THE ERA OF FREEDOM—REALISING THAT KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
The great, long-looked-for and ardently-prayed-for day of freedom had come at last, and probably one of the things which Booker Washington remembers is the kiss which his mother gave him after listening to the reading of President Lincoln's Proclamation, and to which the Southern leaders were compelled to yield when the pressure of the Northern army became too great to be longer resisted. In common justice to the Southern planters, we have to remember that the crisis may have meant little if anything short of actual ruin. The human chattels, as slaves were often called, were not seldom very valuable bargains in the open market. A sum of 3000 dollars in gold was once offered for the ex-slave friend to whom reference has been made, and was at once refused by his owner. It can well be believed that one who has developed such a gift for organisation as Booker Washington would have commanded a much higher figure, although such prices were, of course, far in advance of the average.
It might also be said that the planters were not responsible for slavery having become an institution of the Republic, and that they had to do with things as they found them. But while this may be true, it has also to be admitted that the Southern States retained that institution longer than their neighbours. At the end of the century in which the Republic secured its independence there were under 900,000 slaves in the whole of the United States; but the total was nearly 4,000,000 in the year of emancipation. The Northern States had already liberated their slaves in a gradual way about a quarter of a century before that crisis. For generations slavery had been denounced as a wrong, amounting to a great evil, by a number of chief men among the Republican leaders, such as Franklin and Washington, Madison and Jefferson, and others. These men were sufficiently outspoken to regard the thing as being quite out of keeping with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Nevertheless, differences of opinion over this matter not only led to violent controversy but to religious division, the most notable split being that of the Episcopal Methodist Church, which henceforth had its Northern and Southern sections, the latter being founded on a pro-slavery basis.
Young as he was when the great revolution of complete abolition in the Southern States was brought about, Booker Washington was still able to show a child's keenest interest in what was taking place. It was as if the sun had risen on new times altogether; the very winds seemed to blow more cheerfully; the sky above seemed to be bright with promise with better things to come than mere niggers had ever known before; it was as though the Golden Age itself had dawned. The sharp-witted little son of the slave-girl could heartily enter into his mother's joy, but he could not take in the meaning of the things that were happening as he has been able to understand them since. Such a child was naturally affected by the growing boldness and enthusiasm of his elders, who for some time before the final catastrophe clearly anticipated what the end would be. When they gathered at their nocturnal meetings there was unwonted light in their eyes; a spirit of hope and cheerfulness such as they had never known before gave new life to their hymns, which had too often been sad or weird; their feelings became irrepressible. There were signs and tokens of various kinds which the working slaves well understood, whatever this child of a slave-mother may have made of them. There was something in the air which told that something uncommon was coming—"a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees," as it were, which betokened that the great day of freedom had come. Straggling soldiers, who had broken away from the Confederate Army, had a doleful story to tell of disaster and collapse. Then, besides, the inmates of the great house were thinking of how best they could secure their valuables if the invaders actually came. Then, on the first Sunday of April 1865, the catastrophe may be said to have really come. On that day vast quantities of stores were burned at Richmond; during the night many a slave-owner stole away, and in the early morning numbers who had been slaves found themselves no longer in bondage when they greeted the regiments of the Northern Army.
Booker Washington testifies to the wild excess of joy with which the slaves on all the plantations accepted the freedom which had come to them in this remarkable, but no doubt providential, way. For the moment they took no account of the future; they were altogether intoxicated while trying to estimate the reality of that new condition in which they found themselves—that inestimable blessing about which their forefathers had prayed through long and weary generations. The thing seemed to be too good to be true, and yet it was actually with them—it was their own blissful possession!
Then, as was inevitable, human nature being what it is, there came a somewhat strong reaction to this outburst of feeling and irrepressible excitement. What about the future? Practically, a whole nation of something like 4,000,000 persons had suddenly been set free, severed from their employment and their masters, who in their way had looked after them. Those masters had been sorely reduced by the war; many members of the great houses had been killed or wounded. What was to become of those millions of coloured people who had never come in contact with the outer world, who, with a few exceptions, were quite illiterate and knew nothing of the outside world? No wonder that a certain amount of gloom and misgiving soon took the place of that exuberance of joy which the sense of freedom had at first inspired. The crisis was sufficiently serious for those who were young and strong, but what was to become of the aged or those who were worn out in the hard service of the plantations?
