I. FROM WHENCE WE HAVE COME.
We have seen the tree—dwarfed and yellow-leafed—in the sterile rock-bound soil of the mountain peak, and we have felt that its life was a mere existence, a mere hair’s-breadth remove from death. The fearful regime of slavery had reduced the mental life of the Negro to the point where its activity was a simple, natural struggle for existence. By the terms mental life are designated especially the knowing faculties and voluntary powers, as well as that part of the emotional nature that has to do with character-making. I mean to say that in his intellect, will, and moral sense, the Negro was, by slavery, reduced to the minimum. It could not be otherwise for these reasons: (a) It was unlawful for him to know books; he must know nothing save what his master told him, and must never ask for a reason. (b) He was not allowed to have any will of his own except in minor points, with reference to a brute or a fellow slave. His master’s will was substituted for his, and out of his master’s choice his words and deeds must proceed, even as concerned the most sacred relations of life. At his master’s choice he took the wife, and at his choice he gave up the wife. (c) He was not allowed to have any conscience, except where his master had no choice. Whatever the master said the slave must do, that he must do, conscience or no conscience. Now this state of things had gone on for over 200 years. From this condition we came forth into liberty, and with this eking existence of wilted life we must make a beginning as freemen. With nothing of that sort of manhood which comes only of the well ordered domestic circle, we had to put our shoulders beneath burdens which come of the family institution. The duties of citizenship were imposed upon us, notwithstanding we had never felt or studied anything of the privileges and obligations which center in individual sovereignty. Though we were ignorant of the gospel for the most part and knew nothing of the order of business in church meetings, we found ourselves suddenly forced into the management of church affairs. We had now to look to our own heads for light, to our own hearts for courage, and to our own consciences for moral dictation. So much for the hinderances from within ourselves.
Rev. J. W. Jackson, Pastor Eufaula Baptist Church.
CHANGE IN THE SOCIAL STATUS OF THE SOUTH.
The master and the slave were each pulled from his place as by a mighty force—a force which did no little tearing on both sides, especially on the side of master. For this reason the master was sore. The South had grown rich in slaves. This property the war pulled from its fists, and left in its midst. The Southern people who were rich one day were poor the next day. That the presence of the former slave, clothed in the sovereignty of citizenship, amidst his ex-master’s poverty, should chafe and madden the master, there can be no wonder. Well, it did madden him, and because of this fact the pioneer Negro leader often found himself “headed off” or hindered with reference to some church or school project in his mind. Often did he hide or turn from his course to escape punishment or death by the hands of persons who suspicioned him as a bad man to be among “the Negroes of the neighborhood.” The writer has had many narrow escapes and painful experiences.
We needed help, but whither should we go to obtain it? Thank God for the few white people who had grace in such a time to extend a helping hand to us in our and in their time of weakness.