Many strangely adopt this wrong principle with regard to the negro race—that they are to be treated not simply as men, but as colored men, as members of a peculiar and inferior race, about whom one must not reason as he would about others, and especially about white men. One writer thinks that his eyes have just been opened to the truth, for he says: "Like most Northern men, I have made the mistake of judging the black by the standard of the white. A freer intercourse with him and a closer study of his characteristics have shown me that he is not to be so judged, and that the training adapted to the white man is not adapted to the black." In any reasonable sense of these words, we regard them as involving the same error which so long hindered emancipation—the idea that negroes could not be expected to act as would other men in the same circumstances. It used to be argued that freed negroes would refuse to labor, and would simply plunder and massacre. The history of the last twenty years, and the enormous crops raised at the South since the war, have disproved this absurdity, although the writer quoted still has his doubts, for he says of the negro: "We must take him as he is; and because we have not done this, his freedom, which has been of inestimable value to the Southern white man, has until now been a most questionable blessing to the negro!" One who can utter that doubt has some defect of vision, which disqualifies him from reaching safe conclusions respecting the colored race. Now, every race has certain peculiarities, and so has every nation, and to these we have a degree of regard in our intercourse with them. In minor matters, we remember, in our dealings, that this man is a Scotchman, and that man a Welshman, and that a Frenchman, and that a German. But in great questions of principle and method touching humanity, such as education and religion, we drop race and nation, and act upon simple manhood. If we do not, we are sure to err. The true idea in the case before us is, not to think perpetually of the black skin and the African blood, but of the man, and to use with the negro precisely the measures which should be used with white men in the same circumstances of ignorance and poverty, and with the same responsibilities as citizens. And it is singular that objectors to our work do not seem to be aware that the precise difficulty which they emphasize respecting the black masses at the South has been equally emphasized by others respecting the white masses at the North. The complaint everywhere heard in the Northern States is, that the common people are being so highly educated as to become dissatisfied with labor. The young men and young women refuse to work at manual industries, and take to trade and the professions, or else become dissipated idlers. Hence attempts are making to attach industrial education to our common schools. Why, then, talk of the peculiarities of the negro in this matter? There are none. He simply shares in the temptations which beset all races, and we must reason accordingly, and plan alike for the masses of the people, black and white.
One should avoid extreme and disproportionate statements and implications. The same writer runs a tilt against all education for the negro above the most rudimental, and says: "I have failed to see one who has been made a better man or a better citizen by this higher education; on the contrary, I know of very many who have been morally and socially ruined by it." We are sorry that his acquaintance has been so unfortunate with this class. Others have had the happiness to know scores and hundreds of well-educated colored people who are doing great credit to their race as ministers, physicians, editors, lawyers, teachers and authors. To one of these, a graduate of a theological institution, aided by this Association, the District Attorney in the part of Virginia where he now lives, recently addressed a letter of thanks for his having wrought a moral revolution in that county, saying: "Your boldness in condemning the wrong and asserting and approving the right has not only impressed the colored, and influenced their conduct in the right direction, but it has at the same time won for you the confidence and esteem of all the thinking portion of the white race, who are interested in good government and a well-ordered and law-abiding community ... for which this community ought to be profoundly grateful." And this man is also "ebon black." And here we would correct the impression that a large disproportion of the negroes are receiving "a higher education." The idea is given out that a great mistake has been made by the societies and philanthropists that are seeking the elevation of the freedmen. It would relieve the quite unnecessary alarm of objectors if they would consult the United States census for the statistics of the negro population, and then compare with its six millions of colored people the few thousands of them found in the colleges, academies, high schools, theological seminaries, medical and law schools of the land. Probably not more than one negro in a thousand is receiving anything beyond the very simplest instruction. Surely, then, no great harm can yet have been done, or is likely to be done, for many years to come. And yet, long before the objectors had spoken, these same educators had begun to add industrial training to book learning, and they are now pushing this branch as fast as the pecuniary means are furnished.
Nor should we overlook the vast and pressing necessities to which the higher education stands related. There is a loud and general call for competent colored teachers, instead of there being such a surplus as the aforementioned writer found when he says, "There was only one vacancy where there were fifty teachers." A remarkably favored locality! The superintendents of Southern schools tell a very different story. Not long since, the Rev. Dr. Haygood, of Georgia, in an article in the Independent, called for fifty thousand colored physicians, to be furnished as speedily as possible. And who can exaggerate the need of educated colored ministers to take the place of the old ignorant preachers? And how is any race to rise without intelligent leaders of their own in every locality? These will naturally be found in their men of education and property, in their ministers, physicians, lawyers, editors, teachers and political representatives. It is idle and wrong to repress or ignore the ambition of negroes of talent to be something more than laborers and servants, bootblacks and whitewashers. They must have the chance that others have, in proportion to their numbers; no more, no less. And all these rising colored men must have correspondingly intelligent wives, for their comfort and improvement and for the training of their children. To meet such wants the existing schools of high grade will all be needed and should all be liberally endowed.
OPINIONS.
The American Missionary Association and those allied to it have been the chief agency at the South, so far as benevolent effort is concerned, in diffusing right notions of religion, and in carrying education to the darkened mind of the negro.—Hon. J. L. M. Curry.
Of all the questions which disturb the mental equanimity of the patriotic and thinking citizen of our Republic, none is looming in his horizon with a more lurid and portentous aspect than the black cloud of illiteracy which is rapidly spreading over the country, and especially resting upon the Southern States of the Union. Compared with it as an element of vital danger to the Republic, Mormonism, Communism and Socialism sink into obscurity. The only way out of the unfortunate dilemma or of ameliorating the condition in which the country is placed by the thrusting upon it of this mass of ignorance, is by education—an education both mental and moral.—George R. Stetson.
The real tests of Northern zeal and liberality, of Northern faith and patience in the work of educating the negro, are yet to come. At the first, Christian zeal was mightily stimulated by the patriotic fervors of a great war for the preservation of the Union. In most minds the course of events identified the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery. The tremendous moral and political forces that were at work during the war, and for many years after its close, all conspired to make such an appeal to the thought, sentiment and conscience of the church in the North as was perhaps never before made for any form of Christian philanthropy. Christian men and women were filled with pity for the poor negroes, and there was a movement of "men and money" for their education that was never before seen in this, or perhaps any other, country. The effort was stupendous, and the results are amazing.