American Missionary Association,
56 READE STREET, N. Y.
PRESIDENT.
Hon. E. S. TOBEY, Boston.
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
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Hon. F. D. Parish, Ohio. Hon. E. D. Holton, Wis. Hon. William Claflin, Mass. Andrew Lester, Esq., N. Y. Rev. Stephen Thurston, D. D., Me. Rev. Samuel Harris, D. D., Ct. Wm. C. Chapin, Esq., R. I. Rev. W. T. Eustis, D. D., Mass. Hon. A. C. Barstow, R. I. Rev. Thatcher Thayer, D. D., R. I. Rev. Ray Palmer, D. D., N. J. Rev. Edward Beecher, D. D., N. Y. Rev. J. M. Sturtevant, D. D., Ill. Rev. W. W. Patton, D. D., D. C. Hon. Seymour Straight, La. Horace Hallock, Esq., Mich. Rev. Cyrus W. Wallace, D. D., N. H. Rev. Edward Hawes, D. D., Ct. Douglas Putnam, Esq., Ohio. Hon. Thaddeus Fairbanks, Vt. Samuel D. Porter, Esq., N. Y. Rev. M. M. G. Dana, D. D., Minn. Rev. H. W. Beecher, N. Y. Gen. O. O. Howard, Oregon. Rev. G. F. Magoun, D. D., Iowa. Col. C. G. Hammond, Ill. Edward Spaulding, M. D., N. H. David Ripley, Esq., N. J. Rev. Wm. M. Barbour, D. D., Ct. Rev. W. L. Gage, D. D., Ct. A. S. Hatch, Esq., N. Y. |
Rev. J. H. Fairchild, D. D., Ohio. Rev. H. A. Stimson, Minn. Rev. J. W. Strong, D. D., Minn. Rev. A. L. Stone, D. D., California. Rev. G. H. Atkinson, D. D., Oregon. Rev. J. E. Rankin, D. D., D. C. Rev. A. L. Chapin, D. D., Wis. S. D. Smith, Esq., Mass. Peter Smith, Esq., Mass. Dea. John C. Whitin, Mass. Hon. J. B. Grinnell, Iowa. Rev. Wm. T. Carr, Ct. Rev. Horace Winslow, Ct. Sir Peter Coats, Scotland. Rev. Henry Allon, D. D., London, Eng. Wm. E. Whiting, Esq., N. Y. J. M. Pinkerton, Esq., Mass. E. A. Graves, Esq., N. J. Rev. F. A. Noble, D. D., Ill. Daniel Hand, Esq., Ct. A. L. Williston, Esq., Mass. Rev. A. F. Beard, D. D., N. Y. Frederick Billings, Esq., Vt. Joseph Carpenter, Esq., R. I. Rev. E. P. Goodwin, D. D., Ill. Rev. C. L. Goodell, D. D., Mo. J. W. Scoville, Esq., Ill. E. W. Blatchford, Esq., Ill. C. D. Talcott, Esq., Ct. Rev. John K. McLean, D. D., Cal. Rev. Richard Cordley, D. D., Kansas. |
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY.
Rev. M. E. STRIEBY, D. D., 56 Reade Street, N. Y.
DISTRICT SECRETARIES.
Rev. C. L. WOODWORTH, Boston.
Rev. G. D. PIKE, New York.
Rev. JAS. POWELL, Chicago.
H. W. HUBBARD, Esq., Treasurer, N. Y.
Rev. M. E. STRIEBY, Recording Secretary.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
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Alonzo S. Ball, A. S. Barnes, Geo. M. Boynton, Wm. B. Brown, |
C. T. Christensen, Clinton B. Fisk, Addison P. Foster, S. B. Halliday, |
Samuel Holmes, Charles A. Hull, Edgar Ketchum, Chas. L. Mead, |
Wm. T. Pratt, J. A. Shoudy, John H. Washburn, G. B. Willcox. |
COMMUNICATIONS
relating to the work of the Association may be addressed to the Corresponding Secretary; those relating to the collecting fields to the District Secretaries; letters for the Editor of the “American Missionary,” to Rev. C. C. Painter, at the New York Office.
DONATIONS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS
may be sent to H. W. Hubbard, Treasurer, 56 Reade Street, New York, or when more convenient, to either of the Branch Offices, 21 Congregational House, Boston, Mass., or 112 West Washington Street, Chicago, Ill. A payment of thirty dollars at one time constitutes a Life Member.
THE
AMERICAN MISSIONARY.
Vol. XXXIV.
SEPTEMBER, 1880.
No. 9.
American Missionary Association.
ANNUAL MEETING.
The next Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association will be held in Norwich, Ct., in the Broadway Church, commencing Tuesday, October 12. at 3 P. M. For particulars see 4th page of cover.
