Preface
It seems eminently fitting and proper in this year, the fiftieth anniversary
of the Proclamation of Emancipation that the Negro should give pause and look
around him at the things which he has done, those which he might have done, and
those which he intends to do. We pause, just at the beginning of another half
century, taking stock of past achievements, present conditions, future
possibilities.
In considering the literary work of the Negro, his pre-eminence in the field
of oratory is striking. Since the early nineteenth century until the present
time, he is found giving eloquent voice to the story of his wrongs and his
proscriptions. Crude though the earlier efforts may be, there is a certain grim
eloquence in them that is touching, there must be, because of the intensity of
feeling behind the words.
Therefore, it seems appropriate in putting forth a volume commemorating the
birth of the Negro into manhood, to collect some few of the speeches he made to
help win his manhood, his place in the economy of the nation, his right to stand
with his face to the sun. The present volume does not aim to be a complete
collection of Negro Eloquence; it does not even aim to present the best that the
Negro has done on the platform, it merely aims to present to the public some few
of the best speeches made within the past hundred years. Much of the best is
lost; much of it is hidden away in forgotten places. We have not always
appreciated our own work sufficiently to preserve it, and thus much valuable
material is wasted. Sometimes it has been difficult to obtain good speeches from
those who are living because of their innate modesty, either in not desiring to
appear in print, or in having thought so little of their efforts as to have
lost them.
The Editor is conscious that many names not in the table of contents will
suggest themselves to the most casual reader, but the omissions are not
intentional nor yet of ignorance always, but due to the difficulty of procuring
the matter in time for the publication of the volume before the golden year
shall have closed.
In collecting and arranging the matter, for the volume, I am deeply indebted
first to the living contributors who were so gracious and generous in their
responses to the request for their help, and to the relatives of those who have
passed into silence, for the loan of valuable books and manuscripts. I cannot
adequately express my gratitude to Mr. John E. Bruce and Mr. Arthur A.
Schomburg, President and Secretary of the Negro Society for Historical Research,
for advice, suggestion, and best of all, for help in lending priceless books and
manuscripts and for aid in copying therefrom.
Again, we repeat, this volume is not a complete anthology; not the final word
in Negro eloquence of to-day, nor yet a collection of all the best; it is merely
a suggestion, a guide-post, pointing the way to a fuller work, a slight memorial
of the birth-year of the race.
The Editor.
October, 1913.
CIVIL RIGHTS AND SOCIAL EQUALITY2
By Hon. John R. Lynch
The House having under consideration the civil-rights bill, Mr.
Lynch
said:
Mr. Speaker:
I will now endeavor to answer the arguments of those who have
been
contending that the passage of this bill is an effort to bring
about
social equality between the races. That the passage of this bill
can in
any manner affect the social status of any one seems to me to be
absurd
and ridiculous. I have never believed for a moment that social
equality
could be brought about even between persons of the same race. I
have
always believed that social distinctions existed among white
people the
same as among colored people. But those who contend that the
passage of
this bill will have a tendency to bring about social equality
between
the races virtually and substantially admit that there are no
social
distinctions among white people whatever, but that all white
persons,
regardless of their moral character, are the social equals of each
other; for if by conferring upon colored people the same rights
and
privileges that are now exercised and enjoyed by whites
indiscriminately
will result in bringing about social equality between the
races, then
the same process of reasoning must necessarily bring us to the
conclusion that there are no social distinctions among whites,
because
all white persons, regardless of their social standing, are
permitted to
enjoy these rights. See then how unreasonable, unjust, and false
is the
assertion that social equality is involved in this legislation. I
cannot
believe that gentlemen on the other side of the House mean what
they say
when they admit as they do that the immoral, the ignorant, and the
degraded of their own race are the social equals of themselves and
their
families. If they do, then I can only assure them that they do not
put
as high an estimate upon their own social standing as respectable
and
intelligent colored people place upon theirs; for there are
hundreds and
thousands of white people of both sexes whom I know to be the
social
inferiors of respectable and intelligent colored people. I can
then
assure that portion of my Democratic friends on the other side of
the
House whom I regard as my social inferiors that if at any time I
should
meet any one of you at a hotel and occupy a seat at the same table
with
you, or the same seat in a car with you, do not think that I have
thereby accepted you as my social equal. Not at all. But if any
one
should attempt to discriminate against you for no other reason
than
because you are identified with a particular race or religious
sect, I
would regard it as an outrage; as a violation of the principles of
republicanism; and I would be in favor of protecting you in the
exercise
and enjoyment of your rights by suitable and appropriate
legislation.
No, Mr. Speaker, it is not social rights that we desire. We have
enough
of that already. What we ask is protection in the enjoyment of public
rights. Rights which are or should be accorded to every citizen
alike.
Under our present system of race distinctions a white woman of a
questionable social standing, yea, I may say, of an admitted
immoral
character, can go to any public place or upon any public
conveyance and
be the recipient of the same treatment, the same courtesy, and the
same
respect that is usually accorded to the most refined and virtuous;
but
let an intelligent, modest, refined colored lady present herself
and ask
that the same privileges be accorded to her that have just been
accorded
to her social inferior of the white race, and in nine cases out of
ten,
except in certain portions of the country, she will not only be
refused,
but insulted for making the request.
Mr. Speaker, I ask the members of this House in all candor, is
this
right? I appeal to your sensitive feelings as husbands, fathers,
and
brothers, is this just? You who have affectionate companions,
attractive
daughters, and loving sisters, is this just? If you have any of
the
ingredients of manhood in your composition you will answer the
question
most emphatically, No! What a sad commentary upon our system of
government, our religion, and our civilization! Think of it for a
moment; here am I, a member of your honorable body, representing
one of
the largest and wealthiest districts in the State of Mississippi,
and
possibly in the South; a district composed of persons of different
races, religions, and nationalities and yet, when I leave my home
to
come to the capital of the nation, to take part in the
deliberations of
the House and to participate with you in making laws for the
government
of this great Republic, in coming through the God-forsaken States
of
Kentucky and Tennessee, if I come by the way of Louisville or
Chattanooga, I am treated, not as an American citizen, but as a
brute.
Forced to occupy a filthy smoking-car both night and day, with
drunkards, gamblers, and criminals; and for what? Not that I am
unable
or unwilling to pay my way; not that I am obnoxious in my personal
appearance or disrespectful in my conduct; but simply because I
happen
to be of a darker complexion. If this treatment was confined to
persons
of our own sex we could possibly afford to endure it. But such is
not
the case. Our wives and our daughters, our sisters and our
mothers, are
subjected to the same insults and to the same uncivilized
treatment. You
may ask why we do not institute civil suits in the State courts.
What a
farce! Talk about instituting a civil-rights suit in the State
courts of
Kentucky, for instance, where decision of the judge is virtually
rendered before he enters the court-house, and the verdict of the
jury
substantially rendered before it is impaneled. The only moments of
my
life when I am necessarily compelled to question my loyalty to my
Government or my devotion to the flag of my country is when I read
of
outrages having been committed upon innocent colored people and
the
perpetrators go unwhipped of justice, and when I leave my home to
go
traveling.
Mr. Speaker, if this unjust discrimination is to be longer
tolerated by
the American people, which I do not, cannot, and will
not believe until
I am forced to do so, then I can only say with sorrow and regret
that
our boasted civilization is a fraud; our republican institutions a
failure; our social system a disgrace; and our religion a complete
hypocrisy. But I have an abiding confidence — (though I must confess
that
that confidence was seriously shaken a little over two months
ago) — but
still I have an abiding confidence in the patriotism of this
people, in
their devotion to the cause of human rights, and in the stability
of our
republican institutions. I hope that I will not be deceived. I
love the
land that gave me birth; I love the Stars and Stripes. This
country is
where I intend to live, where I expect to die. To preserve the
honor of
the national flag and to maintain perpetually the Union of the
States
hundreds, and I may say thousands, of noble, brave, and
true-hearted
colored men have fought, bled, and died. And now, Mr. Speaker, I
ask,
can it be possible that that flag under which they fought is to be
a
shield and a protection to all races and classes of persons except
the
colored race? God forbid!
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I say to the Republican members of
the House
that the passage of this bill is expected of you. If any of our
Democratic friends will vote for it, we will be agreeably
surprised. But
if Republicans should vote against it, we will be sorely
disappointed;
it will be to us a source of deep mortification as well as
profound
regret. We will feel as though we are deserted in the house of our
friends. But I have no fears whatever in this respect. You have
stood by
the colored
people of this country when it was more unpopular to do so
than it is to pass this bill. You have fulfilled every promise
thus far,
and I have no reason to believe that you will not fulfill this
one. Then
give us this bill. The white man’s government Negro-hating
democracy
will, in my judgment, soon pass out of existence. The progressive
spirit
of the American people will not much longer tolerate the existence
of an
organization that lives upon the passions and prejudices of the
hour.
I appeal to all the members of the House — Republicans and
Democrats,
conservatives and liberals — to join with us in the passage of this
bill,
which has its object the protection of human rights. And when
every man,
woman, and child can feel and know that his, her, and their rights
are
fully protected by the strong arm of a generous and grateful
Republic,
then we can all truthfully say that this beautiful land of ours,
over
which the “Star-Spangled Banner” so triumphantly waves, is, in
truth and
in fact, the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
ADDRESS DURING THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 18804
By Pinkney Benton Stewart Pinchback
Pinkney Benton Stewart
Pinchback is one of the most interesting and
picturesque figures in the race. A staunch fighter in the
Reconstruction
period in Louisiana, a delegate to many national Republican
Conventions;
Ex-Lieutenant-Governor of Louisiana.
Mr. President and Fellow Citizens:
The founders of the Republican party were aggressive men. They
believed
in the Declaration of Independence and the great truths it
contains; and
their purpose was to make these truths living realities.
Possessing the
courage of their convictions and regarding slavery as the arch
enemy of
the Republic — the greatest obstruction to its maintenance,
advancement
and prosperity, — they proclaimed an eternal war against it and,
marshalling their forces under the banner of freedom and equality
before
the law for all men, boldly and defiantly met the enemy at every
point
and fairly routed it all along the line. Those men believed in and
relied upon the conscience of the people. To touch and arouse
public
conscience and to convince it of the justice of their cause, they
felt
was all that was necessary to enlist the people on their side.
Ridiculed, threatened, ostracised, and assaulted, they
could not be
turned from their purpose, and their achievements constitute the
grandeur and glory of the Republican party. There were no
apologists for
wrong-doers among those men, and there ought to be none in the
Republican party to-day. The South was the great disturbing
element then
as it is now; and the causes which rendered it so are, in a large
measure, the same. The people were divided into three
classes — slave-holders, slaves, and poor whites, or “poor white
trash”
as the latter were called by the colored people because of their
utter
insignificance in that community. Its peculiar condition
established in
the large land and slave-owning portion of the people a sort of
privileged class who claimed and exercised the right not only to
rule
the South, but the nation; and for many years that class
controlled
both. Gorged with wealth and drunk with power, considering
themselves
born to command and govern, being undisputed rulers, almost by
inheritance in their States, the Southern politicians naturally
became
aggressive, dictatorial, and determined to ruin the country and
sever
the Union rather than consent to relinquish power, even though
called
upon to do so by constituted methods. Hence it was that, when the
people
of the great North and Northwest concluded to assert their rights
and
choose a man from among themselves for President, they rebelled
and
forced upon the country so far as they were concerned, the most
causeless and unnatural war recorded in history.
I shall not dwell upon the history of the war or attempt to
detail its
horrors and sum up its cost. I leave that task to
others. If the wounds
made by it have been healed, which I do not concede, far be it
from my
purpose to re-open them. My sole reason for referring to the war
at all
is to remind the Northern people of some of the agencies employed
in its
successful prosecution. When it commenced, the principal labor
element
of the South — the source of its production and wealth — was the
colored
race. Four millions and a half of these unfortunate people were
there,
slaves and property of the men who refused to submit to the will
of the
people lawfully expressed through the ballot-box. They were the
bone and
sinew of the Confederacy, tilling its fields and producing
sustenance
for its armies, while many of the best men of the North were
compelled
to abandon Northern fields to shoulder a musket in defense of the
Union.
As a war measure and to deprive the South of such a great
advantage,
your President, the immortal Lincoln, issued a proclamation in
September, 1862, in which he gave public notice that it was his
purpose
to declare the emancipation of the slaves in the States wherein
insurrection existed on January 1, 1863, unless the offenders
therein
lay down their arms. That notice, thank God, was disregarded, and
the
proclamation of January 1, 1863, proclaiming universal
emancipation
followed. Had the requirements of the first proclamation been
observed
by the people to whom it was addressed who can doubt what would
have
been the fate of the colored people in the South? It is reasonable
to
assume, inasmuch as the war was waged to perpetuate the Union and
not to
destroy slavery — that they would have remained
in hopeless bondage. On
more than one occasion President Lincoln officially declared that
he
would save the Union with slavery if he could, and not until it
became
manifest that slavery was the mainstay of the Confederacy, and the
prosecution of the war to a successful close would be difficult
without
its destruction, did he dare touch it. I do not think that
President
Lincoln’s hesitancy to act upon the question arose from sympathy
with
the accursed institution, for I believe every pulsation of his
heart was
honest and pure and that he was an ardent and devoted lover of
universal
liberty; but he doubted whether his own people would approve of
his
interference with it. Assured by the manner in which the people of
the
North received his first proclamation that they appreciated the
necessity of destroying this great aid of the enemy, he went
forward
bravely declaring that, “possibly for every drop of blood drawn by
the
lash one might have to be drawn by the sword, but if so, as was
said
over eighteen hundred years ago, the judgments of the Lord are
just and
righteous altogether,” and abolished human slavery from the land
forever.
That this great act was a Godsend and an immeasurable blessing to
the
colored race, I admit, but I declare in the same breath that it
was
dictated and performed more in the interest of the white people of
the
North and to aid them in conquering the rebellion than from love
of or a
disposition to help the Negro. The enfranchisement of the colored
race
also sprang from the necessities of the nation. At the close of
the war
the Southern
States had to be rehabilitated with civil governments and
re-admitted into the Union. The men who had plunged the country
into war
and had tried to destroy the Government were about to resume their
civil
and political rights, and, through the election of Representatives
and
Senators in Congress, regain influence and power in national
councils.
Apprehending danger from the enormous power they would possess if
reinstated in absolute control of eleven States, some means had to
be
devised to prevent this. A political element, loyal to the Union
and the
flag, must be created; and again the ever faithful colored people
were
brought into requisition, and without their asking for it, the
elective
franchise was conferred upon them. There was no question about the
loyalty of these people, and the supposition that they would be a
valuable political force and form the basis of a loyal political
party
in the South was both natural and just, and the wisdom of their
enfranchisement was demonstrated by the establishment of
Republican
governments in several of the States, and the sending of mixed
delegations of Republican and Democratic members of Congress
therefrom
so long as the laws conferring citizenship upon the colored man
were
enforced.
If the South is to remain politically Democratic as it is to-day,
it is
not the fault of the colored people. Their fealty to the North and
the
Republican party is without parallel in the world’s history. In
Louisiana alone more than five thousand lives attest it. While in
nearly
every other Southern State fully as many lie in premature graves,
martyrs to the cause. Considering themselves
abandoned and left to the
choice of extermination or the relinquishment of the exercise of
their
political rights, they have, in large districts in the South,
wisely
preferred the latter. Kept in a constant condition of suspense and
dread
by the peculiar methods of conducting canvasses and elections in
that
section, who can blame them? It is my firm conviction that no
other
people under God’s sun, similarly situated, would have done half
so
well. The fault is attributable to the vicious practise, which
obtains
largely even here in the civilized North, of apologizing for and
condoning crimes committed for political purposes. Men love power
everywhere and Southern Democrats are no exception. On the
contrary,
deeming themselves “born to command,” as I have already remarked,
and
knowing that there is no power to restrain or punish them for
crimes
committed upon the poor and defenseless colored citizens, of
course they
have pushed them to the wall. The inequality between the two races
in
all that constitutes protective forces was such as to render that
result
inevitable as soon as Federal protection was withdrawn, and I do
not
hesitate to affirm that unless some means are devised to enforce
respect
for the rights of the colored citizens of the South, their
enfranchisement will prove a curse instead of a benefit to the
country.
Emancipated to cripple the South and enfranchised to strengthen
the
North, the colored race was freed and its people made citizens in
the
interest of the Republic. Its fundamental law declares them
citizens,
and the Fifteenth Amendment expressly states that: “The right of
citizens
of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged
by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.” The faith and honor of the
Nation are
pledged to the rigid enforcement of the law in this, as in every
other
respect, and the interests of the 40,000,000 white people in the
Republic demand it. If the law, both constitutional and statutory,
affecting the rights and privileges of the colored citizens can be
defiantly ignored and disobeyed in eleven States of the Union in a
matter of such grave import as this — a matter involving the very
essence
of republican government, i.e., the right of the majority
to
rule — who can tell where it will end and how long it will be before
elections in all of the States will be armed conflicts, to be
decided by
the greatest prowess and dexterity in the use of the bowie knife,
pistol, shot-gun and rifle?
White men of the North, I tell you this practise of controlling
elections in the South by force and fraud is contagious! It
spreads with
alarming rapidity and unless eradicated, will overtake and
overwhelm you
as it has your friends in the South. It showed its horrid head in
Maine,
and came very near wresting that State from a lawful majority.
Employed
in the South first to drive Republicans from a few counties, it
has
grown from “autumnal outbreaks” into an almost perpetual hurricane
and,
gathering force as it goes, has violently seized State after
State,
mastered the entire South, and is even now thundering at the gates
of
the national Capital. Whether it shall capture it too, and spread
its
blighting
influence all over the land, is the question you must
answer at the poles in this election.
It was the intention of the great men who founded this Republic
that it
should be “A government of the people, for the people, and by the
people”; that its citizens, from the highest to the lowest, should
enjoy
perfect equality before the law. To realize this idea the rule of
the
majority, to be ascertained through the processes provided by law,
was
wisely adopted, and the laws providing for and regulating
elections are
respected and obeyed in the Northern, Eastern, and Western States.
The
Democracy of the South alone seems privileged to set at defiance
the
organic as well as every statutory enactment, national and State,
designed to secure this essential principle of free government.
Those
men must be taught that such an exceptional and unhealthy
condition of
things will not be tolerated; that the rights of citizens of every
nationality are sacred in the eyes of the law, and their right to
vote
for whom they please and have their ballots honestly counted shall
not
be denied or abridged with impunity; that the faith of the Nation
is
pledged to the defense and maintenance of these obligations, and
it will
keep its pledge at whatever cost may be found necessary.
IN THE WAKE OF THE COMING AGES6
By J. Madison Vance, of New
Orleans, La.
In these trying times of peace with tears of blood; these times
of
crimes so horrible and fiendish that Christianity bows in
supplication
for surcease of sorrow, and the advance of civilization seems in
vain;
in these times when the Negro is compared to the brute, and his
mentality limited to the ordinary; in these times when the holy
robes of
the Church are used to decry, villify and malign the race; in
these
times when the subsidized press of the country loudly proclaims
the
Negro’s incapacity for government; in these times I turn with
pardonable
pride to the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, an organization
the
affairs of which are administered entirely by colored men, an
organization that typifies the possibilities of the race; the
organization whose very existence gives the lie to the damnable
aspersions cast upon us by the enemies of humanity.
This grand organization is but a collection of individuals, and
as
individuals we must shape our destiny. The time is past for
pleading;
these are days of action. The higher we rise, the sharper will
become
the prejudice of color. The laboring white is
jealous of the
competition of the blacks. The problem is to be worked out in
the
South, and largely by ourselves. With all the disadvantages
and
proscriptive doctrines that encroach upon us in that Southland, I
honestly believe that this land with all its natural beauties and
advantages, this land below the mountains; this land of passion
and
pleasure, of fever and fret, this land famed in history, song, and
story
as the “land of Dixie,” is the Negro’s coming Arcadia. From its
lowlands
and marshes will yet come forth the peerless leader, who will not
only
point out the way, but will climb the battlements of tolerance and
race
prejudice, backed by the march of civilization, and, with his face
to
the enemy, fight the battle of common humanity.
The romance of “Emancipation” is fading out. The old slave is
rapidly
passing. The mythology of his period is extinct. The Republic has
declared against the “Force Bill.” The “Prætorian Guard” is
mustered
out, and the sentiment of the times is against paternalism. “Every
tub
must stand on its own bottom,” and the eloquence of the orator
cannot
arrest the trend of the times. A problem is half solved when facts
are
apprehended; it is more than half solved when the facts are
comprehended, and practical sense succeeds sentiment.
The Negro confronts destiny. He must be the architect of his own
fortune. He must demonstrate capacity and independence, because
mendicancy is always destructive. The living present calls us away
from
the ashes of the dead and buried past. Our hopes are brighter and
our
ambitions higher. Let us stand on our own racial
pride, and prove our
claim for equality by showing the fruits of thrift, talent, and
frugality. The brotherhood of genius will not refuse the need of
merit,
and within the sweep of our constant observations great artists,
musicians, poets, and orators are more than hinted possibilities.
We
would be criminals to despair. The Negro is here, and here to
stay, and
traveling rapidly in “the wake of coming ages.” We know not how
far the
goal may still be distant, but at least we think we see it and our
most
fervent hope is to approach it more and more nearly —
“Till each man find his own in all men’s good,
And all men work in noble brotherhood,
Breaking their mailed fleets and armed towers,
And ruling by obeying nature’s powers,
And gathering all the fruits of earth
and crowned
with her flowers.”
As the shadows come creeping over the dial of time, the
nineteenth
century faces the setting sun; a century replete with the grandest
inventions of modern times, and with a fullness of scientific
investigation beyond the possible conception of man one hundred
years
ago. This century has emancipated woman, and like the “Dreamers on
the
brow of Parnassus,” she is not forgetful of the toilers on other
altitudes within the horizon’s rim. She is not blind to the signal
lights, which in their blaze proclaim new knowledge, new power for
man,
new triumphs, new glory for the human spirit in its march on chaos
and
the dark. Any message of love would be incomplete without her
gentle
voice. Her love is her life, white-winged and eternal.
Her welcome is
spontaneous, fervid, whole-souled, generous. Her influence is felt
everywhere, throughout the ramifications of our “Order.” The
wholesome
power of her persuasive counsel is ofttimes needed, and the tender
mercies of her tireless devotion have smoothed away the grim
visage of
discontent, brought solace to the fevered brain, and made peaceful
that
dreary journey from life to death.
We look out upon our vast army of followers, and glory in our
stalwart
band. * * * * * Out of the darkness of the night, imposing in our
numbers, stand we forth, splendid and terrible, in “The Wake of
the
Coming Ages.” And when we look at all the magnificent fabric we
call
civilization, its incalculable material, its wealth, its amazing
mechanical resources, its wonderful scientific discoveries, its
many-sided literature, its sleepless and ubiquitous journalism,
its
lovely art, its abounding charities, its awful fears and sublime
hopes,
we get a magnificent conception of the possibilities of life, as
this
latest of the centuries draws its purple robe about its majestic
form
and stands up to die as the old Roman Cæsar stood, in all
the
magnificence of its riches, and the plenitude of its power.
But after all, the measure of its value is the character of it
humanity.
THE NEGRO AS A SOLDIER
12
By Christian A. Fleetwood
Christian A. Fleetwood,
Sergeant-Major, United States Volunteer
Infantry, 1863-1866. Received a Medal of Honor from Congress for
meritorious action in saving the colors at Chapin Farm,
September 29,
1864, where he seized them after two color-bearers had been shot
down,
and bore them throughout the fight. Also has a General B. F.
Butler
Medal for bravery and courage before Richmond.
For 1600 years prior to the war between Great Britain and the
Colonies,
the pages of history bear no record of the Negro as a soldier.
Tracing
his separate history in the Revolutionary War is a task of much
difficulty, for the reason that while individual instances of
valor and
patriotism abound, there were so few separate bodies of Negro
troops
that no separate record appears to have been made. The simple fact
is
that the fathers as a rule enlisted men both for the Army and
Navy, just
as now it is only continued by the Navy; that is to say, they were
assigned wherever needed, without regard to race or color.
Varner’s
Rhode Island Battalion appears to have been the only large
aggregation
of Negroes in this war, though Connecticut, New York, and New
Hampshire
each furnished one separate company in addition to individuals
scattered
through their other organizations, so that ere the close of the
war,
there were very few brigades, regiments, or
companies in which the
Negro was not in evidence.
The free Negro appears to have gone in from the beginning without
attracting or calling out special comment. Later, as men grew
scarcer
and necessity more pressing, slaves were taken in also, and then
the
trouble began. Those who held slaves did not care to lose them in
this
way. Others who had not did not think it just the thing in a war
for
avowed freedom to place an actual slave in the ranks to fight.
Some did
not want the Negro, bonded or free, to take part as a soldier in
the
struggle. So that in May, 1775, the Massachusetts Committee of
Safety
voted that thereafter only free men should be enlisted. In July,
General
Gates issued an order prohibiting further enlistments of Negroes,
but
saying nothing of those already in the service.
In October a council of war presided over by General Washington,
comprising three major-generals and six brigadier-generals, voted
unanimously against the enlistment of slaves, and by a decided
majority
against further enlistments of Negroes. Ten days later in a
conference
held at Cambridge, Mass., participated in by General Washington,
Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Lynch, and the deputy
governors of Connecticut and Rhode Island, a similar action was
taken.
