unconditional blessing. They discovered that they needed more than mere political liberty, and, in the presence of the mighty problems that confronted them, they grew serious and thoughtful.

They were poor—very poor. Freedom they had, and nothing more—nothing but muscle and sinew, and faith in God. Four millions of people faced the struggle for existence without a dollar. No such spectacle has been witnessed in the world since the children of Israel crossed the Red Sea, and began their wanderings in the wilderness. No lands, no houses, no cattle, no sheep, no household goods, not even clothes and shoes. The spectacle was indeed appalling, but not without the glintings of hope. Labor was needed for Southern plantations, and that this hardy race could supply. The charge of thriftlessness and indolence has little to support it when we remember the absolute poverty of the negro on the day of his emancipation, and the immense wealth his labor has created for the South and himself since that day. Mostly by his free labor the cotton production of the South has grown from 3,000,000 to 9,000,000 bales. All other products of agriculture in the Southern States have increased in like ratio. The United States government has contributed but little to his physical wants, and, practically unaided, he has had to rely upon his own brawny arm for the means of subsistence. This was no small matter, and to meet all the demands upon him, he has had to give to it the best thought of his brain and the best work of his hands.

Another subject presented itself to the negro mind, after the first joys of freedom had expended themselves. It was the question of his education. No race ever came suddenly into the acquisition of freedom so thoroughly ignorant. It was the design of slavery to keep the slave in ignorance. The perpetuity of the system demanded it. Hence, when he was freed he could neither read nor write. He knew nothing of how to get along in the world of trade, and had no knowledge of the ordinary occupations and vocations of life. He was an easy prey to the designing and conscienceless employer, if he wished to rob him of the products of his labor. He knew but little of the amenities of life, having been accustomed to nothing but the primitive society common to the backwoods and remote sections of the South, and having been always treated as a menial, and not as a freeman and a citizen. He knew but little of law and government, and was easily duped by the designing politician, who used him wherever he could to further his own petty and ignoble ambitions. What a burden for a people to carry? How it hinders in the race for progress! As to what the negro has accomplished within the last thirty years towards removing this burden from his race, we will attempt to show in another chapter.

THE slave was not a citizen. He could claim under the law no right but the right to live. He was in the category of goods and chattels. Under the evils incident to his condition it was almost impossible to secure him even in the right of life. Many masters were humane and their pecuniary interest in the slave prompted them to protect, as far as they could, the life of the slave, but even with the promptings of humanity and the motives of self-interest, the humane master could not always see to the protection of the lives of his slaves. Irresponsible and cruel overseers, far from the eye of the owner, sometimes exercised the most brutal treatment toward the defenseless negroes far away on the plantations. How many lost their lives sooner or later as the result of such treatment the records of the last day will alone disclose.

But now the dark night, so full of suffering and unrequited toil, was gone forever. The blood of thousands shed on the battle fields, which are now historic, had bought the negro's freedom. As much as the Southern whites resisted his further advancement, it was impossible to resist the tide of sentiment at the North, which now demanded that the negro be clothed with the full rights and immunities of citizenship. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution passed Congress and was ratified by two-thirds of the States of the Union in 1865. This amendment simply abolished slavery in the United States. It was couched in the following language:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Three years later the Fourteenth Amendment was passed by Congress, and was ratified by the States. Many of the prominent men of the South, as we have already stated, advised acceptance of the situation and quiet submission to the results of the war. These far-sighted men saw that it was useless to fight the inevitable. For this they were socially ostracised, and even execrated by the white masses of the South. Hon. Benjamin H. Hill, to whom I have already alluded as the leading orator of the South, advocated the social ostracism of white Republicans, and in his celebrated “Notes on the Situation,” hurled red-hot anathemas upon the heads of all who dared to advocate submission to reconstruction.

IT was natural that the Southern whites should have resisted reconstruction which involved negro citizenship and suffrage. They, like the Normans, were a haughty, hot-blooded race. Having held the negro so long in subjection, they could not brook the thought of his elevation to a position of equality before the law with them. It was indeed a severe blow to the gentry of the South, when the millions they had invested in slaves were swept away almost in a moment, and the fortunes of years scattered like leaves before the breath of the wind. I am just enough to say, that had I been a slaveholder, I would have felt the same chagrin and disappointment at the results of the war.

But in addition to the loss of his slaves, the slaveholder was now to witness the spectacle of those slaves elevated to citizenship and dignified with the ballot. This was indeed a bitter pill, and it was but natural that the Southern people should have been loth to take it. I for one was not surprised at the opposition of Southern whites to the reconstruction measures.