4. We have a common sympathy in Protestantism. The early Spanish and French occupation in Louisiana and in Baltimore has made those strong Catholic centres. But Romanism is not so generally a prevailing power in the South as in the North. The drift of foreign emigration has made this difference. Rome’s chance at the South is now not with immigrants, but with natives, Africo-Americans; and she is bound to make the most of it. But just here comes out our unity in Protestant views. Southern Christians are anxious lest the display and the mystery of the Roman system should captivate these simple children of nature. They are as solicitous as we that the same Providence which delivered our land from the early domination of Romish nationalities, may save it from coming under the supremacy of that spiritual despotism. When the Catholic bishop at Richmond opened his cathedral, Sunday nights, to a free service in behalf of the colored people, it made a tremendous stir among white as well as colored Protestants.
5. Have we not had a common responsibility for the existence of slavery? Striking in its upas roots at Jamestown, it was allowed to spread over all the colonies. Samuel Hopkins, thundering at the gates of the pens of the slave-trade in Newport, must yet reverberate among those empty dens still standing. In 1872 I saw in Connecticut an aged disciple who had once been a slave in that State. My childish ears tingled with my father’s stories of slave life as known to him in New Jersey. The system, by implication, was recognized in the Federal Constitution. The Government allowed it to sweep out over yet other empire areas at the South and West. We had Federal laws, resting upon Northern public sentiment, to protect the institution. We allowed our churches and our literary institutions and our benevolent societies to come under the common paralysis of conscience. Without any interest in slaves as personal property, we allowed our great commercial affairs to be brought under bondage to that system. Our measure of complicity in that national wrong was indicated in part by the awful retribution meted out in the sacrifice of half a million of precious lives and by the offering of billions of treasure. We have had occasion to join our brethren at the South and say, “We are verily guilty concerning our brother.”
6. Have we not now a common obligation to make restitution to these new-made citizens? We are not only by legislation to recognize their rights of manhood and of citizenship, but to uphold them in the same. We are to secure them in the enjoyment of the blessing of our American educational system and of the best Christianizing processes. As we have endowed them with the sacred elements of citizenship, we must help them to the means of making them citizens worthy of the nation. This common duty was indicated by Hon. John Goode, of Virginia, when he said, in Congress, “Can the Government bestow civil and political rights upon these wards of the nation, and at the same time avoid the solemn obligation to provide for their mental and moral improvement?” That is the responsibility of citizens, North and South, as well as of the Government. And so let the people join hands, irrespective of sectional lines, in doing the just, the right thing by these native Americans, the providential significance of whose existence in our country is a problem calling for solution.
REMINISCENCES.
“It’s the color that tells”—“Jes hear dem niggers read”—Candle and half-bushel—“Age up country,” &c.—Sad words making glad—“Frosty arms.”
After the full accounts you have been giving your readers of late of the Commencement Exercises, with their attendant essays and orations, brief reminiscences of a few years ago, when the Freedmen knew little of Greek and Latin, but were intent upon “blue-back” spellers and the easy parts of the Bible, may not come amiss.
It happened once that in a dimly-lighted school-house, about nine o’clock at night, filled with men and women of various hue, from white through brown to black, there was one class of nine young men spelling words of three syllables. They were very earnest, and in real old-fashioned way were going “up and down” in the class. At the head stood Joseph, very black; then three nearly as dark, followed by four light ones, with the very darkest of the whole class at the foot. All went well till the upper light one missed and the word passed down; Joseph, seeing it likely to pass from the light ones to the very dark face at the foot, in excitement and joy burst forth with, “Spell it, Dave, and cut up here; it’s the color that tells.” Dave spelt it, and the color did tell.
One man who made his appearance in night-school about the middle of the winter, I shall never forget. His entrance was quite overpowering—a big man, big cane, big hat, and a big shawl thrown over his shoulder, Arab style. I happened to be at leisure, so I went at once to ask him if he intended coming regularly to school. Saying that he did, my next question was, “What’s your name?” “I’m Lucy’s husband, over there.” As I didn’t know Lucy, I was not much the wiser, and had to repeat the question with the emphasis on the your. Wishing to classify him, I asked, “What book do you read in?” “The Bible mostly, ma’am.” “Can you read in the First Reader?” “Yes, first, second, third, fourth and all the other elementary books.” Thinking I might gain some information where to assign him, I looked at the books he had brought with him. There were four: a large family Bible; another book of some size, but very fine print, on “Presbyterian Ordination Refuted;” a “Child’s Scripture Question Book,” and a small geography.
But if the night-schools were amusing, the afternoon schools for the women were not less so. Old women and young women, many of them in fantastic attire, with hats, caps and dresses that would have been considered prizes by an antiquary; the dark faces peering from under the white or speckled turban; old women wiping their spectacles, vainly endeavoring to get “more light” on the subject, while picking away at the letters in some old Primer, as if they were to be transferred bodily to the head. Aunt Chloe Fisher must have been seventy-five or eighty years old, but still she was bright and original. She came into school one afternoon very anxious to learn to read “de way, de troof, and de life.” Seeing some women in another part of the room reading, she exclaimed, “Jes hear dem niggers read! If dis nig can’t read, too, won’t she fight ’em?” and then she vigorously applied her finger to the pages of the Gospel of John which she had with her, finding the words Lord and God, which were about all she knew. She believed in both faith and works, for she used to pray most earnestly that God would help her know the words, and then get up in the middle of the night and light a pine knot to see if she had a word right. Old Aunt Chloe was always happy. I never saw her otherwise but once, and then she was greatly troubled for fear she should lose her place in the grave-yard. One special place she had chosen, and young people were dying so fast she was afraid she should not die soon enough to lie there. She would get happy over her wash-tub or anywhere else, and her hands and her feet would keep time with some negro hymn in a most amusing manner.