American Missionary Association.

We present our readers in this issue of the Missionary, which is a double number, an account of the proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of this Association. For want of space we have only given the important points of most of the papers and addresses, endeavoring to preserve their spirit.

The paper of Pres. E. H. Fairchild will appear in the “Weekly Witness” of Nov. 17, of which copies will be supplied gratuitously to persons applying by postal card to the author at Berea, Ky.

Rev. Lysander Dickerman’s address may be looked for in the “Congregationalist” at an early date.

The papers read by Miss Sawyer and Miss Emery will be reserved for mention in the January Missionary.

We send this number of the Missionary to some persons whose names are not among our subscribers, with the hope that they will read it, and that their interest in the work which it represents will be deepened. We believe that if any such will send us their subscription for the Magazine, they will find themselves amply rewarded for the outlay.

The inquiry is sometimes made as to the reasons for the steadily increasing support given to the A. M. A. In answer we suggest:—1. The increasing prosperity of the country. People have more to give and they give more. 2. The careful management of the affairs of the Association has probably given it a stronger hold upon the confidence of the public. 3. The great reason, we believe, is that the nation, after many fluctuating opinions in regard to the Freedmen, has settled down to the conviction, voiced repeatedly by Pres. Hayes and reiterated so emphatically in Pres. Garfield’s inaugural, that the only safety for the nation and the Freedmen is in their thorough education. The A. M. A. is now seen to have steadily pressed forward from the beginning in this only true method, and hence its work has come to be more fully appreciated. The rapid growth of the colored population gives emphasis to the demand for their Christian education. 4. Another reason is the awakened conviction in Great Britain and America that the freed people are destined by Divine Providence to take an important part in the redemption of Africa. Our schools and churches, so well fitted to prepare them for this work, are felt to deserve not only support but enlargement.

FINANCIAL—APPEALING FACTS.

One year ago we asked our constituents to enlarge our receipts twenty-five per cent; the generous response was nearly thirty per cent. We increased the appropriations of the year, but kept safely within the income. At our recent Annual Meeting the appeal was made for $300,000 this year—an increase over last of $56,000, or 23 per cent. This appeal is based on no random figures. The appropriations for this fiscal year are carefully made on the basis of last year’s income, but in addition we most pressingly need the means:—1. To finish and furnish two buildings, not provided for by the Stone fund. They are nearly ready, but will be useless unless completed. 2. To provide additional teachers, boarding and student aid for the increased number of students in the new buildings in Atlanta, Talladega, Tougaloo, New Orleans, Austin, Athens. 3. To erect a boy’s dormitory at New Orleans, and a new building at Memphis. As to the latter, Prof. Steele writes: “All the desks in the lower rooms were filled at the end of the first week, and we have been refusing admission to pupils in these rooms every day since. Early last week the last seat in the Normal room was taken. We seat 102 there. Since then I have placed small tables and chairs in every foot of available space in the Normal room, raising the number enrolled to 118. I am every day receiving letters from young men and women in the country who wish to enter the school, but I can in no way take more than two students in addition to those now in the room. Of the 120 in the Normal department, 50 have taught school and all the rest expect to become teachers.” Must we refuse education to more of such students and teachers? The unexpended portion of the Stone fund is already appropriated and is not available here. 4. To meet the urgent demands for enlargement in the church work. 5. To increase our expenditures for the Indians. The nation is aroused in their behalf and Congress is ready to help. Now is the time for us to enlarge. 6. To double our appropriation for the Chinese work. No outlay yields better returns. 7. To build the John Brown steamer for the Mendi, and to complete the $50,000 fund for the Arthington Mission.

These facts are our appeal. We add no words. The day has gone by when our friends will be content with good speeches and resolutions at the Annual Meeting. The hour has come for steady and effective work. We are ready for it, and the tone of the meeting at Worcester shows that our friends are also.

ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS AT THE ANNUAL MEETING.

The Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Missionary Association was held in Plymouth Church, Worcester, Mass., on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, November 1st, 2d and 3d, 1881.

As the bells in the church-tower finished chiming the “Missionary Hymn,” at three o’clock Tuesday afternoon, Secretary Strieby called the meeting to order, and in the absence of the President and Vice-Presidents, Rev. S. R. Dennen, D.D., of New Haven, was chosen to preside. After devotional services, Rev. Marshall M. Cutter, of Medford, was chosen Secretary, and Rev. John L. Ewell and Rev. C. P. Osborne Assistant Secretaries.

A Nominating Committee was appointed consisting of Rev. E. H. Byington, Rev. E. P. Marvin and C. L. Mead, Esq.; also a Business Committee consisting of Rev. Geo. M. Boynton, Rev. G. R. M. Scott, and Geo. P. Davis, Esq.

The Treasurer, H. W. Hubbard, Esq., read his report, which was referred to a Committee on Finance. The Annual Report of the Executive Committee was made through Rev. G. D. Pike, D.D., District Secretary, and was referred seriatim to appropriate Committees. An hour was then spent in prayer and conference, with special reference to the work in the South.

Tuesday evening, after devotional services, led by Rev. E. G. Porter, of Lexington, Rev. C. D. Hartranft, D.D., of Hartford, Conn., preached for the Annual Sermon a discourse appropriate to the Communion, which followed it, from Matthew xxvi, 27, l.c., “Drink ye all of it.” The Lord’s Supper was administered by Rev. Geo. W. Phillips, pastor of Plymouth Church, and Rev. Geo. H. Gould, D.D.

Wednesday morning, a prayer meeting, conducted by Rev. A. P. Foster, of Jersey City, was held at eight o’clock. At nine o’clock the regular session began, the chair being occupied in turn by Rev. L. T. Chamberlain, D.D., of Norwich, Conn., and Gen. O. O. Howard, of West Point, Vice-Presidents. John H. Washburn, Esq., in behalf of the Executive Committee, to whom was referred the matter of amending the Constitution of the Association at the last Annual Meeting, reported certain recommendations, which were referred to a Special Committee, to report Thursday morning. Richard Wright, Esq., of Augusta, Ga., colored, read a paper on “The Colored Man: His Strength, Weakness and Needs.” President E. H. Fairchild, of Berea College, Kentucky, read a paper on “Review of the Anti-Slavery Contest, and estimate of its meaning and value with reference to the Civilization of Africa and the World.” Secretary Strieby made an address on “The duty of America in the Conversion of the World, and especially in the Conversion of Africa.” President E. A. Wane, of Atlanta University, Ga., read a paper on “Higher Education.”

Wednesday afternoon. Prayer was offered by Rev. H. A. Stimson, of Worcester. Gen. O. O. Howard made an address on “Our Social Needs and their Remedy.” Gen. S. C. Armstrong, of Hampton, Va., reported for the Committee on Indian work, and was followed by Capt. R. H. Pratt, of Carlisle, Penn. A report of the Committee on Church work was read by Rev. Cyrus Hamlin, D.D., who also made an address upon the subject. Rev. J. E. Roy, D.D., Field Superintendent of the Association, supported the report by interesting statements illustrating the influence of the work among the colored people. The report of the Committee on Educational work was read by Rev. Charles T. Collins, of Cleveland, Ohio, and supported by Rev. John R. Thurston, of Whitinsville.

Wednesday evening. Hon. E. S. Tobey, of Boston, President of the Association, in the chair. Rev. William M. Gage, D.D., of Hartford, offered prayer. Addresses on “Christian Education at the South” were made by Rev. L. O. Brastow, D.D., of Burlington, Vermont; Prof. Cyrus Northrop, of Yale College, and Hon. Geo. F. Hoar, of the U.S. Senate.

Thursday morning. The prayer meeting at eight o’clock was led by Rev. O. H. White, D.D. The regular session at nine o’clock was opened with prayer by Rev. I. P. Langworthy, D.D., of Boston. Col. Franklin Fairbanks read the report of the Special Committee on the Constitution.

