%images;]> LCRBMRP-T0E01A defence of the Negro race in America from the assaults and charges of Rev. J.L. Tucker, D.D., of Jackson, Miss., in his paper before the "Church Congress" of 1882, on "The relations of the church to the colored race" : prepared and published at request of the colored clergy of the Prot. Epis. Church, by Alex. Crummell, rector of St. Luke's Church, Washington, D.C. ...: a machine-readable transcription. Collection: African-American Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1820-1920; American Memory, Library of Congress. Selected and converted.American Memory, Library of Congress.

Washington, 1994.

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 91-898112Daniel Murray Pamphlet Collection, 1860-1920, Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. Copyright status not determined.
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A DEFENCE OF THE NEGRO RACEIN AMERICAFROM THEASSAULTS AND CHARGESOFREV J.L. TUCKER, D.D.,OF JACKSON, Miss.,In his Paper before the "Church Congress" of 1882,on"The Relations of the Church to the Colored Race"Prepared And Published at Request of the Colored Clergy ofTHE PROT. EPIS CHURCH,BY ALEX. CRUMELL,Rector of St Lukes's Church, Washington, D.C.,Author of "The Future of Africa," and "The Greatness of Christ," And other Sermons.SECOND EDITION.Price ----- 15 cents.WASHINGTON:PRINTED BY JUDD & DETWEILER,1883.

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A DEFENCE OF THE NEGRO RACE.

This is peculiarly the age of criticism, and neither the sensitiveness nor the weakness of people can exempt them from its penetrating search or its pointed strictures. Criticism, however, in order to perform its functions aright, must submit to certain laws of responsibility, and be held by certain rules of restraint. It must deal with facts, and not with fancies and conjectures. It must not indulge what Butler calls the "forward and delusive faculty" of the imagination, "ever intruding beyond its sphere." It must avoid coloring its facts with the hues of its own self-consciousness or feelings. It must be rigidly just in its inferential processes. Nothing can be more ludicrous than to make a wide generalization from the narrow circle of a provincialism, and nothing more unjust.

It is because Dr. Tucker's paper "ON THE RELATIONS OF THE CHURCH TO THE COLORED RACE" is defective in these several points that I have undertaken, at the suggestion of reverend brethren of my own race and Church, a refutation of it. We are all fully aware of the weaknesses, and, to a large extent, of the degradation of our race in this country; for the race has been a VICTIM race. Our children have been victimized, our men have been victimized, and alas! worse than all, our women have been victimized--generation after generation, two hundred years and more, down to the present! We make no pretense that our people, by a miraculous impulse, have of a sudden risen entirely above the malarial poison of servitude. We know better than this, and we mourn their shortcomings. But we know, also, that a marvelous change has taken place in all the sections of their life--social, 00034civil, educational, ecclesiastical--since the day of freedom; and we regard it a most grievous misdemeanor in Dr. Tucker that he has blindly ignored that change.

I have read Dr. Tucker's pamphlet with very much care and attention, and I cannot resist the conclusion that it is one of the most unjust and injurious statements that I have ever met with. First of all, on the hypothesis that his representation of the moral condition of the Negro is correct--but which I deny--his pamphlet, instead of being a lamentation over wrong and injustice, is an INDICTMENT, alike gross and underserving, of a deeply-wronged people. Unless I greatly misunderstand Dr. Tucker, and his endorsers also, he attributes gross moral depravity, general lewdness, dishonesty, and hypocrisy as Negro peculiarities, and as such constitutional to him. But I beg to say that these charges are unjust. These traits of character, so far as they maintain at the South, are American characteristics--the legitimate outcome of the pernicious system of bondage which has crushed this race for more than two hundred years. For,first, when Dr. Tucker and his endorsers declare that the Negro, as such, is void of the family feeling; that moral purity is an unknown virtue; that dishonesty is almost an instinct; that both economy and acquisitiveness are exotics in his nature, they testify that of which they do not know.

THE NATIVE CHARACTER OF THE NEGRO.

I have lived nigh twenty years in West Africa. I have come in contact with peoples of not less than forty tribes, and I aver, from personal knowledge and acquaintance, that the picture drawn by Dr. Tucker is a caricature. I am speaking of the native Negro. (a) All along the West Coast of Africa the family tie and the marriage bond are as strong as among any other primitive people. The very 00045words in which Cicero and Tacitus describe the homes and families of the Germanic tribes can as truly be ascribed to the people of the West Coast of Africa. (b) Their maidenly virtue, the instinct to chasitym, is a marvel. I have no hesitation in the generalization that, in West Africa, every female is a virgin to the day of her marriage. The harlot class is unknown in all their tribes. I venture the assertion thay any one walking through Pall Mall, London, or Broadway, New York, for a week, would see more indecency in look and act than he could discover in an African town in a dozen years. During my residence there I only once saw an indecent act. Of course polygamy--and polygamy is the exceptional fact--brings, in Africa, all its common disastrous fruits: intrigue, unfaithfulness, adultery. But these are human, not Negro, results, cropping out from an annatural system. (c) And then, when you come to the question of honesty, the state of society in Africa settles that point. Heathen though these people are, their system is a most orderly one--filled everywhere with industrious activities; the intercourse of people regulated by rigid law. The whole continent is a beehive. The markets are held regularly at important points Caravans, laden with products, are constantly crossing the entire continent; and large, nay at times immense, multitudes are gathered together for sale and barter at their markets. Such a state of society is incompatible with universal theft and robbery.

I know somewhat the reputation of the "Yankee;" and the nature of the Few has made his name a synonym. But if either Jew or Yankee possesses more of the acquisitive feeling than the native African, then I have failed in my knowladge of human nature.

Of course the wants of the African are inferior to those of the Yankee or the Jew; but that the masterful instinct 00056of greed stimulatedthe entire continent is witnessed by the strong trading tendencies of almost every tribe; by the universal demand for foreign goods; by the search for outlets for native products; and by the immense trade which is poured out of every river into the holds of foreign vessels.*

*See the testimony of celebrated African travellers-Mungo Park, Ledyard, Adanson, Laing, &c., &c.
THE DEBASED AMERICAN NEGRO.

But perchance Dr. Tucker will insist that the portrait he gives of the SOUTHERN Negro is a true one. He is void of family feeling; he is lewd; he is liar and self-deceiver; he is dishonest and improvident. Grant, for the moment, that this representation of the American Negro is correct. I have shown that these characteristics are not native to the race. Whence then this divergence of character from the original type? Why is the black man in America so different in morality from his pagan brother in Africa?

