PAYING THE DEBT.
We are rejoiced to be able to report cheering progress in the payment of our debt. Our last statement, in the December number of the Missionary, announced the payment of $30,416, thus bringing the debt down from $93,232.99 in 1876, to $62,816.90, as reported at the Annual Meeting in 1877. It also gave a list of pledges of $5,000, reducing the balance to $57,816.90. Pledges and payments have been made since that date, which reduce the amount to a little below $50,000.
The spirit manifested by our friends in this movement, may be gathered from extracts from the letters we have received. A liberal friend in New England writes: “I have thought for a long time of your Society, and of its just call upon me for aid, additional to what I do when I send you our church collection. * * I will soon send you my check for $1,000” [it has been received] “for your debt, and I will add another thousand during 1878, conditioned upon the total wiping out of the debt in 1878.”
A friend in Hartford, Ct. says: “I have from time to time received reports of the doings and wants of your Association with much interest. You may count me in as one of twenty-five, for a thousand dollars for liquidating your debt, and I hope the full number may soon appear.”
Another Connecticut friend writes: “After getting through with the very busy month, and inspecting the balance sheets, I conclude to anticipate a little on the strength of my hopes, and promise you five hundred dollars toward the debt. I wish I could see my way clear to do more.”
A gentleman in Springfield, Mass., whose “Unabridged” contributions we have often had occasion to acknowledge, sends us his check for $500. “A worshipper at Indian Orchard,” remits $500.
One of our liberal and constant patrons at the West, tells his experience thus: “I could not see where the funds were to come from to aid you, but yesterday, to my great joy, the inclosed three hundred dollars dropped into my hands, and as a faithful and favored steward, I take great pleasure in handing it over to you, to aid in extinguishing the debt of the Association.”
Many expressions of regret come to us from those whose hearts are with us in this effort, but whose means will not permit them just now to help. We wish to express our earnest hope that an effort, so well begun, will not be suffered to fail. It will be seen that some of the pledges are made on condition that the whole sum be raised in a specified time—an additional reason for promptness on the part of those who desire to aid in the movement. We have avoided thus far, the expense of collecting agents, and we trust that the friends of the Association will continue to forward their contributions, and thus save us from any such outlay. It will be a triumph of economy, as well as of liberality.
Rev. Peter J. Gulick, a veteran missionary of the A. B. C. F. M., died at Kobe, Japan, Dec. 8th, 1877. We record his death with affectionate regret, remembering his annual contributions sent to us for many years, accompanied with expressions of his deep interest, in the uplifting to Christian citizenship of the destitute and despised people of his native land.
The Council Fire is the title of a new Monthly Journal, of 16 pages, devoted to the history, character, social life, religious traditions, government, current legends, etc., of the American Indian, including also discussions of our relations to him as a people and a Government. The fact that it is under the editorial management of Col. A. B. Meacham, formerly Indian Superintendent and Peace Commissioner, is a guarantee of its character and value. It gives the current history of Indian affairs in all parts of the country.
NEGROLOGY.[A]
The political calm in the Southern States has apparently given leisure for a somewhat wide discussion of the negro: what he is in himself, and what he may be in the State. It is largely a discussion by Southern men, and from a more or less distinctively Southern standpoint.
Mr. Stetson gives a series of answers to questions, representing the negro as he is, morally, socially and politically: the sum of it all being, what might be anticipated for a race of tropical origin, held for generations in slavery, and suddenly endowed with political equality. Sensual and emotional by nature, lazy and thievish by training, clannish and easily misled as a voter, his salvation will depend on his receiving education, but not by a forcing process, and on his coming gradually to the independent exercise of his civil rights.
The South Carolinian gives an apparently frank representation of the situation as it appears to the native people of that State. The present shows more honesty and less crime, a renewed interest of the whites, and the banishment of the blacks from politics. No party will be tolerated “which aggressively, and in real earnest, advocates negro rights.” He says: “The whites regard the negro as an inferior animal, admirably adapted to work and to wait, and look on him, ‘in his proper place,’ with a curious mixture of amusement, contempt and affection. It is when he aspires to participate in politics, or otherwise claim privileges, that their hatred becomes intense.” In regard to Education, he writes: “There is great prejudice in this State against free schools for any color; nor have the airs put on by colored-school children contributed to remove it. Policy, however, and past promises will probably impel the maintenance of a free-school system for some time, at least, but on a less extensive scale. It is proper to add that some cultured Southerners are in favor of educating and elevating the negro, as the best way to solve our race difficulties. But it is doubtful if their views will prevail against inherited prejudice.”
