Chapter II: Part 2

THE FREEDMEN.—For Church and Educational Work $130,929.82
THE CHINESE.—Supt., Teachers and School Expenses 8,020.35
THE INDIANS.—Missionaries and Teachers and
Student Aid 1,953.32
FOREIGN MISSIONS.—Mendi Mission 11,802.78
Jamaica Mission 450.00
————————— 12,252.78
PUBLICATIONS.—American Missionary, Annual
Report, &c. 9,063.30
COST OF COLLECTING FUNDS.—Boston Office 5,586.66
Chicago Office 3,612.47
Other Agencies 4,193.56
—————————— 13,392.69
COST OF ADMINISTRATION.—
Department of Correspondence 6,401.54
Department of Treasury 4,127.73
—————————— 10,529.27
MISCELLANEOUS.—Estates and Legacies 99.11
Annual Meeting 1,023.96
Amounts paid Annuitants—balance 852.67
Donations returned 54.92
—————————— 2,030.66
——————————
188,172.19
Balance on hand, Sept. 30, 1880 783.73
——————————
188,955.92
==========
STONE FUND.—Amount received from Mrs. Valeria
G. Stone at the hands of Trustees $150,000.00
ARTHINGTON MISSION.—Donations received
from Oct. 1st to Sept. 30th, 6,576.48
AVERY FUND.—Amount received from Executor 408.92

* * * * *

The receipts of Berea College, Hampton N. and A. Institute, and Atlanta University, are added below, as presenting at one view the contributions of the same constituency for the general work in which the Association is engaged.

Receipts of the A. M. A. $187,480.02
Hampton N. & A. Inst. 57,014.73
Atlanta University, State Appropriation 8,000.00
Berea College 37,607.06
—————————————$290,101.81

* * * * *

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE AND ENLARGEMENT.

Your Committee on Finance and Enlargement, to whom was referred the financial exhibit of the Association for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 1880, as presented by the Treasurer, beg leave to report that they have examined the accounts and found them duly audited. These accounts include a minute and detailed statement of receipts and expenditures, a list of the endowments, and also a full account of the property owned by the Association, and were accompanied by the account books of the Treasurer.

We are unanimous in vouching for the faithfulness and economy which characterize all branches of the financial administration. Nor can we refrain from a word of most emphatic commendation of the thorough explicitness of the Association’s financial statement.

But passing from this to the substance of the Report, we notice three points suggested by it which seem to call for special mention.

In the first place, it is ground for gratitude and thanksgiving that the year closes without leaving us burdened with a debt. On the contrary, there is a balance in the treasury of nearly eight hundred dollars. Not a very large surplus, surely, but the fact that the year’s work has been done and left us anything besides a disheartening deficiency, is itself occasion for thankfulness and cheer.

In the second place, there is ground for anxiety, lest the financial condition of the Association should be misunderstood. It is well known that a gift of $150,000 has recently come into its treasury. This fact, it is to be feared, has given, or may give, the impression that the Association is, for the present at least, in no further need of funds. We have already heard of one generous friend who has withheld an intended gift through such an entire misapprehension. And lest others should be similarly misled, it seems to us important not only to state, but to emphasize the fact, that this large gift _brings no relief whatever to the usual wants of the Association_. It is not designed to do the work which the Association is doing. This money is wholly appropriated to the erection of new buildings for the increasing numbers of colored students. It is to do nothing whatever towards meeting the ordinary expenses of the Association’s work; nothing whatever towards diminishing the necessity of aid which the Association is compelled to seek from the Christian and the philanthropist. It cannot be too clearly seen or too widely known, that so far as any augmented power for doing its proper work is concerned, the Association is not one whit better off for this gift of $150,000 than it would be if not a dollar of it had been given. But,

In the third place, this gift is itself a trumpet call for the enlargement of the Association’s resources and work. It is simply to erect new buildings for Fisk and Atlanta, at Talladega, New Orleans and Tougaloo. These buildings will soon be filled with students. That means the necessity for more teachers and more pecuniary aid to those who need it. It means increased work for the Association, and the necessity of increased funds with which to do the work. In one word, it means _expansion_, _enlargement_. God, Himself, is opening before us new furrows in hitherto untilled fields. That is His own call upon us for more seed-corn, and more labor for the enlarging harvest. He is building for us new homes for the development of mental culture and Christian character among the colored people of the South. Each one of these is a Divine summons for such co-operation on our part as is necessary for the best accomplishment of His designs.

In conclusion, therefore, your Committee respectfully suggest the adoption of the following resolution:

“_Resolved_, While most gratefully acknowledging the prosperity that has crowned our work through another year, we recognize and accept that prosperity as itself a call from God for still larger and more earnest work.”

W. H. WILLCOX, _Chairman_.

* * * * *

WHY WE SHOULD ENLARGE.

REV. L. T. CHAMBERLAIN, D.D., NORWICH, CONN.

