A BRIGHT AND CANDID VIEW OF OUR MOUNTAIN WORK.
The following letter comes from a member of the "Andover Band," three of whom entered the work among the American Highlanders last year. It is the first band of theological students organized in any of our seminaries for work in the field of the American Missionary Association. It was a very interesting movement and worthy the seminary that has sent out bands into other parts of the country which have accomplished great results.
The testimony is set forth by Prof. John C. Campbell, a cultured young man, who looks on this interesting work with a fresh vision and gives opinions well balanced respecting this field and others.
It should be said that the letter was not written for publication.
The year has been trying and wearing, but I take great satisfaction in knowing that much has been accomplished. We have established ourselves in the hearts of the people, I believe, and have the respect and co-operative interest of the best men in this and adjoining counties, so I hope for great things in the future if our friends in the North will only help us.
Suspicion has given way to confidence, and I may even fire broadsides at the tobacco habit now, even if it hits home. They are a trying, promising, and loveable people. I admire those of my classmates who have heard the voice of God (not the prompting of inclination) calling them to remain in dear old hair-splitting New England; but, while I admire their bravery, I am sorry for them, for it must seem as if they were striking in the air. Here we see the enemy, and can strike directly at him, and one has some satisfaction in getting weary and sick at heart in fighting at great odds against a visible power instead of the more subtle powers "of the air." But I digress! It is such a temptation to let myself out when communicating with one who understands this discouraging, fascinating, and encouraging work. This year's work has given me experience, as well as gray hair, and even if my labors in the South should terminate this year, I should feel that I had gained a great deal. I wish that all Northerners could come to know the best element of the South, and show their magnanimity as victors by helping the American Missionary Association do the work which alone will make a new South. To me the South presents a touching but heroic picture as she struggles nobly, but somewhat uncertainly, toward the light, still the victim of her cavalier training, still held back by the poor black and the poor white, the products of her accursed institution. Now that is all abolished, she needs help from the North. I doubt if we in the North would be any better had we been[pg 190] placed in the same environment, and our superiority may be due as much to soil, climate, and the consequent unprofitableness of slave labor, as to our Puritan ancestry.
The tide of immigration is beginning to turn toward this State from Georgia, and many coming from the Dakotas. The mass of ignorance is appalling. I realize in part, I think, the difficulty of getting the needs of the whites before a sympathizing audience. When it comes to a white man's needs and his condition, too many church members and others substitute the scientific theory of the survival of the fittest for Christ's law of love. They forget too, I fear, that many of these people in the mountains are victims of slavery as innocent as the Negro; and they do not see that their indifference is letting them lie in the hard bed which circumstances, largely beyond their control, have made for them. If they will only give us money, "greenbacks," if need be, and enable us to get the young out of bed on their intellectual and spiritual feet, I shall be satisfied. And if our Congressmen and politicians would bury the "Bloody Shirt," and stop throwing stones over Mason and Dixon's fence, and out of their personal means give, what is too often given uselessly, to the Association and other similar Boards, the questions which spring from sectional prejudice would soon be solved. I do believe that what the American Missionary Association stands for is the panacea for all political and social ills.