These views and impressions are confirmed by actual experience. With a view of learning the results of that experience, I addressed letters to the Secretaries of all the larger societies in Europe and America doing missionary work on that continent, and, in due time, received courteous replies from nearly all of them, giving opinions and facts with more or less fulness of detail. My inquiries mainly centered around two points: first, the ability of the colored missionary as compared with the white, to endure the climate; and secondly, his relative success as a missionary. The opinions given in those letters, as might be expected, are various, and the facts themselves, gathered from widely different sources, and relating to very different climates and local circumstances, point to somewhat different conclusions.
The specific statements of these letters may be thus summed up:
1. No society reports that the colored man is less healthy than the white; one or two societies discern as yet no special difference; but the larger number say that he endures the climate much better than the white man.
2. On the second point—the comparative success of colored missionaries—the testimony bears very decidedly, as a rule, and as yet against them; while a few and very favorable exceptions indicate that the fault is with the individual and not with the race, and hold out the hope that time and better training will remove the difficulties.
The more full account may be thus given: Some of the societies charge a want of carefulness, perhaps a want of integrity against the colored missionaries—that "colored treasurers will not render accounts, teachers will not make reports, missionaries desire to control, and they seldom are sufficiently respected, especially when of younger age." Now, these are manifestly the vices and infirmities of an immature and imperfectly cultured race. We must recollect that centuries of civilization and Christian influences are behind Europeans and Americans, while the native African, converted and trained in his own land, has behind him only the few years of his own life separating him from the densest degradation of heathenism; the African born and converted in the West Indies has been a freedman only since 1840; and the American Negro was perhaps himself a slave, and his race had the shackles struck from their bodies only in 1863, while the fetters of ignorance and vice still manacle the minds and hearts of the mass. We ought not, therefore, so much to wonder at the failure of the many, as to rejoice and take courage at the success of the few, especially as there is a bright side to the dark picture, to which I now take pleasure in turning your attention.
There have been some very successful colored missionaries in Africa, whom the Christian world has known and honored, and the letters I have received joyfully refer to them, and mention others not yet widely known, but whose work attests their wisdom, piety and usefulness. Thus one Secretary refers to a missionary, born a slave in America and educated here, as "the most scholarly man in the whole mission." Another society testifies, and our personal knowledge of the man referred to confirms the testimony, to the remarkable success of one of its colored missionaries as "a business manager, a preacher and a teacher, showing himself fully equal to any emergency, and remarkable in his influence with the heads of the tribes, and his success in winning souls." The testimony in regard to two others of its missionaries is almost equally emphatic.
The Secretary of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America writes: "All ordained men on our missionary staff in Africa, from the Bishop down, are colored men. I think we have concluded that, all things considered, except for the work of higher education, colored missionaries are more available in that field than white." He refers with gratification to the career of Bishop Ferguson, the only colored man who has a seat in the American House of Bishops, who was born in America, educated in the mission schools, and has risen through the positions of teacher, deacon, priest and rector, until he was consecrated the Bishop of Cape Palmas in 1885, and has worthily filled all these positions. The Church Missionary Society of London refers to the remarkable career of Bishop Crowther, who was born in Africa, put on board a slave ship, rescued, and landed at Freetown, educated in Sierra Leone and in England, and at length entered his chosen field on the Niger, reduced the language of the people to writing, and preached the gospel to them in their native tongue. In 1861, there were reported to be 1,500 converts as the result of his labors. He received the degree of D.D., from Oxford, England, and was consecrated in 1864 African Bishop of the Niger. This society also mentions others, one as possessing "special educational and linguistic powers;" another as a "pastor and evangelist with remarkable power and spiritual influence;" another as "a practical organizer and administrator;" another as "very successful in educational work," and it adds: "Many others have also shown considerable power as educationists, pastors and evangelists."
From all these facts, the inferences are plain:
1. That Negroes have succeeded in this work, and that those in America can be prepared for it. They can endure the climate, find ready access to the hearts of the people, and be eminently successful in preaching the Gospel. They should have the best training for the purpose, and great care should be exercised in selecting and sending forth only those of good education, mature character, sound judgment and unquestioned piety.
2. America owes it as a debt to them and to Africa that they be furnished with the means for this training. The guilt of man-stealing and of slavery can have no better atonement than by sending back to Africa the sons of those stolen from those benighted shores, who shall bring with them the light and blessing of civilization and Christianity. England, too, having had a share in introducing slavery into America, should take its share in making this atonement.