Chapter II: Part 2

Well, I am to say a word or two about the Chinese in America. How did they come here? They came here on the invitation of the Americans. California boasted at first of the grand people they were to receive. But that soon changed, and they began a system of ingenious abuse, such as has never been equalled. Take the laws passed by San Francisco—the “basket” law; the “cubic foot of air” law, under which, if a Chinaman was found living in a room with less than 500 cubic feet of air, he was thrust into a prison where he would not have over 200 cubic feet of air; and the “tax” law, under which Chinamen were taxed for sending their children to school and not permitted to send them. Every man in the street took the license himself of breaking every law of God and of humanity by pounding and stoning them. Then, it was not enough for the municipality to seize this question, but the State took hold of it. The Legislature of California settled all ethnological questions at once. They passed a law and said, by majority, that the Chinaman was an _Indian_! That settled it. Then the nation took hold of it and passed a law—these great 50,000,000 of people against 75,000 of people.

So the nation passed a law to keep the Chinamen out, violating all the traditions of the country, and to import _the Chinese wall!_ They ceased importing the Chinamen and imported their wall—a barbaric, ramshackled old thing of a great many centuries. It was a kind of waistband to the Chinese Empire when it was young; but they burst it long ago and ran over it.

This infamy was carried to this extent. A committee was appointed by the United States Senate, and a corresponding committee from the House, in 1876, to investigate this subject thoroughly. They examined 130 witnesses. They took over 1,200 pages of evidence from experts in all departments in regard to Chinese history and ethnology and everything else. They met them face to face and talked it over. Senator Sargent, the chairman of the Committee, made this statement in his report. He says, in the first place, that the Chinaman is an “_indigestible mass_.” Well, that is not quite definite; a man hardly knows how to handle such a statement as that. It is a kind of mince-pie, I suppose, in the body politic. I think I shall leave that for the gastric juice to analyze. But his next assertion is more practical. He says that the brain capacity of the Chinaman is not sufficient to furnish motive power for self-government; for all that, he has governed himself since the time that Senator Sargent’s ancestors, assuming him to be an Anglo-Saxon, were cautiously cracking acorns in Northern Europe and wearing bearskins! Mr. Pixley, a gentleman we sent to California from my part of the State of New York, a lawyer, and violently opposed to the Chinaman, says in his opinion before this Committee that the Chinaman is the inferior of any being that God ever made; he says that a specimen cannot be produced that has ever been affected in any particular by Christian influences, and that in his (Pixley’s) opinion the Chinaman hasn’t any soul, or if he has a soul it is not worth saving. Gentlemen, these things have been put into laws and organized before people of influence, and their animus spent itself in that infamous legislation in Congress which abrogated a treaty without consultation and flew in the face of a hundred years of precedents.

What is the fact? Why, the fact is that Chinamen are human beings. They are _honest_ human beings as the rule goes. The word of a Chinese merchant in California is taken everywhere. They are _industrious_ and _frugal_. Senator Cassidy said—he was very much opposed to them—in this book of testimony to which I have referred: “They are the most ingenious, industrious and frugal people on the planet; and if they come into competition with us in low forms of industry to-day, they will come in higher forms to-morrow.”

There was an old philosopher who lived 500 years before Christ, Confucius by name, who wrote certain maxims; and it does seem as though he was inspired to look ahead precisely at this treaty that they passed at Washington, when he said, “It is an evidence of the superior man, of the great moral man, the true man, that he adheres strictly to the old agreements, however long they may have stood.” He was asked if he could put into one word what would express the whole duty of man, and he said, “Is not that word '_reciprocity_'?” (That was a “reciprocity” treaty.) He says, “We should not ask another to do unto us what we would not be willing to do unto him.” And then he says, “The superior man has regard to virtue and to the sanctions of law; but the small man only thinks of himself and what favors he is to receive.” It looks like an inspired and animated riddling of this whole question as it stands to-day before the nation.

One of the largest land proprietors and wheat-growers in California said that the work could not be done without the Chinamen; they have reclaimed two millions of acres.

Now, mind you, with all the wrongs that the Chinese have received on our shores, every little disturbance on the Chinese coast which has ever occurred, or where a mission station has been sacked by a mob, we have collected and been paid every dollar of the damage; and the Chinese Government has paid nearly a million dollars to our Government for the wrongs perpetrated upon American people But this Government has not paid a dollar to the Chinese. There is a claim which the Chinese Embassy are now pressing on the Government, for $40,000 that was destroyed in one night in Colorado; but the reply upon such claims usually is, “We have not been in the habit of paying such claims to Chinamen.” Isn’t that justice? Isn’t that purity of legislation?

