Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

new home than those of Hayti and the British colonies of the West India Islands. Their close touch with the Anglo-Saxon people, the educational and religious influence, the industry and enterprise of the land, ought to fit African leaders for independent national life. If ever the negroes can be fitted for self-government, they have had splendid opportunity for such preparation, North and South, during the past thirty years. This may be the way of Providence concerning the sons of Ham.

4. The gradual exodus plan, whether it covers twenty or thirty years, would annually throw new and vigorous life into the new African home and government.

5. If Christian negroes, ministers of the gospel particularly, have the zeal and the missionary spirit of their white brethren, they will embrace this plan to carry the gospel message to their kindred of the Dark Continent. Through them Africa can be Christianized. More ought to be done for Africa by a large number of negro ministers of the gospel in one year than has thus far been accomplished in fifty years.

6. It solves the negro problem. The exodus of this people puts forever at rest this vexed question. Without it, there is no peace for the South; its development is checked; its prosperity is lame and sickly; misunderstanding of the negroes between the North and the South will continue; violence and lawlessness will hardly cease; the negro's idleness will continue to paralyze agricultural industry; and the alarming increase of crime and vice among

this people will hasten the day of a pitiless war of

races.

In these pages the Africans have frequently been referred to as negroes. The term has been used in no sense to express anything that is degrading. Under the term "colored population" are included negroes, mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons, Chinese, Japanese, and Indians. Negroes designate all those of African descent.

We have described this people as a daily witness of their life on the farm, in the village, and in the town, for a period of twenty-eight years. Neither ill will nor prejudice has been our motive. We have befriended them in their educational work and in their religious work. We have defended them in times of violence. We are not conscious that there is a negro, living or dead, whom we have knowingly wronged in any sense whatsoever, and this is the statement of candor and truth.

Our plea to-day is-as it has ever been our plea -as long as the negroes remain among us, show them kindness-genuine kindness-and in full measure. Deal fairly and honestly with them. Help them educationally, religiously, and industrially. Help them with good counsel. Organized efforts may improve their morals. Industrial schools, not makeshifts, but such as shall do what the name implies, may do much. The common schools, so far as they relate to this people, and so far as these agencies can be judged by the fruit they have borne, are not satisfactory. They have removed illiteracy in a degree. The beneficiaries have not been in

spired to make their lives useful, but rather to shun and despise honest toil. Make these schools something better than mere mechanical agents to impart so much knowledge. Lessons in punctuality, cleanliness, honesty, industry, and the like, would be invaluable to this race. Make these schools morally disciplinary. Knowledge should show the path to virtue. Make the common schools efficient agents to energize moral principle. Dead perfunctory hearing of lessons is a waste of time and money.

In dealing with the race problem, and until it is solved, no duty is more solemnly binding upon the Southern people, and joined to every interest, than obedience to constituted legal authority. Defective laws are better than no laws. A bad government is better than anarchy. To render obedience to "the powers that be," to sustain the authorities, to let the law take its course, are the dictates of reason. A lawless land, where every man can take his grievances, real or imaginary, into his own hands, is an accursed land. There can be no safety to life or property where this spirit prevails. Mob law is hateful in every way. It is subversive of justice. It is an adder, always stinging its deluded victims. It converts right into wrong. It damages the participant; to him it is a personal injury. It is cruel in all its features. Under such a rule innocence has no protection. To-day it strikes the negro; tomorrow it threatens the white man. It is ruinous to the country. It shames our Christianity. Such a law is a cheat and a delusion. It proposes to correct crime with crime, and so it forms a league with

guilt. It has done infinite harm, and reformed nothing. Distress and trouble have invariably come home to its blind partisans.

"Righteousness exalteth a nation," not violence. Strengthen the right by every influence that can give it power. Wrong in every form must be brought into disrepute. The perjurer wickedly insults the God in whose hand his breath is, severs the bond that binds truth to the throne of justice, and destroys the confidence that holds society together. The assassin assumes the prerogative of God, and loads his memory with a crime that gnaws to the core. Every lawless act has its penal consequences. No crime exalts, but degrades. All guilt

lowers the man before the court of his own soul. Wrong is commissioned with curses; right is dowered with blessings to mankind. Right knows neither rich nor poor, neither white nor black.

To do the right is the path of wisdom and virtue. The best interests of the individual and the country depend upon it. Here is hope; here is order; here is security. Happy are the people who love and honor the laws of the land. Every evasion, infraction, or subterfuge affecting the purpose or the execution of law is a public injury. Right embodied in statutes, and these firmly and impartially enforced, are essential to peace and prosperity.

[blocks in formation]

Anglo-Saxons a dominant race, Bills, railroad land grant, 140,

[blocks in formation]
« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »