NORTH AND SOUTH.
Some Things in Common.
In efforts to promote the spirit of Christian union, it is always advised that we look for the things that we hold in common—the things that make us Christians, rather than those which make us of this or that church party. In seeking to advance national good feeling, may we not wisely pursue something of the same course? If any persons can take up this line of talk without being accused of having been bulldozed by Southern blandishment, it may be those who were the early abolitionists, and especially those who endeavor to prove their faith by their works in going down among the lowly and despised ex-slaves to try to raise them up by the appliances of education and of the Gospel.
1. One such common possession is that of our English inheritance. We are, characteristically, of the Anglo-Saxon stock. We speak the English language from South to North. We have that glorious speech that swallows up and overmasters the Babel of tongues that fall upon our ears. We think that, led by our incomparable Webster and Worcester, we use our English with even more of correctness than does the mother country. We inherit the great principles of constitutional government, of trial by jury, habeas corpus, and of civil and religious liberty. We are joint heirs to the matchless English literature, and to a history that has made England the leading nation of Christendom.
2. We hold in common the glories of our Revolutionary period. We share in the joys of the birth of a new nation. We have the same traditions of patriotism. We are mutually proud of the memory of Washington and Jefferson and the Adamses, and of the other fathers of the Republic. Our National Centennial gave occasion for a revival of our national feeling. Masses of our brethren who had been estranged were glad of the opportunity thus afforded to share in the thrill inspired by the world’s recognition of our national greatness.
3. We share in the essentials of the Reformed Church life. The Pilgrims and the Puritans settled in New England. Much of the blood by which the Southern States were stocked was of the Reformed quality. In the celebration, at Chicago, of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Landing of the Pilgrims, Dr. Bacon said that the Presbyterians were Puritans. The South has had a large portion of this moral and theological leavening. The Scotch and the Scotch-Irish element in that region has been large and largely influential. Through them Puritan notions have been planted and propagated. The Huguenots, who were the contribution of France to the Reformation, have had a large representation in the South. Sixty years before the Pilgrims landed, they made, on the Carolina coast, two settlements, which were annihilated by the persecuting power of Rome that followed them to the wilderness continent. They tried again and made a lodgment where Charleston now stands, and to this day “The Huguenot Church” abides in its integrity of language and of character. From this same source that city has received a large infiltration of blood and of principle. Out in the State, and at other places in the South, the Huguenots have given names to towns and tone and caste to society. The South has had but a small portion of the foreign emigration, and so has felt less the influence of the Continental views as to the Sabbath. One of our professors, who has been many years in the South, says that the Holy Day is more strictly observed in that part of the country than at the North. The intellectual orthodoxy of the South is well known. It may be because of the lack of activity in theological discussion, but the fact is apparent to such a degree that a more ethical and practical preaching is what the Christian people are hungering for thereaway.
4. We have a common sympathy in Protestantism. The early Spanish and French occupation in Louisiana and in Baltimore has made those strong Catholic centres. But Romanism is not so generally a prevailing power in the South as in the North. The drift of foreign emigration has made this difference. Rome’s chance at the South is now not with immigrants, but with natives, Africo-Americans; and she is bound to make the most of it. But just here comes out our unity in Protestant views. Southern Christians are anxious lest the display and the mystery of the Roman system should captivate these simple children of nature. They are as solicitous as we that the same Providence which delivered our land from the early domination of Romish nationalities, may save it from coming under the supremacy of that spiritual despotism. When the Catholic bishop at Richmond opened his cathedral, Sunday nights, to a free service in behalf of the colored people, it made a tremendous stir among white as well as colored Protestants.
5. Have we not had a common responsibility for the existence of slavery? Striking in its upas roots at Jamestown, it was allowed to spread over all the colonies. Samuel Hopkins, thundering at the gates of the pens of the slave-trade in Newport, must yet reverberate among those empty dens still standing. In 1872 I saw in Connecticut an aged disciple who had once been a slave in that State. My childish ears tingled with my father’s stories of slave life as known to him in New Jersey. The system, by implication, was recognized in the Federal Constitution. The Government allowed it to sweep out over yet other empire areas at the South and West. We had Federal laws, resting upon Northern public sentiment, to protect the institution. We allowed our churches and our literary institutions and our benevolent societies to come under the common paralysis of conscience. Without any interest in slaves as personal property, we allowed our great commercial affairs to be brought under bondage to that system. Our measure of complicity in that national wrong was indicated in part by the awful retribution meted out in the sacrifice of half a million of precious lives and by the offering of billions of treasure. We have had occasion to join our brethren at the South and say, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother.”
6. Have we not now a common obligation to make restitution to these new-made citizens? We are not only by legislation to recognize their rights of manhood and of citizenship, but to uphold them in the same. We are to secure them in the enjoyment of the blessing of our American educational system and of the best Christianizing processes. As we have endowed them with the sacred elements of citizenship, we must help them to the means of making them citizens worthy of the nation. This common duty was indicated by Hon. John Goode, of Virginia, when he said, in Congress, “Can the Government bestow civil and political rights upon these wards of the nation, and at the same time avoid the solemn obligation to provide for their mental and moral improvement?” That is the responsibility of citizens, North and South, as well as of the Government. And so let the people join hands, irrespective of sectional lines, in doing the just, the right thing by these native Americans, the providential significance of whose existence in our country is a problem calling for solution.