Vol. VII—April, 1922—No. 2

NEGRO CONGRESSMEN A GENERATION AFTER

The period of reconstruction which followed the Civil War presented to the statesmen of that time three problems of unusual significance. These were: what should be the status of the eleven Confederate States; what should be done with the leaders of the Confederacy; and finally, what should be the rôle to be played by the several millions of freedmen? In the effort to deal effectively with these problems the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses adopted a reconstruction policy which provided for the readmission of the formerly rebellious States to the Union, the imposition of political disabilities upon many former Confederates, and the bestowal of citizenship and suffrage upon the freedmen. Upon the enlarged electorate the reconstruction of the States was undertaken.

That the freedmen, comprising in many communities a preponderance of voting power, should elect to public office ambitious outstanding men of their race was expected. At that time, therefore, Negroes attained not only local and State offices of importance, but also sat in the United States Congress. Indeed, during the period from 1871 to 1901, the latter year marking the passing of this type of Congressman, twenty-two Negroes, two of whom were senators, held membership in Congress. It seems, moreover, that men like Menard of Florida, Pinchback of Louisiana, Lee and others, though unable to prove their contentions, were, nevertheless, contestants with good title.

This situation, no less unique than it was interesting, has become the source of interminable debate. It has been contended that because of the ignorance of the blacks, in letters, in manners, in business, and in the affairs of State, it was a serious mistake to enfranchise them, thus making possible for a period however brief their virtual direction of the political affairs of some of the Southern States. Consistent in principle, historians of this conviction have viewed with abhorrence the seating of black men in the highest legislative assembly of the land. Not all men, however, have concurred in this opinion. There were those who had precisely the opposite view, basing their argument on the necessity of the plan of reconstruction effected, in order to preserve to the Union the fruits of its victory.

The merits of that reconstruction are not here, however, at issue. Of far greater import for our consideration is the single fact that Negroes were thereby sent to Congress. Did the Negroes elected to Congress justify by their achievements their presence there? To what extent did they give direction to the thought and policies which were to govern and control in this nation? Manifestly an impartial judgment in this matter may be most adequately arrived at by the setting up of certain criteria of excellence expected to inhere in Congressmen and measuring by these the achievements of these functionaries. Considering the matter in this light, therefore, the following questions are advanced as bearing a direct relationship to the services of these Congressmen. First, what of their mental equipment to perform the tasks of law makers? Second, as measured by their experience in public positions of trust and by their grasp of the public questions at that time current, to what extent did they show capacity for public service? Third, in what directions were their chief interests manifested?

Evidences of Mental Equipment

Regarding the Negro Congressmen in the light of the standards already referred to, we shall first make inquiry as to their mental fitness to function as law makers. Broadly considered, they may be divided into two groups: first, those who possessed but limited education; second, those who were college bred.

Among the men comprising the first group, certain common characteristics are noticeable: first, they were mainly members of the earliest Reconstruction Congresses, beginning with the Forty-first, in which Negroes held membership, and were therefore but little removed from slavery; second, some of them were born of slave parents or had been, themselves, slaves; third, others were brought up in communities which expressly prohibited the establishment of educational institutions for Negroes; and fourth, all of them, by dint of severe application in later years, secured, prior to their election to Congress, a better education than rudimentary instruction. The members of this group were twelve in number, including Long [1] of Georgia; De Large,[2] Rainey,[3] Ransier,[4] and Smalls [5] of South Carolina; Lynch [6] and Bruce [7] of Mississippi; Haralson [8] and Turner [9] of Alabama; Hyman [10] of North Carolina; Nash [11] of Louisiana; and Walls [12] of Florida.

As many as ten of the twenty-two Negro congressmen were men of college education. This training, however, varied widely in scope and purpose. Two men of this group became ministers of the gospel. One of them, Richard H. Cain [13] of South Carolina, was trained at Wilberforce University, Xenia, Ohio, whence he left in 1861, at the age of thirty-six years, to begin a career in his chosen field; the other, Hiram E. Revels [14] of Mississippi, was educated at the Quaker Seminary in Union County, Indiana. Prior to their election to Congress, both of these men attracted wide attention as churchmen. Cain was for four years the pastor of a church in Brooklyn, N. Y., after which his congregation sent him as a missionary to the freedmen of South Carolina. Senator Revels, on the other hand, was widely known as a lecturer in the States of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Missouri. For some time he preached in Baltimore, taught school in St. Louis, and among other things, organized churches and lectured in Mississippi. The wide experiences of both gentlemen offered to them unusual opportunities to develop the power, keenness of insight, and knowledge of human nature so essential to the leadership of men.

To some of these future Congressmen, the profession of teaching seemed more attractive than the ministry. Three of the number were destined to become educators. One of them, Henry P. Cheatham [15] of North Carolina, attended the public and private schools near the town of Henderson, and was later graduated with honor from the college department of Shaw University. Immediately thereafter, in 1882, he was elected to the principalship of the Plymouth State Normal School, where he served until 1895. The second member of this group, George W. Murray [16] of South Carolina, won by competitive examination a scholarship at the reconstructed University of South Carolina. There he remained until 1876, his junior year, when by the accession to power of an administration unfriendly to the coeducation of the races, he was forced to withdraw. For many years thereafter, Murray was engaged as a teacher in the schools of his native county.

John Mercer Langston [17] of Virginia, the third member of the group of educators, was graduated, in 1849, at the age of twenty, from Oberlin College. Four years later, in 1853, he completed the work of the theological department of that school. Because of his ripe scholarship, moreover, unusual honors were conferred upon him by several American colleges and universities, and he was the recipient of several honorary memberships in scientific and literary institutions and associations of foreign countries. Indeed, there have sat in Congress few men of greater mental power and energy than John Mercer Langston.

Of the twenty-two Negroes who have sat in Congress, five were members of the legal profession. One of these men represented Alabama, two South Carolina, and two North Carolina. Robert Brown Elliott, the first member of this group of legally trained leaders, was perhaps the most outstanding and certainly the most brilliant of the Negroes who have served in Congress. Elliott [18] entered the High Hollow Academy of London, England, in 1853, at the age of eleven years. In 1859, he was graduated from Eton College. Later, he studied law and was admitted to the bar, where he practiced for some time before the courts of South Carolina. This superior training of Elliott no doubt contributed in large measure to his eminence in debate, which was so often manifested during the memorable sessions of the 42nd and 43rd Congresses.

James T. Rapier [19] of Alabama, one of the really brilliant men in this group, acquired a liberal education, after which he studied law and practiced in his native State. Another member of the legal group was James E. O'Hara [20] of Enfield, North Carolina. Following his academic training which was received in New York City, O'Hara studied law, first, in North Carolina, and later at Howard University in Washington. In June, 1871, he was admitted to the bar of his State.

Two others of this group were Miller and White. The first one, Thomas E. Miller,[21] of Beaufort, South Carolina, attended the free public school for Negroes in his native city. In 1872 he was graduated from the Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Later, Miller read law, and in 1875 was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of his State. The second of these two, George Henry White [22] of North Carolina, studied first in his native State and later at Howard University. While there he pursued concurrently courses in liberal arts and in law. In January, 1879, he was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of his State.

Their Public Service Prior to Membership in Congress

Perhaps the most accurate method whereby one's capacity for the performance of any service may be measured is that which seeks, first, to establish the experience of the individual in the performance of the identical or similar services, and second, to evaluate the degree of skill with which the individual, at a given time, performs the particular service. Regarded in this light, therefore, we subject the Negro Congressmen to this test: As measured by their experience in public positions of trust and confidence and by their grasp of the great public questions at that time current, to what extent did they show capacity for public service?

The first part of our query lends itself to solution without difficulty. Indeed, one may with great ease establish the fact that, with but few exceptions, these men, prior to their election to Congress, had held public offices of honor and trust. A case in point is that of John Mercer Langston [23] of Virginia. While never a member of a State legislature, Langston was, nevertheless, brought often into other public service. Indeed he early attracted attention in Ohio by his service as a member of the Council of Oberlin and by his record in other township offices. Langston served as dean of the Law Department of Howard University, and in 1872 became Vice-President and Acting President of that institution. In 1885 he became President of the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute. He served, moreover, as Inspector-General of the Bureau of Freedmen, a member of the Board of Health of the District of Columbia, Minister resident and Consul-General to Haiti, and Charge d'Affaires to Santo Domingo. His election to Congress, therefore, was the crowning achievement of a lifelong public career.

Hyman,[24] O'Hara,[25] Cheatham,[26] and White,[27] all of North Carolina, had held public office prior to their election to Congress. Hyman and White had each been members of the State Senate, the former for six years, from 1868 to 1874, while O'Hara and White had each served in the lower house of the legislature. Hyman had been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1868, moreover, while O'Hara, who had also served as chairman of the Board of Commissioners of the County of Halifax, had been a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1875. For the eight years from 1886 to 1894, White served as prosecuting attorney for the second judicial district of the State, while Cheatham, the fourth member of the North Carolina delegation, had held but one office, that of Register of Deeds for Vance County.

It is especially significant that each one of the Negro Reconstruction Congressmen from South Carolina, namely Cain,[28] De Large,[29] Elliott,[30] Rainey,[31] Ransier,[32] and Smalls [33] were members of the State Constitutional Convention of 1868. Two of them, Cain and Rainey, had been formerly State Senators; Smalls had served two terms in the Senate and four in the House; while each of the others had been members for one term or more in the lower branch of the legislature. Ransier, moreover, had held, prior to his election to Congress, the high office of lieutenant-governor of the State; Elliott had served as adjutant-general, and Smalls had held successively the offices of lieutenant-colonel, brigadier-general and major-general in the State militia.

Of the two South Carolinians who served in Congress after the Reconstruction, Thomas E. Miller [34] was for four terms a member of the lower chamber of the State legislature and for one term a member of the Senate. Furthermore, he was for one term a school commissioner of his county, and received also his party's nomination for the office of lieutenant-governor of the State. Indeed, of the entire South Carolina group, Murray, alone, seems to have been elected to Congress without previously having held public office.[35] Jefferson F. Long,[36] of Georgia, was not unlike Mr. Murray in that the former had never held public office. In this, his experience differed from that of Walls, of Florida, who had been a member of the Florida State Senate.

Alabama sent to Congress three Negroes, Turner,[37] Rapier,[38] and Haralson.[39] Of these men Haralson alone had had experience in the legislature prior to his election to Congress, having served in both branches of that body. Turner was elected in 1868 to the city council of Selma. Later he became tax collector of Dallas County, but because of his inability to secure honest men as assistants, resigned the office. The third member of this group, James T. Rapier, served as an assessor and later as a collector of internal revenue in his State.

The two Negro United States Senators, Hiram R. Revels [40] and B. K. Bruce,[41] both of Mississippi, and Representative John R. Lynch [42] of the same State, had all served in public office before they were sent to Congress. Senator Revels had held several local offices in Vicksburg, while Senator Bruce, before he came to the Senate, had been sheriff, a member of the Mississippi levee board, and for three years the tax collector of Bolivar County. John R. Lynch, on the other hand, had served not only as justice of the peace, but also two terms in the lower house of the legislature, during the latter one of which he was the Speaker of that body. Unlike the Congressmen from Mississippi, Nash [43] of Louisiana held office for the first time when his state elected him a representative to Congress.

Accessible records and impartial and unbiased historians support the contention that with a few exceptions the record of these Negro functionaries was honorable. Corrupt government was not always the work of the Negro. In the chapter on reconstruction in his The Negro in Our History, C. G. Woodson states that local, state, and federal administrative offices, which offered the most frequent opportunity for corruption, were seldom held by Negroes, but rather by the local white men and by those from the North who had come South to seek their fortunes. In many respects selfish and sometimes lacking in principle, these men became corrupt in several States, administering the government for their own personal ends. "Most Negroes who have served in the South," says he, "came out of office with honorable records. Such service these Negroes rendered in spite of the fact that this was not the rule in that day." New York, according to the same authority, was dominated by the Tweed ring, and the same white men who complained of Negro domination robbed the governments of the Southern States of thousands of dollars after the rule of the master class was reestablished.

Negro Congressmen in Action

With the facts concerning the earlier experiences of these Congressmen in public life a matter of record, attention may now be centered upon the second aspect of the question of their capacity for public service—namely, that of their reactions to the great public questions of their day. Perhaps this topic may be most properly treated first by determining what were the problems of greatest public moment during the period in which these men were in Congress. From the year 1871—the period of service of the first Negro in Congress—throughout the first year of the administration of Rutherford B. Hayes, there were brought prominently before the public mind the questions of reconstruction, economic, social, and political, in the North and West as well as in the South. The exploitation of the public domain in the West, the development of transcontinental railroads and other means of communication, the plea for sound money, the economic regeneration of the South, the proper adjustment of the social relations between the two races living in that section, and the readjustment of political control in the former Confederate States were the great issues upon which, during this period, the attention of the nation was focused.

In the solution of some of these problems the Negro was intimately involved. What was to be his place in the scheme of social adjustment in the South? What part was he to play in the economic regeneration of that section? How and to what extent should he maintain the political power delegated to him by the war amendments? Indeed, of utmost importance to the Negro was the proper solution of three perplexing problems: first, to secure to themselves the civil rights so freely exercised by other groups in the nation; second, to obtain national funds to aid education; third, to determine whether their former masters should be relieved of their political disabilities. It was to the solution of these problems, therefore, that the Negro Congressmen of that period especially addressed themselves.

The problem of civil rights, however, did not immediately take precedence. With the passage by Congress, in 1875, of a measure known as the Civil Rights Bill, which was supplementary to measures of the same sort previously enacted, the Negroes of the country were accorded the rights granted by the Constitution to all other citizens of the United States. The subsequent approval of this bill by the president, and the well-known policy toward the Southern States then adopted, served to remove from the fore of American politics the various issues arising from the larger problems of the social and political reconstruction of the South.

Economic questions then had more opportunity for consideration. A new era in the nation's development was ushered in, and with it came new issues and new policies. The question of the exploitation of the public domain in the West and that of transcontinental railway construction had long been before the nation and still remained, but in lieu of the others of the earlier period, there arose also such questions as the free coinage of silver, the bimetallic monetary standard, tariff for protection or for revenue only, and the Chinese immigration. Despite the new character of the great problems before the public forum, and of the consequent relegation to a minor position of national importance the problems of reconstruction in the South, the issues of peculiar interest to the Negro were not so aptly settled. Indeed, it is to the discredit of the Supreme Court of the United States that in all cases coming before that body in which there was at issue a right granted by the Constitution to the freedmen, efforts were made to evade the real issue, or to interpret the laws so as to contravene the intent of the framers of the Constitution.[44] To urge the protection of the Negro in his exercise of the rights and privileges granted by the Constitution, to secure the enactment of laws with the purpose to secure to him a greater measure of opportunity for social advancement, to oppose the enactment of laws proposing to retard such progress, to stimulate a healthy public opinion favorable to the Negro's cause, to protest against every injustice, great or small, meted out to him, became, as never before, the imperative duties of the Negro members of Congress. Whatever other time and energy remained might be directed towards the solution of the other important issues before the public, but for the most part, the Negro Congressmen were of necessity compelled to defend those interests peculiar to the freedmen. The petitions which these Congressmen presented, the resolutions which they offered, the amendments which they proposed, the bills which they introduced or supported, and the issues which they discussed or debated, will enable one to ascertain to what extent these men viewed aright the needs of their constituents and of the nation. Because of the constitutional right of all citizens to petition Congress for a redress of grievances, however, Congressmen have, in general, considered it a duty to present to Congress the petitions of their constituents, whatever their nature may be. An examination of these, therefore, does not always assist in the effort to determine the interests of a statesman. The sole justification for their consideration in this case is the fact that they have formed, in many instances, the basis of the resolutions, motions and bills which were subsequently introduced.

While petitions of varying natures were presented by all of these legislators, three classes, particularly, claimed the attention of practically every one of them. These petitions sought the relief either of an individual or of an institution suffering from some misfortune of the war, made application for a pension, or requested the adjustment of a claim. Of greater significance, however, were the petitions which, while not so generally popular, led often to the introduction of legislative measures. Conspicuous among these were those seeking to remove the political disabilities of former secessionists, those praying that undesirable laws or privileges be abrogated, those advocating the passage of bills, those praying an investigation of the political methods used in certain States, those directing attention to conditions which merited legislative enactment, those praying an appropriation by Congress for the construction of public buildings, the promotion of public works, and the making of local improvements, and those endorsing movements for the good of the body politic.

One of the first problems of reconstruction that claimed the attention of the Negro Congressmen arose from the measures proposing to grant amnesty to the former Confederates who, by a provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, had been declared ineligible to vote and to hold office. In reference to this matter, Jefferson F. Long, a representative from Georgia to the Forty-first Congress, spoke in a manner reflecting the attitude of many of the Negro Congressmen who were to follow him. His forceful protest maintained that any modification of the test oath as then administered, having the purpose to bring about a general removal of political disabilities, would effect the subjugation of the loyal men of the South to the disloyal. It would, moreover, appear to the Ku Klux Klan to be an indorsement of their campaign of lawlessness, depredation, and crime, fostered and abetted by the men whose political disabilities it was then being sought to remove.[45]

Speaking on the enforcement act, on which he stated first his own position and later that of the Republican Party in his State, Revels, the Senator from Mississippi, said: "I am in favor of removing the disabilities of those upon whom they are imposed in the South just as fast as they give evidence of having become loyal and of being loyal. If you can find one man in the South who gives evidence of the fact that he has ceased to renounce the laws of Congress as unconstitutional, has ceased to oppose them, and respects them and favors the carrying of them out, I am in favor of removing his disabilities; and if you can find one hundred men that the same is true of, I am in favor of removing their disabilities. If you can find a whole State that this is true of, I am in favor of removing the disabilities of all its people."[46]

Revels at that time had reasonable grounds for supporting amnesty, but conditions soon changed. Speaking in the 42nd Congress as it regarded the enforcement of the 14th Amendment, Rainey felt that too much amnesty had led to the murderous activities of the disloyal after they had reached the point of acquiescing. He said:[47] "If the Constitution which we uphold and support as the fundamental law of the United States is inadequate to afford security to life, liberty, and property—if, I say, this inadequacy is proven, then its work is done, then it should no longer be recognized as the magna charta of a great and free people; the sooner it is set aside the better for the liberties of the nation." Another member of the 42nd Congress, Robert C. De Large of South Carolina, while speaking on the bill for the removal of political disabilities, made it quite clear that he would not support the bill unless the gentlemen for it would support a measure to protect the loyal people of the South.[48]

Notable among the speeches on the question of amnesty was that made by Elliott protesting against a bill to this effect by Beck of Kentucky. Contending that the men now seeking relief were responsible for the crimes perpetrated against the loyal men of the South, Elliott maintained that the passage of the bill would be nothing less than the paying of a premium on disloyalty and treason at the expense of those who had remained loyal. Pointing out the cause of their disfranchisement, he demanded in the name of the "law-abiding people of his constituency, whites as well as Negroes," the rejection of this bill and the protection of those whose "only offense was their adherence to the principles of freedom and justice."[49] That the proposed bill was defeated [50] was perhaps in some measure due to his masterful arraignment of its purposes.

Contemporaneous with the question of amnesty, and lasting throughout the thirty years during which Negroes served in Congress, the problem of securing civil rights for the freedmen or of protecting them in the exercise of such rights demanded, to a greater extent than any other, the energy and efforts of the Negro Congressmen. Indeed, but few of the men of this group failed during their careers in Congress to register their opinions on this all-absorbing matter.

Remarking at length on the Georgia bill,[51] Senator Revels spoke out fearlessly in the defense of his race. He defended the Negroes against charges of antagonism and servile strife, lauded the conduct of Negro soldiers in the Civil War and the part they played in saving the Union. He called attention to the loyalty of the Negroes in protecting the white women and their homes, with the knowledge that the masters were engaged in the prosecution of a war the success of which would have meant permanent bondage to the blacks. He asserted that the Negroes bore toward their former masters no revengeful thoughts, no hatreds, no animosities. He recounted the iniquities of the bill then before the body, prayed the protection of those whose rights were thereby threatened, and appealed to Congress to give to the reconstructed State such direction and support as would best meet its most imperative needs.

The discussion of the civil rights bill gave rise to one of Robert Brown Elliott's greatest speeches.[52] Arising to defend the bill, he proceeded to refute the proposition advanced by Beck of Kentucky and supported by Stephens of Georgia, that Congress had no power to legislate against a plain discrimination made by State laws or customs against any person or class of persons within its limits. In reference to the decision of the Slaughter House Cases of Louisiana, which the gentlemen had advanced in support of their thesis, Elliott pointed out the difference in principle between the issues there involved and those at hand. In the former case the court held the act in question to be "a legitimate and warrantable exercise of the police power of the State in regulating the business of stock landing and slaughtering in the city of New Orleans and the territory immediately contiguous." In this case, however, the evils complained of comprehended "the exclusion of certain classes of persons from public inns, from the saloons and tables of the steamboat, from the sleeping-cars on railways, and from the right of sepulchre in public burial-grounds."

