Out of the Briars / An Autobiography and Sketch of the Twenty-ninth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers

by A. H. Newton

3. The Church must look after the poor. This is not being done today. In the Church during the days of the Hebrew nation there were no poor. During the Church in the early days of Christianity, the poor were well cared for. There were not any that lacked. The Church should be going out after the poor instead of running away from them. Christ was constantly serving the poor. He was with them all the time. He shared their sufferings and bore their burdens. The Church to be true to Him and true to itself must do the same thing. Our very judgment test will be found in the manner in which we treat the poor, which are the representatives of Christ on the earth. “I was hungry and ye gave me no meat.” Read the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew and see what this test is. Suppose that the Church today would be judged by this test, where would it stand?

These are some of my views which I gladly put into this book hoping and praying that they will become an inspiration to many to get back to the Bible; back to the old time religion of our fathers; back to the cross of Jesus Christ. They are written in the greatest kindness but with the greatest earnestness. They are written in no fault finding spirit, but with the spirit of love and sympathy, for I love the Church more than my own life.

The Negro Problem

It might be profitable to my readers, after having sketched my life in the army, to give some of my views pertaining to my race, relative to the Civil War and the time since then.

Much is being said and written on the so-called Negro Problem. Why it has taken this name, I have never been able to decide. For when we examine into its intricacies, we find that it is the White Man’s problem also. And certainly it is true, that if this problem is ever settled in this country on a proper basis, it will be settled when the White and the Colored people come together on some practical basis of agreement. There are more than ten millions of Colored people in this country and they are here to stay. They have paid at least a part of the debt which they owe to the nation, on the battlefield. They have never shirked their duty in this respect and they never will. Soldiers during both the Civil and the Spanish-American wars, demonstrated the fact that they are patriotic to the core and that on the battlefield they are not afraid of the belching cannon. They have done their duty in this regard. And when we look into the history of the Colored people since the Civil War we are satisfied that the progress which has been made, is a most satisfactory one. It is acknowledged by some of the leading White men of the nation, that the progress of the Negro Race since the Rebellion has been unparalleled in history.

But that there is much to be done by my own people yet, is evident. We have just begun the work of our race. A race that is not over fifty years old in the arts of civilization, is but an infant in swaddling clothes. We are to wait until he is able to walk and especially to work. The Negro Race in this country has a most trying ordeal before it. It is one of the most difficult of undertakings, to work out our destiny in a land of such high civilization as that of this country. While on the one hand it would seem an easier task in such a civilization, because of the advantages which we have thrown about us; on the other hand, there are probably more disadvantages. And why? For the simple reason that the Colored man comes out of the past without the centuries of training which the White man has. He comes out of the past without any history. He comes out of the past in a crude condition, untrained and with the curse of slavery still resting on him. It will take time for him to prepare himself to compete with the White man and compete he must! The Colored people must wake up to the fact that they have to pay for everything that they get in this country. The mystic “mule and forty acres,” promised by Uncle Sam, has never been forthcoming. And this is but an indication of any other mystic gifts that we might dream of in days to come. It will be by the dint of hard labor, that the Colored man will rise and make his mark. There are many features of this situation which we will be compelled to look into and many conditions which we must face, as men.

I have often asked myself the question, why is it that on our railroads and street car tracks, there is such a lack of our working men? We see thousands upon thousands of white men, chiefly foreigners. There was a time when the larger portion of railroad laborers was Colored men. There are two or three reasons for this which are obvious. One is that the foreigner will work for a cheaper wage and will live on less than the Colored man. He is willing to undergo certain hardships and privations that the Colored man does not undergo. I am not willing to concede that he is a better workman than the Colored man, for the Colored man has proven his ability as a laborer along every line of work. Another reason is that the White man may be more reliable. He can be depended on with more certainty. And at this point let me say that if the Colored race is ever to take its place in the mart of trade, it must become more reliable.

Promises must be kept. When a man agrees to work for six days in the week, for a certain number of weeks, he must stay his time out and do his work. It is not a question of his disliking the work or the employer, but the question of his fidelity to his trust. For this reason, that the Colored man is not faithful to his promises, he has been discounted in the field of manual labor. The more important the job of the employer, the more important the fidelity of the employee. No employer wishes to undertake an extensive and costly piece of work and be dependent on a class of labor that may fail him at the place where he needs steady, persistent work. So he will, in making his choice select that class of labor that will stick to him through thick and thin. Fidelity to a trust is one of the essentials of man and womanhood that must be cultivated among my people. If I am correctly informed, I understand that in our large cities, our girls are not holding their own as house servants. They are being set aside for the White girls and these for the most part are foreigners also. Here is a large and remunerative field that will be ultimately closed to our girls if they do not take hold of the situation and meet all competition. Surely it is due us, if we make good, to receive the labor that is being given out on every hand. We were here before the foreigner and are the native laborers of the country. And the country owes it to us to give our race the labor of the field, of the trades and of the homes, if we merit it. I greatly fear, however, that we do not merit it. We need more sterling worth among us.

The cities are becoming the great centers of my people and in these cities there is plenty to do. The work is there. It must be done. My people must live. They must have money to live. They should get this money honestly, and this means by work. But suppose that the Colored people of the cities, both North and South, fail in getting their portion of the work that is to be done, how are they going to live? That is the question. And we are sure of this conclusion, that if a man does not earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, which is the Divinely appointed way to earn it, that he will be forced to earn it in some dishonorable manner. He will be forced to become more or less a criminal. He will become a menace rather than a benefit, to the community in which he lives. So that unless my people look to their own welfare in our cities there is an ever growing future of darkness for them. I need not stop to tell of the unsanitary conditions in which they live. These conditions are enough to deplete their living greatly every year. I need not talk of the crowded tenement houses of the city where many persons of both sexes are frequently huddled into one room and many families into one house. I need not tell of the bawdy houses, the gambling dens and the saloons, thickly scattered through the sections of the city where the Colored people live. It is enough to damn them all. I need not tell of the growing criminal class among the Negroes in the cities and of the recruits that flow in from the South every year. I need not speak of the White and the Black Slave traffic among the young girls of both races. The cities are the death centers of the Negro race, unless there is something radically done to overtake these conditions. This, of course, is the dark side of the picture, but I have not painted it as dark as it is. It would be impossible to do this. It might be profitable for my readers, when they are in Philadelphia, to visit South street and its adjoining streets, that they may see with their own eyes, the signs of infamy, idleness and debauch among my people. You will find scores of young men there well dressed, simply straggling about. How do they live? Why are they not at work? The dens of infamy hidden in houses answer to their vocations.

It would be well in our cities to have such municipal regulations that such loafers, male or female, could be arrested, unless they could show that they were actually engaged in some legitimate work. Unless something of the kind is done in the cities, they will become more and more the cess pools of sin and death, and into these pools thousands upon thousands of my people will be thrown annually to sink to hell!