Probably the gloom which now overtook so many of the coloured people was as exaggerated as their wild ideas about their good fortune when freedom first came to them. These coloured folk were apt to run into extremes. Booker Washington well remembers them in both moods; and he also can call to mind how they came to see that, after all, liberty was an inheritance of sterling worth when it was fairly estimated. One advantage of the new-found freedom consisted in possessing the right to choose a respectable surname; and another gain was the right, if they felt so disposed, to leave the old haunts and, in some measure, to look round the outside world. Otherwise, they could hardly tell how it might feel to be free. As is the case with agricultural labourers in general, these poor coloured slave folk, with whom Booker Washington was acquainted, had never been far afield from the place of their birth, and, having seen so little of the world, they found that the world was a wide place and, in some respects, different from what they had expected. Of course, a large number were glad to return to the plantations and to agree with their old employers to work as labourers. In choosing their new names, the ex-slaves showed some good taste as well as ambition. Having the patronymic list of presidents, statesmen, soldiers and others to select from, they bedecked themselves in becoming style, not forgetting a middle and, apparently, an initial letter, which usually did not represent a name at all, but, as showing the American manner, was still indispensable. Even in the case of the distinguished negro, an account of whose life and work is given in this volume, he had no such name as Booker T. Washington while he remained in a state of slavery; he chose it for himself after he became free, and all must admit that he made a good selection.
Mrs Washington—as by courtesy she may be called—did not return to the fields after gaining her freedom, as was the case with so many of her old companions. Circumstances led to her removal to Malden, in West Virginia, and which is also in the suburbs of Charleston. Still being quite a young lad, Booker Washington accompanied his mother, as did also his brother John, the object being to join their mother's husband—the man being only their stepfather—who was then employed in the salt industry.
Notwithstanding that all were now free, the temporal prosperity of the family so far showed no improvement. Amid the huts and furnaces of the salt-producing little town there was even less comfort, and far more repulsive squalor, than there had been on the plantation among fellow-slaves. Being a mixture of coloured and white people, the main part were a degraded set; so that, after all the toil and rough adventure of some weeks of travelling, the wonder is that the future benefactor of his race was not utterly demoralised amid his new surroundings. Perhaps it turned out to his advantage that he had to work hard through very long days.
Ever since the time that he began to think about anything, Booker Washington had been inspired by a very strong desire to learn to read. He resolved that, come what might, he would, if possible, so far distinguish himself as to become competent to read the periodicals and newspapers of the day. This was a very praiseworthy resolution to make, but to ordinary persons how utterly impossible of attainment it must have seemed when all things were against them. By a roundabout way he so far advanced as to be able to understand what certain figures on a salt-barrel meant; but he had not even a primer or spelling-book until, on being earnestly requested to do so, his mother was successful in her strenuous endeavours to obtain one. In the whole circle of his coloured acquaintance the ex-slave child knew of no individual who could read, his mother being no exception. This fact, however, seems to have the effect of bringing out in bolder outline the sterling traits of this negro woman's character. She was evidently uncommonly shrewd in worldly matters, and, instead of advising her child not to attempt what might well have seemed to be impossibilities, she showed that wholesome ambition for the boy's future which proved her to be of a superior nature, while she was a genuine, loving mother. We may be sure that Booker Washington inherited his gifts and indomitable perseverance from his mother. A long line of distinguished men have borne similar testimony. Men who have lived and laboured for the benefit of others have been, in very many instances, what their mothers made them.
Having obtained his spelling-book, Booker Washington commenced his education without a teacher, the consequence being that he was occupied for some weeks in overcoming the difficulties of the alphabet, which, under the most favourable conditions, would have detained him but a few hours. In due course he made more rapid progress under the teaching of a negro boy who had the rare distinction of being able to read a printed page; and, as was quite natural, such an example of literary attainments in youth was no less envied than admired.
Then something else occurred which cannot fail to strike us as being almost a phenomenon—at all events, a thing altogether extraordinary under the circumstances. What, through the vista of a third of a century, looks like a perfect furore for education took complete possession of the ex-slaves, and, what made this the more singular, the burning desire for school teaching extended to aspirants of all ages. Before philanthropists came forward to help them the coloured people were found to have their own appointed tutor, and care was taken that he should fare well. Thus, in the case of Booker Washington, the first comparatively competent teacher with whom he came in contact was a quondam soldier who had served in the war. Surely no tutor ever had more enthusiastic pupils; and whether the age of the learner was seven or seventy-five, it seemed to make no difference in damping their enthusiasm. Indeed, it may be seriously questioned whether any other race of people would ever have rivalled this extraordinary ardour in learning to read. And circumstances made it necessary that even the Sunday schools, in common with the day schools, should, first of all, give the most elementary of teaching. What a contrast such a state of things presents to anything of the kind with which we are familiar in connection with any other country! How many there are who remain illiterate, or semi-illiterate, in spite of the schools which are provided and admirably equipped under any national system of education! In their darkest days of ignorance and bondage the negro slaves showed the most lively desire for education. In what measure is that true of any other race? We know that through a long succession of centuries our own peasantry remained, for the most part, quite illiterate, all the while showing a kind of sullen content or stolid indifference. That negroes should show other characteristics should inspire the encouragement coming from the hope that they are destined for better things than have usually entered into the calculations of American politicians. It is because Booker Washington so thoroughly well understands his race that he can harbour such bright hopes of their future, provided that common-sense means are used to train and educate them, so as to give them an opportunity of making the best possible use of their capacities. He is quite an ingenuous man, who says just what he thinks, and who would never think of aiming at the impracticable. What may at first have seemed to be quite a Utopian enterprise to quidnuncs in American social and political circles is to him a very ordinary business. He has solved what has been to others a dark problem, because he has failed to see that there was any problem which needed solution. He sees in the labour of the millions of negroes who people the Southern States a source of vast national wealth. Only turn this to good account and the whole country will be benefited and enriched, while the descendants of the ex-slaves themselves will remain contented and good citizens. To carry out this idea is certainly one of the greatest of enterprises to which social reformers in the New World have ever set their hand.
When a school was established and a supposed competent tutor was appointed, Booker Washington did not find that his course had ceased to be a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. His mother and stepmother were so poor that it was not thought that his services at the salt works could be altogether dispensed with in order that he might attend school. Then a kind of compromise was made, and without the work being entirely suspended, he was allowed to pass some portion of each day at the school. Having thus risen to this respectable standing, he found it desirable to wear a cap which his mother made for him; for it would seem that a Virginian planter no more thought of providing such head-dress for boy slaves than he would of clothing his colts or calves. It was then, moreover, that he gave himself the name which he has ever since retained and honoured. He had been called Booker as a child-slave; for some reason his mother had added Taliaferro, but the final Washington was a becoming euphonism of his own.
With so much manual labour to be done, the difficulties in the way of education were continually becoming intensified. Soon it became impossible to continue in attendance at the day school, and he had to be content with attending an evening class after completing the day's toil. Under the most favourable circumstances this was exhausting; and his experience proved still more trying when he was removed from the salt works to serve in a coal mine, which supplied the furnaces with fuel. Booker Washington has very vivid recollections of the horrors and even constant dangers attending such subterranean work. The darkness alone was almost such as might be felt; and the mishaps, through taking a wrong path, through falling coal, or a candle getting extinguished, were ever threatening those engaged in the works. It was in such an atmosphere and amid such surroundings, however, that the dawn of a new era sent its beams across his chequered pathway. It was there that he heard for the first time of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, which was destined to shape for him his life-course. The institution in question is near to the small town and bathing resort of Hampton, in Virginia, and the channel, commanded by Fortress Monroe, was the scene of some lively naval fights during the Civil War. The institution was founded in 1868 by General S. C. Armstrong, and two years later was incorporated by the State of Virginia. Its object is stated to be "to train young men and women of the negro and Indian races to become teachers among their own people." Booker Washington happened to overhear two men in the coal mine conversing together about this school, and he resolved to find out everything possible about it. The revelation had for him something more than passing interest; strange new hopes had been kindled in his soul. If he had asked, Who was Samuel Chapman Armstrong? he might have learned that he was an officer who had served in the Civil War, and that he was born in the Hawaiian Islands in 1839. The General was a genuine, warm-hearted friend of the coloured races, and as he became to Booker Washington an exemplar, or even something like an apostle, who did more than any other human teacher to mark out his pathway of life, some reference may be made to the pressing needs of the freed negroes in the years which immediately followed the close of the Civil War. There are now some ten million coloured people in the Southern States, but at the time in question there were less than half of this number. Nevertheless, the crisis was sufficiently serious to be even alarming. Thus a contemporary writer says:—
"Such sudden emancipation, on so vast a scale, is unequalled in the annals of history. The nearest parallel to it is the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. A nation, numbering about two millions, was then suddenly emancipated. But as for their sustenance and preservation a succession of miracles took place, it is not necessary for our present purpose to pursue the parallel. No instance in secular history equals the present position of the freed negroes of North America. The crisis has come in a manner and at a time that could hardly have been anticipated by the wisest forecaster of political events."
Great as was the need for earnest effort after hostilities ceased, however, the want and suffering had been far more acute in days that had gone before. The contemporary writer just quoted adds:—
"From the very beginning of the war hundreds have suddenly poured in, as at an hour's notice, upon the cities of the Northern States. One of the camps was inundated by a thousand of these naked and starving fugitives in a single day, and this whilst the snow was coldly and silently covering the surrounding landscape. After the Federals had gained possession of Memphis, there speedily turned into it a long train of negroes, so miserably destitute that, having nothing whatever with them of food or clothing but the rags of two or three years' wear, and only the clouds and the trees to shelter them, these human multitudes were far worse off than the comfortably-kennelled dogs of their white brethren. When General Sherman passed through Georgia, he was asked how many negroes had followed his army. The reply was, 'Ten miles of them.'"