I have been invited to the privilege of additionally sustaining the report of your Committee in their recommendation of an enlargement of the work of this Association; and, as a member of that Committee, I may say that we could not possibly have reported otherwise than we did. I could not have read the record of this last year, and have seen its events as our honored Secretary has presented them, without feeling that the movement must be toward an increase in every department.

Sir, you were entirely right in drawing your inspiration in part from the wonderful past. I, too, have recalled the years gone by, and they seem to say, as with one voice, that the time has come for the yet greater effort. My brethren, what a history sweeps back from this thirty-fourth anniversary, to the day when, in this same Commonwealth, the Amistad captives were bravely released, and an additional impulse was given to the anti-slavery sentiment of the participants! At that hour, the men who afterwards founded this Association, looked out on a tumultuous sea of discouragements. Themselves only a handful; the press absolutely unfriendly; the market-place contemptuous; the State frowning; the Church in general incredulous and silent; scarcely anything anywhere that did not wear a hostile front. And then, at last, one missionary commissioned and one teacher sent out; one paper persuaded into partial support; a few dollars given into the treasury; and a few steadfast souls pledging themselves to maintain the cause. But, to-day, what a different record! A great, honored organization, with an annual income approaching the fifth of a million; three hundred and thirty ministers, missionaries and teachers; seventy-six mission, and yet, for the most part, self-sustaining churches; more than five thousand intelligent church members, and nearly ten thousand pupils in the Sunday-schools; seventy-one common schools, normal schools, colleges and theological seminaries, with more than ten thousand eager and advancing students. An organization that takes effective hold on four millions of Freedmen, and then enlarges its bounds to take in the resident and emigrant Chinese, and the tribes of original Indians. An organization able to inspire the churches with missionary zeal, and making even our national Government respect its requests and its advice.

What a review is that, and almost within the space of a single generation. The success that has already been accomplished is reason why, at the very outset, we may call you to a hopeful and an enlarged interest in this work; for history is telling us to-day, if she tells us anything, that it is not a hopeless thing to attempt to provide efficiently for all the despised of our land. And, let me say, I should not hesitate to make that hopeful appeal, if there were no such glowing record to present. I would not change the tone of it, though the years rolled back, and you and I stood to-day where those men stood thirty and four years ago; for Christ has said, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” and has said distinctly that our neighbors are pre-eminently those who have fallen among thieves and are lying wounded by the way. That simple command is enough to assure us that our labor shall not be in vain. You and I know whom we have believed, and we know that whatever He commands is commanded in infinite wisdom and infinite love. We know that what He says we are to do, it is possible to do, and that in some way it shall be done. The stars in their courses, and earth, and hell, may fight against Christ, but sooner or later He is to reign.

Therefore, when the Master calls us, his requirement is enough to warrant us in our advance. On that simple requirement, backed by, and reflected in, the impulse of every regenerate soul, you may ground your missionary motive. That is the corner-stone on which, with abiding cheer and infinite courage, the missionary, and every friend of missions, may build forever. Therefore, while we have this firm foundation, and all the more that we have it, it is for us to note the actual progress that has been made. While we recur to these absolute considerations, let us not, through any attempt at unnecessary heroism, forget the fulfillment that has already been vouchsafed to the promise and to the command of Christ.

And now that I am speaking of motives, let me say that I cannot conceal my feeling that, with special and peculiarly appealing considerations, God is binding upon us the work for the so-called alien races of this country. Let me illustrate. Here, for example, are four millions of _Freedmen_—strange designation for the inhabitants of a Republic that has already celebrated its centennial! Suppose that a stranger to our history should ask us the meaning of it, what must be our confession? Why this, and nothing else: that the ancestors of those Freedmen, by fraud, and violence were wrested from their distant and native land; that for two centuries they were held in sheer and open bondage; that they were denied the commonest rights of humanity; bought and sold like beasts of the field; debarred from the privileges of education and true Christian instruction; that, while their toil went to build the colleges and schools and churches of the dominant race, they were left without any reward but the desolation of their bondage; that, when they piteously plead, their appeal was met with derision; that, when they respectfully protested, the protest was crushed back with blows and curses; that when they ventured to resist, the resistance was answered unto death, with lashes and bullets and the fangs of pursuing hounds; that manhood was deliberately degraded among them; womanhood was well-nigh obliterated; truthfulness was made dangerous for them, and chastity absolutely impossible; and then at last, that to keep them in such a bondage, the whole power of the National Government was pledged and put forth; that, by Constitution interpreted and special laws enacted, by military might and civic decree, by private volition and public compulsion, it came to pass that there was not one spot of safety for them in all the land over which floated the flag of their country; that, in their effort to escape from their bondage, not a single door might lawfully be opened to them, nor any hearth-stone give them shelter; but, taking the pole-star for their guide, they must flee from the Republic to the land of a king or queen.

