Historical Romance of the American Negro

by Charles Henry Fowler

In these happy days of ours knowledge covers the land, as the waters cover the seas. It is perfectly laughable for me now to look back and remember the taunting expressions that were flung upon our dear people, saying that we had no originality, and that we could never rise above being mere imitators of the white man! In those days our people were in slavery, and had no opportunities of showing what they were capable of doing. But now we are free, and we can all go to school, and education can polish us like other races, in the same way as we polish the block of marble, and cut out the precious jewels of all descriptions. If we leave a diamond in its rude, rough state, like the colored race in the dark days of slavery, that diamond will continue to be rude and rough still; but place the precious stone in the hand of the jeweler, and we shall soon behold a bright and shining precious stone, indeed. It was not only cruel, but it was cowardly to taunt a whole race of people with incapacity and lack of talent, when our enemies had our hands tied, and were unwilling to give us a chance. But by the grace of God, and the blood of the Americans, both white and black, we are now all free, and thousands upon thousands of our dear people have acquired splendid educations, in all the different professions and walks of life, and they have proved to the whole world, both men and women, that there is talent and genius among our sons and daughters who have forged to the front, who are self-made men and women, indeed—men and women who have risen from the ranks, just the same as officers and commanders start up from the ranks in the time of war.

My dear reader, we are often told that poverty is no disgrace, but that it is very inconvenient. Which is all true, indeed, too true; and what is still worse, it often cannot be helped. In days not so long since gone by, we used to be taunted with poverty, but if we had no possessions of our own in the days of slavery, we at least, like the apostle Paul, made others rich, and it was our oppressed people who built up the Sunny South—the richest section of the United States before the war. If we had had all the wealth that was thus stolen away from us and given to those who led on the great rebellion, we would never had been turned loose with nothing in our hands in 1865, and to begin life anew at the lowermost round of the ladder of prosperity. It is very true that even in the days of slavery there were colored men scattered over all the free States of the Union, many of whom had amassed vast sums of money, and who were invariably treated with great respect and honor by white people because they were rich. So long as they had plenty of money it was all right, and there was nothing either thought or said about the color of their skin. But if the whole race of colored people in the South were turned loose with nothing in 1865, they have at least made in the aggregate immense sums of money since then, and devoted it all to those noble purposes whereby the entire race has been raised up and elevated in the scale of nations. Above all other causes, religion and education have been thus spread all over the land, the money being supplied by a willing people, whose good natural inclination to give has never been surpassed, and very seldom equalled by any race under the sun. Immense sums of money have been put away in savings banks, and property in land is a noble feature of the wisdom of our people in the South.

Take the more than 8,000,000 colored people all over the Union, and behold what a vast number own their own houses, and have money to their credit stored up in banks against a rainy day. And then see the comfort, cleanliness and order to be observed everywhere in an untold number of dwellings. The colored race are unusually fond of cleanliness and order in their nice and cosy snug homes, when they can get them; and take the United Stages all over to-day, it is most astonishing to behold such a number of beautiful and comfortable homes as there are. I think, dear reader, that our own people taken as a whole, have been both industrious and thrifty since the close of the war, and, as the Bible tells us, they have succeeded in building up the walls of Jerusalem, because they have had a mind to work. Wherever there is a will there is a way. It is all very true that some among us are extravagant, lazy, shiftless, but that is quite true of the white race, too, only I think more so, and we never condemn a whole race for the faults of a few.

STATUE OF LIBERTY.

Let us then judge fairly, and award to the colored race what belongs to them by right. As in the days of slavery, so at the present day it is the colored man who still extracts the wealth from the soil of the South, partly for himself, and partly for the white man. He can stand the heat of the sun far better than the white tiller of the soil, and it seems that the rich white man would rather have him than the other. In the days of slavery we had to do the best we could. We had no Vanderbilt palaces to live in then. But now we have at least lots of comforts—nice furniture, carpets, pictures hanging from our walls, whole libraries on our book-shelves, and hundreds of other things too numerous to mention.

GRANT'S TOMB.

Music and song are more or less bound up with the history of every nation of which we have ever heard or read. Away back in the dark night of slavery in America, the slaves in the field used to sing their mournful, plaintive, yet musical ditties to lighten their heavy labors, and cheer up their hearts. These ditties were songs and prayers at one and the same time. In the day of his distress, the African never forgot the God who brought Israel out of Egypt, and we know quite well that many of our own people confidently expected that day of happy deliverance that came at last to all. Therefore they sang praises unto the Lord, God of Israel, and, like the Psalmist, they prayed and sang at the same time; and we have it plainly on record that they had powerful lungs and most wonderfully rich voices, showing in advance what great and famous singers they would become if their musical talents were only fully developed like others. I have already spoken of the "Jubilee Minstrels," who were mostly born in slavery, many of whom indeed "came up by the rough side of the mountain," and yet who possessed such a wealth of music and song within themselves that they surprised the whole country, and even crossed the North Atlantic, and rendered themselves illustrious for all coming time by performing and singing before Queen Victoria, the grandees and general population of the British Isles, and some of the royal families, and magnates and peoples of continental Europe. This was honor, indeed, with a vengeance! Old England and all the rest cared nothing for the color of the skin. They all at once set their seals upon the wonderful talents of the colored race in the musical line, and there was rejoicing among Freedom's friends over all the earth.

The time would fail to mention the names of all those eminent singers who have made themselves illustrious in these latter years in this country, and not in this country alone, but they have crossed the wide oceans in ships, and sung before the admiring audiences of many a foreign land. But among all these great singers of our race who have thus distinguished themselves, I will simply mention the name of Miss Flora Batson, who has justly been called the "Jenny Lind of America," and she can sing, indeed, before any audience in this nation—a veritable nightingale and queen of song. But leaving her and a whole host of other warblers on one side, there is a grandeur in singing of our church members and congregations on the Sabbath-day that has become the standing wonder of the country; and it is my own deliberate opinion, and the openly-confessed opinion of many of the white race, that for music and song, at least, we have no equals in the United States.