The following amendments were adopted: In Art. vi. the words, “Recording Secretary,” and “of which the Corresponding Secretaries shall be advisory, and the Treasurer ex-officio members,” are omitted; and after “Secretaries” the words, “who shall also keep the records of the Association,” are inserted. In Art. vii. after “dismissing,” the parenthesis is omitted. Article viii. is omitted, and Arts. ix. and x. are respectively numbered viii. and ix. The consideration of Arts. iii. and v. were referred to a special committee of thirteen, Col. Franklin Fairbanks, chairman, to report at next Annual Meeting.

A letter from Hon. E. S. Tobey, President, declining re-election on account of the pressure of other duties, was read, and resolutions of thanks for his faithful services were unanimously adopted by a rising vote. The Nominating Committee recommended Hon. Wm. B. Washburn, of Greenfield, Mass., for President, and presented a list of other officers, who were duly elected.

On motion of Rev. C. T. Collins, it was voted to memorialize Congress for immediate and increased appropriations for education at the South.

The report of the Committee on Chinese Missions was read by Rev. A. E. P. Perkins, D.D., of Ware. A paper on the subject was read by Miss Harriette Carter, of Mt. Vernon Church, Boston, where more than one hundred Chinamen have had Bible instruction, and addresses were made by Rev. Lysander Dickerman, of California, and by Rev. C. H. Pope, of Machias, Me.

Rev. G. W. Harding read the report of the Committee on African work, and addresses were made by himself, by Col. H. G. Prout, late in the service of the Khedive of Egypt, and by Rev. Geo. S. Dickerman, of Lewiston, Me.

Thursday afternoon. On “Woman’s Work for Woman,” papers were read by Miss M. L. Sawyer, of Boxford, and Miss E. B. Emery, of Gorham, Me., and addresses delivered by Mrs. A. K. Spence, of Nashville, Tennessee; by Rev. E. N. Packard, of Dorchester; Rev. A. H. Plumb, of Boston, and Rev. E. S. Atwood, of Salem.

The report of the Finance Committee, in the absence of Hon. J. J. H. Gregory, chairman, was read by Rev. E. S. Atwood, and asked for $300,000 for the ensuing year. Addresses were made by Rev. Geo. F. Stanton, of Weymouth, and Secretary Strieby. District Secretary Woodworth made a statement of Mr. Gregory’s recent gifts, amounting to $15,000. Rev. A. H. Plumb, in a happy little speech, announced $2,000 from an unknown donor, which he passed to the Treasurer in a sealed envelope. Of the amount, $500 was for Berea College and $500 for Hampton Institute.

Thursday evening, after prayer by Rev. Lewis Grout, Rev. O. H. White, D.D., for six years Secretary of the Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society in London, spoke of English co-operation and of the miseries of the slave trade in Africa. Henry D. Hyde, Esq., of Boston, pressed the claims of the Association to more liberal support, and John B. Gough, Esq., in a series of incidents, told in his inimitable style, illustrated the capacity of the colored race to be educated and elevated.

After some parting words from President Tobey, resolutions of thanks to the churches, committees, pastors, choir and railroads, and to the hospitable people of Worcester, and addresses in response by pastors Lamson and Phillips, the meeting closed with the benediction by Dr. O. H. White, to meet next year in Cleveland, Ohio. Near the close of the session a beautiful white dove entered the church and suggestively perched in a high niche over the pulpit platform.

Notwithstanding the prevailing dullness of the weather during our Annual Meeting at Worcester, there was nothing like dullness in the meetings. Daily the capacious church was thronged with deeply interested listeners. The high character of the addresses, the absorbing interest of subjects discussed, the excellent music of the ample choir, the completeness of arrangements by the local committee, and their uniform courtesy and unremitting attentions, and last, but not least, the generous hospitality of the Christian people of the city, all conspired to make the occasion one to be long and delightfully remembered.

The American Missionary Association turns with fresh hope and new inspiration to the work of the coming year.

GENERAL SURVEY.

FREEDMEN.

The fortunes of the freed people during the current year indicate a marked degree of progress. A healthy growth in all the branches of our Southern work is quite discernible. It is strikingly evident that the Freedmen are discovering the extent of the horizon opening up before them through our educational institutions. At one time, many of their leaders were attracted by the allurements of political preferment, and counted nothing so good as position in office, and many such, doubtless, there will be to the end of time. There is, however, an increasing number among them who are coming to realize that intelligence and character developed by Christian education have a commanding worth and solid value that cannot be conveyed by an appointment or imbibed during the sessions of a legislature. This good result has been hastened by Teachers’ Institutes, conducted by Southern and Northern educators, among the black and also the white citizens, sometimes large numbers of both classes mingling in the same convention.

Possibly never have our missions been more richly blessed by the outpourings of the Holy Spirit than during the past year. Whole classes in a school have indulged the hopes of a new life, and the rich experiences gathered during revivals have been borne forth into the villages and the country during the summer months by our students. Sabbath-schools have everywhere received due attention, and temperance work has been well sustained and productive of much good. Missionary meetings and societies have been encouraged, and the gifts from the hard earnings of the poor to the cause of missions abroad, indicate what may be hoped for when the colored people become educated and prosperous.

EDUCATIONAL WORK.

Our eight Chartered Institutions, including Berea College and Hampton Institute, which were founded by this Association, have experienced a year of unusual prosperity. The number pursuing a higher grade of study has been continually on the increase, and the quality of the work done, as testified to by many who have witnessed it, indicates that the grade of teachers has been improved, not only by self-culture on the part of those who have been long in service, but also by accessions from among the best educators in the country. Three of our teachers have received honorary degrees from important colleges at the North, and others have been encouraged by many tokens of appreciation and esteem.

During the year, the Tillotson Institute at Austin, Tex., took possession of its new building, a brick structure one hundred and four feet long, forty-two feet wide and five stories high. From the first this school has met with the hearty approval and sympathy of a large number of the best citizens of Austin. The new building was opened in January, and before the close of the spring term 107 students had availed themselves of its advantages.

The college at Berea has added $50,000 to its permanent endowment fund; the Fisk University has received $4,000 endowment for student aid. At Hampton, two new buildings, one for Indian and one for Negro girls, have been provided by the friends of the Institution, and a new Academic Hall, in place of one that was burned, has been dedicated. At Tougaloo, Miss., a boy’s dormitory of brick, with accommodations for about 75 students, has been completed. This building was made especially necessary by the ravages of fire, which destroyed the wooden structure that had served in a very inadequate way both for school rooms and boarding purposes.

Other buildings at Straight University, New Orleans; Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.; Talladega College, and Atlanta University, provided by the gift of $150,000 by Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, have either been completed, or are in a good state of progress. At New Orleans, there was added to the half square of land on Canal street, before owned by the A. M. A., the remaining half. Upon this site has been erected a neat three-story building, ninety-two feet on Canal street and ninety-one feet on Roche Blave street, containing dining-room, kitchen and laundry for the whole school, parlor, bath-room, apartments for teachers and dormitories for about 60 girls.

At Talladega, Stone Hall, for boys, has been completed. It is three stories high, with a basement, and contains printing office, reading-room, bath-room and dormitories for 76 students. With a portion of Mrs. Stone’s gift, supplemented by $1,000 from Mr. Gregory, of Marblehead, $100 from Gen. Swayne and a few smaller sums from others, Swayne Hall has been remodeled and thoroughly repaired from pavement to bell-tower, including roofing, flooring, blackboarding, etc. A house for the accommodation of the President will soon be completed. With these improvements the college will be ready for a great work.

At Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn., Livingstone Missionary Hall is nearly inclosed. It is two hundred and four feet long, sixty-two feet wide in the centre, and has four stories and a basement. The foundation is of stone and the walls are of pressed brick. A mansard roof with brick gables and ornamented chimneys crowns the edifice. It will contain chapel, lecture-rooms, recitation-rooms, teachers’ apartments and dormitories for 120 boys. Although planned with a strict regard for economy, it will be a grand and stately companion for Jubilee Hall. Several months will be required for its completion.

At Atlanta, a new wing has been added to the girl’s dormitory, and plans for a school building between the two dormitories have been completed and some materials purchased. It is expected that the building will be finished and ready for occupancy in a year from this time. In planning these various buildings, it has been the aim to provide the best facilities possible, but the claims of architecture have not been wholly ignored. Some of the best architects in the country have been consulted, and all the plans have been examined carefully by your Executive Committee.

It will be seen by this review that each of our eight chartered institutions has received permanent and substantial aid either in funds or in buildings, and that never before were they so fully equipped for the great work thrown upon them. The prayer of the last half score of years for room has been wonderfully answered, and the blessing of Heaven is crowning the labors of workers with rich rewards.

Our other schools, 46 in all, normal and common, have met with favor on every hand, and have experienced uninterrupted progress throughout the year. At some of them the industrial work has been pushed forward with gratifying success. Attention has been given to household industries in two or three places. A class of girls at Memphis, Tenn., has been carefully instructed with actual practice in an experimental kitchen, on the nature, relative values, and healthful methods, of cooking food. Classes in needle work, knitting, and in the use of sewing machines, have had daily lessons and practice.

We have had in all 230 teachers in the field, a gain of 30 over last year. Of these, 14 have performed the duties of matrons and 15 have been engaged in the business departments.

The total number of students has been 9,108, a gain of 1,056 over the previous year. They were classed as follows: theological, 104; law, 20; collegiate, 91; collegiate preparatory, 131; normal, 2,342; grammar, 473; intermediate, 2,722; primary, 3,361; studying in two grades, 136.

Our normal and common schools, like our chartered institutions, are constantly sending up the call for more room. Permanent accommodations have been provided at some points and temporary ones at others. At Wilmington, N.C., by the gift of Hon. J. J. H. Gregory, the school building has been remodeled for the accommodation of a large number of students. A new mission home has also been built by the munificence of the same gentleman. At Athens, Ala., the colored people have done nobly toward furnishing material for the school-house now under process of construction. They have already made two hundred thousand bricks with their own hands, and are placing them in the walls to represent their interest in the property. It is hoped that the work will be completed by January 1st, and that Miss Wells, who has been Principal of the school for fifteen years, will be rewarded for her labor and patient waiting by ample accommodation for all the students who may seek the advantages of her excellent normal school.

During the year we have inaugurated work at Topeka, Kan., the chief rendezvous of the refugees, where a lot has been purchased and a building suitable for both church and school purposes erected. Divine services are held on the Sabbath. A Sabbath-school with an average attendance of 170 has been gathered, and a prosperous night-school sustained. Much good has been done by our missionary and others at this point in the distribution of supplies to the destitute, and by speeding them on their way to homes among the farmers and mechanics of the State. We have also resumed our church work at Lawrence, Kan., with good results.

Commencement days, or the closing exercises at our different institutions, are becoming more and more eventful as the years go on. One feature of especial interest at Hampton was the delivery of orations and the reading of papers by the alumni of the school. These displayed an amount of character and culture on the part of those who had been several years in the field since their graduation which was very gratifying.

Commencement day at Berea College is unlike any other in the South or elsewhere in the country. Hours before the exercises begin, the streets are thronged with hundreds of people, black and white, old and young, properly dressed or dressed in rags, some riding on the finest steeds produced in Kentucky, some on plough horses, mules and ponies, riding single, riding double, with a child or two between. The exercises are held in a large open tabernacle seating about three thousand persons. The building is usually decorated with mottoes and banners, with plants and flowers and miniature fountains. The college band furnishes the music. Not the least interesting is the basket dinner on the college campus. The fame of these days spreads far and wide for hundreds of miles, awakening an enthusiasm on the part of the young for an education, and winning words of praise and tokens of cheer from the very best people throughout the State.

At the Emerson Institute, Mobile, Ala., eight hundred people crowded into the Third Baptist Church to see and to hear of the work for themselves; while, at Montgomery, on the theory that what is good for a part is good for all, every scholar, from the least to the greatest, was given a speech. As there were more than three hundred to take part, the authorities decided that all the exercises should not be crowded into a single day. Consequently, in order that a good thing might last a good while, it was arranged to devote three evenings to the speaking.

The growing interest in these anniversary occasions all along the line of our work, the attendance of leading white citizens, and their readiness to occupy seats on the platform with our teachers and workers, the enthusiasm of the colored folks to throng in and catch every word that is uttered, all combine to lift up the work from the low place it has occupied among those at the South who have looked unfavorably upon it, and to magnify in the minds of the colored people, who have struggled so hard to send their children to school, the dignity and importance of Christian education. With a few more years of progress like the past, our educational work will outrun and leave behind the obstacles and the enemies which have stood in its way during the past years, and God is speeding the day.

CHURCH WORK.

Our Church Work is attaining a steady and healthful growth. We do not seek to force the founding of churches where there is no urgent demand for them; while this might swell our rolls, it would only serve to weaken and discourage ultimately. Our purpose is to establish churches where there is sufficient intelligence and outlook to give reasonable hope that a Congregational church may do good service for the Master, not only by the benefit accruing to its own members, but also by its influence upon other and older churches that have not had the advantages of an educated ministry. Our whole number of churches is 78, being an addition of five over last year. These have been organized at Washington, D.C., Louisville, Ky., Little Rock, Ark., Thibadeaux, La., and Houma, La. The total number of church members is 5,472, a gain of 511 on last year. The number in Sabbath-school, 8,130, a gain of 1,806. New meeting houses have been constructed at Peteance, La., Little Rock, Ark., Lassiter’s Mills, N.C., and Wilmington, N.C. At the latter place a tasteful structure, with accommodations for 400, was provided by the gift of Hon. Mr. Gregory, at a cost to him of $3,600, and dedicated with fitting ceremonies, which were heartily participated in by the leading white clergymen of the city. Church buildings are under process of erection at Caledonia, Miss., Luling, Tex., Frausse Point, La. Parsonages have also been built at Florence, Ala., Flatonia, Tex., and houses for the Presidents at Tougaloo, Miss., and Talladega, Ala.

The material prosperity of our churches indicated by these statements is very encouraging, but the spiritual activity and growth is far more so. More than one-third of our churches have reported revivals, with conversions numbering from seven to forty-four, resulting in a large number of accessions to the churches.

Our church work is gradually creating a demand for the services of the students graduating at theological departments under our supervision at Howard University, Talladega College, Fisk and Straight Universities, and these are taking the places of white clergymen from the North in many localities.

The growing interest in theological seminaries for Freedmen is happily illustrated by the gift of $25,000 to us, for endowment of the theological department at Howard University.

We have seven State Conferences, embracing the most of the territory occupied by our schools and churches. These hold annual conventions, at which large numbers assemble.

The Alabama Conference has associated with it a woman’s missionary society, which reports the operation of its auxiliaries in different parts of the State. It is an active, hard-working and successful society, that does great credit to the missionary workers connected with it. This Conference also has a Sabbath-school convention representing many county organizations, and the Sabbath-school interests of the State. The meetings of this Conference, as well as those of the others, exert a beneficent and wide-spread influence, which serves not only to cement, but to make active and strong, the Congregational church work at the South.

The movement made a few years since on the part of a few leading ladies at the North to send forth female missionaries to labor in the homes of the poor and destitute colored people, and to assist otherwise for their temporal and spiritual improvement, has met with marked approval and encouraging success. We have commissioned eleven in all during the past year, and their reports have been full of interest. We believe the work they have been doing is a vital necessity, and that it should be extended as rapidly as may be consistent with the other interests we have in charge.