Pardon me that I have opened the record. I confess it makes me sick at heart. With you I wish it had never been enacted; with you I wish it might be buried to-day in the deepest depths of oblivion. But I tell you, when we stand, as we do practically to-day, in the face of those men, and in the face of God who made us and them of one image and of one blood, we have no right to forget that guilty past. It is one of the mighty motives that are still to be invoked in their behalf. Like the blood of Abel, it cries to us for atonement. It says to us to-day, “In your nation, aided and abetted by you or your fathers, under your flag, that wrong was inflicted; and until that wrong is thoroughly righted, neither the remembrance nor the cry can be allowed to pass.” It says that you owe them every reparation in your power; that they have a valid lien on every dollar of your property, and on every possible degree of your culture. It is not enough that you have made them free—to have denied that would have been to perpetuate the wrong itself. It is not enough that you have given them the franchise—that in itself were a barren gift. Give them the rather that manhood that was their birth-right withheld. Lift them up, if you can, into truthfulness and purity, intelligence and industry; make them free with the freedom of the Gospel of Christ, and then that past may be forgotten.

And brethren, I make an appeal of that same sort to-day for the Indian and the Chinese;—the Indian, abused, deceived, made a fool of; a nominally Christian civilization degrading him beyond even his original degradation. And the Chinese, in that part of the land where they have chosen to dwell, despised, defrauded, spit upon. My claim is that whatever appeal you propose to disregard, it is not becoming for you to turn a deaf ear to those whom you have so foully wronged.

Moreover,—and I beg you to ponder this also,—you owe a debt of gratitude, in the case of the Freedmen at least,—with whom this Association is chiefly concerned,—that has not yet been discharged. And now, is it imagined that I am speaking of something far-fetched and fanciful? Does any body suppose that I am about to summon you by a visionary and distant appeal? Or, if anyone guess wherein it is claimed that that debt consists, is it supposed that time has made that claim no longer valid? Some may so reflect; I cannot share the feeling, for I cannot so easily forget the days and the months when the scales of our national destiny hung in equipoise, or seemed to vibrate towards the nation’s overthrow. It seems incredible, I know, but such was the fact. We had put forth what appeared to us well-nigh the last resource for the national defense; on every side the prospect was dark; it seemed sometimes as if we should be driven to question whether we were not doomed to overthrow—the heavens black above us, the billows rolling, and the very earth beneath our feet trembling and being moved. For the enemy smote us in the field and the traitor betrayed us at home. And you remember with what unspeakable thankfulness we then saw those who had suffered so much at the nation’s hands coming to our rescue, forgetting their personal wrongs, and fighting for the flag that had hitherto been to them an object of dread. You remember with what eagerness we offered them at last their freedom, lest the enemy should offer it to them before us. Why, what were we not willing to pledge, and to do, for the Freedmen in those days? We felt that they were helping us to save this Republic, and that the balance of power was in their hands; and did we mistake? Does history say that in the excitement we misread the facts? No, the after events proved the correctness of our thought; and it stands written in simple, imperishable lines to-day, that among the saviors of the country, there were none more deserving than those of darker skin, who forgot their wrongs and stood in the breach for you and me.

* * * * *

And so it comes to pass that, not only in obedience to the command of Christ but by _the threefold consideration_ of _repairing a wrong_, and _paying a debt_, and _averting a danger_, we are called to the continuance and the enlargement of the work of this Association.

I have suggested two lines of action, parallel and coincident; the one educational, and the other strictly religious. I want to say to you now, that the inspiration for those movements must come in large measure from the Christian North; for, if you ask the South to be wholly responsible for her own improvement, then you ask reformation to precede itself, and a disordered and perverse sentiment to be its own awakener and its own corrective. Should you suppose that a nation of Freedmen, after two centuries of bondage, would have the sufficient desire for improvement, not to say the means adequate for its accomplishment? I deem it to be perfectly clear that this Association is right in thinking that one great part of its work is in laying the foundations, and affording the facilities, for increased instruction among the Freedmen. It is undoubted good sense, I take it, to establish here and there a common school, and here and there a normal school, and a moderate number of colleges, to the end that in them, during this formative period of the Freedman’s life, you may train his future teachers,—not attempting to make the way of mental improvement over-easy; not attempting any pampering plan of encouragement; but simply affording opportunity to those who will struggle and practice self-denial. God bless the institutions at Hampton, and Carlisle, and Berea, and Nashville, and Atlanta, and Talladega, and New Orleans, and Tougaloo, and that institution that has the good fortune, sir, to have you for its presiding officer (Howard University). For, do you know it? the former students of those very institutions are to-day teaching one hundred thousand of their own countrymen.

And then the religious work, the saving of souls—what a call for enlargement in that work! for that underlies even the educational work. Every teacher I know is an ardent and an earnest worker for Christ, and all your attempt is to make the way to education, the way to the cross of Christ; but, besides that, there is the preaching of the Gospel, and the gathering of churches, and the opening of Sunday-schools. I used to wonder why you asked us to preach to the Freedmen. Were they not already religious? Were they not gathered in churches? But I came to know the terrible fact that religion among the Freedmen, was not the religion of the understanding mind and the consecrated heart, but, rather, in the olden time, of uninstructed impulse and uncontrollable passion; and to-day the prevailing testimony concerning those old-time churches is, that in them religion is not founded on a regenerate, or even a moral, life.

What a task then, to lift up those millions—more difficult, I sometimes think, than the conversion of the original heathen! And yet it must be done—done for the sake of the souls who else will perish in their sins; done for the sake of this country that we love; done, first and last and always, by thoroughly Christian instrumentalities; and yet done under motives that take hold on the concerns of our national welfare. Therefore, my friends, count all the past progress in this direction only the signal and the token of your future success and triumph. If to-day the doors are opened wide, let us, in the Master’s name, go up and possess this land for Him, and for the future of our united and Christian Republic.

So much for this land. And what shall I say of Africa, that dark continent beyond the seas? I think of Africa, and the longing burns in my soul, that out of the uplifted negroes there may speedily be trained those who shall carry Divine light into the very depths of her darkness. Is not Africa actually reaching out her hands to this Association, and to us who have in our care so many of her children? You say, ‘the last to be enlightened.’ I grant it; but, I assure you, God has a great future for that continent. Who shall say that there, there will not yet be developed a civilization and a manifestation of Christianity, the most bountiful, the most beautiful, of them all?

Ah, my friends, the cry comes to us not merely from Africa! This call for enlargement is wider still; it is from the four quarters of the globe. For the work is all one; and you will find, if you think of it, that the solidarity of the race, the oneness of the kingdom of Christ, is in the appeal that is made through this Association. The considerations of an illimitable future join with those of the present. The new heavens and the new earth await our preparation for their advent. Christ, in His kingly glory, is summoning us to the conflict and the conquest. Let us advance in His name. With unlimited devotion let us give, let us pray, let us work. For once hath God spoken, yea, twice have I heard it, to God belongs the power, even as to Him shall be the glory forever.

* * * * *

SACRIFICIAL LIVING AND GIVING.

REV. AUGUSTUS F. BEARD, D.D., SYRACUSE, N. Y.

The kingdom of Heaven, in its ways, has many similitudes in the kingdom of nature. The law of the universe is, the giving of the lower for the sake of the higher. The worlds are built on the principle of sacrifice. At the bottom of the scale, we have, for example, lifeless matter. But this is put under contribution to force, and simple matter is organized into systems. And this giving comes under a law; we call it gravitation. Then this in turn comes under contribution to what is called a law of chemical affinity, and matter is diversified, and enters into many combinations in advance of what was. The forces, of which light and heat, electricity and magnetism, are different forms, also expend themselves. Then there is a step up by the contribution of what was, to this end, and we have the first organic process, vegetable life and its forces. The soil under these influences gives vegetable life, giving up a part of itself for a higher end. The vegetable, in turn, gives itself for the animal, and the human soul finds these all in sacrificial contribution to itself, every one giving for that which is higher, to lead up to the highest. Nature is packed through and through with illustrations of this. Thus the worlds are built upon this law. By the law of sacrifice, the lower rises into that which is higher. So Christ taught us it is, and is to be, in the realm of the soul. He taught us by word, by deed, by example, that sacrifice is not only the highest, the most satisfying, the most exhaustive expression of love, but is God’s way for man to reach up to God. It was the climax of this law that found expression in the gift of Christ, and we but follow God’s law in Christ’s way, when we are ready to sacrifice lower good for higher good, to bring into contribution lesser things for greater things. And life rises to its highest when it is sacrificial in its self-abnegations; in its renunciations, when souls are uplifted into heroic sufferings and self denials. In wives for husbands, in husbands for wives, in parents for children, in patriotic soldiers, in Christian philanthropists. Men who incarnate their love in sacrifice rise by their giving. They reach to nobleness upon the “stepping-stone of their dead selves.” They put off earthiness and put on heavenliness. It is God’s law from lowest to highest. That which thou sowest is not quickened except it _die_. To give is to live.

So we come to the Christian’s highest doctrine. It is that of the cross. We sing “In the cross of Christ we glory.” We accept it as the chief doctrine of our religion. We see the grandest exhibition of it when Christ gave himself for the sake of a greater good than could be if he did not give himself; and we teach that it is the personal reception of this which is _the_ mark of one who has a right to wear the name of Christ. To this doctrine the churches hold. Christians subscribe to it. We stoutly contend for it.

