ADDRESS OF THE REV. A. G. HAYGOOD, D.D.
President of Emory College, Oxford, GA.
Mr. President: I never saw the day since Christ converted me that my heart did not warm toward any good cause that, in its plans and efforts, took in the whole human race. This American Missionary Association represents such a cause, and I am grateful for the privilege of taking some small part in this anniversary meeting. And I am the more glad because this meeting is held in the city where Garfield, our President, awaits the resurrection of the just. President Hayes did good work for the South, for which history will give him due credit. It was this: he let the South alone that the storm-rocked sea might calm itself. President Garfield—living, dying, and dead—awoke within the hearts of the masses of the Southern people the throbs of a profounder national sentiment than they had felt in twenty years.
It is becoming that I speak this evening of that part of your work which I understand best, your work in the Southern States; and of that part of it which I know best, your work for the negroes. Any work of importance, as to its extent, methods, or designs, done among the negroes must arouse interest in all thinking minds. The negro has been in America 260 years; there are not far from 7,000,000 of them here to-day; nearly all of them are in the Southern States. At the close of our war for independence there were in the United States about 700,000 negroes. Within a century they have multiplied ten times. How many will they be by 1982? To speak in round numbers, the increase of the total population of this country from 1870 to 1880, as the last census shows was 30 per cent; the increase of the white population, aided largely as it was by immigration, was 28 per cent.; the increase of the negro population, unaided by immigration, was 34 per cent. It is only very foolish people who can be indifferent to such facts; thoughtful men will consider them.
Visionaries and cranks may dream and declaim of solving the problem of our future and theirs by getting them somehow out of this country. But, if it were desirable or practicable to transport them, they are born faster than whole navies can move them, and it is as undesirable as it is impracticable. They are here to stay, and so far as men can see, for the most part where they now are, in the Southern States of this Union.
They are now nearly one-seventh of our population, and by the providence of God they are free men and voters. The time has about passed, Mr. President, for the North to please itself with eloquent speech concerning their emancipation and for the South to fret itself with fervent denunciation concerning their enfranchisement. It were wiser and more profitable for the people of both sections to accept the facts of a difficult question, to discuss the issues of 1882, and in a business like way, to do our best to make the most of them. As to the now dominant sentiment in the South, nobody who has good sense wants them back in slavery, and the South, you may depend upon it, will never consent for the ballot to be taken from them.
Everybody knows that when they received the ballot en masse they were utterly unprepared for it. As a class they had just three ideas concerning the ballot when it was given to them. First. They looked upon it as a symbol of their freedom; this, I believe did them good. Second. They received it as a special mark of the love borne to them by the people of the North; this made them vain of it, and alienated them from their white neighbors. Third. Their predominant notion was that it was given them to “keep the old rebels down;” this spoiled them for fair-minded politics. But as a class they lacked conscience in the use of it.
You will pardon a single illustration of their capacity for enlightened politics. For nearly eight years I have had in my employment a colored man, Daniel Martin by name. He is about my own age. I trust him fully in all matters for which he has capacity. We are much attached to each other, and, the truth is, we have been taking care of each other for a good while. He gets better wages than ordinary colored men in our community, and is much above the average of his race in character and common sense. He can read “coarse print,” and can sign his name imperfectly. You will miss the point of my illustration unless you bear in mind that he had steadily voted the Republican ticket from the beginning of his citizenship to the date of my story. And he so votes till this day. The day before the Hayes and Tilden election he was plowing in a little field near my house. One of our students quizzed him about his views and intentions: “How are you going to vote to-morrow, Uncle Daniel?” It is a peculiarity of the Southern negro that he never delivers a solemn judgment on any subject without coming to a full halt in whatever engages him. One consequence is, he comes to a great many halts in his work. Another peculiarity of at least the Southern negro is, that he thinks in metaphor and speaks in parables. So Daniel, stopping his horse and sticking his plow deeper into the ground, delivered himself as follows: “Now, Mr. Longstreet, you see I is plowin dis furrow. If I only plow dis furrow I makes dis furrow too deep and I don’t plow de balance of de patch.” Mr. Longstreet admitted the force of the statement. Daniel continued in answer to the young man’s question: “I think things is ben gwine on in one way long enough; I think dere ought to be a change. Wherefore I is gwine to vote for Mr. Hayes to-morrow—git up, Bill.”
