What Does It Mean?—The venerable Dr. Moffat, father-in-law of Livingstone, says: “More has been learned regarding Africa since the Proclamation of President Lincoln, declaring the slaves of the United States free, than in all the past.” Who can be so blind that he does not see the relation of these two facts?
Today, eight European governments have from one to three exploring parties penetrating that vast continent for various purposes. The negro slave of America has become a free man, has the ballot in his hand, and the nation is under bonds to fit him for citizenship. He is restive in his present position. He has an instinct for home which does not find its full satisfaction either on the cotton lands of Mississippi, nor on the corn fields of Kansas or Indiana. What it all means, God in His own time will fully unfold. Meantime, the pressure of necessity is upon us to save ourselves from being trampled to death under the feet of these ignorant voters, led to the polls by unscrupulous demagogues. When we have done this, we shall have fitted an instrument for God’s own right hand; whether for use in America or in Africa chiefly, we know not, and it matters not.
John Sykes.—The editor of the Independent, on a recent excursion into Virginia, met with, what we may begin to call, a representative negro, for John Sykes is not so much alone today as James’ celebrated solitary horseman of thirty years ago. He is the owner of 171 acres of land near Lake Drummond, all paid for, and stocked with horse, mule, several cows, pigs, sheep, and fowl. He was on his way to Hampton to hear the valedictory address of his son, with great expectations as to what he should see and learn as to new methods of farming practiced on the great farm connected with the school.
His daughter is to take her turn at the school next year, to be followed by another son. Since he bought his land, eight years ago, twenty-five other colored men, his neighbors, have purchased, and paid for, land in lots of from 5 to 50 acres each, while some thirty others have contracts for similar lots. All this within eight years, and along with it has been a progress in education and general thrift which is most hopeful. The editor met four graduates on the same boat with Mr. Sykes, on their way back to Hampton to attend the graduating exercises, “whose intelligence and gentlemanliness were most marked.” He adds as the result of his observations, what a recent excursion into the South enables us to confirm, “In Virginia, the colored people are rapidly rising in intelligence, in comfort, and in wealth; and the feeling of the whites toward them is quite as kindly as could be expected.”
And the contrast suggested is one that it would be well for those who are impatient of the negroes’ slow progress to follow out to the minutest detail. He writes: “It is impossible for a visitor from the North not to compare their position as a race with that of our ancestors two hundred years ago, when starting an American civilization. The Southern negroes have probably as much comfort about them as most of our early forefathers, as good houses, as good furniture, as many cattle: but they have not the intelligent educated upper class, which founded our great colleges and which molded our whole population. This influence they must get from abroad. They need it, and they appreciate and want it; and no more needed and fruitful work can be done by our benevolent people than to provide the Southern negroes with Christian education.”
The Memphis Avalanche says that a most interesting and entertaining feature of the evening exercises, connected with the close of the Le Moyne School, was the address to the graduating class by Judge J. O. Pierce, which was scholarly, thoughtful and eloquent. And it adds of the school that “it is an honor to the educational institutions of Memphis. It has done much to forward the cause of education among the colored population, and the good results of its labors are apparent in every direction. Institutions of this class cannot be too much encouraged.”
It is proof that we have entered upon a new era when the principal of one of our schools is constrained to say, what Prof. Steele, of Le Moyne Institute, does in a card to the editors of the Memphis Appeal: