Various

“ Education is not progress but is a means of it. A brain full of book knowledge, whose physical basis is the product of centuries of barbarism, is an absurdity that we do not half realize, from our excessive traditional reverence for school and college training. We forget that knowledge is not power unless it is digested and assimilated. ”

“ But the Indian has been an irritant throughout the whole history of our occupancy of the land, and in all parts of it. Blood has flowed freely in the track of our wrongs against him, and will do so until we act like Christians and he becomes one. The Chinamen on our Western coast are few, and yet how their coming has shaken the nerves of the nation! What other set of immigrants, so few in number, has excited so much irritation—not on their part, but among ourselves about them? But the great disturber—yet the utterly unintentional disturber—of the peace of this nation, is the negro. ”

“ Indians are easily taught, for their minds are quick; their bodies are a greater care than their brains; but morals are the chief concern of their teachers. Hence their education should be first for the heart, then for health, and last for the mind, reversing the custom of placing mind before physique and character. This is the Hampton idea of education.
Apply sanctified common sense to the Indian problem and you will save them in spite of the steam engine and the threats of fate. ”

“ The nation that emancipates a large number of slaves assumes a grave responsibility. This is increased if the emancipation is immediate and the ex-slaves remain on the soil, and especially if they differ widely in race from the master-class. All these difficulties attach to our Act of Emancipation; but they are not an argument against emancipation. The old abolitionists were right—immediate emancipation was the nation’s duty. ”

“ Many are turning from idol worship and giving evidence of genuine conversion. Such men as Jee Gam, so intelligent, so modest, so pious, are proof that the work is not superficial; and the eagerness of those converts as well as their teachers to extend the effort to the Chinese in the mines, and even to carry the Gospel to China, is proof of a missionary spirit as well as of genuine piety. ”

“ God’s appreciation of the need of homes for the ex-slaves is seen in the fact that He had employed gangs,—not of men, but of nations—for centuries in clearing the land, building houses, and planting olive-yards and vine-yards for them.
This act of emancipation must be the model for Christian nations, so far as the circumstances are the same. There must be no preliminary apprenticeship, but immediate emancipation, followed by prompt, thorough, and persistent training of the people in knowledge, piety, and in acquiring homes. ”

“ The reports brought back by the students themselves, the testimony of Trustees and County Superintendents, the new students brought here through their influence, all reveal to us as we have not realized it before, the greatness of the service the University is rendering to the cause of education, morality, religion and social life throughout the great Southwest. Our students are our epistles; and becoming known and being read by the people wherever they go, are turning the thoughts and hearts of others to the University. ”

“ We have enacted the Freedman into a king where all are sovereigns, and a prophet where all the Lord’s people are priests, but we have not given him the knowledge or the spiritual grace that alone can anoint him as a king or priest. ”

“ Sound and practical views on all that pertains to permanent prosperity are dominant. It is not likely they will be materially modified, save for the better. Our statesmen and philanthropists are coming to prize more and more those forces in man which are developed by a Christian education. The want that is looming up before them, is good schools for the masses in every section of the country. They voice this want in their public utterances, and the sound thereof is echoing and re-echoing over the land. It has in it the promise of expansion and universal application. ”

“ The new movement for the education of Indian youth in schools at the East, begun three years ago at Hampton by Capt. Pratt, deserves encouragement, not as superseding the schools among the tribes, but as helping them. The sending of these young people from their homes has attracted the attention of the [391] Indians to the subject of education more than any other thing that has taken place for years; and the correspondence which has sprung up between the parents and the children, as well as the return of the educated pupils, will deepen the interest. ”

“ The great concern we have about the future is that our friends in the North will not be ready to meet the growing demands of this great work of uplifting the millions of recently emancipated people in the South, by a sufficiently large and constant giving. With the experience of the last fifteen years in mind, we can say with the full assurance of conviction that the call for the enlargement and strengthening of the University is in some vital respects more imperative now than ever before. ”

“ While this eastern work at Carlisle and Hampton is incidental to the general educational effort which must be made at the West, it is, more than anything else, pushing the Indian question to a proper settlement by creating public sentiment. For a Congressman to see an Indian hoeing corn, does more good than piles of documentary evidence. The hundreds of clear-headed, hard-handed young red-skins who will, ere long, be settled among the tribes, will, we think, be strong enough to sustain each other and to teach the rest. ”

“ Ruffner, Supt. of Public Instruction of Virginia, representing the conservative views of the South, had already uttered, that there is no way of making the Freedmen safe members of society but by educating them. To the colored people themselves nothing is more inspiring and helpful than the kind of work achieved by the American Missionary Association in your behalf. ”

“ But these people are here and they must stay; they are so numerous that you cannot ignore them; you must choose between leaving them as they are, a perpetual source of annoyance and danger, or training them to become useful citizens. Moreover, they are your neighbors, fallen among thieves, which stripped them of their raiment and wounded them, and you must choose between the part of the priest and Levite or of the good Samaritan. The meanest of them all is your brother, and you are your brother’s keeper. ”

“ It is now two and a half years since Indian students were enrolled at the Hampton Institute; but I never saw a more radical change of life than appears in these men. They represent the worst stock in the Indian territory: the class that the West declares can’t be elevated any more than the buffalo. If the West knows anything, it knows that you can’t improve the prairie Indian. ”