On the 7th November, 1775, Earl Dundore, commanding the force of
His
Majesty the King, issued a proclamation offering freedom and equal
pay
to all slaves who would join his armies as soldiers. It did not
take the
colonists long to find out their mistake, although
General Washington,
in accordance with the expressed will of his officers and of the
Committee of Safety, did on the 17th of November, 1775, issue a
proclamation forbidding the further enlistment of Negroes. Less
than two
months later, that is to say on the 30th of December, 1775, he
issued a
second proclamation again authorizing the enlistment of free
Negroes. He
advised Congress of his action, and stated that he would recall it
if so
directed. But he was not. The splendid service rendered by the
Negro and
the great and pressing need of men were such, that although the
opposition continued from some sections, it was not thereafter
strong
enough to obtain recognition. So the Negroes went and came, much
as
other men.
In all the events of the war, from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, they
bore an
honorable part. The history of the doings of the armies is their
history, as in everything they took part and did their share.
Their
total enlistment was about 3,000 men, — a very fair percentage for
the
population of that period. I might instance the killing of Major
Pitcairn, at Bunker Hill, by Peter Salem, and of Major Montgomery,
at
Fort Griswold, by Jordan Freeman. The part they took in the
capture of
Major-General Prescott at Newport; their gallant defense of
Colonel
Greene, their beloved commander, when he was surprised and
murdered at
Croton River, May 13, 1781, when it was only after the last of his
faithful guards had been shot and cut down that he was reached; or
the
battle of Rhode Island, when a battalion of 400 Negroes withstood
three
separate and distinct charges from 1,500 Hessians under
Count Donop,
and beat them back with such tremendous loss that Count Donop at
once
applied for an exchange, fearing that his men would kill him, if
he went
into battle with them again, for having exposed them to such
slaughter;
and many other instances that are of record. The letter following,
written December 5, 1775, explains itself:
“To the Honorable General Court of the
Massachusetts Bay:
“The subscribers beg leave to report to your Honorable House
(which we
do in justice to the character of so brave a man) that under our
own
observation we declare that a Negro man named Salem Poor, of
Colonel
Frye’s Regiment, Captain Ames’ Company, in the late battle at
Charleston, behaved like an experienced officer as well as an
excellent
soldier. To set forth particulars of his conduct would be tedious.
We
would only beg to say, in the person of this Negro centers a brave
and
gallant soldier. The reward due to so great and distinguished a
character we submit to Congress.”
This is a splendid and well-attested tribute to a gallant and
worthy
Negro. There were many such, but, beyond receiving and reading, no
action was taken thereon by Congress. There is no lack of
incidents, and
the temptation to quote many of them is great, but the time
allotted me
is too brief for extended mention, and I must bring this branch of
my
subject to a close. It is in evidence that while so many Negroes
were
offering their lives a willing sacrifice for the country, in some
sections the
officers of the Continental forces received their bounty
and pay in Negroes, “grown” and “small,” instead of “dollars” and
“cents.” Fighting for liberty and taking pay in slaves!
When the war was over the free men returned to meet their same
difficulties; the slaves were caught when possible and re-enslaved
by
their former masters. In Boston a few years later we find a party
of
black patriots of the Revolution mobbed on Boston Common while
celebrating the anniversary of the abolition of the slave-trade.
The captain of a vessel trading along the coast tells of a Negro
who had
fought in the war and been distinguished for bravery and soldierly
conduct. He was reclaimed and re-enslaved by his master after the
war,
and served him faithfully until old age rendered him useless. The
master
then brought the poor old slave to this captain and asked him to
take
him along on his trip and try to sell him. The captain hated to
sell a
man who had fought for his country, but finally agreed, took the
poor
old man to Mobile, and sold him for $100 to a man who put him to
attending a chicken-coop. His former master continued to draw the
old
slave’s pension as a soldier in the Revolution, until he died.
The War of 1812 was mainly fought upon the water, and in the
American
Navy at that time the Negro stood in the ratio of about one to
six. We
find record of complaint by Commodore Perry at the beginning
because of
the large number of Negroes sent him, but later the highest
tribute to
their bravery and efficiency. Captain Shaler, of the armed brig General
Thompson, writing of an engagement between his
vessel and a British
frigate, says:
“The name of one of my poor fellows who was killed ought to be
registered in the book of fame, and remembered as long as bravery
is a
virtue. He was a black man, by name John Johnson. A twenty-four
pound
shot struck him in the hip, and took away all the lower part of
his
body. In this state the poor brave fellow lay on the deck, and
several
times exclaimed to his shipmates: ‘Fire away, my boys; nor haul a
color
down!’ Another black man, by the name of John Davis, who was
struck in
much the same manner, repeatedly requested to be thrown overboard,
saying that he was only in the way of the others.”
I know of nothing finer in history than these incidents of valor
and
patriotism.
As before, the Negro was not universally welcomed to the ranks of
the
American Army; but later, continued reverses and a lack of
enthusiasm in
enlistments made it necessary to seek his aid, and from Mobile,
Ala., on
September 21, 1814, General Jackson issued a stirring call to the
free
colored people of Louisiana for aid.
In a remarkably short period, two battalions were raised, under
Majors
LaCaste and Savary, which did splendid service in the battle of
New
Orleans. New York enrolled two battalions, and sent them to
Sacketts
Harbor. Pennsylvania enrolled 2400, and sent them to Gray’s Ferry
at the
capture of Washington, to prepare for the invading column. Another
battalion also was raised,armed, equipped, and ready to
start to the
front, when peace was declared.
In one of the actions of this war, a charging column of the
American
Army was repulsed and thrown into great disorder. A Negro private
named
Jeffreys, seeing the disaster, sprang upon a horse, and by heroic
effort
rallied the troops, led them back upon a second charge, and
completely
routed the enemy. He was rewarded by General Jackson with the
honorary
title of Major. Under the laws he could not commission him.
When the war was over, this gallant man returned to his home in
Nashville, Tenn., where he lived for years afterward, highly
respected
by its citizens of all races.
At the age of seventy years, this black hero was obliged, in
self-defense, to strike a white ruffian, who had assaulted
him. Under
the laws of the State he was arrested and given nine and thirty
lashes
on his bare back. It broke his heart, and Major Jeffreys died.
It seems a little singular that in the tremendous struggle
between the
States in 1861-1865, the South should have been the first to take
steps
toward the enlistment of Negroes. Yet such is the fact. Two weeks
after
the fall of Fort Sumter, the Charleston Mercury records
the passing
through Augusta of several companies of the the 3rd and 4th
Georgia
Regiment, and of sixteen well-drilled companies and one Negro
company
from Nashville, Tenn.
The Memphis Avalanche and The Memphis Appeal of
May 9, 10, and 11,
1861, gave notice of the appointment by the “Committee of Safety”
of a
committee of three persons “to organize a
volunteer company composed of
our patriotic freemen of color of the city of Memphis, for the
service
of our common defense.”
A telegram from New Orleans dated November 23, 1861, notes the
review by
Governor Moore of over 28,000 troops, and that one regiment
comprised
“1,400 colored men.” The New Orleans Picayune,
referring to a review
held February 9, 1862, says: “We must also pay a deserved
compliment to
the companies of free colored men, all very well drilled and
comfortably
equipped.”
It is a little odd, too, that in the evacuation of New Orleans a
little
later, in April, 1862, all of the troops succeeded in getting away
except the Negroes. They “got left.”
It is not in our line to speculate upon what would have been the
result
of the war had the South kept up this policy, enlisted the
freemen, and
emancipated the enlisting slaves and their families. The immense
addition to their fighting force, the quick recognition of them by
Great
Britain, to which slavery was the greatest bar, and the fact that
the
heart of the Negro was with the South but for slavery, and the
case
stands clear. But the primary successes of the South closed its
eyes to
its only chance of salvation, while at the same time the eyes of
the
North were opened.
In 1865, the South saw, and endeavored to remedy, its error. On
March 9,
1865, the Confederate Congress passed a bill, recommended by
General
Lee, authorizing the enlistment of 200,000 Negroes; but it was
then too
late.
The North came slowly and reluctantly to recognize the Negro as a
factor
for good in the war. “This is a white man’s war,” met the Negroes
at
every step of their first efforts to gain admission to the armies
of the
Union.
To General David Hunter, more than to any other one man, is due
the
credit for the successful entry upon the stage of the Negro as a
soldier
in this war.
In the spring of 1862, he raised and equipped a regiment of
Negroes in
South Carolina, and when the fact because known in Washington and
throughout the country, such a storm was raised about the ears of
the
Administration that they gracefully stood aside and left the brave
general to fight his enemies in the front and rear as best he
might. He
was quite capable to do both, as it proved.
The beginning of 1863 saw the opening of the doors to the Negro
in every
direction. General Lorenzo Thomas went in person to the valley of
the
Mississippi to supervise it there. Massachusetts was authorized to
fill
its quota with Negroes. The States of Maryland, Missouri,
Delaware, and
Tennessee were thrown open by order of the War Department, and all
slaves enlisting therefrom declared free. Ohio, Connecticut,
Pennsylvania, and New York joined the band and sent the stalwart
black
boy in blue to the front singing, “Give us a flag, all free,
without a
slave.” For two years the fierce and determined opposition had
kept them
out, but now the bars were down and they came pouring in. Some one
said,
“he cared not who made the laws of a people if he could make their
songs.”
A better exemplification of this would be difficult to find
than is the song written by “Miles O’Reilly” (Colonel Halpine), of
the
old 10th Army Corps. I cannot resist the temptation to quote it
here.
With General Hunter’s letter and this song to quote from, the
episode
was closed:
“Some say it is a burning shame to
make the Naygurs fight,
An’ that the trade o’ being kilt
belongs but to the white;
But as for me, upon me sowl, so
liberal are we here,
I’ll let Sambo be murthered, in
place of meself, on every day of the year.
On every day of the year, boys,
and every hour in the day,
The right to be kilt I’ll divide
wid him, and divil a word I’ll say.
In battles’ wild commotion I
shouldn’t at all object
If Sambo’s body should stop a ball
that was coming for me direct,
An’ the prod of a Southern
bayonet; so liberal are we here,
I’ll resign and let Sambo take it,
on every day in the year,
On every day in the year, boys,
an’ wid none of your nasty pride,
All right in Southern baynet prod,
wid Sambo I’ll divide.
The men who object to Sambo should
take his place and fight,
An’ it is betther to have a
Naygur’s hue, than a liver that’s weak an’ white,
Though Sambo’s black as the ace of
spades, his finger a thryger can pull,
An’ his eye runs straight on the
barrel-sight from under its thatch of wool.
So hear me all, boys, darlin’,
don’t think I’m tipping you chaff, —
The right to be kilt, I’ll divide
with him, an’ give him the largest half.”
It took three years of war to place the enlisted Negro upon the
same
ground as the enlisted white man as to pay and emoluments; perhaps
six
years of war might have given him shoulder-straps, but
the war ended
without authorization of law for that step. At first they were
received,
under an act of Congress that allowed each one, without regard to
rank,
ten dollars per month, three dollars thereof to be retained for
clothing
and equipments. I think it was in May, 1864, when the act was
passed
equalizing the pay, but not opening the doors to promotion.
Under an act of the Confederate Congress, making it a crime
punishable
with death for any white person to train Negroes or mulattoes to
arms,
or aid them in any military enterprise, and devoting the Negro
caught
under arms to the tender mercies of the “present or future laws of
the
State” in which caught, a large number of promotions were
made by the
way of a rope and a tree along the first year of the Negro’s
service. (I
can even recall one instance as late as April, 1865, though it had
been
long before then generally discontinued.)
What the Negro did, how he did it, and where, it would take
volumes to
properly record, I can however give but briefest mention to a few
of the
many evidences of his fitness for the duties of the war, and his
aid to
the cause of the Union.
The first fighting done by organized Negro troops appears to have
been
done by Company A, 1st South Carolina Negro Regiment, at St.
Helena
Island, November 3 to 10, 1862, while participating in an
expedition
along the coast of Georgia and Florida under Lieutenant-Colonel O.
T.
Beard, of the 48th New York Infantry, who says in his report:
“The colored men fought with astonishing coolness and bravery. I
found
them all I could desire, — more than I had hoped. They behaved
gloriously, and deserve all praise.”
The testimony thus inaugurated runs like a cord of gold through
the web
and woof of the history of the Negro as a soldier from that date
to
their final charge, the last made at Clover Hill, Va., April 9,
1865.
Necessarily the first actions in which the Negro bore a part
commanded
most attention. Friends and enemies were looking eagerly to see
how they
would acquit themselves, and so it comes to pass that the names of
Fort
Wagner, Olustee, Millikens Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Pillow are
as
familiar as Bull Run, Antietam, Shiloh and Gettysburg, and while
those
first experiences were mostly severe reverses, they were by that
very
fact splendid exemplifiers of the truth that the Negroes could be
relied
upon to fight under the most adverse circumstances, against any
odds,
and could not be discouraged.