The Chinese are an _educated people_. They have vast libraries, large and broad, rich in literature. They have the lives of great men. They know about our Washington: they teach about him in their schools. Do we know anything about their Washingtons—about their great men who have guided the grandest nation, in some respects, that history has given us any account of for nearly 3,000 years, possibly more? We know about Yung Wing, who graduated at Yale College, taking the prizes in English composition. We know the standing of their students in our colleges generally. We know the fact that of the 75,000 Chinese in this country every one can read and write. In this country, according to the census before the last, we had over 5,000,000 who could not read and write; so that there are hardly Chinamen enough in this country to be schoolmasters to those of our number who cannot read and write! Dr. Hedge in Boston stated some years ago that, in a conversation with Charles Sumner, Sir John Bowring, the representative of Her Majesty at the Court of Pekin, said that when he was there the Chinese Ministers were the superiors of any European cabinet. Mr. Sumner replied: “I am astonished! You do not pretend to compare them with Lord Palmerston, Lord Derby and Mr. Gladstone?” Said he: “I mean precisely what I say, without any invidious comparison; I will add that the Prime Minister of China, during my residence in Pekin, has not, in my opinion, his intellectual superior upon the planet.”

The Chinese are a _cleanly_ people, a _decent_ people. The Chinese laborer washes himself all over every day. As a rule they can come into our mission schools and sit beside our ladies with perfect propriety. When I was preaching in Indianapolis we had every Chinaman in the city in our schools. They are not a clannish people; they are glad for American society.

They have crimes and vices. They are human. They lie and steal, and gamble, and have their peculiar method of getting intoxicated with opium. But I don’t know as it ever has been proven that they can carry on lying to such a magnificent extent as we do in an ordinary political campaign, and they have never risen to the refined plundering of Wall street. They say they take opium, and you know how they took it—they took it at the cannon’s mouth at first. England must make 400 per cent. profit in the poppy fields of India. It was shocking to them to the utmost; and their torment has gone on ever since in homes that were never addicted to any crazier drug than tea and knew nothing of a hell so orthodox as the delirium tremens. The Emperor petitioned England, in a document which I think has not its equal in all the documents of Governments, not to set fire to the morals of his people by loading them with their accursed opium. But they did.

The Chinese worship their ancestors. Well, if I had to choose the least of two improprieties, I think I would prefer to pay a very hearty and cordial appreciation of my grandfather rather than to curse my children with such doctrines as have been proposed toward the Chinese. It is better, I think, to worship your ancestors than to damn your posterity.

But the Chinese have noble qualities. In the days of the yellow fever at Memphis I was near it. We almost felt the hot breath of that dreadful pestilence. We needed money and men; and there came a telegram from San Francisco that the Chinese merchants of that city had contributed $12,000 for the yellow fever sufferers. That looked like putting the prayer of Christ upon the cross into physical results: “Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

We know the Chinese philosophy, the height of their morality; we know the purity of Confucius’ recommendations and the wondrous statement of Lotse that we should love our enemies; and we know that the highest crest waves of this Chinese morality throw spray around the feet of Jesus. I have stood this summer in the far West. I have stood where you can test civilization. There in Seattle stood a university on our right hand, and on it the Indian words _Al-Ki_—by and by—the motto of the Territory—“By and by we will show you.” Brethren, I am not given to nightmares nor to day dragons, but it did seem to me as we stood there and looked out upon that majestic sheet of water, Puget Sound, being nearer in the centre of the majority of the population in the planet than we are here, that the day would come, with that matchless harbor, that wonderful climate, with coal and iron in the vicinity, with all cereals and fruits possible, when the throne of power would be transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, and when the argosies of the world would float without any bar, either in Puget Sound or in the cities around it, and ride there at peace in the security of a gospelized and millennialized age. It can only be done by our appreciation of the necessity of keeping our Christianity clean and solid and aggressive, and on the old basis of sin and salvation through a crucified Redeemer.

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REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON INDIAN MISSIONS.

Your Committee, to whom has been referred that part of the annual statement of the Executive Committee which relates to the American Indians, desire to report as follows:

The chief event of the year, in the Indian department, is the adoption by this Association of the Indian Missions of the American Board. Your Committee look upon this as an event of conspicuous importance in the history of the Association. As long ago as 1872, at the annual meeting of that year, the Committees on the Indian and the foreign work suggested a double transfer—namely, the transfer of the foreign missions of the Association to the American Board, and the transfer of the Indian missions of the Board to this Association. The propriety of such an exchange has seemed obvious to many patrons of the two societies for some time. However satisfactory the explanation of the existing condition of things afforded by the historical development of the two organizations, it was plain that the time had come for such a unifying and concentrating of the work of this Association as would result from leaving the foreign field to others, and assuming the care of those missions in our own country which our foreign missionary society had so well established.

