FROM ADDRESS OF GENERAL CLINTON B. FISK.
The American Missionary Association is one of those societies that has long been near my heart, having a large place in it. From its very beginning I watched its growth, but had no idea in the years before that I should ever have such intimate relations with it. Being in the South at the close of the war with the care of two or three millions of colored people thrown on my hands, I naturally looked about to see what was being done for schools and what for Christian culture. I found the American Missionary Association on the skirmish line. They were gathering up the broken fetters of the slaves, selling them for old iron and putting the money into spelling-books and Bibles, building school-houses and sending self-sacrificing, earnest Christian men and women to the South to teach these people; and I naturally fell very much in love with them.
I got a letter a day or two since. It was written by the Mayor of one of the chief cities of the South to myself. I picked this out of a large bundle of correspondence of the same sort. He addresses me and says: “You will doubtless be surprised at receiving a letter from me. In 1865 I was Mayor of this city, which position I now occupy. In that memorable year 1865, through your instrumentality and by order of Major-General George H. Thomas, I was suspended from office. But that is a matter of the past, and for one I favor letting ‘bygones be bygones.’ The charge against me was using my official position for the oppression of the colored people and opposing their education. However true that might have been at the time, certainly such a charge cannot be made against me now. Immediately after the close of the war and upon the restoration of civil law, I was chosen one of the School Commissioners of this district, and gave active aid, amidst much opposition, in the establishment of Public Schools. I have labored earnestly in the cause ever since, and I am proud to inform you that my efforts have in a measure been crowned with success. We have now a splendid school system and a magnificent school building for the whites. We wish now to do as much for the colored people. There is much opposition in every locality in the city to the establishment of a colored school in their midst. Yet, notwithstanding this opposition, I have proffered to sell a lot of my own for the purpose on very reasonable terms.”
Now, that is a great change to come about in seventeen years. So I simply sat down and wrote him a letter which he could use as “substance of doctrine.” I said: “My dear Mr. Mayor, go on to perfection. Do the same thing for the colored people you do for the white people, and blot ‘colored’ and ‘white’ out of your memory. Make a school for the children. It is not easy to send them to the same school; I know all about that.” The colored boy is perhaps more opposed to associating with the white boy in the school than the white boy is to associating with the colored boy. It takes a long time to overcome those strong prejudices on the part of the colored people.
Just after the establishment of Fisk school, which commenced in such a halo of glory under the auspices of this Association, there came into my headquarters in Nashville an old Irish woman, bringing her two little boys with her, and she said, “Misther Gineral Fisk, ’ave you heny hobjection to my sinding these little chaps to your nigger school?” I said, “Not at all, if the ‘niggers’ haven’t any objection.” But it will take a long time before they will drift into one school. I am glad that all of ours are open. How singular it would look to write over the portals of all our schools in the South, “White children admitted here!” Let us do all we can for the education of both races. That particular class to which my friend Haygood made such admirable reference, those poor white people of the South, appeals to us as scarcely any other interest in the South does to-day. Let us remember them. I am glad, sir [addressing Dr. Haygood], that you are going to be in a position to help a great many colored young men and women to become teachers.
Now, my friend Dr. Haygood is a wonderfully modest sort of a man. They chose him only a few weeks ago to be a bishop in his church. And they did a good thing. Nearly all that great conference of Southern Methodists voted for this man to take the highest place in their church, notwithstanding all his grand utterances, his earnest words, on many a Northern platform. They indorsed him and said, “Come up higher!” He took over night to think about it, and wrote them a letter declining to take such place as that. He said, “God has called me to be an educator, and an educator I will be.” To a man who turns his back upon a bishopric of the church and then accepts the Secretaryship of a fund to promote the education of the colored people, we can all give the right hand of fellowship. Now, let us all go out of this meeting with a new covenant of love and service for the Master.
It has well been said that the world itself is a musical instrument not yet fully strung; but when every coast shall be peopled by the lovers of our Lord Jesus Christ; when every mountain barrier shall be overcome; when every abyss shall be spanned, for the uninterrupted progress of the King’s highway of holiness, and the people of the earth shall flock together, as in the prophetic vision, to the mountain of the Lord’s house; then this world shall give its sound in harmony with the infinite intelligence, and angels and men shall shout together, “Hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” Between that glad day and us there are years of toil and travail. But there shall come the triumph. Truth is marching on, steadily—slowly, sometimes, through the centuries, but ever marching on, as resistless as the tides, whose each succeeding billow washes further up the sands. It may be
“ ... weary watching, wave on wave;
And yet the tide heaves onward.
We climb like corals, grave on grave,
But pave a path that’s sunward.
We’re beaten back in many a fray;
Yet newer strength we borrow;
And where the vanguard rests to-day,
The rear shall camp to-morrow.”
Let us go forth, with our faces to the stars, and do something each day of our lives to bring the world nearer to Christ, who died for it.