Let us glance for a moment at Port Hudson, La., in May, 1863,
assaulted
by General Banks with a force of which the 1st and 2nd Regiments,
Louisiana Native Guards, formed a part. When starting upon their
desperate mission, Colonel Stafford of the 1st Regiment, in
turning over
the regimental colors to the color-guard, made a brief and
patriotic
address, closing with the words:
“Color-guard: Protect, defend, die for, but do not surrender,
these
colors.” The gallant flag-sergeant, Plancianos, taking them
replied:
“Colonel: I will bring back these colors to you in
honor, or report to
God the reason why.”
Six times with desperate valor they charged over ground where
success
was hopeless, a deep bayou between them and the works of the enemy
at
the point of attack rendering it impossible to reach them, yet
strange
to say, six times they were ordered forward and six times they
went to
useless death, until swept back by the blazing breath of shot and
shell
before which nothing living could stand. Here fell the gallant
Captain
Cailloux, black as the ace of spades. Refusing to leave the field
though
his arm had been shattered by a bullet, he returned to the charge
until
killed by a shell.
A soldier limping painfully to the front was halted and asked
where he
was going. He replied, “I am shot bad in de leg, and dey want me
to go
to de hospital, but I guess I can give ’em a little more yet.”
The colors came back, but crimsoned with the blood of the gallant
Plancianos, who reported to God from that bloody field.
Shall we glance from this to Millikens Bend, La., in January,
1863,
garrisoned by the 9th and 11th Louisiana and the 1st Mississippi,
all
Negroes, and about 160 of the 23rd Iowa (white), about 1100
fighting men
in all? Attacked by a force of six Confederate regiments, crushed
out of
their works by sheer weight of numbers, borne down toward the
levee,
fighting every step of the way, hand to hand — clubbed musket,
bayonets,
and swords, — from three A. M. to twelve noon, they fought
desperately
until a Union gun-boat came to the rescue and shelled the
desperate foe
back to the woods, with a total loss to the defenders of 437
men, — two-fifths of their strength.
Shall we turn with sadness to Fort Wagner, S. C., in July, 1863,
when
the 54th Massachusetts won its deathless fame, and its grand young
commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, passed into the temple of
immortality? After a march of all day, under a burning sun, and
all
night through a tempest of wind and rain, drenched, exhausted,
hungry,
they wheeled into line, without a murmur for that awful charge,
that
dance of death, the struggle against hopeless odds, and the
shattered
remnants were hurled back as from the mouth of hell, leaving the
dead
bodies of their young commander and his noble followers to be
buried in
a common grave. Its total loss was about one-third of its
strength.
Here it was that the gallant flag-sergeant, Carney, though
grievously
wounded, bore back his flag to safety, and fell fainting and
exhausted
with loss of blood, saying, “Boys, the old flag never touched the
ground!” Or another glance, at ill-starred Olustee, where the
gallant
8th United States Colored Troops lost 87 killed of its effective
fighting force, the largest loss in any one colored regiment in
any one
action of the war. And so on, by Fort Pillow, which let us pass in
merciful silence, and to Honey Hill, S. C., perhaps the last
desperate
fight in the far south, in which the 32nd, 35th, and 102nd United
States
Colored Troops and the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry won
fresh
and fadeless laurels for splendid fighting against hopeless odds
and
insurmountable difficulties, and then to Nashville, Tenn., with
its
recorded loss of 84 killed in the effectives of the 13th United
States
Colored Troops.
These were all brilliant actions, and they covered the actors
with, and
reflected upon the race, a blaze of glory. But it was in the
armies of
the James and of the Potomac that the true metal of the Negro as a
soldier rang out its clearest notes amid the tremendous diapasons
that
rolled back and forth between the embattled hosts. Here was war
indeed,
upon its grandest scale and in all its infinite variety: The
tireless
march under burning sun, chilling frosts, and driven tempests; the
lonely vigil of the picket under starless skies, the rush and roar
of
countless “hosts to battle driven” in the mad charge and the
victorious
shout that pursued the fleeing foe; the grim determination that
held its
line of defenses with set teeth, blood-shot eye, and strained
muscle,
beating back charge after charge of the foe; the patient labor in
trench
and mine, on hill and in valley, swamp and jungle, with disease
adding
its horrors to the decimation of shot and shell.
Here the Negro stood in the full glare of the greatest
search-light,
part and parcel of the grandest armies ever mustered upon this
continent, competing side by side with the best and bravest of the
Union
Army against the flower of the Confederacy, the best and bravest
of
Lee’s army, and losing nothing in the contrast. Never again while
time
lasts will the doubt arise as in 1861, “Will the Negro fight?” As
a
problem, it has been solved; as a question, it has been answered;
and as
a fact, it is as established as the eternal hills. It was the
Negroes
who rang up the curtain upon the last act of the bloody tragedy
at
Petersburg, Va., June 15, 1864, and they who rang it down at
Clover
Hill, Va., April 9, 1865. They were one of the strong fingers upon
the
mighty hand that grasped the giant’s throat at Petersburg and
never
flexed until the breath went out at Appomattox. In this period it
would
take page on page to recount their deeds of valor and their
glorious
victories.
See them on the 15th of June, 1864, carrying the out-post at
Baylor’s
field in early morning, and all that long, hot, summer day
advancing, a
few yards at a time, then lying down to escape the fire from the
works,
but still gradually creeping nearer and nearer, until, just as the
sun
went down, they swept like a tornado over the works and started
upon a
race for the city, close at the heels of the flying foe, until
mistakenly ordered back. Of this day’s experience General Badeau
writes:
“No worse strain on the nerves of troops is possible, for it is
harder
to remain quiet under cannon fire, even though comparatively
harmless,
than to advance against a storm of musketry.” General W. F.
“Baldy”
Smith, speaking of their conduct, says: “No nobler effort has been
put
forth to-day, and no greater success achieved than that of the
colored
troops.”
Or, again, at the terrible mine explosion of July 30, 1864, on
the
Petersburg line, and at the fearful slaughter of September 29,
1864, at
New Market Heights and Fort Harrison. On this last date in the
Fourth
United States Colored Troops, out of a color-guard of twelve men,
but
one came off the field on his own feet. The gallant flag-sergeant,
Hilton, the last to fall, cried out as he went down, “Boys, save
the
colors”; and they were saved.
Some ten or more years later, in Congress, in the midst of a
speech
advocating the giving of civil rights to the Negro, General Butler
said,
referring to this incident:
“There, in a space not wider than the clerk’s desk, and three
hundred
yards long, lay the dead bodies of 543 of my colored comrades,
slain in
the defense of their country, who had laid down their lives to
uphold
its flag and its honor, as a willing sacrifice. And as I rode
along,
guiding my horse this way and that, lest he should profane with
his
hoofs what seemed to me the sacred dead, and as I looked at their
bronzed faces upturned in the shining sun, as if in mute appeal
against
the wrongs of the country for which they had given their lives,
and
whose flag had been to them a flag of stripes, in which no star of
glory
had ever shone for them — feeling I had wronged them in the past,
and
believing what was the future duty of my country to them, — I swore
to
myself a solemn oath: ‘May my right hand forget its cunning, and
my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if ever I fail to defend
the
rights of the men who have given their blood for me and my country
this
day and for their race forever.’ And, God helping me, I will keep
that
oath.”
History further repeats itself in the fact that in every war so
far
known to this country, the first blood, and, in some cases, the
last
also, has been shed by the faithful Negro, and this
in spite of all the
years of bondage and oppression, and of wrongs unspeakable. Under
the
sun there has nothing been known in the history of any people more
marvellous than these facts!
Oh, to the living few,
Comrades, be just, be true.
Hail them as heroes tried,
Fight with them side by side;
Never in field or tent,
Scorn the
Black Regiment.
It is but a little thing to ask, they could ask no less: be
just; but,
oh, the shame of it for those who need be asked!
There is no need for panegyric, for sounding phrases or rounded
periods.
The simple story is eloquent with all that is necessary to make
the
heart swell with pride. In the hour allotted me to fill, it is
possible
only to indicate in skeleton the worth of the Negro as a soldier.
If
this brief sketch should awaken even a few to interest in his
achievements, and one be found willing and fitted to write the
history
that is their due, that writer shall achieve immortality.
THE LIFE OF SOCIAL SERVICE AS EXEMPLIFIED IN DAVID LIVINGSTON
15
By Alice Moore Dunbar
Hamilton Wright Mabie says that the question for each man to
settle is
not what he would do if he had means, time, influence, and
educational
advantages, but what he will do with the things he has. In
all history
there are few men who have answered this question. Among them none
have
answered it more effectively than he whom we have gathered to
honor
to-night — David Livingstone.
The term “social service,” which is on every one’s lips now, was
as yet
uncoined when David Livingstone was born. But it was none the less
true,
that without overmuch prating of the ideal which is held up to the
man
of to-day as the only one worth striving for, the sturdy pioneers
of
Livingstone’s day and ilk realized to the highest the ideal of
man’s
duty to his fellow-man.
The life of David Livingstone is familiar to all of you. From
your
childhood you have known the brief data of his days. He was born
in
Lanarkshire, Scotland, March 19, 1813. He began working in a
cotton-factory at the age of ten, and for ten years thence,
educated
himself,
reading Latin, Greek, and finally pursuing a course of
medicine and theology in which he graduated. In 1840, firmly
believing
in his call, he offered his services to the London Missionary
Society,
by whom he was ordained, and sent as a medical missionary to South
Africa, where he commenced his labors. In 1849, he discovered Lake
Ngami; in 1852, he explored the Zambezi River. In 1856, he
discovered
the wonderful Victoria Falls, and then returned to England, where
he was
overwhelmed with honors. In 1857, he published his first book,
hardly
realizing that it was an epoch-making volume, and that he had made
an
unprecedented contribution alike to literature, science, and
religion.
In the same year, he severed his connection with the Missionary
society,
believing that he could best work unhampered by its restrictions.
He was
appointed British Consul for the East Coast of Africa, and
commander of
an expedition to explore Eastern and Central Africa. He discovered
the
Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa in 1859; published his second book during
a
visit to England, 1864-65. He returned to Africa, started to
explore the
interior, and was lost to the world for two years. He re-appeared
in
1867, having solved the problem of the sources of the Nile. From
then
until 1871, when he was found by Stanley, suffering the most
pitiful
privations, his was a record of important discoveries and
explorations.
After parting with Stanley in 1872, he continued his explorations,
and
died in 1873. His body was interred in Westminster Abbey in 1874.
This is a meagre account of the life of David Livingstone. The
romance
and wonder of it do not appear on the surface;
the splendor of the
heroic soul is lost in the dry chronology of dates; the marvelous
achievement of self-sacrifice is not visible. Yet the wildest
fantasies
of medieval troubadours pale into insignificance when placed side
by
side with the life-story of David Livingstone.
What has this modern romance in it for the man of to-day? An
infinity of
example, of hope, of the gleam to follow. The most salient thing
about
Livingstone’s early life is the toil and the privation which he
endured
gladly, in order to accomplish that which he had set himself to
do.
Listen to his own words in describing the long hours spent in the
cotton-mill. Here he kept up his studies by placing his book on
the top
of the machine, so that he could catch sentence after sentence as
he
passed his work, learning how completely to abstract his mind from
the
noises about him. “Looking back now on that life of toil, I cannot
but
feel thankful that it formed such a material part of my early
education,
and were it possible, I would like to begin life over again in the
same
lowly style, and to pass through the same hardy training.”
I wonder how many of the modern men, whose privations in early
life in
no wise approached those of our hero look back with gratitude upon
their
early days? Are we not prone to excuse and condone our
shortcomings,
either of character or of achievement, by murmuring at the hard
fate
which deprived us of those advantages which more fortunate
brothers and
sisters enjoyed in infancy and youth? Do we not to-day swing too
far in
the direction of sickly sentimentality and incline to wrap ourselves,
and
those about us, in the deadening cotton-wool of too much care?
Were
it not better if a bit more of the leaven of sturdy struggle were
introduced into the life of the present-day youth? Strength of
character
and strength of soul will rise to their own, no matter what the
struggles be to force them upward.
In keeping with this studious concentration which is shown in his
work
in the cotton-mill, was Livingstone’s ideal of thorough
preparation for
his work. On his first missionary journey, before penetrating into
the
interior, he stopped at a little station, Lepelole, and there for
six
months cut himself off from all European society in order to gain
an
insight into the habits, ways of thinking, laws, and language of
the
natives. To this he ascribed most of his success as a missionary
and
explorer, for Livingstone’s way was ever the gentle method of
those who
comprehend — not the harsh cruelty of those who feel superior to the
ones
among whom they work. In a day whose superficiality is only
equalled by
the ease with which we gloze over the faults of the unprepared,
this bit
of information of Livingstone’s preparation comes like a
refreshing
reminder that true worth is always worth while.
When Livingstone gave up his purely missionary labors and turned
his
life channel into the stream of scientific investigation, the same
thoroughness of preparation is shown. He did not work for
immediate
results, attained by shallow touching of the surface, or for hasty
conclusions. His was the close observation and careful and
accurate
deductions of the mind trained by science to be patient
and await
results. Rather than be inaccurate, he would wait until he knew he
was
correct. A quarter of a century after Livingstone died a
compatriot of
his, Robert Louis Stevenson, said that among the hardest tasks
that life
sets for a man is “to await occasions, and hurry never.”
Livingstone
learned this thoroughly.
In keeping with the quietness, simplicity, and thoroughness of
this
truly great man was the meeting between him and Stanley when that
redoubtable youth found him in the heart of the Dark Continent.
Life is
essentially a dramatic thing, for as Carlyle says, “Is not every
deathbed the fifth act of a tragedy?” But I sometimes think that
we miss
the drama and poetry of every-day life because it seems so
commonplace.
We look abroad and afar for great moments, and great moments pass
unheeded each hour. So to those two — the toil-worn and weary
explorer
and the youthful Stanley, full of enthusiasm, albeit dimmed by the
hardships and disappointments of his long search, that moment of
first
meeting must have seemed essentially commonplace. There was a
wonder in
the encounter, but like all great emotions and great occasions
there was
a simplicity, so that the greetings were as commonplace as if
occurring
in a crowded street. Thirty years had passed since the explorer
had
dedicated himself to the task of making the world know Africa, and
he
was an old man, worn-out, bent, frail, and sorrow-stricken. But
courage
was unfaltering, faith undimmed, power unabated. Had Stanley been
a few
months later, much of his work would have been lost,
and his death even
more pitiful than it was — yet he could smile and be patient and
unhurried.
As Stanley phrases it, “Suppose Livingstone, following the custom
of
other travellers, had hurried to the coast, after he had
discovered Lake
Bangweolo, to tell the news to the geographical world; then had
returned
to discover Moero, and run away again, then come back once more to
discover Kamolondo, and to race back again. But no, he not only
discovers the Chambezi, Lake Bangweolo, Luapula River, Lake Moero,
Lualaba River, and Lake Kamolondo, but he still tirelessly urges
his
steps forward to put the final completion to the map of the grand
lacustrine river system. Had he followed the example of ordinary
explorers, he would have been running backwards and forwards to
tell the
news, instead of exploring, and he might have been able to write a
volume upon the discovery of each lake and earn much money
thereby.”
This was no negative exploration. It was the hard, earnest labor
of
years, self-abnegation, enduring patience, and exalted fortitude,
such
as ordinary men fail to exhibit. And he had achieved a wonderful
deed.
The finding of the poles, north and south, is no greater feat than
his.
For, after all, what is it to humanity that the magnetic pole,
north or
south, is a few degrees east or west of a certain point in the
frozen
seas and barren ice mountains? What can humanity offer as a reward
to
those whose bodies lie under cairns of ice save a barren
recognition of
their heroism? What have their lives served, beyond that of
examples of
heroism and determination? Bronze tablets
will record their deeds, but
no races will arise in future years to call them blessed. Cold
marble
will enshrine their memory; but there will be no fair commerce,
nor
civilization, nor the thankful prayers of those who have been led
to
know God.
In his earlier years of exploration, Livingstone became convinced
that
the success of the white missionary in a field like Africa is not
to be
reckoned by the tale of doubtful conversions he can send home each
year,
that the proper work of such men was that of pioneering, opening
up,
starting new ground, leaving native agents to work it out in
detail. The
whole of his subsequent career was a carrying out of this idea. It
was
the idea of commerce, bringing the virgin country within the reach
of
the world, putting the natives in that relation to the rest of
humanity
which would most nearly make for their efficiency, if not in their
own
generation, at least in the next. Shall we not say that this is
the
truest ideal of social service — to plan, not for the present, but
for
the future; to be content, not with the barren achievement of
exploration, the satisfaction that comes with the saying, “I am
the
first who has trod this soil!” but to be able to say, “Through me,
generations may be helped?”
Says a biographer of Dr. Livingstone, “His work in exploration is
marked
by rare precision and by a breadth of observation which will make
it
forever a monument to the name of one of the most intrepid
travellers of
the nineteenth century. His activity embraced the field of the
geographer, naturalist, benefactor of mankind, and
it can justly be
said that his labors were the first to lift the veil from the
‘Dark
Continent.’”
During the thirty years of his work he explored alone over
one-third of
the vast continent; a feat which no single explorer has ever
equalled.
But it must be remembered that even though he had severed his
connection
with the missionary society that he regarded himself to the last
as a
“Pioneer Missionary.”
One of the most fascinating subjects of controversy since the
time of
Herodotus was the problem of the source of the Nile. Poetry, from
the
description of the Garden of Eden and the writings of Ptolemy to
the
Kubla Kahn of Coleridge, ran rife over the four fountains out of
which
flowed the wonderful river. To Livingstone was reserved the
supreme
honor of settling for all time the secret of this most poetic
river of
mystery. Long ere this he had been honored with a gold medal from
the
Royal Geographical Society. How futile must the bit of metal have
seemed
to this dark, silent man, whose mind had grown away from bauble
and
tinsel, and who had learned in the silences the real value of the
trinkets of the world.
When he had discovered the Victoria Falls, he had completed in
two years
and a half the most remarkable and most fruitful journey on
record,
reconstructed the map of Africa, and given the world some of the
most
valuable land it ever could possess. The vast commercial fields of
ivory
were opened up to trade; the magnificent power of the Victoria
Falls
laid bare to the sight of civilized man. We can imagine him
standing on
the
brink of the thunderous cataract of the Victoria gazing at its
waters as they dashed and roared over the brink of the precipice,
“ — Like stout Cortez — when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise,
Silent, upon
a peak in Darien.”
To this man, who had opened up a continent; who had penetrated
not only
into the heart of the forest, but had made himself one with the
savages
who were its denizens; who knew and understood them as human
beings, and
not as beasts, the slavery trade was, as he expressed it, “the
open sore
of Africa.” Over and again he voiced his belief that the Negro
freeman
was a hundred times more valuable than the slave. He repeatedly
enjoined
those who had the fitting out of his expeditions not to send him
slaves
to accompany him on his journeys, but freemen, as they were more
trustworthy. He voiced the fundamental truth that he who is his
own
master is he who obeys and believes in his master.
The slave trade in Africa was dealt its death-blow by Dr.
Livingstone.
Portugal had foisted the shame of centuries upon the Dark
Continent, and
openly defied decency and honor. Livingstone’s example and his
death
acted like an inspiration, filling Africa with an army of
explorers and
missionaries, and raising in Europe so powerful a feeling against
the
slave trade that it may be considered as having received its
death-blow.
Dear to his heart was Lincoln, the Emancipator, an ideal hero whom
he
consistently revered. Away to the southwest from Kamolondo
is a large
lake which discharges its waters by the important river, Lomami,
into
the great Lualaba. To this lake, known as the Chobungo by the
natives,
Dr. Livingstone gave the name of Lincoln, in memory of him for
whom your
noble institution was named. This was done because of a vivid
impression
produced on his mind by hearing a portion of Lincoln’s
inauguration
speech from an English pulpit, which related to the causes that
induced
him to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. To the memory of the
man
whom Livingstone revered he has contributed a monument more
durable than
brass or stone.
This strange, seemingly almost ascetic man sets before us of
to-day an
almost impossible standard of living. One idea mastered him — to
give
Africa to the world. His life was a success, as all lives must be
which
have a single aim. Life was clear, elemental almost to him, and to
the
man whose ambition is a unit; who sees but one goal, shining
clearly
ahead, success is inevitable, though it may be masked under the
guise of
poverty and hardship. Livingstone had a higher and nobler ambition
than
the mere pecuniary sum he might receive, or the plaudits of the
unthinking multitude; he followed the dictates of duty. Never was
such a
willing slave to that abstract virtue. His inclination impelled
him
home, the fascinations of which it required the sternest resolves
to
resist. With every foot of new ground he travelled over, he forged
a
chain of sympathy which should hereafter bind all other nations to
Africa. If he were able to complete this chain, a chain of love,
by
actual
discovery and description of the people and nations that still
lived in darkness, so as to attract the good and charitable of his
own
land to bestir themselves for their redemption and salvation — this,
Livingstone would consider an ample reward. “A delirious and
fatuous
enterprise, a Quixotic scheme!” some will say. Not so; he builded
better
than even he knew or dared hope, and posterity will reap the
reward.
The missionary starting out must resolve to bear poverty,
suffering,
hardship, and, if need be, to lose his life. The explorer must
resolve
to be impervious to exquisite little tortures, to forget comforts,
and
be a stranger to luxuries; to lose his life, even, in
order that the
world may add another line or dot to its maps. The
explorer-missionary
must do all these things, and add to them the zeal for others that
shall
illumine his labors, and make him at one with God. David
Livingstone had
all these qualities, coupled with the sublime indifference of the
truly
great to the mere side issues of life. You and I sit down to our
comfortable meals, sleep in our well-appointed beds, read our
Bibles
with perfunctory boredom, and babble an occasional prayer for
those who
endure hardships — when we are reminded from the pulpit to do so.
When we
read of some awful calamity, such as has blazoned across the pages
of
history within the past few weeks, we shudder that men should lay
down
their lives in the barren wastes of ice. When we read of the
thirty
years of steady suffering which Livingstone endured in the forests
of
Africa, the littleness of our own lives comes home to us with
awful
realization.
You who fear to walk the streets with a coat of last
year’s cut, listen to his half whimsical account of how he “came
to the
Cape in 1852, with a black coat eleven years out of fashion, and
Mrs.
Livingstone and the children half naked.” You who shudder at the
tale of
a starving child in the papers, and lamely wonder why the law
allows
such things, read his recital of the sufferings of his wife and
little
ones during the days without water under a tropic sun, and of the
splendid heroism of the mother who did not complain, and the
father who
did not dare meet her eye, for fear of the unspoken reproach
therein.
He was never in sufficient funds, and what little means he could
gather
here and there were often stolen from him, or he found himself
cheated
out of what few supplies he could get together to carry on his
travels.
Months of delay occurred, and sometimes it seemed that all his
labors
and struggles would end in futility; that the world would be
little
better for his sufferings; yet that patient, Christian fortitude
sustained him with unfaltering courage through the most
distressing
experiences. Disease, weakening, piteous, unromantic, unheroic,
wasted
his form; ulcers, sores, horrible and hideous, made his progress
slow
and his work sometimes a painful struggle over what many a man
would
have deemed impossible barriers. The loss of his wife came to him
twelve
years after she had elected to cast in her lot with his, but like
Brutus
of old, he could exclaim,
Stanley could but marvel at such patience. On that memorable day
when
they met, and the younger man gave the doctor his letters, he
tells how
“Livingstone kept the letter-bag on his knee, then, presently
opened it,
looked at the letters contained there, read one or two of his
children’s
letters, his face in the meanwhile lighting up. He asked me to
tell him
the news, “No, Doctor,” said I, “read your letters first, which I
am
sure you must be impatient to read.” “Ah,” said he, “I have waited
years
for letters, and I have been taught patience.”
To you, of the younger generation, what a marvel, what a world of
meaning in those words — “I have been taught patience.” We, who fret
and
chafe because the whole world will not bend its will to our puny
strivings, and turn its whole course that we might have our unripe
desires fulfilled, should read and re-read of the man who could
wait,
because he knew that time and all eternity would be bent to meet
his
desires in time.
Livingstone’s is a character that we cannot help but venerate;
that
calls forth all one’s enthusiasm; that evokes nothing but
sincerest
admiration. He was sensitive, but so is any man of a high mind and
generous nature; he was sensitive on the point of being doubted or
criticised by the easy-chair geographers, lolling comfortably in
their
clubs and scanning through their monocles the maps which the hard
working travellers had made. He was humble-souled, as are all the
truly
great. His gentleness never forsook him; his hopefulness never
deserted
him. No harassing anxiety, distraction of mind, long separation
from
home and kindred, could make him complain. He thought
all would come
out right at last, such faith had he in the goodness of
Providence. The
sport of adverse circumstances; the plaything of the miserable
slaves,
which were persistently sent him from Zanzibar, baffled and
worried,
even almost to the grave; yet he would not desert the charge
imposed
upon him. To the stern dictates of duty alone did he sacrifice his
home
and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized
life.
His was the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the
enduring heroism of the Englishman — never to relinquish his work,
though
his heart yearned for home; never to surrender his obligations,
until he
could write “Finis” to his work.