These missions are among the Dakotas, one of the most widely extended and important of the American Indian stocks. The largest of these missions—that at the Sisseton agency, formerly under the care of the lamented Stephen R. Riggs—has chosen for its new mother not our Association, but another missionary board, by which it will doubtless be thoroughly cared for and warmly cherished. The missions which actually come under our care constitute an important group of churches and schools, and should be received with a hearty welcome by an Association with such antecedents as this. The new trust committed to us calls for new purpose and energy in our specific work.

We find that these Dakota missions are not dead or dying, but thoroughly alive. And because they are thoroughly alive they need very real help. The men in charge of them are men awake to their opportunities, believers in a forward movement, and in whatever legitimate experiments may be involved therein. We feel that in all such experiments they should have the ready co-operation of the Christian Church. We therefore heartily endorse the Executive Committee in their plans for enlargement in the Dakota field—for improvements in the mission property and in methods of work, where they are called for, and the establishment of new missions in places which promise success.

One project, your Committee believe, deserves to be regarded with special favor, the establishment of a school—agricultural, mechanical and normal—at Fort Sully. The Executive Committee have secured a delightful site for such a school, and they know the man to take charge of it. What is wanted is money to furnish the proper financial basis, and we can scarcely doubt that this will be forth-coming. The industrial school method of missionary work has already been thoroughly tested at the east—in Hampton and Carlisle—and the verdict is altogether favorable. There is good reason to believe that the adoption of the same method among the Indians themselves would result in real benefit. Let the work of instruction, in all its interesting details, be carried on where the red man can see it, and it will surely make its impression upon him. At all events, we have in favor of this view the opinions of men who may be looked upon as experts in this matter.

In adopting as its aim these Dakota missions, and thus enlarging its strictly missionary work among the American Indians, the American Missionary Association gives its approval anew to the attempt, now so long continued, to Christianize the red men. There are those who scoff at the idea of such a work; but history—not to say the Gospel—teaches us better. No race of men has yet been discovered so low that it cannot be reached and moved by the religion of the Crucified, and the American Indians are certainly no exception. The Indians as a whole are by no means the lowest or the least susceptible; and the results on record are far from insignificant. God has blessed the efforts of his church in their behalf throughout the past two hundred years, and we know he will continue to bless them. Respectfully submitted.

JOSEPH ANDERSON, Chairman.

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ADDRESS OF REV. DR. ANDERSON.

When the question arose in my mind in what line to follow up this brief report, it seemed to me that the subject of Indian wrongs and Indian rights had been sufficiently discussed for the present in this Association and elsewhere, and that it might be of advantage for us to look for a little while in another direction.

There are few, I suppose, who are aware of the largeness of this work as carried on upon our continent, few who appreciate the amount of real labor and real suffering, I may say, endured in this direction. In order to a correct estimate, it seems to me that we ought not to lose sight of, but rather we ought to recognize, the work which has been done by our Roman Catholic friends. They began as long ago as 1611, and from that date onward until 1832, at least, they carried on an extended work among the American Indians upon eight or ten different and important fields. I find, by looking over their lists, that 170 men gave themselves to the work of saving the Indian from barbarism and elevating him to a higher and Christian level during this period.

Then, in order to a correct appreciation of this work, we must remember also what our beloved friends, the Moravians, have done—not only what they did in Greenland, not only what they did in the West Indies, but what they did within the bounds of our own nation, especially in Pennsylvania and farther west. And so, too, we must recognize the work done by the Episcopalians and the Methodists and the Presbyterians, who, through a long series of years and in varied fields, have been laboring for the conversion of the American Indian.

But in none of these fields has a more satisfactory work been done than that which has been done in this America of ours by the Congregational churches and the men whom they have sent out. The missionary work among the American Indians began with the founding of the church in New England—began under the molding hand of John Elliot in Massachusetts. A hundred years later than the day when Elliot began that work another figure arose upon the stage of history: David Brainerd, the humble, quiet young man, who gave himself for Christ and for the beloved Indians, and labored and suffered even unto death. And then, when we come down to 1813 or thereabouts, we find the American Board, newly organized, turning its attention to the Indians in the South and Southwest. In the record of their early work we have such names as Cyrus Kingsbury and Byington and Father Gleason, and in the far West Williamson and Riggs, our lamented brethren to whom reference has already been made, and many others, some of whom are still with us, including our excellent brother and my fellow committeeman Rev. Cushing Eells.

