3. The results and outlook of our own emancipation. Let us consider these, not as is usually done, from the standpoint either of the politician of the North, or the planter of the South, but from that of the negro himself.
With all its glory, emancipation has brought to the negro three great disappointments.
(1.) Education was to him the talisman of the master’s power, and above all, it was the key to open the long concealed treasures of God’s word. He stretched forth his hand for it as if it were Aladdin’s lamp, which by a few touches would reveal the hidden riches. But there was no magic in the lamp; it showed him only a long and difficult road, that by patient and persevering travel would bring him to the coveted knowledge. Then, again, the common school fund of the South gives him but few schools, and those are open but for a short time, while his own necessities bend him down to the struggle for existence, and allow him little means to educate his children, or power to spare them from work in the field.
(2.) His next great disappointment was in the ballot. This, too, he had seized with avidity as the symbol of sovereign power—the one grand test of equality with the master. In two states he wielded it in uncontrolled majority, but his use of it was so disgraceful to himself and so ruinous to the state, that his friends were amazed and his foes exasperated. He showed that he lacked the intelligence to wield this great power, and the strength of character to resist its temptations; and now the symbol is wrenched from his grasp and he is once more helpless before superior knowledge.
(3.) His last disappointment was as to the ownership of land. What visions floated before him of land that he could call his own and of a home that he might adorn and use for himself and family. It is wonderful to see how much he has done to realize this vision. But this, too, in large measure eludes his grasp. If he rents he must pay a rental almost equal to the value of the land; and if he buys, he must take the united toil of himself and family to pay for it; and hence his dilemma. If he buys his home, he cannot educate his children; if he educates them, he cannot buy the home!
Do we wonder that with the crushing of these “great expectations,” and with as little hope in most cases of seeing things better as when he was a slave, he yields to despair, and rather than “bear the ills he has he flies to others that he knows not of,” and that Kansas becomes his refuge?
The Kansas refugees are not the most hopeless of the colored people; they, at least, have the energy to flee. But there are large numbers that are content to sink to the bottom and stay there; they are the water in the hold that threatens to drag down the ship. Yet, thank God, there is still another portion, not so large, but more hopeful and enterprising than either, that get homes and educate their children. These are the ones whose children crowd our schools; they are the hope of the race; they have the right ideal—that an education, of heart as well as head, is the rod of God in the hand of man; that makes character, wields the ballot, wins the home and works the land! This is the class to help first, and this is the way to help—give them the good school and the pure church.
The emergency was too great to brook delay. This Association did not wait. It struck in at this point at the outset and has stuck to it ever since. It is on the right track, as is now admitted on all sides. Pres. Hayes utters the practical sentiment of the nation, and he but echoes what Judge Tourgee, the author of “A Fool’s Errand,” representing the radical opinions of the North, and Rev. Dr. Ruffner, Supt. of Public Instruction of Virginia, representing the conservative views of the South, had already uttered, that there is no way of making the Freedmen safe members of society but by educating them. To the colored people themselves nothing is more inspiring and helpful than the kind of work achieved by the American Missionary Association in your behalf. When these people recall the little handful of their number that cowered under the guns of Fort Monroe for protection and the little school opened there, and now see the large buildings at Hampton, the broad farm and the busy workshops in which their children are trained; when they remember the scowling looks of the masters in Atlanta when Gen. Sherman had gone, and now see the Atlanta University, visited by those old masters—and the best of them—who come away with commendations so warm, that the state grants $8,000 a year to the education of their children, when they think of the timid crowds of their people in Nashville at the close of the war, and now see Jubilee Hall, sung into existence by their children, who have called forth the tribute of tears from crowned heads abroad as well as people at home; when, in short, they see all over the South such schools taught by teachers from the North, and behold their children going forth year by year, by scores and hundreds to teach and to preach, this is to them the manna that sustains them in their wilderness journey. Will you help us to multiply that bread, as Jesus did when He fed the multitudes, saying—“give ye them to eat”? Multiply it not only for the thrifty and enterprising, but multiply it for the discouraged ones now ready to flee to Kansas! Yea, multiply it so abundantly that the most hopeless and degraded may be fed by it and become strong; and then you will have helped save the Freedmen and the nation, and will have helped win a victory for caste-crushed people over all the world—a victory for freedom, humanity and religion!