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Afro-American Encyclopaedia;
Or, the Thoughts, Doings, and Sayings of the Race, Embracing Lectures,
Biographical Sketches, Sermons, Poems, Names of Universities, Colleges,
Seminaries, Newspapers, Books, and a History of the Denominations, Giving the
Numerical Strength of Each. In Fact, it Teaches Every Subject of Interest
to the Colored People, as Discussed by More Than One Hundred of
Their Wisest and Best Men and Women:
Electronic Edition.

James T. Haley

Funding from the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition supported the electronic publication of this title.

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Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
2000.

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(title page) Afro-American Encyclopaedia; or, The Thoughts, Doings, and Sayings of the Race, Embracing Addresses, Lectures, Biographical Sketches, Sermons, Poems, Names of Universities, Colleges, Seminaries, Newspapers, Books, and a History of the Denominations, Giving the Numerical Strength of Each. In Fact, It Teaches Every Subject of Interest to the Colored People, as Discussed by More than One Hundred of Their Wisest and Best Men and Women.
(cover) Thoughts Doings and Sayings of the Race
James T. Haley
xiv, 639 p., ill
Nashville, Tenn.
Haley & Florida
1895
Call number E185 .A27995 1895 (Walter R. Davis Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

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Library of Congress Subject Headings,

21st edition, 1998

Languages Used:

LC Subject Headings:

Revision History:

        

Illustration

        

Illustration

AFRO-AMERICAN ENCYCLOPÆDIA
ENLIGHTENING THE RACE.

Page iii

        

Illustration

Afro-American Encyclopaedia;
OR, THE
THOUGHTS, DOINGS, AND SAYINGS OF THE RACE, EMBRACING
Addresses, Lectures, Biographical Sketches, Sermons, Poems, Names of Universities, Colleges, Seminaries, Newspapers, Books, and a History of the Denominations, giving the Numerical Strength of Each. In fact, it teaches every subject of interest to the colored people, as discussed by more than one hundred of their wisest and best men and women.

ILLUSTRATED WITH BEAUTIFUL HALF-TONE ENGRAVINGS.

Compiled and Arranged by James T. Haley.

SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION EXCLUSIVELY.

        No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with good books if he has the means to buy them. A library is one of the necessities of life. A book is better for weariness than sleep; better for cheerfulness than wine; it is often a better physician than a doctor, and a better preacher than a minister.--Beecher.

NASHVILLE, TENN.:
HALEY & FLORIDA.
1895.

Page iv

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1895, by HALEY & FLORIDA, in the
office of the Librarian of Congress, Washington, D. C.
All rights reserved.

        

Illustration

Page v

PREFACE.

        Twenty years ago we commenced the subscription book business. Our canvass was usually from door to door, embracing both white and colored. The scarcity of books by negro authors suggested the idea of the compilation of this book. The labor connected with such a work as this none can fully appreciate but those who have performed it. We have tried to compress within a few hundred pages the momentous events connected with the Afro-American race during the nineteenth century. The utmost care has been taken in the collation of the matter in this work, and no expense has been spared to make it not only acceptable to the colored people, but to all classes of readers as well. We can scarcely hope that each article our book contains will be found strictly accurate, since authors of the highest repute differ greatly; where there is a difference of opinion we have endeavored to give the explanation which appeared to be the best supported. We hope and believe the book is free from serious error, but if any should be discovered we shall feel under obligation to those who detect the same, if they will kindly communicate with us, so that in future editions they may be corrected. The book, however, is one of reference rather than one of criticism, an accumulation of facts rather than of opinions. It furnishes the most authentic information concerning the race, and we trust it will awaken a more appreciative spirit of enterprise among them. It has aimed to direct attention to their vast capabilities and resources, many of which are yet undeveloped. We have endeavored to meet the wants of the negro, who is desirous of knowing more of the history of his race, and the achievements of its great men and women (but who are without the assistance of books that bear upon this subject), by compiling these subjects, believing that it will incite a more cheerful reading and deeper research, as the best means of obtaining general information. An effort has been made to render it so generally interesting that it may "be dipped into here and there with the certainty of something being found capable of giving instruction to all classes of readers." The matter contained in this volume can be accumulated only by years of labor and research from sources not easily accessible to the general reader, to say nothing of the vast amount that is fresh from the pens of the most eminent men and women of the race.

        Our object throughout has been to produce a useful book, therefore, as far as was consistent with our plan, we have carefully gleaned whatever was of value wherever it could be found. If at any time we have failed to give credit, it has been because we did not know to whom credit was due. It would have been impossible to render this volume as complete as it now appears, without the sanction of living authors, publishers and owners of copyrights to make extracts; for their courtesy, and for all information from whatever source we tender our most grateful acknowledgments. With this preface, we launch our boat, trusting, hoping and praying that it may accomplish some good.

J. T. HALEY.

NASHVILLE, TENN., Sept. 1, 1895.

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DEDICATION

        To all, of whatever nationality, who desire to know more of the progress and achievements of the race, and especially to Afro-Americans, old and young, but more especially to those noble, consecrated Christian men and women, who have rendered me such valuable assistance in the preparation of this work, is this volume dedicated.

By the Compiler.

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CONTENTS.

Page xiii.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Page XV

        

Illustration

AFRICAN WARRIOR.

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Africa and the Africans.

        AFRICA is one of the great divisions of the globe--the second in point of size, but the least important as regards civilization and progress. Until recently, this continent, so long a land of mystery, was inhabited by wild and barbarous tribes and untrodden by the foot of civilization. This great continent of the globe lies in the Eastern Hemisphere, South of Europe, and is separated from that continent by the Mediterranean Sea. No other land division of the globe has such a rounded and complete outline. The explorations of travelers within the present century have revealed all the leading topographical features of the country, and enabled us to form a fairly accurate knowledge of its configurations. Lying almost wholly in or near the equatorial regions, its torrid climate and enormous deserts render explorations perilous.

        It is southwest of Asia, with which it is connected by the Isthmus of Suez. It may, however, be described in brief as an insular continent, since it has of recent years been disconnected from Asia by the Suez Canal.

        The continent lies between 37 degrees 20 minutes north, and 35 degrees south latitude, and 17 degrees 33 minutes west, and 51 degrees 22 minutes east longitude. It is, therefore, almost wholly in the tropical regions. The greatest length of this mysterious land, when we measure from Cape Aquehas, just east of Cape of Good Hope to Cape Bon, which is near Bizerta in Tunis, is about 4,330 geographical miles; while the greatest width, taking Cape Verd on the Atlantic side and Cape Gardafin on the Indian Ocean, is 4,000 geographical miles. Figuring the entire length of the country, excluding Madagascar and other African islands, we have about 11,300,000 statute square miles. The explorations of the continent are slowly advancing year by year, but with earnest and unceasing progress.

        The southern portion of Africa is a vast tableland not generally elevated, sloping on its northern side to the equatorial plane of Soudan, and thence to the lowland region which constitutes the greater part of Northern Africa. Senegambia on the west and Abyssinia on

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the east are characterized by mountaneous ridges and plateaus, which "stretch from the southern tableland like rocky promontories into a sea of level country." The only other elevated region of importance is the Atlas range in the northwest. The coast line is about 16,000 miles in extent, or about two-thirds of the entire distance around the globe. The bodies of water which surround Africa are the Mediterranean Sea on the north, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean on the east, the Southern Ocean on the south, and the Atlantic Ocean on the west.

        This country has been looked upon as pre-eminently the land of deserts. The great Sahara stretches almost across northern Africa. It is not an unbroken sandy expanse, but full of variety, broken up by great oases and green stretches of land. Some of them are 120 miles in length and from three to five miles broad. In Southern Africa is another desert known as Kalahari. The plateaus of Southern Africa are fertile and thickly populated.

        The extent of the mineral wealth of the continent is unknown, but the precious metals are only found in a limited area. Gold is found in Guinea, iron and copper are found in inter-tropical Africa, coal has been discovered along the Zambesi, and salt is everywhere abundant.

        Dense forests with rankest vegetation, teaming with animal and insect life, pervade the equatorial regions. The most valuable productions of the vegetable kingdom are dates, oranges, olives, rice, cotton, indigo, bananas and grains.

        The quadrupeds found in Africa cover a wide range of natural history. The chimpanzee and the gorilla, baboons and monkey abound in great numbers. The elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus buffalo, giraffe, camelopard, zebra, quagga, antelope, lion, leopard, panther, tiger, hyena, jackal and camel are all at home on the "Dark Continent." The camel is used as the principal beast of burden. There are five great mountain systems. The climate is more equable in the distribution of heat than that of America. There are many large and important rivers: The Congo, the Limpoppo, the Niger, the Nile, the Senegal, and the Zambesi. The Nile is the most famous and wonderful of all. Many of the lakes are vast inland seas, whose existence have been verified by recent explorers. The general form of Africa is triangular, the northern part being the base, and the southern extremity the vertex.

        In the northern part of Africa the Mohammedan religion prevails,

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numbering perhaps two-thirds of the entire population. There are about 700,000 Jews, principally in the cities. Christianity pervails in Madagascar, Liberia, the British possessions of Southern Africa, Algeria, parts of Abyssinia and Egypt.

        In the providence of God it seems that this great and glorious country is chiefly for the colored races, and especially for the negro. Centuries of effort and centuries of failure demonstrate that white men cannot build up colonies there. That portion of the continent lying between the Mediterranean Sea and latitude 20 degrees north, is settled principally by tribes not indigenous, such as Arabs, Turks, Moors and Frenchmen. They have gained possession of the country by conquest. Egypt is partly peopled by Copts, supposed to be descended from the ancient Egyptians, but they are probably a mixed race. The greater portion of Africa's population belongs to two races, the Berbers and the Negroes of Ethiopia. The former are nomadic occupying the mountainous regions of Barbary and the Sahara. They are sometimes called the Kabyles. The Berber nation is one of great integrity. They are warlike and predatory. Their religion is Mohammedism. In South Africa there are many Hottentots, entirely different from all the negro race. Central Africa is inhabited by the Ethiopic race. Mohammedanism and Fetishism are the prevailing religious of the continent. Some tribes offer human sacrifices. The principal negro nations are the Mandingoes, the Foolahs, the Yolofs and Ashantees. It is estimated by some writers that 150 languages are spoken in Africa, and that the population is about 200,000,000.

        The principal divisions of the continent are as follows:

        Algeria, Tripoli, Morocco, Tunis, Bambara, Senegambia, Liberia, Ashantee, Dahomey, Gando, Bornoo, Adamawa, Loango, Congo, Angola, Beuguela, Cape Colony, Orange Free State, Madagascar, Mosambique, Zanquebar, Adel, Cazembe, Abyssinia, Darfoor, Kordofan, Waday, Soudan, Sennar, Neubia, Egypt, and Haussa.

        The word negro is a name given to a considerable branch of the human family possessing certain physical characteristics which distinguish it in a very marked degree from the other branches or varieties of mankind.--International Cyclopedia.

        The term negro is properly applied to the races inhabiting that part of Africa lying between latitude 10 degrees north, and 20 degrees south, and to their descendants in the old and new world. It does not include the Egyptians, Berbers, Abyssinians, Hottentots,

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Nubians, etc., though in popular language, especially in the older writings, it comprises these and other dark skinned nations, who are not however characterized by the crisp hair of the true negro.

        The negroes are said to occupy about one half of Africa, excluding the northern and southern extremities, but including its most fertile portions. They have less nervous sensibility than the whites, and are not subject to nervous afflictions. They are comparatively insensible to pain, bearing severe surgical operations well; they seldom have a fetid breath, but transpire much excrementious matter by means of glands of the skin, whose odorous secretion is well known. His skin is soft and silky; hair, though called wool, does not present the characters of it, and differs but little from that of the other races except in color and in its curled and twisted form. He flourishes under the fiercest heats and unhealthy dampness of the tropics, where the white man soon dies.

        In addition to Africa, negroes are found in the United States, Brazil, West Indies, Peru, Arabia, and the Cape Verd Islands. They are rare in Austria, Europe, and Polynesia.

        Negroes were almost unknown to the Hebrews. They were unknown to the Greeks until the seventh century B.C. About twenty-three hundred years B.C. the Egyptians became acquainted with negroes, who helped them on their monuments as early as 1,600 years B.C.

        The African negroes display considerable ingenuity in the manufacture of weapons, in the working of iron, in the weaving of mats, cloth and baskets from dyed grasses, in the dressing of the skins of animals, in the structure of their huts and household utensils, and in the various implements and objects of use in a barbarous state of society.

        Some of them worship idols, and believe in good and evil spirits, in witchcraft, charms and spells, omens, lucky and unlucky days. They make prayers and offerings to their idols, and have sacred songs, and festivals. They sacrifice animals and sometimes human victims. They have priests who are their doctors. They believe generally in an after life, without any distinct idea of retribution. They have great fears of ghosts and apparitions. They become ready converts to foreign religions. All tribes are passionately fond of music, and have many ingeniously contrived musical instruments. They have a keen sense of the ridiculous, and are of a cheerful disposition. Naturally they are kind-hearted and hospitable to strangers,

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and are ready to receive instruction, and profit by it. They are quick to perceive the beauty of goodness, and hence they generally appreciate the services of missionaries in their behalf, and but for intoxicating drinks brought by traders, they would probably soon become Christianized.

LIBERIA.

        LIBERIA is a negro republic in Western Africa, on the upper coast of Upper Guinea. The boundaries are not definitely fixed, but provisionally the River Thebar has been adopted as the northwestern, and the San Pedro as the eastern frontier. The republic has a coast line of 600 miles, and extends back 100 miles, on an average, but with the probability of a vast extension into the interior as the tribes near the frontier desire to conclude treaties providing for the incorporation of their territories with Liberia. The present area is estimated at 9,700 square miles. The republic owes its origin to the "American Colonization Society," which was established in December, 1816, for the purpose of removing the negroes of the United States from the cramping influences of American slavery, and placing them in their own fatherland. The first expedition of emigrants, 86 in number, was sent out in February, 1820.

        About 36 miles along the coast, with an average breadth of two miles, of the Mesurado territory was purchased in December, 1821. For a hundred years the principal powers of Europe, in particular France and England, had repeatedly tried to gain possession, but the native chiefs had invariably refused to part with even an acre, and were known to be extremely hostile to the whites. On the 7th of January, 1822, the smaller of the two islands lying near the mouth of the Measurado River was occupied by the colonists, who called it Perseverance Island. They remained here until April 25th, when they removed to Mesurado Heights, and raised the American flag. The colony henceforth grew, and expanded in territory and influence, taking under its jurisdiction from time to time the large tribes contiguous. In 1846 the board of directors of the American Colonization Society invited the colony to proclaim their independent sovereignty, as a means of protection against the oppressive interference of foreigners,

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and a special fund of $15,000 was raised to buy up the national title to all the coast from Sherbro to Cape Palmas, in order to secure to the new nationality continuity of coast. In July, 1847, the declaration of independence, prepared by Hilary Teoge, was published. Representatives of the people met in convention, and promulgated a constitution similar to that of the United States. Soon after the new republic was recognized by England and France; in 1852 it was in treaty stipulations with England, France, Belgium, Prussia, Italy, the United States, Denmark, Holland, Hayti, Portugal, and Austria.

        The constitution of Liberia, like that of the United States, establishes an entire separation of the church from the State, and places all religious denominations on an equal footing, but all citizens of the republic must belong to the negro race.

        The most important tribes within and near the republic are the following:

        1. The Veys, extending from Gallinas, their northern boundary, southward to Little Cape Mount: they stretch inland about two days' journey. They invented some twenty-five years ago an alphabet for writing their language and, next to the Mandingoes, they are regarded as the most intelligent of the aboriginal tribes. As they hold constant intercourse with the Mandingoes and other Mohammedan tribes in the interior, Mohammedism is making rapid progress among them.

        2. The Pessehs, who are located about 70 miles from the coast, and extent about 100 miles from north to south, are entirely pagan. They may be called the peasants of West Africa, and supply most of the domestic slaves for the Veys, Bassas, Mandingoes, and Kroos. A missionary effort was attempted among them many years ago by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, but it was abandoned shortly after in consequence of the death of the first missionary, Geo. L. Seymore.

        3. The Barline tribe living about eight days' journey northeast from Monrovia, and next interior to the Pessehs, has recently been brought into treaty relations with Liberia. The Barlins are not Mohammedans.

        4. The Bassas occupy a coastline of sixty miles or more, and extend about the same distance inland. They are the great producers of palm oil and camwood, which are sold to foreigners by thousands of tons annually. In 1835 a mission was begun among these people

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by the American Baptist Missionary Union, whose missionaries studied the language, organized three schools, embracing in all nearly a hundred pupils, maintained preaching steadily at three places, and occasionally at a great many more, and translated large portions of the New Testament into the Bassa language. Notwithstanding this promising commencement, the mission has been abandoned for many years, but the Southern Baptist convention has resumed missionary operations among the Bassas.

        5. The Kroo, who occupy the region south of the Bassa, extend about 70 miles along the coast, and only a few miles inland. They are the sailors of West Africa, and never enslave or sell each other. About 50 years ago a mission was established among them by the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions at Settra Kroo, but it has long since ceased operations.

        6. The Greboes, who border upon the southeastern boundaries of the Kroos, extend from Grand Sesters to the Cavalla River. In 1834 a mission was established among them by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which continued in operation for seven years. A church was organized, the language reduced to writing, and parts of the New Testament and other religious books translated into it.

        7. The Mandingoes, who are found on the whole eastern frontier of the republic, and extend back to the heart of Soudan, are the most intelligent within the limits of Liberia. They have schools and mosques in every large town, and, by their great influence upon the neighboring tribes, they have contributed in no little degree to abate the ignorance and soften the manners of the native population of Liberia.

        Agriculture is carried on with increasing success. Sugar is the principal article of produce, also of manufacture. Arrowroot, rice, cocoa, cotton and coffee are cultivated. Lime is made from burnt shells. Trade is rapidly extending. Palm oil, ivory, gold dust, cam-wood, wax, coffee, indigo, ginger, arrowroot and hides are among the principal articles of export. The capital and largest town is Monrovia, a seaport on Cape Mesurado, with about 15,000 population. Liberia has a population of 1,050,000. But speaking of Liberia to-day, in his excellent work, "Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race," Mr. E. W. Blyden says: "No agency has yet been tried for Africa's regeneration, which promises so much and is capable of so much for the permanent welfare of the

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people as the method of the American Colonization Society in the establishment of Liberia. The United States has furnished Africa with the most effective instrument of unlimited progress and development in the Republic of Liberia. The basis of the Liberian political life is the American constitution and laws. But the earlier legislators of the new State very soon discovered that American precedents, in not a few important respects, would have to be set aside; and it is creditable to their statesmanship that they were able to introduce with prudence such modifications into the American system as made it applicable to their new circumstances and practicable for their purposes. Their successors are finding more and more that as they advance into the continent and develop national life, new modifications will be necessary. These must take place if there is normal growth--if the nation is to be the true expression of the race. The friends of Liberians abroad cannot help them to national or racial expression. They must fight their own battles and achieve their own victories, if they are not to be overawed, depressed and overcome, not so much by the merits and virtues as by the vices and failings of foreigners, whose literature they read and whose commodities they purchase.

        The theory upon which Liberia was founded has thus far stood the test. It is a theory with definite practical consequences, which every one who is earnest in the desire for African regeneration and acquainted with the facts must accept, and which no one in these days, however antagonistic to the negro in exile, will strenuously oppose.

        In Liberia, the people, with all the drawbacks incident to their necessarily isolated life, have the legislative control of at least 500 miles of coast, and of an indefinite interior. They recognize the necessity--the prime necessity--of the moral and religious emotions. Their minds are strengthened and expaned by the wide and glorious prospects which their independent nationality and the vast continent on which they live with its teeming millions of their blood relations open before them; and they stretch out their hands to the United States for the return of their exiled brethren, to increase their civilized and Christian force. They ask for greater educational and religious facilities. They could have greater material prosperity; but they look upon the life as more than meat, and the body as more than raiment. For more than half a century they have resisted the appeals of Europeans for an indiscriminate trade in the country, and

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have thus kept an extensive region both on the coast and in the interior in a virgin state waiting for their brethren from the United States, who will know how to protect themselves against the influence of a vicious foreign trade, and who will be able to introduce in a regular and healthful form the blessings of freedom and civilization. As an example of the work in promotion of a genuine Christian civilization which Liberia, as an independent nation, whose laws are final, has the power of performing, see the recent law enacted against Sabbath breaking, which applies only to the seaboard and to the proceedings of foreign vessels. You would understand the import of this fact and its bearing upon Christianity in this country if you could see how all along the coast out of Liberia the Sabbath is disregarded by foreign traders, while the missionaries look helplessly on. In course of time, Liberia will banish the traffic in spirits from the whole of her domain; and in this effort she will be sustained by the great Mohammedan trading community on the east and north.

        Now, here is an instrument--indigenous, sympathetic and permanent--for the aggressive work of the American church. If American Christians will deal with this question earnestly and wisely, they can in a few years revolutionize the migration countries. America possesses the elements--the human instruments--now needed for the work in Africa, and they are anxious to come. Rev. H. N. Payne says: "Much as the colored people are attached to the places where they grew up, thousands of them would gladly go to Arkansas, to Texas, or to any other place where they would better their condition; but they cannot raise the money to emigrate, and must stay and suffer where they are." Now here is disinterested testimony, put not half so strongly as the facts warrant. The any other place is Africa; and if these helpless creatures do not name Africa in the utterance of their tearful longings, it is because thousands do not dream that there is any possibility of ever getting to this distant country. I found, during my travels in the South, in 1882, that hundreds were turning their faces to Arkansas and Texas, who had never heard of Liberia or the American Colonization Society.

        Do not wait until you have trained the negroes up to your ideal--in your peculiar modes of thinking. You cannot make them Anglo-Saxons. You never will make them so in spirit and possibilities, if I interpret the providence of God aright. The Hebrews of Egypt remained illiterate and ignorant, though surrounded for 400 years by the splendors of a brilliant civilization. That civilization was

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not for them, though they had, by providential direction, been brought into contact with it. It was not suited for the peculiar work for which they were destined. So the children of Africa in the United States have the possibilities of a great work in the fatherland. Remove them from the pressure in your country to the freedom and congeniality of their ancestral home, and so open a wider sphere, for the play and development of their social, moral and spiritual nature. It is not the best plan to rely upon college training to fit them for work in Africa.

        The fugitive Hebrew slaves, without the learning of the schools, received the law for their guidance--found the truth for their race--in the solitudes of the desert. In Africa, the merest rudiments of Western learning will have more power upon the negro than the highest culture in America. There is something in the atmosphere, in the sunshine, the clouds, the rain, the flowers, the music of the birds, that makes the a b c of your culture more valuable to him than all the metaphysics and philosophy you can possibly give him in America.

        The Republic of Liberia now stands before the world. The nations of the earth are looking to her as one of the hopeful spots on the continent of Africa. Travelers in Syria tell us that Damascus owes its fertility and beauty to one single stream--the River Abana. Without that little river, the charm and glory of Damascus would disappear. It would be a city in a desert. So the influence of Liberia, insignificant as it may seem, is the increasing source of beauty and fertility, of civilization and progress to West and Central Africa.

        We do not ask that all the colored people should leave the United States and go to Africa. If such a result were possible it is not, for the present, at least desirable; certainly it is not indispensable. For the work to be accomplished much less than one-tenth of the eight millions will be necessary. The question is not whether certain rich men will choose to remain behind, but whether there will be found worthy men who will choose to lead the return. Plenty of prosperous Jews remained in Babylon when Ezra marshalled his band of 40,000, and began a new, glorious epoch in the history of his race, making the preparation for that epoch in the history of the the world which has been held glorious enough to be dated from for evermore.

        There are negroes enough in the United States to join in the return--descendants of Africa enough, who are faithful to their instincts

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of the race, and who realize their duty to their fatherland. There are many who are faithful, there are men and women who will go, who have a restless sense of homelessness which will never be appeased until they stand in the great land where their forefathers lived; until they catch glimpses of the old sun and moon and stars, which still shine in their pristine brilliancy upon that vast domain; until, from the deck of the ship which bears them back home, they see visions of the hills rising from the white margin of the continent, and listen to the breaking music of the waves--the exhilarating laughter of the sea as it dashes against the beach. These are the elements of the great restoration. It may come in our own life time. It may be our happiness to see those rise up who will formulate progress for Africa--embody the ideas which will reduce our social and political life to order; and we may, before we die, thank God that we have seen this salvation; that the negro has grasped with a clear knowledge his meaning in the world's vast life--in politics, in science, in religion.

CAUSES OF COLOR.