Here we have a list of heroes doing their work quietly, silently, patiently, yet a work deserving to be called heroic, as much so as that which has been done on the islands of the sea and on the other side of the globe—a work in which noble men and women have taken part. What is the result? Here is the good seed sewing. What kind of a harvest has been gathered? There are those who think—perhaps it is the common impression—that the results of Indian missions have been meagre and of little value at the best; but let us consider. It seems to me that in any such calculation some account should be made of what may be called the reciprocal effect produced in the lives of the missionaries themselves and of the churches sending them forth. I observe that Dr. Shay, author of the History of Catholic Missions in America, referring to the extinction of the Spanish missions in the southern part of our country, says that even if they have become extinct and if there are no results that we can trace to-day, that does not count for their condemnation any more than the disappearance of the works of art produced so long ago by Apelles and Zeuxis is to the condemnation of those workers. He might have gone farther and called attention to the effect produced upon the artists themselves by their contributions to ancient art, the effect produced upon the artist anywhere by the work that he does in his own field, the effect produced upon the reformer by the work of reform which he accomplishes, the results produced in the lives of missionaries who constitute so large a company in our church from their labors, their sufferings and their sorrows.

I noticed in a past number of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY published during the present year that a cut had been reproduced representing a group of Indians watching a railroad train—an impressive picture; and it suggested to me that our aim should be to bring these Indians of the West where they shall not stand suspiciously watching a railroad train, the emblem of advancing civilization, but where they shall co-operate with us and appreciate the railroad train and make it theirs. We want them to adopt as rapidly as possible all the appliances of our civilization, and above all we want them to accept the Lord Jesus Christ.

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ADDRESS OF REV. J. C. PRICE.

On the 1st of January, 1863, the negro was like a newly-built ship launched upon the waters without mast, sail or rudder. Pleased with liberty, he thought his happiness complete; but a few months’ experience taught him better. When the ballot was denied, when he could not—nay, more, when he cannot—claim as a right or privilege the comforts of travel; when deeply-rooted prejudice on account of his color and previous condition of servitude confronted him at every turn, he soon found that he had not reached the full stature of an American citizen, but was still in his infancy. And the question that presents itself to your minds, and to the friends of the negro and to ours, the orphaned recipients of your generosity, is, Has the negro grown any? has he made any noticeable advancement? Or is he where freedom found him and where slavery left him? January, 1863, found the negro penniless, ignorant, a homeless wanderer, his chief object to be in General Sherman’s army, or if not in it, in the wake of it; but he is now settled, fixed, and by industry and by perseverance he has purchased homes, and he and his children, through the generous aid of friends, have received some education. The land that he once sowed in slavish fear and reaped with trembling, he now sows in joy and gathers with the gladsome shout of a free and jubilant harvester. In fact, the material, as well as the intellectual and moral progress of the negro has surprised his best friends. He has gone forth without possessing the tattered garments that he wore, without a foot of soil on which to tread, and he has purchased those homes. And not only has he purchased them, but he has carried into them those things which make home what it is—the comforts of home. It is nothing strange to go into a Southern home and see a carpet on the floor. If it is not on all of it, it will be a big piece in the middle. And if you don’t find it all the way up-stairs, you will find a little as you step on the first step. That shows a disposition to do something that is elevating. And then the fact that they have purchased these homes is something. I have seen it repeated in the newspapers of the North—and I regret to say by men who do not know the negro—that he is a lazy, shiftless fellow. Well, they do not go down South, as we term it, and go into the negroes’ houses. They do not go into his colleges and universities and high schools, but they ride around by the station, they see a few at the depot—a lot of lazy negroes, as you find a lot of lazy white men under similar circumstances. They judge us unfairly. No man is judged by the worst, but by the best. Did you want Lord Chief Justice Coleridge to form an opinion of America by the men that he met by accident or saw in the slums of New York—“lazy” men, that he saw lounging around the corners of the streets? No; you wanted him to judge you by your best, and you put your best forward. Now, what we ask for the negro is that he be judged by his best and not by his worst. Of course, the best is always in the minority, but that is the way we are judged. If these same men were to go into the South and go into the negroes’ homes, they would find there very often excellent comfort. Some one has asked whether the negro has any of this race prejudice in him. No; he will give you the best bed and the fattest pig and the best chicken he has got in the yard. There is no prejudice there. And then, not only these things, but you find in many of their houses instruments of music—some with an organ, some with a piano; and you can find young girls there who can play on both, and if you want a little singing they can do that too. Negroes can sing as well as my friends the Chinamen. These things, too, are not only found in the cities but in the country places and villages.

The negro has done all this, notwithstanding that he has lost millions—yes, the negro has been defrauded of millions, yet he has accumulated millions, and in many instances he has become the owner of the farms and plantations of his former master. It was no longer than two or three years ago that the papers told us that the farm of Mr. Jefferson Davis rightly belonged not to him, but to two negroes, they having paid $200,000 for it. And these are but examples. You go through the South and you find negroes owning farms of 100 or 200 acres each; and I know of one man who owns 900 acres, all of which he has bought since the war. We have gone forth to the earth, and with the horny hands of toil we have made the earth to answer to our appeals; and these have been the results. Why, in Georgia alone there are more than 85,000 colored voters who own 500,000 acres of land valued at about $1,244,000, besides city property valued at $2,100,000, horses and mules, etc., valued at, $2,000,000, making an aggregate for Georgia alone of more than $6,000,000, which the colored people in that State now own.