But now for our interpretations of this doctrine. When the exigencies of the world and the demands of a spreading Gospel call for willing hearts, to what degree do we find the principle in cordial and worthy practice? How many are the reasons for self indulgence! How ready to hide out of sight the great central doctrine when appeals come for its practical application! How arrangements are made in churches to cajole out of Christians what they will not give on principle! Who does not know many a church that squeezes out its charities,—if not a good part of its miserable support,—by fairs and festivals, by some wretched subterfuge in which one shall seem to get value received and make no sacrifice, to replenish its exchequer by tricks which appeal to no Christian principle. And how often churches come before the world, which they should be dying to save, as objects themselves of the world’s charities, dying to be saved. That which is ordained to be a dispenser of Christ-like benevolence and to develop the spirit of sacrifice, cannot rise into anything higher if it ignores the _only law by which it can rise_. The call for enlargement is the call for sacrifice. It is a call that religion shall not alone be a theory to be preached, but a life to be manifested.

* * * * * The call for enlargement of Christian work from every portion of the world, is a call to _all_. There appears to be no great lack of Christian men and women to go anywhere, to do anything for Christ. But how shall they go except they be sent? And here comes with emphatic intensiveness the appeal of Providence (and I hope with it may be heard the appeal of the Holy Spirit), that those who are engaged in other departments of life shall not forget _their_ service. Let me say it plainly, what is needed now more than men, is _money_, the consecration of property, the sacrificial life in men who accumulate property. I do not think that there is a more universally unpopular theme to discourse about than money. If we preach about the giving of men, the church weeps and prays, and says “Amen.” But when we preach about the giving of money, how many meet this at least with a mental shrug, and do not love to have the Lord’s days made common and unclean with the money question? That which they have been seeking for all the week should not be dragged in too often on the day set apart for _rest_. But if we pause a moment, we shall remember how full the Bible is of directions about giving, and how much of the Lord’s teaching had reference to a right use of money. The unprofitable servant “dug in the earth and hid his Lord’s money.” Ruskin, I think, somewhere says that we, in the spiritual application of this, say that, of course, this doesn’t mean _money_. It means wit, it means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means everything in the world except itself. And a very pleasant come-off there is for the most of us in this spiritual application. Of course, if we had wit, we would use it for the benefit of our fellow creatures. But we haven’t wit. If we had influence, we would use _that_. But we are without political power. It is true we have a little money; but the parable can’t possibly mean anything so vulgar as money.

And yet it does mean what it says, plain money, good, hard, honest money. We are not to “hide the Lord’s money.” So also the parable of the talents means money, and we are to accept the meaning on its own terms, and not to dodge away under a metaphor.

If one man is richer than others, he has more “talents” to account for; and to use another’s words, “what he has acquired is the measure of what he owes.” Why is one man richer than another; that he may higher arch his own gates, pave better his own threshold, enrich more gorgeously his own chambers with all manner of costliness? No doubt, as a steward he may rejoice in his stewardship, but do we remember in just what catalogue inspiration places covetousness? Has any Christian a right to live for self, to cling to riches for self-aggrandizement, to consume riches upon his own lusts or set at naught the infinite urgency _of the world’s_ wants? No, friends. There is a kind of justice in a certain thought of communism. God’s law of life is a law of service. No man has a right under Christ’s law of life to heap up riches in order to lord it over men, only to serve them. Ye have heard, said Christ, how, among the Gentiles, they that will be great exercise authority; they use their strength to exact from others, but it shall not be so among you. He that will be great among you, let him serve others, and be ye ministers even as Christ came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. And no one has a right to hoard for self-aggrandizement, or to use wealth to exact from others, and communism with all its wrongs has a truth here, but when those who have, use to bless those who have not, then that is the way of Christ. When causes like this before us call for enlargement, there is money enough which should be in the Lord’s treasury. It is there. It is the Lord’s. He gave the quickness of apprehension, the clearness of judgment, the strength of will which secures it.

* * * * *

WORKING OUT THE EQUATION.

DISTRICT SECRETARY POWELL.

It is the dictate of economy that we push the Southern work of this Association. It is cheaper to fight ignorance and crime with Christian education, than to fight their certain outcome with military and police force. It is vastly cheaper to settle the bills for the services of the Christian teacher now, than to meet the settlement of accumulated wrongs in the outbreak of a war or rebellion by and by. And this is a kind of settlement that must be met. There is in the universe a law of recompense; God in the government of the world is always working out equations. He may require centuries to bring about the result; if so, he takes them. Men are not far-sighted enough to see the outcome. The wicked grow bold and defiant and boastful because of punishment delayed, while the righteous for the same reason are led to cry out, “How long, oh Lord! how long shall wickedness be allowed to go unrebuked?” but all the while the law of recompense is filling out the equation. The eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth principle is rolling up the answer. Only give it time, and right shall have triumphant, though it may be terrible, vindication. In the case of individuals, the working of this law is not so evident, because retribution follows them beyond the grave, but in the case of nations, since they have no other life than in this world, settlement must take place here; and it never fails. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generations, and there is no escaping the visitations.