The Supreme Court, Elliott contended, has recognized two classes of citizenships, state and national, but nowhere is there denied to Congress the power to prevent a denial of equality of rights, whether those rights exist by virtue of citizenship of the United States or of a State. It followed, therefore, that it is within the authority of Congress to see that no State deny to one class of citizens or persons, rights which are common to other citizens, unless it can be shown to be for the good of all, or pursuant to the legitimate exercise of its police power. Rejecting such classification of the case at hand and pointing out from the decision of the Slaughter House Cases the express recognition of Congress to pass such a bill as the one then under discussion, he concluded that the Constitution warranted the passage of the bill, the Supreme Court sanctioned it, and justice demanded it.[53] Elliott submitted also a resolution directing the Judiciary Committee to report a civil rights bill.[54]

The civil rights of the Negroes constituted the general theme of the remarks made by Alonzo J. Ransier, a representative from South Carolina in the Forty-third Congress. In the first instance he spoke in refutation of the allegements of certain members of the opposition to the effect that the mass of Negroes did not want civil rights. Ransier sought mainly to show, by the presentation [55] of data in form of resolutions from Negro bodies and conventions, the intense desire of the race for civil rights. During the course of these remarks, Ransier served notice of his intention to offer to the civil rights bill an amendment to prevent the disqualification of competent citizens for service as jurors in any court in the nation because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The amendment would provide also for the repeal of all laws, statutes, and ordinances, national or State, which were devised to discriminate against any citizen on account of color by the use of the word "white."[56]

The civil rights of the Negro found nowhere a more ardent champion than James T. Rapier, a representative from Alabama in the Forty-third Congress. In a speech on the measure supplementary to the civil rights bill, Rapier made a lucid analysis of the anomalous position then occupied by the Negro in the United States. Pointing out that Negroes were accorded political rights without the civil, he deplored the whole situation and challenged the truth of the statement that America is the asylum for the oppressed. Averring that the problem was national in scope, he asserted the constitutional authority of Congress to solve it. Denying the contentions of Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, Rapier deplored the apparent inability of that gentleman to comprehend the new order ushered in since the formerly sat in Congress. Stephens, he said, maintained the ideals of the old South. Thus, despite the decision of the war that national rights are paramount to those of the States, Stephens urged that it is the prerogative of the States to confer civil rights upon the Negro, and contended that such action should be left to the States. He thereby offered no constitutional objection to the bestowal of civil rights upon the Negro, but advanced a principle, the acceptance of which would forever preclude his enjoying them. To this proposition Rapier could not assent. That the Negro was considered to possess no rights under the Constitution, he maintained, was fully demonstrated by Kentucky and other Southern States, in which they were denied the privilege of testifying in court against a white man, were refused the right to education by the destruction of their schools and the visitation of violence upon their teachers, and were prevented by the Ku Klux Klan from exercising their right of suffrage. Such actions, he insisted, were in conflict with the contention that the States would eventually confer upon Negroes civil rights. In conclusion he declared that the Negro had earned all the rights that he then exercised as well as those enjoyed by other citizens, that the current conditions constituted a stricture on the fair name of America, and that the solution of the problem lay in the immediate passage by Congress of the Civil Rights Bill then being considered.[57]

Not unlike his colleagues, Richard H. Cain, a representative from South Carolina to the Forty-third and Forty-fifth Congresses, gave to the matter of civil rights much of his time and energy. Replying in part to Vance of North Carolina, Cain denied that the Civil Rights Bill, if passed, would be without the limits of the Constitution or that it would enforce "social equality," maintaining that the regulation of that condition was without the province of legislation. Cain asserted that the Negroes of South Carolina did not enjoy, in public places, all the "rights, privileges and immunities" accorded to other citizens and showed that the admission of Negro students to the University of South Carolina had not effected its destruction. He did not believe that the passage of the bill would alienate from the Negroes the white men of the South who were then friendly to them. Cain reviewed, furthermore, the history of the part played by the Negro in the economic and industrial development of the nation, pointed out the importance of giving to him, in every State, the best possible school facilities, asserted the right of the Negro by statutory enactment to his full civil liberties, and insisted that in the name of justice he should demand for himself all the rights, privileges and immunities accorded to other citizens.[58] Conforming in principle to the doctrine that he had pronounced, Cain introduced before Congress a bill supplementary to the Civil Rights Act.[59]

Much of the energy of James E. O'Hara, a representative from North Carolina, in the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Congresses, was directed toward the protection of the Negro in the exercise of his civil rights.[60] During the course of his remarks on the bill to regulate interstate commerce, he offered an amendment to the effect that any person or persons having purchased a ticket to be conveyed from one State to another, or paid the required fare, should receive the same treatment and be offered equal facilities and accommodation as are furnished all other persons holding tickets of the same class, without discrimination. In support of this amendment, he asserted the constitutional right of Congress to regulate commerce between the States, and that the action contemplated by his amendment came within the scope of this constitutional power. Denying that it was class or race legislation, he maintained that it was in line with the enlightened point of view of the age. The amendment was passed.[61] His opponents, however, were not sufficiently progressive to leave his victory intact.

A defense of the civil rights of the Negro was brought prominently to the fore in the Fifty-first Congress. In his remarks on the affairs of South Carolina,[62] Thomas E. Miller, a representative from that State, declared that the Negroes of South Carolina were suffering from several distinct causes. Among these causes he named lynch law, the petty system of theft which deprived them of the fruits of their daily toil, and injustice in the courts in which they had no rights where their interests and those of the whites conflicted. He demanded for them trial by jury, pay for their work, and the assurance that their lynchers would not become also their legislators. These considerations, he maintained, were of invaluable importance to the country. Miller, furthermore, deplored the action of the Governor of his State, which refused State aid to Negro schools and caused to be closed certain white colleges which had the courage to consider, in a sane way, the so-called Negro problem.

In the Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Congresses, the questions of the protection of the Negroes in the exercise of their civil rights demanded virtually the entire attention of George H. White, who was at that time the sole Negro member of Congress. Among his many protests of discrimination, appeals for just treatment, and discourses on the upright character of his race, there were no speeches more significant nor more prophetic than his arraignment of the apathetic manner with which Congress had greeted his bill, designed "to give to the federal government entire jurisdiction over all cases of lynching and death by mob violence." If, he declared, the nation is to avoid the state of anarchy and moral decay to which conditions were then rapidly leading, there remained no alternative, save the enactment, by some future Congress, of a law to constitute lynching a federal offense.[63]

Education

Despite the great significance attached by many of the Congressmen to the civil rights of the Negroes, that of the education of the freedman was considered hardly less important. One of the first Negro Congressmen to commit himself on this problem was Rainey of South Carolina. That he had the proper grasp of the educational needs of his country is shown by his forceful speech made for national aid to education. He contended that the natural result of this mental improvement will be to impart a better understanding of our institutions, and thus cultivate a loyal disposition and lofty appreciation for them. "The military prowess and demonstrated superiority of the Prussians, when compared to the French, especially in the late war [The Franco-Prussian War]," said he, "is attributable to the fact that the masses of the former were better educated and trained than those of the latter. The leavening spirit of the German philosophers has apparently pervaded all classes of the population of that empire."[64]

The same problem of the education of the Negroes evoked from Walls, of Florida, an opinion replete with sound judgment on the matter. Replying to the objection of McIntyre, of Georgia, that the establishment of a national education fund would interfere with States' rights, Walls conceded, first, that the Constitution confers upon the States all those rights neither expressly delegated to the Federal Government nor prohibited to the States, and second, that one of those rights is the power of regulating common schools; but he doubted the applicability of that principle in this instance. The enemies of progress in the South, he maintained, opposed the education of the masses both of Negroes and whites because of its tendency to liberalize these people. He assigned this policy, therefore, as the motive underlying the opposition of McIntyre to the establishment of a national education fund. He rejected the proposition advanced by McIntyre that the $300,000 appropriated by the legislature of Georgia, of which the Negroes are entitled to a portion, would be shared by them. Continuing, Walls pointed out the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, and the burning of Negro homes and of their schools as inconsistent with the contention that they would receive a fair distribution of the school fund. He reviewed, moreover, the history of the free school movement in Florida and Georgia, assigning the cause of its failure. Concluding his speech with a summary arraignment of the policy of that time, he urged not only the establishment of a national education fund but also of a national education system as constituting the sole assured method whereby the poor whites and Negroes of the South might secure proper educational facilities.[65]

Walls, moreover, submitted a resolution calling for a statement relative to the public lands granted for school purposes, and thereafter introduced bills for the purpose of making large grants of the public lands to schools.[66] Contemporary with Walls in the Forty-third Congress, R. H. Cain shared with him great concern over the question of educating the masses. In the Forty-fifth Congress, he proposed a measure,[67] somewhat similar to one previously submitted by Jere Haralson, to establish an educational fund and to apply the proceeds of the public lands to the education of the people.[68]

Protection of Loyal Citizens

The protection of the loyal people of the South claimed also the attention of Negro Congressmen. When, therefore, the House had under consideration the bill to enforce the 14th Amendment, Robert C. De Large made eloquent remarks replying to Cox of New York, who had denounced the "ignorant" rulers of South Carolina for their "rapacity," which in his opinion justified the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.[69] It was in the defense of the bill for the protection of life and property in the South [70] that Robert B. Elliott had occasion to speak. He showed that the argument upon the pending bill had proceeded upon a question of constitutional law, the opponents denying that its provisions were warranted by the Constitution of the United States, and questioning the data upon which the proposed bill was founded. The probable efficacy of the bill, as a measure of relief and protection for the loyal men of the South from the extraordinary system of oppression to which they were subjected, had not been assailed. Elliott, therefore, undertook to prove that the proposed bill was not obnoxious to the spirit of the Constitution, that it was founded on reason, and that in view of the state of affairs then existing in the South, it was, as a measure of protection, not only warranted, but imperatively demanded.

For his first task, Elliott was compelled to sustain the position that the government of the United States has the right, under the Constitution, to protect a citizen of the United States in the exercise of his vested rights as an American citizen, by the exercise of direct force, or the assertion of immediate jurisdiction through its courts, without the appeal of the State in which the citizen is domiciled. Asserting the legal maxim that where power is given the means of its execution are implied, he sought to establish that the power had been given by Article IV of the Constitution, which imposes upon the Federal Government the duty to protect the States against domestic violence. He attempted, moreover, to establish by the authority of the preamble to the Constitution the violence of the "presumption that the majority of the people of a State may be oppressively subordinated to the minority." To support his own constructions of the Constitution, Elliott quoted Justice Story on this same issue, pointed out the inconsistencies in the argument of his chief opponent, defined within the meaning of the Constitution a republican form of government and thereafter affirmed that the bill in hand came within the limits of the Constitution.

Elliott had next to establish the validity of the facts upon which the proposed bill was founded. Little difficulty, indeed, was experienced in bringing forward convincing evidence. There were presented before the House numerous editorials from Southern newspapers showing the animus of the enemies of the Negro; the report of the partisan committees of Charleston in 1868; communications appearing in the Newberry, South Carolina, Herald of July 17 in 1868; the Ku Klux Klan order appearing in the Charleston News of January 31, 1871; and the printed allegements of leading unreconstructed Southerners, all of which tended to indicate to what extent violence had superseded law, and exactly how unsafe were the lives and property of the loyal people of the South. Elliott quite properly affirmed, therefore, the urgent need for the passage of the bill as a measure of relief and protection to those in the South, whose liberties had been assailed.

On the political conditions in the South during the decline of the Reconstruction régime many Congressmen spoke with seeming authority. Two speeches of note on Southern conditions were made, during the Forty-second Congress, by Robert Brown Elliott. On May 30, 1872, he addressed the House on the subject of the Ku Klux Klan. In this speech, he exposed the whole scheme of domination by violence as effected by that element of the Southern whites who would either "rule [71] or ruin the governments of the several States." The second speech followed remarks by Voorhees, of Indiana, on the misconduct in financial matters of the administration of South Carolina. Replying to the specific charge that his party had been guilty of an over-issue of bonds, Elliott reviewed briefly the financial history of his State for the period in question and, in conclusion, pointed out, first, that "in a legal sense an over-issue of bonds is an issue made in excess of such issue authorized by law," and second, that no act of the General Assembly of South Carolina had limited the extent of bonds to be issued in that State.[72]

An unceasing interest in the political conditions of the South was manifested by John R. Lynch of Mississippi throughout his three terms in Congress. He was quite active in proposing legislation relating to the Southern judicial districts of Mississippi, and he offered also an amendment to the federal election laws.[73] Remarks made by him comprehended discussions of such subjects as the political affairs of the South, reconstruction and restoration of white rule in Mississippi, and "the Southern Question."[74] In his analysis of the "Southern Question," Lynch attributed the condition of the South to certain underlying causes, namely: (1) "A continuous and unnecessary opposition of the impracticable element within the ranks of the Democratic Party to the system of reconstruction finally adopted by Congress, and a stubborn refusal on their part to acquiesce in the results of the War"; (2) "the persistent and uncharitable opposition of this same element—the element that had obtained control of the party organization and therefore shaped its policy—to the civil and political rights of Negroes"; and (3) "the methods of the so-called white-league whereby an armed military organization was maintained to effect a condition of white supremacy." Lynch, in concluding, appealed to the fairminded and justice-loving people of America to unite in a common effort to eradicate these evils and secure to the Negroes the rights that they so justly merited.

Referring to the same situation, Charles E. Nash, a representative from Louisiana to the Forty-fourth Congress, held to be unjustified the attacks upon the character of the white men and the integrity and ability of Negroes in the South, who had joined purposes to promote the principles of justice and of sectional harmony. Furthermore, he entered a general denial of the charge that liberty in Louisiana had been destroyed, and pointed out the need of a policy of cooperation between the whites and blacks, to the end that the education of both races might be fostered, that the indiscriminate and illegal killing of Negroes might be eliminated, and that the reign of terror effected by a union of the ruffian whites and ignorant blacks might be prevented. Nash then extolled the record of the party in power for its fairness to the Negro, and arraigned the attitude of the opposition to all measures designed to ameliorate the condition of the race. Concluding his remarks, Nash preached the sound doctrine that sectional animosities should be buried and that all units and sections of the nation should cooperate to the end that a greater, more humane and more powerful America might be evolved.[75]

The most comprehensive remarks of Smalls of South Carolina concerned the electoral vote and the policy of parties in his State.[76] In this he pointed out that ruffians had intimidated the black voters, had driven out the white, and had perpetrated crimes and election frauds to the end that the political control of the State might be recommitted to the hands of reactionaries. Concerning the frauds committed in the election held prior to the Forty-fourth Congress, facts and figures were presented in great detail to verify his contentions.

During his discussion of the proposal to investigate the frauds in the late election in Mississippi, B. K. Bruce, a senator from that State, came fearlessly to the defense of his State government. On this occasion, also, he put into the record valuable statistics showing the progress of the freedmen in Mississippi. The Negroes, he believed, had suffered on account of leadership, but they had, at that time, better leaders who, though not all educated, yet understood the duties of citizenship. Senator Bruce [77] believed that the thing needed was peace and good order at the South, but it could come only by the fullest recognition of the rights of all classes. The opposition would have to concede the necessity of change, not only in the temper, but in the philosophy of their party organization and management. The sober American judgment would have to obtain in the South, as elsewhere in the Republic, since the only distinctions upon which parties can be safely organized in harmony with our institutions, are differences of opinion relative to principles and policy of government; because differences of religion, nationality, race, can neither with safety nor propriety be permitted to enter into the party contests. The unanimity with which the Negro voters acted with a party was not referable to any race prejudice. On the contrary, the Negroes invited the political cooperation of their white brethren, and voted as a unit because proscribed as such. They deprecated the establishment of the color line by the opposition, not only because the act was unwise and wrong in principle, but because it isolated them from the white man of the South and forced them in sheer self-protection and against their inclination to act seemingly upon the basis of race prejudice which they neither respected nor entertained. As a class he believed they were free from prejudices and had no uncharitable suspicions against their white fellow citizens, whether native born or settlers from the Northern States. "When Negroes," continued he, "can entertain opinions and select party affiliations without proscription, and cast their ballots as other citizens and without jeopardy to person or privilege, they can safely afford to be governed by the considerations that ordinarily determine the political actions of American citizens." Senator Bruce asked, therefore, not for new laws, but rather for the enforcement of the old. Peace in the South could come, he believed, only by guaranteeing the protection of the law.

Replying in part to the remarks of Senator Colquitt, from Georgia, Miller, a representative from South Carolina in the Fifty-first Congress, spoke impressively on the subject, "Southern Affairs."[78] The colleague of Miller in this Congress, John M. Langston of Virginia, spoke at great length on the federal election laws, pointing out the need for an adequate legislation and its proper enforcement.[79] He offered, moreover, a measure directing an inquiry relative to the instructions of the Attorney-General concerning elections.

To the bill to repeal all statutes relating to supervisors of elections and special deputy marshals, George W. Murray, a member of the Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth Congresses, took vigorous exception.[80] Asserting that such action would have the effect of promoting the election frauds of the reactionaries in the South, and that already in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina, a decided minority of the voting population of each Congressional district elected regularly the representative to Congress, he maintained that the present law should not only remain unchanged, but rather, be vigorously enforced. He introduced, moreover, measures designed to assure minority representation in federal elections [81] and to investigate the political conditions in the State of South Carolina.

Interest in Economic Problems

Although not equally interesting to the Negro Congressmen as matters of political import, to not a few of them problems essentially economic in character, or at any rate, of economic significance, made a forceful appeal. Measures designed to provide superior facilities for the trade and commerce of their communities constituted, in some instances, the most valuable service rendered by these legislators.

With the interests of his constituency ever in mind, Benjamin S. Turner of Alabama, a member of the Forty-second Congress, proposed various measures to effect local improvements.[82] He urged a distribution of the public lands, proposed a bill to erect a public building in Selma, sought to increase the appropriation for rivers and harbors from $50,000 to $75,000, and made efforts to secure improvements in navigation in Alabama waters.

Of all the Congressmen, Josiah T. Walls of Florida was perhaps the most persistent in the effort to secure improvements for his district and State.[83] He introduced numerous bills to erect in his district custom houses and other public buildings, and to improve the rivers and harbors of his State. Walls introduced also bills to provide a lifesaving station along the coast of Florida, to amend an act granting right of way through public lands for the construction of railroad and telegraph lines through Florida, and to create an additional land district. He sought further to amend an appropriation bill to the end that $50,000 be made available for the establishment of a navy yard at Pensacola.

James T. Rapier, who succeeded Turner in Congress, continued, to some extent, the policy of the latter to secure local improvements.[84] Of two measures introduced by Rapier, one proposed to erect public buildings in his district, the other to make improvements in the rivers and harbors of the State. He succeeded in having enacted into law his measure to constitute Montgomery, Alabama, a port of entry.

The policy of John R. Lynch of Mississippi in the matter of local improvements [85] did not differ materially from that of Rapier. Lynch proposed measures for the construction of the Memphis and New Orleans Railroad, for the construction of public buildings and custom houses, and for the improvement of rivers within the State of Mississippi.

Smalls, of South Carolina, likewise concerned himself with the matter of local improvements.[86] He endeavored to secure an appropriation for the restoration of the Beaufort Library which was destroyed during the War. He proposed measures to establish in his district custom houses, docks, warehouses, a weather observation station, and other public buildings. He was interested also in the redemption of lands held by direct taxes and sought to promote a measure for the construction of telegraph lines in the State. Similarly concerned was James E. O'Hara of North Carolina, whose chief measures for improvements [87] embraced bills to erect public buildings in his district, and to improve the rivers and harbors in his State. Murray, of South Carolina, was some years later advocating the exemption of the Young Men's Christian Association from taxation and the relief of cyclone sufferers in Beaufort, South Carolina.

The Negro Congressman, too, had an interest in the more important economic questions. On the question of the tariff several Congressmen expressed opinions. In the Forty-second Congress, Josiah T. Walls sought to amend the tax and tariff bill relative to certain commodities produced in the State of Florida.[88] He favored a tariff for protection as opposed to one for revenue only. During a similar discussion, in the House, John R. Lynch, a member of the Forty-seventh Congress, urged a protective tariff [89] for cotton, lumber, and sugar. His argument was that the cotton producers of the South were in favor of a protective tariff. When its producing class (meaning labor) was slave, when all of its products were exported, when all of its wants were supplied from without, and when cotton was its only interest, the South favored cheap labor and free trade. At this time, however, labor was free as distinguished from slave, and it therefore added to the cost of production, while jute, sugar, rice, lumber, and manufactures in the embryonic stage, shared with cotton the interests of producers. These changed conditions, he maintained, demanded for the South a policy of reasonable protection.

Regarding protection as a panacea for all the economic ills of the South, Lynch asserted that it would foster the growth of industries, permit the manufacturing interests to develop, and prevent the recurrence of a situation in which the whole output of raw material is shipped to a foreign market and sold at a price fixed by market, whereas goods manufactured from this same raw material are shipped to the South and sold at a price dictated by the sellers. He said, moreover, that a protective tariff would effect a decrease of American imports in cotton goods and at the same time an increase of employment among the folks at home. With reference to tariff on sugar and lumber, Lynch held that the South needed diversified industries, that the investment of capital in the South was essential to a diversification of industries, that a reasonable interest must be guaranteed to attract the capital, and that inasmuch as protection afforded the only way whereby the interest could be assured, protection for these industries was nationally demanded.

Any consideration of the merits of the arguments advanced by Lynch must not overlook the fact that protection has been the policy of the nation during its periods of remarkable growth. Two arguments largely supported this policy. In the first place, it was early conceived that protection was essential to the development of infant industries; in the second, the belief was accepted that to an agricultural country a home market is the only guarantee of a regular market. Because, however, of the unprecedented growth of the country and its final achievement of economic independence, other reasons were sought to support the protective policy. It was contended, therefore, that the high wages paid in the United States would discourage producers from introducing new industries which, without protection, must compete on equal terms with the products of low waged Europe. Finally, it was pointed out that the owners of great wealth must suffer tremendous loss of capital if protection were withdrawn from certain industries, compelling them to compete on equal basis with the industries of like kind of foreign countries.

In addition to these economic arguments, moreover, a political argument was not lacking. Ambitious statesmen have ever dreamed of a policy with which to cement the bonds that unite the different sections of the country, making them mutually dependent and, at the same time, independent of Europe. Protection, it was said, would do this. In full justice to Lynch, therefore, it must be said that his doctrine, whether or not sound, was not without basis. His firm stand for a protective tariff conformed to the policy that has recently controlled in the nation.

Sometime thereafter, White, in the Fifty-fifth Congress, had occasion to speak on the Wilson Tariff Law enacted in 1893. This measure [90] he held to be responsible for the unemployment among mill workers in his community and the loss of contracts by the Southern producers. He advocated, therefore, protection for the industries and labor of America against the pauperism and cheap labor of foreigners.

Several other subjects of economic character were discussed by the Negro Congressmen. During his terms in the Forty-eighth and Forty-ninth Congresses, James E. O'Hara discussed at length the measure on labor arbitration.[91] Shortly thereafter, in the Fifty-first Congress, John M. Langston made informing remarks on the shipping bill.[92] Presenting in support of his position communications from the chambers of commerce of the principal cities of his State urging his support of the pending bill, facts and figures exhibiting recent progressive development of trade in Newport News, and information showing the growing dependence of world trade upon the development of an American merchant marine, he urged the passage of the shipping bill, with legislation to subsidize an American marine that would assist this nation to recover her former position upon the sea. While pointing out causes underlying the decadence of the merchant marine, he enumerated also the conditions which at that time favored its certain development.... He was, therefore, committed to a vigorous prosecution of any constructive plan leading in that direction.

In the Fifty-second Congress, H. P. Cheatham logically discussed the anti-option bill,[93] a measure defining "options" and "futures," imposing special taxes on dealers therein, and requiring such dealers and persons engaged in selling specified products to obtain a license to do so. Speaking in the behalf of the agricultural class of people whom he represented, Cheatham set forth the disastrous economic effects that dealing in "futures" and "options" has always had on the farming class in fixing the price of cotton and other commodities. As a measure contemplating an adjustment of this most portentous evil in the industrial life of the nation, he urged the passage of the bill then under consideration.

Racial Measures

In the case of some of the Negro Congressmen measures designed either to promote the welfare of their race or to give publicity to its achievement commanded precedence over all others. Many offered petitions and bills providing especially for the benefit of Negroes. Benjamin Turner, of Alabama, secured from the Federal Government several thousands of dollars in payment of a claim for damages to his property during the Civil War. In the Fifty-first Congress, Thomas E. Miller submitted two measures in the interest of his race.[94] The first proposed the establishment of a home for indigent freedmen, and the second sought to authorize the erection of a monument in commemoration of the Negro soldiers who fought for the Union in the Civil War.

The World's Columbian Exposition received much consideration during the first session of the Fifty-second Congress. Henry P. Cheatham,[95] a representative from North Carolina, during the course of his remarks on the Negro race urged that Congress make provisions for exhibiting, at that fair, the facts and statistics of the progress that the Negro had made during his thirty years of freedom. He deplored the fact that "politics" had crept into the amendment designed to effect his purpose and urged its acceptance as a matter of encouragement and justice to a numerically significant group of the American people. Cheatham proposed, also, a measure which sought to have printed the historical record of the Negro troops in the wars in which they had participated.