        THE various colors seen in the natives in Africa, where amalgamation with other races is impossible, has drawn forth much criticism, and puzzled the ethnologist not a little. Yet nothing is more easily accounted for than this difference of color among the same people, and even under the same circumstances. Climate and climate alone, is the sole cause. And now to the proof. Instances are adduced, in which individuals, transplanted into another climate than that of their birth, are said to have restrained their peculiarities of form and color unaltered, and to have transmitted the same to their posterity for generations. But cases of this kind, though often substantiated to a certain extent, appear to have been much exaggerated, both as to the duration of time ascribed, and the absence of any change. It is highly probable that the original characteristics will be found undergoing gradual modifications, which tend to assimilate them to those of the new country and situation.

        The Jews, however slightly their features may have assimilated to those of other nations among whom they are scattered, from

Page 12

the causes already stated, certainly form a very striking example as regards the uncertainty of perpetuity in color. Descended from one stock, and prohibited by the most sacred institutions from intermarrying with the people of other nations, and yet dispersed, according to the divine prediction, into every country on the globe, this one people is marked with the color of all; fair in Britian and Germany; brown in France and in Turkey; swarthy in Portugal and in Spain; olive in Syria and Chaldea; tawny or copper-colored in Arabia and in Egypt; whilst they are "black at Congo, in Africa."

        Let us survey the gradations of color on the continent of Africa itself. The inhabitants of the north are whitest; and as we advance southward towards the line, and those countries in which the sun's rays fall more perpendicularly, the complexion gradually assumes a darker shade. And the same men whose color has been rendered black by the powerful influence of the sun, if they remove to the north gradually become white, (I mean their posterity), and eventually lose their dark color.

        The Portuguese who planted themselves on the coast of Africa a few centuries ago, have been succeeded by descendants blacker than many Africans. On the coast of Malabar there are two colonies of Jews, the old colony and the new, separated by color, and known as the "black Jews" and the "white Jews."

        The old colony are the black Jews, and have been longer subjected to the influence of the climate. The hair of the black Jews is curly, showing a resemblance to the Negro. The white Jews are as dark as the Gypsies, and each generation growing darker.

        Dr. Livingstone says:

I was struck with the appearance of the people in Londa and the neighborhood; they seemed more slender in form and their color a lighter olive than any we had hitherto met.

        Lower down the Zambisi the same writer says:

Most of the men are muscular, and have large, ploughman hands. Their color is the same admixture, from very dark to light olive, that we saw in Londa.

        In the year 1840, the writer was at Havana, and saw on board a vessel just arrived from Africa some five hundred slaves, captured in different parts of the country. Among these captives were colors varying from light brown to black, and their features represented the finest Anglo-Saxon and the most degraded African.

        There is a nation called Tuaricks, who inhabit the oases and southern borders of the great desert, whose occupation is commerce, and

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whose caravans ply between the Negro countries and Fezzan. They are described by the travelers, Hornemann and Lyon.

        The western tribes of this nation are white, so far as the climate and their habits will allow. Others are of a yellow cast; others again are swarthy; and in the neighborhood of Soudan, there is said to be a tribe completely black. All speak the same dialect, and it is a dialect of the original African tongue. There is no reasonable doubt of their being aboriginal.

        Lyon says they are the finest race of men he ever saw, "tall, straight and handsome, with a certain air of independence and pride which is very imposing." If we observe the gradations of color in different localities in the meridian under which we live, we shall perceive a very close relation to the heat of the sun in each respectively. Under the equator we have the deep black of the Negro, then the copper or olive of the Moors of northern Africa; then the Spaniard and Italian, swarthy compared with other Europeans; the French still darker than the English, while the fair and florid complexion of England and Germany passes more northerly into the bleached Scandinavian white.

        It is well-known that in whatever region travelers ascend mountains they find the vegetation at every successive level altering its character and gradully assuming the appearances presented in more northern countries; thus indicating that the atmosphere, temperature and physical agencies in general, assimilate as we approach Alpine regions to the peculiarities locally connected with high latitudes.

        If, therefore, complexion and other bodily qualities belonging to races of men depend upon climate and external conditions, we should expect to find them varying in reference to elevation of surface; and if they should he found actually to undergo such variations, this will be a strong argument that these external characteristics do, in fact, depend upon local conditions.

        Now, if we inquire respecting the physical characters of the tribes inhabiting high tracts in warm countries, we shall find that they coincide with those which prevail in the level or low parts of more northern tracts.

        The Swiss, in the high mountains above the plains of Lombardy, have sandy or brown hair. What a contrast presents itself to the traveler who descends into the Milanese territory, where the peasants have black hair and eyes, with strongly-marked Italian and almost oriental features.

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        In the higher part of the Biscayan country instead of the swarthy complexion and black hair of the Castilians, the natives have a fair complexion with light blue eyes and and flaxen or auburn hair.

        In the inter-tropical region, high elevations of surface, as they produce a cooler climate, occasion the appearance of light complexions. In the higher parts of Senegambia, which front the Atlantic, and are cooled by winds from the Western Ocean, where, in fact, the temperature is known to be moderate, and even cool at times, the light copper-colored Fulahs are found surrounded on every side by black Negro nations inhabiting lower districts; and nearly in the same parallel, but on the opposite coast of Africa, are the high plains of Enared and Kaffa, where the inhabitants are said to be fairer than the inhabitants of Southern Europe.

        Do we need any better evidence of the influence of climate on man than to witness its effect on beasts and birds? Æolian informs us that the Eubaea was famous for producing white oxen. Blumenbach remarks that "all the swine of Piedmont are black, those of Normandy white, and those of Bavaria are of a reddish brown. "The turkeys of Normandy," he states "are all black; those of Hanover almost all white. In Guinea the dogs and the gallinaceous fowls are as black as the human inhabitants of the same country." The lack of color in the northern regions of many animals which possess color in more temperate latitudes--as the bear, the fox, the hare, beasts of burden, the falcon, crow, jackdaw, and chaffinch--seems to arise entirely from climate. The common bear is differently colored in different regions. The dog loses its coat entirely in Africa, and has a smooth skin.

        We all see and admit the change which a few years produce in the complexion of a Caucasian going from our northern latitude into the tropics.--The Rising Sun.

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Color of the First Man.

BY REV. J. F. DYSON, B.D.

        THOSE who are conversant with the Hebrew language will agree with me in the statement that the Hebrew word Adam, the name given to the first man, means reddish or auburn color, as well as man; or better, perhaps, red man; the name designating the color. I therefore claim two points, which, to any reasonable person, are sufficient proof of Adam's color, namely: The color of the material out of which he was made, and this indicated his name. Is it not more reasonable to believe that a man made out of red colored material, and having a name signifying red color, was red, than to believe that he was white? And is it not strange that many men who seem consistent in making expositions on other weighty matters will agree that the first man was made of red clay, that his name signified red color, that it was given him because of his red color, yet he was white? Mystical inference! If the first man had been made out of chalk, and called Chivvah, which is the Hebrew for white, what rational man is there under the sun who would presume to gravely assert that, notwithstanding his formation from chalk, and his name which implies the color of chalk, yet the first man was red? But I must not cross the Rubicon before I come to it. Perhaps when I have presented my whole argument some opinions will have undergone a change. Was the first woman of the color of the first man? This is a question whose answer will determine my cause of procedure.

        1. Is it possible that the color of the first woman was not of the same color of the first man? To say that it is impossible is to limit omnipotence and omniscience. The same wisdom that produced one color in man, could produce a different color in the woman.

        2. It is probable that the first woman was not of the same color of the first man, from the presumption that God having manifested variety of color throughout the several kingdoms of nature would not make an exception of this rule in the heads of creation. To begin with, there is the black earth and the white light of the sun; and

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there is the black crow and the white crane; the black and polar bear; black and white beasts; the black dolphin and white fish. There is chalk, limestone and lead; coal, granite and iron; black and white stone and minerals; ebony trees and sycamore trees; black-berries and white cap berries; the dun pansy and the white rose, and so forth.

        3. It is probable that the first woman and man were not of the same complexion, from the fact of the existence of divers colors in their offspring, to time whereof the history of man runneth not to the contrary, and the total silence of history, sacred and profane, at the surprise of any race, or individual of any race, in meeting another race, or individual of another race of a different complexion, justifies this probability yet more.

        4. It is probable that the first man and woman were of different complexions, from the fact that all of Noah's children were not of the same color. The words alchemy and chemistry preserve in our own language this meaning of Ham or Cham. They literally mean the "black art," from Kemia, chem--black. They came to us through the Arabs from Egypt. That Ham in Hebrew means swarthy or darkish all linguists are agreed and, as we have before intimated, that in the early history of mankind names given men frequently indicated peculiar physical features possessed by those who bore them, we are therefore to conclude that Noah's second son was of a complexion darker than that of either the oldest or youngest son.

        Japheth, the name of the youngest son, was no doubt derived from Yaphah, which means "to be beautiful," hence fair, that complexion being thought the ideal of beauty among the ancients. But for the children to be of different colors, it is necessary that the parents be of different colors, and again their parents must have been of different colors, and so on back to the diversity of color between Adam and Eve.

        What was Eve's color? She could not have been red like Adam, otherwise their posterity would have all been red. If she were darker than red, or even Adam's color, their descendants, according to physiological law, would have been yet darker. If she was jet black, their children, by the same law, would have been a brown next to black. These results would have been as stated, provided their offspring had taken color after Adam, admitting Eve to have been red, brown or black, and thus, too, accounting for the yellow, brown,

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red and black races of those who hold that there are five distinct races of man. But how about the white race? It seems to have been left entirely out of the enumeration. There can be but one conclusion regarding it. If Adam was of a reddish color--as I think I have clearly shown him to have been--and Eve was of a color which was neither yellow, red, brown nor black, and as some of their posterity are a complexion different from either of these just named, and that complexion is the only one that she could possess, if we agree with Blumenback that there are but five races of men distinguished by their color, then we must conclude that Eve, the first woman, was white. The argument upon which this conclusion is founded is both scriptural and scientific, and from this basis, and none other, it proposes to declare a hitherto hidden truth. Having established the color of the first man by a draft on Scripture narrative, etymology and mental philosophy, I shall, in another chapter, establish the color of the first woman by the same means, perhaps using the argument of two or three affinitive sciences in addition thereto.--The Unity of the Human Race.

Color of the First Woman.

BY REV. J. F. DYSON, B. D.

        LET us first consider Gen. ii. 21-23, wherein Moses, Israel's great law-giver, gives the world the only trustworthy history it has of the creation of woman and the beginning of the world. "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And the man said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man."

        I attach more importance to the fact that woman was made out of man's rib than others do, yet no more than the fact deserves. If Adam was made out of red clay, which made his color red, it is unreasonable to believe that as Eve was made out a white rib she therefore

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naturally received her color from it, or received no color at all, if it be contended that white is no color. In all candor, is not this a more reasonable, a simpler theory than the unscriptural ones that are thrust into notice of the reading public? It puts an end to many theories heretofore advanced, and silences forever Ariel's bray, and brands his infamous assertion that the negro is a brute, a malicious falsehood; it withholds from the murderer Cain and a she ape in the land of Nod the ancestry of the black race; it shows that the color of Ham's descendants is not the result of Noah's cursing Canaan, by proving that the source of their color was in Eden. In a word, it turns a full light upon the Scripture declaration, "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth," traces it to its true source, and keeps to the text in contending with those who inadvertently overlook this truth, pervert, or willfully deny it. It does not require nearly as great a stretch of faith to believe that Eve took her color from the rib out of which she was created as to believe that she was created out of the rib; therefore let us bow at the shrine of reason and consistency. In proving the color of Adam I resorted to the etymology of his name. Does not the etymology of Eve's name also have reference to her color? Beyond a doubt it has. The word which we translate Eve is Chavvah in Hebrew, and means simply life, and no one who is familiar with Holy Writ will deny that life and immortality are symbolized by white, from the Pentateuch of Moses to the Apocalypse of John, and in human experience from Nimrod until now. Therefore Eve's color indicated that she was the "mother of all living," or the source of all living, as much as her name. In order for the woman to engage the attention of the man she must have been attractive. What color is more attractive than white? For her to claim his protection she must have had a delicate appearance. What color is more delicate than white? To draw upon his affection she must have been fair, or, in other words white; and I do not think it more poetic than truthful for me to say that Eve's color denoted virtue, the brightest gem in the diadem of her priceless womanhood, and the most glorious and most valuable legacy left by her to her posterity.

        It would be unwise for me to multiply these subsidiary arguments in support of the fact of Eve's color being white, which has been already made plain, for in doing so I would underrate the mental ability of the reader to grasp ordinary truth, and see by the clear light of analogy, illustration and reason.

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        Next we will consider the complexions of the descendants of father Adam and mother Eve. At once the important question is proposed: "If Eve was white and Adam was red, none of their immediate descendants could have been white or entirely black. Some of them must have approximated a white color, some a color medium between white and red, and others must have approximated Adam's color, or the colors must have graded from nearly, or quite red, up to nearly white, in several fine shades. Where then is the source of full white and full black people?" This question is not difficult of solution. In answering it I shall show, however paradoxical the proposition may seem, that it is easier to account for the black and white children from a red Adam and a white Eve than it is to account for yellow, red, brown and black children from a white Adam and a white Eve, white and yellow children from a red Adam and a red Eve, or white, yellow, red and brown children from a black Adam and black Eve.

        Knowing that there are different opinions as to the universality of the flood, I shall not insist that all human beings save Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives, perished therein. My agreeing with those who affirm or those who deny this theory would neither strengthen nor weaken my argument asserting the divergence of color in the first human pair, and per force of reason in their descendants whether they were roaming the tableland of Nod during the flood, or rocking in the Ark upon the billows above Shinar. I have often stated that Noah's three sons, saying nothing of his wife or his son's wives, differed in complexion. The names of two of them indicate this. Ham (Hebrew Cham) means swarthy. Japheth (Hebrew Yaphar) means fair or whitish. Between Ham's swarthy complexion and Japheth's fair complexion it is not unreasonable to believe Shem's auburn complexion had place.

        The Scriptures teach that Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years, but giving no account of his having any other children than those who survived the flood with him and his wife in the Ark. As the Scriptures are mute on this subject I shall be also. Not denying that Noah had other sons and daughters born unto him after the flood, but basing my theory of the re-peopling of the earth upon the fruitfulness of Shem, Ham and Japhet, and the fruitfulness of their children and their children's children, whose geographical distribution alone I shall notice.

        I assume as a matter of course that the white complexion did not

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exist after Eve's death until centuries after the confusion of tongues at Babel, and the dispersion of the three grand divisions of mankind thence "upon all the face of the earth," as the Hebrew has it, nor was the very black complexion known until the people distinguished thereby had subordinated themselves to the circumstances which produced it. To what do these statements lead? They lead to the inevitable conclusion that all the complexions except the white and black were the naturally direct result of the union of Adam's and Eve's complexions, but that these were produced by the "influences of the chemical solar rays, the altitude or depression of the general level, the difference of geological formations, the varying agencies of magnetism and electricity, as atmospheric peculiarities, miasmatic exhalations from vegetable and mineral matter, difference of soil, proximity to the ocean, variety of food, habits of life and exposure."

God's Problem for the South.

BY REV. A. L. PHILLIPS, TUSCALOOSA, ALA.

        GOD is the greatest of all problem makers. Neither nature nor metaphysics nor grace contains a single problem that is not his by origination and proposal. The mystery of the milky way or the doctrine of perception or the method of reconciliation between God and man are not human. Since no human mind has ever fully understood them, it is but just to infer that they are super-human in origin. When God sets a problem before the human mind he usually indicates general principles by which it is to be solved. He never ciphers out the details for any man. God told Moses to go lead his people out of Egypt. "Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." (Ex. iii. 10.) When Moses had insisted upon Jehovah's telling him something about the details of the work, he was at last asked, "What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. Cast it on the ground. He cast it on the ground and it became a serpent, and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said into Moses: Put forth thine hand and take it by the tail. And he put

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forth his hand and caught it and it became a rod in his hand; that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers hath appeared unto thee." (Ex. iv. 3-5.) Moses' problem was to lead out the people; his method of solution was to be miracles. Jesus stood in the midst of his disheartened disciples on the mount in Galilee, and gave them the greatest problem ever committed to human head, heart and hand. "Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." Such a problem had never been given to men in the past history of the church; it has not been modified one jot or one tittle since its first announcement. It was original, startling, overwhelming. It gave the world a new estimate of the power of the human soul, that it could embrace with loving solicitude the entire human family. The problem carried within its depths its own solution as a granite mass bearing its imbedded dynamite. The problem was Go: its solution lay in one word--preach. The problem is now before us. It is divine; so is its solution. The church must, and, by God's good grace, will work it out.