But why should I enumerate? In fact, the negro has made the waste places of the South to blossom as the rose. He has built its railroads, dug its canals, erected its mansions, makes its carriages and buggies, and in 1878 produced for the American people more than $250,000,000. In the face of these evidences, who would dare question his industry, stigmatize him as “lazy,” and ridicule his unskilled labor?

But these are but the beginnings—the gray streaks of dawn ushering in a brighter day for this toiling and long-oppressed son of Ham. We are often reminded of what the negro was in ancient days, especially in Northern Africa; but to-day we are forced to see what he is in America, notwithstanding its prejudices and its political oppression and persecution; we are forced to look at him rising in his incomparable glory, the anomaly of the race and the wonder of mankind.

But there is another feature. The negro’s highest powers and worthiest capabilities are not all shown in the development of sterile marshes or barren highlands. If slavery brought out his power of endurance, his patience and his unparalleled fidelity, freedom called forth his intellectual ability and causes the world to wonder at his rapid attainments. But this angel in him long ago would have sought his native heaven, but slavery clipped his wings, forbade his flight, and confined him to corn hills, cotton rows, rice marshes and pine forests. But his wings are growing again, and already he lifts himself somewhat from the earth. But you say, “Are there any signs of his educational progress?” I might answer by pointing to distinguished colored men who fill positions of responsibility and emolument in this country. But not only are there men who are educated among us, but there are also schools of high grade whose portals are anxiously crowded by young men and women thirsting for knowledge. I have taken one State as an example of our material progress; let another show our intellectual advancement. In 1861 there was not a school in North Carolina to which persons of color were admitted. But to-day, in addition to her common schools, she has Shaw University, Biddle University, St. Augustine Normal School, four State Normal Schools, Esther Seminary, Scotia Seminary, Bennett Seminary, and the Zion Wesleyan Institute—institutions of high grade; these have in them to-day an aggregate of 2,000 young men and women preparing for the great work of uplifting their brethren, and every summer they go forth throughout North Carolina and other Southern States doing what they can for the improvement of their fellows. Besides this, we have in North Carolina from twelve to fifteen newspapers, weeklies, semi-weeklies and monthlies, edited, owned and controlled by colored men. The negro has done something, and we consider it something—something that we are proud of, especially when we think of the manner in which it has been done.

But, notwithstanding this favorable aspect of the condition of the people as seen in these two States, we are forced to ask the question—in fact it comes to us as we travel among the people—what is our material progress in Georgia, what is North Carolina’s educational outlook, when we consider the masses of the people through the South? They are but a drop in the bucket. If you could travel through that section and view the condition of the people away off in the remote towns and districts, you would say so, especially when you remember that the population has increased to almost double its original number. Since 1863 the 4,000,000 have grown to nearly 7,000,000. It is nothing strange to see the need of instruction among the people, even among the ministry. It is my theory that we must get the ministry straight first; and when we have an intelligent ministry before the people, then we will soon have an intelligent people. “Like priest” _always_ “like people”.

It was truly said by President Tobey at the meeting of the A. M. A. in Chicago that the presence of the negro in the United States is of great significance, that the enthusiasms of political life in our nation have resulted from his presence, and that he has been the occasion of the most exhaustive discussion of the rights of man and the formation of a new political party and is now the most considerable element in our politics. That is true; but that is telling us our disease without a cure. What is the remedy? That is what you are here for to-night; that is what you have bean turning over in your minds ever since you assembled. What is the remedy for these existing political and social evils among us? We think it was precisely set forth by the Secretary of the Association at that same meeting when he said, “The true remedy for the existing evils is not to change the negro’s color or his party, but to change his _character_,” and that is what we ask.

Legislation cannot solve the negro problem in this country. The thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, the Civil Rights Bill and the Constitution itself cannot solve the negro problem. We must go behind the Constitution, behind the amendments; we must go to the public sentiment. What effect has a law if there is not a public sentiment to back it up? We have had the Civil Rights Bill for several years, but what did it amount to in some sections of the country? It amounted to nothing, because there was not a public sentiment to sustain it. And it seems to me that we want to educate the public sentiment and it is evident that the solution of this great vexing problem can only come through the gradual and thorough development of the negro’s mental and moral nature. I say _thorough_, because some men think that the negro need have only an elementary training, that he is not prepared for a higher training. Why is he not? If it has taken centuries of culture, with the best masters and the best teachers, to uplift the white race, why is it not necessary to uplift the black race? God has made of one blood all nations of men that dwell upon the face of the earth; and we believe that there are only individual and not race distinctions as to their mental and moral capabilities. Therefore, what one race requires another race requires; and we feel assured that, when this has been done, the millions of minds, both in this country and in Africa, that are now rough and unshapen as the rock from the quarry, will begin to show signs of symmetry under the constant hammer and steady chisel of competent workmen.