Look at Dr. Tucker's picture of the moral degradation of his people. I do not wish to do him the least injustice. Nevertheless I think I may repeat St.Paul's summary of the moral condition of the Pagan Romans, of his day, as the equivalent of Dr. Tucker's characterization of the American Negro. I leave it to the reader to strike out the few epithets in Rom. 1, 29; or I Tim. 1, 9 and 10, which may seem inapplicable to this case,+ for Dr. T. charges them as a class, with hypocrisy, lying, stealing, adultery, &c.

+Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetouness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers. Rom. 1: 29.

Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for whoremongers, for liers, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine. I Tim. 1: 9 and 10.

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Now this is one of the most appalling representations that has ever been put upon paper. (a) Here is a nation of people, for a population that runs up its numbers to six or seven millions, is not merely a people--it is a NATION. Here then is a nation, resident for more than sevengenerations amid the vast populations of this Christain country; and yet, as Dr.Tucker avers, so low and degraded in moral character, that he, himself, is forced even now, after twenty years of freedom, to declare that they are a demoralized people on the downward track to ruin.

(b) Yet notice that this Negro nation has been for two centuries under the absolute control and moulding of the Christain Church and people of the South. They have not been separate in locality, as the Israelites in Goshen were from the Egyptions. They have been living, in all their generations, on the farms and in the houses and families of their master. So thoroughly intermingled have been with life and society of their superiors that they have lost entirely their native tongues, and have taken English as their vernacular. Moreover, they presented the resistance of no organic religion to the faith of their masters. They had a heterogeneous paganism when they came from Africa--so inchoate and diversified that it soon fell before the new circumstances in which they were placed.

(c) Hence, it is evident (1) that the paganism of the African was no formidable obstacle to the Christain Church; (2) that the Christian Church had the opportunity of easy conquest; and (3) joining to the numerical inferiority of the Negro population the vast resources of the Southern Christian, in all the elements of power and available resources, we can see at once the high vantage ground of the Christian Church.

(d) But what now is the fact presented by Dr.Tucker?

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It is this, viz. That after two and a half centuries, the black race in the South is still in a state of semi-barbarism, slightly veneered by a Christian profession. Their religion (I use his own words) is "an outward form of Christianity with an inward substance of full licence given to all desires and passions." (Page 18.)

Let us take Dr.Tucker at his word; and what, I ask--what is the inference to be drawn from this state of things? I state the conclusion with the greatest sorrow; but it seems irresistible, i.e., that the Christian Church in the South, with the grandest opportunity for service for Christ, and with the very best facilities, has been a failure! It has had one of the widest missionary fields! It has had this field of service open before it two hundred years, and it has hardly attempted to enter it! It has been full of missionary zeal for the peoples of Greece and Asia, for India, and even the West African Negro, but it has lacked the missionary heart for millions of Negroes on its own plantations and in its own households! THE SOUTHERN BLACK MAN THE PRODUCT OF THE SOUTHERN "SCHOOLMASTER"-SLAVERY.

I do not deny that there is wide-spread demoralization among the Southern black population. How could it be otherwise? Their whole history for two hundred years has been a history of moral degraduation deeper and more damning than their heathen status in Africa. I am speaking of aggregates. I grant the incidental advantages to scores and hundreds which have sprung from contact with Christian people. I am speaking of the moral condition of the MASSES, who have been under the yoke; and I unhesitatingly affirm that they would have been more blessed and superior as pagans in Africa than slaves on the plantations of the South.

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Bishop Howe, of South Carolina, calls slavery "a schoolmaster to the black man. Bishop Gregg declares that "it brought its benefits and blessings." I am filled with amazement that men of sense and reason can thus travesty plain, common English, and talk such senseless stuff! "Schoolmaster!" And pray what sort of a schoolmaster has slavery proven? Why, the slave system has had the black man under training two hundred years, and yet never in all this period has it developed one Negro community of strength or greatness! Never raised up anywhere an intelligent, thrifty, productive peasantry! Never built up a single Negro institution of any value to mankind! Never produced a single scientific or scholarly or learned black man! Its only fruit has been darkness, degradation, semi-barbarism, immorality, agonies, and death! GARNET, DOUGLAS, WARD, AND PENNINGTON were men of the largest mould. But each had to run away from the South to get the development of their colossal natures amid Nothern institutions!

And so, too, since emancipation. All the black men of conspicuous genius or character South have had to get out of the old slave region and come North for the training and development of their intellect. The little Colony of Sierra Leone, with a population of 90,000, has been in existence one hundred years. Will their Reverence show me anywhere in America any such results as that Colony exhibits in letters, civilization, commercial enterprise, manhood, and religion, which have come from two hundred years' tenure of slavery on American soil? Will they declare that their "SCHOOLMASTER" has bred such men, started such enterprises, and developed such missionary ventures as the handful of Negroes in that little English colony? "Schoolmaster" indeed! Is it not an abuse of the English languageand of common sense to print 000910>such verbiage? Look for a few moments at the moral status and training of the black race under slavery, and see if anything else but demoralization could be the fruit thereof?

1st. They were left, as to religion, to themselves. Their ministers were almost universally ignorant and unlettered men. As the ambition and cleverness of the race, under slavery, could find no other channel than the ministry, the piety of ministers was but an incident; and so men anxious for rule and authority, but withal ofttimes unscrupulous and godless as well as ignorant, became their preachers. Not all such indeed; but alas! in large proportions! Good but illiterate men numbers of the field preachers were. But large numbers of them were unscrupulous and lecherous scoundrels! This was a large characteristic of "plantation religion;" cropping out even to the present, in the extravagances and wildness of many of their religious practices!

2. Their religion, both of preachers and people, was a religion without the Bible--a crude medley of scraps of Scripture, fervid imaginations, dreams, and superstitions. So thorough was the legal interdict of letters and teaching, that the race, as a whole, knew nothing of the Scriptures nor of the Catechisms of the churches. I state it as a strong conviction, the result of wide inquiry, that at the close of the civil war not five hundred blacks among four and a half millions of my race could be found, in the entire South, who knew the "ASSEMBLY'S CATECHISM;" not five hundred who knew, in its entirety, the CATECHISM of the Episcopal Church. The Ten Commandments were as foreign from their minds and memories as the Vedas of India or the moral precepts of Confucius. Ignorance of the MORAL LAW was the main characteristic of "PLANTATION RELIGION!"

