DR. BLYDEN ON THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION.
The American Missionary Association, whose publications we have prefixed to this paper, in their work of lofty and noble purpose through the South are endeavoring to prepare the negro for higher spheres of labor than “cotton-fields, turpentine orchards, and rice-fields.” Every negro who is at all acquainted with matters in the United States must have the highest admiration for it. Almost alone among the benevolent institutions of that land in the days of the great struggle, they never for one moment yielded to the imperious dictates of an oligarchical monopoly, but gave expression to the idea which they inscribed upon their banner, that one of the chief purposes of their organization was to resist the tyranny of the autocracy which doomed the negro to perpetual servitude. No one could be enrolled among its members who was a slave-holder. They have the gratitude of the negro race.
But history will have a brighter page than even that with which to adorn their annals, when she comes to recount the devotion and sacrifices of the hundreds who have been sent forth under their auspices, as uplifters of the prostrate host in the South, to whom, left as they were, paralyzed by slavery, free movement and real progress were intrinsically impossible without the aid of such agencies as the American Missionary Association. As time rolls on, the romance which clings to those heroes who fought to unfetter the body of the slave, will fade beside the halo which will surround these who have labored to liberate his mind.
(Methodist Quarterly Review.)