I might appeal to the history of nations, the record of whose career has been completed, in illustration of this, but a pertinent illustration can be found nearer home, even in our own country. This nation cherished and protected by law the institution of slavery. With an open Bible in the land, with Protestant Christianity in the ascendancy, with the light of a free Gospel shining upon all questions of morals, with the sentiment of enlightened Christendom smiting heavily the iniquity of the sin; nay, with a constitution for its government, a preamble which declared that all men were created free and equal; right in the face of all this, and despite all this, the giant iniquity and monstrous contradiction was fostered and protected by the law of the land. But the equation was working out. The day of reckoning at length came, and, in the settlement, justice exacted full payment.

In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln expressed the sentiment, that, if it were God’s will for the war to continue “till the wealth piled up by two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil of the bondmen be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn by the lash be repaid by another drawn by the sword, as it was said three thousand years ago, so must it still be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” This sentiment was prophetic, and ere the war ended the prophecy had been more than realized by literal fulfillment. Just see how it was fulfilled. Henry Clay once said that taking the slaves as they were—old and young, sick and disabled—the average value was about five hundred dollars per slave. The money value, at this estimate, of the four and a half million emancipated, would be two billion, two hundred and fifty million dollars. This amount, at ten per cent. interest for thirty years, or one generation, would yield, as value created by slave labor, six billion seven hundred and fifty million dollars, which amount, added to the market value of the slaves, makes the enormous sum of nine billion dollars, as representing the wealth “piled up by the unrequited toil of the bondmen,” and held by the oppressors in utter defiance of justice and right.

Nine billion dollars! Can it be that amount was sunk in the war? The answer is yes, and at least six hundred and fifty million dollars more! I take the figures from a responsible source, and they are these: To put down the rebellion it cost the North four billion seven hundred million dollars. To sustain the rebellion it cost the South two billion seven hundred million dollars; add now to this the market value of the slaves emancipated, two billion two hundred and fifty million dollars, and we have, as the total, nine billion six hundred and fifty million dollars, which this nation spent in order to rid itself of the curse of slavery. That was the equation in dollars. As to the equation in blood, justice was even more severe in the exaction. Every drop of blood drawn by the lash, it is no exaggeration to say, exacted for its canceling, not a drop merely, but a stream. A million graves moistened by the blood of those who fell on the field of battle, to say nothing of the blood that ran from the bodies of the wounded millions who survived, gave fearful emphasis to the divine equation. The wealth piled up by the bondmen’s unrequited toil was sunk, and much more in addition; the blood drawn by the lash was more than canceled by the blood drawn by the sword, and still, even in the presence of these awful facts, we are compelled to say, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

It would have been vastly cheaper, we can now see, for this nation to have paid every dollar of the money valuation of the slaves, and set them free before the war; it would have been better still had the iniquity been stamped out at the very formation of the Government, and this because right demanded it. But unfortunately, the standard of our national legislation has been expediency, not right, and under this cover slavery unwisely admitted within the defenses of our constitution, has proved to be the Trojan horse whence has issued so large a part of our national woes. And now, shall we heed the lesson this dearly bought experience teaches? The negro problem is by no means yet solved. There are questions pertaining to his social and political rights not yet answered. Let this nation try to answer them on any other ground than a full recognition of the negro’s rights as a man, and it will again come into controversy with Jehovah, and again be called sooner or later to pay the penalty of disobedience, dollar for dollar, blood for blood, over and over and over again. It pays for the nation to do right every time, and it does not pay for it to do anything else. Having made these people free, justice and self-interest say “educate them,” and it will prove as a matter of mere economy, far cheaper to do this now than to meet the bills that by and by must be paid in blood and money when God shall take the matter in hand to fill out the equation.

* * * * *

THE FREEDMEN.

REV. JOS. E. ROY, D.D.,

FIELD SUPERINTENDENT, ATLANTA, GA.

* * * * *

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON EDUCATIONAL WORK.

* * * * We note with pleasure the growing interest in our schools, and approval of them, by the best people of the South and the public men of the North; the recent erection of a fine building for Tillotson Institute, at Austin, Texas; the munificent gift of $150,000 by Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, to be expended in putting up additional buildings, greatly needed for institutions which have outgrown their present accommodations; the recent acceptance by Christian workers of high standing and rare fitness, of positions in our Southern field; the successful development of industrial methods in many of our best schools, notably at Hampton, Tougaloo, and Memphis; the influence of our institutions on the colored people, as seen in their interest in education, their willingness to endure self-denial as teachers, their hopeful, dispassionate and sensible utterances on their prospects and duties, and their courageous self-support; and once again, and most of all, do we note rejoicingly the prevailing religious sentiment that fills our schools and the colored communities which they reach, with its deep, quiet, but melodious undertone. Surely there is reason, in all these considerations, for profound thankfulness to God.

We are impressed with the call in the Secretary’s Annual Report for enlargement. With the added facilities now providentially given and soon to be enjoyed, in the shape of new buildings at Austin, New Orleans, Nashville, Tougaloo, and Atlanta, there is a necessity for larger contributions for the education of the increased numbers to be accommodated. Similar facilities are loudly called for by the growth of schools at other points, and the Report suggests the need of new schools in Kansas and Arkansas. We cannot forget that the second grade of education will not be complete till these institutions are properly endowed, and the students, coming out of poverty-stricken homes, receive annually, either from scholarships or personal gifts, the small sums necessary to supplement their own earnings, and so to make their education possible.