Next day he and I went to our county town; he voted for Hayes that there might be a change; I voted for Tilden that there might be a change; he killed my vote—or possibly one of yours—and we were “equal before the law.”
But few of them are now prepared to vote intelligently, and ballots, whether cast by fair or dark hands, in the hands of ignorance are dangerous to free institutions. Are not you of the North nearly as much concerned in the quality of the negro’s ballot as we of the South are? Till recently, they voted “solid” for the Republican ticket. A few weeks ago, in Georgia, the majority of them voted for an ex-Confederate Brigadier General, who fought bravely at the first Manassas, and who ran for Governor as an Independent Democrat, receiving, however, the whole Republican vote; and thousands of them voted for the nominee of the Democratic party, the ex-Vice-President of the Confederacy. No white man running for any office in the South will refuse their votes, and, so far as I know, their votes are always sought when there is any chance to get them. I am not sure but that his ignorance makes him more dangerous as a voter when both parties seek his vote than when it is given solid to one. In your work in the South, Mr. President, I rejoice, for many reasons. The reason I now mention is this: That work is helping to prepare the negro for his duties as a citizen. I can well understand how the best and wisest people in the North feel most deeply and solemnly their obligation to do this work. For you gave him the ballot, and history will not justify that gift unless you do all that you can do to prepare him for its intelligent use. Not now, nor during the next generation, can the South do this work alone. Unless you continue to help, and to help mightily, it cannot be done. As to primary education, many in the South—and I, for one, agree with them—believe with our Senator Brown, of Georgia, that the national government should come to the rescue and help the States in this work—distributing its aid on the basis of illiteracy. This would give the South a large share of “appropriations under the old flag.” What if it does? The South is part of you, and you are part of the South—if this is a Union and a Nation. Slowly but surely, as it seems to me, we are beginning to understand our relations to each other. Some day we will, it is to be hoped, understand one another so well and agree so amicably that the phrases “the North” and “the South” shall have only geographical meaning. President Arthur, many thanks to him for this, made no allusion to “the South” in his first message to Congress.
If the general government gives this needed help, it will be in the interest of the whole country, although the Southern States may get, for once, the lion’s share. For we are a large part of this country; we are in the Union and intend to stay there—if we have to whip somebody in order to do it. But, in the nature of things, this sort of help must be temporary, and, as I suppose, should, like the educational work of the State governments, be carried on, for the most part, in the common schools. The thing that must be done, if our work is to stand, is to train up among the negroes, as well as among the whites, men and women who can teach the children of their race—teach them in homes, in school-houses and in churches. This cannot be done by the State as it should be done. For if, as one has said, the “negroes need educated Christianity,” it is also true that they must have Christianized education in order to get it. This the State does not and cannot give. To achieve this most desirable and necessary result the school-house and the church must work together. There must be Bibles in the schools that are to train teachers among this people, and there must be Christian men and women in them who both teach and practice religion.
This, as it appears to me, is what you and others like you are trying to do for the negroes. Your annual reports show that your Association is doing successfully, and on a very broad scale, this most necessary work. I do not particularize; your Secretaries have covered all that ground.
You are raising up in these schools men and women who, in the years to come, can, will and must teach the children of their people. Hundreds of them are doing it now. I say must; for Christianized education must, by its instinctive and divine impulses, perpetuate itself and diffuse itself. Christian education, whether in Christian or heathen lands, is the most aggressive and formative influence that is now shaping the destiny of the human race. When you send out from Nashville, from Berea, from Atlanta and New Orleans young men and women who are both educated and religious, you send into the very masses of these untaught millions those who must teach what they have learned both from books and from Christ. Again I say must, for the spirit that is in an educated Christian man or woman is, as the old Methodist preacher used to say, “a fire in the bones,” and it will blaze out.