Yet who shall say that the years spent alone at the very heart of
Nature
had not made him the possessor of that “inward eye,” which, as
Wordsworth says, “is the bliss of solitude.” For many years he
lived in
Africa deprived of books, and yet when Stanley found him, he
learned to
his surprise, that Livingstone could still recite whole poems from
Byron, Burns, Tennyson, Longfellow, and other great poets. The
reason is
found in the fact that all his life he lived within himself. He
lived in
a world in which he revolved inwardly, out of which he awoke only
to
attend to his immediate practical necessities. It was a happy
inner
world, peopled with his own friends, acquaintances, relatives,
readings,
ideas, and associations. Blessed is the man who has found the
inner life
more real than the trivial outer one. To him mere external
annoyances
are but as the little insects, which he may brush away at will. No
man
can be truly
great who has not built up for himself a subjective world
into which he may retire at will. The little child absorbed in a
mythical land peopled by fairies and Prince Charmings is nearest
to
possessing such an inner life; and we must become as little
children. To
some it is a God-given gift; others may acquire it, as Jack London
tells
us, by “going into the waste places, and there sitting down with
our
souls.” There comes then, the overwhelming realization of the
charms and
beauties of nature — man is a pygmy, an abstraction, an unreality.
This
had come to our hero. Added to the strength of his inner life
Livingstone had the deep sympathy with Nature in all her moods. He
became enthusiastic when he described the beauties of the Moero
scenery.
The splendid mountains, tropical vegetation, thundering cataracts,
noble
rivers, stirred his soul into poetic expression. His tired spirit
expanded in the presence of the charms of nature. He could never
pass
through an African forest, with its solemn stillness and serenity,
without wishing to be buried quietly under the dead leaves where
he
would be sure to rest undisturbed. In England, there was no
elbow-room,
the graves were often desecrated, and ever since he had buried his
wife
in the woods of Shupanga, he had sighed for just such a spot,
where his
weary bones would receive the eternal rest they coveted. But even
this
last wish was denied him, and the noisy honors and crowded crypt
of
Westminster Abbey claimed him, far away from the splendid solitude
he
craved. All Africa should have been his tomb. He should never have
been
forced to share with hundreds of others a
meagre and scant
resting-place. Yet there is food for rejoicing in the knowledge,
that
though his body was borne away, his heart was buried by his
beloved
natives in the forest.
The study of Dr. Livingstone would not be even superficially
complete if
we did not take the religious side of his character into
consideration.
By religion, we do not mean the faith he professed, the particular
tenets he believed, the especial catechism he studied, or any
hair-splitting doctrine he might have upheld, but that deeper
ethical
side of manhood, without which there can be no true manhood.
Livingstone’s religion was not of the theoretical kind, but it was
a
constant, earnest, sincere practise. It was neither demonstrative
nor
loud, but manifested itself in a quiet, practical way, and was
always at
work. It was not aggressive, nor troublesome, nor impertinent. In
him,
religion exhibited its loveliest features; it governed his conduct
not
only towards his servants, but towards the natives, the bigoted
Mohammedans, and all with whom he came in contact. Without it,
Livingstone, with his ardent temperament, his enthusiasm, his high
spirit and courage, must have become uncompanionable, and a hard
master.
Religion had tamed him, and made him a Christian gentleman; the
crude
and wilful were refined and subdued; religion had made him the
most
companionable of men and indulgent of masters — a man whose society
was
pleasurable to a high degree.
If his life held for us no other message than this, it would hold
enough. Unfortunately the youth of to-day is apt to chafe
when the
ideal of Christianity and manly religion is held up to him. He
thinks of
the religious man as a milksop, a mollycoddle. He cannot associate
him
in his mind with the doing of great deeds, the thinking of great
thoughts. His ideal of manhood is the ruthless Man on Horseback,
with
too often a disregard of the sacred things of life. Sometimes, if
the
youth of to-day thinks at all, he runs riot into ethics,
forgetting
that, after all, there could be no ethics without a firm base of
religion. And so he wastes many precious years before he learns
that all
the greatest men whom the world has known drew their strength and
power
from the unseen and the spiritual.
We have noticed that Livingstone’s religion was not aggressive
nor
impertinent. Early in his career as a missionary, he recognized
the
truth that if he were to exercise any influence on the native
Africans,
it would not be by bringing to them an abstraction in place of
their own
savage ideals. His influence depended entirely upon persuasion,
and by
awakening within their minds the sense of right and wrong. “We
never
wished them to do right,” he says, “because it would be pleasing
to us,
nor think themselves to blame when they did wrong.” Worldly
affairs, and
temporal benefits with the natives were paramount, so he did not
force
abstractions upon them but, with a keen insight into human nature,
as
well as into savage human nature, he reached their higher selves
through
the more worldly.
His was a pure and tender-hearted nature, full of humanity and
sympathy,
modest as a maiden, unconscious of his own
greatness, with the
simplicity we have noted before, the simplicity of the truly
great. His
soul could be touched to its depths by the atrocities of the Arab
slave-traders, yet he forgot his own sufferings in the desire to
make
others immune from suffering. He had but one rule of life, that
which he
gave to the Scotch school children, whom he once addressed:
“Fear God and work hard!”
It is one hundred years since this quiet, high-souled man was
given the
world, in the little Scotch village, and yet another hundred may
pass
away and still his life will be as a clarion call to the youth of
the
world to emulate his manhood. For the world needs men now, as it
never
needed them before,
Such a man was Livingstone, not afraid to be meek in order to be
great;
not afraid to “fear God and work hard;” not ashamed to stoop in
order
that he might raise others to his high estate. He gave the world a
continent and a conscience; with the lavishness almost of Nature
herself
he bestowed cataracts and rivers, lakes and mountains, forests and
valleys, upon his native land. He stirred the soul of the
civilized
world to the atrocities of the slave trade, and he made it realize
that
humanity may be found even in the breast of a savage. When he
laid down
his life in the forest he loved, he laid upon the altar of
humanity and
science the costliest and sweetest sacrifice that it had known for
many
a weary age.
What message has this life for us to-day, we the commonplace, the
mediocre, the unknown to fame and fortune? Shall we fold our hands
when
we read of such heroes and say, “Ah, yes, he could be great, but
I? I am
weak and humble, I have not the opportunity?” Who was more humble
than
the poor boy spinning in the cotton-mill; who was less constrained
by
Fortune’s frowns than the humble missionary? His life brings to us
the
message of doing well with that little we have.
We cannot all be with Peary at the North Pole, nor die the death
of the
hero, Scott, on the frozen Antarctic continent. It is not given to
us to
be explorers; it is not given us to be pioneers; we may not
discover
vast continents, name great lakes, nor gaze with wonder-stricken
eyes
upon the rolling of a mighty unknown river. But to each and all of
us
comes the divine opportunity to carve for himself a niche, be it
ever so
tiny, in the memories of men. We can heed the admonition of
Carlyle, “Be
no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even a Worldkin. Produce!
Produce!
Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product,
produce
it in God’s name! ’Tis the utmost thou hast in thee, out with it
then!”
The life of service; the life of unselfish giving — this must
Livingstone’s life mean to us. Unselfish, ungrudging lavishing of
life
and soul, even to the last drop of heart’s blood. Service that
does not
hesitate because the task seems small, or the waiting weary;
service
that
does not fear to be of no account in the eyes of the world. Truly,
indeed, might Wordsworth’s apostrophe to Milton be ascribed to
him:
“Thy soul was like a star and
dwelt apart;
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was
like the sea;
Pure as the naked heavens,
majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s
common way
In cheerful godliness, and yet thy
heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.”
A FEW REMARKS ON MAKING A LIFE
17
By Robert E. Jones, LL. D.
Editor Southwestern Christian Advocate, New Orleans, La.
I have a story to relate, and at once I want to present to you my
hero, — a hero more inspiring than Achilles of the “Iliad,” or
Odysseus
of the “Odyssey,” or Æneas of the “Æneid.”
My hero is not a myth, not a creation of literature, not a
tradition,
but not unlike the Grecian hero in that he sprung from the union
of a
god and a mortal. My hero is not reckoned among the high and
mighty nor
will his name ever be carved on stone or raised on bronze. Neither
has
my hero accomplished startling feats. As a hero he may be a
paradox.
Inconspicuous, humble in station, modest, hid far away from the
maddening, jealous, curious, bickering, taunting, striving,
restless
crowd of life. Too long already I have held him from you. His
name? I do
not know. His birthplace? I do not know. His age? I do not know.
Is he
living now? Here my ignorance is painful. I do not know. My hero,
however, is an actual man of flesh and blood. I met him but twice
in
life, but was so charmed I did not ask his name. His
personality
thrilled and he in a measure has become my patron saint. He is not
a
hero of large and commanding stature, but a cripple — doubly so. His
arms
were palsied and turned in so that he could not use a crutch, his
lower
limbs turned in also. He sat in an ordinary cane-bottomed chair
and
could easily move himself about by throwing the weight of his body
from
one back leg of the chair to the other, lifting the front legs at
the
same time. I saw him along the train side at Spartanburg, S. C.
A beggar? No, my young friends, beggars are seldom heroes. He was
a
merchant prince. He carried his goods around his neck and
shoulders and
in his outer coat pockets. He was selling shoe-strings and
pencils. If
you gave him a dime he would insist on your taking one or both of
the
articles he had for sale. In his activities he was a fine lesson
of the
first requirement of life. He was self-sustaining. By the sweat of
his
brow he earned his bread.
Did he complain of his lot? Not a bit of it. His handicap he did
not
make nor could undo. He therefore accepted his condition
philosophically; he was self-respecting. He knew his limitations;
he
knew what he could do and what he could not do; he was
self-knowing.
Knowing his handicap and that it was quite unlike any other man’s
and
that he needed a means of locomotion, he found it; he had,
therefore,
initiative. He leaned not upon the strength of others, but used
his own
resources; he was therefore self-reliant. He did not wait for
business
to come to him, he put himself in the path of business; he was a
hustler. He saw life through a cheerful lens and kept a stout
heart; he
was optimistic. He recognized his own personality apart from the
personalities of the crowded throng through which he passed; he
was a
self-contented individual. He had but one life to live and he was
making
the most of life. When I left him I crowned him, honored him, and
I love
him for his worth as a true man.
“I like a man who faces what he
must,
With step triumphant and a heart
of cheer;
Who fights the daily battles
without fear;
Nor loses faith in man; but does
his best,
Nor ever murmurs at his humble
lot,
But, with a smile, and words of
hope, gives zest
To every toiler; he alone is great
Who by a life heroic conquers
fate.”
When once away from my hero, as I thought of him in my deepest
soul, I
cried:
“Thou art my chastiser and my inspirator. Thou art simple yet
great;
untaught thyself, thou art the teacher of all. Henceforth thou
shalt be
my hero and guide. Doubting myself, bemoaning my limitations,
depressed
by my failure, ashamed of my achievements, my seeing you has given
me a
new interpretation of life. I own you my friend, my life’s
inspiration
and hero.”
There is my hero. You ask his color? What difference does it
make? Men
have often refused to recognize worth because of color. But to
satisfy
you I will tell you. He is a Negro. Give a seat of
honor to my hero.
Gather inspiration and learn from him the lessons of life, if you
will.
Here is an individual doubly afflicted, without a word of
complaint, or
a fret or whine, depending upon his own initiative and resources,
making
the most of life under the circumstances which surround him.
Upon the basis of what has been said, in closing this address to
the
graduating Class of 1913 of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial
Institute
I desire to offer a personal word:
In the first place, you will know a year from now, more than you
can
realize at this present moment, that this is a commencement. This
is not
the climax of your life. It is but the beginning, and however
paradoxical it may seem, you are not at the top of the ladder, you
are
at the foot. We are here to applaud you to-day not so much on what
you
have already accomplished as to give you a send-off for the
strenuous
tasks that lie before you. To be frank with you, young men and
young
women, the life in earnest that awaits you without will tax every
bit of
your strength. Your moral strength will be drawn upon, as well as
your
intellectual resources.
Secondly; had I my way I would have each of you burn your diploma
and
never refer to it as an indication of what you are and what you
know. Do
not attempt to pass through the world on your diploma or your
class
standing. The world cares little for these. I would urge that you
prove
to the world what you are by what you can do — that you
let your
achievements point to your diploma.
Thirdly; you go forth to-day as a representative of this
institution,
mantled with all the sacred honors, prestige, and commendation
that this
institution, State, and your admirers can bestow. See to it that
you
keep the honors of this hour unsoiled and that you disgrace not
the
noble history of your alma mater.
Fourthly; I do not believe that this institution is fostered with
the
idea that the few students who gather here from time to time only
shall
be reached. I rather suspect that the dollars that come from the
State
and generous friends come with the hope that as you have been
helped and
lifted to culture and refinement, you in turn will carry culture
to
those who may never be permitted to stay in these walls. You are
to
carry light into dark places and unto those who sit in darkness.
By your
arm of strength you are to lift the poor who are beneath you. And
then
your education comes not for self-culture, not for self-enjoyment,
not
for self-use, but for the betterment of those who are about you.
Fifthly; you go forth as the embodiment of a new generation. You
stand
to-day upon the foundation built by those who have gone before
you. They
have wrought well. By their toil and suffering you are blest. You
are to
carry your generation one notch higher and thus help the onward
march of
the world’s progress. Be thou faithful. Lift your eyes heavenward
and
aspire to do the best and be the noblest according to God’s
heritage to
you. There are no chosen depths, no prescribed heights to which
you may
climb.