We are happy to say that encouraging responses have already been made to our note of warning that a debt is impending. Prompt and appropriate effort in this direction by our friends who have as yet only hoped, but have not acted, for the best, will, we trust, give us a clear balance sheet on the last of September.
A Farmer in New York writes: “Enclosed please find draft for $300 for work among the Freedmen in the South. I notice in the Missionary that you need an increase of 20 per cent. over last year’s contribution. I have increased mine 33 per cent. If all felt the interest I do in this work, and would give in like proportion, there would soon be a school-house in every neighborhood. It seems to me that the life of our nation depends upon the education of these people. However much I desire that the Gospel shall be sent to Africa, for a few years longer, it seems to me, our efforts should be directed mostly to the South. All reports from the work are encouraging.”
In the State Courts of Fulton County, Ga., of which Atlanta is the seat, no colored jurors have ever been empanelled; but the commissioners have recently placed upon the jury list about twenty of the most intelligent colored men, and it is hoped that some of them will be drawn at the next term of court, and thus another advance in the right direction be made by the Empire State of the South. For several years the United States court held in Atlanta has had a “mixed” jury, and no serious evil has resulted.
Our readers will anticipate with much interest a new book by Judge Tourgee—“Bricks Without Straw”—which is announced for September. It deals with the problem of negro education, and is by one who has made it a profound study.
The public sentiment of Virginia, in regard to free schools, as gathered from the reports of the county superintendents, may be summed up in the language of one of them as follows: “I might content myself by saying that most of the educated in my county are now decided advocates of the present system. At first, a large majority were hostile to it; but a few days ago, one of the first men of the county said to me that he tried hard to believe it a ‘Yankee innovation’ upon our good old Virginia plan, and as such it should be opposed by all true Virginians; but now he had become a decided advocate of it, and believed that the only hope of educating a large majority of our citizens, indeed, that our very existence, as a free and independent people, depended upon the preservation and extension of some good system of popular education.” An examination of one hundred and three such reports discovers the fact that in less than a dozen counties is there any very great opposition to the system. The reports show an almost uniform and decided growth of public sentiment in favor of it.
A Correspondent of the New Orleans Times draws a discouraging picture of public school prospects in that city and State, and an editorial in the same issue adds: “It is, indeed, true, that our schools are in a very sad condition. What is more to be regretted is that the prospect of their improvement is by no means encouraging. Once we took pride in them, and gloried in the advantages which they offered to our children for obtaining an education. That pride appears to exist no longer. There is a sort of apathy about the schools, which justifies the inference that they have not the hold on popular favor that they once had. * * * If there were a prospect of a better condition of affairs next year, there would be, perhaps, no immediate occasion for discouraging forebodings. But there is not; there is no reason for believing that the provisions for the maintenance of the schools next year will be more ample than they are this year. There is one thing very certain, and that is that if we are to have efficient public schools in this city, the money to support them must be forthcoming.”
The Negro Bishop of Hayti, Theodore Holey, a native of the United States, and consecrated in Grace Church, New York City, who, during the recent gathering of the Bishops of the Anglican Church in London, was much honored by all his brethren, and who at the invitation of Dean Stanley preached in Westminster Abbey, on St. James Day, closed his address with the following eloquent words and remarkable prayer:
“And now, on the shores of old England, the cradle of that Anglo-Saxon Christianity by which I have been in part at least illuminated; standing beneath the vaulted roof of this monumental pile, redolent with the piety of by-gone generations during so many ages; in the presence of the
‘Storied urn and animated bust’
that hold the sacred ashes and commemorate the buried grandeur of so many illustrious personages—I catch a fresh inspiration and new impulse of the Divine missionary spirit of our common Christianity; and here in the presence of God, of angels, and of men, on this day sacred to the memory of an apostle whose blessed name was called over me at my baptism, and as I lift up my voice for the first, and perhaps only, time in any of England’s sainted shrines, I dedicate myself anew to the work of God, of the Gospel of Christ, and of the salvation of my fellow-men in the far distant isle of the Caribbean Sea, that has become the chosen field of my Gospel labors.
“O Thou Saviour Christ, Son of the living God, who when Thou wast spurned by the Jews of the race of Shem, and who, when delivered up without cause by the Romans of the race of Japheth, on the day of Thy crucifixion, hadst Thy ponderous cross borne to Golgotha’s summit on the stalwart shoulders of Simon, the Cyrenian, of the race of Ham; I pray Thee, O precious Saviour, remember that forlorn, despised, and rejected race, whose son thus bore Thy cross, when Thou shalt come in the power and majesty of Thy eternal kingdom to distribute Thy crowns of everlasting glory!
“And give to me, then, not a place at Thy right hand or at Thy left, but only the place of a gatekeeper at the entrance of the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, that I may behold my redeemed brethren, the saved of the Lord, entering therein to be partakers with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of all the joys of Thy glorious and everlasting kingdom.”
