THE NEGRO'S PART IN THE REDEMPTION OF AFRICA[29] (continued 2)

By Reverdy C. Ransom, D. D.

Editor A. M. E. Church Review

Friends, Citizens:

We have assembled here to-night to celebrate the one hundredth birth of William Lloyd Garrison. Not far from this city he was born. Within the gates of this city, made famous by some of America's most famous men, he spent more than two-thirds of his long and eventful career, enriching its history and adding to the glory of its renown. This place, of all places, is in keeping with the hour. It is most appropriate that we should meet in Faneuil Hall, the cradle of American liberty, a spot hallowed and made sacred by the statesmen, soldiers, orators, scholars, and reformers who have given expression to burning truths and found a hearing within these walls. Of all people it is most fitting that the Negro Americans of Boston should be the ones to take the lead in demonstrating to their fellow-citizens, and to the world, that his high character is cherished with affection, and the priceless value of his unselfish labors in their behalf shall forever be guarded as a sacred trust.

Only succeeding generations and centuries can tell the carrying power of a man's life. Some men, whose contemporaries thought their title to enduring fame secure, have not been judged worthy in a later time to have their names recorded among the makers of history. Some men are noted, some are distinguished, some are famous,—only a few are great.

The men whose deeds are born to live in history do not appear more than once or twice in a century. Of the millions of men who toil and strive, the number is not large whose perceptible influence reaches beyond the generation in which they lived. It does not take long to call the roll of honor of any generation, and when this roll is put to the test of the unprejudiced scrutiny of a century, only a very small and select company have sufficient carrying power to reach into a second century. When the roll of the centuries is called, we may mention almost in a single breath the names which belong to the ages. Abraham and Moses stand out clearly against the horizon of thirty centuries. St. Paul, from his Roman prison, in the days of the Cæsars, is still an articulate and authoritative voice; Savonarola, rising from the ashes of his funeral-pyre in the streets of Florence, still pleads for civic righteousness; the sound of Martin Luther's hammer nailing his thesis to the door of his Wittenberg church continues to echo around the world; the battle-cry of Cromwell's Ironsides shouting, "The Lord of Hosts!" still causes the tyrant and the despot to tremble upon their thrones; out of the fire and blood of the French Revolution, "Liberty and Equality" survive; Abraham Lincoln comes from the backwoods of Kentucky, and the prairies of Illinois, to receive the approval of all succeeding generations of mankind for his Proclamation of Emancipation; John Brown was hung at Harper's Ferry that his soul might go marching on in the tread of every Northern regiment that fought for the "Union forever;" William Lloyd Garrison, mobbed in the streets of Boston for pleading the cause of the slave, lived to see freedom triumph, and to-night, a century after his birth, his name is cherished, not only in America, but around the world, wherever men aspire to individual liberty and personal freedom.

William Lloyd Garrison was in earnest. He neither temporized nor compromised with the enemies of human freedom. He gave up all those comforts, honors, and rewards which his unusual talents would easily have won for him in behalf of the cause of freedom which he espoused. He stood for righteousness with all the rugged strength of a prophet. Like some Elijah of the Gilead forests, he pleaded with this nation to turn away from the false gods it had enshrined upon the altars of human liberty. Like some John the Baptist crying in the wilderness, he called upon this nation to repent of its sin of human slavery, and to bring forth the fruits of its repentance in immediate emancipation.

William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 10, 1805. He came of very poor and obscure parentage. His father, who was a seafaring man, early abandoned the family for causes supposed to relate to his intemperance. The whole career of Garrison was a struggle against poverty. His educational advantages were limited. He became a printer's apprentice when quite a lad, and learned the printing trade. When he launched his paper, The Liberator, which was to deal such destructive blows to slavery, the type was set by his own hands. The motto of The Liberator was "Our country is the world, our countrymen mankind."

Garrison did not worship the golden calf. His course could not be changed, nor his opinion influenced by threats of violence or the bribe of gold. Money could not persuade him to open his mouth against the truth, or buy his silence from uncompromising denunciation of the wrong. He put manhood above money, humanity above race, the justice of God above the justices of the Supreme Court, and conscience above the Constitution. Because he took his stand upon New Testament righteousness as taught by Christ, he was regarded as a fanatic in a Christian land. When he declared that "he determined at every hazard to lift up a standard of emancipation in the eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill and in the birthplace of liberty," he was regarded as a public enemy, in a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to freedom!

Garrison drew his arguments from the Bible and the Declaration of Independence, only to be jeered as a wild enthusiast. He would not retreat a single inch from the straight path of liberty and justice. He refused to purchase peace at the price of freedom. He would not drift with the current of the public opinion of his day. His course was up-stream; his battle against the tide. He undertook to create a right public sentiment on the question of freedom, a task as great as it was difficult. Garrison thundered warnings to arouse the public conscience before the lightnings of his righteous wrath and the shafts of his invincible logic wounded the defenders of slavery in all the vulnerable joints of their armor. He declared: "Let Southern oppressors tremble—let their secret abettors tremble; let their Northern apologists tremble; let all the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble." For such utterances as these his name throughout the nation became one of obloquy and reproach.

He was not bound to the slave by the ties of race, but by the bond of common humanity which he considered a stronger tie. In his struggle for freedom there was no hope of personal gain; he deliberately chose the pathway of financial loss and poverty. There were set before his eyes no prospect of honor, no pathways leading to promotion, no voice of popular approval, save that of his conscience and his God. His friends and neighbors looked upon him as one who brought a stigma upon the fair name of the city in which he lived. The business interests regarded him as an influence which disturbed and injured the relations of commerce and of trade; the Church opposed him; the press denounced him; the State regarded him as an enemy of the established order; the North repudiated him; the South burned him in effigy. Yet, almost single-handed and alone, Garrison continued to fight on, declaring that "his reliance for the deliverance of the oppressed universally is upon the nature of man, the inherent wrongfulness of oppression, the power of truth, and the omnipotence of God." After the greatest civil war that ever immersed a nation in a baptism of blood and tears, Garrison, unlike most reformers, lived to see the triumph of the cause for which he fought and every slave not only acknowledged as a free man, but clothed with the dignity and powers of American citizenship. William Lloyd Garrison has passed from us, but the monumental character of his work and the influence of his life shall never perish. While there are wrongs to be righted, despots to be attacked, oppressors to be overthrown, peace to find and advocate, and freedom a voice, the name of William Lloyd Garrison will live.

Those who would honor Garrison and perpetuate his memory and his fame must meet the problems that confront them with the same courage and in the same uncompromising spirit that Garrison met the burning questions of the day. Those who would honor Garrison in one breath, while compromising our manhood and advocating the surrender of our political rights in another, not only dishonor his memory, not only trample the flag of our country with violent and unholy feet, but they spit upon the grave which holds the sacred dust of this chiefest of the apostles of freedom.

The status of the Negro in this country was not settled by emancipation; the 15th Amendment to the Constitution, which it was confidently believed would clothe him forever with political influence and power, is more bitterly opposed to-day than it was a quarter of a century ago. The place which the Negro is to occupy is still a vital and burning question. The newspaper press and magazines are full of it; literature veils its discussion of the theme under the guise of romance; political campaigns are waged with this question as a paramount issue; it is written into the national platform of great political parties; it tinges legislation; it has invaded the domain of dramatic art, until to-day, it is enacted upon the stage; philanthropy, scholarship, and religion are, each from their point of view, more industriously engaged in its solution than they have been in any previous generation. If the life and labors of Garrison, and the illustrious men and women who stood with him, have a message for the present, we should seek to interpret its meaning and lay the lesson to heart.

The scenes have shifted, but the stage is the same; the leading characters have not changed. We still have with us powerful influences trying to keep the Negro down by unjust and humiliating legislation and degrading treatment; while on the other hand, the Negro and his friends are still contending for the same privileges and opportunities that are freely accorded to other citizens whose skins do not happen to be black. We, of this nation, are slow to learn the lessons taught by history; the passions which feed on prejudice and tyranny can neither be mollified nor checked by subjection, surrender, or compromise. Self-appointed representatives of the Negro, his enemies and his would-be friends, are pointing to many diverse paths, each claiming that the one they have marked for his feet is the proper one in which he should walk. There is but one direction in which the Negro should steadfastly look and but one path, in which he should firmly plant his feet—that is, toward the realization of complete manhood and equality, and the full justice that belongs to an American citizen clothed with all of his constitutional power.

