Various

“ All the Negro asks is to be treated with justice and equity, and to be given a fair chance in life. We have simply to apply the elementary principles of our common Christianity to the problem and deal with the Negro in the spirit of the Golden Rule and the whole difficulty vanishes. It looks as though God had made this a polychromatic country—red, black, white and yellow—on purpose that we might give a gospel illustration of the essential unity of all races, and show how these rainbow tints are to be blended in the white light of Christian brotherhood. ”

“ It is for us to clear the way thus for Providence to carry out its wise designs for this race. And if we fulfill our part of the work faithfully, what may not this people, educated and regenerated, add of blessing and benefit to our common country. If out of a race of slaves God in the old time could raise up a Moses, if out of a rude race of sea pirates and robber chiefs, who drank their mead from the skulls of their enemies, He could raise up a Shakespeare, what may He not develop out of this long despised and defrauded people? ”

“ The South is still poor and cannot furnish adequately the means for doing this work as it should be done. The benevolence of the North must furnish still larger sums for education, that the colored race may be made safe for us and for themselves.
And, last but not least, we must secure to the Negro the full enjoyment of all his rights and privileges in church and State. He cannot attain the measure of success and usefulness toward which Providence points, if he is to be kept in a state of peonage. A black man is no better for being black, but he is none the less a man on that account. ”

“ All the ingenious schemes for settling this troublesome question by taking up the black race bodily and dropping it in some roomy region far away from all possible contact with white people, are utterly delusive. The Negro does not want to go elsewhere. Having been compelled to make his home here for two centuries, he is domesticated here, and has as good a right to remain as the white man. Moreover, he can see as well as any one that this is the best country in the world to live in—the land offering greatest opportunity for advancement, the poor man's Paradise. ”

“ It is such a people that we may predict will have a large share in adding to our National prosperity in the future.
Our first duty is to aid the Negro to attain more of moral power. Whatever he wins in the future he must secure because he deserves to. It will not come to him by favoritism nor by chance, but because he conquers the situation, and by his own ability and resolute endeavor fairly captures the prize of success. This the weak, degraded, untutored, semi-barbarous Negro can never do. ”

“ The caste question agitates our great religious assemblies. The spoliation of the civil rights of the Negro is one of the most menacing features in our politics. Bitter race prejudices keep Southern cities in a ferment, and even break out in dreadful massacres. This race problem will continue to be one of the most momentous and disturbing questions in American public life, until somehow we learn how to get into line with Providence, and find some solution that harmonizes with the great movements that have the hand of God in them. ”

“ Nor is it desirable that the black man should leave us, even if he wanted to. It would impoverish us in no small degree and cripple us in our advancement. He is the natural laborer of the South, and has added, as we shall see, immensely to its prosperity since the war, and he is to be one of the chief factors in securing the future wealth of the country. These reasons combine with overwhelming force to show that an exodus is undesirable and impossible, and that the Negro is here to stay. ”

“ The Negro is to be a very important factor in promoting the future prosperity of the country. Already it is manifest that his value to the South as a freed man is far greater than the price formerly set upon him as a chattel. The unrequited toil of the slave is seen in the light of history to be the dearest kind of labor. It was frequently said after the war that the emancipated Negro would be worthless as a laborer ”

“ But, as a matter of fact, far more good work has been done in the South since the war than before, and for the most part the Negro has done it. Great crops of cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, corn, and other staples have been raised and marketed; mines have been developed, railroads built, manufactories established, and hundreds of other industries opened and pushed in the new era of prosperity which has dawned in the South; and while the capital and brains for this have been furnished by the whites, and largely from the North, the manual labor has been done mainly by the blacks. ”

“ It shows that if they can only be given "a white man's chance" they will be as thrifty and prosperous as their Caucasian brothers, and that the wealth which this rapidly increasing race will produce in the next half century will much of it be their own property. Poverty is no more an essential characteristic of the African than of the white American, and it looks as though the Negro was likely to win his fair share of our prosperity in the years to come. ”

“ Having been brought by the providence of God to expiate its former wrongs to the black man at such immense cost of treasure and blood, the Nation will be slow to tax itself enormously to do him another wrong. ”

“ In a country ravaged and denuded by a long and destructive conflict, themselves penniless, with none of the knowledge and training that would fit them for competition with shrewder and abler classes, there seemed small hope of their getting more than a bare livelihood. But ambition, mother wit, and a rare aptitude for learning have helped them on till the gains they have made for themselves are quite astonishing. ”

“ The Iowa Woman's Union is working nobly toward the support of our school at Savannah, Ga., and the sympathetic bond between helpers North and helpers South shows that the money contributions open the way to warmer missionary impulse and more efficient service—the influence acting and re-acting, adding blessings both to him that gives and him that takes. One of their teachers writes:
"Never have we had a more prosperous year, if we are to take numbers into account. Every seat in school is taken, and we are obliged to dispose of about sixty more the best way we can. ”

“ And the universities for higher education find the Negro as susceptible to the best culture, as capable of receiving thorough discipline and of being highly educated as the white boys and girls in our Northern colleges. ”

