A TOUR OF THE CONFERENCES.
It took six weeks. Other pens were engaged to write up the details. Some notes by the way, may be in place. The Kentucky Association did not elect delegates to the National Council. There will be yet another chance at the July meeting. Rev. John G. Fee is opposed to any representation in that body beyond that of an honorary character. Membership in it, he thinks, would be an endorsement of the sect principle, and inconsistent with the position of the Kentucky Association, which is simply a body of Christian ministers and churches. He claims that testimony must be borne, if only in a small way. At the National Council in Oberlin, I was delighted with the catholic and non-sectarian spirit with which the delegates of this body were welcomed to membership. I should say now: Keep on sending delegates to encourage and emphasize that testimony. That is the only ecclesiastical body in the United States that would offer such organic fellowship.
You have been told of the new era in our work, marked by the opening of half a dozen of the homes of the first families in Selma, Alabama, for the entertainment of the white members of the Conference. It was not merely the offer of their houses as eating and sleeping places, but it was a delicate and attentive Christian hospitality, which invited the guests around from home to home in order to the extension of acquaintance. When grateful words were said to Major Joseph Hardie for having led the way, he answered that that gave him too much credit; that the places had all been opened cheerfully, and that, after the sessions were over, other families had said: “Why didn’t you give us a chance? We would like to have had some of those folks.” Another host, referring to the mutual satisfaction, said: “It is just because we are getting better acquainted.” In the same line was the opening of the Presbyterian pulpit, morning and night. The exercises of the Conference, with a printed programme and prepared articles, were of a high order and well sustained throughout. It was much like one of the Western General Associations.
In the Louisiana Conference, at Terrebonne, of the twenty-six members, the only two white men were Pres. Alexander and the Superintendent. It was not a literary tournament, but a glowing religious convocation. Before the adjournment, eight or ten souls were inquiring the way of life, and some fervid spirits remained to extend the flame. Our dear brother, Rev. Daniel Clay, the entertaining pastor, with his own home and his church upon the same plantation where for thirty-seven years he had served as a bondman, is a very patriarch among the young ministers, loved and revered by us all. The last meeting of this Conference, at New Iberia, was followed by a revival that added one hundred to the company of the disciples. Next year we are to go back to Terrebonne.
The regular time for the meeting of the Association of South-Western Texas is in July, which in the South is the slack time of the year, with the corn and the cotton “laid by,” and which is the usual period, among both colored and white, for revival meetings, as is the winter at the North. This year the brethren undertook to bring it forward to April, so that the Superintendent might be with them, but, as everybody was plowing corn and chopping out the cotton, the effort brought to Helena only the two pastors, B. C. Church and M. Thompson. Yet we had a glorious four days’ meeting, with preachings, conferences, a communion, a season of baptizing, and a class meeting, which, according to the custom of the church, precedes the communion as a preparation. People came six, nine, or twelve miles. The native pastor, Mr. Thompson, preached an able and moving sermon upon trust in God. The regular meeting will be at the same place in July. This Church has a dignified and efficient deaconess, who looks after the many little things in the parish, which a woman can do better than anybody else. It did seem appropriate that a woman’s taste should be employed to arrange her Lord’s Table. I took pleasure in pointing out to her, once a slave, the likeness of her work to that of “Phebe, the servant of the Church at Cenchrea.” I had the pleasure of a ride in the nice missionary buggy which Bro. Towne had given to our presiding elder, Church. It is a good deal better, now that he is sixty-seven, though straight and spry, when he camps out, to have this vehicle to lie under, than to have only the starry firmament over him. It helps to keep company on the prairie for the preacher and the picketed pony.
For ingenuity of swindling, can any pale face beat the darkey when he tries? Down this way, one was going about selling tickets to Kansas for five dollars down, and four upon arrival. In one place he took in some forty of his confiding brethren. Some came to the railroad agent, my informant, to learn of the cheat. Others, at another place, had got on board to find that their tickets were a sham. Another black sharper, for one dollar and a half, was making out the papers for land which Queen Victoria was to give them, since Uncle Sam had failed on the “forty acres and a mule.”
On the way, making one hundred miles north by hack to Austin, I had my desire satisfied in overtaking one of the great droves of cattle moving northward. It numbered three thousand. We struck them as they were passing across a valley, so that every creature was in view. A grand sight it was, preceded by the four-mule commissary prairie schooner, attended by the twenty cow-boys in saddle, with cracking whip and awful spurs, and with the relay of sixty horses in drove, each driver having a change of four. The dreadful drouth of the last year, which carried corn up to 25 cents a bushel, was apparent in the poverty-stricken quality of the beasts and in the scraping up of old scalawags and yearlings and two-year-olds to make out the drove. Out of three counties here last year, 25,000 horses were taken. These go in droves of from twelve to fifteen hundred. Multitudes of them, as they run from colts upward, are sold for five dollars each. Mine host, a colored man, while I was with him, sold eight head of broken horses for $155, to be paid next fall, without interest. In some droves, fifty sucking colts are sometimes shot in a day, as impediments of the march.
The Parker farm has in it 24,000 acres. Six thousand of these are to be cultivated to raise grain for fattening the 4,000 cattle which are to be shipped by rail. Collins Campbell, Esq., twenty years from Vermont, has his 15,000 acres, with 7,000 fenced. I found him a stated reader of the American Missionary, and retaining those well-balanced sentiments which his own Green Mountains had bred. He sells land to the Freedmen. One of his neighbors, whose hospitality I enjoyed, is Gabriel Washington. I wonder if that archangel has not sufficient regard for “the Father of his Country,” and for this, its dusky citizen, to be pleased with this collocation of names? Our Gabriel is so much of the earth earthy, that he owns 1,260 acres of its soil, and has a model farm, with its orchard, cotton gin, and its big Yankee woodpile, the finest one I have seen in the South. His buxom wife had been down the day before, twelve miles, to our big meeting.
Austin is picturesquely located on the north bank of the Colorado, and is a city of 12,000 inhabitants, half of whom are said to be colored; and the finest, most sightly spot about the Capital has just now been crowned with the much admired “Tillotson Institute.” It is to be opened October 1st. Mrs. E. G. Garland, whose marriage with one of Gov. Davis’ judges did not interfere with her school work, has for several years been in charge of the Evans school-house, built by the Freedmen’s Bureau, and called by her maiden name. The last year, fifty of her scholars were out teaching. Her school numbered the last term 120. Surely, it was time for the living institution to take to itself ampler accommodations, and to advance to a higher grade. With all my heart I commend this struggling enterprise. Texas has been neglected. It must now be brought into the line of our educational work. Rev. Dr. Wright, pastor of the Northern Presbyterian Church, which was planted by Dr. Daniel Baker, is one of the trustees of the Tillotson Institute, and is working for it heartily. A sermon at Paris and a lecture at Memphis will complete the work of the tour.