“No, indeed,” sez Cousin John Richard. “The Anglo-Saxon will not leave this country, his inheritance, for the sake of peace or to make room for another race; then what will be done? I hear the voice of the Lord,” sez John Richard solemnly, “I hear His voice saying, ‘Let my people go.’” The silence seemed solemn; it seemed some like the pauses that come in a protracted meetin’ between two powerful speakers. I felt queer.
But I did speak up almost entirely onbeknown to myself, and sez I, “Could they take care of themselves in a colony of their own? Do they know enough?”
Sez John Richard, “A race that has accumulated property to the extent of six millions of dollars in one Southern State since the war, under all the well-nigh unendurable drawbacks and persecutions that have beset it, will be able, I believe, to at least do as much, when these hampering and oppressive influences are withdrawn and the colored man has a clear field, in an atmosphere of strength and courage and encouragement—where in this air of liberty he can enjoy the rewards of his labor and behold the upbuilding of his race.
“And what a band of missionaries and teachers will go out from this new republic, upon every side of them, in darkest Africa, to preach the peaceful doctrine of the cross!
“In these same dark forests, where their ancestors were hewn down and shot down like so many wild beasts, and dragged, maimed and bleeding, to become burden bearers and chained slaves to an alien race—
“Under the same dim shadows of these lofty trees will these men stand and reveal to the ignorant tribes the knowledge they learned in the torturing school of slavery.
“The dark baptism wherewith they were baptized will set them apart and fit them for this great work. They will speak with the fellowship of suffering which touches hearts and enkindles holy flames.
“Their teachings will have the supreme consecration of agony and martyrdom. They will speak with the pathos of grief, the earnestness and knowledge born through suffering and ‘the constant anguish of patience.’
“It is such agencies as these that God has always blessed to the upbuilding of His kingdom. And will not the dwarfed natures about them gradually be transformed by the teachings of these apostles into a civilized, God-fearing people?