The welfare of the race was often reflected in the remarks of George W. Murray, a Congressman from South Carolina. When, in the Fifty-third Congress, there arose, in connection with the proposal that federal aid be extended to the Atlanta Exposition,[96] the question of the progress of the Negro race, Murray favored such an exposition because, he declared, it would offer opportunity to have registered the facts and statistics of the Negro's achievement since emancipation. As evidence of the inventive genius of his race, he submitted to Congress at this time a list of patents which had been granted by the government for the inventions of Negroes. Murray spoke briefly of what the Negroes were doing and thinking and, in conclusion, gave to the effort for federal aid his unqualified endorsement.

Measures proposed by George H. White, a representative from North Carolina to the Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth Congresses, tended mainly to promote the social welfare of his race.[97] One of these was a resolution for the consideration of a bill to provide a home for aged and infirm Negroes. His other measures of this sort were bills to pay the wages of the Negro Civil War-time employees withheld by the War Department, to incorporate a "National Colored American Association," and to provide for the exhibit of the educational and industrial progress of the Negro at the Paris Exposition of 1900. Few measures of this type could become law.

Various Interests

Many problems miscellaneous in character interested the Negro Congressmen. Indeed, early in the Forty-second Congress, Josiah T. Walls [98] supported a measure which proposed to appropriate $3,000,000 to aid the centennial celebration and international exhibition of 1876. Sometime later, moreover, he urged the recognition of the belligerent rights of Cuba. In the Forty-fourth Congress, John A. Hyman, of North Carolina, offered a measure to provide relief for the Cherokee Indians, who had returned to the "Nation West"[99] while the measures of his colleague, Jere Haralson [100] of Alabama, comprised such objects as the amendment of the revised statutes of the United States, the relief of the Medical College of Alabama, and the payment of war claims. During his three terms in Congress, John R. Lynch maintained interest in a wide range of subjects. He spoke at length on a bill "to provide and regulate the counting of votes for President and Vice President and the decision in the disputed election of R. B. Hayes.[101] He opposed the bill to repeal the act providing for the pay of Congressmen,[102] but supported a measure to appropriate funds for the establishment of a national board of health.[103]

In the Forty-fifth Congress, R. H. Cain proposed a measure to establish a line of mail and emigrant steam and sailing vessels between certain ports of the United States and Liberia.[104] His colleague, Robert Smalls, was a man of wider interests.[105] Among his various remarks, there must be noted those on the District of Columbia liquor traffic, interstate commerce, and the army reorganization bill. In the latter instance, he attempted to have inserted into the bill an amendment providing for the merging of enlisted men into military units without distinction as to race or color.

In the Senate, B. K. Bruce was afforded opportunity to debate the issues of the day. While most active in offering bills and resolutions, he nevertheless spoke forcefully on several matters of greater than ordinary import. He spoke out fearlessly against the bill restricting Chinese immigration,[106] and while discussing the Indian bill,[107] he took high ground, showing that we had failed in our selfish policy toward the Indian—a policy by which the breeding of hatred and discontent had kept him a fugitive and a vagabond—and emphasized the necessity for the government to do something to civilize the Indian. There must be a change in the Indian policy "if they are to be civilized," said he, "in that the best elements of their natures are to be developed to the exercise of their best functions, so as to produce individual character and social groups characteristic of enlightened people; if this is to be done under our system, its ultimate realization requires an adoption of a political philosophy that shall make the Indians, as individuals and as a tribe, subjects of American law and beneficiaries of American institutions, by making them first American citizens, and clothing them as rapidly as their advancement and location will permit, with the protecting and ennobling prerogatives of such friendship."

In support of his resolution, proposing to admit as a Senator from Louisiana P. B. S. Pinchback, Mr. Bruce spoke out, cogently presenting the facts as he saw them, contending that the gentleman had been regularly elected and that the National Government would, by declaring his election irregular and not expressive of the will of the people, repudiate the very government that it had recognized.[108] Pinchback was not seated, but the records show that his title was as sound as that of scores of senators whose right has never been questioned.

B. K. Bruce had another good claim to statesmanship. During his incumbency in Congress the question of the improvement of the navigation of the Mississippi and the protection of life and property from the periodical inundations of that stream was of much concern to the whole country. As a spokesman for the State of Mississippi and a statesman seeking to provide facilities for interstate and foreign commerce, B. K. Bruce fearlessly advocated that the Federal Government should appropriate funds to undertake this improvement. He repeatedly offered bills and amendments to this end and endeavored to secure the support of the leaders of Congress to pilot these measures through that body. While the results which Senator Bruce obtained were not proportionate to the effort which he made, he paved the way for other promoters of this enterprise, who have been more successful. Subsequent history shows the importance of this national task and demonstrates the statesmanlike foresight of Senator Bruce in championing its cause.[109]

General remarks by James E. O'Hara comprehended discussion of the bills on oleomargarine and the payment of pensions.[110] Towards the former he was opposed, while in the latter he urged that white persons and Negroes be paid according to the same standard. George H. White sought to amend the bill to provide a government for Hawaii.[111] He gave some attention also to the debate on the civil service law.[112] Concerning it he held that the administration of the law had been subversive of the principles of appointment by merit. Indeed, in his opinion, its failure warranted either a return to the spoils system or the adoption of a new policy, by which there would be established in each department of the government a bureau with the duty of determining the fitness of each applicant for a position in that department.

A Critical Survey

It appears, then, these two general types of legislation, the one proposing local improvements, the other seeking social justice for the Negro race, were preeminent in the measures proposed by the Negro Congressmen. On the other hand, however, most of these measures, regardless of merit, met in general one of three fates: they were either sidetracked in committee, reported adversely, or defeated after debate in open session.

The character of measures proposed by these Congressmen has been the subject of much adverse criticism. Not a few persons have considered as weakness the tendency to propose measures relating to local improvements, and those racial rather than national in character. The records of Congress show, however, that the motives impelling the Negro Congressmen to propose the type of legislation stated differed in no wise from those underlying similar actions of other Congressmen. Discussing the service of Congress, Mr. Munro, in his Government of the United States, says: "First among the merits of congressional government as it has existed in the United States for over one hundred and thirty years, is the fidelity with which law-making has reflected the public opinion of the country."[113] Mr. Munro further says that while Congress has not always been immediately responsive to popular sentiment, it has seldom failed to act when there has come to it an "audible mandate" from the whole country.

If, therefore, the Congress as a whole must be somewhat immediately responsive to the expressed public will, what, indeed, is the precise course of action that a representative, as a matter of policy, must pursue? He is regarded, in the first instance, as representing not his State, but rather a particular Congressional district of his State. His tenure of office runs for but two years, at the expiration of which he must submit to his constituents not a record of constructive statesmanship, based upon his fealty to measures of national or international importance, but rather one alleging the skill with which he has protected the peculiar interests of his district. That he has sought to obtain a new customs house, has opposed a tariff for revenue only, has defended the principle of bimetallism, not indeed in relation to the wider demands of the nation, but because of the particular demands of his constituency, are matters of great practical import to him, for upon these depends the approval or the rejection of his record. The Congressman who aspires to longevity of service is apt, therefore, to determine his proposal and defense of measures of legislation largely, if not wholly, by the expressed opinion of those whom he represents. Regarding the Negro Congressmen, therefore, in the light of the practices common to all Congressmen, there can be offered no valid criticism of the character of their legislation. The records of Congress show that these functionaries were, as a matter of policy, interested in their constituents, and that they promoted legislation for general advancement for the reason that the circumstances of the people whom they represented warranted legislation of that sort.

For the tendency of some of the Negro Congressmen to propose legislative measures which were racial in character, two reasons are conspicuously obvious. In the first place, these men regarded themselves the official spokesmen of their race. The power conferred upon them they believed to be evidence of the expectation and confidence of the Negroes in them to secure for the race civil rights, economic opportunity and political preferment. They found, moreover, that legislation granting to Negroes their civil rights failed often to protect them in the exercise of those rights. For such protection, then, these Congressmen had often to contend. These personal, ever present, inherent duties permitted these Congressmen neither time nor energy for the preparation of legislative measures of other types.

Another reason for restricting their efforts to local measures or those peculiar to their race was the rule of politics that all honor for the formulation of national measures must attach to the seasoned veterans in Congress. This custom has become so well established as to be traditional. It could not have been expected that the Negro members, then, should take the lead in Congressional legislation. They faithfully cooperated with the leaders of Congress and generally voted for measures considered productive of the greatest good of the country.

Why did the Negro Congressmen fail to have their measures enacted into law? The path of a bill is fraught with difficulties. The well-known journey through the committee, through both houses of Congress, to the conference and to the President, but few bills complete. Many bills of the Negro Congressmen died of this natural cause. Others because of lack of merit were reported adversely from committee; still others reported favorably could not withstand the Congressional debate. A few that survived the whole ordeal became laws.

There were two preeminent causes for the failure of some of these bills. The Negro membership in any Congress, in the first place always an exceedingly small minority, was never a determining factor in the passage of a measure proposed by one of this particular group. Secondly, the objects of the suspicion of their party colleagues,[114] and regarded by them as an experiment in the legislative program of the nation, these men were not generally able to secure for their measures sufficient white Republican votes. Considered from this point of view, the failure of these measures is in no wise an evidence of the lack of ability and statesmanship.

Of them, James G. Blaine, a Republican leader of fifty years ago, has spoken in a most praiseworthy manner. Conceding the right of the Negroes to sit in Congress and attesting the success of their activities there, he asserted that "they were as a rule studious, earnest, ambitious men, whose public conduct—as illustrated by Mr. Revels and Mr. Bruce in the Senate, and by Mr. Rapier, Mr. Lynch and Mr. Rainey in the House—would be honorable to any race."[115]

Alrutheus A. Taylor

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Jefferson F. Long was born in Crawford County, Georgia, March 3, 1836. Some time thereafter he moved to Macon, Bibb County, where, under the direction of his owner, he learned the tailor's trade. Prior to his election to the third session of the Forty-first Congress, Mr. Long conducted, in Macon, a thriving business as a merchant tailor. His patronage, which consisted largely of that of whites, was much decreased after his term in Congress, due no doubt to their resentment of his activities in politics. Mr. Long was a good speaker, a Christian gentleman, and a man of many fine qualities. Upon his death in Macon, February 4, 1900, his loss was mourned alike by whites and Negroes.—Chaplain T. G. Stewart, Fifty Years in the Gospel Ministry, p. 129.

Letter from Mrs. A. L. Rucker, Atlanta, Ga., daughter of Mr. Long. October, 1921.

[2] Robert C. DeLarge was born at Aiken, South Carolina, March 15, 1842. He received only a limited education and chose to pursue the occupation of farming. He entered politics in 1868, held several local and State offices, was elected to the Forty-second Congress, and on February 15, 1874, became a trial justice at Charleston.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 497.

[3] Joseph H. Rainey was born of slave parents at Georgetown, S. C., June 21, 1832. He received a limited education. After following the trade of a barber, he was compelled, in 1862, to work on Confederate fortifications. From this work he escaped, going to the West Indies, where he remained till the end of the war. Upon his return to the United States, he entered politics. He served in the 42nd, 43rd, 44th, and 45th Congresses, and died at Georgetown, S. C., August 1, 1887.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 757.

[4] Alonzo J. Ransier was born at Charleston, South Carolina, January 3, 1836. He received a limited education, entered politics, and held various offices. In 1868, he was a presidential elector, casting a vote for Grant and Colfax, while four years later he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention. He served as a member of the 42nd Congress and died at Charleston, S. C., August 17, 1882.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 759.

[5] Robert Smalls was born a slave at Beaufort, South Carolina, April 5, 1839. Debarred by statute from attending school, he availed himself of such limited educational advantages as he could secure. In 1851, he moved to Charleston, worked as a rigger, and thereafter led a seafaring life. In 1861, he became connected with the Planter, a steamer plying in the Charleston Harbor as a transport, which he took over the Charleston bar in 1862 and delivered with his services to the commander of the United States blockading squadron. He was appointed a pilot in the Quartermaster's Department of the United States Navy, and remained in the service till 1866, and meanwhile rose to the rank of Captain. In 1868 he entered politics and was later elected to the 44th, 45th, 47th, 48th, and 49th Congresses. In the State militia of South Carolina, he held successively the commands of lieutenant-colonel, brigadier-general, and major-general, the latter terminating with the reorganization of the militia in 1877. Mr. Smalls was a delegate to several National Republican Conventions. His last public office was that of collector of the port of Beaufort.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 803.

[6] John R. Lynch of Natchez, Mississippi, was born in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, September 10, 1847. He attended evening school at Natchez for a few months, and by private study acquired a good English education. He engaged in the business of photography at Natchez until 1869, when Governor Ames appointed him a justice of the peace. Mr. Lynch served in the 43rd, 44th, and 47th Congresses, and was elected to the 45th Congress, but was counted out. Later he served as Fourth Auditor of Treasury Department under President Harrison, and as a paymaster in the Volunteer Army during the Spanish-American War.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 662.

[7] Blanche K. Bruce of Floreyville, Mississippi, was born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, March 1, 1841. A man of limited education, he became, in 1869, a planter in Mississippi. Later he became a member of the Mississippi levee board, served in several local offices, and finally was elected, in 1875, to the United States Senate where he served till 1881. Mr. Bruce died at Washington, D. C., March 17, 1898.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 420.

[8] Jore Haralson was born a slave in Muscogee County, Georgia, April 1, 1846. He was emancipated in 1865, after which he acquired through self-instruction a fair education. After moving to Alabama, he entered into the politics of that State. Mr. Haralson was elected to the 44th Congress, but failed of re-election to the 45th.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 557.

[9] Benjamin Sterling Turner was born a slave at Halifax, North Carolina, March 17, 1825. In 1830, he moved to Alabama, where by clandestine study he obtained a fair education. He became a prosperous merchant, was elected to several local offices, and to the 42nd Congress. He was defeated for the 43rd.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 849.

[10] John Adams Hyman was born a slave in Warren, North Carolina, July 23, 1840. He was sold and sent to Alabama, where he was emancipated in 1865. Returning to North Carolina, Mr. Hyman engaged in farming and acquired a rudimentary education. Entering politics in 1868, he was later elected to the 44th Congress. In June, 1877, he was appointed collector of internal revenue for the 2nd district of North Carolina.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 614.

[11] Charles E. Nash was a native of Opelousas, Louisiana. He was educated at New Orleans, later following the trade of bricklayer. In 1863, Mr. Nash served as a private in the Eighty-third Regiment United States Chasseurs d'Afrique. He was later promoted to sergeant-major and lost a leg in the storming of Fort Blakeley. He was elected to the 44th Congress, but defeated for the 45th.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 713.

[12] Josiah T. Walls was born at Winchester, Virginia, December 30, 1842. He received a limited education, became a farmer, and in 1868 entered politics. Mr. Walls received a certificate of election as a representative from Florida to the 42nd Congress, but his seat was successfully contested by Silas Niblack. He was admitted, however, to the 43rd and 44th Congresses.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 864.

[13] Richard H. Cain was born in Greenbrier County, Virginia, April 12, 1825. In 1831, he moved with his father to Gallipolis, Ohio. Of limited education prior to his marriage, and having entered the ministry at an early age, he found it to his advantage, at the age of 35 years, to undertake formal study at a recognized school of learning. Following a career as clergyman, missionary, and politician, he was elected to the 43rd Congress and re-elected to the 45th. After his retirement from Congress, Mr. Cain, was elected the fourteenth bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. He died in Washington, January 18, 1887. —Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 434.

[14] Hiram B. Revels was born at Fayetteville, North Carolina, September 1, 1822. Being unable to obtain an education in his own State, he moved to Indiana and there began study for the ministry. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Mr. Revels assisted in the organization of the first two Negro regiments in Maryland. Having made a record for service among his people in the central States, he went to Mississippi and there became interested in managing the freedmen's affairs. He was elected to several local offices and in 1870 was elected to fill an unexpired term in the United States Senate. After his retirement from Congress, Mr. Revels served as president of Alcorn University at Rodney, Mississippi, and later as pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church at Richmond, Indiana. He died January 16, 1901, at Abeerden, Mississippi.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 763.

[15] Henry Plummer Cheatham of Henderson, North Carolina, was born at Granville, North Carolina, December 27, 1857. After acquiring a good education, he entered the teaching profession. Later he became interested in politics and was elected to the 51st and 52nd Congresses. His last public office was that of Recorder of Deeds of the District of Columbia.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 450.

[16] George Washington Murray was born of slave parents, September 22, 1853, near Rembert, Sumter County, South Carolina. At the age of eleven years, he found himself free, bereft of parents, completely dependent upon his own resources. His early life, therefore, was one of great trials and sacrifices. Possessed, however, of a determination to live and learn, young Murray availed himself of every opportunity to improve his meagre stock of knowledge. So well did he succeed that his first day in school was spent as teacher rather than student. In later life, he acquired a good education, entered into the service of the public schools of his county and was finally elected to the 53rd Congress. Mr. Murray was elected also to the 54th, but secured his seat only after a successful contest with a leading Democrat of his State.—Biographical Congressional Directory, pp. 711-712.

[17] John Mercer Langston was born in Louisa County, Virginia, December 14, 1829. He distinguished himself as an educator and won many honors in his field. Mr. Langston served also in many civic and political offices prior to his election to the 51st Congress. Due to the contest he was forced to make for his seat, Mr. Langston served actually a very short time in Congress. He died in Washington, D. C., November 15, 1897.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 643.

[18] Robert Brown Elliott was born in Boston, Massachusetts, August 11, 1842. He was educated in England, and upon his return to the United States entered into the politics of the State of South Carolina. Mr. Elliott was elected to the 42nd Congress and resigned before the term had expired; he was re-elected to the 43rd Congress and again resigned, this time to accept the office of sheriff.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 517.

[19] James T. Rapier was born at Florence, Alabama, in 1840. He was sent to Canada to be educated, and while there was given the opportunity to recite before the late King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, who was at that time visiting the United States and Canada. Prior to his election to Congress, Mr. Rapier held several local offices in Alabama and also aspired to become Secretary-of-State. In this contest he was defeated by one Nicholas Davis, a white man. Mr. Rapier was a partisan in the split in the Republican Party in his State, aligning himself with one Spencer, a Republican leader of that date. Losing in this contest, he lost also his ability to win votes and so was defeated in his attempt to seek re-election to the 44th Congress. Soon thereafter, Mr. Rapier gave his attention to farming and was highly successful as a cotton planter.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 760, and a statement of Thomas Walker, a local officer in Alabama during the reconstruction period.

[20] James E. O'Hara of Enfield, North Carolina, was born in New York City, February 26, 1844. He acquired a liberal education, read law, and entered into the politics of the State of North Carolina. After holding several local offices, he was elected to the 46th, 48th, and 49th Congresses, but was counted out in the former.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 722.

[21] Thomas E. Miller was born in Beaufort County, South Carolina, at Ferrybeeville, June 17, 1849. After acquiring a good education, he entered politics. Mr. Miller held many local and State offices, and was nominated by his party, in 1878, for the office of Lieutenant-Governor of the State. Due, however, to riotous actions of the Democratic party throughout the elections that year, the ticket was withdrawn. Mr. Miller was seated in the 51st Congress after a contested election with Col. William Elliott. In 1896, he was elected president of the State Colored College at Orangeburg, South Carolina.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 695.

[22] George Henry White of Tarboro, North Carolina, was born at Rosindale, North Carolina, December 18, 1852. He acquired a good education, practiced law, and entered politics. After serving in several local and State offices, Mr. White was elected to the 55th and re-elected to the 56th Congress.—Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 877.

[23] Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 643.

[24] Ibid., p. 614.

[25] Ibid., p. 722.

[26] Ibid., p. 450.

[27] Ibid., p. 877.

[28] Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 434.

[29] Ibid., p. 497.

[30] Ibid., p. 517.

[31] Ibid., p. 757.

[32] Ibid., p. 759.

[33] Ibid., p. 803.

[34] Ibid., p. 695.

[35] Ibid., pp. 711-712.

[36] Letter from Mrs. A. L. Rucker, Atlanta, Ga., daughter of J. F. Long, Oct., 1921.

[37] Statement of Thomas Walker, Washington, D. C., a local officer in Alabama, during the Reconstruction Period.

[38] Statement made by Thomas Walker.

[39] Biographical Congressional Directory, p. 577.

[40] Ibid., p. 763.

[41] Ibid., p. 420.

[42] Ibid., p. 662.

[43] Ibid., p. 713.

[44] C. G. Woodson, Fifty Years of Negro Citizenship, Journal of Negro History, Vol. VI, p. 11.

[45] Congressional Globe, 41st Congress, 3rd Session, p. 881.

[46] "In regard to the State of Mississippi," continued Senator Revels, "I have this to say: The Republican Party now dominating there pledged itself to universal amnesty. That was in their platform; these speakers pledged themselves to it and the legislature redeemed that pledge, unanimously adopting a resolution asking Congress to remove the political disabilities of all the citizens of Mississippi, which resolution they placed in my hands, and made it my duty to present here, and which I have presented.

"Now I can say more, I believe, for the State of Mississippi, than I can say for any other of the lately insurrectionary States. I do not know of one State that is altogether as well reconstructed as Mississippi is. We have reports of a great many other States of lawlessness and violence, and from parts of States we have well-authenticated reports of this effect; but while this is the case, do you hear one report of any more lawlessness in evidence in the State of Mississippi? No! The people now I believe are getting along as quietly, pleasantly, harmoniously, prosperously as the people are in any of the formerly free States. I think this is the case, I do not think my statement exaggerates anything at all. Now, sir, I hope that I am understood. I am in favor of amnesty in Mississippi. We pledged ourselves to it. The State is for it."—Congressional Globe, 41st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 3520.

[47] Ibid., 42nd Congress, 1st Session, p. 393.

[48] Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 2nd Session, p. 103.

[49] Ibid., 42nd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 102-103.

[50] Ibid., 102-103.

[51] Congressional Globe, 41st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 1287.

[52] Congressional Record, 43rd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 407-410.

[53] Congressional Record, 43rd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 407-410.

[54] Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 2nd Session, p. 3383.

[55] Congressional Record, 43rd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 1311-1314.

[56] Ibid., p. 407.

[57] Congressional Record, pp. 4782-4786.

[58] Ibid., pp. 565-567.

[59] Ibid., p. 64.

[60] Ibid., p. 64.

[61] Congressional Record, 48th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 297.

[62] Ibid., 51st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 1216.

[63] Congressional Record, 56th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 1634.

[64] Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 2nd Session, p. 813; App., p. 15.

[65] Congressional Globe, pp. 808-810.

[66] Ibid., 42nd Congress, 1st Session, p. 3655; 3rd Session, p. 220. Congressional Record, 43rd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 87, 88.

[67] Congressional Record, 45th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 1646; 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 2714, 3602.

[68] At a later date, Langston, in the Fifty-first Congress, introduced a measure for the establishment of normal and industrial schools for Negroes. These numerous measures were referred invariably to the Committee on Education and Labor, from which they were usually reported adversely to the House.—Congressional Record, 51st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 1650.