Especially do we recognize the need at this juncture, of more efficient theological training. Our church work cannot prosper unless educated colored men are raised up to act as missionaries and pastors. The theological training now given, is, from the want of proper facilities,—with the exception, perhaps, of the work at Howard University, where the Presbyterians share in the support of the department,—of the most meagre and unsatisfactory character. We greatly wish that some large-hearted Christian givers might find it their privilege suitably to endow the theological schools already existing, that they might become, in all respects, for the colored students of the South, what Andover, Chicago and other similar schools are for the white students of the North.

Respectfully submitted by your Committee.

ADDISON P. FOSTER, _Chairman_.

* * * * *

CHRISTIAN EDUCATION.

REV. ADDISON P. FOSTER, JERSEY CITY, N. J.

We have all noticed that of late public attention has been much drawn to the need of universal education in this land as a means of national safety. That book to which reference has been made several times in this meeting, and which every thoughtful man must read if he would inform himself in regard to the trend of popular thought to-day, “A Fool’s Errand,” by Judge Tourgee, concludes with an argument for the need of national education in these words:

“The remedy for darkness is light; for ignorance, knowledge; for wrong, righteousness. * * * Make the spelling-book the sceptre of national power. Let the nation educate the colored man and the poor white man, because the nation held them in bondage and is responsible for their education. Educate the voter because the nation cannot afford that he should be ignorant. * * * Honest ignorance in the masses is more to be dreaded than malevolent intelligence in the few.”

To the same effect are the words of our honored President Hayes, in his speech at Canton, Ohio, on the 1st of September last: “Ignorant voters are powder and balls for the demagogues. In the present condition of our country, universal education requires the aid of the General Government.” * * * * * *

Education, then, is called for. But the danger that specially attacks us is in the South. * * * There is more than twenty per cent. of illiteracy all through the Southern portion of our land. * * * But this illiteracy is largest, unquestionably, among those who are black. It has been stated that in one of our Southern States ninety per cent. of the colored people are illiterate; in another, ninety-one per cent.; in another, ninety-three per cent.; in another, ninety-five per cent.; and in Mississippi and Texas ninety-six per cent. Eighty-eight per cent. of the entire colored people in the South are illiterate—or were in 1870; undoubtedly it has changed somewhat since.

We are to labor, then, in our desire to secure popular education, especially among the blacks, and through the blacks we are to reach the whites. * * * But, as we educate the blacks, we ask ourselves, What sort of education shall it be? And I would say, it must be a Christian education. It can be nothing else if it is to accomplish its work. Public men, speaking on political subjects, refer only to a secular education. It is well that they should enforce that and insist upon it; but were we to content ourselves with secular education alone, we should make the most grievous mistake of the century. It is impossible to rely upon secular education for the saving of the nation; we must make it a Christian education as well.

Look at the influences of a merely secular education as seen in biography and history. What has the highest secular education done for men? It has made them simply one-sided, imperfect specimens of manhood, deformed and dwarfed in some of those most essential characteristics that give a man influence here, and happiness hereafter. A man like Hume could defend suicide. Highly-trained intellects like those of Voltaire and Rousseau could advocate licentiousness, both by word and by life. Men and women like J. S. Mill, George H. Lewes, George Eliot, and that gifted but vile woman, Sara Bernhardt, have traduced the idea of marriage, and put a stigma upon the purest relationship that God has given to earth. Education, mere intellectual training, has done nothing for the morals of these people. There was a prisoner executed a few years since in the State of New York, whose great grief before his execution for the terrible crime of murder, was that he could not live long enough to complete a very learned work which he was preparing on some science. And even the honored State of Massachusetts has on its criminal record the name of a professor in one of its highest institutions of learning who committed murder in a moment of passion.

Look at history, if you will, and is not the record the same? Take such nations as Greece, for example,—that wonderful land that reached the highest perfection in culture, in history, in song and in eloquence. Yet that land was sunk in the depths of impurity, and some of the crimes that were prevalent in those days I would not dare to mention in your presence. Take Rome,—that wonderful city, that ennobled the idea of law, that produced such marvelous intellects in the Augustan age. Yet in the very triumph of its intellect, as the capstone of intellectual pride went on to that magnificent temple of literature, the foundations of national virtue were rotten to the core and began to tremble, and presently the whole structure fell in ruins.

I tell you, my friends, there is no safety in mere secular education; it must be Christian as well. We need to put education into the control of principle; otherwise our education may simply give us a certain evil power over other men, and eventually bring ruin upon us. We need to put principle in control in order that whatever we may know shall be turned in the direction of purity, of uprightness and of helpfulness to our fellow-men. And so here, if we are to have an education for the blacks, or an education for the land, we must not content ourselves with what has been called for by these public men.

