The scroll held in the left hand of the bronze statue of Mr. Lincoln bears on it, in large letters, the word “Emancipation,” and the pen in his right hand indicates the signing of that talismanic instrument, while the coat-of-arms, set into the pedestal, represents the eagle as holding in his beak the broken chain of slaves.
Of the 178,000 colored soldiers, 80,000 had, with their great Liberator, laid down their lives for the life of the nation. And so it seemed well that one who was identified with the work of supplementing that edict of freedom should stand there to recount their deeds of valor and to relate with what enthusiasm they celebrate all over the South not only Emancipation Day and the Fourth of July, but Decoration Day itself. Who in that Southland shall be found to offer psalms and prayers, and scatter flowers over the graves of the 321,369 soldiers buried in the eighty-two national cemeteries there? As God would have it, the people are found there, numbered by millions, who delight to render this service of gratitude and of love—a people whose patriotism has never been tarnished with a breath of disloyalty.
What shall be done for a people who have been so true to the nation? Let them be confirmed in all the rights and emoluments of our Christian citizenship.
THINGS TO BE REMEMBERED—NO. 2.
The Want: Nothing so nearly concerns the welfare of this land, and of all lands, as the thorough merging and assimilating of all the races here into one Christian commonwealth. This is needed for the unity and strength of our own nation, and for an example and influence upon the nations abroad. The despised races, in particular, need to be thus fused and absorbed, in order that they may be inoculated and empowered with the spirit of the Republic to carry its freedom, its learning and light, to the lands in darkness. They are part and parcel of our people, fused or not, and the character of the nation will be affected by their presence and influence. The measure with which we mete to them shall be measured to us again. We are in a partnership which involves common gains and common losses. What we put into them of intelligence, piety and moral power, we put into the nation not only, but we put into the mightiest of the unbaptized races of men. We have little conception, indeed, of the immense inertia of the heathen races; or how much sympathy, money and labor, will be needed to move them into new lines of thought, or of moral action. But it is a work to which we are specially called, and for which we have special facilities. It may tax all our patience and charity, and then we shall barely touch the necessities of the case. The churches, the school-houses, the intelligence and the character that will be needed for the uplift of these races, we have only begun to supply. Indeed it is a question as to whether we have yet formed any adequate idea of a work, as for races, in distinction from a work which deals merely with individuals. But if we could bear in mind, in dealing with the Chinaman, the Indian and the Negro, that it is the races we are after, the turning of single souls to God would not seem the small thing that it does. We should then comprehend, perhaps, how much more favorable was a Christian land for the conversion of men, and for the raising up of broad, intelligent, and thoroughly equipped teachers and preachers for the benighted and perishing, than were heathen lands. The activities of our daily life, the forces of our liberty, learning, piety, government, must do immensely more for a man in America than the feeble pulses of gospel life and light can do for him in China and Africa. How much easier, then, the conversion of heathen under the blaze of our Christian sky, and how much stronger and better men can we make of them to undertake the salvation of their own lands!
The great want is the means—both men and money—to throw upon the Pacific slopes, upon the Indian reservations, the Southern savannas, a Christian force large enough to put these races under thorough Christian culture. Anything less than this will fail of the end. It is an opportunity to lay hold of the unsaved races, such as is likely never to come again; which it would not only be unwise to neglect, but deeply criminal not to improve. God sets before us this open door, and not to enter in is to peril their future as well as our own. A responsibility greater than this could hardly be given to men, and an eye to see it and a soul to feel it are what, beyond all things, our people need.
C. L. WOODWORTH