Negro prejudice against negroes is likely to yield slowly, and will do so only for good reasons. The prejudices of the whites have so far given way that Atlanta has had its negro juror, who promptly joined in convicting a negro who was put on trial. But the next prisoner, who was also a negro, charged with murder, strenuously objected to having one of his own race on the jury. There was another such case in Virginia some time ago, when a colored prisoner made the same objection, on the ground that “niggers would hang a nigger just to see him kick.”
So against this we note the fact, that the Court of Appeals in Kentucky recently quashed an indictment against a negro, on the ground that the grand jury was composed entirely of white men, and that the law excluding all persons other than white men from serving on juries is unconstitutional.
Negro Teachers.—The author of “Other Fools, and Their Doings,” pays this somewhat rhetorical, but just tribute to the noble women who went forth to add value to the freedom, which, under stress of military necessity, the nation had given to the negro slave—a tribute which will appear more just as the history of our noble workers becomes better known:
“While from thousands of homes brave men came with flaunting flags, and beating drums, and booming cannons, singing as they marched,
‘We are coming, Father Abraham,
Three hundred thousand more,’
from out those same homes stole a procession of women, not clandestinely, not timidly, but brave of soul and strong of heart and inflexible of purpose, though without ostentation. The Bible and spelling-book were their only weapons, and their song was of ‘the mercies of the Lord forever,’ and their ‘trust under the feathers of his wings!’ ‘Neither the terror by night,’ ‘the arrow by day,’ ‘the pestilence in darkness,’ nor ‘destruction at noon,’ nor the ‘thousands falling on their right hand, and on their left,’ could make them afraid; ‘because they had made the Lord their strength, even the Most High their refuge.’ They went forth to ‘tread upon the lion and the adder, the young lion and the dragon.’ Scorn, insult, slander, poverty, loneliness, sickness and death, they trampled under their feet; for ‘through the work of the Lord were they made glad,’ and they ‘triumphed in the work of His hands.’
“Away on in the Elysian fields of Heaven, when the cycles of eternity shall have encircled the universe, and rolled back upon their track in such repeated and intricate mazes as only the Infinite mind can trace, they shall receive from the lips of the ransomed of all nations, ‘the blessing of those once ready to perish;’ and the blessed assurance that the torch they lit in the Freedman’s hut, lit a beacon that illumined the world.
“If the South is saved to civilization, its chief human Saviour was ‘the nigger school-teacher.’”
Capt. Payne, who was ejected from the Indian Territory, which he invaded last spring in defiance of the President’s proclamation, again defies the Government and the Courts, and has gone to the Territory with a company of men. Parties in St. Louis have purchased machinery and various kinds of goods for his colony, and the issue is made most unequivocally with the Administration. We anxiously await the action of President Hayes.
The Poncas, of whose wrongs we spoke in the last number of the Missionary, failing to receive justice at the hands of Congress, have commenced a suit to recover possession of their houses and lands now held by the Sioux, to whom the General Government has ceded them. The plaintiffs rely upon the fact that the Constitution of the United States makes a treaty a part of the supreme law of the land, and also extends the judicial power of the Government to all cases in law and equity arising under treaties; and they have in their favor established precedents by the courts for applying to the treaties with themselves this provision of the constitution. Judge Dundy has decided that an Indian is a person within the meaning of the laws, and, therefore, discharged from the custody of Gen. Crook the Poncas whom he held for the purpose of forcibly returning them to the Indian Territory from which they had escaped. Thus it is decided that they may have the question judicially tested in the Federal courts whether they have been illegally restrained of liberty. This suit is to determine whether they may have not only their liberty, but their homes which have been forcibly taken from them in violation of solemn treaties.
ENCOURAGING SIGNS OF THE TIMES.
(From the Fisk Expositor.)
Few things can be more gratifying and cheering to those engaged in the grand work of educating the colored people in Tennessee, than the fact that those having charge of educational affairs in the various towns, named below, either have, within the past few years, organized graded schools for colored youth, or are now taking steps for organizing such schools: Clarksville, Trenton, Shelbyville, Brownsville, Jackson, Union City, Bolivar, Paris, Covington, Pulaski, Columbia, Fayetteville, Mason Station, and perhaps some other towns. Another thing that all who are engaged in the educational work in the State, ought to regard as a hopeful sign, is the fact that the last Legislature, in all its zeal for retrenchment, made no effort to reduce the income of the free school system. This, and the fact, that much complaint was uttered by the people all over the State, because of the suspension of schools consequent upon the postponement of the collection of taxes by the Legislature, show how deeply the system of the State has taken hold upon the affections of the masses.
Still another ground for hopefulness is found in the fact, that, whereas, year before last, not quite 39 per cent. of the colored children of the State were enrolled in the free schools, last year nearly 49 per cent. were so enrolled. And there are reasons for believing that the superintendent’s forthcoming report will show equally encouraging figures.