WORKING OUT THE EQUATION.
DISTRICT SECRETARY POWELL.
It is the dictate of economy that we push the Southern work of this Association. It is cheaper to fight ignorance and crime with Christian education, than to fight their certain outcome with military and police force. It is vastly cheaper to settle the bills for the services of the Christian teacher now, than to meet the settlement of accumulated wrongs in the outbreak of a war or rebellion by and by. And this is a kind of settlement that must be met. There is in the universe a law of recompense; God in the government of the world is always working out equations. He may require centuries to bring about the result; if so, he takes them. Men are not far-sighted enough to see the outcome. The wicked grow bold and defiant and boastful because of punishment delayed, while the righteous for the same reason are led to cry out, “How long, oh Lord! how long shall wickedness be allowed to go unrebuked?” but all the while the law of recompense is filling out the equation. The eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth principle is rolling up the answer. Only give it time, and right shall have triumphant, though it may be terrible, vindication. In the case of individuals, the working of this law is not so evident, because retribution follows them beyond the grave, but in the case of nations, since they have no other life than in this world, settlement must take place here; and it never fails. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even to the third and fourth generations, and there is no escaping the visitations.
I might appeal to the history of nations, the record of whose career has been completed, in illustration of this, but a pertinent illustration can be found nearer home, even in our own country. This nation cherished and protected by law the institution of slavery. With an open Bible in the land, with Protestant Christianity in the ascendancy, with the light of a free Gospel shining upon all questions of morals, with the sentiment of enlightened Christendom smiting heavily the iniquity of the sin; nay, with a constitution for its government, a preamble which declared that all men were created free and equal; right in the face of all this, and despite all this, the giant iniquity and monstrous contradiction was fostered and protected by the law of the land. But the equation was working out. The day of reckoning at length came, and, in the settlement, justice exacted full payment.
In his second inaugural address, President Lincoln expressed the sentiment, that, if it were God’s will for the war to continue “till the wealth piled up by two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil of the bondmen be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn by the lash be repaid by another drawn by the sword, as it was said three thousand years ago, so must it still be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” This sentiment was prophetic, and ere the war ended the prophecy had been more than realized by literal fulfillment. Just see how it was fulfilled. Henry Clay once said that taking the slaves as they were—old and young, sick and disabled—the average value was about five hundred dollars per slave. The money value, at this estimate, of the four and a half million emancipated, would be two billion, two hundred and fifty million dollars. This amount, at ten per cent. interest for thirty years, or one generation, would yield, as value created by slave labor, six billion seven hundred and fifty million dollars, which amount, added to the market value of the slaves, makes the enormous sum of nine billion dollars, as representing the wealth “piled up by the unrequited toil of the bondmen,” and held by the oppressors in utter defiance of justice and right.
Nine billion dollars! Can it be that amount was sunk in the war? The answer is yes, and at least six hundred and fifty million dollars more! I take the figures from a responsible source, and they are these: To put down the rebellion it cost the North four billion seven hundred million dollars. To sustain the rebellion it cost the South two billion seven hundred million dollars; add now to this the market value of the slaves emancipated, two billion two hundred and fifty million dollars, and we have, as the total, nine billion six hundred and fifty million dollars, which this nation spent in order to rid itself of the curse of slavery. That was the equation in dollars. As to the equation in blood, justice was even more severe in the exaction. Every drop of blood drawn by the lash, it is no exaggeration to say, exacted for its canceling, not a drop merely, but a stream. A million graves moistened by the blood of those who fell on the field of battle, to say nothing of the blood that ran from the bodies of the wounded millions who survived, gave fearful emphasis to the divine equation. The wealth piled up by the bondmen’s unrequited toil was sunk, and much more in addition; the blood drawn by the lash was more than canceled by the blood drawn by the sword, and still, even in the presence of these awful facts, we are compelled to say, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
It would have been vastly cheaper, we can now see, for this nation to have paid every dollar of the money valuation of the slaves, and set them free before the war; it would have been better still had the iniquity been stamped out at the very formation of the Government, and this because right demanded it. But unfortunately, the standard of our national legislation has been expediency, not right, and under this cover slavery unwisely admitted within the defenses of our constitution, has proved to be the Trojan horse whence has issued so large a part of our national woes. And now, shall we heed the lesson this dearly bought experience teaches? The negro problem is by no means yet solved. There are questions pertaining to his social and political rights not yet answered. Let this nation try to answer them on any other ground than a full recognition of the negro’s rights as a man, and it will again come into controversy with Jehovah, and again be called sooner or later to pay the penalty of disobedience, dollar for dollar, blood for blood, over and over and over again. It pays for the nation to do right every time, and it does not pay for it to do anything else. Having made these people free, justice and self-interest say “educate them,” and it will prove as a matter of mere economy, far cheaper to do this now than to meet the bills that by and by must be paid in blood and money when God shall take the matter in hand to fill out the equation.