It is fitting before bringing to a conclusion the report of our operations among the Freedmen, that proper recognition be made of the improved sentiment among the whites at the South relative to our work. We entered the South with right principles. We did not inquire especially what was good policy, but what was required by justice, and what was consistent with righteousness. To promote these ends our missionaries were ready to sacrifice, if need be, their lives. They never advanced to retreat, but to conquer. Amidst hardship, ostracism and poverty, they toiled on; the Southern people watched them; little by little they came to recognize their worth; they saw massive structures rear themselves in choice locations in the great capital cities of the South. They were led to recognize the ability and integrity of the self-denying workers, who pursued their toilsome way in leading young Freedmen up to Christian manhood and womanhood; they saw church after church founded with a pure and educated ministry; some of the best of them ventured to visit the teachers and their schools. The work grew on. The children who had been under the care of leading white citizens in service or in household, exhibited the value of the work done so strikingly as to remove all doubt of the purpose and success of the teachers from the North. United States Senators, the Governors of States, Legislative bodies and companies of good men, out of interest, out of patriotism, out of curiosity sometimes, attended anniversary occasions, and lent their interest and gave their influence to promote the welfare of the institutions under our care. The result of it all has been to emphasize and establish the principles with which we started out, and to revolutionize the sentiment of many leading minds throughout the Southern country; and now halls of legislation and portions of the press of the South sparkle with sentiments that would do honor to Northern patriots, who battled early for the existence and success of this Association. Governor Brown of Georgia wins his election to the United States Senate after affirming before the Legislature, “We must educate the colored race. They are citizens, and we must do them justice.”

Governor Holliday, of Virginia, who lost an arm in the Confederate service, comes forward and makes good use of the other in expressive gestures while urging the claims of the colored people for education at the anniversary at Hampton.

General Humes, a Major-General in the Southern army, consents to give the oration at the anniversary of the Le Moyne Institute, and conveys assurances of the active sympathy of the best citizens of Memphis for the work carried on; while Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, the President of Emory College, bursts forth with the exclamation, “Suppose these Northern teachers had not come, that nobody had taught the negroes, set free and citizens, the South would have been uninhabitable by this time. Some may resent this; be it so, they resent the truth.”

The utterances of the press are not less significant. An editorial in the Memphis Appeal affirms: “The Southern States have too long stood aloof and allowed the stranger to do for the negro what they should have done themselves.” “There is but one thing for the people of the South to do, and this is, to throw themselves into the work of educating the negro. We must go forward, and must take the negro by the hand and make him feel that he is a part of the great column of the people.” The Nashville American, the most influential paper in the State, through its leading editor, in giving a report of the anniversary of Fisk University, goes on to say: “In the labor of regeneration of a race, no agency will have so high a place as this conservative school.” The Vicksburg Herald strikes another note on the gamut and illustrates a change of sentiment on this wise, in response to a narrow-minded, complaining correspondent: “We are heartily in favor of the South from the Potomac to the Rio Grande being thoroughly and permanently Yankeeized. Yankee energy, Yankee schools, Yankee cultivation, Yankee railroads and Yankee capital are badly needed in the South, and will be welcomed by every Southern progressive patriot.”

We believe there is nothing to hinder this tidal wave of better feeling from sweeping the entire South. For our part, we have only to hold on and press on.

AFRICA.

The development of the work among the Freedmen, the interest taken in African civilization by the most thoughtful people in the country at large, and the enthusiasm awakened among the blacks for the land of their ancestors, constantly remind us of the call we have for mission work in Africa. We have paid much attention to the consideration of this call. In accordance with the suggestion of the last Annual Meeting, we have appointed a Superintendent of African Missions, not only to supervise the work we have carried on so long on the West Coast, but to lay the foundations of the Arthington Mission on the Upper Nile. Great care was taken in selecting a Superintendent, resulting in the choice of Rev. Henry M. Ladd, the son of a missionary, who spent the first sixteen years of his life in the East, after which he came to this country, pursued a course of study and entered the ministry at Walton, N.Y. Mr. Ladd left America for the Mendi Mission in February, reaching the West Coast the last of March. He made a careful examination of the methods of missionary work at Freetown, Sierra Leone, under the care of our British brethren, and afterward proceeded to Good Hope Station, where we have a church and school. Mr. Ladd was accompanied to Africa by Mr. Kelly M. Kemp and his wife, from Lincoln University. A council was called at Good Hope Station for the ordination of Mr. Kemp, and representatives of the Shengay and other missions were present. It was thought advisable that Mr. A. E. White, who had acted as teacher at this point, should return to America. He has since done so, and at present is pursuing his studies at Oberlin College, with a view of preparing himself for better service on the mission field. Mr. Nurse also retired from the mission, giving place to Bro. Kemp, whose experiences and education rendered himself a desirable person as pastor over the church at this point. After arranging details of affairs at Good Hope, Mr. Ladd visited the Avery Station, and was encouraged by the good work under the supervision of Mr. Jackson at this inland station.

Our saw-mill, being the only one on the coast, can be brought into service constantly. Logs are plentiful in the neighborhood, and the people are willing to work. The coffee farm at Avery shows signs of progress, and very soon we may hope for a yield that will test the value of the experiment. The church and school have been kept up, much attention being given in the church to rigorous discipline, where the members had inclined too strongly toward the barbarous customs of the heathen about them. We have long felt the need of a business superintendent to manage the affairs of the mill and farm at Avery, to take care of the property at Good Hope and Debia, and to keep the temporary home at Freetown in readiness for the missionaries on their way to and fro. Mr. I. J. St. John, a man of considerable experience in business affairs, has been appointed to fill this position. In common with other missionary societies, laboring for the redemption of Africa, we find that where there are no roads or domestic animals, but many rivers, a suitable steamer would be quite serviceable in promoting the interests of our civilizing operations, and in adding to the comfort of our missionaries. We believe we ought to provide such a steamer for the Mendi Mission as early as possible, and our appeals are already out for $10,000 as a special fund for this purpose.

We were saddened early in the summer by the unexpected death of Rev. Mr. Kemp, which was followed soon after by the death of his wife, just as they were settling down to the life work they had chosen. Both of these dear missionaries were unavoidably exposed in open boats to the bad influences of the climate. By their death they illustrate our need of more speed and better shelter in transporting missionaries from station to station.

We have appointed Rev. J. M. Williams, a native of South America and an experienced worker in Africa, to carry on the work at Kaw Mendi, the first station occupied on the return of the Amistad captives.

Rev. J. M. Hall, a graduate of Maryville College and of the Theological Department of Howard University, has consented to fill the place vacated by the death of Mr. Kemp, and he, with Mr. St. John, left America in October for the mission.

Three lads from the Mendi country are at school in America, one at Fisk University, and the others at Hampton Institute.

Early in December, Mr. Robt. Arthington, of Leeds, Eng., signified his readiness to pay over the £3,000 he had pledged as a nucleus, provided we would plant a mission on the Upper Nile. Already Dr. O. H. White, Secretary of the Freedmen’s Missions Aid Society of London, had made good progress in securing £3,000 additional to Mr. Arthington’s pledge for the same purpose. It was evident to us that the $30,000 asked for from Great Britain toward the $50,000 fund for this mission would be speedily made up. As we had pledged ourselves to furnish $20,000 on condition that we received in all from Great Britain $30,000, the question of the establishment of the mission directly was thrown upon us. We felt that the call to us was to go forward, and Mr. Ladd’s services were secured at the earliest day possible with a view to this necessity. As the plan of sending forward two men to look over the mission field, select a site for the station, and to determine what supplies and facilities would be needful for the mission, fully met Mr. Arthington’s view, we determined to send forward Mr. Ladd early in the autumn for the purpose mentioned. We were happy, also, in securing the services of a former parishioner of Mr. Ladd, Dr. E. E. Snow, a physician of much experience, to accompany him on his journey. These two brethren left New York in September. They had provided themselves with a valuable letter from Secretary Blaine, instructing the Consul General of the United States at Cairo to further their object as much as he might be able. On their way they purposed to procure letters of introduction from the English Government, hoping thereby to be assisted in making favorable arrangements with the Khedive of Egypt for transportation to the field of their destination, and also for the privilege of using a steamboat on the waters of the Upper Nile. Their plan of route will be to visit Cairo, and proceed from thence to Souakim, on the Red Sea; from this point they will pursue a camel route a distance of 240 miles to Berber, where they hope to find steamboat facilities for the remainder of their journey. The point which they seek to reach is about 1,500 miles in a direct line south of the Mediterranean and near the mouth of the Sobat, where the people are in the depth of barbarism. It is the hope of your Committee that Brothers Ladd and Snow will be able to return in early summer, at which time Dr. Snow will devote himself to procuring a suitable steamer for mission purposes on the Nile, and other supplies and facilities needful for the comfort and success of the enterprise. Supt. Ladd will devote himself to organizing a suitable corps of missionaries for the Arthington mission, two of whom are already under appointment, with a view of proceeding up the Nile next autumn to their field of labor. Our African work is not without its hazards, its embarrassments and inevitable discouragements. We believe, however, that the good tidings of great joy must be preached to the millions of newly-discovered peoples in Central Africa, and that the negro race with which we have so much to do has an urgent and imperative call in this direction. We accept, therefore, cheerfully and prayerfully, our part of the burden, trusting that the many friends of the long despised and forgotten Africans will sustain us by their prayers and by their contributions, while we go forward as the Lord opens the way, performing our tasks as best we are able until the day shall dawn.

THE INDIANS.

We believe that the Peace Policy of General Grant, which was continued by President Hayes, has been productive of great and lasting good to the Indians. Some infelicities have occurred between the Government representatives and those of the religious bodies having nominations intrusted to them, and these, together with other reasons, have served to diminish the interest once taken by the officials at Washington in the co-operation of the religious bodies. We have no wish to discuss the subject, nor to press upon the Administration the question of the continuance of the Peace Policy. We content ourselves, therefore, with giving a few statements relative to the Indian work under our care.

The general improvement of the Indians at the S’Kokomish Agency is indicated from the fact that the white employés, with the exception of the clerks, physicians, and those connected with the schools, have been discharged and their places filled by Indians. At this Agency, the long desired titles to their land have at last been granted to the Indians by the Government, and they have, therefore, additional inducements to become thrifty and make themselves homes. At Dunginess Station, where a few members of the S’Kokomish church reside, there is a church building, the only one in the county. This has been furnished recently with a bell and melodeon. An average attendance of forty on divine services at this point and of eighty at S’Kokomish is of much encouragement. Their gifts, also, to benevolent objects for the year, amounting to $614.67, indicate that the Indian may be counted upon to help on the world’s conversion. Good work has been done for Indians at Hampton and Carlisle, and we have the question under serious consideration of providing suitable accommodations for Indian youth in connection with other institutions.

THE CHINESE.

The work among the Chinese on the Pacific Coast has been carried on under the able and energetic superintendence of Rev. W. C. Pond with unabated interest and success. Here there has been enlargement. The excess of teachers for the past year over the previous year has been six, that of pupils 76, and of hopeful conversions 13. A comparison of the statistics and work shows an improvement at all points. The total enrollment last year was 1,556; this year, 1,632. The number last year who gave evidence of conversion was 127; this year, 140. All reports that have come to us are exceedingly encouraging, and not the least among them is the repeated expression of the need there is of some well chosen point in Southern China for a mission station from which converted Chinamen returning to their fatherland may go forth to preach to their countrymen. We do not purpose to act hastily upon suggestions of this kind. We seek, however, to learn clearly the will of the Master, and to expand His work whenever and wherever it is evident He is leading the way.

FINANCES.

The financial success reported at our last Annual Meeting, while full of encouragement, cast upon us a shade of anxiety. It was not certain that the additional funds made necessary by the large gifts we had received for new buildings, and the plans we had adopted for enlargement at different points, would be forthcoming. Efforts were made throughout that meeting to impress upon all those present the urgent necessity we were under for at least 25 per cent. of increase in receipts over the previous year for current expenses. The same necessity was also set forth at the National Council at St. Louis, in our publications and in the pulpits, and at conferences and conventions wherever opportunity was afforded. We felt that God had called us to do an enlarged work, and that if we could convey the information to His people, and share with them the burden we felt ourselves, the responses would be sufficiently liberal to meet all demands. In this we were not disappointed. The receipts reported for the fiscal year closing Sept. 30, 1880, were, for current work, $187,480.02; this year, $243,795.23, a gain of $56,315.21. This shows an advance of 30 per cent. mainly in the ordinary subscriptions over last year, and indicates the people’s hearty appreciation and indorsement of our work. For this we return profound gratitude to Almighty God. The fiscal year was closed free from debt, and with a balance in our treasury of $518.80. We are sure that the liberality displayed augurs well for the future. We believe the money received was expended wisely. We do not see how we could have done justice to our work without it. But additional outlay for current expenses is sure to be needful. The Stone Hall just finished at Straight University will afford accommodations for the teachers and sixty girls. The cost, however, for student aid, for insurance and the care of the building, will require additional receipts. What is true at New Orleans is equally true at Talladega College, with its new dormitory for a hundred boarders, and at Tougaloo, Miss., with the facilities of its new Hall. When Livingstone Missionary Hall, at Nashville, is done, and Stone Hall, at Atlanta University, completed, two hundred additional boarding students will make new demands which must be met.

To all we have mentioned must be added the consideration that we are laying foundations for a mission in Africa on the Upper Nile, at a point further remote from the coast than any occupied by other societies, either home or foreign, and that the outlay for this, if carried forward, will be considerable in the near future. We believe, therefore, that it is our duty to ask the friends of this Association to give us during the coming year not less than $300,000 for the support and enlargement of the varied work we have in charge.

DEMANDS OF THE FUTURE.

Some of the demands indicated above may be summarized as follows:

1. The increase of students this year over last year is 1,056. A considerable number of these were boarding students, but with our additional accommodations we shall require the coming year from five to ten thousand dollars more than usual for student aid.

2. We have no boys’ dormitory at Straight University, the new Stone Hall being exclusively for the teachers and girls. We need immediately fifteen thousand dollars to supply this want.

3. Funds also are necessary for libraries in at least ten of our different institutions. An advanced school without a sufficient library labors under great disadvantages, and especially so when located amid a people who have but very few books of their own. From ten to twenty thousand dollars for libraries could be used very profitably at once.

4. Our theological departments need better facilities and an increased corps of instructors. The number of students graduating from the different schools at the South is rapidly increasing. Many of these would enter the Christian ministry if sufficiently encouraged to do so. We need funds for the endowment of professors’ chairs at least at three different points south of the Ohio.

5. We need also endowment funds for all our chartered institutions. No colleges thrive for a great length of time without endowments. The work of a missionary society primarily is to plant churches and religious institutions, and to sustain them until they can care for themselves. Its business is, and must be, aggressive. As soon as may be, its churches and its educational institutions must become self-sustaining by their own endeavors, while the society goes forward to new fields. We need now, we surely ought to have in the near future, not less than five hundred thousand dollars for the endowment of our different institutions.

6. We need also ten thousand dollars at once for a suitable steamer for our Mendi Mission.

The negroes in the West Indies, the millions in South America, the two hundred millions in Africa, have their claims upon us. We are of them as a missionary society, and they are of us as our brethren in distress, awaiting such benefits as we have been blessed in bestowing on the few representatives in our own country.

Finally, this Association needs, most of all, the prayers of God’s people everywhere for the guidance of His Holy Spirit, and the sufficiency of His grace to direct its affairs in days to come, and for this your Committee puts forth its most urgent appeal.

SUMMARY OF THE TREASURER’S REPORT OF THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION, FOR THE YEAR ENDING SEPT. 30, 1881.

RECEIPTS.

From Churches, Sabbath Schools, Missionary Societies and Individuals $159,035.21

From Estates and Legacies 46,710.34

From Income, Sundry Funds 7,495.65

From Tuition and Public Fund 21,449.92

From Sale of Property 2,250.00

From Rents 1,208.40

————— 238,149.52

From Donations for Tillotson C. and N. Institute Building 5,645.71

—————

243,795.23

Balance on hand, Sept. 30, 1880 783.73

————— $244,578.96

========

EXPENDITURES.