[69] In placing the responsibility with both parties, DeLarge said: "Mr. Speaker, when the governor of my State the other day called in council the leading men of the State, to consider the condition of affairs there and to advise what measures would be best for the protection of the people, whom did he call together? The major portion of the men whom he convened were men resting under political disabilities imposed by the Fourteenth Amendment. In good faith, I ask the gentlemen on this side of the House, and gentlemen on the other side of the House, whether it is reasonable to expect that those men should be interested, in any shape or form, in using their influence and best endeavor for the preservation of the public peace when they have nothing to look for politically in the future? You say that they should have the moral and material interest of their State at heart, though even always denied a participation in its honors. You may insist that the true patriot seeks no personal ends in acts of patriotism. All this is true, but, Mr. Speaker, men are but men everywhere, and you ought not to expect of those whom you daily call by opprobrious epithets, whom you daily remind of their political sins, whom you persistently exclude from places of the smallest trust in the government you have created, to be very earnest to cooperate with you in the work of establishing and fortifying the government set up in hostility to the whole tone of their prejudices, their connections, and their sympathies. What ought to be is one thing; what in the weakness and fallibility of human nature will be is quite another thing. The statesman regards the actual and acts upon it; the desirable, the possible, and even the probable furnishes but poor basis for political action."—Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 1st Session, App., pp. 230-231.

[70] Ibid., 42nd Congress, 1st Session, p. 376.

[71] Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 3rd Session, p. 4039.

[72] Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 3rd Session, App., p. 475.

[73] Congressional Record, 43rd Congress, 1st Session, p. 1121; 44th Congress, 1st Session, p. 206; 47th Congress, 1st Session, p. 3946.

[74] Ibid., 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 3825-3826; 3781-3784; 5540-5543.

[75] Congressional Record, pp. 3667, 3668, 3669.

[76] Ibid., 44th Congress, 2nd Session, App., pp. 123-136.

[77] Ibid., 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 2100-2105.

[78] Miller pointed out the inherent weaknesses of the South, the insecurity of investment, violation of the right of property and of contract, the jeopardy of life, and over-assessment of taxes on property held by Northern Whites—as constituting the causes underlying the failure of investors to direct their monies to Southern enterprises. He discussed the amenability of the Negro to civilizing influences and the economic progress that the race had made since its emancipation from slavery. Miller asserted, moreover, that though these remarks might effect the loss of his seat in the next Congress, he conceived it his duty to his party and to his race to defend his people against the dastardly attack of one who pretended to be its friend. Congressional Record, 51st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 2691.

[79] Ibid., pp. 1479-1482; 1524.

[80] Ibid., 53rd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 2158-2161.

[81] Ibid., 54th Congress, 1st Session, p. 1868; 2nd Session, p. 320.

[82] Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 393, 2439, 2447, 2452.

[83] Ibid., 42nd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 198, 178, 3793; 3rd Session, p. 220; 43rd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 87, 88.

[84] Ibid., 43rd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 85, 320, 1333.

[85] Congressional Globe, 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 321, 1203; 47th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 4551, 6146.

[86] Ibid., 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 442, 3754, 4857; 45th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 2706; 47th Congress, 1st Session, p. 6432; 49th Congress, 1st Session, p. 1218.

[87] Ibid., 49th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 437, 1404, 3748, 4980, 4982, 5069.

[88] Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 1st Session, p. 3570.

[89] Congressional Record, 47th Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 2312, 2660, 2870-2871.

[90] Congressional Record, 55th Congress, 1st Session, p. 550.

[91] Ibid., 49th Congress, 1st Session, p. 3049.

[92] Congressional Record, 51st Congress, 2nd Session, p. 3490.

[93] Ibid., 52nd Congress, 1st Session, App., p. 508.

[94] Congressional Record, 51st Congress, 1st Session, pp. 10,707, 10,708.

[95] Ibid., 52nd Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 4695, 5974.

[96] Ibid., 53rd Congress, 2nd Session, p. 8382.

[97] Congressional Record, 56th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 166, 372, 594, 791; 2nd Session, p. 188; 55th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 3153.

[98] Ibid., 43rd Congress, 1st Session, App., p. 250; pp. 27, 206. Congressional Globe, 42nd Congress, 1st Session, pp. 198, 178.

[99] Congressional Record, 44th Congress, 1st Session, p. 3340.

[100] Ibid., 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 771, 2714, 2791.

[101] Congressional Record, 44th Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 1025-1026.

[102] Congressional Record, 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 118, 119.

[103] Ibid., 47th Congress, 1st Session, p. 6898.

[104] Ibid., 45th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 1646.

[105] Ibid., 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 3457, 3467, 3468; 48th Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 316, 2057; 49th Congress, 1st Session, p. 1919.

[106] Ibid., 45th Congress, 3rd Session, p. 1914.

[107] Ibid., 46th Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 2195-2196.

[108] Congressional Record, 44th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 1444, 1445.

[109] Congressional Record, 45th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 245, 1750; 3rd Session, 1314, 1316, 2309.

[110] Ibid., 53rd Congress, 2nd Session, p. 2399; 1st Session, pp. 1392, 1396.

[111] Ibid., 56th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 3814.

[112] Ibid., 55th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 541.

[113] Munro, The Government of the United States, p. 297.

[114] A Letter from John E. Bruce, Brooklyn, N. N., a man active during the Reconstruction. June 6, 1921.

[115] James G. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, 1861-1881, Vol. II, p. 515.

THE PRIORITY OF THE SILVER BLUFF CHURCH AND ITS PROMOTERS

In speaking of the beginning of Negro churches in the United States, those of the Baptist faith must not be forgotten. Nor must we err in thinking that the first churches of this faith were planted in the North. It is true that there were Negro Baptists in Providence, Rhode Island, as early as 1774,[1] and doubtless much earlier, but they had no church of their own. Indeed, there is absolutely no trace of Negro Baptist churches in the North prior to the nineteenth century. The oldest Negro Baptist churches, north of Mason and Dixon's Line, are the Independent or First African Baptist Church, of Boston, Massachusetts, planted in 1805; the Abysinnian, of New York City, established in 1808; and the First African, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, organized in 1809.[2]

Negro Baptist churches, unlike other Negro churches, had their beginning in the South, and at a somewhat earlier date. The first church of Negro Baptists, so far as authentic and trustworthy writings of the eighteenth century establish, was constituted at Silver Bluff,[3] on Mr. Galphin's [4] estate, a year or two before the Revolutionary War. It continued to worship there, in comparative peace, until the latter part of 1778, when the vicissitudes of war drove the church into exile [5]—but only to multiply itself elsewhere.[6] The work at Silver Bluff began anew with the cessation of hostilities, moreover, and was more prosperous than ever in 1791.[7]

Silver Bluff was situated on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River, in Aiken County, just twelve miles from Augusta, Georgia.[8] All there was of it, in September, 1775, seems to have been embraced in what William Tennett, of Revolutionary fame, styled "Mr. Galphin's Settlement."[9] Nevertheless, as it lay in the tract of the Revolutionary forces, and was for a time a center of supplies to the Indians, who had their habitation in that quarter, living in treaty relations with the colonists, Ramsey, Carroll, Drayton,[10] and others, give it a place on the map of South Carolina. Indeed, so identified was Silver Bluff with the Galphins, their interests and their influence, that by 1785 it was known far and near as Galphinton. Fort Galphin was there. Bartram, who visited it in 1776, says that Silver Bluff was "a very celebrated place," and describes it as "a beautiful villa," while the picture which Jones, in his history of South Carolina, gives of Silver Bluff, is animating, to say the least.[11]

David George, who was one of the constituent members, and the first regular pastor of the Silver Bluff Church, is our authority in regard to the early history of this flock. We make the following extracts from letters of his, published in London, England, in connection with other foreign correspondence, during the period from 1790 to 1793:

Brother Palmer,[12] who was pastor at some distance from Silver Bluff, came and preached to a large congregation at a mill of Mr. Galphin's; he was a very powerful preacher.... Brother Palmer came again and wished us to beg Master to let him preach to us; and he came frequently.... There were eight of us now, who had found the great blessing and mercy from the Lord, and my wife was one of them, and Brother Jesse Galphin.... Brother Palmer appointed Saturday evening to hear what the Lord had done for us, and next day, he baptized us in the mill stream.... Brother Palmer formed us into a church, and gave us the Lord's Supper at Silver Bluff.... Then I began to exhort in the Church, and learned to sing hymns.... Afterwards the church advised with Brother Palmer about my speaking to them, and keeping them together.... So I was appointed to the office of an elder, and received instruction from Brother Palmer how to conduct myself. I proceeded in this way till the American War was coming on, when the Ministers were not allowed to come amongst us, lest they should furnish us with too much knowledge.... I continued preaching at Silver Bluff, till the church, constituted with eight, increased to thirty or more, and 'till the British came to the city of Savannah and took it.[13]

The first clear conception of time, which we get from these extracts, in regard to the origin of the Silver Bluff Church, is where David George speaks of being left in sole charge, as Liele and Palmer might no longer visit Silver Bluff, lest in so doing, they should impart to the slaves of the settlement a knowledge, which, in the then prevailing conditions, would result in their personal freedom, and, consequently, in great financial loss to their masters. This undoubtedly was not later than November, 1775, when the Earl of Dunmore issued on American soil a proclamation of emancipation, in which the black slaves and the white indentured bondmen were alike promised freedom, provided they espoused the cause of England, in its struggle with the colonists. How well these slaves understood and appreciated the proffered boon, may be inferred from a letter which was written by Stephen Bull to Col. Henry Laurens, President of the Council of Safety, Charleston, South Carolina, March 14, 1776. In that letter he says: "It is better for the public, and the owners, if the deserted Negroes who are on Tybee Island be shot, if they cannot be taken."[14] By this means, as he informs us, he hoped to "deter other Negroes from deserting" their masters. According to Bull's representation, the Negroes along the Savannah River were abandoning their masters, and now going to the British in scores and hundreds, to the detriment of their owners, and the menace of the cause of American independence.

Now George Liele, although not a runaway slave, appears to have had some liking for the Tybee River, as a place of abode, and it is probable that when he could no longer visit Silver Bluff, and was not in camp with Henry Sharp (who had not only given him his freedom, but also taken up arms against the Revolutionists), he reported to Tybee Island to preach to the refugees there assembled. At any rate, when Liele appears in Savannah, Georgia, as a preacher of the Gospel, his biographer declares that "He came up to the city of Savannah from Tybee River."[15]

The next hint which we get from the statements of David George, in regard to the time when the Silver Bluff Church was planted, is where he says that George Liele preached at Silver Bluff both before and after the organization of the church. Happily, Liele himself refers to Silver Bluff as a place where he used to preach. Liele also informs us that he became a Christian about two years before the American Revolution, but did not immediately connect himself with a church; that when he did join, he became a member of Matthew Moore's church, in Burke County, Georgia; that he was a member of this church about four years; that his membership terminated with the evacuation of Savannah; that he preached at Yamacraw and Brumpton Land about three years; and that he went to Jamaica, in the West Indies, in the year of 1782.

Let us consider carefully these facts, with reference to time. The three years, which preceded 1782, were 1781, 1780, 1779. This brings us to the evacuation of Savannah by the Americans, within two days, as the British captured the city December 29, 1778. The four years which preceded 1779 were 1778, 1777, 1776, 1775. We understand from George Liele's statements concerning himself, therefore, that he became a member of Matthew Moore's church at the close of the year 1774, or the beginning of 1775, but was converted at the end of the year 1773, and let a whole year, or nearly so, pass before becoming a church-member.

It is probable that George Liele did not wait to be received into the fellowship of a church before going from plantation to plantation to tell his fellow slaves of the blessing of salvation which he had experienced. He may have thus declared the love of Christ, at Silver Bluff, as early as 1773, as Burke County, Georgia, in which he lived, is in part practically adjacent to Aiken County, South Carolina, in which was Silver Bluff. Accordingly, we are warranted in concluding that the Negro Baptist Church at Silver Bluff was constituted not earlier than 1773, nor later than 1775.

In making these deductions, we bear in mind that the year 1777 has been designated as the time of Liele's conversion, 1778 as the time when he united with Matthew Moore's church, and four years later, or 1782, as the time when his membership in that church ceased. In explanation of this view its advocates insist that the three years in which Liele preached at Brumpton Land and Yamacraw are included in the four years during which he was a member of Matthew Moore's church. According to this claim, the Silver Bluff Church could not have been planted earlier than 1777 nor later than 1778.

We do not share this view for good and sufficient reasons. When Liele, in 1779, went to Savannah to reside, during the British occupancy, he became separated from Matthew Moore's church and the people of Burke County, Georgia, for all time. With the British troops he entered Savannah, as the Americans had evacuated it at the very close of the year 1778. With the British he remained in Savannah during his three years stay in that city, and with one of their officers he left the country, in 1782, for Kingston, Jamaica, British West Indies, where he spent the remainder of his life. His four years of connection with Matthew Moore's church, therefore, must have preceded the year 1779, covering the time from the latter part of 1774 to the latter part of 1778.

As George Liele informs us that he became a Christian about two years before the American War, those who place his conversion in the year 1777 are compelled to reckon the beginning of the Revolutionary War from the year 1779. Errors are hard things to substantiate, and force men to choose between strange dilemmas. But, in explanation of this absurdity, it is claimed that the Revolutionary War did not make itself manifest in Georgia and South Carolina until about the year 1779, and the Negroes of Georgia and South Carolina, in speaking of it, would refer to that year as the beginning of the war. But as a matter of fact, the Revolutionary struggle in South Carolina and Georgia was manifest from the very first. Thus the biographer of Abraham Marshall, of Kiokee, Georgia, having informed his reader that the subject of his sketch was ordained to the work of the Gospel ministry on May 20, 1775, adds, "Just as he had chosen his life work, the Revolutionary War broke out, and Georgia became a scene of violence and bloodshed. During almost the entire struggle, the people were subject to the combined outrages of Britons, Tories and Indians."[16]

Thus, too, the biographer of Gov. John Houston's trusted slave, Andrew C. Marshall, writes, "The embargo having taken effect in Savannah at the opening of the Revolution, fifteen merchants of that city agreed to give him a purse of $225.00 if he would carry word to several American vessels that lay in a bay on the lower seaboard, in which achievement he was successful."[17] The expression, "the opening of the Revolution," in this passage, refers to the year 1775, and not to 1778-1779, for the British attacked the city of Savannah as early as March 3, 1776, and would have captured it if they had not been repulsed by the Americans.

The English agents, their American allies (the Tories), and the Cherokee Indians, who resided in the neighborhood of Silver Bluff and made it the commercial mart it was in colonial times, took up the cause of the British against the revolutionists from the very beginning of the war. Accordingly, William H. Drayton, of South Carolina, on August 30, 1775, urged the sending of foot-soldiers and mounted men to the vicinity of Augusta, Georgia, to protect the interests of the patriots, and chasten their foes.[18]

Eight days later, September 7, 1775, William Tennett, of South Carolina, wrote in his journal as follows: "Went ten miles to New-Savannah, where I had appointed a meeting of inhabitants, in hopes to draw an audience out of Augusta, from Mr. Galphin's Settlement, and Beach Island, but most of the men having marched with Mr. Drayton, and Mr. Galphin being from home, I had but few."[19] To this same neighborhood Col. Andrew Williamson led a large force of South Carolinians, in defense of the American cause, some time later, and General Griffith Rutherford, with 2,400 men, reinforced him, September, 1776.

In view of all these statements in regard to the time when the Revolutionary War began to make itself manifest in Georgia and South Carolina, we conclude that when George Liele says he was converted to Christianity about two years before the Revolutionary War, he refers to the year 1773, and his visits to Silver Bluff were at an end by the summer of 1775. We are, therefore, driven back to our first affirmation, namely, that the Negro Baptist Church at Silver Bluff, South Carolina, was organized not earlier than 1773, nor later than 1775.

The writers who have insisted that Mr. Liele united with Matthew Moore's church in 1778, and terminated that membership in 1782, have followed what is undoubtedly an erroneous inference. Liele said, "I continued in this church about four years till the 'vacuation.'" But as the expression seemed to Dr. Rippon indefinite in some particulars, he sought information from persons who were supposed to be capable of guiding him, and added five words to the statement of Liele, which made it read as follows: "I continued in this church about four years, 'till the 'vacuation'—of Savannah by the British."[20] Dr. Rippon carefully states that "Brother George's words are distinguished by inverted commas, and what is not so marked, is either matter compressed, or information received from such persons to whom application had been made for it."

It is easy enough to see how the inference was drawn, for in one of his letters Liele says, "Our beloved Sister Hannah Williams, during the time she was a member of the church at Savannah, until the 'vacuation, did walk as a faithful, well-beloved Christian."[21] Here there is no room for doubt. Liele speaks in this case of the evacuation of Savannah by the British, July, 1782, but in the former instance the only evacuation of Savannah which harmonizes with the story of his own life, the events and circumstances of his time, and those of his associates, is the evacuation of Savannah by the Americans, December 29, 1778.

George Galphin—Patron of the Silver Bluff Church

The planter and merchant on whose estate the Silver Bluff Church was constituted is deserving of special mention in connection with the story of that people. We learn from White's History of Georgia, that George Galphin was "a native of Ireland, emigrated soon after manhood to America, and died at Silver Bluff, his residence, on the Savannah River, in South Carolina, on the second of December, 1782, in the seventy-first year of his age." N. W. Jones, in his history, quotes William Bartram as saying that George Galphin was "a gentleman of very distinguished talents and great liberality."[22]

The spirit of justice and kindness, it appears, was manifest in all his dealings with the peoples of the weaker races, who were daily about him. The red man and the black man alike saw in him a man of kindly soul. David George, who was ever a British subject, described his former master as an "anti-loyalist." N. W. Jones, speaking as an American, pronounced him a "patriot." Neither spoke of him except to praise. A master less humane, less considerate of the happiness and moral weal of his dependents, less tolerant in spirit, would never have consented to the establishment of a Negro church on his estate. He might have put an end to the enterprise in its very incipiency, but he did not. He fostered the work from the beginning. It was by his consent that the gospel was preached to slaves who resided at Silver Bluff. It was by his permission that the Silver Bluff Church was established. It was he who permitted David George to be ordained to the work of the ministry. It was he who provided the Silver Bluff Church with a house of worship, by permitting his mill to be used in that capacity. And it was he who gave the little flock a baptistry, by placing his mill-stream at their disposal on baptizing occasions. But we are satisfied that he had no conception of the far-reaching influence of these deeds of kindness.

The truth is, the Galphins appear to have been masters of the patriarchal type. Thomas Galphin, under whose beneficence the work at Silver Bluff was renewed in postbellum time, was, as we shall see, as much the benefactor and protector of Jesse Peter, as George Galphin had been of David George before, and during the earlier stages of the Revolutionary War.[23] Accessible records reveal the fact that John Galphin was an Indian interpreter and a friend of the Cussetahs. It is indeed suggestive that, in 1787, these Indians wished a Negro, whom John Galphin owned, to be a messenger with one of their men to the whites.

The Silver Bluff Church in Exile

With the fall of Savannah, at the very close of the year 1778, the Silver Bluff Church completed the first stage in its history. At that time Rev. David George, the pastor, and about forty other slaves, whom George Galphin had abandoned in his flight, went to Savannah, to find safety and freedom under the British flag. Later David George returned to South Carolina, and abode for a time in the city of Charleston. Thence, in 1782, he sailed to Nova Scotia, in company with not less than five hundred white persons, who were adherents of the British cause. In Nova Scotia he abode ten years, preaching to the people of his own race who had found their way into that portion of the continent, in large numbers, after abandoning their homes in the United States.

These labors were performed amid hardships and persecutions, but in faithfulness to God and suffering humanity. In prosecuting his mission, he preached in Shelburn, Birchtown, Ragged Island, and in St. Johns, New Brunswick. So pronounced was the opposition to his labors in New Brunswick, that he found it necessary to invoke the protection of the civil authorities. How well he succeeded in doing so, may be imagined from the subjoined statement:

"Secretary's Office, Fredericktown, 17th July, 1792, I do hereby certify that David George, a free Negro man, has permission from his Excellency, the Lieutenant Governor, to instruct the Black people in knowledge, and exhort them to the practice of the Christian religion. Jno. Odell, Secretary."[24]

It should excite in us no surprise that David George was opposed in his labors in his new home, for, as Lorenzo Sabine declares, "the original population of this Colony was composed almost entirely of the Loyalists of the Revolution."[25] They had not changed their views in regard to the rights of Negroes, by being removed from a land where the two races had hitherto sustained the relation of master and slave. The real surprise lies in the fact, that the secretary of the province was himself a preacher, a minister of the Episcopal Church, and a former resident of the State of New Jersey.

So effective were the arduous labors of David George that he is enrolled among the pulpit pioneers, in Bill's history of Canadian Baptists. He was certainly first to plant a Baptist church at Shelburn, as well as a number of feeble beginnings elsewhere. But Canada was only a temporary home to David George, and to others from the States. Accordingly, he took a colony of Negroes to Sierra Leone, British Central Africa, in 1782.

Of this distant colony, G. Winfred Hervey remarks: "The first settlers of Sierra Leone were what they needed to be, men of bravery. They consisted of about 12,000 colored men who had joined the British forces in the American Revolution. At the close of the war they were sent to Nova Scotia, but the climate proving too unfriendly to them, they were, in 1792, transported to Sierra Leone."[26] One of the first things that David George did, after reaching Africa, was to plant a little Baptist church, which was composed of Negroes from America who had arrived in their fatherland by way of Nova Scotia.

In order to stimulate in the English people an intelligent interest in the colony of Sierra Leone, and secure for the Baptist cause in Freetown the sympathy and aid of English Baptists, David George took a trip to London, England, shortly after establishing himself on the continent of Africa. It was this visit to the metropolis of the world which doubtless, more than anything else, facilitated the collection and publication of many facts then existing and ascertainable in regard to Negro Baptist preachers and their churches in the eastern and western hemispheres.

In visiting Europe, David George took with him letters of commendation from persons of recognized standing in England. John Rippon, the distinguished London divine, thus speaks of David George, after investigating his standing: "Governor Clarkson, in the most unreserved manner, assured me that he esteemed David George as his brother, and that he believes him to be the best man, without exception, in the colony of Sierra Leone."[27] Had the Silver Bluff Church done nothing more than produce this one earnest Christian man, this faithful preacher of Christ, this potent factor in the planting of a colony under the English flag, it would not have existed in vain, but it did more.

The Silver Bluff Church Revived

When peace had been restored, and the Revolutionary forces had been disbanded or recalled, Silver Bluff resumed once more the aspect of social distinctions between master and slave in colonial times. Once more, too, the Galphin place became a center of religious activities, and the Negro Baptists of Silver Bluff were more numerous than ever.

