Chapter III: Part 3

2. The question of two Congregational Societies on the Southern field receives its greatest importance from its relation to caste-prejudice. There are other difficulties. One of the saddest features of the modern church extension at the West is the starting of two or more feeble churches of different denominations in small villages or among sparse populations, creating frictions and rivalries where harmony and Christian fellowship are so essential, and a waste of men and money where there is so much need of economy. This would be aggravated in the poorer and sparser settlements of the South, and still more aggravated if the same denomination should, by two of its own societies there, thus come into rivalry with itself. In the one case two houses are arrayed against each other; in the other, a house is divided against itself. It is the same railroad company running parallel lines in competition with each other.

But all these considerations, grave as they are, are of small importance when compared with the danger that the division of the labors of two societies, running mainly along the color line, would be construed as lending the sanction of the denomination to caste separation. This is the gravamen of the difficulty. I am happy to say that the two societies are equally committed against caste, and will equally and honorably repudiate all intentional sanction of it. But the bare fact that one is avowedly working mainly for the whites and the other mainly for the blacks, will, in spite of all protests to the contrary, array them before the public as separated only by the color line. It is not proper for me to speak for another society, but for my own I must speak. The American Missionary Association was born an opponent of slavery. Amid poverty, sneers and reproach from the best of men, as well as the worst of men, it pressed forward in its opposition till the glorious end came. It must oppose caste as it did slavery. It began its work among the freedmen as the avowed enemy of caste, and amid much misapprehension and reproach at the South, it has pressed onward until it has gained the respect of both races. That position it cannot, and it ought not to be asked to, surrender or jeopardize by being placed on one side of a line of separation in missionary labors that has no reason for its existence except the colors of the people to be benefited.

3. If, in view of all the facts, it should be ultimately decided that the Congregational churches should be represented at the South by one missionary society, the decision should be reached in the broadest spirit of Christian wisdom and kindness.

The American Missionary Association is not eager to be pushed forward into the mission work among the whites, but it knows something of their needs, especially their need of deliverance from caste-prejudice that mars the symmetry of their piety and chills their hearts as slavery did, and that perpetuates a race antagonism that must be crushed before the South can be safe or prosperous. If the Association should be called to that work, it has some experiences and facilities that would be helpful. Its past record would be a guaranty that it would not foster caste. It would have no temptation to found schools and churches mainly white that should be rivals of its schools and churches mainly colored, and it could have no reason to hesitate in establishing both, if both were needed. It is not “handicapped” for this work except by its firm and well-known attitude against caste, and any other society equally faithful on that subject would soon be equally handicapped. Its large planting of schools and churches, with a value of property of nearly a million of dollars, gives it a position and an influence that it would take any other society a long time and a large outlay of funds to acquire—to say nothing of the facilities it thus possesses to extend its work among both races. It has a wide acquaintance with the Southern people, both white and colored, and has won for itself a large place in their confidence, by its quiet, unselfish and useful work for both. It has, moreover, already done something in bringing the two races together in school and church, and for this reason it is fitted to be a bond of union and Christian fellowship between them.

This Association, standing on the ruins of slavery, and amid the schools and churches it has erected thereon for the benefit of the colored race, and to some extent also for the white, would find it both cognate and congenial to enlarge its work among the whites, both the ignorant and the educated, carrying to them a gospel that is not only uplifting and purifying, but that makes no caste distinction in the school room or in the house of God.

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REPORT ON EDUCATIONAL WORK.

The Committee on the Educational Work of the A. M. A. would respectfully report that they find the history of the past year highly satisfactory and encouraging. It is a record of enlarged accommodations at several of the institutions. Stone Hall, at Atlanta, the fourth of the buildings erected by the munificence of Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, has been completed. New buildings, or very considerable additions to former buildings, have been constructed at Midway, Macon, Talladega, Williamsburg, Hillsboro, Memphis and New Orleans; yet from several quarters the call still comes for more room.

It is a record of increased practical efficiency. Industrial training, which forms so important an adjunct of the work, has been making progress by workshops established at Macon and Memphis, and arrangements for carpentry schools at Tougaloo and Atlanta; while farming education and training in housekeeping go on at various points as heretofore, supplemented at Memphis by instruction in nursing and hygiene; and Hampton continues to teach more vigorously than ever a variety of handicrafts, such as printing, bookbinding, iron and tin work, carpentry and wood turning, the manufacture of sash and doors, shoe and harness making, tailoring and farming. All this is, for the present, a very essential element of the educational work.

It is a record of some degree of expansion, although the main aspect is rather one of consolidation and elevation. The number of teachers has increased by twenty-eight and the number of common schools by four; the number of pupils being but slightly greater than last year. The grade of these institutions is steadily advancing. Among these pupils are found, we are happy to say, ninety theological students—twelve more than were reported last year. The three Teachers’ Institutes, held in as many States, may prove to be the entering wedge of another great instrument of power and quickening influence. The crowded halls and interested audiences of the anniversaries of so many of our Institutions are a striking manifestation of genuine progress. When we remember that the oldest of these institutions has seen but a quarter of a century, and practically but twenty years of life time, and that now we rejoice in eight chartered institutions, comparatively strong and effective, twelve high and normal schools and forty-two common schools, with 279 teachers doing their soul-expanding work, we may well say “What hath God wrought.” Far as it falls short of our desire and our duty, so far and more also does it exceed the boldest reasonable expectations of the dark and cloudy time of the beginning.

But far the most satisfactory statement of the annual report is its record of the religious spirit which guides, controls and pervades this whole educational movement. The information that at seven out of eight of the chartered institutions “special religious interest has been manifest, adding scores and scores of these scholars to the number of the disciples of Christ,” and that, “as yet, but very few have been graduated from our various courses of study who had not become Christians,” is a record of the crowning mercy of God. So may it ever be. The heart and conscience must be quickened with the intellect or there is no good hope for that race, or for any other race. It must be _Christian_ education. The school and the Church must move on together at the South as they started together from Plymouth Rock, and they must extend, as far as possible—certainly must offer—their joint benign influences, not to a portion of the population, but to all classes and races alike. For the part can receive its full benefit only in conjunction with the benefit of the whole. This is no new principle, but the method in which, as our annual reports show, this Association has been proceeding throughout its history. Having always refused to recognize the color-line, it can proceed on no other basis without defeating its own ends, and compromising its own principles. And the recent decision of the Supreme Court has rolled a new burden on the Church.

Hence it is that your committee look with much interest upon the experiment, tried and effectually settled at Berea, and now extending thence among the “mountain whites,” of including all classes and races in the purview of our educational and Christian work. We refer to the movement at Williamsburg, a county-seat on the Cumberland River, which is simply a repetition of the movement at Berea of twenty years ago—with this difference, that the abolition of the color-line, both in church and school, at Williamsburg, is fully accepted beforehand by an actual constituency in that place. Here the establishment of an academy to educate teachers for the common schools of the county—of whom, as of the population, but a small portion are colored persons—went hand in hand with the opening of the church to both races alike, and has led most naturally to the establishment of three adjacent preaching places, and the formation of another church at the nearest railway station. This method, when viewed simply on its own merits, seems to be at once the dictate of a wise Christian economy, and an almost necessary sequence, or rather part, of the work of Christian education. Within the particular regions where this Association is planting its schools, exerting its influence and gaining the confidence of the community, it would seem to have peculiar advantages and a special call to leaven the whole community with the institutions of the gospel; while the molding influence of its Christian schools will be left incomplete, except as permanently embodied, fortified and nourished by surrounding Christian churches, built upon the same fundamental principles. Similar in condition, character and wants to this Whitley County, in Kentucky, is a great area of five hundred miles by two hundred, beginning in Virginia and extending to Alabama, occupied chiefly by a white population numbering nearly two millions, of whom more than half the adults can neither read nor write. It is one of the most needy and neglected regions of our country, and presents a pressing call to Christian philanthropy to enter and occupy.

S. C. BARTLETT, Chairman.

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ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT S. C. BARTLETT.

There is perhaps some propriety in my saying an earnest word for the educational work of this Association, representing as I do a college that from its birth abolished the color line in education. More than a century ago Dartmouth College was training the red man and more than half a century ago the black man. Our first six graduates included three missionaries to the Indians, and the last class that entered contains a full-blooded Dakota and a Cherokee. Fifty-nine years ago, twenty-two years before the first anniversary of this Association, we were educating the negro. In 1824 a young man from Martinique, of irreproachable character and conduct, but with some African color and African blood in his veins, applied for admission. Objections were raised in some quarters from the fear that his presence would prove unwelcome. The students heard of it, held meetings and sent a committee to urge his reception, and under the direction of a most conservative Board of Trustees, with Dr. Bennet Tyler at its head, he was admitted, and into one of the most distinguished classes in the history of the institution. There, in company with forty classmates, who from that small number have furnished six college professors, two theological professors, two college presidents, two Indian missionaries, a senator of the United States and a judge of a Supreme Court, Edward Mitchell went on in comfort, graduated with honor and did a good work in the Baptist ministry. Since then many colored men have entered without hindrance, inconvenience, disability or disrespect. They have been the equal companions and in some instances the room-mates of their fellow students. In June last two such young men graduated, one of them an appointment man and a commencement speaker.

We know the colored man as a student, a Christian and a gentleman. And without making contrasts or comparisons, I will say that were all our students as irreproachable as these last two colored men, there would be no more discipline in the institution. We might burn our college laws.

I have seen the colored student elsewhere in Northern schools. Some of you remember that choice young man, Barnabas Root, a Christian scholar in America, though the son of a heathen chief in Africa. I well remember his graduating oration at Knox College, second to no other on that occasion. I remember him as three years a student in Chicago Theological Seminary, in all respects the peer of his classmates. When that young man passed away just on the threshold of his missionary career, it was a grievous loss to his race and to the church.

It is not necessary to say that all are like these. But these show what can be and sometimes will be. Educationally, they are a most hopeful race, because, in the main eager for improvement. And with whatever deductions, it may be doubted whether the summons to awake and arise intellectually, socially and morally ever fell on the ears of six or seven millions of people with such a simultaneous thrill of response. When I look out on our educational work at the South, I am greatly impressed with what has been already done, even more than I am oppressed with what remains to be done.

What have you done? No doubt it was a notable plan of the French authorities in this country near two hundred years ago to encircle this young nation with a chain of military stations from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico. But this Association has done better than that. You have gone not to the outskirts, but to the centre. You have planted your cordon of educational fortresses from the Potomac and the Ohio almost to the Rio Grande, through the heart of the South in all the great slave-holding States. They are there to stay and to re-construct. They are already working powerfully, not alone on the education of individual young men and young women, but on the education of the community and of public sentiment. What a change has the President of the Board of Trustees of Berea College lived to behold—the man who was robbed and driven out, but who now sees white men and black in nearly equal numbers graduating together, and audiences of three or four thousand gathered to hear them. And these sixteen other anniversaries lately chronicled in the AMERICAN MISSIONARY, with their interested audiences and crowded halls, sometimes in stately buildings, are the signal tokens of a great transformation.

No more significant testimony could be given to this change than a sort of wail in the _Atlantic Monthly_ over the “New Departure in Negro Life,” a lament over the decadence of “the jocund customs of the past,” with its thoughtless levity and hilarity, and over the “half-hearted manner in which the characteristic festivities that remain are gone through with.” What does it mean? It means, says the writer, that “an unmistakable change in the negro character is at hand, and in an advanced state of progress. He is putting away childish things and striving in his own crude way to grasp matters of higher import. The bulk of the race have learned to read after a fashion. His primer, his _vade mecum_, is the Bible. Never before, perhaps, in the history of the world, have two decades brought about such a manifest change in a race. Religion, religionism, forms the staple of his speech by day, and the stuff that his dreams are made of by night.”

Would that the picture was more completely true. But, thank God, it is at least founded on fact. The race is aroused, and in earnest. It is bent on accumulation, education, elevation. The world may pay as little heed to the movement as did the Roman world in the time of Tacitus to the Christian Church in the Eternal City; but the time is not distant when the world will see that this quiet work is one of the great movements of modern history.

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CHRISTIAN EDUCATION AT THE SOUTH.

BY REV. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, D.D.

The problem that confronts us this morning is that which is presented by the illiteracy of this country, and especially of the Southern States. This is not the only problem before this Association; the problem of the irreligion and heathenism which infest many regions also claims our energies. There is moral evil as well as ignorance to be met and fought and overcome. The Association has an evangelical work as well as an educational work in its hands; and though, as we shall see, these two are properly one, yet it is now convenient to consider them separately. It is the educational work that is now before us.

We educate, because education is the servant of a pure religion. We educate, because we are the missionaries of a faith which always adds to itself virtue, and to its virtue knowledge. We educate, because a genuine Christianity always educates; because the work of the pulpit, the work of the Church everywhere must always be, in considerable part, the work of education; but, more especially, we of this Association educate, because the peoples with whom we work are in peculiar need of education; and because nothing but intelligence will ever break the fetters of degrading superstition by which they are held, and lead them forth into the liberty of the sons of God.

We educate, also, because we love our country, and because we believe that there is no other remedy for evils that now threaten her very existence, but the remedy of Christian education. Thus we are brought face to face with the problem of illiteracy. Illiteracy in a republic; what does it signify? It is the creeping paralysis that unnerves its arm; it is the malaria that poisons its blood; it is the cataract that dims and finally destroys its vision; it is the slow decay that consumes its life. Illiteracy, ignorance, in a republic is, and must always be, assailing and undermining its very foundations. It is the natural and deadly foe of free government. No republic can live, no republic ought to live, in which the voters are ignorant. Voting in a republic is governing; and no man has any right to govern me who does not know enough to govern himself. No man has any right to take part in the government of the nation, who has not some notion of what right government is. I protest against such government. I have never consented to the justice of it, and I never will. I do not believe that the State has any right to intrust this responsible business of governing—and voting is governing—to the hands of men who cannot read the ballots that they cast and who have no conception of the duties of a citizen.

But the State has done it; and what has been done cannot be undone by any political methods. It is with the consequences that we have to do. And the consequences are tremendous, appalling to those who stop to consider them. The total number of men of voting age in the Southern States at the last census was 4,154,125. Of these 1,354,974 could neither read nor write. A little more than thirty-two per cent. of the voters of those States were at that time wholly illiterate. Think of that! Almost one-third of all the voters in sixteen States of the Union so ignorant that they cannot write their own names or read the simplest English sentence! And these are our rulers.

I know very well that you will find among these thirteen hundred thousand illiterate voters not a few men of great natural shrewdness and considerable general information, who may be fairly qualified to discharge the duties of citizenship. There are men to whom all print is shut, who can see quite as far into public questions as many of those to whom print is as wide open as it was to Silas Wegg. The alphabet test is by no means an infallible test. Some who could not pass this test are well qualified for citizenship. On the other hand, there are tens of thousands of those who are reported among the literates, who are put down as being able to read and write, and who are yet utterly ignorant. They can manage to scrawl their names, perchance, or to skip and tumble about a little among simple words in a primer: but the reading and writing of which they boast is of no sort of use to them as fitting them to vote intelligently. You would need to add a great many figures to that array in the census if you should state fully the facts in regard to the illiteracy of the Southern States.

I think we shall all agree with Dr. Haygood when he says, as he did at the meeting of the National Educational Association in Washington last winter, “This is bad enough.” And perhaps we should also be able to agree with him in the further statement that it “is far from being the worst of this sad case. The worst,” he says, “is this: the illiterate vote in these States is increasing. From 1870 to 1880 the increase of this army of ignorant voters in the South amounted to 187,671.” Of course this is worse, in one sense; for the more we learn of this illiteracy the worse we are off, no doubt. But there is a brighter side to this picture, thank God! It is dark enough, at best; and I want you to see it in all its blackness; but I do not want to paint it any blacker than it is. After you have seen the facts just as they are, you will still find on your hands a stupendous task; but you will have, I trust, some reasons for believing that it is not a hopeless task.

It is true, then, as Dr. Haygood says, that there was a positive increase of illiterate voters in the South between 1870 and 1880. He makes this increase in round numbers 197,000; the figures I have found increase it a little to 208,000. But that is not a _relative_ increase. The increase in the illiterate vote does not keep pace with the increase of the population. The population increased 30 per cent. in the ten years; the illiterate vote increased less than 20 per cent. In 1870, more than 40 per cent. of the voters of the South were illiterate; in 1880, only 32 per cent. were illiterate.

This is what I call very substantial gain. Under the circumstances I am inclined to call it a splendid gain, one that is quite worth singing the doxology over, one that should cause us all to thank God and take courage.

But there are other features of the case to my own mind still more significant. Dr. Haygood says in the same address to which I have referred: “In this downward progress the two races keep well together.” We have seen that it is not a downward, but an upward progress. And I think we shall see that instead of the two races keeping well together, one of them is falling a good ways behind. Which is it? “The increase of the illiterate _white_ vote,” says Dr. Haygood, “was 93,279; of the illiterate negro vote, 94,392. The whites being in the majority, take the South as a whole, the increase of the illiterate vote is relatively greater among the Negroes.”

This is a great misconception. Dr. Haygood has no purpose whatever of misrepresenting the facts; we all know that. No man in the country is doing better work for the colored people than he is doing; no man deserves more honor; but he has misapprehended the facts in this statement; and I know that he will be glad to be corrected. It is true, then, that the actual increase of the illiterate white vote in the Southern States during the last decade was about the same as that of the illiterate Negro vote; 93,000 of the one, 94,000 of the other. But how was it in 1870? In that year there were in the Southern States 317,281 adult whites who were illiterate, and 820,022 adult Negroes. There were at that time considerably more than two and a half times as many Negro illiterates as white illiterates. Now, if the Negroes have added to their eight hundred thousand illiterates only about 94,000, while the whites have added to their three hundred thousand about 93,000, it seems to me that the relative increase is immensely greater among the whites than among the Negroes. In fact, the increase of the illiterate white vote, in the ten years, was more than twenty-eight per cent., while the increase of the illiterate Negro vote was only eleven and a half per cent.