Make the most of life!
THE PEOPLE OF HAYTI AND A PLAN OF EMIGRATION
25
By Prince Saunders
Respected Gentlemen and Friends:
At a period so momentous as the present, when the friends of abolition
and emancipation, as well as those whom observation and experience might
teach us to beware to whom we should apply the endearing appellations,
are professedly concerned for the establishment of an Asylum for those
Free Persons of Color, who may be disposed to remove to it, and for such
persons as shall hereafter be emancipated from slavery, a careful
examination of this subject is imposed upon us.
So large a number of abolitionists, convened from different sections of
the country, is at all times and under any circumstances, an interesting
spectacle to the eye of the philanthropist, how doubly delightful then
is it, to me, whose interests and feelings so largely partake in the
object you have in view, to behold this convention engaged in solemn
deliberation upon those subjects
employed to promote the improvement of
the condition of the African race.
Assembled as this convention is, for the promotion and extension of its
beneficent and humane views and principles, I would respectfully beg
leave to lay before it a few remarks upon the character, condition, and
wants of the afflicted and divided people of Hayti, as they, and that
island, may be connected with plans for the emigration of the free
people of color of the United States.
God in the mysterious operation of his providence has seen fit to permit
the most astonishing changes to transpire upon that naturally beautiful
and (as to soil and productions) astonishingly luxuriant island.
The abominable principles, both of action and belief, which pervaded
France during the long series of vicissitudes which until recently she
has experienced, extended to Hayti, or Santo Domingo have undoubtedly
had an extensive influence upon the character, sentiments, and feelings
of all descriptions of its present inhabitants.
This magnificent and extensive island which has by travellers and
historians been often denominated the “paradise of the New World,” seems
from its situation, extent, climate, and fertility peculiarly suited to
become an object of interest and attention to the many distinguished and
enlightened philanthropists whom God has been graciously pleased to
inspire with a zeal for the promotion of the best interests of the
descendants of Africa. The recent proceedings in several of the slave
States toward the free population of color in those States
seem to
render it highly probable that that oppressed class of the community
will soon be obliged to flee to the free States for protection. If the
two rival Governments of Hayti were consolidated into one well-balanced
pacific power, there are many hundred of the free people in the New
England and Middle States who would be glad to repair there immediately
to settle, and believing that the period has arrived, when many zealous
friends to abolition and emancipation are of opinion that it is time for
them to act in relation to an asylum for such persons as shall be
emancipated from slavery, or for such portion of the free colored
population at present existing in the United States, as shall feel
disposed to emigrate, and being aware that the authorities of Hayti are
themselves desirous of receiving emigrants from this country, are among
the considerations which have induced me to lay this subject before the
convention.
The present spirit of rivalry which exists between the two chiefs in the
French part of the island, and the consequent belligerent aspect and
character of the country, may at first sight appear somewhat
discouraging to the beneficent views and labors of the friends of peace;
but these I am inclined to think are by no means to be considered as
insurmountable barriers against the benevolent exertions of those
Christian philanthropists whose sincere and hearty desire it is to
reunite and pacify them.
There seems to be no probability of their ever being reconciled to each
other without the philanthropic interposition and mediation of those who
have the welfare of the African race at heart. And where, in the whole
circle
of practical Christian philanthropy and active beneficence, is
there so ample a field for the exertion of those heaven-born virtues as
in that hitherto distracted region? In those unhappy divisions which
exist in Hayti is strikingly exemplified the saying which is written in
the sacred oracles, “that when men forsake the true worship and service
of the only true God, and bow down to images of silver, and gold, and
four-footed beasts and creeping things, and become contentious with each
other,” says the inspired writer, “in such a state of things trust ye
not a friend, put ye not confidence in a guide; keep the doors of thy
mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom; for there the son dishonoreth
the father, and the daughter riseth up against her mother, the
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and a man’s enemies shall be
those of his own house.”
Had the venerable prophet in the foregoing predictions alluded expressly
and entirely to the actual moral, political, and above all, to the
religious character and condition of the Haytians, he could scarcely
have given a more correct description of it.
For there is scarcely a family whose members are not separated from each
other, and arrayed under the banners of the rival chiefs, in virtual
hostility against each other. In many instances the husband is with
Henry, and the wife and children with Boyer, and there are other
instances in which the heads of the family are with Boyer, and the other
members with Henry.
Let it be distinctly remembered, that these divided and distressed
individuals are not permitted to hold any
intercourse with each other;
so that it is only when some very extraordinary occurrence transpires,
that persons in the different sections of the country receive any kind
of information from their nearest relatives and friends.
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” is the language of that celestial
law-giver, who taught as never man taught; and his religion uniformly
assures the obedient recipients of his spirit, that they shall be
rewarded according to the extent, fidelity, and sincerity of their works
of piety and beneficence.
And if, according to the magnitude of the object in all its political,
benevolent, humane, and Christian relations, the quantum of recompense
is to be awarded and apprised to the just, to how large a share of the
benediction of our blessed Savior to the promoters of peace shall those
be authorized to expect who may be made the instruments of the
pacification and reunion of the Haytian people? Surely the blessings of
thousands who are, as it were, ready to perish, must inevitably come
upon them.
When I reflect that it was in this city that the first abolition society
that was formed in the world was established, I am strongly encouraged
to hope, that here also there may originate a plan, which shall be the
means of restoring many of our fellow beings to the embraces of their
families and friends, and place that whole country upon the basis of
unanimity and perpetual peace.
If the American Convention should in their wisdom think it expedient to
adopt measures for attempting to affect a pacification of the Haytians,
it is most heartily believed, that their benevolent views would be
hailed and
concurred in with alacrity and delight by the English
philanthropists.
It is moreover believed that a concern so stupendous in its relations,
and bearing upon the cause of universal abolition and emancipation, and
to the consequent improvement and elevation of the African race, would
tend to awaken an active and a universally deep and active interest in
the minds of that numerous host of abolitionists in Great Britain, whom
we trust have the best interests of the descendants of Africa deeply at
heart.
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE AND THE HAYTIAN REVOLUTIONS
26
By James McCune Smith, M. A., M. D.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Whilst the orgies of the French revolution thrust forward a being whose
path was by rivers of blood, the horrors of Santo Domingo produced one
who was pre-eminently a peacemaker — Toussaint L’Ouverture.
In estimating the character of Toussaint L’Ouverture, regard must be
paid, not to the enlightened age in which he lived, but to the rank in
society from which he sprang — a rank which must be classed with a remote
and elementary age of mankind.
Born forty-seven years before the commencement of the revolt, he had
reached the prime of manhood, a slave, with a soul uncontaminated by the
degradation which surrounded him. Living in a state of society where
worse than polygamy was actually urged, we find him at this period
faithful to one wife — the wife of his youth — and the father of an
interesting family. Linked with such tender ties, and enlightened with
some degree of education, which his indulgent master, M. Bayou, had
given
him, he fulfilled, up to the moment of the revolt, the duties of
a Christian man in slavery.
At the time of the insurrection — in which he took no part — he continued
in the peaceable discharge of his duties as coachman; and when the
insurgents approached the estate whereon he lived, he accomplished the
flight of M. Bayou, whose kind treatment (part of this kindness was
teaching this slave to read and write) he repaid by forwarding to him
produce for his maintenance while in exile in these United States.
Having thus faithfully acquitted himself as a slave, he turned towards
the higher destinies which awaited him as a freeman. With a mind stored
with patient reflection upon the biographies of men, the most eminent in
civil and military affairs; and deeply versed in the history of the most
remarkable revolutions that had yet occurred amongst mankind, he entered
the army of the insurgents under Jean François. This chief rapidly
promoted him to the offices of physician to the forces, aid-de-camp, and
colonel. Jean François, in alliance with the Spaniards, maintained war
at this time for the cause of royalty.
Whilst serving under this chief, Toussaint beheld another civil war
agitating the French colony. On one side, the French Commissioners, who
had acknowledged the emancipation of the slaves, maintained war for the
Republic; on the other side, the old noblesse, or planters, fought under
the royal banner, having called in the aid of the British forces in
order to re-establish slavery and the ancient regime.
In this conflict, unmindful of their solemn oaths
against the decree of
the 15th of May, 1791, the whites of both parties, including the
planters, hesitated not to fight in the same ranks, shoulder to
shoulder, with the blacks. Caste was forgotten in the struggle for
principles!
At this juncture Jean François, accompanied by his principal officers,
and possessed of all the honors and emoluments of a captain-general in
the service of his Catholic Majesty, retired to Spain, leaving Toussaint
at liberty to choose his party. Almost immediately joining that standard
which acknowledged and battled for equal rights to all men, he soon
rendered signal service to the Commissioners, by driving the Spaniards
from the northern, and by holding the British at bay in the eastern part
of the island. For these services he was raised to the rank of general
by the French commander at Porte-aux-Paix, General Laveaux, a promotion
which he soon repaid by saving that veteran's life under the following
circumstances: Villate, a mulatto general, envious of the honors
bestowed on Toussaint, treacherously imprisoned General Laveaux in Cape
François. Immediately upon hearing this fact, Toussaint hastened to the
Cape at the head of 10,000 men and liberated his benefactor. And, at the
very moment of his liberation, a commission arrived from France
appointing General Laveaux Governor of the Colony; his first official
act was to proclaim Toussaint his lieutenant. “This is the black,” said
Laveaux, “predicted by Raynal, and who is destined to avenge the
outrages committed against his whole race.” A remark soon verified, for
on his attainment of the supreme power, Toussaint avenged those
injuries — by forgiveness!
As an acknowledgment for his eminent services against the British, and
against the mulattoes, who, inflamed with all the bitterness of caste,
had maintained a sanguinary war under their great leader Rigaud, in the
southern part of the colony, the Commissioners invested Toussaint with
the office and dignity of general-in-chief of Santo Domingo.
From that moment began the full development of the vast and versatile
genius of this extraordinary man. Standing amid the terrible, because
hostile, fragments of two revolutions, harassed by the rapacious greed
of commissioners upon commissioners, who, successively dispatched from
France, hid beneath a republican exterior a longing after the spoils;
with an army in the field accustomed by five years’ experience to all
the license of civil war, Toussaint, with a giant hand, seized the reins
of government, reduced these conflicting elements to harmony and order,
and raised the colony to nearly its former prosperity, his lofty
intellect always delighting to effect its object rather by the tangled
mazes of diplomacy than by the strong arm of physical force, yet
maintaining a steadfast and unimpeached adherence to truth, his word,
and his honor.
General Maitland, commander of the British forces, finding the reduction
of the island to be utterly hopeless, signed a treaty with Toussaint for
the evacuation of all the posts which he held. “Toussaint then paid him
a visit, and was received with military honors. After partaking of a
grand entertainment, he was presented by General Maitland, in the name
of His Majesty, with a
splendid service of plate, and put in possession
of the government-house which had been built and furnished by the
English.”
Buonaparte, on becoming First Consul, sent out the confirmation of
Toussaint as commander-in-chief, who, with views infinitely beyond the
short-sighted and selfish vision of the Commissioners, proclaimed a
general amnesty to the planters who had fled during the revolutions,
earnestly invited their return to the possession of their estates, and,
with a delicate regard to their feelings, decreed that the epithet
“emigrant” should not be applied to them. Many of the planters accepted
the invitation, and returned to the peaceful possession of their
estates.
In regard to the army of Toussaint, General Lacroix, one of the planters
who returned, affirms “that never was a European army subjected to a
more rigid discipline than that which was observed by the troops of
Toussaint.” Yet this army was converted by the commander-in-chief into
industrious laborers, by the simple expedient of paying them for their
labor. “When he restored many of the planters to their estates, there
was no restoration of their former property in human beings. No human
being was to be bought or sold. Severe tasks, flagellations, and scanty
food were no longer to be endured. The planters were obliged to employ
their laborers on the footing of hired servants.” “And under this
system,” says Lacroix, “the colony advanced, as if by enchantment
towards its ancient splendor; cultivation was extended with such
rapidity that every day made its progress more
perceptible. All
appeared to be happy, and regarded Toussaint as their guardian angel. In
making a tour of the island, he was hailed by the blacks with universal
joy, nor was he less a favorite of the whites.”
Toussaint, having effected a bloodless conquest of the Spanish
territory, had now become commander of the entire island. Performing all
the executive duties, he made laws to suit the exigency of the times.
His Egeria was temperance accompanied with a constant activity of body
and mind.
The best proof of the entire success of his government is contained in
the comparative views of the exports of the island, before the
revolutions, and during the administration of Toussaint. Bear in mind
that, “before the revolution there were 450,000 slave laborers working
with a capital in the shape of buildings, mills, fixtures, and
implements, which had been accumulating during a century. Under
Toussaint there were 290,000 free laborers, many of them just from the
army or the mountains, working on plantations that had undergone the
devastation of insurrection and a seven years’ war.”