The South.—For Church and Educational Work $180,753.26

For Tillotson C. and N. Institute Building 5,645.71

————— 186,398.97

The Chinese.—For Supt., Teachers and School Expenses 8,858.50

The Indians.—For Missionaries and Teachers and Student Aid 1,703.24

Foreign Missions.—For Mendi Mission, Missionaries and Teachers 12,187.86

For Jamaica Mission 250.00

————— 12,437.86

Publications.—For American Missionary, Annual Report, Pamphlets, Postage, &c. 8,795.04

Collecting Funds.—Boston Office. Dist. Sec., Agent, Traveling Expenses, Rent, Clerk-hire, Printing, Postage, &c. 5,715.91

Middle District. Dist. Sec., Traveling Expenses, Clerk-hire. Printing, Postage, &c. 2,953.50

Chicago Office. Dist. Sec., Traveling Expenses, Clerk-hire, Printing, Postage, &c. 3,513.09

————— 12,182.50

Administration.—New York Office. Cor. Sec., Treasurer, Traveling Expenses, Clerk-hire, Rent, Printing, Stationery, Postage, &c. 11,943.89

Miscellaneous Items.—Annual Meeting 335.51

Wills and Estates 251.32

Annuitants bal. 679.90

Traveling Expenses of Cor. Sec. as Delegate to England, and in other services abroad 473.43

————— 1,740.16

—————

244,060.16

Balance on hand, Sept. 30, 1881 518.80

—————

$244,578.96

=========

ENDOWMENT FUNDS.

General Endowment Fund.—Belinda Sanford, Lebanon Springs, N.Y. $1,000.00

Scholarship Endowment Fund for Fisk University.— By Mrs. A. M. Haley, Buda, Ill., in memory of Samuel Gordon Haley, deceased, Two Scholarships $2,000.00

Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Plumb, Streator, Ill., Two Bonds, $1,000 each, of Wabash, St. Louis and Pacific R. R. 2,000.00

————— 4,000.00

Theological Endowment Fund for Howard University.—Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, Malden, Mass. 25,000.00

—————

30,000.00

STATEMENT OF ARTHINGTON MISSION FUND FOR AFRICA.

Collections to Sept. 30, 1879 $ 45.00

Collections Oct. 1, 1879, to Sept. 30, 1880 6,576.48

Collections Oct. 1, 1880, to Sept. 30, 1881 26,289.62

————— 32,911.10

Amount expended to Sept. 30, 1881 7,433.57

Amount unexpended 25,477.53

————— 32,911.10

STATEMENT OF STONE FUND.

Received of Mrs. Valeria G. Stone, Sept., 1880, 150,000.00

Expended as follows:

Straight University, Stone Hall and Lot, in full $ 25,000.00

Talladega College, Stone Hall and improvements, in full 15,000.00

Fisk University, Livingstone Missionary Hall, in part 22,476.50

Atlanta University, Stone Hall, in part 14,000.00

Supt. of Construction, in part 655.47

————— 77,131.97

Amount unexpended 72,868.03

————— 150,000.00

RECAPITULATION.

A. M. A. Current Fund $243,795.23

Endowment Funds 30,000.00

Arthington Mission Fund, expended 7,433.57

Stone Fund 77,131.97

————— $358,360.77

The receipts of Berea College, Hampton N. and A. Institute and State appropriations of Georgia to Atlanta University, are added below, as presenting at one view the contributions of the same constituency for the general work in which the Association is engaged:

A. M. A. $358,360.77

Berea College 60,106.69

Hampton N. and A. Institute 102,578.77

Atlanta University 8,000.00

————— $529,046.23

ADDRESS OF SENATOR GEO. F. HOAR.

Mr. President and Ladies and Gentlemen:

I suppose your Secretary was well warranted in announcing my name, for early in the summer I made an engagement to prepare a paper to be read here to-night on Christian education in the South; but the occupations of the last four weeks, as imperative as they were unexpected, have put it entirely out of my power to comply with my engagement, as I informed your Secretary yesterday. But with a persistence which certainly affords a very good illustration of the doctrine of the “perseverance of the saints,” he has compelled me to come here to make my excuse in person.

I have not come at this late hour of the evening to enter upon an argument in favor of what I am sure every person within the sound of my voice is now thoroughly convinced of, but rather to express my gratitude and honor at the great work which is now going on in this country for a Christian education in the West and South, in which the American Missionary Association is so nobly taking the lead. I do not think you yourselves are entirely conscious of the sublimity of what you are doing and what you are helping to do. Why, take the $321,000 which, including the expenditure from the Stone fund, your treasurer reports you have expended during the past year: at the present rates at which the Government can borrow money, that represents the income of a capital of $9,000,000—the income of a capital which, I suppose, is greater than the entire aggregate of all the productive funds of the American colleges forty years ago, and which I know is more than fifteen times the entire productive fund of Harvard College as it was estimated by President Quincy in 1840. Gen. Eaton made an imperfect estimate of the amount given for education by voluntary contribution in this country, and in 1872 it amounted to $8,000,000 and upwards; in 1873, the last year before the great depression in business, it amounted to more than $11,000,000; and I am informed on credible and high authority that in this year of grace 1881, it will amount to more than $18,000,000—the income of a capital, at present rates, of more than $500,000,000—a vast national school fund invested not where thieves break through and steal and where moth doth corrupt, but invested in the patriotism and sense of religious duty of a Christian people. There is nothing in statesmanship, there is nothing in the opportunities for political effort, which the highest honors of the State can hold out to any of her public servants, which surpasses in dignity the opportunity to help and to bid God-speed to a work like this.

My friends, it is not strange that the wealth and the conscience of New England should arouse itself to the opportunities which God has held out to you in the present age. There are persons within the sound of my voice within whose lifetime twenty new states will be admitted to this Union from territory which now is scarcely settled. That “ancient, primitive and heroical work,” as Lord Bacon calls it, which he ranks as the highest work which is vouchsafed to man to take part in, is being performed in your day and by your hands, if you choose, in a manner unparalleled in human history; and the sixteen states now reconstructed, within which, until lately, slavery had bolted the door against every form of popular education, now, thank God, have their doors unfolded and afford a field of scarcely less interest than the other. How can the manufacturer, how can the merchant of Massachusetts fail to respond to the appeal of these good men and these good women for help in the great work of educating these communities? Combined, they are very soon to be the majority, both in states and in population, they are to determine every question of peace and war, every policy of finance or of tariff; they are to enact, they are to furnish the men who expound and the men who execute the laws under which you and I and our children are to live, and upon which depends the value of all property and the prosperity of all labor. Will the manufacturer or the merchant, who gladly taxes himself to insure his property against fire or against crime, hesitate a moment when you ask him to insure it against being governed by laws which are to be made by and rest upon ignorance?

But there is a better reason even than this. I think the opportunity to take part in such a great benefaction is enough to stimulate every ingenuous soul. I think there is no more beautiful memorial among men than to have your name remembered or your picture hang on the walls of an institution of learning as one of its founders or benefactors. What gratitude is there like that which men feel for the college or the founder of the college where they were bred and educated? Now you have an opportunity to attach to you the coming generations of the South by this tie, a tie which will be far stronger than all the hatreds or the passions engendered by civil war, or which have grown up under years of misunderstanding and hatred.

I have been gratified in what I have heard and read of the speeches of this Annual Meeting, and what I have read in the reports of your Association, in seeing what theory it is upon which all your efforts seem to rest. The foundation of this American Missionary Association’s work seems to me to be—if I were to state it in a single phrase—reverence for the individual soul; that doctrine which Christ preached, for which Christ died—the doctrine without which there can be neither education, freedom, republic or self-government in the world—that every human soul, whether contained in a casket of ivory or a casket of bronze, is a precious thing in the sight of God, entitled to its equal right, to its equal opportunity, to its equal share in government with every other.

Now, my friends, you have got a great deal still to do to teach the people of this commonwealth of Massachusetts to believe and act upon that doctrine, whether they profess it or not. We avowed it, and pledged our lives and fortunes and sacred honor to support it on the fourth of July, 1776, and under it we grew up from a weak to a strong and mighty people. The doctrine crossed the water. When Mr. Webster, in his speech in 1843, at the completion of the Bunker Hill monument, undertook to sum up what it was that America had done for mankind in the seventy years, nearly, that had then elapsed, he mentioned a few inventions and a few new plants and new animals which had been contributed by this continent, and then he said that the one thing which we had done for the world was the avowal and illustration of this doctrine, that however poor or however humble a man might be, or whatever was his occupation, he was the equal in rights, the equal in dignity, the equal in capacity for improvement, in the presumption of the law, to every other man. Well, Europe began to adopt the doctrine. France established a republic; England becomes nothing but a republic, “hooped,” as somebody has said of her. In Spain, Italy and Germany, the doctrine is spreading; and lo and behold, 75,000 Chinamen landed on our shores and the great republic has struck its flag! Men are not free and equal any longer! God has not made of one blood all the nations of the earth any more!

My friends, there is nothing in this world, if there is any lesson of history to be depended upon, which God visits with a surer and a severer punishment than the violation of this law. Just think how we have undertaken to violate it in the case of the negro; and think of the terrible retribution in desolated homes, in debt and squandered treasure, and in the loss of precious human life, He exacted of us. Just think of our dealing with the Indians! Why, excluding the five civilized nations in this country, there are about 170,000 Indians, all told, including those in the states and including those on the plains. There are 34,000 Indian children, according to the estimate of the Indian Bureau, which I think is a little underestimated—certainly not more than 40,000 Indian children of school age in this country. I suppose Gen. Armstrong could tell you he could take the whole of them and educate them at one hundred and fifty or two hundred dollars apiece. Why, that number of Indians is less than one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth part of the population of this country to-day. If you should gather them all into a city they would not form a city the tenth in population among the cities of America; they would not make two average Congressional districts out of our 293. And yet, in the mode in which this country has dealt with them, considering that good faith, honor, honesty, respect for property, respect for its own word, was out of place, from the time when Washington said that was our policy, almost in the words I have uttered, down to the time when the Ponca Indians were driven from their homes, and half Boston rushed to make itself an accomplice to the crime, our history has been marked by a disregard of this law, and has been marked by the terrible retribution which God has exacted of us. The Indian wars and the cost of supporting the Indians, of transportation and of military police, are estimated by a very thorough and careful estimate which I received from the statistician in the Treasury department the other day, at between five hundred and six hundred millions of dollars. I think it amounts to a thousand millions. The interest on the interest of what we have paid for Indian wars would take every Indian child of school age and give him a competent education.

Now, my friends, we have gained one thing in the history of our treatment of the Indian, and we have gained one thing in the history of our treatment of the negro. It has been demonstrated by a sufficient number of individual instances that both these races, having their own peculiarities and their own defects, as the white man has his own peculiarities and his own defects, are fit for civilization, for law, for education, for the family, for the home, for the arts and the industries which belong to civilization and peace. Take the case of the negro, whom we have not all learned to respect as we should. I sat in the House of Representatives with seven members of the negro race, and you could not find seven men in that House, chosen on any principle of selection, who were the equals of those seven men, or who certainly were their superiors, in everything that indicated the conduct of an honorable, sensible and capable representative of the people. I should like to have you take the Congressional Record, and read the speeches of the old slave-masters, and then put by their side the speeches of the slaves! Why, the great orator and statesman of the Southern Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, when he came back to the public service, announced weeks beforehand a speech that he proposed to make upon a political question of the day. The House and the country were in expectation. Mr. Stephens gave months of his best thought and his best care to the preparation of that speech; and when he finished delivering it, a full-blooded negro got up, and, on the moment, answered the argument which had been made by the great champion of the slave-holding race and overthrew it. When our illustrious senator died, his eulogy was pronounced throughout the land from the lips of orator and poet and friend. Massachusetts called to her service, perhaps, the two most brilliant and accomplished orators in the country, Mr. Curtis and Mr. Schurz; and still the one eulogy of Charles Sumner which more than any other deserves to go down into literature and to be found in the school-books of coming generations, is that pronounced by Robert B. Elliot, of South Carolina. It is too late. If you do not educate these black people, it is not because they are your inferiors; it is because, in your selfishness and greed, you prefer to do something else with your money than to expend it for the benefit of these American citizens.

But, my friends, as I have said, I did not come here to enter upon an argument in behalf of a cause in which this audience, at least, is already enlisted. I come to express to you nothing but gratitude, nothing but hope. It is no time for despair. I notice that our friends, especially the clergymen who spoke to us, reexamined, somewhat, the foundations of our religious faith in their speeches, as if they thought that science or unbelief had shaken a little the strength of the old faith in the minds of men. I don’t believe it. Undoubtedly, modern science has stripped our religious faith of some of the frame-work, of some of the imagery, of some of the associations with which the vision and the imagination of our early childhood had surrounded it; but it seems to me that, judging as we should judge of the progress of mankind, by the state and depth of its religious faith, and by the perfectness of its obedience to the moral law, humanity reached its high-water mark on the day of President Garfield’s funeral. Three thousand millions of mankind, at the same hour, in this country and across the sea, bowed their heads in a common grief and rose up to do a common honor to the simple qualities of love, courage, religious faith, obedience to the will of God, exhibited by one man and by one woman whom freedom had called to her high places.

Why, my friends, you know how it is. Every speaker and every auditor knows how an emotion is multiplied by the size of the audience that feels it. You utter a jest to your neighbor which will hardly create a smile, or you make a remark with pathos in it, which will hardly move him; but say the same thing to a great audience of three or four thousand people, and in every man’s heart that feeling is multiplied and intensified by the knowledge that the same feeling is experienced by every other person. You all know how that is. Now, science, the telegraph and the press enabled the emotion of human sorrow, at the time of Garfield’s funeral, to be felt over the entire civilized world. Do you think, speaking of science having injured the cause of religion or Christianity, that the telegraph and the printing-press are the products of cold, hard science—that there is no religion or morality in them? Yet, of what evil passion would they have rendered the service of conveying it to the whole of mankind at once? Could any base man, could any mere intellectual power, could any man of wealth, could any Napoleon, could any conqueror, have swayed mankind as this simple President of ours and his wife did on that day? The power in this universe that makes for evil, and the power in this universe that makes for righteousness, measured their forces. A poor, feeble fiend shot off his feeble bolt; a single human life was stricken down; and, lo, a throb of Divine love thrills a planet!

But, my friends, those of us, young or old, who are enlisted in the service of God’s moral law, who pour out their wealth or do their work in life in obedience to the doctrine, “He that hath done it unto the least of one of these, hath done it unto Me,” works in the service of the Master, who never will be shaken on His throne, and whose rewards are sure.

EXTRACTS OF ADDRESSES RELATING TO GENERAL WORK.

Value of Consecration.—Christ honors alabaster boxes that are broken, and in a moment their costly ointment is shed forth and lost forever. He honors a service not according to its commercial value, not according to the results that appear in the reports of societies, but he honors a sacrifice for the purity of the principle in which it is made and the completeness of soul with which it is rendered. I believe that the church is a unit; I believe that the church is one—the body of Christ, and that Christ calls upon his body to be a living sacrifice to himself. As any blemish on the lamb that was brought to the temple for offering neutralized its value, so any blemish in our hearts, in the withholding of a complete self-sacrifice, is a blemish on that “living sacrifice” which the Lord Jesus Christ calls upon us and prompts us to make. Nay, more, I believe that the very offering of one has its effect upon all, and that there is this vicarious suffering and this vicarious holiness, and that God Almighty looks down into the dark places of the world, and He regards those places a little less dark and a little less dreadful when He sees the light of one poor flame burning upon one solitary altar.