Charitable and Christian people were moved to do what lay in their power not only to relieve present sufferings, but to enable the coloured folk to make a new start in the world. Associations were formed, money was collected, even the Government took care that rations should be distributed. The result was that the outlook soon showed signs of improvement. At one time Levi Coffin of Cincinnati reported that there were thirty-five camps in the Mississippi Valley which contained about 650,000 coloured fugitives, but these camps soon became self-supporting. The more acute want and suffering were soon relieved, but it soon became more and more apparent that service of a more permanent kind would have to be undertaken if the coloured people were to be raised from the low condition into which slavery had reduced them. People of the shrewder sort clearly saw that great results might be expected from education and industrial training. Although the prevailing ignorance was of the densest kind, all were most anxious to learn. Wherever a camp appeared it was certain that schools would speedily follow; and in what must have appeared an incredibly short space of time no less than 250 schools were established in that Mississippi Valley alone. The contemporary anonymous writer in the Leisure Hour who has already been quoted, and who appears to have been thoroughly well acquainted with the negroes' characteristics and condition in their transition state, adds this word-picture of the general outlook at the time to which reference is being made:—
"They are most anxious to be taught, and most docile under direction. Their ignorance previously was universal and extreme. It is no wonder that their religious camp-meetings had become associated with the most grotesque ideas and narrations. It is no wonder that their phraseology was a caricature of civilised language. For how could they be expected to manifest intelligence without any education? So deplorably destitute of instruction were they that very few even of their preachers could read the simplest words. Old men amongst them who had preached the Gospel to their black congregations for upwards of forty years, were found totally ignorant of the alphabet, and, of course, had never read a verse of Scripture. How could the Sermons, the prayers and the religious ideas of such 'pastors' be other than grievously deficient?"
When the depressed conditions under which these coloured people had previously lived were duly taken into account, the most wonderful thing of all was seen in the rapid strides they made in the betterment of their temporal condition or outward surroundings. The days no longer passed in dull or even painful monotony. Labour, which had hitherto been to them hard bondage, not easy to bear, had become a privilege and a pleasure. Having survived the too exaggerated notions of what the new era might mean for them, and the inevitable reaction of disappointment which followed, they could now take stock of life and realise that they had been enormous gainers by at last coming into that inheritance for which their forefathers had so earnestly longed and prayed. The responsibilities, and even the commonplace things associated with freedom, were intensely prized. In contrast with the loose and demoralising customs which had been characteristic of slave-worked plantations, marriage became a bond not to be dissolved. Now that they were becoming able to read it for themselves, the Bible became a prized book, which the negroes regarded as being peculiarly their own. So far from disappointing those who sought to aid them, now that their ex-owners, the planters, were so greatly impoverished, or even ruined, the negroes surprised their friends by the readiness with which they adapted themselves to their new life. The way in which habits of industry and economy were formed struck observers with peculiar force, as being an exceedingly hopeful sign. Nor did the freer air, which they now breathed, in any measure weaken those Christian ties which had held them together in their days of bondage. Their religious meetings were well maintained, but of course under happier conditions. The sad or even strangely weird songs which had been sung by night with bated breath, as it were, in the slave-cabins could now be superseded by more cheerful hymns. The former had been the natural expression of bond-slaves, to whom life on earth was without hope; at last they were able to sing the triumphant note of freemen. He was a very representative member of the negro race who at that time remarked to a friend, "I'se afeard I'll work myself to death now. I'se so glad to work for myself and the family that I can't stop nohow." Even in the United States, where towns and large communities have often risen rapidly in what had but just before been the wilderness, this new reformation, which the negroes now proved themselves to be capable of keeping pace with, must have struck many observers as a phenomenon for which they had hardly been prepared. Schoolhouses and churches, as well as cottages, which were a grateful contrast to the squalid cabins of the plantations, were in many instances supplemented by savings banks. At the same time a disposition towards self-reliance showed itself, which led the main body, whenever possible, to keep aloof from the alms-houses, in which pauper poor were sheltered, by working hard and bravely to support themselves and their households.
While this transition age was in progress, Booker Washington was growing up apace. He had been fortunate enough to sever his connection with the Malden salt-furnaces and their squalid and immoral surroundings, and, what was still better, he had escaped from the coal mine never to return, and had found more genial employment in the household of a military officer and his wife. He now worked more ardently than ever towards the Hampton Institute.