In consequence of the almost entire cessation of official communication
with France, and for other reasons equally good, Toussaint thought it
necessary for the public welfare to frame a new constitution for the
government of the island. With the aid of M. Pascal, Abbe Moliere, and
Marinit, he drew up a constitution, and submitted the same to a General
Assembly convened from every district, and by that assembly the
constitution was
adopted. It was subsequently promulgated in the name
of the people. And, on the 1st of July, 1801, the island was declared to
be an independent State, in which all men, without regard to
complexion or creed, possessed equal rights.
This proceeding was subsequently sanctioned by Napoleon Buonaparte,
whilst First Consul. In a letter to Toussaint, he says, “We have
conceived for you esteem, and we wish to recognize and proclaim the
great services you have rendered the French people. If their colors fly
on Santo Domingo, it is to you and your brave blacks that we owe it.
Called by your talents and the force of circumstances to the chief
command, you have terminated the civil war, put a stop to the
persecutions of some ferocious men, and restored to honor the religion
and the worship of God, from whom all things come. The situation in
which you were placed, surrounded on all sides by enemies, and without
the mother country being able to succor or sustain you, has rendered
legitimate the articles of that constitution.”
Although Toussaint enforced the duties of religion, he entirely severed
the connection between Church and State. He rigidly enforced all the
duties of morality, and would not suffer in his presence even the
approach to indecency of dress or manner. “Modesty,” said he, “is the
defense of woman.”
The chief, nay the idol of an army of 100,000 well-trained and
acclimated troops ready to march or sail where he wist, Toussaint
refrained from raising the standard of liberty in any one of the
neighboring island, at a
time when, had he been fired with what men
term ambition, he could easily have revolutionized the entire
archipelago of the west. But his thoughts were bent on conquest of
another kind; he was determined to overthrow an error which designing
and interested men had craftily instilled into the civilized world, — a
belief in the natural inferiority of the Negro race. It was the glory
and the warrantable boast of Toussaint that he had been the instrument
of demonstrating that, even with the worst odds against them, this race
is entirely capable of achieving liberty and of self-government. He did
more: by abolishing caste he proved the artificial nature of such
distinctions, and further demonstrated that even slavery cannot unfit
men for the full exercise of all the functions which belong to free
citizens.
“Some situations of trust were filled by free Negroes and mulattoes, who
had been in respectable circumstances under the old Government; but
others were occupied by Negroes, and even by Africans, who had recently
emerged from the lowest condition of slavery.”
But the bright and happy state of things which the genius of Toussaint
had almost created out of elements the most discordant was doomed to be
of short duration. For the dark spirit of Napoleon, glutted, but not
satiated with the glory banquet afforded at the expense of Europe and
Africa, seized upon this, the most beautiful and happy of the
Hesperides, as the next victim of its remorseless rapacity.
With the double intention of getting rid of the republican army, and
reducing back to slavery the island of
Hayti, he sent out his
brother-in-law, General Leclerc, with 26 ships of war and 25,000 men.
Like Leonidas at Thermopylæ, or the Bruce at Bannockburn, Toussaint
determined to defend from thraldom his sea-girt isle, made sacred to
liberty by the baptism of blood.
On the 28th of January, 1802, Leclerc arrived off the bay of Samana,
from the promontory of which Toussaint, in anxious alarm, beheld for the
first time in his life so large an armament. “We must all perish,” said
he, “all France has come to Santo Domingo!” But this despondency passed
away in a moment, and then this man, who had been a kindly-treated
slave, prepared to oppose to the last that system which he now
considered worse than death.
It is impossible, after so long a tax on your patience, to enter on a
detailed narration of the conflict which ensued. The hour of trial
served only to develop and ennoble the character of Toussaint, who rose,
with misfortune, above the allurements of rank and wealth which were
offered as the price of his submission; and the very ties of parental
love he yielded to the loftier sentiment of patriotism.
On the 2d of February, a division of Leclerc’s army, commanded by
General Rochambeau, an old planter, landed at Fort Dauphin, and
ruthlessly murdered many of the inhabitants (freedmen) who, unarmed, had
been led by curiosity to the beach, in order to witness the
disembarkation of the troops.
Christophe, one of the generals of Toussaint, commanding at Cape
François, having resisted the menaces and the flattery of Leclerc,
reduced that ill-fated town to ashes, and retired with his troops into
the mountains, carrying with him 2,000 of the white inhabitants of the
Cape, who were protected from injury during the fierce war which ensued.
Having full possession of the plain of the Cape, Leclerc, with a
proclamation of liberty in his hand, in March following re-established
slavery with all its former cruelties.
This treacherous movement thickened the ranks of Toussaint, who
thenceforward so vigorously pressed his opponent, that as a last resort,
Leclerc broke the shackles of the slave, and proclaimed “Liberty and
equality to all the inhabitants of Santo Domingo.”
This proclamation terminated the conflict for the time. Christophe and
Dessalines, general officers, and at length Toussaint himself,
capitulated, and, giving up the command of the island to Leclerc, he
retired, at the suggestion of that officer, to enjoy rest and the sweet
endearments of his family circle, on one of his estates near Gonaives.
At this place he had remained about one month, when, without any
adequate cause, Leclerc caused him to be seized, and to be placed on
board of a ship of war, in which he was conveyed to France, where,
without trial or condemnation, he was imprisoned in a loathsome and
unhealthy dungeon. Unaccustomed to the chill and damp of this
prison-house, the aged frame of Toussaint gave way, and he died.
In this meagre outline of his life I have presented simply facts,
gleaned, for the most part, from the unwilling testimony of his foes,
and therefore resting on good authority. The highest encomium on his
character is contained in the fact that Napoleon believed that by
capturing him he would be able to re-enslave Hayti; and even this
encomium is, if possible, rendered higher by the circumstances which
afterward transpired, which showed that his principles were so
thoroughly disseminated among his brethren, that, without the presence
of Toussaint, they achieved that liberty which he had taught them so
rightly to estimate.
The capture of Toussaint spread like wild-fire through the island, and
his principal officers again took the field. A fierce and sanguinary war
ensued, in which the French gratuitously inflicted the most awful
cruelties on their prisoners, many of whom having been hunted with
bloodhounds, were carried in ships to some distance from the shore,
murdered in cold blood, and cast into the sea; their corpses were thrown
by the waves back upon the beach, and filled the air with pestilence, by
which the French troops perished in large numbers. Leclerc having
perished by pestilence, his successor, Rochambeau, when the conquest of
the island was beyond possibility, became the cruel perpetrator of these
bloody deeds.
Thus it will be perceived that treachery and massacre were begun on the
side of the French. I place emphasis on these facts in order to endeavor
to disabuse the public mind of an attempt to attribute to emancipation
the acts of retaliation resorted to by the Haytians in imitation of
what the enlightened French had taught them. In two daily papers of this
city there were published, a year since, a series of articles entitled
the “Massacres of Santo Domingo.”
The “massacres” are not attributable to emancipation, for we have proved
otherwise in regard to the first of them. The other occurred in 1804,
twelve years after the slaves had disenthralled themselves. Fearful as
the latter may have been, it did not equal the atrocities previously
committed on the Haytians by the French. And the massacre was restricted
to the white French inhabitants, whom Dessalines, the Robespierre of the
island, suspected of an attempt to bring back slavery, with the aid of a
French force yet hovering in the neighborhood.
And if we search for the cause of this massacre, we may trace it to the
following source: Nations which are pleased to term themselves civilized
have one sort of faith which they hold to one another, and another sort
which they entertain towards people less advanced in refinement. The
faith which they entertain towards the latter is, very often, treachery,
in the vocabulary of the civilized. It was treachery towards Toussaint
that caused the massacre of Santo Domingo; it was treachery towards
Osceola that brought bloodhounds into Florida!
General Rochambeau, with the remnant of the French army, having been
reduced to the dread necessity of striving “to appease the calls of
hunger by feeding on horses, mules, and the very dogs that had been
employed
in hunting down and devouring the Negroes,” evacuated the
island in the autumn of 1803, and Hayti thenceforward became an
independent State.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I have now laid before you a concise view of the
revolutions of Hayti in the relation of cause and effect; and I trust
you will now think, that, so far from being scenes of indiscriminate
massacre from which we should turn our eyes in horror, these revolutions
constitute an epoch worthy of the anxious study of every American
citizen.
Among the many lessons that may be drawn from this portion of history is
one not unconnected with the present occasion. From causes to which I
need not give a name, there is gradually creeping into our otherwise
prosperous state the incongruous and undermining influence of caste.
One of the local manifestations of this unrepublican sentiment is, that
while 800 children, chiefly of foreign parents, are educated and taught
trades at the expense of all the citizens, colored children are excluded
from these privileges.
With the view to obviate the evils of such an unreasonable proscription,
a few ladies of this city, by their untiring exertions, have organized
an “Asylum for Colored Orphans.” Their zeal in this cause is infinitely
beyond all praise of mine, for their deeds of mercy are smiled on by Him
who has declared, that “Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these
little ones a cup of cold water, shall in no wise lose her reward.” Were
any further argument needed to urge them on in their blessed work,
I
would point out to them the revolutions of Hayti, where, in the midst of
the orgies and incantations of civil war, there appeared, as a spirit of
peace, the patriot, the father, the benefactor of mankind — Toussaint
L’Ouverture, a freedman, who had been taught to read while in slavery!
Notes
- Proclamation of Emancipation. Executive order issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, which freed all slaves in the ten states that were in rebellion against the United States.
- Civil Rights and Social Equality. A speech delivered in the House of Representatives, February 3, 1875.
- Civil Rights Act of 1875. Also known as The Enforcement Act or The Force Bill, a law passed by the United States Congress which prohibited discrimination against African Americans with regard to public accommodations, public transportation and jury service. It was later declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1883.
- Address During The Presidential Campaign of 1880. Delivered at Indianapolis, Indiana.
- Fifteenth Amendment. Amendment, passed in 1870, to the U.S. Constitution that gave African American men the right to vote. However, many states still found ways (via poll taxes, literacy tests, et al.) to continue denying these men the vote.
- In the Wake of the Coming Ages. Extract from an address delivered at the Music Hall, Boston, Mass., October 4, 1894, before the Seventh Biennial Meeting of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows of America.
- Dixie. Sometimes known as “I Wish I Was In Dixie” or “Dixie’s Land,” an extremely popular song originating in the 1850’s and coming to symbolize the American South.
- Arcadia. A poetic conception of an unspoiled utopia, referring back to the Greek province of the same name.
- Force Bill. See Civil Rights Act of 1875, above.
- Prætorian Guard. A force of bodyguards used by Roman emperors.
- Parnassus. Short for Mount Parnassus, said in some Greek myths to be the home of the Muses and thus the home of poetry, music and learning.
- The Negro as a Soldier. Delivered at the Negro Congress, at the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta Ga., November 11 to November 23, 1895.
- Varner. Appears to be a misspelling of the name of Colonel James Mitchell Varnum, who led the 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the Continental Army of the U.S. Revolutionary War. This regiment is considered the first African-American military regiment, although only some of the soldiers were men of color.
- Diapasons. Grand swelling bursts of harmony.
- The Life of Social Service. Delivered at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, on the occasion of the Centenary of the birth of David Livingstone, March 7, 1913.
- Awful Calamity. Appears to be a reference to the tragic South Pole expedition of Robert Scott and his comrades, which ended in February 1913 with the deaths of everyone in the expedition party. News of the catastrophe became a worldwide sensation.
- On Making a Life. Extracts from Commencement address delivered at Tuskegee Institute, May 29, 1913.
-
With her flowers.
From “Ode Sung at the opening of the International Exhibition,” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
-
Black Regiment.
From
“The Black Regiment,”
by George H. Boker.
-
A peak in Darien.
From
“On first looking into Chapman’s Homer,”
by John Keats.
-
Patience to endure it now.
Julius Caesar IV. 3., by William Shakespeare.
-
Excel cold rocks and rambles rude.
From
“Patriotism” by William Jones.
-
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.
From
“England, 1802,”
by William Wordsworth.
-
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.
From
An Essay on Man: Epistle IV, by Alexander Pope.
-
The People of Hayti.
Extracts from an address delivered at the American Convention for
Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and Improving the Condition of the
African Race, Philadelphia, Pa., December 11, 1818.
-
Haytian Revolutions.
Extracts from a lecture delivered at the Stuyvesant Institute, New
York, for the benefit of the Colored Orphan Asylum, February 26, 1841.
Text prepared by:
- Keri King
- Larissa Lee
- Bruce R. Magee
Source
Dunbar, Alice Moore, ed. Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence: The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of Slavery to the Present Time. New York: Bookery, 1914. Archive.org. 28 Sept. 2006. Web. 23 Jan. 2015. <https:// archive.org/ details/ masterpieces ofne00dunbrich>.
L’Anthologie Louisianaise