I say, then, that just here the work of this Association comes in. However much may be done by others, however much a secular education may attempt to accomplish, it can never cover the ground that is absolutely necessary. We have a secular education in the North, and it is doing much, but it has never done a religious work; nor will it ever do such in the future. We cannot expect that it should; and we feel a peculiar sensitiveness in this matter,—perhaps a sensitiveness that is not too great. We cannot trust the State to educate our young religiously. I, for one, confess a profound distrust of all State universities. I too often have seen those universities, in their attempt to be non-sectarian, ministering to the interests of that intensest of sectaries—the infidel. I will go even further than this, although I may carry but few of you with me in this conviction. I fear the methods of higher education in our high schools are not always what they should be. I have too often seen those who were the disciples of Huxley and Tyndall in science, and of Spencer and of Taine in sociology, literature and history, teaching their pupils doctrines that were insidious in their religious influence. I should be glad for one to see a return to the old-time academy system of New England, under which students who valued education enough to pay for it, were taught all branches of a higher learning on a Christian foundation, and trained first of all and most of all in character building.

But whatever you may say in regard to this matter, I am sure that I shall carry you with me in this conviction, that in the South, in our labor among the blacks, our institutions must be of this character and can be of no other. We must have institutions that shall furnish Christian homes. Those who come to our institutions, come from places where they have no such Christian training as have most of those who are in public schools in this more favored portion of the land; and those in the South, if they are to have a Christian training at all, must have it in schools that are under the management of Christian men, in chartered and endowed institutions, cared for by Christian boards of trustees. It is this Association that is doing precisely this kind of work; and this Association and others like it will, I firmly believe, be called on by God for years to come to labor with the same devotedness as they have in the past for the salvation of the land.

My friends, our land is in danger. I am profoundly moved with an anxiety for a land which should be dearer to us than life. It has seemed to me, as I have looked over this broad extent of country, that there were flames of fraud and violence springing up here and there, that were working disaster to our republic, and that would in time—if we may judge by the history of other republics that have been similarly controlled by evil influences, as France in the last century and Spain in this, and Greece and Rome in the centuries gone by—bring this our beloved land to wreck and ruin. And yet we have a God above, and He has given us methods of fighting the flames.

This summer the woods of New Jersey were all ablaze, and the farmers went out into the forests to fight the fire that they might save their homes and their property from desolation; and the method they pursued was this: to build against those fires a back fire that should rage more furiously and destroy the other flame as it advanced. It is your business and mine to

“Take up the torch of truth
And wave it wide,”

to take up this blessed Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and carry it all through the South, and touch points here and there until at length we have the fires blazing all over the land, and ignorance is dispersed in the light of the Gospel. Already, in almost every Southern State, these fires are lighted and the work goes gloriously on. Let us not lose heart, but thank God that He has given us the privilege of joining in this grand work.

* * * * *

A SAMPLE STATE.

PRES. H. S. DE FOREST, TALLADEGA, ALA.

Our Southern States are so much alike, our work, its difficulties, its successes, its necessities are so similar, that a view of one part of the Southern Field will stand for all. Burke’s study motto, “From one learn all,” I think is applicable to the question before us. If, therefore, for the few minutes I am before you, I shall speak of one State only, and of the work of the Association in that State, it is not because it is more important than in neighboring States, nor because the work is more hopeful, but because for a few months I have been learning something there of our need and of our opportunities.

On that map, you see Georgia facing east to the sunrise, and northward toward New England. Behind Georgia, with its back close to Mississippi, where flows the Yazoo river, is the State of Alabama, in which about half of the population is colored. Ten years ago there were 475,510 colored men there, when our entire population was not quite one million. If we now look at the field, its condition is, perhaps, what you might expect. Bear in mind that there were no free schools there until after the reconstruction; that our New England ideas are exotics and grow there with difficulty; that twenty years ago, these colored men were all slaves and it was a crime to teach them; and you are prepared to believe such facts as these. Of our black population of nearly 500,000 there are 168,000 of school age; and now you ask how many after seventeen years of freedom are cared for. Recent statistics show that of this number there were 54,000 enrolled as pupils and 40,000 in actual attendance. You see a company of black youth on the street, and there is about one in three of them on the road to school, and about one in four who will enter the school-house. School-houses with us are not as numerous as at the West. On that grand and growing frontier, the white painted school-house anticipates the coming of the settler, and often the first building put up is a hall for learning. You may go through that dark State of Alabama, and travel far and wide, and not see a public school-house. Alphabetically Alabama leads the van of the States. She does not, however, in letters. The entire school year is about eighty-two days, and the teachers are paid upon an average $22.65 a month. We have never come to the taxing of property for education. Nothing but the poll tax of our State goes for our free schools, and the black man’s head-tax goes for the colored schools, and the white man’s head-tax for the white schools. You are prepared to believe, then, that our appropriation for each pupil is only $1.06. That is about two cents a week per pupil.