Mr. Jefferson’s second prediction will fail—it is failing now. These two races are both equally free, and they are living together in the same government with less and less difficulty and misunderstanding each year. Disturbances here and there, conflicts, acts of violence there have been, there are, and there will be for a time. The wonder is not that there was a period of disorder in the Southern States after the war. The true wonder is that there is now so little of it, and that between 1865 and 1870 the South did not rush into final and utter chaos. There was never in any country such a state of things—so provocative of universal and remediless anarchy. What is it that saved us? Not the troops; not acts of Congress. Christian schools and the church of God. It was the Protestant religion that dominated the majority—both of the negroes and the Southern white people. I grant you that the conservative influences that the churches in the South brought out of the war have been greatly aided by the work done by your society and others like it; but it is also true that, but for the work the church in the South did before your coming, you could have done next to nothing, by this time, in the experiment. As to this whole subject, full of difficulties as those know best who have personal relations to it, there is just one platform on which Christian people can stand. Our problem with these millions of negroes in our midst can be happily solved—not by force of any sort from without the States where they live; no more can it be solved by repression within those States. It can be worked out only on the basis of the Ten Commandments and of the Sermon on the Mount. On this platform we can work out any problem whatsoever—whether personal, social, political, national or ethnical—that Providence brings before us. On any lower or narrower platform we will fail, and always fail. We have learned—you of the North and we of the South—many things in the last ten years. Among other valuable discoveries, we have learned that the people of neither section are either all good or bad. As to this race question, we of the South have learned, and we are learning, that we can’t manage our problem by any mere repressive system; you have learned, and are learning, that it can’t be solved by any sort of force from without, whether force of law, force of troops, or force of denunciation. Such knowledge is precious; alas! that it cost us so much.
May I quote at this place one other paragraph from the words of Dr. Leonard Bacon? It is at the close of a letter dated “New Haven, October 22, 1875,” and is in these words: “May I be allowed to say one word concerning the future of this society? That word is conciliation—conciliation by meekness, by love, by patient continuance in well-doing. The field is wide open for schools and for the preaching of the Gospel, two great forces operating as one for fundamental reconstruction. In both these lines of effort the work of the society must be more and more a work of conciliation—conciliation of the South to the North and to the restored and beneficent Union; conciliation of races to each other, white to black and black to white; conciliation of contending sects oppressed with traditional bigotries to the simplicity of the truth as it is in Jesus.” Thomas Jefferson was not a prophet: Leonard Bacon was. And, thank God! so much has been done by this Association to incarnate the truth that was in his great thoughts and to fulfill his hopes and predictions as to its own future. But this work of “fundamental reconstruction” is a slow process, suggests the impatient one. That is true; character-building, whether in a man or in a nation or in a race, is always a slow process. And it must be slower in a nation or in a race than in a man. There was never any great work done in the uplifting or training of a race in a day or in a year. It takes generations. How slowly our own race has risen out of its original savagery; how unfit we still are to fulfill our mission to the world. We have small cause for boasting when white men’s votes—sometimes enough of them to turn the scale in great elections—can be bought cheap in the open streets. Lifting up a nation or a race is a slow process; wherefore the greatest necessity for zeal, for wisdom, and for patience in our work. Whenever a great and necessary work that requires a long time and much labor is to be done, we should begin at once and do our best.
You find more sympathy and more of the spirit of co-operation among Southern people than you found ten years ago. I rejoice in this change of feeling in the South, and it is easy to understand it. Time, the healer, has done his blessed work. Grace has overcome, and the grave has buried much of bitter feeling on both sides. You have learned your work better, and we have learned more perfectly its value. A good deal of your work I have seen; I believe it is good. I have looked into your school methods; they are yielding happy results. I have considered “examination papers” from some of your schools; they would have done credit to any school for any race. I have listened to speeches and essays from colored youth at your commencements; there was the evidence of sound culture and true religion in them. When I heard them I “thanked God and took courage.”
It is often asked, “Why don’t the South do more in this work of educating and lifting up the negroes?” Sometimes the question has been asked angrily—perhaps because ignorantly.
I believe the South can do more than it is doing—certainly more than it has done. But I think it likely that we have done as much as any other people in like circumstances would have done. History does not record of any people such vast, rapid and radical changes of opinion and sentiment on subjects that had been fiercely fought over on hundreds of bloody fields, as has taken place in the South during the last fifteen years on the questions that grow out of the negro’s emancipation and enfranchisement. But the Southern States have done more than most people suppose. There are nearly one million negro children in our public schools in the South.
In speaking of what the South has done and has not done in the work of educating the negroes, let it be remembered that the white people of the South have not been on beds of roses since 1865. The war and its consequences made the South poor beyond conception by those who have not had our experience. It left the North rich. The majority of our people have had a sharp struggle to live; most of them have been unable to educate their own children.
Let me tell you of a man I talked with last summer. I went with my family and a little party on what we might call a camp-fishing expedition. As we approached the place where we proposed to spend a few days in recreation, my attention was attracted by a white woman pulling fodder in a little field near a cabin. That night her husband came to our camp, offering such welcome as he could. We had a long talk together. He had been a Confederate soldier, and he had on his body the marks of seven bullet wounds. He never owned a slave, he had fought for what he had been taught to believe were the rights of the States. He is a laborer on the farm of the man who owned the land where he lived. He gets $140 a year, cabin rent, a few acres tended by his wife and little girls, and the privilege of his winter wood. He said his employer is one of the kindest of men, and does for him all he can do. The landlord himself has small margins of profit. The poor fellow has five children, the eldest a bright girl, aged fourteen. She looked dwarfed and older than her years; she had been nurse and drudge for the little ones. These children came to our camp by invitation, and the oldest promised to come one afternoon and show my own children how to fish. I had my heart set on her coming; I wanted my children to know more about such people. She did not come at the time appointed, but that night she came to tell us why. Her cotton dress was wet with the dew and her little hands were fodder-stained. She said to me: “I am sorry I could not come; mother and I had so much fodder to take up that we have just got through.” This child and I had much talk together. I asked her: “Daughter, can you read?” Her face brightened as she said: “Yes, sir; a little.” “Can you write?” The brown eyes sought the ground as she answered: “No, sir.” “If I will send you some books, will you try to teach your little sisters to read?” The glad look in her eyes I shall never forget, as she answered: “Yes, sir; I will try.” We sent her a good supply and it made them all glad. They are not beggars; the father would not take money for a fine bunch of fish he sent, with his compliments, to my wife, and when he found that we had left some money for little services by the children he flushed and could hardly be persuaded to let them keep it.
Some people call these “white trash.” I declare to you I never heard a Southern white man or woman use the expression in speaking of such persons.
Mr. President, there are tens of thousands of white people in the South as poor as my friend of the fishing camp. If you can help them, in Christ’s name do it.