The man who was instrumental in resuscitating the work at Silver Bluff was Jesse Peter, who, according to an old custom of applying to the slave the surname of the master, was better known as Jesse Galphin, or Gaulfin. Having been connected with the Silver Bluff Church from the very first, and only separated from it during the Revolutionary War and the period of readjustment immediately thereafter, Jesse Peter was eminently fitted, at least in one particular, to take up the work at Silver Bluff which David George had abandoned in the year 1778. He knew the place and he loved the people. Silver Bluff was his home, and there he was held in high esteem. Moreover, he possessed what is essential to ministerial success everywhere, deep sincerity, seriousness of purpose, knowledge of the Bible, an excellent spirit, and the ability to deliver, with profit and pleasure, the message of the truth. Jonathan Clarke, and Abraham Marshall, who knew him personally, have left on record beautiful testimonials of his work and his worth.[28]

Why this young man, who had obtained his freedom by going to the British at the fall of Savannah,[29] in 1778, remained in America to resume the condition of a slave, after the Revolutionary War, is not known. It is known, however, that, unlike George Liele and David George, men of adventurous spirit, Jesse Peter was not a pioneering worker in strange fields. If, indeed, he ever traveled beyond Kiokee, Georgia, in the one direction, and the city of Savannah in the other, we have failed to note the fact. It is known, too, that he had an indulgent master, and it is possible that he preferred a state of nominal slavery, under his protection, to a probable state of want and hardship in a foreign land. Or it may be he was willing to die for the cause, and so deliberately entered again into the old condition of bondage in order to enjoy the privilege of preaching, where Liele and George had labored in other days.

It is to be presumed that Jesse Peter was regularly ordained to the work of the Gospel ministry. We take this view because he exercised the duties and privileges which ordination implies, without ever being called in question for doing so. His three years of association with Liele and George, in Savannah, during the British occupancy, moreover, afforded him ample opportunity to be publicly and regularly consecrated to his life-work. Certainly Abraham Marshall, of Kiokee, Georgia, would not have associated himself with Jesse Peter in the ordination of Andrew Bryan, of Savannah, in 1788, if Jesse Peter had not himself been ordained to the work of the ministry.

Conditions in the earlier stages of Jesse Peter's pastorate at Silver Bluff were such that he did not reside at his old home, but came and went as a stated visitor. Accordingly, Jonathan Clarke, writing from Savannah, Georgia, December 22, 1792, says, "Jesse Peter (whose present master is Thomas Galphin), is now here, and has three or four places in the country, where he attends preaching alternately."[30] George Liele, writing from the West Indies, in 1791, had said to Joseph Cook, of South Carolina, "Brother Jesse Galphin, another black minister, preaches near Augusta, in South Carolina, where I used to preach."[31] Referring to him, George White speaks as follows: "On the 20th of January, 1788, Andrew, surnamed Bryan, was ordained by Rev. Abraham Marshall, and a colored minister named Jesse Peter, from the vicinity of Augusta."[32] Benedict, referring to Andrew Marshall, in the same connection, states that "he was accompanied by a young preacher of color, by the name of Jesse Peter, of Augusta."[33] From these testimonies, it is evident that Jesse Peter was a nonresident pastor of the Silver Bluff Church from 1788 to 1792, if not for a longer period.

During the first period of Jesse Peter's pastorate at Silver Bluff, another slave, who lived in that locality, began to preach. Andrew Bryan, writing from Savannah, Georgia, December 28, 1800, refers to him in the following manner: "Another dispensation of Providence has greatly strengthened our hands and increased our means of information: Henry Francis, lately a slave of the widow of the late Col. Leroy Hammond, of Augusta, has been purchased by a few humane gentlemen of this place, and liberated to exercise the handsome ministerial gifts he possesses amongst us, and teach our youth to read and write." He adds, "Brother Francis has been in the ministry fifteen years, and will soon receive ordination."[34] According to Andrew Bryan, Henry Francis was a half-breed, his mother being white, his father an Indian, but I find in a letter, written by another from the city of Savannah, May 23, 1800, that he is characterized as "a man of color, who has for many years served Col. Hammond, and has handsome ministerial abilities."[35]

The question easily suggests itself, was Henry Francis a member of the Silver Bluff Church when, in 1785, he began to preach? We infer that he was, from certain known facts as to his place of abode, and his opportunities for church membership. In the first place, he lived in the immediate neighborhood of Silver Bluff. William Tennett informs us that the Hammond place was in South Carolina, four miles from Augusta, Georgia and Lossing, Abraham Marshall, and others, that Silver Bluff was also in South Carolina, twelve miles from Augusta. It was easy, therefore, for Henry Francis to attend divine service at the Silver Bluff Church. In the second place, it was the custom of the slaves on the neighboring plantations to attend preaching at Silver Bluff during the pastorate of David George,[36] and the custom doubtless prevailed during Jesse Peter's pastorate. If Henry Francis attended church at Silver Bluff, he did only what other slaves of the neighborhood did. Furthermore, there was no other Baptist church, white or colored, in the neighborhood, for Francis to join. Marshall's church at Kiokee, Georgia, was twenty miles above Augusta, while Botsford's Meeting House, in the opposite direction, was "25 or 30 miles below Augusta."[37] In Augusta itself, there was no Negro Baptist church until 1793,[38] and no white Baptist church until 1817.[39] To our mind the conclusion is inevitable that Henry Francis, in 1785, was a member of the Negro Baptist church, at Silver Bluff, South Carolina.

In reaching this conclusion, moreover, we have been not a little influenced by the fact that when Henry Francis was formerly ordained to the ministry at Savannah, Georgia, seventeen years after he had commenced to preach, and when he was an officer in the Negro church at Savannah, the ordination sermon was not preached by Dr. Henry Holcombe, of the white church of that city, nor by Andrew Bryan of the First African, but by Jesse Peter,[40] pastor of the Silver Bluff Church. We can account for the deference shown Jesse Peter, on this occasion, only on the presumption that Henry Francis was converted, baptized, and licensed to preach at Silver Bluff, and that Jesse Peter was the instrument used in bringing these results to pass. It is evident, then, that the Ogeeche African Baptist Church,[41] on the Ogeeche River, fourteen miles south of Savannah, organized in the year 1803, is more indebted to the Silver Bluff Church for her first preacher and instructor of youth than to any other church.

Of Jesse Peter's ministry at Silver Bluff, as a resident pastor, we are not well informed. In a letter written from Kiokee, Georgia, May 1, 1793, Abraham Marshall speaks of him as follows: "I am intimately acquainted with Jesse Golfin; he lives thirty miles below me in South Carolina, and twelve miles below Augusta. He is a Negro servant of Mr. Golfin, who, to his praise be it spoken, treats him with respect."[42] Jesse Peter, then, was resident pastor of the Silver Bluff Church in the early spring of 1793. From another source we learn that the membership of the Silver Bluff Church, at this time, was sixty or more.[43]

The Church at Augusta

Here we lose sight of the Silver Bluff Church, just as the First African Baptist Church, of Augusta, Georgia, better known as the Springfield Baptist Church, comes into being. Jesse Peter had secured standing and recognition for the First African Church, at Savannah, Georgia,[44] and Henry Francis had been ordained for the Ogeeche Church by him and Andrew Bryan and Henry Holcombe. It was natural, then, that he would wish for his work at Silver Bluff the standing and recognition which had been secured for the work in and about Savannah, Georgia. In order to obtain this boon, and have his work in touch with that near the seacoast, it would be necessary to transfer its place of meeting from the State of South Carolina to the State of Georgia, where he had a friend, who was able to bring things to pass. It is in this way alone that we account for the beginning of the First African Baptist Church at Augusta at the very time when the Silver Bluff Church disappears. The curtain falls on the Silver Bluff Church, with Jesse Peter as pastor, when the church is reported as in a flourishing condition. The curtain rises, and again we see a flock of devoted Christians, with Jesse Peter as pastor, but they are twelve miles away from Silver Bluff, South Carolina, receiving from Abraham Marshall and another white Baptist minister the regulating touches which gave the body standing and influence as the First African Baptist Church, of Augusta, Georgia.

Here is what Benedict says of the body: "This church appears to have been raised up by the labors of Jesse Peter, a black preacher of respectable talents, and an amiable character. It was constituted in 1793, by elders Abraham Marshall and David Tinsley. Jesse Peter, sometimes called Jesse Golfin, on account of his master's name, continued the pastor of this church a number of years, and was very successful in his ministry."[45] If, as we presume, the Silver Bluff Church is still with us, in another meeting-place and under a new name, the oldest Negro Baptist church in this country today is that at Augusta, Georgia, having existed at Silver Bluff, South Carolina, from the period 1774-1775 to the year 1793, before becoming a Georgia institution.

The First African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia

The story of the Silver Bluff Baptist Church would not be complete without reference to the Negro Baptist Church at Savannah, Georgia, which existed before Andrew Bryan became a Christian. Neither E. K. Love, a recent pastor of the First African Baptist Church, nor James M. Simms, of the Bryan Church, have intimated, in their respective histories, that Savannah had a Negro Baptist church before the 20th of January, 1788. Nevertheless, the fact remains that during the British occupancy—that is, from the year 1779 to the year 1782—there was at Savannah, Georgia, an African Baptist church.

If the Negroes of Savannah had been without a Baptist church from 1779 to 1782, it would have been strange indeed. For David George led a company of fifty or more fugitive slaves from Galphinton, South Carolina, into that city at the close of the year 1778, and this company, it is reasonable to infer, included a considerable part, if not nearly all, of the members of the Silver Bluff Church. Devout Christians who had enjoyed such privileges as slaves, and that for years, in South Carolina, would scarcely be satisfied without them in Georgia, as free men, when they had with them three preachers of the Gospel, David George, George Liele, and Jesse Peter, men of their own race and denomination, men from the vicinity of Augusta, who had figured in the planting and growth of the Silver Bluff Church.

We are glad that we have historical data which establish the fact that there was a Negro Baptist church in Savannah from 1779 to 1782, and that the Negro Baptist ministry, which had made itself felt at Silver Bluff for the centuries to come, was now embraced in the church at Savannah. But in this church, it will be seen, George Liele, the eldest of the trio, was the pastor, and not David George. George Liele, as servant of the British officer, who had given him his freedom, could secure for the church recognition and influence, at the hands of the military government then in possession of Savannah, which neither David George, nor Jesse Peter, could obtain. Liele was with a man who had influence with the British government. David George and Jesse Peter, as strangers and fugitives, were unknown to that government, and without influence. It is in this way that we account for the fact that George Liele, and not David George, was pastor of the church. Under ordinary circumstances, the Silver Bluff element, which probably included nearly the whole church at the beginning, would have insisted upon having their old pastor.

In seeking facts, which make it manifest that Savannah, Georgia, had a Negro Baptist church prior to 1788, we have consulted the testimony of persons who were connected with the church at the time, and that of persons of recognized standing who were contemporaneous with them and competent to testify. Joseph Cook, of Euhaw, Upper Indian Land, South Carolina, in a letter to Dr. John Rippon, London, England, dated September 15, 1790, uses the following language: "A poor Negro, commonly called Brother George, has been so highly favored of God, as to plant the first Baptist church in Savannah, and another in Jamaica."[46] As Hervey, Cox, Phillipo, and others who have noticed the missionary efforts of Negro Baptists in the West Indies, inform us that George Liele left the United States in 1782 and began preaching at Kingston, Jamaica, British West Indies, in 1784, it is evident from Cook's letter that the church which Liele planted at Savannah existed prior to 1782.[47] Cook is corroborated by F. A. Cox, who, in speaking of George Liele, in his history of the Baptist Missionary Society of England, states that "He had been pastor of a colored congregation in America." A paragraph which we take from the History of the Propagation of Christianity Among the Heathen, is of the same nature. It refers to the church of which Mr. Cook speaks, in this manner: "The first Baptist preacher in Jamaica was a black man named George Liele, who, though a slave, had been the pastor of a Baptist church in Georgia. He was brought to Jamaica about 1782." Liele, on his own behalf, testified that there was a Negro Baptist church in Savannah, Georgia, during the British occupancy, and mentions by name at least three of its members, who were not in this country, after the British withdrew their forces from Savannah, in 1782. In a letter to Joseph Cook, written from Jamaica, in 1790, Liele refers to one of these members in the following manner: "Also I received accounts from Nova Scotia of a black Baptist preacher, David George, who was a member of the church at Savannah."[48]

In a communication written in 1791 and addressed to the pastor of a London church, Liele refers to one of his Jamaica members in this style: "Sister Hannah Williams, during the time she was a member of the church at Savannah, until the 'vacuation, did walk as a faithful, well-behaved Christian."[49] In answer to questions in regard to Jesse Peter, Liele replied to his London correspondent as follows: "Brother Jesse Gaulphin, another black minister, preaches near Augusta, in South Carolina, where I used to preach. He was a member of the church at Savannah."[50]

In the face of this testimony, coming from different sources and from parties widely separated from each other who had no motive to deceive, there is absolutely no room for doubt as to the fact that a Negro Baptist church existed in Savannah, Georgia, from 1779 to 1782.

As to what measure of prosperity attended the work of the Negro Baptist church at Savannah, Georgia, during the years 1779-1782, we are not informed. It was well that at a time when churches in some parts were going to pieces because of the ravages of war, this little flock remained intact. We infer, however, that it did a most blessed work. George Liele speaks in one of his letters of one "Brother Amos,"[51] who appears to have been a product of the Negro church at Savannah, or the older church at Silver Bluff, South Carolina. Amid the changes wrought in the closing days of the Revolutionary War, this Negro preacher had his lot cast in New Providence, Bahama Islands, British West Indies. According to George Liele, Amos had a membership of three hundred in 1791. Benedict informs us that Amos was in correspondence with his brethren in Savannah, Georgia, in 1812, and at that time the church at New Providence numbered eight hundred and fifty.

A Remnant of Liele's Church in Savannah After The Revolutionary War

What portion of the Savannah Church remained in America, after the evacuation of the city of Savannah by the British, in 1782, we are not able to state. But blessings and trials attended both that portion of the flock which went abroad and that which remained. Andrew Bryan, Hannah Bryan, Kate Hogg, and Hagar Simpson,[52] were among the last converts received into the fellowship of the Negro Baptist church at Savannah before the pastor, the Rev. George Liele, sailed for the West Indies in 1782. These and probably others, like Jesse Peter, remained in America after the restoration of peace between the United States and the "mother-country," and labored under Andrew Bryan, their new spiritual leader, for the continuation of the work which had been so blessed of God under the labors of George Liele.

From Liele's departure, in 1782, to the time of Andrew Bryan's ordination, in 1788, the little flock at Savannah, Georgia, was bitterly persecuted, but its work for resuscitation, and progress, was wonderful—wonderful because of the moral heroism which characterized it. It is reasonable to suppose, however, that much of the opposition to the church at Savannah from 1782 to 1787 was due to the circumstances in which it had come into being, and not to any real antipathy to the cause of Christ. For it must be borne in mind that it was a creature of the Revolutionary War, and of British origin, having been planted when the rightful people of Savannah were languishing in exile, or heroically struggling with the enemy in other parts of the country. Bryan and his associates were beaten unmercifully for their persistency in holding on to the work, but they were prepared to yield their lives in martyrdom [53] sooner than relinquish what George Liele had instituted. So it lived—lived amid the fires of persecution.

Jesse Peter, a member of the church under Liele, and, after the Revolutionary War, pastor of the church at Silver Bluff, saw what was needed to end this persecution, and proceeded to change the aspect of things. He was held in high esteem by the colonists, and Abraham Marshall, of Kiokee, Georgia, was his chief admirer and friend. Accordingly, he secured the services of Abraham Marshall in setting things aright. The church was organized anew, the pastor was ordained to the office of a Baptist minister, and the reestablished church, with its preacher, was brought into membership with the Georgia Baptist Association.[54] As Abraham Marshall was beloved by Georgia Baptists as no other man of the State, it was enough that this church should have his official approval and recognition. Referring to this new order of things, instituted on the 20th day of January, 1788, Marshall, the one associated with Jesse Peter in the undertaking, recognizes Jesse Peter as taking the initiative, when he says, "I assisted in the constitution of the church, and the ordination of the minister."[55]

So ended the second period in the history of this church, as the dawn of its new day began—a day in which the once-persecuted congregation could say: "We enjoy the rights of conscience to a valuable extent, worshipping in our families, preaching three times every Lord's Day, baptizing frequently from ten to thirty at a time, in the Savannah, and administering the sacred supper, not only without molestation, but in the presence and with the approbation and encouragement of many of the white people."[56]

Let us recapitulate. We began with the church at Silver Bluff, South Carolina. We were next attracted to Canada, and then to far-off Africa by the labors of David George, the first regular pastor at Silver Bluff. Again we follow a portion of the Silver Bluff Church to Savannah, Georgia. In Savannah we see a church growing under the labors of George Liele, then we find Liele and Amos in the British West Indies, leading large congregations of Negro Baptists. Once more we turn our eyes homeward, and we are attracted to the church at Silver Bluff, South Carolina, to the church at Augusta, Georgia, and the church at Savannah, which, having endured the severest trials, rejoices in recognition and peace—the church of today.

Walter H. Brooks

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Benedict's History of the Baptists (edition, 1848), p. 454. Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1801-1802, p. 836.

[2] Ibid., pp. 397, 577, 620. Compare with edition 1813, Vol. II, pp. 504, 509, 515.

[3] See Ramsey's History of South Carolina, Vol. I, p. 158, note 19, p. 159; Steven's History of Georgia, Vol. I, pp. 255-256; Gibbes' Documentary History of American Revolution (South Carolina), Vol. I, pp. 235-236 and 158-159; Furman's History Charleston Baptist Association, p. 77; Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, pp. 445, 474, 477, 541; State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, pp. 15, 32, 35, 36; Lossing's Field Book of Revolution, Vol. II, p. 484; article on Henry Lee in Appleton's Cyclopedia, Vol. X, p. 487; Light Horse Harry in Larner's History of Ready Reference, Vol. V, pp. 32-74-5; American Cyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 378; N. W. Jones' History of Georgia, Vol. II, pp. 136-138; Abraham Marshall in Cathcart's Baptist Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 349.

[4] George and John Galphin, brothers, are mentioned in State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, pp. 32, 35, 36, 158, 159. Thomas Galphin is referred to in Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, pp. 540-541. Milledge Galphin, according to Act of Congress, passed August 14, 1848, and statement of United States for 1850, set forth in Lossing's Field Book of the American Revolution, Vol. II, p. 484, received in settlement of his claim against the United States as heir of George Galphin, $200,000.

[5] For date of fall of Savannah, Dec. 29, 1778, Sir Archibald Campbell in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. I, p. 511, and for troubles at Silver Bluff, South Carolina, see Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, p. 477, and compare with pp. 473-480 and 332-337. For conditions necessitating the exile of Silver Bluff Church, see letter of Wm. H. Drayton, written from Hammond's place near Augusta, Georgia, August 30, 1775, to the Council of Safety in Gibbes' Documentary History of the American Revolution (South Carolina), Vol. I, p. 162, and for distance from Silver Bluff see letter of Rev. Wm. Tennett, p. 236, and compare with note in Lossing's Field Book of the American Revolution, Vol. II, 484. See also Rev. Tennett's letter of September 7, 1775, for movement of men at Silver Bluff and surrounding country. Gibbes' Documentary History of the American Revolution (South Carolina), Vol. I, pp. 245-246.

[6] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1791, p. 336, compare with 1790-1793, pp. 476-477.

[7] See Rippon's Annual Baptist Register for 1793, pp. 540-541. Compare with 1790-1793, pp. 544-545.

[8] Lossing's Field Book, p. 484; Steven's Georgia, Vol. II, pp. 255-256, etc., as above in note 3.

[9] Gibbes' Documentary History American Revolution, Vol. I, pp. 235-236; Furman's History Charleston Baptist Association, p. 77, and compare letters of George and John Galphin in State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, pp. 15, 35, 36, and G. No. 2, p. 32.

[10] Ramsey's History of South Carolina, Vol. I, p. 158.

[11] Steven's History of Georgia, Vol. II, pp. 255-256; article on Henry Lee, Appleton's American Cyclopedia, Vol. X, p. 487.

[12] But who was "Elder Palmer," the man who planted the first of this series of churches? David George states that he was a powerful preacher, and that he was pastor of a church some distance from Silver Bluff. We are satisfied that the church alluded to was not in South Carolina, nor in Georgia, nor were the members of the church in question, nor its pastor, of African descent. It is our opinion that "Elder Palmer" was no less a distinguished person than Wait Palmer, the founder of the First Baptist Church of Stonington, Connecticut. It was possible that he should be the cause of this remarkable beginning of Negro Baptist churches in the United States, for he was living and active during and prior to the Revolutionary period, and long before.

Wait Palmer, of Stonington, Connecticut, moreover, was, as his biographer states, "an actor in the great New Light, or Separatist movement," and in this capacity he "preached often in destitute regions." Benedict testifies that "he became a famous pioneer in Virginia and North Carolina." But what is more, Mrs. Marshall, the mother of Abraham Marshall, of Kiokee, Georgia, was a sister of Shubal Sterns, and Shubal Sterns was baptized and ordained to the work of the ministry by Wait Palmer, at Tolland, Connecticut, in the spring of 1751. It was but natural that, in his zeal to preach Christ in destitute regions, Palmer would visit this Connecticut family and preach the gospel to any who might desire to hear it.

If it should be thought by some that no man would, in the circumstances, have gone on a preaching tour from Connecticut to South Carolina, it may be well to recall the fact that Rev. Abraham Marshall covered the ground in question, in the year 1786, travelling both ways on horseback, preaching nearly every day during the three months he was away from home. But Palmer was now in the South and not in the North, as Benedict states. No other Palmer, known to Baptists, fits the case like this friend of Shubal Stearns. We shall continue to assign to him the credit of the first Negro Baptist Church in America, until we can find another "Elder Palmer," whose claim is absolutely certain. See Rippon, Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, pp. 475-476; Catheart's Baptist Encyclopedia, II, 882.

[13] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, edition 1790-1793, pp. 473-480, and compare article, Sir Archibald Campbell, in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. I, p. 511.

[14] See Bill's letter of March 12, and one of March 14, 1776; also March 26, 1776, printed in Gibbes' Documentary History of the American Revolution (South Carolina), Vol. I, pp. 266-273. Compare with letter in Vol. II, p. 62. See also Dunmore's Emancipation Proclamation issued in November, 1775, in Joseph T. Wilson's Emancipation, pp. 36-37.

[15] Cyclopedia American Biography, Vol. I, p. 511. Compare with Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, edition 1790-1793, pp. 332-333.

[16] Cathcart's Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 749, and compare article of John Houston in Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. III, p. 273.

[17] Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. IV, p. 219. Compare Vol. III, p. 273. See article, Savannah in Appleton's American Cyclopedia, Vol. III, p. 646.

[18] See Drayton's letter in Gibbes' Documentary History of American Revolution (South Carolina), Vol. I, p. 162, and for distance from Silver Bluff compare letter of Tennett, p. 235, note in Lossing's Field Book of Revolution, Vol. II, p. 484.

[19] Gibbes' Documentary History of the American Revolution (South Carolina), Vol. I, pp. 235-236, letter of Tennett, of September 7, 1775.

[20] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1770-1773, pp. 332-337.

[21] Ibid., 1790-1793, p. 344.

[22] White's History of Georgia, pp. 246-247; Jones, Vol. II, p. 137.

[23] State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. I, G. No. 2, p. 32.

[24] See Jonathan Odell, Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. IV, p. 556; Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, p. 481; Bill's History of the Canadian Baptists, pp. 26, 176, 653, 657. Compare with Rippon's Annual Baptist Register for 1798-1800, p. 336.

[25] Sabine's American Loyalists, Vol. I, p. 127. Compare pp. 122-123.

[26] G. W. Hervey, Story of Baptist Missions in Foreign Lands, p. 596. Compare article on Sierra Leone in Appleton's American Cyclopedia, Vol. XV, p. 32; also article on Nova Scotia, Vol. XII, pp. 524-525; See Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, pp. 481-483. See also article on Sierra Leone in The Earth and its Inhabitants—Africa—Vol. III, p. 207.

[27] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, pp. 481-484.

[28] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, pp. 473, 544-545; 1791, p. 336; 1793, pp. 540-541.

[29] Joseph T. Wilson's Emancipation, pp. 36-38; Dunmore's Emancipation Proclamation issued 1775.

[30] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1793, pp. 540-541.

[31] Ibid., 1791, p. 336.

[32] White's Historical Collections of Georgia, p. 316.

[33] Benedict's History of the Baptists, p. 170.

[34] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1798-1801, p. 367. Compare 263.

[35] Ibid., p. 263.

[36] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, p. 476.

[37] Benedict's History (edition 1848), p. 723.

[38] Benedict's History of the Baptists (edition 1813), Vol. II, p. 193.

[39] Article on Augusta, Georgia, First Baptist Church of, Cathcart's Baptist Encyclopedia, Vol. I, p. 49.

[40] James M. Simm's First Colored Baptist Church in North America, p. 57.

[41] Ibid., pp. 58-59.

[42] Benedict's History of the Baptists, edition 1813, Vol. II, p. 193, quoted from Rippon's Annual Baptist Register.

[43] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1791, p. 336.

[44] White's Historical Collections of Georgia, p. 316; Benedict's History of the Baptists (edition 1848), p. 740. Compare with Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1793, p. 545. Benedict's History of the Baptists, edition 1848, p. 727, note 5, shows no white minister was present except Abraham Marshall, and he says here he "assisted in the constitution of the church, and the ordination of the minister."

[45] Benedict's History of the Baptists (edition 1813), Vol. II, p. 193.

[46] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1791, p. 332.

[47] Hervey's Story of Baptist Missions in Foreign Lands, pp. 611-612; Cox's History of the British Baptist Missionary Society, 1792-1842, p. 12. Phillipo, Jamaica, Past and Present; E. K. Love's History First African Baptist Church, p. 35; Brown, Propagation of Christianity among Heathen, Vol. II, p. 94.

[48] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1791, p. 336, and compare Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1790-1793, pp. 476, 481-483.

[49] Ibid., 1791, p. 344.

[50] Ibid., 1791, p. 336.

[51] Benedict's History of the Baptists (edition 1813), Vol. II, p. 206.

[52] James M. Simm's The First Colored Baptist Church in North America, p. 15.

[53] "Andrew Bryan, and his brother Sampson, who was converted about a year after Andrew was, were twice imprisoned and they with about fifty others, without much ceremony, were severely whipped. Andrew was inhumanly cut and bled abundantly; but while under their lashes he held up his hands and told his persecutors that he rejoiced not only to be whipped but would freely suffer death for the cause of Christ." Baptist Home Missions in America, 1832-1882, Jubilee Volume, p. 388.

[54] Benedict's History of the Baptists, edition 1848, p. 170. Compare with p. 723.

[55] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1793, p. 545.

[56] Rippon's Annual Baptist Register, 1793-1801, p. 367. Compare with Clark's letter, 1790-1793, p. 540.

THE NEGROES IN MAURITIUS [1]

Mauritius was discovered by the Portuguese in 1505 and remained in their possession until 1598, when it was ceded to the Dutch, who gave it the name by which it is now known. Aside from erecting a fort at Grand Port, however, the Dutch did no more for the development of the colony than the Portuguese. The Dutch finally abandoned it in 1710 when the island was taken over by the French. Under the French the island was considerably developed, especially during the second half of the eighteenth century, and this new step, as the majority saw it, necessitated the introduction of slavery. During the Napoleonic Wars Mauritius was captured by England and was formally ceded by France in 1814.

The significant history of the Negroes in Mauritius, however, dates from the year 1723 when the East India Company of France, in order to promote agriculture in the Island, sanctioned the introduction of slaves, whom they sold to the inhabitants at a certain fixed price. This price was seldom paid at the moment of purchase, and, as many evaded payment altogether. Mahé de Labourdounais, the then Governor of the Colony, received instructions on this point, the execution of which made him unpopular among the inhabitants.[2]

The slave trade, at this period, was principally in the hands of those pirates who had formed a settlement at Nossibé (Nossé Ibrahim), on the northeast coast of Madagascar, where they had been received with kindness and hospitality by the natives. In return they excited a war between the tribes in the interior and those inhabiting the seacoast, and purchased the prisoners made by both for the purpose of conveying them for sale to Bourbon or Mauritius. If the prisoners thus obtained proved insufficient to the demands of the slave market, a descent was made on some part of the Island, a village was surrounded, and its younger and more vigorous inhabitants were borne off to a state of perpetual slavery.[3]

Harrowing as the scenes witnessed in such forays must have been, the slave trade from Madagascar to Mauritius was not accompanied with the same horrors as from the neighboring continent to America, if history be credited. Its victims were spared the toiling and harassing march from the interior and the horrors of being cribbed and confined for successive weeks beneath the hatches till they reached their final destination; and yet, of every five Negroes embarked at Madagascar, not more than two were found fit for service in Mauritius. The rest either stifled beneath the hatches, starved themselves to death, died of putrid fever, became the food of sharks, fled to the mountains, or fell beneath the driver's lash.

Mahé de Labourdounais was not the founder of slavery. The institution preceded his arrival. Slavery existed in Mauritius even under the Dutch régime. Of every eighteen slaves in the colony one died annually, so that if the traffic had ceased for eighteen years, at the end of that time the whole black population would have died out. From first to last Mauritius has been the tomb of more than a million of Africans. Their lamentable history is like the roll of the prophet, written within and without, and the writing thereof is mourning and lamentation.

Many became fugitives, and sometimes by daring adventure returned to Africa. In order to check the fugitive slaves, Labourdounais employed their countrymen against them, and formed a mounted police who protected the colonists from their incursions.[4] To preserve the inhabitants from famine, he introduced the cassava from the Island of St. Jago and the Brazils, and published an ordinance by which every planter was compelled to put under cultivation five hundred feet of cassava for every slave that he possessed. The planters, an ignorant and indolent race, used every measure to degenerate and discredit this innovation, and in some cases destroyed the plantations of the cassava by pouring boiling water on the root. The benefit conferred by this ordinance was later felt and appreciated when their crops were destroyed by the hurricanes or devoured by locusts. The cassava was immune from either of these casualties and was the usual article of food for the Negroes. Labourdounais instructed the slaves in the art of ship building, made them sailors and soldiers and found them highly useful in the expedition which he undertook against the English in India. He endeavored also to mitigate their sufferings from the enforcement of the regulations of the Code Noir.

After the dispersion of the pirates, the slave trade fell into the hands of European merchants or Creole colonists, who extended it to the adjoining coasts of Africa. The Mozambique Negroes were found more tractable than those of Madagascar, but Negroes were obtained from both points, according to the difficulties and exigencies of the traffic. The price paid by the French at Madagascar for a man or a woman from the age of thirteen to forty was two muskets, two cartridge boxes, ten flints, and ten balls, or fifteen hundred balls or seventeen hundred flints. In spite of the price the trade developed. In 1766 there were about 25,000 slaves and 1200 free Negroes in the colony. In 1799 there were 55,000 of the former class and 35,000 of the latter. In 1832 they were estimated at 16,000 free Negroes and 63,500 slaves. It seems difficult to account for the diminution among the free Negro population. Baron Grant de Vaux [5] states that to prevent the increase of this class it was enacted that no slaves should be liberated save those who had saved the lives of their masters. A kind-hearted master, however, could always give his slave an opportunity to save his life.

Slavery as it developed in Maritius falls in three epochs. During the earliest period the institution gradually took the form of a system somewhat like that of the bondage of the Hebrews, modified in the case of Mauritius, however, according to the requirements of the temper and habits of the natives and the situation of the planters. There was no regard for the comfort of the slaves and they tended to degrade to the lowest depths. Yet the slaves were not considered altogether as chattels, convertible at the will of their masters. In the second stage, however, the bondage of the Negro reached the darkest age of irresponsibility to law and cruelty absolutely intolerable. A few officials and planters protested, and travelers who saw the horror appealed for mercy in behalf of the unfortunate.[6] A change in the attitude of the planters toward the slaves was finally forced and characterized the third stage of slavery in Mauritius. These cruelties were mitigated largely by the agitation of Les Amis des Noirs, among whom were some of the most distinguished actors in the grand drama of the French Revolution. The leading reformers were the brilliant orators Mirabeau and Madam de Poivre, the wife of the deceased Intendant of the Isle of France. At a much earlier date, even under Labourdounais, under whose economic development of Mauritius slavery flourished, much was said about improving the condition of the slaves.[7] Yet it was not until the rule of De Caen that we observe actual efforts to provide for the slaves, such as better nourishment, religious instruction and legal marriage.[8]

The first attempt to emancipate the slaves was made by the leaders of the French Revolution, who, while they professed to discard Christianity as a revelation from God, deduced the equality of all men before God from the principles of natural reason.[9] The prohibition of slavery was rendered null and void by the planters of Mauritius and the members of local government, all of whom were slaveholders and opposed to any change. The only effect of the prohibition was to alienate the affections of the colonists from the mother-country, and to lead them to rejoice when Napoleon assumed the consular power and annulled the ordinance prohibiting slavery after the capture of the island by the British. The importation of slaves was prohibited under severe penalties.

As the execution of this law was vested in the local authorities, who had a direct personal interest in the continuance of this traffic, slaves were still imported in sufficient numbers to satisfy the wants of the planters.[10] It is true that trading in slaves was declared to be felony, that the two harbors of Port Louis and Matubourg were closed against their entrance, that a slave registry was opened in 1815, and that credulous Governors wrote to the home authorities that the Mauritians, far from wishing to renew this nefarious traffic, were filled with indignation at the remembrance of its horrors. All this may be true, but the slave trade was as brisk as ever, and the island swarmed with Negroes whose peculiar appearance and ignorance of the Creole language proved them to be of recent introduction.

No law can be executed unless it be in accordance with public opinion, and the feelings of the white Mauritians were altogether in favor of slavery. The illicit introduction of slaves was a felony by law, and yet, notwithstanding the notorious violations of this law, no one was ever convicted. The prisoner might have turned on the judge and proved his complicity in the crime. The only convictions that were obtained were in the case of offenders that were sent to England for trial. This statement will excite no astonishment on the part of those who are acquainted with the manner in which justice is still administered in Mauritius. The slave registry was opened in 1815, but the entries were so falsified that instead of checking slavery it threw its mantle of protection upon it.[11] Slaves were not introduced publicly at the two chief ports of the island from Africa, but the Seychelles Islands lay at a convenient distance, and slaves registered at the Seychelles were admitted into Mauritius without any questions being asked. The coral reef that surrounds the island could easily be passed and the slaves loaded in those light coasters that are used by fishermen. The governors were surrounded by functionaries who were slaveholders and who were therefore interested in supporting the traffic and screening the offenders from punishment, so that their reports, based on information received from these parties, were not entitled to much credit.

As to the feelings of indignation expressed by the colonists at the remembrance of the horrors of the slave trade, it is sufficient to remark that rogues are always louder in protestation of their innocence than honest men—that this change of feeling was too rapid to be sincere, and that truthfulness of character does not stand high in the code of Mauritian morality, to judge from the attitude of the white population.

In judging the treatment of the slaves in Mauritius, recourse must be had to those writers who visited or lived in the colony during the prevalence of slavery, and have given the world the benefit of their experience. These are St. Pierre, Soumerat and Baron Grant. St. Pierre spent several years in the island, and mingled freely with the inhabitants of all classes. The last was born in the island where his father had sought to retrieve his fortune after the failure of Law's Mississippi scheme. The pictures presented in the writings of St. Pierre might appear exaggerated, or prejudiced, if drawn by a foreigner; but it must be borne in mind that he describes only what he witnessed, and that his good faith has never been questioned.[12] He thus speaks of the importation and treatment of slaves:

"They are landed with just a rag around their loins. The men are ranged on one side and the women on the other with their infants, who cling from fear to their mothers. The planter, having examined them as he would a horse, buys what may then attract him. Brothers, sisters, friends, lovers, are now torn asunder, and bidding each other a long farewell, are driven weeping to the plantations they are bought for. Sometimes they turned desperate, fancying that the white people intended eating their flesh, making red wine of their blood, and powder of their bones. They were treated in the following manner:

"At break of day a signal of three smacks of a whip called them to work, when each betook himself with his spade to the plantation, where they worked almost naked in the heat of the sun. Their food was bruised or boiled maize, or bread made of cassava root, their clothing a single piece of linen. Upon the commission of the most trivial offence, they were tied hands and feet to a ladder, where the overseer approached with a whip like a postilion's and gave them fifty, a hundred, and perhaps two hundred lashes upon the back. Each stroke carried off its portion of skin. The poor wretch was then untied, an iron collar with three spikes put round his neck, and he was then sent back to his task. Some of them were unable to sit down for a month after this beating—a punishment inflicted with equal severity on women as on men. In the evening, when they returned home, they were obliged to pray for the prosperity of their masters, and wish them a good night before they retired to rest. There was a law in force in their favor called the Code Noir or the Black Code, which ordained that they should receive no more than thirty lashes for any offence, that they should not work on Sundays, that they should eat meat once a week, and have a new shirt every year; but this was not observed."[13]

Soumerat, who visited the island during the period of slavery, speaks of their treatment by their white masters in the following terms:

"I have known humane and compassionate masters who, instead of maltreating them, tried to mitigate their servile condition, but they are very few in number. The rest exercise over their Negroes a cruel and revolting tyranny. The slave, after having labored the whole day, sees himself obliged to search for his food in the woods, and lives only on unwholesome roots. They die of misery and bad treatment, without exciting the smallest feeling of pity, and consequently they never let slip any opportunity of breaking their chains in order to escape to the forests in search of independence and misery."

So miserable indeed was their condition that they welcomed death as a friend, and often committed crime in the hope of being executed.[14] Conditions decidedly improved in Mauritius, however, after the British took possession in 1814. The freedom of slaves was then agitated throughout the civilized world. The British interfered with slavery there in 1826, endeavoring to ease the burden of the bondmen. In 1829 the charter of the slave population was proclaimed. It provided for the religious instruction of the slaves, the recognition of the sanctity of the Sabbath, toleration in worship, the right of the slave to contract marriage, and prohibition of the separation of husband from wife or the mother from her children. Slaves were made competent to acquire stock and movable or immovable property. They were given power to dispose of property by will. Punishments were diminished and the way to elevation to civil power was opened.[15]

The end of this ordeal finally came. The British Emancipation Act was passed in 1833. From 1834 the traffic in human flesh ceased. In 1839 all slaves in Mauritius six years old and upwards became apprentice laborers and remained so until 1841 as regarded field laborers, and until 1839 for those unattached. There were then in the island 39,464 men and boys and 25,856 women and girls, in all 65,320. Knowing that the change in the status of so many inhabitants might interfere with the labor supply, the planters prepared for this contingency by importing coolies from Ceylon and India. By 1838 they had brought in 24,566 such natives, but because they had managed the importation so badly that many evils resulted therefrom, it was stopped by public protest. When the apprentices were freed in 1839, however, there followed such a scarcity of labor that the immigration of the Cingalese and Hindoos was reopened. So many have since then made their way to the island that they now constitute a substantial element of the colony. So much race admixture has followed, on the other hand, that observers sometimes refer to the Mauritians as creoles and coolies.

A. F. Fokeer

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For the leading facts of the life and history of Mauritius see the following: Charles Pridham's England's Colonial Empire (London, 1846); Le Premier Établissment des Neerlandais à Maurice; A Transport Voyage to the Mauritius and Back; Baron Grant, History of Mauritius or the Isle of France and the Neighboring Islands; Jacques Henri Bernardin de St. Pierre, A Voyage to the Island of Mauritius, the Isle of Bourbon, the Cape of Good Hope, etc. (London, 1775); Le Baron d'Unienville, Statistique de l'île de France et ses Dépendances (Paris, 1838); M. J. Milbert, Voyage pittoresque de l'île de France à Cap de Bonne Espérance et à l'île de Teneriffe (Paris, 1812); Adrien d'Epinay, Renseignements pour servir à l'histoire de l'île de France jusqu'à l'année 1810, inclusivement, précédés de notes sur le découverte de l'île sur l'occupation hollandaise; Henri Prentout, L'île de France sous Decaen, 1803-1810 (Paris, 1901); Patrick Beaton, Creoles and Coolies (London, 1858); Nicholas Pike, Subtropical Rambles in the Land of the Aphanapteryx (New York, 1873); and An Account of the Island of Mauritius and its Dependencies by a Late Official Resident.

[2] Adrian d'Espinay Renseignments, etc., 112-113; An Account of the Island of Mauritius, 19.

[3] Grant, History of Mauritius, 74.

[4] Grant, History of Mauritius, 74-75.

[5] Grant, History of Mauritius, p. 75, 1801.

[6] Pridham, England's Colonial Empire, I, 160.

[7] Beaton, Creoles and Coolies, 94-111; An Account of the Island of Mauritius and its Dependencies by a Late Official Resident, p. 19; Adrien d'Epinay, Renseignments, etc., pp. 112-113.

[8] Henri Prentout, L'île de France sous DeCaen, 126.

[9] Pridham, p. 154.

[10] Ibid., p. 156.

[11] Pridham, p. 157.

[12] Pridham, pp. 164, 165.

[13] Bernardin de St. Pierre, A Voyage, etc., pp. 100-105.

[14] Pridham, p. 161.

[15] Ibid., pp. 175-175.

DOCUMENTS

Letters Collected by R. E. Park And Booker T. Washington

This is an extract from the publications of the Southern History Association, Spangenberg's Journal of Travels in North Carolina, 1752.[1]

Whoever comes to North Carolina must prepare to pay a poll tax. Poll tax is required from all white men, master or servant, from 16 years of age and on; all Negroes and Negresses pay poll tax from their twelfth year. Whoever marries a Negro, or Indian, a mixed blood—his children are liable to the fourth degree from the twelfth year on, and the female Indian or Negro is also taxable. Should this tax not be paid to the sheriff—by whom it is demanded, he is empowered to sell anything belonging to the delinquent party, he can seize at public vendue, and after keeping enough to pay his own fees and satisfy the tax he returns the remainder to the party.

When anyone wishes to marry he must go to the clerk of his county and deposit a Bond for fifty pounds, as assurance that there is no obstacle or impediment to his marying.

He then receives a certificate which he presents to the Justice, who gives him his license: he may then get married. The fees are 20 shillings for the clerk—five shillings for the Justice; 10 shillings for the Minister. Should the "Banns be published," however the license fee is not required. Should the marriage not be performed by the Minister, his fee must, nevertheless, be offered to him. Whoever marries a Negress, Indian, Mulatto or anything of mixed blood, must pay a fine of fifty pounds. Whoever marries such a couple must also pay a fine of fifty pounds.

If a slave or servant buys or sells anything without his master's knowledge and consent, the parties dealing with him shall not only lose three times the amount bargained for, but also pay a penalty of six pounds.

Whoever assists a slave to escape from his master, be it much or little, shall serve the master 5 years, as punishment.

The following is a letter from an investigator seeking in Ohio information concerning the Randolph slaves:

November 18, '08.

Dr. Park:—

The following is what I found in answer to your questions concerning the Randolph slaves in Ohio:

In Virginia, they lived in Charlotte and Prince Edward Counties on the Roanoke River.

They traveled overland, in wagons and carts from there to Cincinnati and from Cincinnati, to Mercer Co., in Ohio by flat boats. The land which is said to have been bought for them was in Mercer Co.

The settlers of the Community were mainly Germans who would not allow the landing of the Negroes where they arrived there.

The Colony then moved down the Miami River, settled in camp in Miami County not far from the towns of Piqua and Troy.

They never got possession of any of the land supposed to have been purchased for them.

The citizens of Piqua held a mass meeting to discuss the condition of the Negroes in Camp, to decide upon some course of action in regard to them.

The decision was to find employment for them wherever they could and distribute them accordingly. Some were sent to Shelby County-Sidney, about 12 miles N. E. of Piqua—being the county seat. Several descendants live in this community yet.

Many remained in & about Piqua & Troy where there are still few of the old ones & many descendents. Some were sent into Indiana and other parts of Ohio. There were 385 of them.

The most noted of them is Mr. Goodrich Giles. His father was a member of the Colony. His mother belonged to another planter in Virginia & did not get to go.

Mr. Giles is without any question a Negro. He farms & has succeeded at it. He owns 425 acres of land just out from Piqua not an acre of which is said to be worth less than one hundred dollars. He lives in a good roomy brick house, has good farm buildings, is supplied with farming implements and though old is still active—leading in his work.

His crop this year consists of about,

4500 bus. Corn
500 bus. Oats
1400 bus. Wheat
100 tons Hay with potatoes & other crops in smaller quantity but enough to do him.

He raises most of his meat. Has twelve horses & fifteen cows.

He is a good churchman, attends, counsels and pays. Believes in lodges & helps them too. His city property is said to be worth from $15,000 to $20,000. His obligations he says are very slight, well within his ability to handle. The best citizens of the community are loud in praise of him.

Mr. Fountain Randolph went up with the colony a boy. He is not very active now & has not prospered as Giles has, but lives in his own house of brick with four rooms I think, and is still respected by the community. He & Giles lead in trying to keep the descendents of the colony together & in the effort to get the land which it is claimed was bought for them.

Randolph still lives in Piqua. A son of his, John S. Randolph was born there, educated in the city schools, and was called to Macon, Ga. several years ago to teach in the schools there, is reported to have done well, established a school at Montezuma, Ga. known as Bennett University. I have not had chance to look him up or his work.

A Miss Anna Jones born at Troy, O. is a descendent who has been prominent as teacher I was told. Mr. Fountain Randolph said she now lives & teaches at Wilberforce as Mrs. Coleman. I wrote Prof. Scarborough about her but have not heard from him.

Mr. Robert Gordon living at Troy is prospering in business and is greatly helped—says Mr. Randolph, by his wife who is one of the descendants.

Mr. Samuel White at Troy is a prosperous farmer owning his farm & is a successful Tobacco grower. He is a descendent.

Mr. Cash Evans is a prosperous barber in Piqua. He is one of the descendants & is said to own several houses there.

In the summer of 1901 Messrs Goodrich Giles & Fountain Randolph started what became known as "The Randolph Slave Society."

It grew out of a custom in Ohio of holding what they call "Family Reunions" one day in each year. This is a day of feasting and special amusement of some kind when all the members and relatives of a family from far and near are brought together and rejoice among themselves.

The day chosen is usually the anniversary of the birth of some member of the family when all others make special effort to cheer that one, bringing presents & greetings of various sorts.