Then, and not till then, the negro’s sun of progress and prosperity, whose earliest rays already gladden his eastern horizon, will rise and climb the firmament of his glory until it reaches its zenith, and from that zenith it will shed forth a light that all the nations of the earth shall behold, whose heat shall melt away all prejudice, in whose light all indignities and all inhumanities shall vanish; and all these nations, in one united, harmonious voice, shall cry aloud, “Ethiopia, Ethopia has indeed and in truth stretched forth her hands unto God.”

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CASTE IN AMERICA.

BY SECRETARY STRIEBY.

India has four castes, America two. The Hindoo castes are the priest, soldier, merchant and laborer or Soodra. The last is the largest and lowest and bears the weight of all the upper classes, whom it is born to serve and by whom it is despised. The highest caste may come down to the employments of the soldier or merchant, but not to those of the Soodra, but, according to Hindoo orthodoxy, the Soodra can as little enter a higher caste as a stone can become a plant.

America’s two castes are simply the white and the colored races. The latter are the Soodras, and in the orthodox theology of slavery they were born to serve the whites. But while that high orthodoxy suffered a rude shock in the Proclamation of Emancipation, caste comes in to save it from utter overthrow, and has fixed a great gulf between the races, so that especially “they cannot pass to us that would come from thence.”

This proscription of the colored races includes the Indian and the Chinaman, but for the sake of simplicity of presentation I shall refer mainly to the most numerous race in this country—the Negro.

By caste prejudice they are denied fellowship which Christ enjoins—rights which the Constitution grants, access to trades, professions and schools where they could compete with the whites.

Caste is a worse sin in America than in India. In practicing it the Hindoo obeys his gods and his veda; the American dishonors his God and disobeys his Bible. The Hindoo is a heathen and is degraded by caste; the American sends missionaries to convert him and to denounce his caste, and yet sustains caste at home. The Hindoo is consistent in denying equal rights to all men; the American boasts that God made of one blood all nations, and that all men are free and equal, and yet tolerates caste.

In sustaining caste the American perpetuates the inconsistency and shame of slavery. No greater inconsistency was ever shown than in holding slaves in America after the Declaration of Independence; and no greater shame than in the zealous defense of slavery by the press, the pulpit and the theological seminaries—at the imperious bidding of the slaveholder. Caste is the tap root of slavery, and the defense of it is a repetition—nay, an aggravation—of the apologies formerly made for slavery. Men will live to be ashamed of this defense.

Caste is a curse to America.

It injures those who cherish it. Caste-prejudice is a sin. All prejudice is narrow, born of ignorance and hate. Caste-prejudice, therefore, by narrowing the mind and embittering the heart, harms the American citizen both as a man and a Christian. It hinders the progress of its victims. The slaves are emancipated—their continued degradation is the nation’s danger, their elevation the nation’s hope, and yet caste shuts up the avenues of trades, professions, schools and churches, through which alone they can escape from ignorance and degradation. If they rise it must be in spite of all the obstacles that caste can throw in their way.

It creates race antagonisms. The foreign immigration into this country creates no antagonisms. It flows into the great river of American life like brooklets, bringing down often their turbid waters, but these are soon mingled and purified in the mightier stream. But caste renders the colored races an opposing tide now indeed overflowed and borne under, yet resisting their fate. That they are overborne is seen in the nullifying of their vote in the South and in denying them access to the rights, immunities and privileges of the dominant class. But they are neither silent nor submissive. We know how prompt and deadly is the resentment of the Indian; the negro and the Chinaman are more quiet, but they resist as best they can and await the time, in the conflict of tides, when their volume and momentum will give them the preponderance.

Nor is that awaiting vain, nor that time distant, in view of the astonishingly rapid increase of the colored population—an increase of over 500 per day—an increase of 35 per cent. in ten years, as against 28 per cent. in the white population of the South. It is easy to estimate in how few years the colored population will equal the whites, and it is easy to see that, as this growth goes on and long before the equal numbers are reached, the sense of growing strength and of continued wrong will stimulate the negative resistance of the present to the determined hostility of the future; and when that race conflict comes, what human ken can foretell the issue? But we may be sure that when it comes the North, the whole nation, can no more keep out of it than it could keep out of the dreadful conflict with slavery, out of which this impending struggle grows.

Special significance is given to all this by the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States pronouncing the Civil Rights Bill unconstitutional. This takes from the colored man the last shadow of legal protection to rights which he, and all men for themselves, consider essential to their manhood, and will stimulate him to more determined resistance unless the conscience and good sense of the white races shall speedily end this needless, yet dangerous conflict.

This leads me to ask: Is there a remedy for all this, and what is it? Not in dragging the white man down, but in lifting the colored man up. Both races must coöperate. The white man must let down the ladder; the black man must climb. The white man must open the door of the shop, and the black man must go in and do as good work as the white man can. The white man must open the school house and the black man must go in and become as good a scholar as the white man is. The black man can never attain positions and honors by demanding them simply because he is a black man; he must fairly win them by being worthy of them. The white man cannot maintain his superiority by denying the black man the chance of becoming his equal. He cannot hold it by force. Slavery for a time enabled him to do so, for then he had superior numbers and the aid of the Government, but he has no longer that aid and he cannot always have the weight of superior numbers. The white man must give the chance, and the black man must take it and win his position.

But the white man is not ready to give the chance—in other words, surrender the vantage ground his color gives him. Here is a call for an appeal to conscience. The subject must be discussed, North and South, among white and black alike. As the anti-slavery reform arose not out of the stagnant waters of indifference, but out of the dashing stream of healthful agitation, so must the caste reform be brought about. That discussion has begun in earnest, and will not cease till caste be sent to that bourne to which slavery, its ancestor, has gone and whence it shall never return. But discussion must take shape; the Church must cease to sustain caste. The time was when men were afraid to oppose slavery because it would hinder the spread of their churches in the South. They urged: “Why endanger the growth of our denomination by joining in this useless clamor against slavery?” But the time came when these same persons decided that it was more important to destroy slavery than multiply churches that sustained slavery. Missionary societies abandoned their churches in the South, and the great national churches allowed themselves to be rent in twain rather than uphold slavery. Only such an attitude against caste will avail anything. When the North feels that ten churches or schools that stand unequivocally against caste are more important than a thousand churches or schools that sustain caste, then we shall see the beginning of the end.

But the colored people themselves must be educated out of caste. Strange as it may seem, some of them are its abettors, and, stranger still, they are so religiously. As men, they repudiate it; as Christians, they sustain it. They prefer separation mainly, perhaps, because they think the whites would not welcome them. Other reasons may be given. Some of the members love excitement in their worship, and this they can enjoy better if no whites are present; the leaders can be bishops and rulers among their own people, but, if joined to the whites, these honors are denied, or, at least, unequally divided. Why is it that religion is compelled to shield some of the greatest wrongs on earth? Albert Barnes said, long before slavery was abolished: “There is no power _out_ of the Church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained _in_ it.” Must sinful and harmful caste, the baleful progeny of slavery, find its bulwark in the Church—nay, in some of the colored churches themselves?

But this wish or willingness of these churches for separation is gravely made use of by many most excellent people as a reason for ceasing to make war against caste. It is said triumphantly: “See how the colored people, welcomed to Dr. Goodell’s or Dr. Rankin’s churches, prefer churches of their own.” Does their abetting caste help to destroy it? Did the wish of the Israelites in the wilderness to return to Egypt help them on to Canaan? If the slaves in this country were ever content to remain slaves, as was sometimes alleged, that was all the greater evidence of the curse of slavery. If the Soodra consents to remain a Soodra, all the more does he need the breaking of his bondage that he may become a man. And so, if the colored people consent to caste separation, all the more do they need emancipation from the bondage of caste.

In this point of view the action of some of the large religious bodies North and South in consenting to a separation on the color line is riveting the chains of caste on the colored people, and sustaining caste-prejudice in the hearts of the white race; and it is seriously questioned by many considerate persons whether the presence of two Congregational Missionary Societies in the South, the one working mainly for the whites, and the other side by side, mainly for the blacks, will not, with all explanations, be construed into a sanction of caste. The question is fairly before the churches, and should be met in a frank and Christian way.

The presence with us to-day of a committee appointed by the American Home Missionary Society to confer on this very subject renders its consideration by this meeting a matter of comity and of Christian duty, and to aid in its intelligent and harmonious settlement I beg leave to contribute some facts and considerations.

The A. M. A. was organized when the great missionary societies, home and foreign, aided churches in the South that received slaveholders as members. It was formed not as an anti-slavery society, nor merely as a formal protest against slavery, but as affording a channel through which anti-slavery Christians might carry forward missions without complicity with slavery. Hence it established missions in foreign lands and among the Indians, and also home missions in the West.

But in the progress of the anti-slavery movement the large missionary societies withdrew their aid from slaveholding churches, and soon thereafter came the opening for the great work to be done for the freedmen. The Association was believed to be providentially prepared to undertake this work, and hence it gave up its home missions in the West and among the Indians and entered with alacrity into this new field.