This is a crucial hour for the Negro American; men are seeking to-day to fix his industrial, political, and social status under freedom as completely as they did under slavery. As this nation continued unstable, so long as it rested upon the foundation-stones of slavery so will it remain insecure as long as one-eighth of its citizens can be openly shorn of political power, while confessedly they are denied "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We have no animosity against the South or against Southern people. We would see the wounds left by the War of the Rebellion healed; but we would have them healed so effectually that they could not be trodden upon and made to bleed afresh by inhuman barbarities and unjust legislation; we would have the wounds of this nation bound up by the hands of those who are friendly to the patient, so that they might not remain a political running sore. We would have the bitter memories of the war effaced, but they cannot fade while the spirit of slavery walks before the nation in a new guise. We, too, would have a reunited country; but we would have the re-union to include not only white men North and South, but a union so endearing, because so just, as to embrace all of our fellow-countrymen, regardless of section or of race.

* * * * *

It is not a man's right, it is his duty to support and defend his family and his home; he should therefore resist any influence exerted to prevent him from maintaining his dependants in comfort; while he should oppose with his life the invader or despoiler of his home. God had created man with a mind capable of infinite development and growth; it is not, therefore, a man's right, it is his duty to improve his mind and to educate his children; he should not, therefore, submit to conditions which would compel them to grow up in ignorance. Man belongs to society; it is his duty to make his personal contribution of the best that is within him to the common good; he can do this only as he is given opportunity to freely associate with his fellow-man. He should, therefore, seek to overthrow the artificial social barriers which would intervene to separate him from realizing the highest and best there are within him by freedom of association. It is a man's duty to be loyal to his country and his flag, but when his country becomes a land of oppression and his flag an emblem of injustice and wrong, it becomes as much his duty to attack the enemies within the nation as to resist the foreign invader. Tyrants and tyranny everywhere should be attacked and overthrown.

This is a period of transition in the relations of the Negro to this nation. The question which America is trying to answer, and which is must soon definitely settle, is this: What kind of Negroes do the American people want? That they must have the Negro in some relation is no longer a question of serious debate. The Negro is here 10,000,000 strong, and, for weal or woe, he is here to stay—he is here to remain forever. In the government he is a political factor; in education and in wealth he is leaping forward with giant strides; he counts his taxable property by the millions, his educated men and women by the scores of thousands; in the South he is the backbone of industry; in every phase of American life his presence may be noted; he is also as thoroughly imbued with American principles and ideals as any class of people beneath our flag. When Garrison started his fight for freedom, it was the prevailing sentiment that the Negro could have no place in this country save that of a slave, but he has proven himself to be more valuable as a free man than as a slave. What kind of Negroes do the American people want? Do they want a voteless Negro in a Republic founded upon universal suffrage? Do they want a Negro who shall not be permitted to participate in the government which he must support with his treasure and defend with his blood? Do they want a Negro who shall consent to be set apart as forming a distinct industrial class, permitted to rise no higher than the level of serfs or peasants? Do they want a Negro who shall accept an inferior social position, not as a degradation, but as the just operation of the laws of caste based upon color? Do they want a Negro who will avoid friction between the races by consenting to occupy the place to which white men may choose to assign him? What kind of a Negro do the American people want? Do they want a Negro who will accept the doctrine, that however high he may rise in the scale of character, wealth, and education, he may never hope to associate as an equal with white men? Do white men believe that 10,000,000 blacks, after having imbibed the spirit of American institutions, and having exercised the rights of free men for more than a generation, will ever accept a place of permanent inferiority in the Republic? Taught by the Declaration of Independence, sustained by the Constitution of the United States, enlightened by the education of our schools, this nation can no more resist the advancing tread of the hosts of the oncoming blacks than it can bind the stars or halt the resistless motion of the tide.

The answer which the American people may give to the question proposed cannot be final. There is another question of greater importance which must be answered by the Negro, and by the Negro alone: What kind of an American does the Negro intend to be? The answer to this question he must seek and find in every field of human activity and endeavor. First, he must answer it by negation. He does not intend to be an alien in the land of his birth, nor an outcast in the home of his fathers. He will not consent to his elimination as a political factor; he will refuse to camp forever on the borders of the industrial world; as an American he will consider that his destiny is united by indissoluble bonds with the destiny of America forever; he will strive less to be a great Negro in this Republic and more to be an influential and useful American. As intelligence is one of the chief safeguards of the Republic, he will educate his children. Knowing that a people cannot perish whose morals are above reproach, he will ally himself on the side of the forces of righteousness; having been the object of injustice and wrong, he will be the foe of anarchy and the advocate of the supremacy of law. As an American citizen, he will allow no man to protest his title, either at home or abroad. He will insist more and more, not only upon voting, but upon being voted for, to occupy any position within the gift of the nation. As an American whose title to citizenship is without a blemish or flaw, he will resist without compromise every law upon the statute-books which is aimed at his degradation as a human being and humiliation as a citizen. He will be no less ambitious and aspiring than his fellow-countrymen; he will assert himself, not as a Negro, but as a man; he will beat no retreat in the face of his enemies and opposers; his gifted sons and daughters, children of genius who may be born to him, will make their contribution to the progress of humanity on these shores, accepting nothing but the honors and rewards that belong to merit. What kind of an American does the Negro intend to be? He intends to be an American who will never mar the image of God, reproach the dignity of his manhood, or tarnish the fair title of his citizenship, by apologizing to men or angels for associating as an equal, with some other American who does not happen to be black. He will place the love of country above the love of race; he will consider no task too difficult, no sacrifice too great, in his effort to emancipate his country from the un-Christlike feelings of race hatred and the American bondage of prejudice. There is nothing that injustice so much respects, that Americans so much admire, and the world so much applauds, as a man who stands erect like a man, has the courage to speak in the tones of a man, and to fearlessly act a man's part.

There are two views of the Negro question now at last clearly defined. One is that the Negro should stoop to conquer; that he should accept in silence the denial of his political rights; that he should not brave the displeasure of white men by protesting when he is segregated in humiliating ways upon the public carriers and in places of public entertainment; that he may educate his children, buy land, and save money, but he must not insist upon his children taking their place in the body politic to which their character and intelligence entitle them; he must not insist on ruling the land which he owns or farms; he must have no voice as to how the money he has accumulated is to be expended through taxation and the various forms of public improvement. There are others who believe that the Negro owes this nation no apology for his presence in the United States; that, being black, he is still no less a man; that he should not yield one syllable of his title to American citizenship; that he should refuse to be assigned to an inferior plane by his fellow-countrymen; though foes conspire against him and powerful friends desert him, he should refuse to abdicate his sovereignty as a citizen, and to lay down his honor as a man.

If Americans become surfeited with wealth, haughty with the boasting pride of race superiority, morally corrupt in the high places of honor and of trust, enervated through the pursuit of pleasure, or the political bondmen of some strong man plotting to seize the reins of power, the Negro American will continue his steadfast devotion to the flag, and the unyielding assertion of his constitutional rights, that "this government of the people, for the people, and by the people, may not perish from the earth."

It is so marvelous as to be like a miracle of God, to behold the transformation that has taken place in the position of the Negro in this land since William Lloyd Garrison first saw the light a century ago. When the Negro had no voice, Garrison pleaded his cause; to-night the descendants of the slave stand in Faneuil Hall, while from ocean to ocean every foot of American soil is dedicated to freedom. The Negro American has found his voice; he is able to speak for himself; he stands upon this famous platform here and thinks it no presumption to declare that he seeks nothing more, and will be satisfied with nothing less than the full measure of American citizenship!

I feel inspired to-night. The spirits of the champions of freedom hover near. High above the stars, Lincoln and Garrison, Sumner and Phillips, Douglass and Lovejoy, look down to behold their prayers answered, their labors rewarded, and their prophecies fulfilled. They were patriots; the true saviors of a nation that esteemed them not. They have left us a priceless heritage. Is there to be found among us now one who would so dishonor the memory of these sainted dead; one so lost to love of country and loyalty to his race, as to offer to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage? When we were slaves, Garrison labored to make us free; when our manhood was denied, he proclaimed it. Shall we in the day of freedom be less loyal to our country and true to ourselves than were the friends who stood for us in our night of woe? Many victories have been won for us; there are still greater victories we must win for ourselves. The proclamation of freedom and the bestowal of citizenship were not the ultimate goal we started out to reach, they were but the beginnings of progress. We, of this generation, must so act our part that, a century hence, our children and our children's children may honor our memory and be inspired to press on as they receive from us untarnished the banner of freedom, of manhood, and of equality among men.