The author of the Declaration of Independence wrote, it is said, in 1782, this prediction: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.”
It does not surprise me that Mr. Jefferson made both of these predictions. As to the first, there was at that time in Virginia and other Southern States a strong party that favored the emancipation of the slaves. As to the second prediction, he had studied French philosophy more than he had studied Christianity. If this country were pagan Rome, or infidel France, the first prediction would have failed—they would not have been set free by the will of men. Had they been set free, the second prediction would have been fulfilled, for in a pagan or infidel country, the two races could not be equally free “and live in the same government.” They would not have been set free had this not been a Christian country; as it is a Christian country, the two races, equally free before the law, can live in the same government and the problem of their citizenship can be solved.
But this problem cannot be solved by legislation alone. Time has proved the truth of the weighty words delivered at your anniversary in 1875, by that venerable and great man who was taken to heaven last winter. At that time the Rev. Dr. Leonard Bacon wrote these words: “I come to this conclusion, legislation on the part of the national government is no longer to be invoked in aid of fundamental reconstruction. Attempts by Congress to employ force for the abolition of prejudices and antipathies in social intercourse do not help the cause in which the American Missionary Association is at work. I used the word force, because law enforced is force, and law not enforced is not law. The more completely our cause can be henceforth disentangled from all connection with political parties and agitators, the better for its progress. Doubtless there will be more legislation by the several States, especially in behalf of the great interest of public schools for all, before the consummation that we hope for shall have been attained; but the legislation, must be the effect and not the cause of that fundamental reconstruction which we desire to work for. It will exhibit and record, more than it can inspire or control, the progress of reformed opinions and better sentiments among the people.”
When the law gives equal opportunity and guarantees equal rights to all (and this it must do to be worthy of respect), it has done all it can do. Foundation work means character-building, and this goes on in individuals. Law has its educative force; but to lift up a race whether white, yellow, black, or red, there must be character-building in individual men and women, and to do this work right we must have the church and the school-house. And these two must work together and not against each other. This sort of foundation work you are trying to do and others are trying to do. It has not failed; it cannot fail; it has life in itself.
Mr. Jefferson’s second prediction will fail—it is failing now. These two races are both equally free, and they are living together in the same government with less and less difficulty and misunderstanding each year. Disturbances here and there, conflicts, acts of violence there have been, there are, and there will be for a time. The wonder is not that there was a period of disorder in the Southern States after the war. The true wonder is that there is now so little of it, and that between 1865 and 1870 the South did not rush into final and utter chaos. There was never in any country such a state of things—so provocative of universal and remediless anarchy. What is it that saved us? Not the troops; not acts of Congress. Christian schools and the church of God. It was the Protestant religion that dominated the majority—both of the negroes and the Southern white people. I grant you that the conservative influences that the churches in the South brought out of the war have been greatly aided by the work done by your society and others like it; but it is also true that, but for the work the church in the South did before your coming, you could have done next to nothing, by this time, in the experiment. As to this whole subject, full of difficulties as those know best who have personal relations to it, there is just one platform on which Christian people can stand. Our problem with these millions of negroes in our midst can be happily solved—not by force of any sort from without the States where they live; no more can it be solved by repression within those States. It can be worked out only on the basis of the Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount. On this platform we can work out any problem whatsoever—whether personal, social, political, national or ethnical—that Providence brings before us. On any lower or narrower platform we will fail, and always fail. We have learned—you of the North and we of the South—many things in the last ten years. Among other valuable discoveries, we have learned that the people of neither section are either all good or bad. As to this race question, we of the South have learned, and we are learning, that we can’t manage our problem by any mere repressive system; you have learned, and are learning, that it can’t be solved by any sort of force from without, whether force of law, force of troops, or force of denunciation. Such knowledge is precious; alas! that it cost us so much.