“ There is on the part of the students a growing comprehension of the value and of the necessity of a thorough education, and consequently a very much stronger desire and purpose to take long courses of study. This is one of the most hopeful facts connected with our work. It required a wonderful amount of determination and patience on the part of both professors and students to engineer the first classes through a college course of study. ”

“ However gratifying a gift may be to the receiver, nevertheless it puts him to a disadvantage. The gift-taker becomes under obligation to the gift-maker. The receiver’s joy in a gift terminates in himself. It has a mixture of dependence and submission in it. But the giver is placed under no obligation to the receiver. Moreover, he inevitably ministers to his own well-being, though it may be unconsciously. “Every man is a friend to him that giveth gifts.” ”

“ Denison of Hampton writes of the twelve captive Indian warriors from Florida received by him into the church: “We are not deceived into thinking that these Indians present a highly civilized type of piety, but after careful observation, we are forced to believe that, as regards the pith and marrow of Christianity, they are our beloved brethren, for this one thing they do if ever men did it, forgetting the things that are behind, they press toward the mark. ”

“ Ten miles from a leading city a young lady writes: “This is such a wicked place that out of ninety day scholars I can get only forty to come to Sabbath-school. I begin school at eight, and close at half-past five in the evening. Parents think the children are not learning anything unless they stay in school as long as the field hands work.”
A young man, whose recitations in class are always excellent, says: “I have professed a hope in Christ, and joined the church. The letter you wrote me two or three years ago concerning religion was in my mind all the time before I professed hope. ”

“ It is quite possible for young people to leave school with fair knowledge of the text-books, yet profoundly ignorant of everything else, unless access to libraries and thorough Bible training accompany the regular school work, and are made a part of it. ”

“ Whatever other danger threatens this republic, or calls for the labors of its Christian people, that arising from the three colored races is, I do not say the greatest, but the most obvious. The vast influx of European peoples does [392] indeed, awaken serious apprehension, for they bring with them infidelity or Romanism; yet thus far no overt peril has arisen from this source, for they have so spread themselves among the masses that their influence has gathered to no focal point. ”

“ We watch with peculiar interest the indications of the first month of church and school work, in their relation to the general results of the year. The first month has passed, and we have abundant reason to take courage and press forward. Never did a year begin with fairer prospects of success. Never before, perhaps, have so many students reported on the opening day of the University. ”

“ And herein—the helping of the old-time colored churches of the South to a public sentiment that demands more of purity and of education in their ministry—we find much of our incentive and of our mission. Their children come to our schools and soon learn to call for more intellectual and moral cultivation in their preachers. Not a few of their best pastors were trained in our institutions. ”

“ The proposition met with favor, and a Christmas service of worship with a Christmas offering to some deserving cause became incorporated in the annual school plans. It occurs to us that such holiday gifts by Sabbath-schools and households have the following advantages:
One is, they afford the young people more real pleasure. The happiness from rejoicing over the good of others is an exercise of the purest affection and the finest feeling of the human heart. ”

“ Sons of Indian Chiefs, at Carlisle, are now making a portion of the shoes, harnesses, wagons, tin-ware and other supplies needed by the Department of Indian Affairs.
Indians think. Their wise ones know that there is no hope for them but in taking the white man’s road. But there is also a stubborn, unyielding class. [407] There are progressives and conservatives, as among all thinking people.
The braves will not fight the people who are educating their children. Every Indian child at school is a hostage. ”

“ In Texas, there is a tidal wave setting strongly in favor of popular education, impelled by the far-sightedness which discerns that the flow of emigration of the best sort trends away from territory, however rich and inviting, where free schools for all classes are not abundant. ”

“ There is also more self-denial in giving than in receiving, and self-denial is the essence of virtue. The receiver has no natural habit or inclination to counteract, but the giver must overcome many obstacles which require superior virtue. The more young people do to develop the attribute of virtue, the more real pleasure they are sure to experience.
And then again, God promises to reward the giver but not the receiver. This is a great consideration, and may well be taken into account by all teachers and parents. ”

“ By his aid a church has been built to which he summons his people every Sunday, acting as interpreter when there is occasion.
—The negro Anderson, who has had great experience in travel and adventure in Western Africa, is about to undertake the training of elephants for service in Liberia. He has at his command elephant hunters from the vicinity of the Congo, who will endeavor to capture and bring to Monrovia as many of the animals as are wanted. As domestic animals in Liberia are few in number and affected badly by the climate, this new enterprise is looked upon with great favor. ”

“ Art VIII. This society, in collecting funds, in appointing officers, agents and missionaries, and in selecting fields of labor, and conducting the missionary work, will endeavor particularly to discountenance slavery, by refusing to receive the known fruits of unrequited labor, or to welcome to its employment those who hold their fellow-beings as slaves. ”

“ In conclusion, we think it proper to dwell for a moment upon the fact that the Atlanta University, besides the influence which it wields directly upon its scholars, reaches, through the many who pass out from its walls as teachers, almost the entire colored population of our State. While the mental man is being developed, the moral man is carefully trained, and temperance and religion are important parts of the instruction given. ”