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3. Sad as are these facts in the history of the race, one further item is horrifying; and that is that the prime functions of the race, under slavery were 1st, LUST, and 2d, UNREQUITTED LABOR. This is the most serious feature of the whole slave system; and upon it a volume might be written. But I confine myself to the statement of a few simple glaring facts.

In speaking to the licentious and demoralizing nature of slavery, I am speaking of its general influences. I have no time to waste upon exceptional features. There are black men who tell me that all slave-holders were tyrants and Legrees; but such men I know to be fanatics. There are white men who tell me that slave--holders in general were fathers to their slaves; but such men are manifestly fools. Slave-holders, like all other sorts of men were divided into two classes--the good and the bad: the good, like Baronial lords, like Patriarchs of old, like grand aristocrats of civilizes society, were kind, generous, humane, and fatherly; they were NOBLEMEN; and were was a large class of such men. The bad, and they were the mass of slaveholders, were full of greed, tyranny, unscrupulousness, and carnality. They herded their slaves together like animals. They were allowed to breed like cattle. The marriage relation was utterly disregarded. All through the rurtricts, on numerous plantations, the slaves for generations merely mated and cohabited, as beasts. They were separated at convenience, caprice, or at the call of interest. When separated each took up with other men or women as lust or inclination prompted. Masters and ministers of the gospel taught their slaves, not only that there was no sin in such alliances, but that it was their duty to make new alliances and exercise the animal function of breeding. And hence the cases are numerous where men, sold from one plantation to another, have had six and eight living wives; 001112and women, as many living husbands. Nay more than this, I have the testimony where one man less than fifty years old was the father of over sixty children; of another man who was kept on a plantation with full license as a mere breeder of human beings! And from this disastrous system, so wide has been the separation of families and the rending of the ties of relationship, that now after twenty years of freedom, one cannot take up a copy of the eighty or ninety COLORED NEWSPAPERS printed in the United States without finding at times a score of inquires of husbands for wives and of wives for husbands; of children for parents and of parents for children. Ever and anon I meet with a woman who had dozen children sold from her; and in her old age, with living children, is childless, not knowing where they are! And one case came to my knowledge where a woman married her own son, sold from her in his early boyhood and only discovered the relationship months after the marriage!

Of this gross carnality of the slave system, trained into the blood for generations, until they became mere animals, we see symptoms cropping out ever and anon, in the atrocious acts which are reported in southern newspapers. The slave system is indeed dead, but its deadly fruit still survives. But it should be remembered that these gross sins are common as well among the whites of the South as among its black population. It filled them full of lust as well as their victims.*

*See "A Journey to the Black Country: and "Sea Side and Slave States," by Frederick Law Olmstead.

One would have supposed that with these appalling facts staring him in the face, Dr. Tucker would have taken up the wail of lamentation-"We have offended. Oh, my countrymen!We have offended very grievously,And been most tyrannous. From East to West 000613A groan of accusation pierces Heaven!The wretched plead against us; multitudes,Countless and vehement, the sons of God,Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels onSteam'd up from Cairo's swamps of pestilence.Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forthAnd borne to injur'd tribes slavery and pangs;AND, DEADLIER FAR, OUR VICES, WHOSE deep taintWith slow perdition murders the whole man,His body and his osoul.Coleridge.

Alas, nothing of the kind is visible in all this pamphlet! It is an INDICTMENT, from beginning to end, of a victimized and wronged people! Bishops, presbyters, and laymen all unite in a dark picturing of an entire race, almost oblivious of any wrong doing on their part! Some of these men are painstaking in the endeavor to show that the difficulty lies in the INHERENT NATURE OF THE NEGRO! Poor miserable obtuse creature, he has been to SCHOOL two hundred years! He has had Bishop Howe's "SCHOOLMASTER," and all his teachings; but he still remains an ignorant, stupid, semi-barbarous animal! It is the Negro! the Negro!

And Dr. Tucker, instead of a wail of lamentation at the neglect and outrage which has brought this race to degradation, not only ignores all the conspicuous facts of Negro progress since emancipation, but actually enters a gross and exaggerated charge of deterioration against the entire race. Nay, worse than this; when confronted by brother clergymen, who deny his charges, he goes to work to gather in from every quarter every possible charge of infamy against them! It is evidently a disguised attempt to prove EMANCIPATION A FAILURE!

THE NEGRO RACE SOUTH, PROGRESSIVE IN NUMBERS, INPROPERTY, IN EDUCATION, IN RELIGION.

This indictment of the black race is a false one. I care not how generous may be the professions of Dr. Tucker, 000714his statement before the Episcopal Congress at Richmond was an outrage, and his charges untrue and slanderous. I set before me, at this point, especially, the following summary of his charges. He says (p. 21): "The great facts stare us in the face-that the race is increasing largely in numbers; that since the war but few of them have come up above the moral level of the race; that the average level in material prosperity is but little higher than it was before the war; that in morality there has been a great deterioration since the removal of the restraints of slavery; that there is now no upward movement whatever in morals, and if there is any change it is downward."I address myself to the proof that these charges are false.PROOF FROM VITAL STATISTICS.1st. The admission in this paragraph, viz: that the race is increasing largely in numbers," is a refutation of the charge of general deterioration. Nothing is more established than the fact that a people given up to concubinage and license lose vitality and decline in numbers. Through unbridled lust and the commonality of their women whole islands in the Pacific seas have long since taken up "funeral marches to the grave;"and their populations have become utterly extinct. And so everywhere on earth the integrity and the advance of a people's population have been conditioned on the growth and the permanency of the family feeling. The last census of the nation (1882) bears out these fundamental principles. The increase of the black population from 4,880,009, in 1870, to 6,577,497, in 1882, is in itself a complete refutation of Dr. Tucker's assertion. Its full force can only be seen in connection with another fact, viz: that in the face of the enormous immigration from Europe, added to the natural increase of the American 000815white population, the rate of increase is 34.8 for the black race to 29.2 for the white.

Observe that the rate of increase of the slave population in the decades, viz., from 1850 to 1860, was 23.38, from 1860 to 1870, was 9.9.

But now we have the fact that as soon as slavery declines, up springs this population to the enormous rate of 34.8.* Will Dr. Tucker tell me that no moral facts underlie this growth of a people? That numberical increase is merely the manifestation of animality? Such an assertion is both false and unphilosophical. The vitality of a people is a sure indication of several high qualities. Mere human animals can live and increase nowhere. They are doomed everywhere to destruction. "No country," says Mr. Burke--I substitute "people" -- "No people in which population flourishes and is in progressive improvement can be under a very mischievous government." Freedom then is a better government than slavery.

*It must be remembered, too, that this increase of the colored people is entirely by native birth. More colored people left these States during every one of these decades than came to them. It will be noticed also that the rate of growth by birth is a state of freedom has been much more rapid than in a state of slavery; thirty-four per cent, begin the rate since they were emancipated, while twenty-two per cent, was the average of increase during the last two decades in a state of slavery. These facts clearly indicate that the physical condition of the colored people has been greatly improved since they became free men, and no longer merchantalbe chattels to be bought and sold.-- From "THE FIELD," in paper of Presbyterian Board of Missions for Freedmen.

No, the growth of population evinces the presence of moral qualities. It is a manifestation of industrial forces. It witnesses the existence of the family instinct. It points out forecast, the use of material agencies, and the play of divers intelligent qualities which are absolutely necessary to the persistency of life and the attainment of some of the higher planes of being. THE EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS OF THE RACE.

But, second, the educational progress of the race, refutes Dr. Tucker's charge of deterioration. Previous to emancipation the black race, so far as the intellect is concerned, was a dead race! Look at this people at the present. There is, I know, vast illiteracy among the southern blacks. But there are two sides to all questions; and there is a view of this question which is full of cheer and encouragement.

Remember, then, that previous to emancipation there were not more than 30,000 people of color in the Union who could read and write. At the North those trained in the schools were chiefly confined to the large cities. In the rural districts tens of thousands were cruelly neglected. At the South education was a thing universally interdicted by law; secured only by stealth; and then confined to only a small fraction of the race. Take these facts into consideration, and then consider the grand fact that this day there are 738,164 of this race in annual attendance at school.* Consider that a large number of these have advanced to a knowledge of grammar, geography, and history! Consider that no small portion of these are persons who have stretched forth to philosophic acquaintance and some of the acquisitions of science and literature! Consider that over 15,000 of them are employed as teachers! Consider that in this immense army of scholars there is a grand regiment of undergraduates in fifteen colleges; then another, smaller, but not less important, phalanx fitting themselves for the legal and medical professions; and then a 000917larger host of sober, thoughtful, self-sacrificing men, who are looking forward to the pains, trials, and endurance of a thankless but glorious service as ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

*This is the number reported by Hon. Augustus Orr, State School Commissioner of Georgia, in 1878. This statement included all Southern States except Arkansas, Florida, and Louisiana. The number at this time must well nigh reach 1,000,000. See "Our Brother in Black," p. 166, by Rev. A. S. Haygood, D. D.

Consider these large and magnificent facts, and you get somewhat an idea of the wonderful contrast between the bright and hopeful present and the dark and disastrous night of our past intellectual history!

Join to this the other significant fact that this large reading population has created a demand for a new thing in the history of the race--NEWSPAPER LITERATURE. And thus have sprung into existence over EIGHTY newspapers edited by men of the Negro race. All this, be it noticed, in a downward-going race!STATISTICS OF EDUCATION, FURNISHED BY BUREAU OF EDUCATION, WAtSHINGTON, D.C. Enrollment of colored youths, as far as reported by State school officers, for the year 1880, 784,709.Per cent. of the colored youth of school age enrolled, about 48. Colored school teachers in U.S.A.:Males...10,520Females ....5,314______Total...15,834

Normal schools for colored youth, 44; teachers in these, 227; pupils in them, 7,408.

High schools, or academic, for them, 36; teachers in them, 120; pupils 5,327.

Universities and colleges for the race, 15; teachers in them, 119; students, 1,717.

Schools of theology for them, 22; teachers in them, 65; pupils reported, 880. 001018

Schools of law, 3; teachers in these schools, 10; pupils in the same, 33.

Schools of medicine, 2, with 17 teachers and 87 pupils.THE RELIGIOUS ADVANCEMENT OF THE FREEDMAN.Upon this topic Dr. Tucker gives us simply dogmatism and assertion. He never--to use his own language in reply to his critics-- "undertakes to furnish proof" of his assertions. A man evidently of deep convictions, he is content to use frequent and most positive affirmations. "No one knows better than himself" the grave statements he makes! He "knows" what he asserts "to be absolutely true!" "The consensus of all authorities (?) establish them beyond the power of any man to overthrow them." This is Dr. Tuker's usual style.

All this, let me remind Dr. Tucker, is but OPINION, unsupported, as are the statements of himself and his endorsers, by a single item of documentary or official testimony. And opinion," says no less an authority than John Locke, is "the admitting or receiving any proposition for true upon arguments or proof that are found to persuade us to receive it as true without certain knowledge that it is so." Or, in other words, opinion is altogether a subjective thing. But facts, Dr, Tucker will observe, are objective, i.e., outside of the range of imagination, conjecture, and likewise of dogmatism.

I shall not follow Dr. Tucker in his peculiar mode of setting forth his case. I yield to him a monoply of self-assertion and positivness. Nevertheless, I shall present a few facts upon this subject which, if I do not greatly err, will lessen the weight of Dr. Tucker's cart-loads of intensity and exaggeration.

I present here statistics of the religious status of the 001119black race in the Southern states. These statements are very important. Items of considerable importance, such as baptisms, marriages, contributions, &c., are omitted, from the impossibility of securing details. I have not included the facts relating to Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Campbellites, and Lutherans. I have only taken the work of those denominations which embrace the masses of the black population.

Churches Statistics of Black Population.DENOMINATION.MINISTERS.MEMBERSHIPBaptists.probably 3,000700,000Methodist Episcopal Church (colored membership)not known300,000 African Methodist Episcopal1,832390,000Zion African Methodist Episcopal2,000300,000Colored Methodist Episcopal638125,000Colored Methodist Episcopal Union1012,550Presbyterians 75 15,0007,6461,832,552

Here, then, we have an aggregate of nigh TWO MILLIONS of professed disciples amid the black population of the South. Putting aside all the other items relating to their religious life and conduct, I shall confine myself to this single point of membership. What is to be said concerning it? We will, for Dr. Tucker's sake, make large concessions, (a) on account of the ignorance of these people; (b) for the taint of immorality, the heritage of slavery, which, doubtless, largely leavens their profession; and (c) because their religion is certainly greatly alloyed with phrensy and hysteria, and tinged with the dyes of superstition.

But, after all, is it not, in the main, genuine and true? Is it not, simple and childish though it be, in its essence, Christianity? Does it not lead to prayers, and faith, and Sabbath keeping, and holy meetings, and sacramental observances? Does it not produce fruits of righteousness? Does it not beget astonishing self-sacrifice for the glory of Jesus, and the lavish outpouring of moneys for the extension of Christ's kingdom and the building of churches? 001220

Surely this is the testimony of scores andhundreds-Presbyterians, Congregationalists, above all, Methodists and Baptists, the very men who have done the most for them, lived most with them, and who know them better than any others.

Dr. Tucker, however, has deliberately declared of this immense multitude of Christians (1) "that they have a form of Christianity without its substance, and that they have no comprehension of what that substance ought to be!" (2) "That the great mass of them are hypocrites, and do not know it." (3) "That their religion is an outward form of Christianity, with an inner substance of full license given to all desires and passions" (4) "That almost a whole race of them going down into perdition before our eyes!"*

*The reader will bear in mind that these and similar statements of Dr. Tucker are absolutely contradictory of the statements of Southern men made at the period of Southern "Secession." Then the Southern clergy published to the world, as one ground of justification of their course, THEIR RESPONSIBILITY FOR HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF NEGRO CHRISTIANS, WHOM THEY HAD CONVERTED. Then, as slaves, they were CHRISTIANS. Now, as freemen, they are "HYPOCRITES," going down to perdition! The reconcilement of these inconsistencies I leave to others.

We have a dreadful picture in the 1st Epistle of the Corinthians of the demoralization of an Apostolic Church; and yet the holy Apostle St. Paul did not dare to speak of that Church in the sweeping and distructive way that Dr. Tucker speaks of millions of disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Southern Negro Churches. And I cannot but ask, if it is not horrible thing that a minister of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ should thus assume the perogative of Deity, and thus sit in judgment upon the character and piety of multitudes of people whom he has never seen, and of whom he knows nothing! "Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod,Rejudge His justice, be the God of God!"

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INDUSTRIAL FACTS.

Fourth. I turn from the religious advance of my people to their monetary and industrial condition. And here, too, as in the other cases referred to, there is every cause for thanksgiving. We are indeed a poor people--most likely the poorest, as a class, in the whole nation. This fact of poverty is unavoidable, for our history had one conspicuous peculiarity, viz.: that while enriching others, both law and slavery prevented us from enriching ourselves. At the period of emancipation both these hindrances were removed, and for the first time in two hundred years my people saw open before them the pathway to wealth. The change in their monetary condition has been rapid. They have not, indeed, succeeded as yet in amassing wealth; for, first, no people can extemporize a state of opulence suddenly; nor, second, has it been possible to break down straightway all the unhappy influences and hindrances of slavery. CASTE, the eldest child of slavery, still exists. but, notwithstanding all the difficulties in the way, the black race in this country has begun the race of wealth; has succeeded in entering some of the golden avenues of prosperity and affluence.

Twenty years ago it was a slave race. Over four millions of men and women did not own the bodies in which were enshrined the immortal spirits which resided therein.

Out of those immortal spirits slavery had crushed every noble impulse, and all the springs of action. And see now at once the marvelous change. The instinct of greed, dead for two centuries under the palsying influences of slavery, has been resurrected by the genius of civil freedom.

To-day this same people are the possessors of a wide domain of lands. Immense tracts of land have been brought by them into cultivation, and by this cultivation they have become producers of the most valuable staples. 001422

I am indebted to the Editor of the "People's Advocate" for the following facts: "In the State of Georgia the Negro owns 680,000 acres of land, cut up into farms; and pays taxes on $9,000,000 worth of property. In the Cotton States he owns 2,680,800 acres." And he adds to this the significant remark: "Think of it, that in the Cotton States, including a fraction of over two-thirds of the race, the Negro, in seventeen years, has accumulated territory equal in extent to the size of the State of Connecticut."

Let me suggest here another estimate of this landed property of the Negro, acquired since emancipation. Taking the old slave States in the general, there has been a large acquisition of land in each and all of them. In the State of Georgia, as we have just seen, it was 680,000 acres. Let us put the figure as low as 400,000 for each State--for the purchase of farm lands has been everywhere a passion with the freedman-this 400,000 acres multiplied into 14, i.e. the number of the chief Southern States, shows an aggregate of 5,600,000 acres of land, the acquisition of the black race in less than twenty years.

But Dr. Tucker will observe a further fact of magnitude in this connection: It is the increased PRODUCTION which has been developed on the part of the freedman since emancipation. I present but one staple, and for the reason that it is almost exclusively the result of FREE NEGRO LABOR.

I will take the five years immediately preceding the late civil war and compare them with the five years preceding the last year's census-taking; and the contrast in the number of cotton-bales produced will show the industry and thrift of the black race as a consequent on the gift of freedom:

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YearsBales.Years..Bales.1857. 2,939,51918784,811,2651858. 3,113,96218795,073,5311859. 3,851,48118805,757,3971860. 4,669,77018816,589,32918613,656,00618825,435,845Total18,230,738The five years'workof freedom27,667,367The five years' workof slavery18,230,738Balance in favor offreedom9,436,639

Now this item of production is a positive disproof of Dr. Tucker's statement, "that the average level in material prosperity is but little higher than it was before the war." Here is the fact that the freedman has produced one-third more in five years than he did in the same time when a slave!

Another view of this matter is still more striking. The excess of yield in cotton in seven years [ i.e., from 1875 to 1882] over the seven years [ i.e., from 1854 to 1861]is 17,091,000 bales, being AN AVERAGE ANNUAL INCREASE of 1,000,000 BALES. If Dr. Tucker will glance at the great increase of the cotton, tobacco, and sugar crops South, as shown in Agricultural Reports from 1865 to 1882, and reflect that NEGROES have been the producers of these crops, he will understand their indignation at his outrageous charges of "laziness and vagabondage;" and perhaps he will listen to their demand that he shall take back the unjust and injurious imputations which, without knowledge and discrimination, he makes against a whole race of people.

This impulse to thrift on the part of the Freedmen was no tardy are reluctant disposition. It was the immediate offspring of freedom, and the result was--

First. The founding of the Freedmam's Bank in the city of Washington.

The following facts are worthy of notice:(a) This bank was opened in 1865 and closed in 1874. 001624

(b) No less than 61,000 Freedmen were the depositors in this bank.

(c) The depositors were men and women in every Southern State from Maryland to Louisiana.

(d) The sum total of moneys deposited amounted to over $56,000,000. All which evidences character, industry, moral energy, and the capability of self-support.

The destruction of this Bank, through the rascality of white men, was a great calamity; but it did not quench the ambition of the race. Since then other notable demonstrations of manly power have been shown by the freedmen.

Second. The uprising of thousands in the Southwest and their emigration with great loss of property, health, and life to the west, was not the act of degenerate beings, but of high-souled and aspiring men--albeit they were poor and ignorant. They were cheated wholesale out of their wages by the very men--Dr. Tucker's neighbors--who, he tells us, "know the Negroes and love them" with the "tender remembrances of childhood!" These men, owners of wide, uncultivated tracts of land, refused to sell these Freedmen the smallest patches, in order to keep them them perpetual serfs of the soil. So in deep indignation, they shook the dust of the South from their feet and carried their families into free Kansas, to secure freeholds, liberty, and education for their children.

Third. Just now a fact of magnitude invites the attention of the friends of the Negro. I refer to the projected RAILROAD, already begun by the BLACK CITIZENS of North Carolina. All but four miles of the forty (40) mile route has already been graded, by a black Civil Engineer, employed by the company. The track for the road is to be laid down from Wilmington, N.C., to Wrightsville, on the seaboard; and the whole scheme is the work, in capital and execution, of Freedmen! 001725

Fourth. "The last census shows us that the colored people are assessed for over $91,000,000 worth of taxable property. Does this look like an incurably thriftless race?"*

*See speech of Rev. Dr. Allen, before Presbyterian General Assembly, 1883.

I have referred above to the large landed estate of the black man; and I may add here that it is the result of his own sweatful toil. He has earned his own property. Unlike the Indian, he has had no one to prop him up. He was turned loose suddenly, without any capital, to undertake the duty of self-support. The nation acted as though it owed him no duty and no debt. It gave him his freedom to save its own life; and then left him to struggle for life, if not to die! Justice demanded that, after centuries of slavery, he should have been made the ward of the nation--at least until he learned the ways and provinces of freedom. He was turned out to die.

But neither failure nor death was to be the destiny of the Negro. It never has been in any of the lands of his emancipation. Everywhere, when freedom has come to him, he has discovered all the proclivities to enterprise and personal sustentation. It has been conspicuously so in this nation. The Freedmen of this country, on coming out of bondage, began at once all the laborious activities which their needs demanded, and which were required for the securing a foothold in this land.

Of course this industrial enterprise was not universal. It never is universal in any people. Large numbers could not understand the situation; could not see the grand vista of opportunity and success which freedom opened before them. My own estimate of their progress since emancipation is this, viz: (1) That about one- third have fallen to a lower level than they were previous to emancipation, viz: the aged, the decrepid, the imbruted, and the 001826slaves of the meanest; lowest whites. (2) That another third stand a little above their condition when freedom was given them. And, (3) lastly, that the last third have risen to a state of superiority which already rivals the energy and progress of the American people in general. To start one-third of any people earnestly on the road of glorious progress is a grand result. For in all revolutions of society there is sure to be a great loss of men. For it is with men as it is with seeds--some spring up into life, and some seem to have no productive vitality at all. Says Bishop Butler: "For of the numerous seeds of vegetables and bodies of animals which are adapted and put in the way to improve to such a point or state of natural maturity and perfection, we do not see that one in a million actually does. For the greater part of them decay before they are improved to it, and appear to be absolutely destroyed."* So, too, some men--large classes of men--are sure fall behind in the race of life. But, as the immense loss of seeds does not contradict the fact of supply the world with food, so the actual loss or decline of a third of the Freedmen does not contravene the fact of the real progress of the race. For this same relative loss is discovered in all peoples. It is seen in the white population of this land, notwithstanding all their advantages. Look into the alms and poor houses; into the jails of the country; into the indigent quarters of the large cities; examine the statistics of crime and poverty, and you will see that fully one-third of the white population is constantly going down. Indeed society everywhere advances only by the force and energy of minorities. It is the few who lift up and bear the burdens and give character to the many.

*Butler's Analogy, Ch. V.001927

But, nevertheless, it is advance; and the human race in civilized countries is ever going upward.

Just here I rest my case; and I submit that I have disproved Dr. Tucker's gross indictment of my race. I have shown, by the evidence of incontrovertible fact, by figures and statistics pwhich cannot be denied--

1st. That their numerical increase has been prodigious;

2d. That their acquisition of property has been enormous;

3d. That they show almost a reduplicated capacity for production, the direct result of freedom;

4th. That their rise in education and religion has been almost like the resurrection of a people from death to life!DR. TUCKER'S REMEDIAL SYSTEM.I close this paper with a brief reference to Dr. Tucker's plans for the elevation of the Negro.

They are as follows:1st. That the Northern people shall furnish supplies of money for work among Negroes;

2d. That Southern Missionaries shall use and disburse these moneys in church work among the black race;

3d. That Northern Missionaries shall be excluded from this work.

4th. That black men shall not be entrusted with the training and education their brethren.

As Dr. Tucker is evidently serious in these suggestions, I presume that I must take them up in as serious a manner as be presents them.

Now, I beg to say that nothing can be more non-natural than the plans thus proposed. People, however philanthropic, are rarely prepared to go it blind in the disbursements of moneys. Christian people especially give as "stewards" of their Divine Master. They want to know, first of all, the quality of fitness in their almoners; and, next, that they will use their moneys aright. But here is 002028a proposition which reverses all the settled principles of alms-giving. For--

1st. It cleverly lays the burden of obligation in this matter upon the Northern people. Dr. Tucker says, "You freed the slaves and left them on our hands." * * * "Blood and trouble have come of it so far, and for this you of the North are largely to blame." But the question arises, Has freedom made the alleged heathenism of the Southern blacks any denser than slavery did? Has emancipation plunged the Southern blacks into ignorance and benightedness? And, if not, whence arises the special obligation of the North to perform this duty of evangelization? And then--2d. Why should Southern men be the chosen missionaries to the black race? Whence arises their special fitness for this work? From experience? From high achievement or from large success? Why, Dr. Tucker admits the failure of the South. The Negro has been moulded and fashioned by Southern Christians two centuries and more; and Dr. Tucker avers--I am using his own language--"the Negro is retrograding in morality," (p.2.) "I say deliberately, with a full realization of what the words mean, that the great mass of the Negroes in the South professing religion have a form of Christianity without its substance; and, further, that they have no comprehension of what that substance ought to be," (p. 3.) And this after two hundred years of Southern training!

Then, next, Dr. Tucker, self-contradictory as usual, exhorts--"Work through the Church South;" that is, be it noticed, through this inept and fruitless Church South, which has brought the Negro to a state of ignorance of "what the substance of Christianity ought to be!" But let us follow our author: "Work through the Church South * * * and then you will enlist those who thoroughly know what they are about; know how to reach the 002129colored people; who love them with the remembrances of childhood and youth and manhood, as strangers can never learn or grow to care for them" (p. 27)

Did ever any one hear such assumption! The Church South "thoroughly knows what they are about!" But for two hundred years they have had an awkward way of showing it! "They know how to reach the colored people!" But, alas, in two hundred years have failed to reach them; and now Dr. Tucker himself is calling for a new departure; exhorts an attempt de novo in order to reach and christianize them! This is logic with a vengeance! But lastly comes the claim--"We Southern people know the Negro better than you do!" This is the old claim which the American people have heard ad nauseam. Alas for all their knowledge they never knew them well enough to treat them as men! They never knew them well enough to give them freedom! they never knew them well enough, after freedom came, to stimulate culture, manhood, and superiority among them.

Precisely this same claim was made by the slaveholders in the British West Indies. They were constantly telling the English people, "we know the Negro better than you do." And yet emancipation had to be forced upon bothWest Indian and American slaveholders! With all their knowledge of the Negro, and their exuberant love of him, they both resisted to the utmost the unfettering of their bondmen!

How was it after emancipation? The great work of elevating and educating the Freedmen had to be undertaken by philanthropists outside of the former domains of slavery; by the friends of the black man in England; by Northern men in the United States. I don't know of one single instance in the history of Negro bondage where slaveholders, as a class, have ever voluntarily emancipated the Negro, or, when raised to freedom, have ever voluntarily put themselves 002230to pains to elevate him to manhood, intelligence, and superiority.

I challenge Dr. Tucker to point out one such instance.

3. The main reason Dr. Tucker gives for the rejection of Northern Missionaries is that the "Northern man don't know the Negro." When they ( i.e., the Northern Christians) propose to help the Negroes, the Southern (white) Christians "draw back," he says, "with a feeling of despair, mingled with anger, that God's servants should in wilful ignorance build up the kingdom of evil." Passing strange language this! Here these Northern people, from divers denominations of Christians, have been sending forth missionaries to every quarter of the heathen world--Presbyterians, Baptists, Congregationalists, Methodists, Episcopalians. Everywhere they have gone their work has been so graciously attended by the gifts of God the Holy Ghost, they have shown such wonderful knowledge of human nature, and plied such marvelous skill and practicality that English Civilians, great Governors-General, French and German tourists, yea, even infidel travelers, have spoken of these Northern American missionaries as equal, aned in many cases superior, to all other modern Missionaries. And yet Dr. Tucker gravely tells us, "Send no Northern Missionaries down here!" And why, forsooth, this mandate? Because, without doubt, something besides the grace of God, and high literary culture, and a knowledge of human nature is needed. And pray what is this special quality needed? Why, to use the grotesque language of a humorous acquaintance, "These Northern men--wise, learned, experienced in God's work, full of the Holy Ghost--lack a knowledge of the special science of NEGROOLOGY." That, Dr. Tucker would have us believe, is the exclusive possession of Southern slaveholders!

But how comes it to pass that Northern people "rarely know a Negro when they see him?" As Dr. Tucker seems 002331oblivious of some facts in American History, let me briefly set before him two classes of facts:

The first class:

(a) Let me say that Northern people from Massachusetts, Rhode Island,Connecticut, New York, &c., went to Africa in slave ships, stole and bought native Negroes from the predatory chiefs, and brought them in cargoe to the Northern States. And this fact, first of all, shows some "acquaintance" of a very sorry nature "with Negroes" on the part of Northern people.

(b) These captured Negroes were bought by Northern people by thousands; worked on their farms and in their houses; and ofttimes were put upon the auction block, and sold as good and chattels. And this fact implies, secondarly, a further acquaintance with Negroes.

(c) And, lastly, that these Northern people were NOT Negro-worshippers is evidenced by the fact that these Negroes were kept in ignorance by their owners; whipped at the whipping-post; families were seprated; treated as brutes; once, under the suspicion of insurrection, were hung up in the streets of New York as dogs! And then, after emancipation, for nigh fifty years they were cruelly treated; excluded from cars, coaches, and steamboats; frequently mobbed; and late as 1863, in an awful riot, their houses were sacked, their women whipped in the streets, and their men hung up at the lamp-posts! Does not all this look as though "Northern people knew Negroes when they saw them?"

I turn to the second class of facts:

(a) During the whole period of Northern slavery there was always a class of Northern men, philanthropists, who revolted at a human bondage.

(b) This class of men--Quakers, Episcopalians, and others--were never afraid of slaveholders, and would never allow themselves to be bullied by them.

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(c) At a very early period, even in Colonial times, they asserted themselves, and demanded the abolition of slavery.

(d) hence arose the "Abolition Societies" of the Middle States, who both established schools for Negro children and cdemanded the abolition of slavery. It was these men--the jays Clarkson, Kings, and Kents, of New York; the Boudinots, shotwells, the Benezets, of New Jersey; the Rushs and Kranklins, of Pennsylvania--who ameliorated the condition of Northern Negroes, and, in some cases, destroyed their slavery. They looked upon these people as men, and secured their citizenship. They regarded them as intelligent beings; and so, at last, through their efforts schools,and the colleges of the North--Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Princeton, and Pennsylvania--have been opened to Negroes. Nay, beyond this, they counted them as brethren in Christ; and so they have been received in their churches; and in many cases they have been cordially welcomed to their pulpits.

And now I trust these facts will serve to convince Dr Tucker that Northern people " know a Negro when they see him!" And I beg to add, if he has any doubt of these historical facts, he can easily verify them by any "Common School History of the United States of America."