But The Louisianian takes stronger ground. The Southern question germinated when a slave was first introduced into the American colonies. The institution of slavery made all the difference; giving rise in the South to a “domineering and proscriptive aristocracy,” with regard to all of the African race, and putting all whites—poor or rich, ignorant or educated—on a footing of equality. “There was a nobility in the white skin, more sacred and more respected than the one derived from the letters patent of kings;” more even, apparently, than that based on intelligence or virtue. Slavery made of the Southern planters, “high barons in reality, although not in name.” In the North and West, on the contrary, there was a democracy politically, but a social aristocracy, not recognizing the equality of the white skin. The writer says: “The aristocrats of the South were the real ones; those of the North were spurious. The Southern question used to be, that of the maintenance of this supremacy over the whole land by these real aristocrats.”
Now “mediocrity is enthroned,” and the Southern question is the free negro question; a reversal has been made—the body politic has had its feet up and its head down. The author seems to see nothing but the race question: the law of animal life, where the strong destroy the weak, is the highest law he can think of for its solution; where a weak race comes in contact with a stronger, it must merge into it, or “subserve its interests and prejudices,” or be wiped out of existence, and Providence so orders it. “There will never be peace and prosperity in the Southern States, as long as Caucasian supremacy shall be opposed there;” but, “we intend to control the negro vote by superior intelligence, by persuasion, and not by violence.”
Equal opportunity for education should, he thinks, be given to the blacks; but they should be discouraged from all “aspirations and efforts which will end in disappointment,” [and this is the sentiment, also, of so earnest a worker as Col. Preston of Va.]; “and hasten a more active and deadly struggle.”
It will be a surprise, we doubt not, and a disappointment to many of our Northern friends, to find that such views, especially those of the admirably-written article in the North American Review, still constitute the substratum of thought among the cultivated classes of the Southern States. For what such men as this accomplished writer think in their bed-chambers, finds very different and much grosser expression among men of coarser fibre and ruder touch. We do remember that the last two writers quoted, are from the two longest and most sorely troubled States, where sentiment is probably more extreme than elsewhere in the South; and we hope, indeed, to some extent we know, that there are many of the natives of these States, who are not represented by these views, but who have freed themselves from the dominion of the old ideas of race-rule and caste prejudice. But we are glad to see these free discussions, and from these varying standpoints.
We are pleased to see that education is still not absolutely denied in them, though the motives for its acquirement are largely taken away. But we suggest to our co-workers in this field that, even though the various States in which these freedmen live, are, and have been, extending the advantages of their public schools to children of the blacks, yet, with such sentiments deep-seated in the minds of the educated, and so the influential class, this provision is uncertain, and may be at any time diminished or withdrawn. The substantial foundation for the permanent and patient work of the education of the negro, must be in the minds and hearts of those who believe in his manhood and in his education, for some sufficient use.
In regard to the general question, we believe it a law of God that, as intellectual attainment and moral character are in themselves of far more consequence than complexion or race, those who are equal in these higher spheres easily overlook the differences in things below. If we understand it at all, the Christian idea is not that the strong should destroy the weak, but “laboring, should support” them. The noblest sight on earth is when a superior race, or family, or individual—we care not which—reaches down to an inferior race, or family, or individual, to lift them up toilfully and patiently to its own higher level. The aristocracy of Christ’s kingdom is an aristocracy of service. And, in its accomplished peace, the lion does not eat the lamb, but they lie down together. It may be worth our while to practice a little here.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] “The Southern Negro as He Is”: a Pamphlet, by George R. Stetson, Boston, Mass. “The Result in South Carolina”: Atlantic Monthly, by a South Carolinian. “The Southern Question”: North American Review, by Charles Gayarré, of Louisiana.
—A variety of bills have been introduced into Congress affecting the interests of the red man. One to organize a territorial government, to secure land to individuals, to missions and to Church societies, the residue of land to be forfeited to the United States. Another granting right of way to two railroads, and still another for “a military and post-road bisecting the territory from North to South”; taking for it a strip five miles wide, some 300 to 1,000 square miles. Our large army could certainly travel it without elbowing one another. Another still is arranged, to make Indians having an organized government citizens by wholesale.
Unfortunately, most, if not all, these bills indicate by their origin, as well as by their contents, that they are in the interest of those ambitious to get possession of the lands set apart by treaty to the Indians, and that they involve an utter disregard of the plighted faith and the sworn promises of the nation.