“ Our Chinese brethren have their full share in the family feeling which for ages has been nurtured in their race. This feeling is even intensified by their new life in Christ. They long for what they hope to make a Christian home, and greatly desire to perpetuate themselves in children who may follow them in following Christ. But what are they to do for wives? Many live in a virtual celibacy that is hopeless, because enforced by the betrothals made for them in China by their parents or elder brothers. ”

“ And besides this, is the work being done by the South itself for the colored youth in its public schools. A million Negroes are in the 15,000 colored schools of the South to-day, being taught by 15,000 teachers of their own color, the best of whom have been educated in these schools nurtured by Northern benevolence. And what is the result? The illiteracy in this race diminished 10 per cent. between 1870 and 1880, showing the eagerness of the people for improvement. It is estimated that two millions of the blacks can now read the Bible for themselves. ”

“ The simple thing to be insisted on is that he shall be treated as a man, entitled to the same rights as other men, and protected in his enjoyment of them. This is no time to relax our emphasis on this point, when the bitterness of the caste spirit is venting itself in violence, and in assertion that white supremacy must be maintained by illegal means if it cannot be by legal. ”

“ Haygood estimates that about $50,000,000 has been spent for the education of the Negro since the war, nearly half of which has come from the benevolence of the North. Through the American Missionary Association alone some $10,000,000 has gone into the school and church work for the Negro, both alike educational. There are some 200 schools carried on in the South by different benevolent organizations, having over 28,000 colored youth in them. Of these, ninety are colleges or high schools, and furnish teachers and educated leaders for this race. ”

“ Others think the short way to peace is by force, keeping the Negro down with a strong hand, and keeping the Anglo Saxon on top by any vigorous means that may be needed. Others, again, think there never can be any solution of the problem so long as the two races occupy the same territory, and they propose some mammoth scheme of colonization to take the blacks away to some quarter of the world where they can be by themselves. ”

“ The avidity with which they receive education, and profit by it, is another indication of their capacity for advancement. True, there is still an appalling illiteracy among them, some 70 per cent. of them in the South being unable to write. But we must remember that hardly a quarter of a century ago it was a crime to teach one of them to read; they were sedulously kept in compulsory ignorance, and since the ban was removed, poverty, lack of schools and teachers, and other causes have prevented their advancement as rapidly as we may expect in future. ”

“ They have responded wonderfully to every effort made to elevate them, and have shown in themselves such versatility and vigor of intellect as give high promise for their future.
Their own advancement in material prosperity is an indication of this. Never was there a people left in worse plight than they were at the close of the war. ”

“ The Negroes, like the Athenians of Paul's day, are very religious. They revel in camp meetings and fairly wallow in revivals. But too often their piety is the mere gush of emotion, and in hideous conjunction with gross evils. They need an intelligent piety and an educated ministry. As Dr. Powell said, they ought to have 7,000 educated ministers, when now in our sense of the word educated, they have hardly 500. The church work of this Association is a powerful aid to their moral upliftment. ”

“ The twenty-one cotton crops from 1841 to 1861, raised by slave labor, amounted to 58,500,000 bales; the twenty-one cotton crops from 1865 to 1885, raised by free labor, amounted to 93,500,000 bales. There was a gain, with free labor, of nearly 35,000,000 bales, worth $2,000,000,000, or about the full estimated value of all the slaves set free by the war. These facts show the value of the Negro to the South simply as a common laborer.
But his importance as a factor in securing a National prosperity is much enhanced when we note his remarkable capacity for improvement. ”

“ Some greatly desire to send for their wives, but not only does the Restriction Law bar the entrance, but the father in China will probably raise effectual objection. A son is as much the property of his father at sixty as at six, and all he has, not only in property, but in wife and children as well, is under the father's control. The daughter-in-law, if strong and willing, is a very serviceable person about the old homestead in China, and the appeals of the son for the enjoyment of his wife's society in California are answered with the advice to get him another wife here. ”

“ Some have hoped that time would settle the burning question; if people would only stop talking about it, especially meddlesome people far away from the real pinch of the trouble, they fancy that somehow the mere flight of years would adjust differences and secure to all their rights. ”

“ At a given time each month they divide the accumulated contributions among the different societies as they may elect. The American Missionary Association has occasion to be grateful for this "Extra Cent-a-Day" plan in the pledge of about thirty dollars to its treasury. I pass it along in these "Notes," as these friends hold no patent right upon the method, and would gladly see it adopted in many churches.
* * * * *
There seems to be a great localization of patriotic Christian thought in New England upon the Southern problem now, as there has not been since the war closed. ”

“ It was made manifest that the Negro can succeed in any trade or occupation that the white man follows. They are diversifying their labor more and more. They are physicians, lawyers, master-mechanics, bridge-builders. ”

“ So many have come in who are professing Christians, and still it seems as though we had before us to teach them the rudiments of Christian living; and there are so many older ones with no knowledge of the Way, that the heart almost grows faint at the outlook. ”

“ Hence the great need, as in the dark days of the war, of multiplying the means of equipment. The money should be poured out with a lavish hand to sustain a vastly enlarged working force. Money can never be spent at a better time, nor for a better purpose. ”