Dr. Tucker may also learn from this that Northern people have had some experience in the endeavor to civilize and elevate the black race; and so, when they come South on such a mission, they will come, not as novices, but as adepts. In every State North they can point to schools and churches, to intelligent and thrifty communities, nay, in some cases, to wealthy and learned colored men, the result of the endeavors of their fathers to elevate a wronged and injured people, and to redress a dark and shameful past. When the South has done as much for the Negro as the North, then it will be unjust as well as absurd to say that "Southern Missionaries barely know a Negro when they see him!" 002533

For my own part, I differ toto coelo from Dr. Tucker. I rejoice in the aid of all sorts of Christians in this great work. I am glad to have the assistance not only of Northern, but also, and especially, of Southern white missionaries. When, with their other knowledge of the Negro, they come to a recognition of him as a MAN, then they will make the very best missionaries to the Negro. This was the case of old with the Abolitionists. None were so true to the Negro cause as the Grimkés, the Birneys, the Brisbanes, and others.

But I must say, with all candor, that the deliverance of the black race South into the hands exclusively, of Southern whites, has its dangers. I would not, for the life of me, say one word in the least derogatory to Southern white men. They are just the same--no better, no worse--than other men. They are in no way responsible for the acts nor the sentiments of their forefathers. Nay, their fathers themselves were the heirs, NOT the creators, of the heritage of human bondage. But Southern men are but men; and Southern or any other men, who are the descendants of a long line of slaveholders, or of a feudality, or of a nobility, or of an aristocracy, are the heirs of a spirit of dominancy; and carry in their blood all the proclivities to undue mastership and control. Placed in juxtaposition with a degraded and illiterate race, they will naturally, albeit unconsciously, be tempted to a system of feudality or peonage, unless the most careful safeguards are guaranteed that race. There is no such guarantee in placing the Negro entirely in the hands of his former masters. It would be to look for too much from poor human nature to expect of the Southern white man such large disinterestedness as Dr. Tucker demands. He has too many personal interests involved in this problem for him to rise to the height of such lofty virtue; and therefore the temptation should not be set before him.

Nor is this mere speculation. The South has shown its hand. Ever since emancipation the Legislatures of the 002634South have resorted to every possible expedient to neutralize the force of the "AMENDMENTS" which gave freedom to the black man. They, the aristocracy of the South, have left no stone unturned to narrow the limits of the black man's new-born liberty and his rights. Hence it is evidently unsafe to put the Freedman's future entirely in the hands of his former master.

No, the Southern black man needs teachers of diversified characteristics. He needs the Southern Missionary, for he is to the "manner born," and understands certain phases of life, society, and character which no other man knows. But he needs, too--and so does the Southern white man need --the Northern element. No civilization on this continent will be worth a cent which lacks a large infusion of the large common-sense, the strong practicality, the fine intelligence, the lofty culture, the freedom-loving spirit, and the restless aspiration of the people of the North.

Hence, it seems to me, that there must be an element of aberration in Dr. Tucker's constitution when he deliberately ejaculates "Send no more Northern Missionaries down here!" Here, when the whole civilized world is instinct with curiosity at the manifestation of the peculiar civilization of the North; and delegates are coming hither from England and China, from France and Japan, from Germany and Madagascar, to study it, and carry away with them its very best elements as contributions to the higher civilization of the future; Dr. Tucker peremptorily demands that the Negro is to be entirely shut out from it.

Dr. Tucker is mistaken. He has not the ability to erect another Chinese wall to keep out this (to him) objectionable element. What has been so graciously and fruitfully begun by Northern teachers, preachers, and philanthropists will be continued, until the Negro in the South is re-fashioned, enlightened, and lifted up to the very highest planes of civilization, grace, and manhood. 002735

4. Equally mistaken is Dr. Tucker in another most important point. He seems to think that the work of educating the Negro race is to be entrusted chiefly to white men. "The Negroes," he says, are not well enough educated, not yet on a high enough level, to make good use of any help you may extend to them. The Southern white people, who know all about the race, and how to deal with them, are the only ones who can work judiciously to lay sure foundations."

I cannot dwell upon this topic. I only wish to say three or four things:

1st. That hundreds of well-furnished and efficient colored teachers (about 16,000 at the present) are now in the field doing noblae service as teachers.

2d. That hundreds more can be obtained for the same service at any time.

3d. That hundreds more besides these are preparing in schools, academies, and colleges for a life service as teachers among their race; and there is no likelihood of a lack of supply of colored teachers in the farthest future.

4th. That an INDIGENOUS AGENCY in the evangelization of a people is a UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE. Negroes are no exception to this principle; and the man or the organization which attempts the training of the black race by ignoring this principle may surely expect these two inevitable results:

a. They will doubtless get a certain following of people; but their gatherings, save in the rarest exceptional cases, will be nothing more or less than useless "snobberies," to be perpetually petted or paid for their allegiance, and everlastingly deficient in strength and manliness. And,

b. They will find the masses about them will resist all their inducements, and, under the racial impulse, will go off to any standard lifted up by a man of their own blood.

The true leaders of a race are men of that race; and any 002836attempt to carry on missions opposed to this principle is sure to meet disastrous failure!

The Negro race is a living, not a dead race--alive in the several respects of industry, acquisitiveness, education, and religious aspiration. Not entirely divorced as yet from the sore diseases of the Egypt from which they have only recently been delivered, they are, nevertheless, making mighty efforts for cure and healing by both the appliances of education and the Blood of the Lamb. It is a race instinct in every section with HOPE and aspiration. All the springs of action are moving in it. Its leaders, everywhere, conscious, indeed, of deep, radical defects within, and most formidable hindrances without, have, notwithstanding, but few misgivings as to the future. They have very great confidence, first of all, in certain vital qualities inherent in the race! They trust those universal and unfailing tendencies of TRUTH, JUSTICE, and EQUITY, which have ever attended their history on this continent! They look with no uncertainty to the large and loving BROTHERHOOD of countless Christians, of every name, in this land, whose hearts are alive with pity for the past sorrows of the Negro; whose prayers go up as clouds of incense for his restoration; and whose purses pour forth annually tens of thousands for his well-being and salvation! And they repose in quiet confidence upon the marvelous mercy and loving-kindness of a divine Deliverer and Saviour, who has wrought out a most gracious and saving providence for them!

These succors and assistances cannot fail! They will surely serve to realize the qualities and justify the character implied in the epithet of Homer, when he speaks of"Æthiopia's Blameless Race."