Dr. Haygood gives the figures with respect to several of the States. “In Georgia,” he says, “the illiterate white voters in 1870 were 21,899; in 1880, 28,571; the illiterate Negro voters in Georgia, in 1870, were 100,551; in 1880, 116,516.” Let us see what these figures mean. In Georgia, in 1870, the whole number of males of voting age was 237,640; in 1880, it was 321,438. The increase of adult males was, therefore, about 31 per cent. But the increase in the whole number of illiterate voters was only about 18-1/2 per cent. according to Dr. Haygood’s figures. The white illiterates, however, increased 30-1/2 per cent. while the colored illiterates increased not quite 16 per cent.

Two other States in which we are deeply interested, are reported to us in Dr. Haygood’s figures, and, neglecting the numbers which he gives, I will give you the percentages, which he neglects. In Kentucky the number of male adults has increased 23 per cent. and the whole number of illiterate voters about 21-1/2 per cent. But the per cent. of increase among the illiterate white voters is very nearly 23, almost keeping up with the increase of population, where the per cent. of increase among illiterate Negro voters is not quite fourteen.

In Tennessee the facts are still more striking. The increase in the whole number of males of voting age was, in the ten years, about 26 per cent., while the increase in the number of illiterate voters was only 13 per cent. The illiterate voters increased only half as fast as the voting population. Here, evidently, a very successful attack has been made upon the strongholds of illiteracy. But where have these victories been gained—among the whites or the Negroes? Almost wholly among the latter. The number of illiterate white voters increased during the ten years 24 percent., almost as fast as the population, while the illiterate Negro voters increased during the same period _less than five per cent._

Taking these three States together, we find that the percentage of increase of males of voting age was 27; of illiterate voters, 18; of illiterate white voters, 25; of illiterate Negro voters, 12.

Now these figures completely overthrow the statement that the increase of illiteracy is relatively greater among the Negroes than among the whites. They show that the proportions are all the other way, tremendously the other way; the difference between the two races is startling. The whites are gaining a little in this battle with the powers of darkness; but it is very little; they are scarcely doing more than hold their own; but the Negroes are gaining splendidly; it is to them that the large increase in the percentage of intelligent voters is mainly due.

Now what does this mean? Of course it is due to several causes. The Negroes had had but about five years of opportunity when the census of 1870 was taken; in 1880 they had had fifteen years of opportunity. That a better chance has been offered them, and that they are taking the chance that has been offered them, these figures assure us. But they tell us something more, that, to us, is very significant. The gains of intelligence among the Negroes in all parts of the South have been much more rapid than those of the whites; but they have been more rapid in these three States than in most other parts of the South; and why? Why? Did you ever hear of Fisk, and Berea and Atlanta? The census tables have heard of them, if you have not.

It is to the hundreds of young people that go out every year from these colleges, and such as these, teaching in public and in private schools pupils of their own color, that this gain in the battle with illiteracy at the South is due. They are the children of the light, who are waging this victorious battle with the powers of darkness. There has been great improvement, of course, in the public schools of the South during this decade; but in this improvement the whites have shared as well as the blacks; the great reasons for the more rapid advancement of the blacks are, first, that they are more eager for instruction than the ignorant whites, and, secondly, that they are better supplied with teachers—missionaries of education, who not only do much to supply the demand for knowledge already existing, but who do still more to increase this demand.

We come back, now, from our brief excursion into this fruitful and fascinating realm of percentages, to confront again that large mass of illiteracy that lies athwart the path of this nation. Huge it is, but, thank God, it looks not so vast and unmanageable as once it seemed. It is growing; but the nation is growing faster; relatively it is decreasing. It is far too formidable yet to be let alone; so long as ignorance rules almost one-third of our rulers in all of these sixteen States, no man has any right to relax his vigilance or abate his energies. What these figures show is simply this, that work tells; that our money is not wasted; that our labor is not in vain in the Lord; that if we will only keep it up with our giving and our working, if we will only see to it that these same agencies that have done this grand work in the past ten years are fully equipped to carry it on with increasing vigor, we may hope to gain in the next ten years still more rapid and decisive victories. The word that comes to every friend of the American Missionary Association, to every benefactor in deed or in purpose of these noble schools, is the word that Grant sent to Sheridan after the battle of Five Forks: “Push things!” You’ve got ’em running, these legions of ignorance and darkness; up and after them; harry them on the flank, press them in the rear, till they plunge like the herd of devil-pestered hogs, into the Gulf of Mexico.

You have got the forces to do this work. All you want to do is to give them a better equipment. You want no new machinery; you only want more power; no new organizations, but reinforcements of those in the field.

The kinds of educational work that this Association is doing are exactly the kinds of work that must be done. The industrial training given in some of the schools is admirable; the normal training of teachers is work whose results are immediate and beneficent; the higher education, too, is abundantly justified. If there are any who have doubts on this last score, I am not one of them. There is nothing that these six millions of colored people need to-day more than they need thoroughly educated men of their own race to be their leaders. More than any other class in this country, they are in danger of being misled by petty demagogues and small philosophers. We cannot too soon furnish them with social and political and religious guides who have been trained by severe discipline to think clearly, to consider questions broadly and historically, to reason judicially and dispassionately, to chasten the exuberance and verbosity of their own people with the dignity and judgment that are the fruits of sound learning. Such examples of high character and broad culture scattered about here and there among the Negro people will do more to form their ideals and direct their progress than can be done in any other way. I tell you that the money spent in making first-class men in these colleges is as well invested as any other money that you spend. The only thing to be desired about such schools as Fisk and Atlanta is that their standards be made higher and more inflexible, year by year, and that their work be more and more thorough, so that the diploma shall mean in every case just as much as the diploma of Amherst or Williams or Bowdoin.

It is a Christian education that pupils are receiving in these schools of ours. Most of the pupils who go out from them to become pastors, teachers, lawyers, physicians, merchants, citizens, fathers and mothers are Christian men and women; and they become messengers of a pure Gospel, living epistles of Christ, wherever they go. Especially as teachers do they make their influence felt. We cannot Christianize the public school systems of the Southern States; but if we can Christianize the teachers, that is a much more effective service. And that is precisely what we are doing in all these Southern schools.

This Association has been promoting Christian education at the South in quite another fashion. Gently, without censure or denunciation, by the silent influence of Christly lives, it has been teaching the Southern people that caste is un-Christian. It is a great lesson; it is a lesson hard to learn; and we must not wonder at it: the social maxims and usages of centuries are not changed in a day. But it will be learned by and by; patience and fidelity and sweet reasonableness in those who teach it will have their reward in God’s good time. It only needs that we should quietly bear our testimony and wait; the leaven may be hidden now, but it is working; and the time will surely come, and as speedily as it ought to come, when from churches and from schools the color line will disappear. I do not think that the people who have commissioned and who support this Association in its work—the great Congregational communion, on which it mainly depends—can propose to themselves any better sort of work than that which this Association is doing, or can afford to carry on that work in any other way or by any other hands. It is true, as the figures I have quoted have shown, that the colored people have received most of the benefit of this work, and that the whites have profited by it but little. This is true of the educational work, and of the church work as well. But it is not because the schools and churches of this Association are not open to whites and blacks on equal terms. It is simply because they _are_ open to whites and blacks on equal terms. This is the only reason why the whites do not generally avail themselves of these excellent advantages. It is because the basis on which these schools and churches rest is frankly and thoroughly Christian—because caste is not tolerated in them—that the white people of the South have held aloof from them. For the present, until their convictions and feelings on this subject shall have changed, the white people of the South will, generally, hold themselves aloof from any church or school that rests on this basis, no matter by whom it may be administered. Any society that is as frankly and thoroughly Christian as this society has always been, will have the same difficulty in reaching the whites that this society experiences.

It is possible that churches or schools might be established at the South, nominally open to both races, but really intended exclusively for the whites, into which some whites could be drawn. You might put it into the constitution that no distinctions of color were recognized in the church, and you might still keep saying: “Of course colored people are welcome here, if they want to come; but we think they will be happier and better off in churches of their own.” Probably the colored people would not accept this kind of welcome; and possibly some whites would be satisfied with this method of establishing the color line. It would be an effective method, no doubt. But is this the sort of thing that the people calling themselves Congregationalists want to do? For one I feel sure that it is not worth doing. I don’t believe that we can afford to propagate two kinds of Congregationalism down there, one of which is frankly and bravely Christian in its dealings with the caste of color, and the other of which is, to say the least, less frankly Christian, consenting, by its silence, to the maintenance of the color line. Such a policy seems to me something other than Christian, something less than Christian: and I, for my part, have no time and no money to spend in propagating a Congregationalism that is broader or narrower, or higher or lower, or tighter or looser than simple Christianity. When our zeal for the propagation of Congregationalism leads us to slur over the everlasting verities of Christ’s kingdom, it is leading in doubtful ways.

It has been said that this Association is handicapped by its record and its methods in the work of reaching the whites of the South. Perhaps it is. So was He handicapped in His work among the Pharisees, of whom it was said: “Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?” The burden it is bearing is the cross of Christ; nothing else. It has gone down into humiliation with its Master to succor and save these His brethren. Would it be better for the Association to fling aside this burden? Would it be wise for any other society going down into that field to work to refuse to take it up or to try to hide it from the sight of men?