Giles & Randolph being impressed with this, arranged for a picnic and invited all the members of the Randolph colony that could be reached and their descendents. A number came and spent the day pleasantly together. A permanent organization was effected. Mr. Fountain Randolph was made President & still holds that position.

That meeting and later ones attracted attention. The Newspapers got interested and began to write them up. The story of their going into Ohio, of the land which was said to have been bought for them in Mercer Co., and of the refusal of the settlers to permit them to occupy the land and more was set forth in the papers. Then lawyers began to talk with them about the lands. A colored lawyer named Henderson from Indianapolis was among the first to call upon them advising that the land could be secured. He was employed to look it up, He advised & secured the employment of a white lawyer, Mr. Johnson at Salina, O. in Mercer Co. to assist him in working out the matter. Mr. Johnson is said to have a certified copy of the Randolph will providing for the liberation of the slaves—their transportation into Ohio, the purchase of land for them, its distribution among them etc. How much money has been raised for the lawyers I could not find but some money has been raised & more probably will be.

Speaking of John Randolph the Master, old Mr. Fountain Randolph said "my father said he had lots of peculiarities about him. He never sold a slave & never allowed them to be abused. He never sold any produce as corn, meat and stuffs used by the slaves without first enquiring of the slaves if they could spare it. He would say to the person wanting to buy "You must ask my slaves." "and my mother said:" continued Mr. Randolph "He would often go among his slaves, parents & children & pat them on the head saying 'all these are my children.' His chief body guard was a faithful slave called John White for whom some special mention & provision was made in the will."

This man went with the colony to Ohio, was respected by the others & treated by them just as if he had not been favored by the Master, says Mr. Randolph.

The master gave as his reason for not marrying that should he die—his heirs would want to hold the slaves or sell them and he wanted neither of the things to happen.

He often called the slaves together and asked which they preferred: "Freedom while he lived or after his death and they always said after his death."

Mr. Fountain Randolph has in his possession an old copy of "Life of Randolph of Roanoke" written by Hugh A. Garland, & Published in New York in 1850 by D. Appleton & Co. and Published in Phila. the same year by G. S. Appleton & Co. It is in two volumes. Mr. Randolph had both Vols. but loaned Volume I to the Indianapolis lawyer & has not been able to get it back.

The Randolph will is set forth in Vol. II from which I made the following notes:

Will 1st written in 1819 & left with Dr. Brockenbrough saying:

"I give my slaves their freedom to which my conscience tells me they are justly entitled. It has long been a matter of deepest regret to me that the circumstances under which I inherited them and the obstacles thrown in the way by the laws of the land have prevented my emancipating them in my life time which it is my full intention to do in case I can accomplish it. All the rest & residue of my estate (with exceptions herein after made) whether real or personal, I bequeath to Wm. Leigh, Esq., of Halifax, Atty at Law, to the Rev. Wm. Meade of Frederic and Francis Scott Key Esq., of Georgetown, D. C. in trust for the following uses and purposes viz:

1st To provide one or more tracts of land in any of the States or Territories not exceeding in the whole 4000 acres nor less than 2000 acres, to be partitioned & apportioned by them in such manner as to them shall seem best, among the said slaves.

2nd To pay the expense of their removal & of furnishing them with necessary cabins, clothes & utensils."

In 1821 another Will was written saying: 1st I give and bequeath to all my slaves their freedom—heartily regretting that I have ever been the owner of one.

2nd I give to my executor a sum not exceeding $8,000 or so much thereof as may be necessary to transport & settle said slaves to & in some other state or Territory of the United States, giving to all above the age of 40 not less than ten acres of land each.

Then special annuities to his "old faithful servants Essex & his wife, Hetty, same to woman servant Nancy to John (alias Jupiter) to Queen and to Johnny his body servant." In 1826 a codicil was written confirming previous wills. In 1828 a codicil to will in possession of Wm. Leigh Esq., confirming it as his last will and testament revoking any and all other wills or codicil at variance that may be found.

In 1831 on starting home from London another codicil adding to former provisions as follows:

Upwards of 2000 £ were left in the hands of Baring Bros, & Co of London & upwards of 1000 £ in the hands of Gowan & Marx to be used by Leigh as fund for executing the will regarding the slaves.

Respectfully yours,

The following account and the clipping attached thereto give an interesting story of the success and the philanthropy of a Negro:

I was born in Milledgeville, Ga. about the year 1867. My mother belonged to a white man by the name of Dr. Garner Edwards. My father belonged to a different family. About two weeks after I was born my mother died. She was still working for the same people who once owned her. She was much liked by them so they decided to keep her child and try and raise it. They taught me at home so when I went to school I knew how to read and write. They sent me to a school four or five years. Dr. Edwards had a son by the name of Miller or (Buck) Edwards. It was through him that I received my schooling as Dr. was old and Miller was the support of the house. After years Miller died and I had to stop school and go to work. I worked in a number of stores in Milledgeville and was always trusted.

My earnings I always carried them home and gave them to the white people. They never asked me for anything. They gave me all I made but I thought they needed it more than I, so that went on for a number of years. At this time I was about twenty years old so I told them I was going to Macon, Ga. to work. I secured work at the Central R. R. Shop. I worked on the yard a number of months. During that time I was called off the yard at different times to work in the office when some one wanted to get off. Finally I was given one office to clean up. My work was so satisfactory until I was moved from the shop to the car shed and was given a job of delivering R. R. Mail. I was promoted three times in two years. It was then where I became acquainted with a route agent. He boarded at the same house. We were often in conversation. He was telling me of a daughter he had in school. I told him I wanted to go but I was not able. He ask me did I know Booker Washington. I said no. He said well he runs a school where you can work your way through school. I told him I would like to go so he gave me the address. I wrote and received a little pamphlet. I was looking for a catalogue so I was much disappointed in getting this little book and said it was not much. But I decided to go and try. I did not have much money. I had been living high in Macon and spending all I made. I did not stay to make more but left in about four weeks after I received the first letter. I asked for a pass to Montgomery. It was given me. I arrived in Montgomery with 10 or 12 dollars. I said well I am going to school so I will have a good time before going so I got broke did not know any one, thought my trip was up. I walked up the street one morning. In passing a drug store I saw a young man inside. I step back a few steps to look again. I recognized it to be some one I knew some years ago so the first thing came in mind was to borrow enough money from him to take me to Tuskegee. After a long talk he asked me where I was going and what I was doing there, so now was my chance. I told him I was on my way to Tuskegee. He said it was a fine that he had worked up there. I told him I had spent all the money I had and wanted to borrow enough to get there which he very liberally responded. But before I saw him I begged a stamp and some paper and wrote to Mr. Washington that if he would send me the money to come from there I would pay him in work when I came. I received an answer from Mr. Logan stating that if I would go to work there it would not be long before I would get enough money to come on so I borrowed some money from that man and landed there with $3.40. The food was very poor so I soon ate that up. I was not satisfied at first and wanted to leave but I did not have any money and did not want to write home because I did not want my white people to know where I was until I accomplished something so I made up my mind that if all these boys and girls I see can stay here, I can too. So I was never bothered any more. I went to work at the brick mason's trade under Mr. Carter. They did not have any teacher at that time. Soon after Mr. J. M. Green came and I learned fast and was soon a corner man. I was a student two years and nine months. After that time I secured an excuse and left for home. I was very proud of my trade and all seemed to be surprised as no one knew where I was but my white people. I wrote to them once a month and they always answered and would send me money, clothes something to eat. They were very glad I had gone there and tried to help me in many ways when I got home. They had spoken to a contractor and I had no trouble in getting work. I worked at home about two years. Meantime I received a letter from Mr. Washington stating he would like for me to return and work on the chapel, which I did. At this time I was a hired man and not a student. I worked for the school five or six years. Within that time I had helped build two houses in Milledgeville Ga. and paid for them and bought me thirty acres of land in Tuskegee, Ala. I feel very grateful to the school for she has help me in a great many ways. I have always had a great desire to farm but I said I never would farm until I owned my land and stock.

So three years ago I bought some land and I am at the present time farming. I like it and I expect I will continue at farming instead of my trade. My white people are as good to me now as they were when I was a boy. I made it a rule not to ask them for anything unless I was compelled to but when I do they always send more that I ask for. I will say that I did not know the real value of a dollar until I had spent 2 years and 9 months at Tuskegee. The teachings from the various teachers and the Sunday evening talks of Mr. Washington made an indellible impression upon my heart. I remember the first Sunday evening talk that I ever heard him. He spoke of things that were in line with my thoughts and I have tried to put them in practice ever since I have been connected with the school. There is one word I heard Mr. W. Speak 13 years ago that has followed me because I was taught the same words by my white people and they were not to do anything that will bring disgrace upon the school you attend. I was taught not to do anything that will bring disgrace upon the people that raised you. There are a number of other thoughts that I will not take time to mention for I have thanked him a thousand times for those Sunday evenings talks.

Garner J. Edwards

The Republican—Springfield, Mass.—Dec. 6, 1902.

The Milledgeville (Ga.) News of November tells the following interesting story of one of the young colored men connected with Booker T. Washington's school at Tuskegee, in regard to the work of which Mr. Washington is to speak in the high school hall in this city the 10th:—

A case has come to the News which deserves more than a mere passing mention. The story deals with the prettiest case of loyal Negro's devotion and gratitude to his white benefactors that we ever knew of. When we refer to the incident as a story we mean that there is in it a good subject for a real story with a genuine hero. And every word of it is true; in fact, there is more truth in it than we feel at liberty to tell.

About 30 years ago Buck Edwards of this city picked up a very small and dark-colored boy and undertook, in his language, "to raise him and make something of him." Mr. Edwards clothed and fed the boy, and in a general way taught him many things. In return the boy was bright and quick, and rendered such return as a boy of his years could. His name was Garner, and in time he came to be known as Garner Edwards, which name I think he yet clings to.

In the course of human events, Mr. Edwards passed from the stage of life and went to reap the reward of those who rescue the perishing and support the orphans. After his death, Mr. Edward's sisters, Misses Fanny and Laura, continued to care for the boy, and raised him to manhood. Garner was proud of his family, "and was as faithful as a watchdog, honest at all times, and a great protection to the good ladies who were befriending him, and who were now also alone in the world without parents or brothers. When Garner grew into manhood he did not forsake the home that had sheltered him, but insisted that it was his home—the only home he knew—and that it was his duty and pleasure to aid in supporting it; and he did come to bear a considerable part of its expenses.

Garner learned to be a brickmason, and finally moved to Alabama. He became acquainted with Booker Washington, the great Negro Educator, and the acquaintance ripened into friendship. Washington aided Garner in getting work that would enable him to take a course in the school at Tuskegee and at the same time be self-sustaining. Here as in all other of his positions, Garner made a good record and won many honors. In the meantime he did not forget the folks at home, and his remittances to them were always punctual. After finishing school he married, but continued in the employ of the school and Booker Washington and is there yet.

Sometime ago Miss Laura had a fall and sustained a painful injury which confined her to her room. As soon as Garner heard of it he telephoned to Warren Edwards here to provide the best medical attendance possible, and to supply every want at his expense. Following the telegraph came his wife, a trained nurse, "to take care of his white folks," and she is here yet performing every duty with a devotion seldom witnessed. Garner wanted to come too, very much, but he sacrificed the pleasure to keep his salary doing, "because they might need something."

Garner paid the taxes on the old home for years, but in the meantime he has saved enough to buy him another home in Alabama. No one of any color could have been more faithful and appreciative, and such gratitude and devotion as this humble Negro has shown for his white benefactors is a lovely thing to behold in this selfish day. It is said that he never once presumed anything or forgot his place and the respect due to those around him.[2]

The following letter and list accompanying it explain themselves:

Beloit, Wis. Dec. 28, 1906.

Dear Mr. Washington

In answer to your telegram for names of graduates and former students engaged in farming in Ala I send the following. I know there are others especially former students but I cannot now recall names. I will try to add to the list if possible.

I would say in regard to the Bowen sisters they have about 600 acres of land and look after the cultivation of it and some parts Cornelia and Katie care for directly actually raising a crop. McRae farmed last year at Louisville, Ala. the year just closing. Mr. W. A. Menafee has 200 acres of land at Alexander City. This he superintendents by two visits each year. Those marked with a cross farm on their own land. Edwards and Barnes own land at Snow Hill which they farm by the labor of others. Whether they and Mr. Chambliss come under the head of farmers according to your idea you can decide.

I leave January 3 for Denmark, S. C. You can write me there till further notice.

Yours
(Signed) R. C. Bedford

Graduates and Former Students Engaged in Farming in Ala. Wholly Or in Part

*Cornelia Bowen '85 also teaches Waugh, Ala.

J. T. Hollis '85 also teaches Armstrong, Ala.

*Berry Bowen Campbell '84 also nurses Waugh, Ala.

W. D. Floyd, teaches also Hawkinsville, Ala.

Watt Buchanan 1889 farming wholly Montgomery, Ala.

*Enoch Houser 1889 also teaches Antangville, Ala.

William Chambliss 1890 Tuskegee, Ala.

*Davis Henry 1890 Bells Landing, Ala.

*Abner Jackson 1890 Newville, Ala.

John W. Perry 1890 Myrtle, Ala.

Abner Edwards 1890 Salem, Ala.

*J. H. Michael 1890 Mt. Meigs, Ala.

Robert B. Sherman 1890 Sprague Jc., Ala.

*H. A. Barnes 1893 Snow Hill, Ala.

*W. J. Edwards 1893 Snow Hill, Ala.

*N. E. Henry 1893 China, Ala.

Sophia Momen 1894 Notasulga, Ala.

*C. A. Barrows 1894 Snow Hill, Ala.

*S. F. Bizzell, has a store 1894 Hammac, Ala.

E. W. McRae 1894 also teaches Louisville, Ala.

*Moses Purifoy 1894 also teaches Evergreen, Ala.

*J. C. Calloway 1896 also teaches Dawkins, Ala.

Geo. W. Henderson, preacher 1899 Hannon, Ala.

*Martin A. Menafee, Treasurer 1900 Alexander City, Ala.

George K. Gordon, Dairying 1902 Mobile, Ala.

Former Students

Katie Bowen also teaches Waugh, Ala.

Benjamin Jones Waugh, Ala.

Nelson Judkins Cecil, Ala.

Gomine Judkins Cecil, Ala.

Wm. Plato, also black smith Waugh, Ala.

James Pinckett, carpenter Waugh, Ala.

Ossie Williams Waugh, Ala.

James Garrison Waugh, Ala.

Nelson Garrison Waugh, Ala.

John Mitchell also painter Waugh, Ala.

*Wallace Campbell blacksmith Fitzpatrick, Ala.

*R. T. Phillips blacksmith

*Cornelia Bowen '85 also teaches	Waugh, Ala.
J. T. Hollis '85 also teaches	Armstrong, Ala.
*Berry Bowen Campbell '84 also nurses	Waugh, Ala.
W. D. Floyd, teaches also	Hawkinsville, Ala.
Watt Buchanan 1889 farming wholly	Montgomery, Ala.
*Enoch Houser 1889 also teaches	Antangville, Ala.
William Chambliss 1890	Tuskegee, Ala.
*Davis Henry 1890	Bells Landing, Ala.
*Abner Jackson 1890	Newville, Ala.
John W. Perry 1890	Myrtle, Ala.
Abner Edwards 1890	Salem, Ala.
*J. H. Michael 1890	Mt. Meigs, Ala.
Robert B. Sherman 1890	Sprague Jc., Ala.
*H. A. Barnes 1893	Snow Hill, Ala.
*W. J. Edwards 1893	Snow Hill, Ala.
*N. E. Henry 1893	China, Ala.
Sophia Momen 1894	Notasulga, Ala.
*C. A. Barrows 1894	Snow Hill, Ala.
*S. F. Bizzell, has a store 1894	Hammac, Ala.
E. W. McRae 1894 also teaches	Louisville, Ala.
*Moses Purifoy 1894 also teaches	Evergreen, Ala.
*J. C. Calloway 1896 also teaches	Dawkins, Ala.
Geo. W. Henderson, preacher 1899	Hannon, Ala.
*Martin A. Menafee, Treasurer 1900	Alexander City, Ala.
George K. Gordon, Dairying 1902	Mobile, Ala.

Katie Bowen also teaches	Waugh, Ala.
Benjamin Jones	Waugh, Ala.
Nelson Judkins	Cecil, Ala.
Gomine Judkins	Cecil, Ala.
Wm. Plato, also black smith	Waugh, Ala.
James Pinckett, carpenter	Waugh, Ala.
Ossie Williams	Waugh, Ala.
James Garrison	Waugh, Ala.
Nelson Garrison	Waugh, Ala.
John Mitchell also painter	Waugh, Ala.
*Wallace Campbell blacksmith	Fitzpatrick, Ala.
*R. T. Phillips blacksmith

This is a letter from a Negro farmer in the south:

Isaac P. Martin—

Merryweather Co—near Stenson

Father belonged to Peter Martin near about 3 miles from where he was born—never did own any land. Went to work planting at 9—Worked 9 to 25—Had six or eight months schooling—Went one month in a year. School lasted about three months. Used Blue Back Speller got as high as Baker; Got as far as subtraction—Did not know anything outside of reading—Did not know what a newspaper was.

Father taught us to work corn, cotton sweet potatoes—He was a —— farmer—Had eleven children all worked—about 1880 they began to grow up and leave the farm—go on some other plantation—all married.

My older brother and all the younger children got more schooling Brother next younger—Payne's Institute Ga.—finished preaching in Americus Georgia. I had a cousin to come here—He wanted to buy —— here—He was interested in machine shop—He was down in Opelika. He met more boys on their way here, inquiring around to get down this far and get in.

I had saved up $200 in the bank. I was going to buy land. Went into day school a Preparatory about 800 or 900 students. The first work was in harness & shoe shop—Lewis Adams was in charge—I came there walking. I wanted to get away from the farm. Going around town I saw that everyone looked better than on the farm—I wanted to be something. Went in twice a year. We had plenty country churches. Rabbits, squirrels, ducks, possums—Geography, reading, Wentworth's Arithmetic. Miss Hunt and Miss Logan were one of my teachers. I read lots about Hiawatha. There was a number of little boys in the shop—they used to call me "Pop." They were ahead of me. Went to Blacksmith Shop. Worked about four months. Then went to work in Wheelwright. I learn a good deal about blacksmith and wood work. I find both these trade very handy.

I was here three weeks before I could eat in the dining room—had to go to restaurant—I was ashamed.

I was here only one term. Came in 1895—left in 96—Never came back until tonight. My mother sent for me—My mother was awful sick. My class was so low that I was ashamed to come back. I weighed 240 pounds. I went back home until 1898—on farm. I got to read my newspapers. I subscribed for the semi-monthly Atlanta Journal—I could read that.

I saw advertised and so much money paid out for wages—I thought I would go into business. I started grocery store and meat market—I had $2,500 made on farm. Father used to run us off the farm at 20 so I rented some land.

I was born 1870. I had been working for myself for years. 1898 I came to Birmingham. I failed in grocery business. "Credit." I made a lot of friends all over town. ....................................... They had lots of money but they owed a lot. It take lot to feed them. Took three years and little over to get all of money.

Worked for Tenn. Coal and Iron Co. I leased some land from the Republic Iron and Steel Co. Leased 64 acres outside of Pratt City and went to trucking. I bought two mules for $40. It was a sale. They were old run down mules. They were blind—I worked there until I grew something. Farm about a mile from Pretts. Paid $1.50 per acre—now I pay $7. The company would not sell. I peddle vegetables to people here—ran two wagons—now I run three. Got new feed for horses. By fall had lots of stuff. Married in 1900—year after went to Birmingham. Second year I was able to buy two good mules—Had two good wagons made. Fall of second year had another which made three. Running three now. I employ six people—3 men and 3 women all the time. I drive the wholesale wagon.

I raise between $3,500 and $4,000 worth of stuff each year. Have since the second year. I sell about $2,000 a year above expenses. Production increases every year. I learned all I know about trucking since then. I have fifteen head of cattle. Eight milking cows. I raise three crops. That is the highest. Third crop is not worth so much. 90,000 cabbages this year. Got the plants from South Carolina. I bought a piece of land in Oklahoma for $3,000 outside of 22 miles from Muskogee. Land rents now for $300. I own a lot in Red Bird. Have 2 children. 14 & and 17. They go to school.

Won county prize year before last—196 bushels—this year received State prize 200 bushels. Plant eight and ten acres of cotton, 14 acres corn. Raise all my fodder. Three-fourths acres of new sugar cane, 150 gals. of syrup. I make butter $30 per hundred. $40 retail. I take two or three little farm journals and take the bulletin.

These letters addressed to R. E. Park and to Booker T. Washington give information about the estate of John McKee:

Estate of }
John Mckee, }
Deceased. }

Hon. Booker T. Washington,
Tuskegee Institute,
Alabama,

Dear sir:

Your favor has been received and in reply thereto I would state that the State Appraiser fixed the valuation in Estate of the late Colonel John McKee as follows:

Gross valuation of Personal estate, $ 71,644.29

Gross valuation of real estate in Pennsylvania, 271,188.33

Making together, $342,832.62

Net valuation of the above, $212,831.86

Of this $46,500. is in unimproved real estate from which, at this time, no income is derived.

In addition to the above the Estate owns the following from which no income (or but a nominal income) is derived:—a lot in Gloucester County, New Jersey, valued at One hundred Dollars ($100),—a large area of land in Atlantic County, New Jersey, known as McKee City, assessed for taxation at twenty-thousand six hundred and fifty Dollars ($20,650) and a tract of coal and mineral lands in Kentucky, which Colonel McKee always considered would turn out to be valuable and would eventually realize a considerable sum. It is assessed for taxation for 1909 at Seventy thousand Dollars ($70,000)—

In brief the testamentary directions of Colonel McKee are to accumulate the rents and income of his estate until the decease of all his children and grand-children, meanwhile improving (under certain conditions) his unimproved real estate. Upon the death of all his children and grand-children, the estate is to be made use of in the establishment and maintenance of a college for the education of colored and white fatherless boys.

Very truly yours,
Joseph P. McCullen
February 23, 1909.

Gross valuation of Personal estate,	$ 71,644.29
Gross valuation of real estate in Pennsylvania,	271,188.33
Making together,	$342,832.62
Net valuation of the above,	$212,831.86

Mr. Robert E. Park,
Tuskegee Institute, Ala.,
Dear Sir:

Yours of the 13th inst., post marked the 16th inst., has been received. You state you would be glad to have any information I can give you about Mr. McKee, particularly in regard to the amount of the estate he left at the time of his death.

The value of Mr. McKee's estate has been variously estimated from $1,000,000 to $4,000,000. I am not able to give a more exact estimate, as I have not seen any inventory made by his executors. He owned more than 300 houses in this city, all unencumbered. He also owned oil and coal lands in Kentucky and West Virginia, and lands in Bath and Steuben Counties, N. Y. As to his personal characteristics, I would suggest that you see the Philadelphia Press of April 20, 1902. If you desire a more exact estimate of the value of his estate, I would suggest that you write Joseph P. McCullen, Jr., No. 1008 Land Title Building, this city.

Yours truly,
T. J. Minton.

