Large Gifts of the Wealthy.
It is refreshing to find in this grasping, selfish and money-making world that there are wealthy men who amass fortunes and use them for noble purposes. It is said that growing wealth only tightens the grip on the money and hardens the heart against the calls of benevolence. But the examples are accumulating that give shining evidence that there are noble exceptions. Mr. Hand has added his name to the number. He knows the needs of the colored people, and he devotes a vast fortune to their benefit. But Mr. Hand has not exhausted the opportunities, even in the range of the work of this Association, for blessing needy races of men, or of aiding in the varied forms of effort for the colored people. The mountain regions of the South present an unique and promising field of effort. The inhabitants are a noble people, descendants of some of the best races that settled America. Their mountain isolation separated them from the people around them. The want of schools and churches left them ignorant, their thin mountain lands kept them poor; but they never held slaves and they were loyal to the Union in the war. Railroads now penetrate their mountains and valleys, and the hitherto unused wealth of mines and timber is brought to light. A new future opens out to these people, and the question is, "Shall that future be one of prosperity and piety, or one of intemperance and infidelity?" Some other man wise and wealthy can do for these people what Daniel Hand has done for the primary and industrial education of the Negroes. But this does not exhaust the opening for large investments in the work of the Association. The Indians are fewer in number than the blacks or whites of the South, and their future will sooner be determined by their being incorporated into the national life as citizens, yet that problem is not settled, and a large fund could be wisely used for their benefit. Then, too, our higher schools and colleges need endowment, and our church work should be indefinitely expanded.
If this review does not succeed in drawing large gifts for these several objects, it may at least serve to show that our wants are not all provided for, and that smaller contributors have still the duty and the privilege of aiding by gifts and prayer this good work of patriotism and Christianity.
THE SOUTHERN SITUATION.
The position of the South is becoming once more clearly defined. Before the war, it was fully formulated thus: The Negroes are an inferior race, and slavery is their divinely ordained condition. To this was added: The Negro question is purely local, and with it no one outside of the South has any right to interfere. To these axioms agreed the press, the pulpit and the politician. But the war came as an earthquake, with the utter upheaval of these firm foundations.
During the years of reconstruction and political agitation, uncertainty prevailed, but now again the Southern position is becoming settled. It is the old position with a variation. It runs: The Negroes are an inferior race, and must be held as a peasant class in subjection to the superior white race. To this the warning is again added: This is purely a domestic affair, and all outsiders must keep tongues and hands off. This revised version of the old theory is proclaimed by Senator Eustis in his now somewhat famous article in the Forum. More recently it has been re-affirmed in the fervid eloquence of Mr. Grady, of Atlanta, in his address at Dallas, Texas.
This is the same orator (he is an orator) who a few years since electrified the whole country by his speech at the New England dinner, on the "New South." But the logic of Southern events has driven him down again to the platform of the "Old South." More recently still, the Governor of South Carolina, in his message to the Legislature, has taken the same position.
These three gentlemen, representing the press and the politician, are sustained by the pulpit in the South. For example, the Presbyterian church South repels all overtures for re-union with the Presbyterian church North, because such a re-union would involve a practical recognition of the equal manhood of the inferior race. The Presbyterian church South does not stand alone on this platform. Other denominations are arrayed side by side with it, and we fear that even the Congregationalists in the South, with two Conferences in the same State, one white and the other black, are in danger of being numbered with them.