The Negro went aboard the ship of state when she was first launched upon the uncertain waters of our national existence. He booked as through passenger until she should reach "the utmost sea-mark of her farthest sail." When those in command treated him with injustice and brutality, he did not mutiny or rebel; when placed before the mast as a lookout, he did not fall asleep at his post. He has helped to keep her from being wrecked upon the rocks of treachery; he has imperiled his life by standing manfully to his task while she outrode the fury of a threatening sea; when the pirate-craft of rebellion bore down upon her and sought to place the black flag of disunion at her masthead, he was one of the first to respond when the captain called all hands up on deck. If the enemies of liberty should ever again attempt to wreck our ship of state, the Negro American will stand by the guns; he will not desert her when she is sinking, but with the principles of the Declaration of Independence nailed to the masthead, with the flag afloat, he would prefer rather to perish with her than to be numbered among those who deserted her when assailed by an overwhelming foe. If she weathers the storms that beat upon her, outsails the enemies that pursue her, avoids the rocks that threaten her, and anchors at last in the port of her desired haven, black Americans and white Americans, locked together in brotherly embrace, will pledge each other to remain aboard forever on terms of equality, because they shall have learned by experience that neither one of them can be saved, except they thus abide in the ship.

For the present our strivings are not in vain. The injustice that leans upon the arm of oppression for support must fall; truth perverted or suppressed gains in momentum while it waits; generations may perish, but humanity will survive; out of the present conflict of opinion and the differences of race and color that divide, once the tides of immigration have ceased to flow to our shores, this nation will evolve a people who shall be one in purpose, one in spirit, one in destiny—a composite American by the co-mingling of blood.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN[37]

By James L. Curtis, of New York

Since the curtain rang down on the tragedy of Calvary, consummating the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth, there has been no parallel in history, sacred or profane, to the deeds of Abraham Lincoln and their perennial aftermath.

For two hundred years this nation writhed in the pain and anguish of travail; and as a happy sequel to this long night of suffering, in the dawn of the nineteenth century, she bore a son who was destined to awaken a nation's somnolent conscience to a monstrous evil; to lead a nation through a fierce siege of fratricidal strife; to strike the shackles of slavery from the limbs of four millions of bondsmen; to fall a victim to the assassin's bullet; to be enshrined in the hearts of a grateful nation; and to have an eternal abode in the pantheon of immortals.

* * * * *

Abraham Lincoln! What mighty magic is this name! Erstwhile it made the tyrant tremble on his throne and the hearts of the down-trodden leap for joy. Now, over the chasm of two score years, it causes the drooping hopes of freemen to bud anew, and the smoldering embers of their ambition to leap into flame.

With talismanic power, it swerves the darts of hate and malice aimed at a defenseless race, so that though they wound, they do not destroy. With antidotal efficacy, it nullifies the virus of proscription so that it does not stagnate the blood nor paralyze the limb of an up-treading and on-going race.

When the nation was rent in twain, Lincoln, the propitiator, counselled conciliation. When the States of the South sought to secede, Lincoln, the concatenator, welded them into a solid chain, one and inseparable. When brother sought the life of brother and father that of son, Lincoln, the pacificator, advised peace with honor. When the nation was stupefied with the miasma of human slavery, Lincoln, the alleviator, broke its horrid spell by diffusing through the fire of war the sweet incense of liberty.

The cynic has sneered at the Proclamation of Emancipation. The dogmatist has called the great Emancipator a compromiser. The scholar, with the eccentricity peculiar to genius, has solemnly declared that the slaves were freed purely as a war necessity and not because of any consideration for the slave. The undergraduate, in imitation of his erudite tutors, has asserted that the freedmen owe more to the pride of the haughty Southerner than to the magnanimity of President Lincoln. But the mists of doubt and misconception have been so dissipated by the sunlight of history, that we, of this generation, may clearly see the martyred President as he really was.

* * * * *

All honor to Abraham Lincoln, the performer, not the preacher; the friend of humanity, the friend of the North, the friend of the South, the friend of the white man, the friend of the black man; the man whose heart, like the Christ's, was large enough to bring within the range of its sensibilities every human being beneath the stars. The man who, when God's clock struck the hour, swung back on its creaking hinges the door of opportunity that the slaves might walk over its portals into the army and into new fields of usefulness in civil life.

One hundred years have rolled into eternity since freedom's greatest devotee made his advent on this earth. One hundred years, as but a moment compared with the life of nations; yet, changes in our form of government, in the interpretation of our laws, in the relation between the North and the South, in the status of the Negro, have been wrought, that were beyond the wildest dreams of Lincoln. And wonderful as have been these changes to our advantage, in the acquisition of property, in moral and mental development, in the cultivation of sturdy manhood and womanhood, yet, all these have come to us as a direct result of the labors of Lincoln, who, with the ken of a prophet and the vision of a seer, in those dark and turbulent days, wrought more nobly than he knew.

From these prodigious tasks so well performed, I adjure you, my friends, that you catch inspiration; that you take no backward step in the future; that you prove worthy heirs and joint heirs to the heritage of golden opportunities bequeathed you; that you demand every right with which his labors have endowed you; and that the righteous sentiment of "Equal and Exact Justice" be emblazoned on a banner and flaunted in the breezes till every foe of justice is vanquished and right rules supreme.

That you will do this, I doubt not, for in my heart of hearts, I believe with Henry Clay that "Before you can repress the tendencies to liberty, or the tendencies to absolute emancipation from every form of serfdom, you must go back to the era of our independence and muzzle the cannon which thunders its joyous return; you must penetrate the human soul and eradicate there the love of liberty." Then, and not till then, can you stifle the ennobling aspiration of the American Negro for the unabridged enjoyment of every right guaranteed under the Constitution and the laws.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND FIFTY YEARS OF FREEDOM[38]

By Alexander Walters, D. D.,

Bishop of A. M. E. Zion Church

The distinguished person whom we pause to honor was not born great, if to be born great means to be born in a mansion, surrounded at the start of life with opulence, "dangled on the knee of indulgence and charmed to sleep by the voice of liveried servants"; if this is the measure of greatness, then Abraham Lincoln was not born great,—but if to be born great is to be ushered into the world with embryonic qualities of heart, elements calculated to unfold into the making of the stature of a complete man, a manly man, a brave, a God-fearing man—a statesman equal to the greatest emergency of a nation, then the little fellow of destiny who made his initial bow to the goddess of light in Hardin County, Kentucky, February 12, 1809, was born great.

If to achieve greatness is to win the hearts of one's youthful companions, one's associates in professional life, and to merit the confidence and genuine love of a nation to the extent of securing its greatest honors and to perform the mightiest work of a century, then Abraham Lincoln achieved greatness.

* * * * *

The assertion has been made that President Lincoln was not in favor of universal freedom. I beg to take issue with this view.

A careful study of this sincere, just, and sympathetic man will serve to show that from his earliest years he was against slavery. He declared again and again; "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong; I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel."

Back in the thirties this young man clad in homespun was standing in the slave-mart of New Orleans, watching husbands and wives being separated forever, and children being doomed never again to look into the faces of their parents. As the hammer of the auctioneer fell, this young flat-boatman, with quivering lips, turned to his companion and said: "If ever I get a chance to hit that thing (slavery), I will hit it hard, by the Eternal God I will."

In March, 1839, he had placed upon the House Journal of Illinois a formal protest against pro-slavery resolutions which he could get but one other member beside himself to sign. Long before he was made President, in a speech at Charleston, Illinois, he said: "Yes we will speak for freedom, and against slavery, as long as the Constitution of our country guarantees free speech, until everywhere on this wide land the sun shall shine, and the rain shall fall, and the winds shall blow upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil."

While in Congress in 1848 he offered a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. It was his opinion that Congress had control over the institution of slavery in the District of Columbia and the territories, and he evidenced his desire for the freedom of the slaves by offering a bill to abolish it in the District, and he afterwards strenuously advocated the elimination of slavery from the territories.

In 1864, about the time of the repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, President Lincoln said to some gentlemen from the West: "There have been men base enough to propose to me to return to slavery our black warriors of Port Hudson and Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I do so, I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity."

