Under the present tribal system, the father has nothing but his tomahawk and scalping knife to leave to his children, and transmits only a disposition to use them. Give him the right to acquire a title to something else, and he will doubtless acquire and bequeath it.
There is a poor blind Samson in this land,
Shorn of his strength and hound in bands of steel,
Who may in some grim revel, raise his hand,
And shake the pillars of this commonweal,
Till the vast temple of our liberties
A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.
That same “blind Samson” is in the land to-day. It is the Negro, uneducated, immoral, with a ballot in his hand. It is the white man, uneducated, immoral, with a ballot in his hand. For it makes no difference. The harm lies back of the color. The consequences of ignorant suffrage, by whomsoever exercised, can be only detrimental to the peace and welfare of the State. Free institutions can be built up only on the basis of intelligence and integrity. Without intelligence and integrity, the best cannot long survive. If there be large numbers on whom this right has been conferred, but who are densely ignorant, especially if these large numbers are grouped in a single section, like these millions of negroes and poor whites in the South, it is an official notice served on the nation that no time is to be lost in imparting the mental and moral training requisite for the right discharge of these sacred functions of voting. Men are not left to settle this question of helping with schools and churches, merely on the ground of humanity or Christian duty. Their interest is challenged, and their very selfishness is under contribution. We do not put matches in children’s hands, and then leave them to play about hay-mows. If we give them matches we train them in the use of them. With an instrument in his hands so potent as the ballot, and with the possibility of using the leverage of it in contingencies easy to be foreseen for the overturning of the nation, it takes but half an eye to see that the man who wields it ought to have an instructed mind and an instructed conscience, and the State is not secure until he does.
—[Dr. Noble in Advance.
SIX PREACHERS, ALL OF THEM CALLED.
[The following letter reveals the condition of one out of many neighborhoods scattered all over the South, densely populated with negroes, neglected by the whites, excepting as the agent or overseer of the plantation looks after the owner’s interests as connected with the labor of the people. No schools, no churches, excepting such as are ministered to by preachers as ignorant and, in many cases, as licentious as the people themselves. Just think of it! The visit of this Sunday-school agent the first visit of a white Christian to the hundred families; their religious and other culture such as those six preachers could give! And this not in Central Africa, but in the very heart of the southwest portion of our own land! These people citizens of our republic, and voters!—Ed. Miss.]
A missionary of the American Sunday-School Union in the Southwest writes:
“I recently organized a Sunday-school for the colored people at Homan Station, on the St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern R. R., in Miller County, between Texarkana and the Red River, where is a large cotton plantation, and two others are near, having in all more than one hundred families. Among them is one Baptist church, and six preachers, every one ‘called!’ Only two of them can read, and the pastor or ‘head-preacher’ is blind; and so are all, in spiritual things, preachers and people. After delivering an address, I found that only seven in the audience could read. In all, fifty adults and children joined the Sunday-school and promised to learn to read. I furnished them with primers, Bibles, Testaments, etc., which seemed to please the plantation agent or overseer as well as the people.