The following letter from Colonel James Lewis to Booker T. Washington gives valuable information about Thomy Lafon and incidentally about other persons in New Orleans:

New Orleans, La., Jany. 25/09.

Colonel James Lewis,
Dear Sir:

In answer to your letter of 14th instant, will say that the delay in my answer was caused by my desire to obtain and furnish to you all informations regarding the late Mr. Thomy Lafon.

The baptismal records in the archive of the Cathedral at that time written in Spanish attest that the late Mr. Thomy Lafon was born in this city on December 28th, 1810. He died at his home, corner Ursulines & Robertson Streets, on December 23rd, 1893, at the ripe age of 83 years. His body rests in the St. Louis cemetery on Esplanade Avenue. He was a man of dignified appearance and affable manners. In early life he taught school; later he operated a small dry goods store in Orleans Street until near into 1850. He was never married. Sometime before the war of Secession he had started his vast fortune by loaning money at advantageous rates of interest and by the accumulation of his savings. Toward the close of his career he became attached to the lamented Archbishop Janssens and began his philanthropies. By the terms of his will, dated April 3rd, 1890, he provided amply for his aged sister and some friends, and wisely distributed the bulk of his estate among public charitable institutions of New Orleans. His legacy was appraised at $413,000.00 divided in securities and realty.

In recognition of his charity, the City of New Orleans, named after him one of its public schools.

Before his death he had established an asylum for orphan boys called the Lafon Asylum, situated in St. Peter Street between Claiborne Avenue & N. Derbigny Street. To this Asylum he bequeathed a sum of $2000, and the revenues, amounting to $275 per month of a large property situated corner Royal & Iberville Streets.

Other legacies were to the

Charity Hospital of New Orleans $10,000

" " Ambulance Dept. 3,000

Lafon Old Folks' Home 5,000

Little Sisters of the Poor 5,000

Shakespeare Almshouse

Catholic Institution for indigent orphans 2,000

and the following property:

1st. St. Claude St. bet. St. Philip & Ursulines Sts., valued at $1500

2nd. Robertson St. bet. St. Philip & Ursulines Sts., valued at 2000

3rd. Burgundy St. bet. Hospital & Barracks Sts., valued at 2000

4th. Union St. between Royal & Dauphine Sts., valued at 2000

St. John Berchman Asylum for girls, under the care of Holy family 2000

and the following property:

1st. Burgundy St., No. 528, worth about $1500

2nd. Dumaine St., Nos. 2129/31, worth about 2500

3rd. Galvez St., No. 828, worth about 1800

4th. Toulouse St., Nos. 726/28, worth about 2500

5th. Tulane Ave., No. 1402, worth about 4000

Asylum for old indigents, corner Tonti & Hospital Streets 15000

and the following property:

1st. St. Andrew St., 1536/38 valued at $ 6000

2nd. Baronne St., No. 722 valued at 4000

3rd. Baronne St. Nos. 732/36 valued at 8000

4th. Canal & Villere Sts. valued at 6000

5th. Canal St., old No. 176 valued at 30000

An another cash $ 2000

Society of the Holy Family, Orleans St. 10000

Straight University of New Orleans 3000

Southern University of New Orleans 3000

New Orleans University of New Orleans 3000

Society of Jeunes Amis, New Orleans 3000

Eye, Ear Nose & Throat Hospital 3000

Mother St. Clair of the Convent of the Good Sheperd 20000

All of which cash legacies were doubled.

Yours respectfully,
(Signed) P. A. Bacas

Charity Hospital of New Orleans		$10,000
" " Ambulance Dept.		3,000
Lafon Old Folks' Home		5,000
Little Sisters of the Poor		5,000
Shakespeare Almshouse
Catholic Institution for indigent orphans		2,000
and the following property:
1st. St. Claude St. bet. St. Philip & Ursulines Sts., valued at	$1500
2nd. Robertson St. bet. St. Philip & Ursulines Sts., valued at	2000
3rd. Burgundy St. bet. Hospital & Barracks Sts., valued at	2000
4th. Union St. between Royal & Dauphine Sts., valued at	2000
St. John Berchman Asylum for girls, under the care of Holy family		2000
and the following property:
1st. Burgundy St., No. 528, worth about	$1500
2nd. Dumaine St., Nos. 2129/31, worth about	2500
3rd. Galvez St., No. 828, worth about	1800
4th. Toulouse St., Nos. 726/28, worth about	2500
5th. Tulane Ave., No. 1402, worth about	4000
Asylum for old indigents, corner Tonti & Hospital Streets		15000
and the following property:
1st. St. Andrew St., 1536/38 valued at	$ 6000
2nd. Baronne St., No. 722 valued at	4000
3rd. Baronne St. Nos. 732/36 valued at	8000
4th. Canal & Villere Sts. valued at	6000
5th. Canal St., old No. 176 valued at	30000
An another cash		$ 2000
Society of the Holy Family, Orleans St.		10000
Straight University of New Orleans		3000
Southern University of New Orleans		3000
New Orleans University of New Orleans		3000
Society of Jeunes Amis, New Orleans		3000
Eye, Ear Nose & Throat Hospital		3000
Mother St. Clair of the Convent of the Good Sheperd		20000

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This extract and the documents which follow were collected by Dr. R. E. Park.

[2] The Springfield Republican, Dec. 6, 1902.

BOOK REVIEWS

The History of the Negro Church. By Carter G. Woodson, Ph.D. The Associated Publishers, Inc., Washington, D. C. 1921. Pp. 330.

With due regard for the modern scientific methods of historiography, the author of this book has traced the rise and spread of institutionalized Christianity among American Negroes. He discusses such salient points as the early efforts of white missionaries to evangelize the heathen bondmen, the difficulties which beset their labors, the respective contributions of the white denominations, showing the Baptists in the lead, followed closely by the Methodists, with the Presbyterians, Catholics and Congregationalists in the rear. There are set forth the psychological, geographical and other reasons why the Negro was attracted more readily to the Baptist and Methodist denominations, the causes for the reactions of slave holders for and against the evangelization of the slaves, the rise of Negro preachers of merit in the Baptist and Methodist denominations during the eighteenth century, and the founding of the first churches by Negroes of these sects. Among these he mentions the first African Baptist Church by Andrew Bryan in 1788, the first African Methodist Episcopal Church by Richard Allen in 1794, and the first African Presbyterian Church by John Gloucester in 1807.

The factors which caused the cleavage of the white denominations into North and South, the causes of the separation of the Negro communicants from the whites and the threefold cleavage of the Negro Methodists are adequately discussed. Attention is given also to the increase in the number of churches and the State and national centralization of the churches within the respective denominations. The ante-bellum beginnings of the only Negro education which aimed to develop Negro preachers through instructors of both races, the importance of Negro churches in developing race leaders, educators, and statesmen who figured in the economic, social and political life of the Negro after the war, are ably treated. The book gives an account of the rise of the conservative and progressive elements within the church and closes with a chapter on the present-day Negro church statistics which indicate the enormous spread of Christianity through the ascendancy of the Methodists and Baptists.

One can hardly appreciate the sympathetic and scholarly character of this work from the bald outline given above. Just therein may it be characterized as a pioneer work, a genuine contribution. In a larger sense it is more than the history of the Negro church; it is the very life history of the Negro race in America, so intimately have the spiritual strivings of the Negro been bound up with his sentiments and interests, his habits and endeavors, his situation and circumstances, his monuments and edifices, his poetry and song.

F. C. Sumner

Unsung Heroes. By Mrs. Elizabeth Ross Haynes. N. Y. DuBois & Dill. 1921. 279 pp. Illustrated.

One of the gravest problems now facing the Negroes in the United States, and a problem none the less grave because unrecognized by the unthinking majority, is that of reading for their children. Can anything be more dangerous than the continual subjection of our children to the influence of books, magazines, and newspapers in which their race is being held up constantly to pity or contempt? The use of opprobrious and insulting epithets with reference to the Negro is so common in English and American publications as to need no more than a mere reference here, and this practice is to be noted even in authors who are conscious of no active race hostility. If the psychological influence of such endlessly reiterated and therefore inescapable slurs is bad for adults, how much worse must it be for children. In The Brownies' Book, published by DuBois and Dill, a most praiseworthy attempt has been made to meet this need in the form of a children's magazine free from all objectionable matter, and it is nothing short of a national calamity that this periodical has been forced to suspend publication because of a lack of sufficient patronage. It is fitting, then, that the same publishers should issue the book now under our hand, a fine specimen of the printer's art in paper, presswork, binding, and illustrations.

In it the author, the wife of Dr. George E. Haynes, the well-known sociologist, has set forth in a language and style suited to young readers the lives of seventeen of the most celebrated men and women of Negro descent. Eight of them—Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Banneker, Phillis Wheatley, Josiah Henson, Sojourner Truth, Attucks, and Paul Cuffé—belong to the ante-bellum period in America; five—Dunbar, Booker Washington, B. K. Bruce, Crummell, and Langston—to the reconstruction and late nineteenth century periods; and four—Pushkin, the Russian; L'Ouverture, the Haytian; Coleridge-Taylor, the Englishman; and Alexandre Dumas, the Frenchman—belong across the ocean. It will be seen that the selection is a representative one, and that no living person is included. The material chosen from each life is carefully selected, too, to suit the minds and tastes of children. There are six illustrations by four of our well-known young artists. Altogether the book is the most satisfactory addition yet made to our children's literature in this country, and should be in every home where there are colored children, and in every library in which they are readers.

E. C. Williams

Les Daïmons du Culte Voudo. By Dr. Arthur Holly, Port-au Prince, Haiti, 1919. Pp. lx-523.

The author of this unique volume declares himself "boldly, but without vanity, or false modesty" an esoterist, that is to say, one who is an adept at the interpretation of the occult and secret doctrines. This book, an exposition of the secret doctrine, is not, therefore, as its title might suggest, a scientific treatise upon the Voudo cult as it has existed and as it still exists in Haiti. It is rather an interpretation and defense of the primitive religion of Africa, particularly as it is represented in the religious customs and practices of the common people in Haiti today.

The sentiments which have inspired this undertaking are altogether admirable. "Haitiens," he says, "have reached a point in their efforts to conform to an alien culture where they are in danger of losing their personality as a people as well as their native culture." But now if ever is the moment, after the great cataclysm in Europe, to lift the ancestral cult from the dust and make it worthy of Haiti, of the African race.

"We are," he continues, "African-Latins. But our Latin culture is all on the surface. The old African heritage persists in us and controls us to such an extent that under certain circumstances we feel ourselves moved by mysterious forces when the silence of the night, throbs with the irregular rhythm, melancholly, passionate and magical, of the sacred dances of Voudo."

Dr. Arthur Holly is evidently learning, but he draws his knowledge from sources that are esoteric and therefore inaccessible to all except the adepts. What he has written is, therefore, neither science nor history. It has the character rather of revelation. It is impressive, but not intelligible to the uninitiated.

From his introduction, however, one gathers that he intends to show that Christianity and Voudoism are from a common source, that "the Bible," as he says, "belongs to us," i.e., the black people, but that this earlier and more primitive form of religion which is revealed in it has been corrupted by the white race.

It is an interesting idea, but more interesting is the evidence that it offers of the rise, among the Negro people of Haiti, of a racial consciousness which embraces in one conscious unity the Negro peoples of Africa and America. It is another spontaneous manifestation of that unrest of the black man which has found expression in pan-Africanism and in the movement in this country headed by Marcus Garvey, whose program is Africa for the Africans.

Robert E. Park

University of Chicago

The Wings of Oppression. By Leslie Pinckney Hill. The Stratford Company, Publishers, Boston, Massachusetts. Price by mail, $2.15.

Bearing the certificate of the Lyric Muse, Mr. Leslie Pinckney Hill, schoolmaster of Cheney, Pennsylvania, and authentic singer, is the newest arrival on the slopes of Parnassus. A first glance tells that he is an agile climber, sinewy, easy of movement, light of step, with both grace and strength. Every indication in form and motion is for some point far up toward the summit. Youthful is he, ambitious plainly, and, in spite of a burden, buoyant. "Climber," I said. I will drop the figure. Poets were never pedestrians. Mr. Hill comes not afoot. If not on the wings of Pegasus, yet on wings he comes—the wings of oppression. Sad wings! Yet it must be remarked that it is commonly on such wings that poets of whatever race and time rise. And Mr. Hill's race knows no other wings. On the wings of oppression the Negro poet and the Negro people are rising toward the summits of Parnassus, Pisgah, and other peaks. This they know, too, and of it they are justly proud.

In his Foreword Mr. Hill thus states the case of his people, and, by implication, of himself:

"Nothing in the life of the nation has seemed to me more significant than that dark civilization which the colored man has built up in the midst of a white society organized against it. The Negro has been driven under all the burdens of oppression, both material and spiritual, to the brink of desperation, but he has always been saved by his philosophy of life. He has advanced against all opposition by a certain elevation of his spirit. He has been made strong in tribulation. He has constrained oppression to give him wings."

The significant thing about these wings, in a critical view, is that they fulfill the proper function of wings—bear aloft and sustain in flight through the azure depths. Mr. Hill's wings do bear aloft and sustain: if not always, nor even ever, into the very empyrean of poetry, yet invariably, seventy times, into the ampler air. Like all his race, he has suffered much; and, like all his race still, he has gathered wisdom from sorrow. As a true poet should have, he has philosophy, also vision and imagination—vision for himself and his people, imagination that sees facts in terms of beauty and presents truths with vital imagery. Add thereto craftsmanship acquired in the best traditions of English poetry and you have Hill the poet.

The merits of this book cannot be shown by the quoting of lines and stanzas. As ever with true art, the merit lies in the effect of complete poems. Still, we can here detach from this and that poem a stanza or two, despite the wrong to art. The first and fourth stanzas of the title-poem will indicate Mr. Hill's technique and philosophy:

I have a song that few will sing
In honor of all suffering,
A song to which my heart can bring
The homage of believing—
A song the heavy-laden hears
Above the clamor of his fears,
While still he walks with blinding tears,
And drains the cap of grieving.

. . . . . .

So long as life is steeped in wrong,
And nations cry: "How long, how long!"
I look not to the wise and strong
For peace and self-possession:
But right will rise, and mercy shine,
And justice lift her conquering sign
Where lowly people starve and pine
Beneath a world oppression.

Significant as interpreting the character and temper of the Negro with whom today the white world has to deal, are the following lines from the blank verse poem entitled Armageddon:

Because ye schooled them in the arts of life,
and gave to them your God, and poured your blood
Into their veins to make them what they are,
They shall not fail you in your hour of need,
They hold in them enough of you to feel
All that has made you masters in your time—
The power of art and wealth, unending toil,
Proud types of beauty, an unbounded will
To triumph, wondrous science, and old law—
These have they learned to value and to share.

If these poems, taken collectively, do not declare "what is on the Negro's mind," they yet truly reveal, to the reflecting person, what has sunk deep into his heart. They are therefore a message to America, a protest, an appeal, and a warning. They will penetrate, I predict, through breast armor of aes triplex into the hearts of those whom sermons and editorials fail to touch in the springs of action. Such is the virtue of music wed to persuasive words.

A sonnet entitled To a Caged Canary in a Negro Restaurant will present the poet's people and his own manner of poetic musing:

Thou little golden bird of happy song!
A cage cannot restrain the rapturous joy
Which thou dost shed abroad. Thou dost employ
Thy bondage for high uses. Grievous wrong
Is thine; yet in thy heart glows full and strong
The tropic sun, though far beyond thy flight,
And though thou flutterest there by day and night
Above the clamor of a dusky throng.
So let my will, albeit hedged about
By creed and caste, feed on the light within;
So let my song sing through the bars of doubt
With light and healing where despair has been;
So let my people bide their time and place,
A hindered but a sunny-hearted race.

It would be an injustice to this poet did I convey the idea that his seventy-odd poems are exclusively occupied with race wrongs and oppression. Not a few of them bear no stamp of an oppressed or afflicted spirit, though of sorrow they may have been nurtured.

A lyric of pure loveliness is the following, entitled:

To a Nobly-Gifted Singer

All the pleasance of her face
Telleth of an inward grace;
In her dark eyes I have seen
Sorrows of the Nazarene;
In the proud and perfect mould
Of her body I behold,
Rounded in a single view,
The good, the beautiful, the true;
And when her spirit goes up-winging
On sweet air of artless singing,
Surely the heavenly spheres rejoice
In union with a kindred voice.

The Wings of Oppression strikes a high level of artistic expression and makes a quite extraordinary appeal. It is intense poetry, lyrical and meditative.

Here is that solid body of thought which, in addition to artistic expression, is requisite to poetry that attains and holds a high place of esteem. Great variety of form is also here; excellent blank verse with a movement at once easy and restrained, an equable, strong flow, bearing lofty meditations; sonnets after the manner of the masters; octo-syllabics of sententious felicity; various apt lyrical stanzas. Culture alone, of which there is abundant evidence, could not have produced these poems. The poetic endowment, thoroughly disciplined, was necessary. Mr. Leslie Pinckney Hill is a poet. His powers are rich, varied, and developing. His second book will be better than this excellent first.

But more than the merit that has been intimated there is in these lyrics and measured musings a pathos, a restrained Laocoön cry, that must be to thousands an arresting revelation of the unimagined sufferings of the cultured colored people of our land. Mr. Hill's Wings of Oppression has a message in it for America.

Robert T. Kerlin

Lexington, Va.

NOTES.

By aiding the education of Negroes in rural communities with the assistance of State governments and of Negroes themselves Mr. Julius Rosenwald has been making an important chapter in the history of this race during the last generation. The significance of this achievement is apparent when one merely glances at these statistics:

1223 buildings (2812 teachers).
Total Cost	$4,012,923

Negroes	$1,139,165
Whites	277,668
Public Funds	1,840,210
Rosenwald aid	755,880

These schoolbuildings have been built in the States as follows: Alabama 234, North Carolina 175, Mississippi 145, Louisiana 136, Tennessee 114, Virginia 105, South Carolina 73, Arkansas 54, Georgia 53, Kentucky 52, Texas 50, Maryland 16 and Oklahoma 15.

By types these buildings include:

357	one-teacher
464	two-teacher
191	three-teacher
106	four-teacher
39	five-teacher
32	six-teacher
5	seven-teacher
5	eight-teacher
1	nine-teacher
2	ten-teacher
1	eleven-teacher
1	twelve-teacher
1	sixteen-teacher
18	Teachers' Homes
1223

The fact that over $4,000,000 has been invested in these buildings is worthy of comment as is the added fact that more than one-fourth of this large total has been raised by the Negroes themselves. While the figures are of buildings which have been actually completed, it is well to note that there are in progress now, some of them nearly finished and all of them to be finished before June 30, 1922, other buildings which will increase the total to 1500, will show a total outlay of $5,500,000, will bring the total of contributions by the Negroes up to $1,500,000, and make Mr. Rosenwald's contribution over $1,000,000. These school building projects and the financial outlays for them have been definitely approved, and all that is lacking is the actual completion of contracts let.

When the work was first undertaken, the thought was to build one-room rural schoolhouses. Under the developing interest, however, larger and better buildings have been erected. As the teacher capacity is an important thing, the total number of teachers has been given to serve as another index to the value of this achievement.

Still another significant thing should be noted. All of the construction now going on is being done through the States themselves. Every project is presented for approval by the State educational authorities, and is certified as completed by the same officers. The interest manifested is sincere and continuing, and in North Carolina, for example, there are no fewer than eight people connected with the office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction who are giving their time toward Negro education.

There is another point too which may be interesting. The buildings are constructed according to definite plans and specifications and no building receives Rosenwald aid unless it conforms to the details of such plans and specifications. As a result in the Rosenwald schools the windows are so placed as to give the right kind of light; the blackboards too are properly located; and the equipment in the way of desks is the best available for the funds on hand. No school building is paid for until inspection has shown it to be built according to the approved ideas.

The following extract from Current History, Vol. XV, pages 771-772, sets forth the participation of Alice Ball, a scholarly Negro chemist, in the treatment of leprosy through the use of chaulmoogra oil extracted by a difficult scientific process.

"Credit for initiating a revolutionary method of treatment is generally ascribed to Dr. Victor Heiser of the United States Public Health Service in the Philippines. Instead of giving raw chaulmoogra oil in doses, as had been the custom for centuries, he gave it by injection to the muscles. Mixed with olive oil and drugs, it was efficacious and helped all patients treated. The old method of taking the oil through the mouth, even in capsules, produced such violent nausea that very few could retain it. If retained, it was healing; the best remedy then known. The success of the Heiser treatment led physicians generally to adopt injections as the best method of giving the oil, but it was thick and not easily absorbed. This led Dr. Harry T. Hollman, a member of the Government Medical Corps at Honolulu, to call for a more diluted form of the oil, one freed from extraneous matter, an ethyl ester, or the vital principle, if there was one. The decomposition of the oil, he said, should be accomplished outside the body.

"After securing the approval of his superiors, Drs. McCoy and Currie, he asked the Chemistry Department of the University of Hawaii to liberate this essence from the vegetable compound. President Dean, himself an expert chemist, became greatly interested. He assigned to the task Miss Alice Ball, a young negro woman and an expert chemist, who found the task exceedingly elusive. She gave it all her time and secured a light essence, which Dr. Hollman administered with improved results; but he still insisted it could be improved. Miss Ball's health failed, possibly from chemical poisoning, and she went to California to recuperate. On her return she again took up the task, aided by Dr. Dean, but was again forced to give up the work entirely and soon afterward died in California.

"President Dean then entered upon the task with redoubled enthusiasm. He was encouraged from results obtained to give every possible aid to the indomitable and optimistic Dr. Hollman. There were months of persistent effort, the devising of expensive and complicated apparatus, including a special furnace for intense heat. At last the precise ethyl ester desired—with a number of others—was secured. Injections were made as before into the hips of patients—the large muscles were selected to avoid any possible introduction of the medicine into the large veins or arteries. The improvement following in every case was so marked as to cause surprise and decided gratification."

On the 3rd and 4th of April, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History will hold its spring conference in New York City. This meeting will come as a climax of a nation-wide membership drive now being conducted by the Association. The plans are to have present a large representation of persons from the various parts of the country that steps may be taken for a more thorough prosecution of the work.

The Journal
of
Negro History

Vol. VII—April, 1922—No. 2

NEGRO CONGRESSMEN A GENERATION AFTER

Evidences of Mental Equipment

Their Public Service Prior to Membership in Congress

Negro Congressmen in Action

Education

Protection of Loyal Citizens

Interest in Economic Problems

Racial Measures

Various Interests

A Critical Survey

FOOTNOTES:

THE PRIORITY OF THE SILVER BLUFF CHURCH AND ITS PROMOTERS

George Galphin—Patron of the Silver Bluff Church

The Silver Bluff Church in Exile

The Silver Bluff Church Revived

The Church at Augusta

The First African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia

A Remnant of Liele's Church in Savannah After The Revolutionary War

FOOTNOTES:

THE NEGROES IN MAURITIUS[1]

FOOTNOTES:

DOCUMENTS

FOOTNOTES:

BOOK REVIEWS

NOTES.

The JournalofNegro History

THE NEGROES IN MAURITIUS [1]

The Journal
of
Negro History