May I quote at this place one other paragraph from the words of Dr. Leonard Bacon? It is at the close of a letter dated “New Haven, October 22, 1875,” and is in these words: “May I be allowed to say one word concerning the future of this society? That word is conciliation—conciliation by meekness, by love, by patient continuance in well-doing. The field is wide open for schools and for the preaching of the Gospel, two great forces operating as one for fundamental reconstruction. In both these lines of effort the work of the society must be more and more a work of conciliation—conciliation of the South to the North and to the restored and beneficent Union; conciliation of races to each other, white to black and black to white; conciliation of contending sects oppressed with traditional bigotries to the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus.” Thomas Jefferson was not a prophet: Leonard Bacon was. And, thank God! so much has been done by this Association to incarnate the truth that was in his great thoughts and to fulfill his hopes and predictions as to its own future. But this work of “fundamental reconstruction” is a slow process, suggests the impatient one. That is true; character-building, whether in a man or in a nation or in a race, is always a slow process. And it must be slower in a nation or in a race than in a man. There was never any great work done in the uplifting or training of a race in a day or in a year. It takes generations. How slowly our own race has risen out of its original savagery; how unfit we still are to fulfill our mission to the world. We have small cause for boasting when white men’s votes—sometimes enough of them to turn the scale in great elections—can be bought cheap in the open streets. Lifting up a nation or a race is a slow process; wherefore the greatest necessity for zeal, for wisdom, and for patience in our work. Whenever a great and necessary work that requires a long time and much labor is to be done, we should begin at once and do our best.
You find more sympathy and more of the spirit of co-operation among Southern people than you found ten years ago. I rejoice in this change of feeling in the South, and it is easy to understand it. Time, the healer, has done his blessed work. Grace has overcome, and the grave has buried much of bitter feeling on both sides. You have learned your work better, and we have learned more perfectly its value. A good deal of your work I have seen; I believe it is good. I have looked into your school methods; they are yielding happy results. I have considered “examination papers” from some of your schools; they would have done credit to any school for any race. I have listened to speeches and essays from colored youth at your commencements; there was the evidence of sound culture and true religion in them. When I heard them I “thanked God and took courage.”
It is often asked, “Why don’t the South do more in this work of educating and lifting up the negroes?” Sometimes the question has been asked angrily—perhaps because ignorantly.
I believe the South can do more than it is doing—certainly more than it has done. But I think it likely that we have done as much as any other people in like circumstances would have done. History does not record of any people such vast, rapid and radical changes of opinion and sentiment on subjects that had been fiercely fought over on hundreds of bloody fields, as has taken place in the South during the last fifteen years on the questions that grow out of the negro’s emancipation and enfranchisement. But the Southern States have done more than most people suppose. There are nearly one million negro children in our public schools in the South.
In speaking of what the South has done and has not done in the work of educating the negroes, let it be remembered that the white people of the South have not been on beds of roses since 1865. The war and its consequences made the South poor beyond conception by those who have not had our experience. It left the North rich. The majority of our people have had a sharp struggle to live; most of them have been unable to educate their own children.