The disability under which this Association labors is its glory. And I do not believe that it will prove to be a permanent impediment in its work. No; that cannot be. I believe in the victorious might of Christian principles. The heroic faith and patience of the men and women who have been toiling there so long among Christ’s little ones, identifying themselves with the lowly and giving their lives for them, neither striving nor crying against the scorn that has greeted them, reviled but reviling not again, must triumph in the end. It is the one power that is irresistible. The barriers of caste will go down before it, and the color line will no longer stain the threshold of the Christian Church.

So, then, I do not believe that we, as Congregationalists, need any other agency in the Southern field than the one that has wrought there so nobly in the years now past. I am sure that even the educational work of this Association would be obstructed by the entrance of any other missionary organization into this field. Because I love and honor the Home Missionary Society, I do not want to see it compromise itself or imperil the interests of Christ’s kingdom at the South by turning from its proper work, its urgent work, to try a doubtful experiment. And I trust this Association, in all love and kindness, but with all needful frankness, will express its wishes in this matter. Two little boys were astride of a hobby-horse, and the one who was riding ahead was being crowded out of the saddle, and was clinging with some difficulty to the neck of the wooden steed. Finally he ventured: “Jimmy, don’t you think if one of us should get off I could ride a little better?” I hope that the American Missionary Society will say, by her representatives here, to her honored sister, the American Home Missionary Society: “Don’t you think that if one of us should keep out of this Southern field, I could do my work in it a little better?” I am sure that she has earned the right to express this wish, and I have not the slightest fear that the wish will not be heeded.

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ADDRESS OF PROF. C. G. FAIRCHILD.

From the trend of the discussion this morning I find that a large responsibility has drifted into my hands. There is among the churches in the North a deep, unmistakable interest in those long-neglected ignorant whites of the South. It is a difficult problem to tell how to turn this into channels that shall benefit these people without on the one hand neglecting the work already undertaken by this Association or, on the other, giving some suspicion of countenancing a color line and perhaps bringing a clashing of interests between sister societies. In the report on education just received, special attention was turned to the mountain whites. Perhaps the solution of our difficulties may be found here. Certainly there will arise in your minds no suspicion of waning interest in the colored people or sympathy with caste on the part of those who have heretofore been closely connected with this mountain work at Berea College and the surrounding regions. It is their unanimous conviction that work undertaken for these mountain people with firm faith in Christian brotherhood and unswerving courage will assist in unfurling upon a higher masthead the broad motto borne on the seal of Berea College for twenty-five years past: “God hath made of one blood all nations of men.”

The term “mountain” stands for much more than appears at first. It stands for a larger, more inviting and fertile section than many are aware of. It comprises a stretch of country commencing in the Virginias and extending to Alabama, 500 miles one way by 200 the other. Much of the land, not simply in valleys, but also upon the benches of hillsides and even upon the broad mountain tops, is as fertile as the better known sections of the South. At the base of these hills lies an untold wealth of coal, iron and other minerals which is, as yet, almost untouched, while the summits of these hills are still crowned with the virgin forests. This country supports now a population of two millions, though its capabilities are wretchedly developed. The growth since the war in these regions has been at almost double the ratio of that of other parts of the South.

But the term “mountain” bespeaks a country with different social and political characteristics. Slavery had no use for a self-respectful, laboring white man. The badge of manual labor was a badge of servile degradation. Of two brothers one would chance to get a little start, own a few slaves and all society would spur him onward. The other, less fortunate at the start, would slip away to some mountain hamlet and lead an uneventful, unambitious life and bring up a large family in utter ignorance. He plodded on his way, working only as necessity compelled him, instinctively hating slavery, slave-owners and slaves. Thus slavery rejected not simply this broken mountainous country, but the large class of whites which inhabited this region. If the North cares to dignify physical labor in the South, if it feels the need of a class that has a natural love for free, republican institutions, if it cares to have the common-school system take rooting in the soil, if it desires a class of whites that shall be the wise, consistent friends of the colored people, perhaps it may find that this large body of whites rejected by slavery will prove the effective agency under the divine planning for this purpose. The stone which the builders rejected may become the head of the corner.

But one or two railroads cross this section. There are few towns of any importance, and a man who should own $10,000 worth of property would be the great man for twenty miles around. They are an agricultural people, each family living on its own little farm of 50 to 100 acres, the homestead often having been handed down through two or three generations. The houses range from the painted and unpainted frame house of four to six rooms to the very common little log hut of one to two rooms where you will find huddled together at night a father and mother, and children of every age, and you yourself if you happen to be their guest. The most that is needed for family wants, from corn and bacon to tobacco, is raised by themselves. Often such a family will not see $50 in cash the year round. Even the old hand looms find a friendly shelter in those Rip Van Winkle hollows. A man who moved from these regions to Berea, that he might give his seven children an education, wore upon his back his carefully preserved wedding suit, the wool for which he himself had cut from the backs of his father’s sheep, and which his mother, after spinning, and weaving, and dyeing with butternut bark, had cut and made for him. A little shovel plough, a hand-made hoe, and an unkempt mule with a straw collar make up the agricultural outfit. The schoolhouse is a log hut sometimes without doors and windows, or even a floor. For religious services, dependence is placed upon the chance visits of an exhorter who sometimes cannot read, and is even proud of getting his inspiration at first hand. There is a section of Eastern Kentucky, 200 miles one way by 100 the other, that has not a settled minister of any denomination. Some hesitate about extending the work of this Association beyond the blacks, but they need have little scruple here, for this section of the map of our country is black through illiteracy. More than half of the adult white population native born, of the same stock and lineage that furnished from the more favored sections the Clays and Breckenridges, that gave to this country Abraham Lincoln—more than half of this white population cannot read or write. Thus, not on the farther side of broad oceans, or even the distant borders of our land, but right at hand in the very heart of the best settled and most cultured part of our country lies this territory, vast in extent, utterly neglected by all uplifting agencies in the past, peculiarly susceptible to the awakening influences of the changed social conditions at the South, where there is an ignorance so dense that when we remember that they are our brothers and sisters, not by Christian ties simply but by direct blood and lineage, we must hang our heads in shame. Surely if the Church at the North is sighing for new worlds to conquer, what more claim can there possibly be upon its attention and benevolence?

It is a matter of congratulation that this work can be entered upon by this Association at once and with vigor, without embarrassment or exciting in any quarter criticism or suspicion. It is idle for us to suppose that the social growth of generations enforced by ignorance, savage heredity and marked physical characteristics, has wasted away in less than a score of years. More vital than any political problem or the growth of any special church polity is the question whether the time can ever come in this country when the negro in debating his chances and opportunities in life shall not be made to feel that his color is a drawback to him. In working out the solution of this problem this Association has borne a part that is fast challenging the respect of the South and the admiration of the North. This is a vantage ground that it is hazardous to yield. The work of this Association is understood everywhere to mean that nothing less than the utter demolishment of every barrier in the upward progress of the negro race will satisfy it. If, therefore, the churches lay upon it this further work, we feel sure that not only by heritage will it prove true to these fundamental principles, but that the workers at present in the South will exercise an Argus-eyed vigilance that nowhere shall there be a shadow of a suspicion that the spirit of caste has influenced its action. Without rashness on one hand or neglecting its opportunities on the other, the churches at the North can thus safely gratify their present earnest and commendable, though somewhat tardy, desire to benefit the needy whites of the South by asking this Association to turn its attention specially to these mountain whites.

The friends of this Association should also remember that the man whose name as a missionary has been the longest on your roll, the Rev. John G. Fee, was born at the base of these Kentucky hills. You should remember, too, that the men who made an anti-slavery church and school in a slavery State years before the war were these mountain whites. This Association nursed its firstborn on these mountain slopes. As patriots, some of whose sons sleep on that Southern soil, you should remember that this whole section was loyal in the battle for a united country unstained by slavery. West Virginia parted from the parent State under this patriotic impulse. Some mountain counties in Kentucky sent more men into the Union army than they had liable to military duty. Surely gratitude for such help in that struggle is not so dead at the North that it will not say to this Association: “If you have the opportunity by churches and schools to repay in part the debt we owe, we will see that you have the money and the men.”

* * * * *

REPORT ON CHURCH WORK.

Your Committee finds in the report of the Executive Committee for the past year, proof of healthy and steady growth in the work of planting churches. The report records the organization of six new churches, viz., McLeansville, N.C.; Knoxville, Tenn.; Birmingham, Ala.; Jackson, Miss.; Fayetteville, Ark.; and Belle Place, La., and one new State Association of six churches in Miss.; making the whole number of churches eighty-nine, and of State Associations eight. The additions to these churches during the past year have been six hundred and sixty-seven; the number of scholars gathered in the church and Mission Sunday-schools has been nine thousand four hundred and four; the contributions for church work $12,027.21 and for benevolent purposes $1,049.35.

We are glad to find it to be the distinct aim of the Society to press its work of evangelization to its consummation in Christian churches, and that while its educational and industrial work must from the nature of the case be general in its character, the obligation is recognized to gather up the result, so far and as fast as opportunity affords, in a more specific and permanent form. An intelligent Christianity, such as is fostered in the academies, seminaries and colleges maintained by the Society, demands a church-polity that gives scope to the developed manhood and retains it in a process of growth. Our work would be but half done did we leave those brought under its influence to fall back into old methods and be lost in the mass of ignorance and superstition.