Through all the mighty struggle of the Civil War when bowed in sorrow, and when it was truly said of him "That he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," he was ever heard to say, "It is my desire that all men be free."

If President Lincoln were not in favor of the freedom of the slaves, why did he write the Emancipation Proclamation without the knowledge of his Cabinet and, when reading it to them, informed them that he did not do so to have them make any changes, but simply to apprise them of its contents? I answer, because he saw the time had come, the opportune time for which he had longed, when he, as President of these United States, could free the slaves. The South was so certain that it was Mr. Lincoln's intention to liberate the slaves, that, upon his election as President, they seceded from the Union. They felt that the institution which they had struggled so long to maintain was doomed.

His famous letter to Horace Greeley, so diplomatically written, shows him to be in favor of the emancipation of slaves. Said he; "My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views. I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."

Had President Lincoln not desired the freedom of the slaves would he have written this last sentence?

Professor Pickens, of Talladega College, says: "He was a patriot statesman; although he abhored slavery in his own inclination, he was wise enough to see that the question of slavery was subordinate to the immediate object of saving the Union. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong; he declared as his private opinion; but it was his public duty and his oath to save the Union, regardless of slavery. His logic and clear seizure of the main point stood him in good stead against the over-zealous Abolitionists on the one hand, while on the other hand, as soon as the interests of Negro freedom and the interests of the Union coincided, the same unchanged and consistent logic answered those who assailed him on constitutional grounds."

Mr. Lincoln believed that the Constitution protected slavery in the States wherein it existed, and his aim was to let it alone where it had a constitutional right to exist. Not because he thought slavery right, but because of his respect for the law.

His original position was that, since slavery was protected by the law, the friends of freedom would have to abide their time and continue to create sentiment sufficient to change the law and thus overthrow the iniquitous institution. This is the only interpretation that can be put upon his doctrine. "The house divided against itself."

Is it reasonable to think that a man so thoughtful and sincere as was Mr. Lincoln could give a life to the advocacy of the freedom of the slaves, and in his heart not be in favor of their liberation. Mr. Lincoln often expressed ideas on the emancipation calculated to jeopardize his political future, which he would not have done but for the fact that in his heart of hearts he was committed to the cause of freedom.

The slaves hailed him as their savior, which he proved to be by emancipating 4,000,000 of them, and he will be held in loving remembrance by Afro-Americans as long as the world shall stand.

It is fitting that we assemble ourselves together on the anniversary of his birth to honor his memory, and tell of his noble deeds to the rising generation.

President Lincoln was truly a great man; a giant in intellect, a peerless diplomat, a fearless advocate of the rights of humanity and a wise ruler. In council he stood head and shoulders above the members of his Cabinet and other advisers, notwithstanding he was surrounded by some of the greatest scholars and statesmen of his time.

Allow me to apply to Lincoln the words of Wendell Phillips in his address "Toussaint L'Ouverture":

"Lincoln was greater than Cæsar; Cæsar fought to further his ambition and to extend a great empire. Lincoln was an advocate of principle, justice, and fair play. He was greater than Alexander; Alexander fought for glory—to conquer all the world, all at the sacrifice of happy homes and the desolation and ruin of countries. Lincoln sacrificed comfort and ease to save a nation and liberate an enslaved people. He was greater than Napoleon; Napoleon made wives to be widows, and children to be fatherless and homeless, and drenched Europe and Egypt in blood for fame and the desire to found a greater empire than the Roman dynasty; but Lincoln perished because he dared to defend an oppressed people."

When the last scarred veteran shall gather around the last campfire and shall rehearse stories of valor, he will close his tale of sorrow with the name of Lincoln.

When the last poet shall compose his last poem on America's greatest struggle,—yea of the victories of Vicksburg, Fort Donaldson, Lookout Mountain, Gettysburg, Appomattox, Petersburg, and the fall of Richmond, he will close it by paying a tribute to the memory of the sainted Lincoln.

When the last statesman of the world shall pronounce a farewell anathema upon the world's oppression, when he shall write the names of those foremost in the work of emancipation, after he shall have written the name of Moses,—long ere he reaches the name of Wilberforce or Clarkson, he shall have written high on the scroll of fame the name of Lincoln.

When the last flag bearing the "Stars and Stripes" shall wave over this great commonwealth, telling of its glory and tremendous influence, on the wings of the eagle upon the staff of that flag will be written for her to bear away on the eternal breezes the name of the immortal Lincoln,—the savior of his country, the Emancipator of its people.

* * * * *

The dying legacy bequeathed to the American nation by the martyred Lincoln was a united country and a free people. It gave us a nation which to-day stands first in the galaxy of the nations of the world—in character, thought, wealth, and all the qualities which make for the highest civilizations—a glorious country, whose natural resources stand unsurpassed.

All honor to Mr. Lincoln, the nation's Chieftain, the giant of the conflict, the statesman of the age, the immortal Emancipator; and all honor to the men who wore the blue, both white and black; and all honor to the men and women who gave their sons to the cause and furnished the sinews of war; and all praise be to the God of Heaven who was behind the conflict controlling all.

If we would properly honor this great and good man we must finish the work which he so nobly began,—the lifting up of the Negro race to the highest point of civilization. This can be accomplished; first, by being good and loyal citizens ourselves, and by teaching our children to be the same.

The groundwork of our material advancement is industry. As a race we are generally industrious, but we need to become more skillfully so. Unskilled labor cannot compete with skilled labor, neither North or South. In the past you gave us certain positions as the result of sympathy, not because we could perform the work as skillfully as others.

The sentiment which actuated you to help us was a noble one, but that kind of sentiment is a thing of the past; now we are required to stand or fall according to our merits. When goods are to be manufactured, machines constructed, houses and bridges built, clothing fashioned, or any sort of work performed, none but skilled workmen are considered; there are a great number of employers that care but little about the color of the workmen; with them the question is, Can he do the work?

We must continue the struggle for our civil and political rights. I have no sympathy with that class of leaders who are advising the Negro to eschew politics in deference to color prejudice.

Does it make for permanent peace to deny to millions of citizens their political rights when they are equal to the average electorate in intelligence and character? Fitness, and not color or previous condition of servitude, should be the standard of recognition in political matters. Indeed the Negro should not be denied any civil or political right on account of his color, and to the extent this is done there is bound to be disquietude in the nation.

We have already seen that temporizing with slavery at the formation of the Union resulted in a hundred years of strife and bitterness, and finally brought on devastation and death. And may we not profit by this bitter experience? The enlightened American conscience will not tolerate injustice forever. The same spirit of liberty and fair play which enveloped the nation in the days of Mr. Lincoln and that was recognized by his astute mind, clear to his mental vision and so profoundly appreciated by his keen sense of justice and which he had the courage to foster against all opposition is abroad in our land to-day, will ultimately triumph.

Mr. Lincoln was the first to suggest to his party the enfranchisement of the Negro. He wrote Governor Hahn, of Louisiana, advising that the ballot should be given to the colored man; said he, "Let in, as for instance, the very intelligent and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks. They would probably help in some trying time in the future to keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom."

It seems to me right and proper on this memorable day, when the nation has stopped to consider the work of the man above all others who started the Negro on his upward way, that we should appeal to the enlightened conscience of the nation, to unloose further the fetters which bind the black man, especially the industrial bands placed upon him in the North. I appeal to the white people of the South, the sentiment-makers of that section, to create sentiment in favor of law and order, and that they demand a cessation of lynchings. I appeal to the legislature of the South to allow the civil and political door of hope to remain open to my people, and in all things which make for quietness and permanent peace, let us be brethren.

The Negro should no longer be considered a serf, but a citizen of this glorious Republic which both white and black alike have done so much to develop.

Mr. Edwin D. Mead, in the New York Independent of January 21, 1909, says, "Has the country been faithful to Lincoln's memory and task? Has the evolution of emancipation been pushed with proper persistence and earnestness? Are we ceasing our discrimination against men because they are black? It is not a question put by North to South. It is a question put to Springfield, Illinois, the old home of Lincoln himself, as directly as to men in Maryland busy with their pitiful disfranchising chicanery." To the still lingering cry of "black men down" this salutary Commemoration rings back, the "all men up," whose echoes after forty years were growing faint in too many American hearts.

Had they not grown faint in many, the recent words of Justice Harlan, so like Lincoln's own, upon the Berea College decision confirming the Kentucky law that, however, they themselves desired it, and even in private institutions, a black boy and a white boy may not study together the rule of three or the law of gravitation, the Golden Rule, or the Emancipation Proclamation,—would have aroused a vastly profounder and louder response.

"If the views of the highest court of Kentucky be sound, that commonwealth may, without infringing on the Constitution of the United States, forbid the association in the same private school of pupils of the Anglo-Saxon and Latin races respectively, or pupils of Christian and Jewish faith respectively. Have we become so inoculated with prejudice of race that any American government professedly based on the principles of freedom and charged with the protection of all citizens alike can make distinctions between such citizens in the manner of their voluntary meeting for innocent purposes, simply because of their respective races? If the court be right, then the State may make it a crime for white and colored persons to frequent the same market-places at the same time or to appear in an assemblage of citizens convened to consider questions of a public or political nature, in which all citizens without regard to race are equally interested; and other illustrations would show the mischievous, not to say cruel, character of the statute in question, and how inconsistent such legislation is with the principle of the equality of citizens before the law."

Mr. Mead further says that Abraham Lincoln was called upon to make his memorable and mighty protest with reference to a single race. In our time the problem becomes vastly more complex and pressing.

But, however complex, there is but one way of solving it—the simple, Christian, fraternal way. It is well for us that the Lincoln centennial comes to say this to us persuasively and commandingly.

ADDRESS ON THE OCCASION OF THE PRESENTATION OF A LOVING CUP TO HON. JOSEPH BENSON FORAKER, UNITED STATES SENATOR[39]

By Hon. Archibald H. Grimke

The Honorable Joseph Benson Foraker, and Colored Citizens:

A little more than two years ago the country was startled one November morning by a Presidential order for which there is no precedent in the history of the government. It was an act not only without precedent, but, as it appeared at the time to many Americans and as it appears to them now for that matter, not warranted either by law or justice. The punishment which that order inflicted on a whole battalion of American soldiers, without trial of any kind seemed unmerited and cruel in the highest degree, and a wanton abuse of executive power.

The history of this case is known of all men, thanks and yet again thanks and love without limit to the illustrious man whom we have met to honor to-night. For it is now and it must forever remain the history of the Black Battalion and of Senator Foraker. It is the history of the most masterly and heroic struggle in defense of the rights and liberties of the individual citizen against executive usurpation and oppression which this country has witnessed for a generation.

The act of the President, while it affected the rights of all Americans, bore with peculiar hardship, with crushing injustice, on the one hundred and sixty-seven men of the Black Battalion who were discharged from the Army without honor and on a mere assumption of their guilt in the "Brownsville" affray.

That act was a sad blow to the colored race of the country likewise, and fell upon them with cruel surprise. For they are people without many friends and are hard pressed in this boasted land of the free and home of the brave. They are hard pressed in every part of the Republic by an increasing race prejudice, by a bitter colorphobia which forgets that they are weak, forgets their claim at the hands of a Christian nation to just and equal treatment to the end that they may do and become as other men with a race and color different from their own. Blows they are receiving thick and fast from their enemies whose name is legion, blows against their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the South and in the North. We are accustomed as a race to such blows. Cruel as they are and hard to bear, yet they do not take us by surprise. For we have learned by long and bitter experience to look for them from a people who loudly proclaim, in season and out, their belief in the principles of democracy and of Christianity. But when an old friend turns against us, and strikes too like an ancient enemy, such a blow is more grievous to bear, and seems crueler than death itself. The blow of an old friend is always the unkindest blow of all. One is never prepared for it, and when it falls the wound which it inflicts cuts deeper than flesh and blood, for the iron of it enters the soul itself. And so it happened to us, when, two years ago, the cruel wrong of that executive order was done to our brave boys in blue by the hand of a trusted friend, the apostle of the "square deal."

Who can describe the shock of that first terrible amazement, the hot indignation felt by a race at the huge injustice, at the Draconian severity of that order which expelled from the American Army one hundred and sixty-seven men without trial of any kind and on a mere suspicion of their guilt, and which made them forever ineligible to employment thereafter in any department of the National Government, whether on its civil, military, or naval side, and the deep consternation which filled the homes of every colored man in the land—North and South alike? I for one can not describe those feelings, although I experienced in unison with the race at the time the amazement, the indignation, and the consternation which swept us together and caused us to feel and speak and act as one man under the wrong done us by the hand of an old friend whose golden words of hope and fair play we had sometime written in letters of light on the tablets of our hearts. It is no slight matter for any man, whether he be President or private citizen, so to wound the sense of right of a whole race, so to shock its faith in the justice and righteousness of its rulers and government, as that cruel blunder of the President of the United States produced among the colored people of the entire country.

We lifted up our voice as the voice of many waters from one end of the land to the other in loud protest against the wrong, in stern denunciation of it, and the press of the North came nobly to our assistance and swelled the volume of our protest and denunciation. But alas, all this volume of protest and denunciation on the part of the race and of the press would have passed over the nation and the Government like a summer storm of wind and rain—so little do our outcries against injustice and oppression excite the attention and sympathy of the Republic any more—had there not arisen in the Senate of the United States a man for the hour, had not God raised him up to defend his little ones against the slings and arrows of a sleepless energy, of an almost omnipotent power seated in the highest place of the Government. It was the genius, the grandeur of soul of a great man who was able to gather into thunderbolt after thunderbolt all the sense of outraged justice on the part of race and press, and to hurl them with marvelous precision and overwhelming might against that cruel executive order and the hosts of words and messages and other hordes of blood-dyed epithets which the President marshalled and sent forth from time to time in defense of his Draconian decree. If there was sleepless energy in the White House, there was an energy just as sleepless on the floor of the Senate. The almost omnipotent power wielded for the destruction of the Black Battalion by the formidable occupant of the executive mansion was met and matched, ay, overmatched again and again by an omnipotence in discussion which a just cause and genius as orator, lawyer, and debater of the first rank could alone have put into the strong right arm of the brave redresser of a race's wrongs on the floor of the Senate. For more than two years he carried the case of the Black Battalion in his big and tireless brain, in his big and gentle heart, as a mother carries under her bosom her unborn babe. God alone knows what sums of money, what deep thought and solicitude, what unflagging energy, what unceasing labor, he spent in his holy and self-imposed task to right the wrongs of those helpless and persecuted men. In the Senate their case pursued him like a shadow, and at home it sat with him like a ghost in his library, and slept for a few hours only when the great brain slept and the generous heart rested from the pain which was torturing it. Sir, did you know what love went out to you during those tremendous months of toil and struggle, and what prayers from the grateful hearts of ten millions of people?

Yes, he was one man against the whole power of the Administration and all that that meant. Perhaps we do not fully understand what a colossal power that was to confront and grapple with. Almost single-handed he met that power and threw it again and again in the arena of debate. Every speech he made in behalf of his clients, whether on the floor of the Senate or outside of that body, was as terrible as an army with banners to the enemies of the Black Battalion who had now, alas, become his enemies too, and who were bent on the destruction of both, the defender and the defended alike. But he did not hesitate or quail before that power and the danger which threatened his political life. As the battle thickened and perils gathered fast about his head he fought the fight of the Black Battalion as few men in the history of the Republic have ever fought for the weak, for a just cause against organized power and oppression in the high places of the Government. Senator Foraker was one man, but Senator Foraker was a host in himself. We know this, but the enemies of the Black Battalion know it better than we do, for wherever they appeared on the field of action during those two years, whether with their sappers and miners or assaulting columns, there they found him alert, dauntless, invincible—their sappers and miners hoisted with their own petard, their assaulting columns routed and driven to cover before the withering, the deadly fire from the flashing cannon of his facts, his logic, his law, and his eloquence. Sir, God knows that I would rather have fought the fight which you fought so gloriously than be a Senator of the United States, day, than be President of the Republic itself. For it is better to be a brave and just and true man than to be either Senator or President, or both.

"Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends." This is what Senator Foraker has done for the Black Battalion and for the principles of law and liberty which underlie their case. He has given his political life, his seat in the Senate, all the honor and power which were his had he chosen to defend the order of the President, discharging those one hundred and sixty-seven men without trial of any kind from the Army which their valor had helped to make glorious—instead of the soldiers whom he did not know but whose pitiful case, whose unjust and cruel punishment, enlisted the sympathy of his great heart and the masterly labors of his tireless brain. Yes, I repeat, and do not let it ever be forgotten by us as a race, that Senator Foraker might to-day be his own successor in the United States Senate had he chosen to play in the "Brownsville" affair the part of defender of President Roosevelt's wanton abuse and usurpation of executive power, instead of taking the side of the Black Battalion and the fundamental principle of our law and Constitution that each man accused of crime is entitled to trial before he is condemned and punished. He chose the side of the weak, of justice, and the Constitution in this great struggle, and not that of power and the Administration. This was the sin which brought upon him all the wrath of that power and of that Administration, but of which all good men and true absolve and for which they honor him, and for which, besides, a grateful race enshrines him in its heart of hearts. For he preferred to suffer affliction with the Black Battalion and to suffer defeat for the Senatorship rather than enjoy power and office as the price of his desertion of the cause of those helpless men.

No man can give as much as Senator Foraker has given to a just cause, give as generously, as unselfishly, gloriously as he has given of his very self in this "Brownsville" case and lose that which is best striving for in life. He may lose place in the Government and power as a political leader. But what are these but the ephemera of man's fevered existence and strivings here below? "What shadows we are," Burke said on a memorable occasion in his contest for a seat in Parliament, "and what shadows we pursue." Office, power, popularity; what are they but shadows of passing clouds which a breath blows to us and a breath blows from us again. No man loses anything in reality when he loses such fleeting, such shadowy possessions. But if for the sake of them he loses truth, justice, goodness, his love of the right and his hatred of the wrong, his sympathy for the oppressed, his passion to help God's little ones, such a man has bartered away his soul, the immortal part of him for a rood of grass, which to-day flourisheth and to-morrow withereth and is cast into the oven of all transitory and perishable possessions.

How many men who now hold seats in the United States Senate or the House of Representatives do we even know the names of? How many of all that long procession of them who have been passing for more than a century though those halls of power have we so much as heard the names of? They have filed through those stately chambers to dusty death and oblivion, and the places which knew them once know them no more forever. A few names only are remembered among all the multitude of them, not because of the places they occupied or the power they wielded, but because while in those houses they chose the better part—chose not to busy themselves with shadows, with the things which perish, but seized and held fast to the eternal verities of justice and freedom and human brotherhood. The vast majority of them magnified their brief authority and neglected the opportunity which their offices offered them to link their names and official lives with some noble movement or measure for the betterment of their kind, for the lifting up of those who were down, the strengthening of those who were weak, the succor of those who were hard pressed by man's inhumanity to man.

It is beautiful to defend those who can not defend themselves, to lift up the weak, to succor those who are ready to perish. It is heroic, divine, when the doing so involves peril and sacrifice of self. It is the essence of the Gospel preached and lived by one who spoke and lived as never man spoke and lived. It is simple and undefiled Christianity. Nothing avails to make Senator or President or people Christian but just this one thing—not race or color or creed, not learning and wealth and civilization—but kindness to God's poor, to Christ's little ones. Did you feed them when they were hungry; did you give them to drink when they were thirsty; did you visit and comfort them when they were in prison? Those who do these things to the humblest and the blackest of these little ones of the Republic have done them unto the divine Master, are in truth His disciples; and those who do them not are not His followers, whatever may be their profession, but quite the contrary. They have no part or lot with Him but belong to the evil forces of the world which are forever opposing the coming of His righteous Kingdom on earth when all men shall be brothers, when the strong shall everywhere bear the burdens of the weak.

Inasmuch as William Lloyd Garrison, Charles Sumner, Wendell Phillips, John Brown, and Abraham Lincoln did it to the least of His little ones in this Republic, they did it unto Him. They are a goodly company, the glorious company of the elect of the Republic, its prophets, its priests, and its kings. And, Sir, inasmuch as you, too, did it to the Black Battalion in their dire need, you did it unto Christ, and you are now henceforth and forevermore to enter into the supreme joy of that supreme service and sacrifice. You lost, Sir, your seat in the Senate, it is true, but you have won an enduring place in a race's heart, its enduring love and gratitude, and the plaudit of the divine Master, "Well done, good and faithful servant," uttered from the lips of all good men and true the country over.

EQUALITY OF RIGHTS FOR ALL CITIZENS, BLACK AND WHITE, ALIKE[40]

By Rev. Francis J. Grimke, D. D.

I Cor. 16:13. "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong."

It has been my custom for many years to speak during the inaugural week on some phase of the race question. I have done it because usually at such times there are representatives of our race here from all parts of the country, and an opportunity is thus afforded of reaching a larger number than would be possible at any other time. Such occasions, it seems to me, should be utilized in the interest of the race, in the discussion of matters pertaining to the race. The inauguration of a President is an event in which the whole nation is interested, and which emphasizes the fact of citizenship, as perhaps nothing else does, coming as it does after the election, and growing out of it. On such occasions it is well for us, therefore, especially at this juncture of our history, not to be unmindful of our own citizenship, of our own status in the body politic.

We have just been celebrating, all over the country, the centennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, our great war President, and this inauguration coming so soon after, makes it especially a good time to talk about some of the questions which grew out of the war, and which were settled by it. And this is what I want to do this morning.

Over forty years ago the great struggle ended, the "irrepressible conflict" came to a close. It marked an epoch in the history of our country, and in the history of the black race in this country. Certain great questions, which had agitated the country for years, were settled, and settled for all time.

* * * * *

It is now no longer a question as to whether we are a nation, or a confederation of sovereign and independent States. That question is settled, and settled once for all by the issue of the War. It is not likely that any Southern State will ever again attempt to withdraw from the Union, or to act on the assumption that it has the right to do so. Even if it is foolish enough to entertain such a view, it will be sure never again to act upon it. The issue of the War has removed forever from the field of serious discussion this question of the right of a State to secede. The ghost of secession will never again arise to disturb the peace of the Union. The Stars and Stripes, the old flag, will float, as long as it floats, over all these States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lakes to the Gulf. If the time ever comes when we shall go to pieces, it will not be from any desire or disposition on the part of the States to pull apart, but from inward corruption, from the disregard of right principles, from the spirit of greed, from the narrowing lust of gold, from losing sight of the fact that "righteousness exalteth a nation, but that sin is a reproach to any people." It is here where our real danger lies—not in the secession of States from the Union, but in the secession of the Union itself from the great and immutable principles of right, of justice, of fair play for all regardless of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The fact that the Union has been saved, that these rebellious States have been brought back into it, will amount to nothing unless it can be saved from this still greater peril that threatens it. The secession of the Southern States in 1860 was a small matter compared with the secession of the Union itself from the great principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, in the Golden Rule, in the Ten Commandments, in the Sermon on the Mount. Unless we hold, and hold firmly to these great fundamental principles of righteousness, of social, political, and economic wisdom, our Union, as Mr. Garrison expressed it, will be "only a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." If it continues to exist it will be a curse, and not a blessing.

Our brave boys in blue, whose bodies lie moldering in the grave, but whose souls are marching on, settled the question of the Union of the States. It is for the patriotic men who are living to-day, and those who are to follow in their footsteps, to deal with this larger and more important question. It isn't enough that these States are held together, they must be held together on right principles—principles of justice, of equity, of fair play, of equality before the law for all alike. Whether there is patriotism, political wisdom, moral insight and stamina enough to lead men to forget their differences on minor matters and to unite their forces for the attainment of this greater and more important end, remains to be seen. There are so many who are controlled by their petty prejudices, whose views are so narrow and contracted, that they seem incapable of appreciating the things of prime importance, the things that are fundamental in the life of the nation, and upon which its future peace and prosperity depend. The fear of rebellion is forever gone. It is not so, however, with regard to the danger of which I am speaking—the danger of the nation divorcing itself from sound political and moral principles.

* * * * *

In the scheme of citizenship of our country for years following the close of the war the Negro had no part; and he had no part because he was looked upon as an inferior. "Subordination to the superior race is declared to be his natural and moral condition." His inferiority was asserted to be a "great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

And this is exactly the Southern view to-day; and is exactly the programme to which it is committed. Its whole attitude to-day is in harmony with the great principle upon which the Southern Confederacy was founded—the non-recognition of the Negro as an equal in any respect—socially, civilly, politically. The South holds to this view just as tenaciously to-day as it did when Mr. Stephens made his Great Cornerstone Speech in 1861. The Ku Klux Klan, the White Caps, the Red Shirt Brigade, tissue ballots, the revised constitutions with their grandfather clauses, Jim Crow Car legislation, the persistent effort of the South to disfranchise the Negro—all these things have grown out of the idea that the rightful place of the Negro is that of subordination to the white man, that he has no rightful place in the body politic.

* * * * *

But I cannot believe that the nation is always going to leave its loyal black citizens to be despoiled of their civil and political rights by the men who sought to destroy the Union. A better day is coming, and coming soon, I trust.

While we are waiting, however, for the nation to come to its senses—waiting for a revival of the spirit of justice and of true democracy in the land—it is important for us to remember that much, very much, will depend upon ourselves. In the passage of Scripture read in our hearing at the beginning of this discourse, three things we are exhorted to do, and must do, if we are ever to secure our rights in this land: We are exhorted to be watchful. "Watch ye," is the exhortation. We are to be on our guard. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." There are enemies ever about us and are ever plotting our ruin—enemies within the race and without it. We have got to live in the consciousness of this fact. If we assume that all is well, that there is nothing to fear, and so relax our vigilance, so cease to be watchful, we need not be surprised if our enemies get the better of us, if we are worsted in the conflict.

(2) We are exhorted to stand fast in the faith. In the faith we feel that, as American citizens, we are entitled to the same rights and privileges as other citizens of the Republic. In this faith we are to stand, and stand fast. We are not to give it up; we are not to allow anyone, white or black, friend or foe, to induce us to retreat a single inch from this position.

(3) We are exhorted to quit ourselves like men, to be strong. And by this, I understand, is meant that we are to stand up in a manly way for our rights; that we are to seek by every honorable means the full enjoyment of our rights. It is still true—

"Who would be free himself must strike the blow."

And, if we are ever to be free from invidious distinctions in this country, based upon race, color, previous condition, we have got to be alive, wide-awake to our own interest. If we are not, we have no right to expect others to be; we have no right to expect anything but failure, but defeat. And we deserve defeat if ours is the spirit of indifference, of unconcern. We are not going to secure our rights in this land without a struggle. We have got to contend, and contend earnestly, for what belongs to us. Victory isn't coming in any other way. No silent acquiescence on our part in the wrongs from which we are suffering, contrary to law; no giving of ourselves merely to the work of improving our condition, materially, intellectually morally, spiritually, however zealously pursued, is going to bring relief. We have got, in addition to the effort we are making to improve ourselves, to keep up the agitation, and keep it up until right triumphs and wrong is put down. A programme of silence on the part of the race is a fool's programme. Reforms, changes in public sentiment, the righting of wrongs, are never effected in that way; and our wrongs will never be. A race that sits quietly down and rests in sweet content in the midst of the wrongs from which it is suffering is not worth contending for, is not worth saving.

This is not true of this race, however. We are not sitting down in sweet content, let it be said to our credit. I thank God from the bottom of my heart for these mutterings of discontent that are heard in all parts of the land. The fact that we are dissatisfied with present conditions, and that we are becoming more and more so, shows that we are growing in manhood, in self-respect, in the qualities that will enable us to win out in the end. It is our duty to keep up the agitation for our rights, not only for our sakes, but also for the sake of the nation at large. It would not only be against our own interest not to do so, but it would be unpatriotic for us quietly to acquiesce in the present condition of things, for it is a wrong condition of things. If justice sleeps in this land, let it not be because we have helped to lull it to sleep by our silence, our indifference; let it not be from lack of effort on our part to arouse it from its slumbers. Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, while they were crying to their god, "Peradventure he sleepeth." And it may be that he was asleep; but it was not their fault that he continued asleep, for they kept up a continual uproar about his altar. And so here, sleeping Justice in this land may go on slumbering, but let us see to it that it is due to no fault of ours. Even Baalam's ass cried out in protest when smitten by his brutal master, and God gave him the power to cry out, endowed him miraculously with speech in which to voice his protest.

It is not necessary for God to work a miracle to enable us to protest against our wrong; He has already given us the power. Let us see to it that we use it. If we are wise we will be able to take care of ourselves. If we are not wise, however, if we adopt the policy of silence, and if we continue to feel that it is our duty to follow blindly, slavishly, any one political party, we will receive only such treatment as is accorded to slaves, and will go on pleading for our rights in vain. The only wise course for us to pursue is to keep on agitating, and to cast our votes where they will tell most for the race. As to what party we affiliate with is a matter of no importance whatever; the important thing is our rights. And until we recognize that fact, and act upon it, we will be the football of all political parties. John Boyle O'Reilly, in speaking on the race question years ago, said: "If I were a colored man I should use parties as I would a club—to break down prejudice against my people. I shouldn't talk about being true to any party, except so far as that party was true to me. Parties care nothing for you, only to use you. You should use parties; the highest party you have in this country is your own manhood. That is the thing in danger from all parties; that is the thing that every colored man is bound in duty to himself and his children to defend and protect." And that is good advice. It embodies the highest political wisdom for us as a people.

The exhortation of the text is, "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong." And this is the message that I bring to you, who are here this morning, and to the members of our race all over the country. We must be watchful; we must hold firmly to our faith in our citizenship, and in our rights as citizens; and we must act the part of men in the maintenance of those rights. In the end the victory is sure to be ours. The right is bound, sooner or later, to triumph.

"Before the monstrous wrong he sits him down— One man against a stone-walled city of sin. For centuries those walls have been a-building; Smooth porphyry, they slope and coldly glass The flying storm and wheeling sun. "No chinks, no crevice, lets the thinnest arrow in. He fights alone, and from the cloudy ramparts A thousand evil faces gibe and jeer him. Let him lie down and die; what is the right And where is justice in a world like this? "But by and by earth shakes herself, impatient; And down, in one great roar of ruin, crash Watch-tower and citadel and battlements. When the red dust has cleared, the lonely soldier Stands with strange thoughts beneath the friendly stars."

And so, in the end, will it be with this great evil of race prejudice against which we are contending in this country, if, like the lonely soldier, we show the same earnestness, the same patient determination, the same invincible courage. A better day is coming; but we have got to help to bring it about. It isn't coming independently of our efforts, and it isn't coming by quietly, timidly, cowardly acquiescing in our wrongs.

IS THE GAME WORTH THE CANDLE?[41]

By Dr. James E. Shepard

Founder and President of the National Religious Training School at Durham, N. C.

Students and Friends:

I am not unmindful of the vast opportunity that is mine as I stand before young men. The opportunity is great, but the responsibility is greater. It was the thought of the responsibility that decided me to speak on the subject, "Is the Game Worth the Candle?"; the meaning simplified being—Is the object pursued worth the price paid for its attainment.

Once during an all-night ride en route for Arkansas in the latter part of the year just closed, I fell into a retrospective mood, and the scroll of the past years unfolded itself before my memory, and as I reviewed it and marked the possibilities which had passed with the years, life took on even a greater aspect than it had already possessed. I shall not discuss my life, but life with its probabilities and possibilities of power and achievement; life in its earnestness and life that is merely drifting with the tide, of no benefit to itself or to humanity.

A man's life depends upon his emotions, his aspirations, his determinations.

A young man, somebody's son, starts out with the determination that the world is indebted to him for a good time. "Dollars were made to spend. I am young, and every man must sow his wild oats and then settle down. I want to be a 'hail fellow well met' with every one." So he is ever ready to drink a social glass, to give a pun and to be a "masher on the girls." With this determination uppermost in his life purpose he starts out to be a good-timer. Perhaps some mother expects to hear great things of her boy, some father's hopes are centered in him, but what does that matter? "I am a good-timer." From one gayety to another, from one glass to another, from one sin to another, and the good-timer at last is broken in health, deserted by friends, and left alone to die. Thus the "man about town" passes off the stage. When you ask some of his friends about him, the answer is, "Oh, John was all right, but he lived too fast. I like good time as well as anyone, but I could not keep up with John." Was the game worth the candle?

Two pictures come before my mind; two cousins, both of them young men. One started out early in life with the determination of getting along "easy," shirking work, and looking for a soft snap. His motto was, "The world owes me a living, and I am going to get mine." He was employed first by one firm and then by another; if anything that he considered hard came along, he would pay another fellow to do the work and he "took things easy." It was not long before no one would hire him. He continued to hold the idea that the world was indebted to him and furthermore, he arrogated a belief that what another man had accumulated he could borrow without his knowledge. He forged another's name, was detected, and sentenced to the penitentiary and is now wearing the badge of felony and shame—the convicts' stripes. Young men, the world owes no man a living, but those who work faithfully and make contributions to the happiness of mankind and the advancement of civilization. These will ever be honored and rewarded. Is the game worth the candle?

The other cousin started out with a determination altogether different. He believed with Lord Brougham, that if he were a bootblack, he would strive to be the best bootblack in England. He began in a store as a window-washer, and washed windows so well that they sparkled like diamonds under the sun. As a clerk, no customer was too insignificant to be greeted with a smile or pleasant word; no task was too great for him to attempt. Thus step by step, he advanced, each day bringing new duties and difficulties but each day also bringing new strength and determination to master them, and to-day that cousin is a man of wealth and an honored citizen, blessed too, with a happy home.

Some young men start life with the idea that every dollar made requires that one dollar and a half shall be spent; in order to be noticed they must make a big show, give big dinners, carriage drives, and parties, invite friends to the theatres, and have a "swell" time; must do like Mr. "So-and-So." They forget in their desire to copy, that Mr. "So-and-so," their pattern, has already made his fortune; that he began to save before he began to spend. But no, his name appears often in the papers and they think also that theirs must. So they begin their careers. A few years pass. The young men marry; their debts begin to accumulate and to press them, their countenances are always woe-begone; where once were smiles, now are frowns, and the homes are pictures of gloom and shadows. The lesson is plain.

Debt is the greatest burden that can be put upon a man; it makes him afraid to look honest men in the face. No man can be a leader in the fullest sense who is burdened by a great debt. If there is any young men in the audience who is spending more than he is making let him ask himself the question, Is the game worth the candle?

I know another young man who believed he could be happy by spending one-third of what he made and saving the other portion. He said to me, "some day I want to marry and I want to treat my wife better, if possible, than she was treated at home. I want the respect of my fellow man, I want to be a leader, and I know I can only do so by saving a part of what I make." It was my good pleasure, a few weeks ago, to visit the city where this young man is practising medicine. He carried me over that town in an automobile, he entertained me in his $5000 home, he showed me other property which he owned. Ah, my friends, his indeed was a happy home. Life to him was blessedly real.

Some young men start life with the idea that Sunday school is a place for children, the church for old people and the Y. M. C. A. a place for young men with no life. What a wrong idea! Why, the young men who are alive in all walks of life, and who are in the forward ranks, are found in these places. The other young men with distorted views of life think that they must frequent places where the social glass is passed. They do so; after a while it becomes a necessity, the drink habit grows upon them; they die drunkards. Do you remember the story of Robert Ferguson who, better known as the "laureate of Edinburgh," was the poet of Scottish city-life? His dissipations were great, his tavern and boon companions hastening him on to a premature and painful death. His reason gave way. He was sent to an asylum for the insane. After about two months' confinement he died in his cell. What a sad climax to a promising career!

Young men, be masters of yourselves. Dare to do the right. Dare to say No. Have strong faith not only in yourself but faith in the Unseen Power, who holds the destinies of all in His hands. The world needs you.

A good many young men think that to be great they must go into the broad fields of politics, waiting for an office, waiting on the changing whims of men, instead of waiting upon self; waiting for something to turn up instead of turning up something; going to the Capital "because I helped to elect someone." "I leave behind me a good job but I have been promised something better." So the poor fellow starts out to the capital of the nation, spends what little money he has saved at home, because he is going to get a job and make barrels of money. The Mecca of his hopes is reached. He finds himself a little man at the great center of the nation, the few dollars he brings with him soon melt away; his friends run when they see him coming because he wants to borrow a dollar. At home he was a little king, but at the Capital he is a "would-be statesman seeking a job." Was the game worth the candle?

My friends, good men are needed in politics, men who are safe and tried, men who will not yield to prejudice or sentiment, but will do the right as they see the right. God give us such men. Politics for a helpless, dependent race will never prove a relief or blessing until we have strong, safe leaders who, losing sight of self and a few self-constituted leaders, will see the whole people. The race will never come into its own until we have such a condition.

A young man starts out in life with the determination to fight his way by physical force to the front ranks. Bruised, disfigured, or killed, he is forced back even beyond the lines again. A religiously inclined youth asked his pastor, "Do you think it would be wrong for me to learn the noble art of self-defense?" "Certainly not," replied the pastor, "I learned it in youth myself, and I have found it of great value in my life." "Indeed, sir, did you learn the Old English system or the Sullivan system?" "Neither; I learned Solomon's system!" replied the minister. "Yes, you will find it laid down in the first verse of the fifteenth chapter of Proverbs, 'A soft answer turneth away wrath'; it is the best system of self-defense I know."

Too many of us starting out on life's journey have a warped ambition. This ambition is a love of self in the desire that self might gain the ascendency over our fellows, not that we might be of benefit to humanity, but that we aim to derive personal gain only. We follow the standard of this or that man, not because we believe in him or his policies, but because he is on the successful top round of the ladder now, so away with principles, away with conscience, away with right,—I must follow the man who will give most! A sad awakening comes, the idol tumbles or else turns against you, and you are left like a stranded ship on some vast ocean, alone, amidst the lashing of the billows and the roaring of the waves. Remember Cardinal Wolsey's experience. You may recall these lines,

"Would that I had served my God With half the zeal I served my king, He would not in mine old age Have left me naked to my enemies."

Was the game worth the candle?

Another young man starts life with a wrong idea regarding city and country life. Born in the country he is free, his thoughts and ambitions can feed on a pure atmosphere, but he thinks his conditions and his surroundings are circumscribed, he longs for the city, with its bigness, its turmoil, and its conflicts. He leaves the old homestead, the quiet village, the country people, and hies himself to the city. He forgets to a large extent the good boy he used to be, in the desire to keep up with the fashions and to make the people forget that he was once a country boy. City life, as is often the case, breaks up his youth, destroys his morals, undermines his character, steals his reputation, and finally leaves the promising youth a wrecked man. Was the game worth the candle?

Young men, never be ashamed of the old log-cabin in the country, or the old bonnet your mother used to wear, or the jean pants your father used to toil in. I had rather be a poor country boy with limited surroundings and a pure heart than to be a city man bedecked in the latest fashions and weighted down with money, having no morals, no character. I had rather have the religion and faith of my fathers than to have the highest offices. I had rather have glorious life, pure and lofty, than to have great riches. Sir Walter Scott was right when he said,

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife, To all the sensual world proclaim: One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name."

Young men, what is the basis of your life and what is its goal? Have you digged deeply and thrown out all the waste material of follies and vice and built upon a substantial foundation of honest manhood and sterling character? If not, you are a failure. However, chords that are broken may vibrate once more; take up the angled threads again and weave another pattern. The book that will always be the best and safest guide for weaving life's pattern is the Bible,—the truest and best friend any young man can have. If you want oratory, you need not talk about Demosthenes walking along the shores of Greece with pebbles in his mouth, nor about that great American orator, Daniel Webster, but if you turn almost to the beginning of that wonderful Book and listen to the pleadings of Jacob's sons as they begged for the life of their father, it will surpass your Demosthenes or Webster in true eloquence. If you want logic, even though Aristotle may be world famous as the "father of logic," yet if you listen to the hunch-backed, red faced, crooked nosed, baldheaded Jew, Saul of Tarsus, you will find his logic stands unsurpassed in all the ages of the world. The history of four thousand years and more you will find there. You will discover the beginnings and the end of things. Reason, with her flickering torch, cannot point to any such sublime truths as are found in the Bible. Philosophy with her school stands amazed when confronted with the philosophy of the Bible. Science, itself the greatest contributor to the happiness of man, having penetrated the arcana of nature, sunk her shafts into earth's recesses, measured the heights of its massive pillars to the very pedestal of primeval granite, tracked the tornadoes, uncurtained the distant planets, and foretold the coming of the comets and the return of the eclipses, has never as yet been able to lift up a degraded man and point him to a higher path. I commend the Bible to you.

No life is great unless that life is good. Each day is a life, and that day is wasted that is not filled with lofty desire, with actual achievement, that does not bring us nearer to God, nearer to our fellow-man and nearer to the things God has created. In such a plan of life will we find real and lasting happiness. God means every man to be happy. He sends us no sorrows that have not some recompense.