Let me tell you of a man I talked with last summer. I went with my family and a little party on what we might call a camp-fishing expedition. As we approached the place where we proposed to spend a few days in recreation, my attention was attracted by a white woman pulling fodder in a little field near a cabin. That night her husband came to our camp, offering such welcome as he could. We had a long talk together. He had been a Confederate soldier, and he had on his body the marks of seven bullet wounds. He never owned a slave, he had fought for what he had been taught to believe were the rights of the States. He is a laborer on the farm of the man who owned the land where he lived. He gets $140 a year, cabin rent, a few acres tended by his wife and little girls, and the privilege of his winter wood. He said his employer is one of the kindest of men, and does for him all he can do. The landlord himself has small margins of profit. The poor fellow has five children, the eldest a bright girl, aged fourteen. She looked dwarfed and older than her years; she had been nurse and drudge for the little ones. These children came to our camp by invitation, and the oldest promised to come one afternoon and show my own children how to fish. I had my heart set on her coming; I wanted my children to know more about such people. She did not come at the time appointed, but that night she came to tell us why. Her cotton dress was wet with the dew and her little hands were fodder-stained. She said to me: “I am sorry I could not come; mother and I had so much fodder to take up that we have just got through.” This child and I had much talk together. I asked her: “Daughter, can you read?” Her face brightened as she said: “Yes, sir; a little.” “Can you write?” The brown eyes sought the ground as she answered: “No, sir.” “If I will send you some books, will you try to teach your little sisters to read?” The glad look in her eyes I shall never forget, as she answered: “Yes, sir; I will try.” We sent her a good supply and it made them all glad. They are not beggars; the father would not take money for a fine bunch of fish he sent, with his compliments, to my wife, and when he found that we had left some money for little services by the children he flushed and could hardly be persuaded to let them keep it.
Some people call these “white trash.” I declare to you I never heard a Southern white man or woman use the expression in speaking of such persons.
Mr. President, there are tens of thousands of white people in the South as poor as my friend of the fishing camp. If you can help them, in Christ’s name do it.
As to our higher schools, some of our best colleges have died since 1865; others are dying now. Such a death is a loss, not to the South only, but to the whole country. Yours have grown rich. I do not envy you; I rejoice in your strong and well-furnished institutions. But you should be patient toward us, and, I am not ashamed to say, you should help us as God gives you opportunity. Men and brethren, it is time to have done with 1860–65. Said a Brooklyn man to me last year who, unsolicited, had helped two Southern schools: “I think my friends here approve what I have done; but if any should ask, ‘Why did you not give this money to your own people?’ my answer is: ‘They also are my people—we are one people.’” On that platform we can become a Christian nation strong enough to bless the world.
Northern money has done much to “develop the South” during the last decade in pushing railroads and other great industrial enterprises. It is all welcome, and ten times as much. But I do not question that each $100 invested in Christian education in the South since the war has done more to develop it in every best sense than each $1,000 placed in railroads and factories. But enough on these lines of thought.
I must say a word or two as to the relations of your work to Africa. The first atlas I ever saw made a desert of sand cover all the wonderful lands that Livingstone, Stanley, and others have discovered, and they printed across the map of Africa 28,000,000, with an interrogation point to indicate a guess as to the population. Now we are studying the maps of interior Africa, and they tell us of great nations and a population that may reach 200,000,000! Can any man who believes in the Bible, or in God, doubt for one moment that Providence is in the history of the negroes in the United States? Can we doubt that these millions of negroes, now committed to us as the wards of the Christian church, must, some day, attempt and accomplish the evangelization of Africa?
I rejoice that your Association has its eye and heart upon Africa. I saw two photographs in the chapel of Fisk University last May that stirred my soul; they were the faces of two missionaries who had gone from that great Christian school to Africa. One Sunday evening I preached in the chapel. A youth from your Mendi Mission, a native of Africa, getting ready to be a missionary, sang for us in his home language a familiar Sunday-school song, “I Have a Father in the Promised Land.” Some day they will be singing Christian songs in every village of the Dark Continent. How the thought of the Divine fatherhood and of the brotherhood of the eternal Son has changed Europe and made America. Some day these thoughts will change Africa. What we call civilization can’t do it; the gospel of Jesus Christ can. The Christian negroes are getting ready for their work, and you and others working in the same fields, are helping them to get ready. The missionary fire is beginning to burn in their hearts. When they go forth, bearing the sacred symbol of our Lord’s love to men, every Christian man and woman in our land should help them. That movement—and it is coming—will, at no distant day give your colonization and missionary societies all they can do. Was there ever a greater need or a more hopeful field, a greater duty or a brighter promise of success? Mr. President, you may be sure that from thousands of Christian hearts all over the South the prayer goes up, “God bless the work of the American Missionary Association, with all others who are preaching the gospel to the poor.”