The territory it occupied was the whole South, its schools being located in every Southern State. But gradually it withdrew from Delaware, Maryland, and unwisely, as I then thought, and now think, from Florida. At the West it organized a few churches in Kansas, which, however, it at length turned over to the American Home Missionary Society, only resuming limited efforts there when the great exodus of colored people thither took place. In Missouri it never attempted much in church planting. It found that the Home Missionary Society that had done so grand a work from the Atlantic to the Pacific, rearing its monuments of light and piety along the whole line of its march, had entered Missouri so effectually that there was no more call for the Association in those parts, and hence that state was soon and cheerfully surrendered to the occupancy of that Society. In Texas the Association has established one of its chartered institutions at Austin, the Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute; it was the earliest Congregational Society to plant churches in the State; its churches there, though few, are more in number than that of any other Congregational Society, and two calls are pressing upon us now for the organization of new churches. Thus its field may be said to be the “Solid South” leaving out Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Florida and the new State of West Virginia. In this territory it has planted its large and permanent educational institutions; its 89 churches, united in eight conferences, covering nearly the whole South.

The Association has been as much opposed to caste as to slavery, as its early publications abundantly show, and has ever refused to accept the limitation of a color line. Its schools and churches have seemed to be almost wholly confined to the blacks, solely because it allowed them to enter at all. But it has not confined itself entirely to efforts for that race. It has founded schools and churches mainly white. The church in Jacksonville, Fla., was organized under its auspices. Its founders did not ask pecuniary aid, but they did ask one of our District Secretaries to assist in the organization, which he did, and spent nearly a month with them afterward, supplying the pulpit until a permanent pastor could be obtained. In Kentucky, John G. Fee, its first missionary in the South, commissioned in 1848, formed white churches on an anti-slavery basis. The same was done by Daniel Worth in North Carolina. That church planting in Kentucky was followed by Berea College, the most conspicuous example in the South of an anti-caste institution, its pupils being in nearly equal numbers of both races; and now more recently the example of Berea has been followed by a church and school in Williamsburg, Ky., and in Clover Bottom. Other openings of the same sort are presenting themselves in the same region.

The only movement made by Congregationalists to found white churches in the territory occupied by the Association was begun during or soon after the war. At that time the work of the Association was in its infancy, and the broad and permanent foundations which it has since laid were scarcely anticipated. On the other hand, this new movement for white churches was mainly confined to the largest cities and perhaps the thought of possible competition was not entertained. At all events the movement was not very successful and was very nearly abandoned.

Whatever general impressions may have existed at that early day as to the special work of the Association or whatever special designations may since have been used as to the classes for which it was mainly to labor, it never supposed that it was to be confined entirely to those classes; and certainly now, after nearly twenty years of almost exclusive occupancy of the special territory to which it has confined itself, so far as Congregationalists are concerned, it may well be supposed to look with some surprise upon a movement recently inaugurated to enter that same territory with missionary efforts that practically places it on one side of a color line.

An agreement was made between the two societies when this question came before them, which provides temporarily and tentatively against the repetition of any such interferences as that which started this discussion. Both societies have agreed not to enter into any field occupied by the other without mutual consultation. But this agreement provides no permanent basis for a settlement of the question which field each society shall occupy. It only insures Christian co-operation and forbearance until a settlement be made. What that settlement shall be is for the constituency of our societies to determine, and to them we must leave it. The American Board and the Association have made a harmonious arrangement of their respective fields of labor, and it is to be hoped that an adjustment equally satisfactory may be reached with the American Home Missionary Society.

In view of all this several questions ought to be considered.

1. What is the field open before us among the white population of the South?

It is not the extent of the territory, nor the number of millions of white people that are in the South, nor even the number that need our school and Gospel advantages, but it is: _How many of them can be reached by an anti-caste Gospel?_

It is not enough to say that we are to preach the Gospel, and if people are converted the caste question will take care of itself. Well do I remember when that plea and policy were in vogue in regard to slavery. The Gospel was preached, churches were formed, and the denominations were happy in their enlargement. Slavery also did take care of itself, and good care, too, for it found snug homes in these very churches. And well do I remember when these same denominations cast slavery away from them and the coveted churches along with it!

The American churches cannot afford to repeat that experience in regard to caste. What was done then in comparative innocence, because done in ignorance, cannot now be done without great guilt in the light of that experience. We must remember that it is more important to destroy caste than to found churches that will sustain caste. No work can be done by our churches among the white people of the South that will stand the test, that does not proceed on the avowed and practical repudiation of caste; no school opened that does not welcome the colored child; no church formed that does not present the open door, the open hand and the open heart to “Our Brother in Black.” There are Congregationalists in the South that are ready to welcome again the polity of New England and at the same time welcome among them the colored races, and there are native Southerners ready for our schools and churches, and also ready to make no distinction on account of color, and to all such we ought to carry with joyful hearts and ready hands the institutions we so much cherish. But we ought not to enter upon the effort under a misapprehension. The number of openings for this kind of labor is not great.