        In working it out, the church in the United States has some peculiar conditions to meet. It is better equipped in brains, in money, in spirituality than ever in its history. More people are easily accessible than ever before. Cries for the preached word come from every quarter of our own country and in tumultuous mobs beneath our windows alarm our sleeping consciences. Mute appeals of unnumbered millions of heathen call us irresistibly to their help. The Syro-Phoenician woman in the coasts of Tyre begs for crumbs from the spiritual feast that our Lord spreads before us. Poor Lazarus, outcast, sore-covered, dog-licked, lies at our door piteously pleading, "Give, or I die!" Let us attend to this cry from Lazarus for a little while. We'll not stop to speak of the Chinaman, for he is removed from us by law, nor the Indian, who is fast being removed by powder, rascality, and liquor. Our problem in the South is how to reach the negro with the gospel. It may be solved perhaps by first reaching the white man. For until his brain is cleared and his conscience aroused, very little can be done. What are the conditions of the problem? 1. Many millions of white and black people live in the same territory. 2. The whites once owned the blacks. 3. The whites are vastly in the majority, have infinitely more money, education and spirituality. 4. Against the will of the intelligent majority, the minority was freed. 5. By law both black and white are equal citizens of the same government. 6. Powerful influences

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have for years been at work causing ill-will between the two races. The question that we have to answer is, can these two races live in peace on the same soil as equal citizens of the same government? If so, how?

        What does history say about it? Before the general diffusion of Christianity when two alien races came into contact, one or the other was exterminated or enslaved. Rome and Carthage fought until it was written Delenda est Carthago. But what lesson do the records of nations since our Lord's ascension even down to the year 1891 teach us? An elaborate experiment was made in Spain. But the Moors were expelled in spite of their superior science and art. Spain and Portugal came into contact with the natives of Mexico and South America only to enslave and destroy them. The Puritan and the cavalier met the proud red man on his own soil and have killed him until only a small remnant remains to build the camp-fire and recall the deeds of ancient braves, with no hope for the future except his ration of blue beef and abuse. Slave and Hebrew, though not even of different races, cannot live together unless the Jew will submit to oppression nearly as galling as slavery. What says history? She says emphatically that the experiment that we are making in this country is a crime against humanity--that either slavery or death must be its end.

        What says the Constitution of the United States? Before the adoption of Article XIII. of the amendments of the Constitution abolishing slavery, its existence had been simply ignored by that immortal document. Perhaps no greater experiment in making laws has ever been attempted than the adoption of the last three amendments, making citizens out of slaves up to that time kept ignorant by law. Questions as to the wisdom of their enactment or perpetuation are purely theoretical. They are there, and nothing short of a revolution can remove them. What does the Constitution, our highest and most unchanging law, say about these two races living together? It simply says to all alike, "You shall live together in peace!" This may not be the voice of conscience, but it is the fiat of authority. The Constitution therefore says to us, say we yea or say we nay, "I know that history declares it can't be done, but my voice is louder and my arm is stronger than history. Let there be peace!" The Constitution sought to create peace and interject it between the discordant and warring elements of society. As loyal citizens of our land and as staunch defenders of the Constitution, we must obey the law.

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        What says the gospel of God? "As ye would that men should do to you do ye even so to them likewise." "Follow peace with all men." "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." We are perhaps too prone to apply these wholesome precepts to the lives of others, forgetting for the time their direct bearing upon our own consciences and lives. It is to no purpose that we say that we once did our religious duty to the negroes. Satifying reflections on our past performances may soothe us into present neglect. Energetic resolutions to do our duty in the future may be a subtly delusive way of calming the cryings of an urgent conscience to-day. A shifting of responsibility that God has laid, is impossible, for the only method of discharging responsibility to God is by doing the duties demanded.

        A condition of society exists to-day in the South the like of which has never before been seen. Ignorance and intelligence, poverty and plenty, have always existed side by side everywhere. But when in the history of the ages has a people who were never in bondage to any man, conferred on an alien race, once their slaves, the equal legal rights and privileges which they themselves have created and enjoy?

        When we have set aside all political considerations and social fears, we find that the essence of the whole matter lies in the question of, How shall two men, equal before the law, behave towards one another? History is eloquent with illustrations, and the Constitution speaks with the voice of authority. But to consider this question, neither history nor the Constitution is sufficient. For the Christian, there is but one code of morals, but one yard-stick for measuring this cloth, but one voice--and that of law and love united--that has inherently the power of solution. Political expedients are, at best, mere temporary aids. The law is useful as an educator, but it has no power of producing in its own subjects sympathetic obedience. We must have a solvent more permanent than party platforms, more powerful than all law. Something is needed to arouse the conscience, engage the heart, and direct intelligent effort. There are three persons concerned in this matter--the white man, the negro and Almighty God. The [white man knows his weakness, the negro is expectant, and, unless the Lord show the strength of his right arm, the pessimism taught us by history and aggravated by the demands of an unfailing law, will soon change to discord and open strife. A learned divine once said, "Unless the gospel solve this matter, then it will be bang! bang!" Says the apostle "I can

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do all things in him that strengtheneth (endynamites) me." What says the gospel? "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel." "For it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth"--"Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." So long as we walk in such light as that, there is no pessimism, not even a shade of doubt.

        Again, says this same gospel, 1 Thess. ii. 3, 4, For our exhortation is not of error nor of uncleanness, nor in guile; but even as we have been approved of God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak; not as pleasing men, but God, which proveth our hearts. That is, we were made by Christ, at his ascension, trustees of his Gospel, for the benefit of all mankind. Shall not this stir up our consciences? A trustee must be faithful. Have we, as individuals, or as a church of Jesus Christ, done our duty to the negroes? At the judgment seat of Christ it will be too late to attempt an answer. It is called to-day. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," said Jesus, "because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Man can have no higher duty, he can enjoy no more sanctifying privilege than to do the works and speak the words of God to men everywhere. Is there a finer field in our South-land for preaching Christ than is afforded by the negroes? Humble, bound by Satan in chains of lust, enslaved to sin, blinded by the god of this world, ignorant of the time of God's calling--among such, surely ought the gospel to be preached.

        The Southern Presbyterian Church is just entering upon the great evangelistic period of its history. For the coming of this time God has been patiently preparing us. He has endowed us with a pure doctrine and an adaptable polity. He has enlarged our borders. He has filled our barns with plenty. He has unstopped our ears to the cry of the heathen. He has opened our eyes to the destitution at home. He has been perfecting us by the sufferings of persecution, dissension and discord from within and from without. Uniform and unified we stand before him to-day. In his own hand-writing he gives us our ploblems. The great home-problem is how to evangelize our colored fellow-citizens, who are our friends and neighbors. Surely, God's people will not halt now. To halt will be to retreat. With heart and head and hand, intelligently, wisely, humbly, patiently,

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cheerfully, sympathetically, for God's own glory, let us now do our whole duty to the negro. Let North, East and West be patient and charitable, while aiding us to adapt the gospel to these hitherto untried conditions. Let all the people conscientiously introduce God into this mighty problem. It will soon be solved then, and, until then, never.

The Providence of God in the Historical Development of the Negro.

BY REV. A. F. BEARD, D. D.

        THE orginal condition of the Negro people was heathenism in Africa. Then came two and a half centuries of American slavery with the evils which it bred and fostered. In the dreadful discipline of slavery, there had yet been a great gain in condition over the estate of their ancestors. The race had ceased to be absolutely African; there remained few with wholly African blood.*

        * A Southern authority, in a careful work entitled: "The Resources and Population of South Carolina," published in 1883 with the State imprint, speaking of the Negro people uses the following words, viz. : "One-third has a large infusion of white blood. Another third has less, but still some; and of the other third it would be difficult to find an assured specimen of pure African blood. If the lineage of these Negroes whose color and features seem most unmistakably to mark them as of purely African descent be traced indisputable evidence may often be obtained of white parentage more or less remote."


Not only by the amalgam of race but in other ways, all had gained something from contact with civilization. Those who had lived in towns and cities had taken on certain of the blessings of civilization. The great majority who lived on remote plantations had nevertheless seen something of civilization. Mentally and morally children, their heathenism had been modified by living among white people. The speech of heathenism had been exchanged for the rudiments of the English tongue. Besides this they had learned needful lessons in their hard school of servitude. The spirit of obedience, the consequent reverence for law and respect for authority, in the providence of God, were preparations for the
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day of emancipation. While most of them imperfectly apprehended the meaning of a religion which meant character and conduct, yet nearly all had absorbed a sense of the government of God, which was strong and in some ways controlling. All this was progress in condition over the estate of their African ancestors; a great gain over naked barbarism. This was not the purpose of man, but it was in the providence of God.

        When Christian faith and love said this redeemed people must now be educated and helped into worthy Christian manhood and womanhood, this was another step in the movement of divine providence.

        When the race history began, it began at zero. Four millions of people had existed, but as yet there could be no history. That there may be history, there must be legal marriage, family name, continuity of family life, and possession of property. The Negro had none of these.

        A score and a half years have passed and the Negroes number seven millions of people. Two millions have learned to read. Many have pushed on beyond elementary education, and a small percentage have made attainments which are prophetic of power and position for the race in the times to come.

        While it is true that those who cannot read to-day are in excess of the original four millions when they were set free, and that the Negro left to himself has even degenerated from the Negro of slavery, it is also true that a single generation has witnessed in the life of hundreds of thousands a wonderful evolution in manhood and womanhood. The growth of the race in honorable self-hood has been for such, like the story of Narcissus in the myths of the ancients. Narcissus, you remember, had fallen from the knowledge of his high birthright as a descendant of the gods, and was living low down unmindful of his high origin. But one day at the water side for the first time he saw his own image reflected back to him as from a mirror. It was not a clear vision, but to him it was a revelation. He saw that he was not like the brutes. He felt that he ought to be more than he was. His thoughts within him were stirred. The sense of his high origin and birthright slowly came to him. One thought quickened another, and he found himself rising to his thought until he felt the fire of his divinity. He grew in his purpose toward that which he held in his mind. He cast aside what was low, and he resolutely left all that pulled him down. Thus leaving the things that were behind, he pressed forward, and so

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became transformed in thought, in character and in life, passing from achievement to permanent possession, until the glory of the gods was his, and he took his place among them.

        Thousands upon thousands of the Negro people have had this vision and revelation. The idea of self-hood, and the reaching forth to it, in a single generation of the Negro race has been a wonderful prophecy of possibility in the significance and quality and nobility of life. This is seen to be the master key to unlock the door of caste and hindrance for their entrance to the rights of manhood and womanhood, and to the dignities of life. This is the power that is to settle at last the standing and the recognition of race. This is a gain greater than that which can be tabulated in statistics.

        This is the highest achievement of this generation of the Negro race. It means a people who are capable of storing strength and character. It means the uplift of race life.*

        * When the race history began there was not a school for the Negro; there are now more than 25,000 schools.

        Then there was not a Negro pupil; now there are enrolled 1,309,251 pupils in schools.

        Then the number of Negro people who could read "were not worth the counting;" now 2,000,000 people have learned to read since 1865.

        But elementary education is not all. There are 25 colleges, 8,396 professors and students; there are 25 schools of theology with 755 students; there are 5 schools of law, and 5 schools of medicine.

        Where a Negro teacher would have been a subject for jest and also of arrest, there are now 20,000 such teachers in common schools.

        Where their churches had the ministry of ignorant and immoral preachers these are being displaced by those who are intelligent and worthy. Purer churches are being organized. We sometimes think the progress is slow. It is no slower than Christianity is.

        The Negro who possessed nothing is acquiring property. The estimate of taxable property gained since emancipation for 7,000,000 of people is 264,000,000 of dollars.


        We are not to conclude, however, that a true and living progress of the race is to come easily or in a short period of time.

        The fact that millions are in degradation and are not getting out of it, and that more children are growing up in ignorance than are being educated, is one of gravity, and must excite concern. It will trouble future generations more than it does the present one. It must not only qualify the progress of those who would rise, but it must also make the question of white and black people living side by side in peace and in respect for civil and Christian rights more difficult of solution, and more uncertain in respect to time.

        We may expect no little trouble in such conditions. The alienation between the white and black people will be likely to widen and

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deepen. True peace and cordial relations depend upon conditions which as yet exist but in very small degree.

        The moral evolution of mankind is a very slow process. The development of purity of mind and heart is a long way from perfection yet, in peoples most powerfully affected by Christianity. The development of conscience so that it shall rule the life of man has not been such as to make the best communities unduly elated. The development of civil society which depends upon the development of man, upon the expansion of his mind and the regulation of his moral nature, is slow even when the hindrances are fewer than the helps.

        Consider now a people among whom chastity was an almost unknown virtue, among whom superstition overlaid conscience, among whom conscience was in the alphabet of development, among whom the first principles of civil society and duties were never thought of, and he would be unreasonable who should even in favorable environments expect any permanent progress which shall come in other than in long and patient years. Then remember that for the most part the environments are not favorable. There is the prejudice of race to be overcome--prejudice which lives cruelly and dies slowly.

        The Negro people have not to make their first acquaintance with oppression and injustice, and no one can tell when they and their wrongs will part company. It will be a long time before the Negro race will have even-handed justice. The race will be tolerated, perhaps, and some Christian souls will cherish friendliness and give helpfulness. But to most the Negro will be a social and political burden. He will be discriminated against. If recent events in the South teach anything the negro may not expect his civil rights and perhaps not the protection of equal laws for many a year. We may hope for gradual amelioration with gradual education. We may hope that brute force and violence and personal cruelties will not long continue, but we have no reason to expect that the time of discipline is nearly over. This people are to remain a separate race, who cannot be absorbed with the people by the side of whom they are to live, and yet to live without a separate national existence--always in the minority--always the weaker among the stronger. Here, on the same soil the struggle of life must go on, are two races--the juxta-position of two nationalities--that differ in physical externals, in distinctive characteristics and in sympathies; the weaker condemned to the discouragements which grow out of their weakness, and with no alternative but the generosity of the stronger when any conflict

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of interest may arise. Until Christ shall possess the hearts of men as he does not yet, it requires no prophet to tell us that the history in many respects must be sad, and it may be fearful. There are difficult facts to meet when we consider the development of this race.

        What shall we say as to the providence of God in this history?

        Let us get our bearings. For the sake of comparison suppose we recall the history of the development of some other peoples during this period of two hundred and fifty years, peoples who were civilized when the first shipload of slaves landed in Virginia.

        Our Anglo-Saxon people. It has not been always a sunny day and an excursion of pleasure in the forward movements of our own race. During this same period of time more people in England have lost their lives in their struggles to come where they now are, than have perished in this land through slavery. Not to mention ruder days, two hundred and fifty years past have witnessed stormy times in old England. The dethronement and beheading of a king, bloody wars under Cromwell, persecutions for opinions' sake; imprisonments and executions in the restored monarchy; insurrections in Scotland, conspiracies in Ireland, massacres in all three islands, and that on a large scale. How people suffered for their opinions! How property was taken from them! How families were exiled and scattered! It is a crimson history.

        If we take France, e.g., in the same period, there are the Hugenot persecutions, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and its attendant horrors, St. Bartholomew's day and its murders, and for centuries men hunted down like beasts and driven from their country to keep their lives; the French Revolution; the Reign of Terror; the Goddess of Reason and the Scourge of Unreason. Germany with its continuous wars poured blood of men on the soil like water.

        All this and more in many lands became history while the Negro was in the tobacco plantations and in the cotton fields. There is in the lesson of history certainly no ground for discouragement for the Negro people in the fact that struggle means struggle, and that struggling up means time, a long time. Said the apostle, "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together, until now." This is what other peoples have been doing all the ages "until now." The stages of advancement and attainment in the history of peoples are, if you please to call them so, the evolutions in these processes God's providence. The kingdom of truth, of order, of reason, of justice and, finally and supremely, of love,

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that is, the kingdom of God comes in these processes; in and through the conflicts of human thought and the struggles of human will not only, but most often by means of them. The philosophy of the history which records the movement of men's minds through darkness into light, through obstacles and painful transformations, over oppositions and adversaries, the errors and the evils, the discordances and distractions are all in evidence that these very conditions in the providence of God, furnished not only the occasions, but the reasons and methods for growth out of weakness into strength, for the expansion of intelligence, for better laws, for better and larger life. History is full of movements which themselves were big with injustice, and from which were painfully envolved the very arguments to overcome them, and to deliver the people from their evils. The progress of mankind has thus been through storms and against head winds. The course has seldom been a straight one as men planned, but a crooked one as men made it, like a ship beating its way against hard and furious weather. When the evils in one form had come to be at last too grevious to be borne, then under the impulsion of necessity there is a new course of thought and action, and the ship tacks about. She does not point to the goal always but there is a gain in the stretch. The movement is zig-zag, and often apparently away from what is desired, but the resultant of these movements is progress toward the final good. From every century and every race comes this same story. It is this, the law of struggle is the law of life, a severe law, but in the providence of God, and in the long run the law through which comes all human achievement and progress. The peoples who are welded are welded in the fire.

        Now the Negro people will prove to be no exception to this law, unless they are always to be a subject class. If in their hard conditions God has some better things for them they cannot get this in an easy way nor in a short time. They are taking now their first step in their historic life as a people. No people ever got as far as their advanced guard has, more easily or more rapidly.

        If now under the dispensations of God's providences these who have moved up from the lowland to highland look back into the bogs to see millions of people there with little movement to better life and get discouraged, or if they see the difficulties and dangers, the inevitable hostility to which they are subjected, and get apprehensive, we can say to these, other people have been through floods and under the waters. Governments and institutions and races are but human nature

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on a great scale, and what the word of the Lord says to persons is true for aggregations of persons, "Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you." It must needs be that peoples which have not been through the fiery ordeal, which is God's school of development for the accumulated strength of trial, must remain in weakness. The accumulated strength of a patient overcoming on the part of a soul or on the part of a people, is a permanent possession, and in the end is worth all the cost. Ideas that have been wrought in by pain and wrought out by patience are those which are permanent. The working and the waiting, the injustice and reactions to the confirmations of justice, the wandering in the wilderness on the way to the promised land, and the dying without the sight of it; the violence of opposers as well as the hand of Christian sympathy, the hostility of caste as well as brotherly kindness, these are all in the process. This discipline, development, evolution, all in the end make for the regeneration of the generations. If the process is hard, it is yet a process in the providence of God, and it prevents weakness. No people who have a history have been exempt. All have found in this way their inheritances. If this stumbles you, does it stumble you any more than the fact of sin in the world?

        Again, if the missionary, or the philanthropist, or patriot, is likely to be discouraged or disheartened because that which will surely take many generations is not secured in one generation, he may call to mind the fact that the providence of God is a continuous providence, and as the great historian of France says, "its logic is not the less conclusive for reasoning slowly." As Christians we may not forget that the first fact of history is sovereignty of God. Men may oppose this, and suffer and cause others to suffer, but they cannot hinder it. The Omnipotent will is ceaselessly working. It has neither change of purpose nor repose. Every detail of history, every attempt to hinder and destroy that which God has purposed, works on and all work together in combination and dependency until God's clock of time shall strike the hour of his providence.

        Very truly did Ex-Governor Bullock, of Georgia, recently testify as to the present avowed purpose in our Congress to practically annul the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to our Constitution, which confirm to white and black alike the rights of freedmen and the privileges of citizenship, in saying, "this is not only unpatriotic, but for our section is bad politics." Yes it is, and it is one more of

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those false movements intended to reverse the providence of God and to secure the will of man, but which always turn out for the furtherance of the divine purposes. The brethren of Joseph took counsel together to hinder the purposes of God. The stronger sold the weaker a slave in another land. But as time moved on, these sinners and brothers must needs go "way down into Egypt land." Then conscience extorted the confession from them, "We have verily been guilty concerning our brother." The one whom they proposed to degrade in servitude God had highly exalted. "Ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good." Man is free, but God rules.

        What God in his purposes may have in store for the people whom his providence brought from the jungles of Africa, and whom his providence prepared for the emancipation which he himself ordained and brought to pass, we cannot know until his providence shall have ripened. But this we have learned, that God has overturned the purposes of man. When men proposed to make the chains stronger, God snapped them. Enough already has been concluded to give us a pledge of God's purpose that he intends this people to be at least really and truly free, and to have their opportunity for manhood and womanhood. That which has been settled in heaven will not be unsettled on earth. Prividence takes no step backward. The chariot wheels of God turn only one way. On man's part possession may wait, must wait upon preparedness. The fullest manhood, the truest brotherhood, the best life, is not a gift which one may take and say, "I have it." It is a salvation which one must needs work out with fear and with trembling, as God works it in. As to time, this salvation of a people will move on with the movement of Christianity and Christian faith in our land.

        Finally, we who are working together with God are engaged in that which is assured. There is no uncertainty as to the result. The prayers of good men and good women, the schools and the teachers, the churches and the preachers, the forces that make for righteousness, the promises of God for the accomplishment of his purposes among men, "the stars in their courses," will bring forth judgment unto truth. There may be oppositions, hindrances, and what are to us discouraging delays, but he who came "to bring forth judgment unto truth will not fail, nor be discouraged." And when God shall explain his providences and justify his ways to man, it shall be seen that human history is something more than the fact

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that men can choose, and that one event thus follows another coming and going, but that while they choose there is One who both governs and judges. To the degree that we believe this we shall be faithful and we need not fear.

        Whatever happens on the way to this day of God, it is for us to labor on, confident in his redeeming grace, in the certainty of his holy government, in the pledge of his omniscience, in the help of his omnipotence, and in the amen of his accomplishments.

The Possibilities of the Negro.

BY THE LATE SENATOR LOGAN.

        Extracts from His Washington City Address in the A. M. E. Church.

        AFTER dwelling at length upon the marvelous progress of the colored race in the United States, he then pointed out the negro's faults:

        If there is any one thing that will clog the wheels of your material progress it is the fact that some of you try to overreach yourselves. Do not become dazzled at the splendor and magnificence of those who had hundreds of years to make this country what it is today. No man is a success who has not a fixed object as a sign-post--an aim in life to attain unto. A man should get that kind and that amount of education that will best fit him for the performance and the attainment of his object in life. Too much Greek will do you no good; what does a man want with Greek around a table with a white apron on? I do not say that you should not study Greek if you intend to fill a chair in some institution of learning; I do not say that you should not read medicine if you desire to become a physician, or law if you wish to follow that profession. But I tell you our white people are fast growing indolent and lazy. If you watch your chances and take timely advantage of the opportunities offered you, your race will be the wage workers, the skilled artisans, and eventually the land owners and the wealthy class of this country. I advise you to learn trades; learn to become mechanics. You have the ability and capacity to reach the highest point, and even go further in the march of progress than has yet been made by any people.

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        I predict that the time will come and it is not far off when we will have a negro poet from the South. He will set the magnificent splendor of the "Sunny South" to music. His muse will touch the lyre and you will hear the sweet murmur of the stream, the rippling waters, and we shall see the beauty of that country as it was never seen before. It will come; and after him other still greater men. But it takes labor to become a great man just as it takes centuries to make a great nation. Great men are not fashioned in heaven and thrown from the hand of the Almighty to become potentates here on earth, nor are they born rich. I admit that there is, in some parts of this country, a prejudice against you on account of your color and former condition. In my opinion the best way to overcome this is to show your capability of doing everything that a white man does, and do it just as well or better than he does. If a white man scorns you, show him that you are too high-bred, too noble-hearted to take notice of it; and the first opportunity you have do him a favor, and I warrant you he will feel ashamed of himself and never again will he make an exhibition of his prejudice. The future is yours and you have it in which to rise to the heights or descend to the depths.

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A BLACK MOSES.

BY THADEUS EDGAR HORTON.

        BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER, of the A. M. E. Church, who has stood for many years as one of the foremost representatives of the negro race in this country, has attracted attention of late by his advocacy of the return of the black man to his native land. His published views on this subject have been extensively discussed, and because of the bishop's prominence and his reputation as a student of the Afro-American problem, have had great weight attached to them.

        The bishop is himself an interesting personality. He was born in Newberry, S. C., in 1834. His parents were free, but while a boy he was "bound out" to a slave owner and worked side by side with slaves in the fields until his fifteenth year. Then, tiring of the hard labor and ill treatment, and with restless longings for something higher than the farm hand's fate, he ran away from his master and entered the service of a firm of attorneys in Abberville, S. C., where John C. Calhoun once practiced law. His employers, attracted by his aptitude, especially in spelling, taught him the elementary English branches, and in the intervals of his duties as office boy he read law, often pouring over his books late at night, when his "bosses" had gone home.

        At twenty years of age young Turner became a liscensed minister of the M. E. Church, South. After a few years of itinerant service, during