Let this, then, be the principle on which you go. You can do very little; we individually do very little in this world; but you can put yourself into it, you can give yourself to it, and then you have made the grandest possible consecration and offering.—Rev. E. N. Packard.

The Reward of Work for the Lowly.—I remember to have read of a traveler who was shipwrecked. He seemed to have been a dissolute, young Englishman, though of culture enough to read and write. He was held captive on one of the South Sea islands for several years, the natives keeping him out of sight whenever a vessel was near-by. They saw that he was of a superior culture to themselves, and they had built him a hut and given him everything to make him happy. They waited on his instructions and he taught them many things, and for years he had blessed them as much as a dissolute, immoral man could. Finally, however, he managed to escape. One day he saw a ship approaching the island, and he got behind some rocks and put off in a canoe. The natives saw him and made after him. It was a race for life. He finally succeeded in getting so near the vessel that they threw him a rope and pulled him on board—a strange looking creature, all his clothes in tatters and his hair unshorn. He was in great agitation, but as soon as he could speak he told them his story, and there was this fleet of canoes crowding around the vessel to corroborate his account. And the natives took up a wail, that he was going away from them, he, their only link to the civilized world, was going to leave them, and their hearts were full of sorrow. They wanted him to come back and give them one farewell embrace; but he would not trust himself in their midst. But they did this: the sailors tied a rope around him and lowered him over the side of the ship, and then the natives rowed by in their canoes and kissed the poor scoundrel’s feet in token of gratitude.

Oh, what a blessing it is to be permitted to lift others! How thankful those colored people at the South are for their teachers and helpers! It is a success, thank God! See the gratitude that swells up in their hearts; see their eagerness to follow their instructions; see the endeavors they make to copy the examples that are set before them.

* * * We are enabled to be personal sharers in this work; and we can, by prayer and alms, thus express to Him who is over all, God, blessed forever, our thanksgiving.—Rev. A. H. Plumb.

Hope for the Future.—[This veteran friend of the Freedman, after enlarging upon the evils to which the country is exposed by prevailing ignorance and vice, continued as follows:]

Is there any light? When Judge Tourgee wrote his first book, “The Fool’s Errand,” there appeared to be a sort of hopelessness in all the air; but the next book, “Bricks without Straw,” let the light through the crevices. He discovered and unfolded the remedy. It is educate! Educate the masses by educating the children! It is the fear of God and the love of man in active operation which make the individual his brother’s keeper, his brother’s helper. It is by expanding the individual conscience to take in fully and largely his individual responsibility, and re-awakening it among those who are more or less enlightened already.

The American Missionary Association is the mother of a big household. She is pure, sweet-tempered, patient and persevering. She entered the field of contest early and is proud of her scars. She has stood at the doors of church pews which would not open, and endured the contempt and derision of the unthinking in her school-house receptions; her sons have lost arms and legs and lives in her service; but she looks ever forward for her final reward, when vast multitudes shall rise up to call her blessed. My friends, give help to this Association, and you help in the most direct way the cause of Universal Education.

But let me say a word for Howard University. It has received pronounced commendation from both the friends and the enemies of colored men. A representative friend says of it: “It recognizes the complete manhood of a man and the complete womanhood of a woman.” An enemy says: “It makes gentlemen and ladies of niggers!”

It duly claims for itself equality of rights for all men, and limits knowledge not to color but to capacity. May the Lord bless and prosper it till its students and graduates shall be honored in all the world!

The Fisk University will ever be memorable for the wonderful struggle, perseverance and final success of the Jubilee Singers. Theirs is the history, in a brief compass, of their race. It is a prophecy to which we of this generation should take heed. Here were slavery, emancipation, want; then journeyings almost without hope—none except in God; then the dawn, broadening and widening till the full day came! Turned out of hotels in hate; pushed from railways in disgust and blasphemy; then received with delight and honor by kings and princes, queens and princesses everywhere; men, women and children crying with joy at the plaint of their song, and clapping their hands by the thousands in their praise!

May we not take this bright history as a harbinger of good—as a spur to more and more activity to the pupils’ foster-mother, the American Missionary Association—as a call to individual duty on the part of us who make up its membership—yea, as in some degree an offset to the grievous evils that afflict our land? Ah, may we not, resolving to be better and do better ourselves, look steadily forward, and, like your own poet, say:

—Gen. O. O. Howard.

Elevation of the Degraded.—When I received an invitation to speak at this meeting, I had arranged my business engagements for the week, and I sent word back that I could not come; but I was asked to reconsider it, and so I have canceled two of my engagements for the purpose of being here, not that I am to interest you with a speech, but to show my earnest love for the great movement carried on by this society.

When a man steps out from his own specialty, he generally makes a failure of it; and I don’t know but I shall make a failure in attempting to speak to you on this theme to-night.

But this meeting and all these meetings are a grand contradiction to the infidel utterance, that those who love God the best love their fellow-men the least. We give such a sentence as that the flat contradiction as an abominable and outrageous falsehood. What is it that prompts men to endeavor to ameliorate the condition of their fellow-men? There is no benevolence worth anything that does not come from the New Testament Christianity. Love for Christ, it is that which induces us to bring those who are straying away into the fold. And this is the idea of this society, if I understand it.

Now you know as well as I do that a reformed drunkard can operate upon a drunkard better than a man who never was an intemperate man; and a converted thief will do more good among thieves than a man who has always been honest; and one who has been converted from the lowest grade of sin can go down into the very depths to lift up those who are as debased as he or she was.

With regard to educating the colored people, I have heard people say: “O, there is no use trying to educate them.” I have heard the remark that they are “a stupid lot.” No, they are not! If you know anything about them, you know they are not stupid. They will say wonderful things. I grant you a good many of them are ignorant; but I tell you, although they may be ignorant, utterly ignorant, yet you will hear brighter, smarter things from them than you will hear from the ignorant in the North, as a general thing. Why, what do you think of the negro who, when asked why he didn’t fight in the time of the war, said, “Because I don’t want to fight.” “Well, but they are fighting for the negro.” “I know they are; but did you ever see two dogs fighting for a bone?” “Yes.” “Well, did you ever see the bone fight?”

There is something, I say, in the education of the colored man—though why they call him “colored,” I don’t know. A man was once asked if he was colored; he said no, he was “born so”—something to build on in themselves. And then there is their desire for education. We here in the North can hardly conceive the earnest desire of those people to learn. When Straight University was burned, I received a letter asking me for some books; and I had the privilege of sending some two or three hundred volumes to them. I was told in the letter that on the very morning after the fire the scholars assembled, and, standing among the ruins, they sang, “Hold the Fort,” and then formed themselves into classes all around about the ruins that they might not lose their lessons.

I have an idea—I shall get bewildered here a little, because I am talking about education, and I never was educated myself—that education may not make a man a better Christian, but it will make him a more useful Christian. One poor woman, living in a smoky cabin, when asked how she could endure to live in such a smoke, said: “Why, honey, I’se thankful to de good Lord to get anything to make a smoke of.” There was a good deal of ignorance, but there was true thanksgiving. Another one said: “God whips you and leaves you alone sometimes, to see if you won’t work; but la, it’s just like a baby—as soon as you cry He hears ye!” Some of the most beautiful sentiments have been uttered by those who are the most ignorant; but when we are appointing men to preach the Gospel, my opinion is that education is needed, and we must so arrange the machinery of the American Missionary Association that hundreds of thousands of men who are now waiting the opportunity to preach the everlasting Gospel intelligently shall be brought into the field of labor.

O, it is a glorious work, this lifting, lifting up of the low, this ministering to those who are poor, this helping those who have no helper! It is a grand work, and I thank God that there is such an Association as this, stretching out its hands and its arms in every direction to lay hold on those for whom the world has cared so little.—John B. Gough, Esq.

The Negro Worth Saving.—It may be put down as a sure thing that our estimate of men, in the long run, determines what we do for them. Our theories of human nature are the measure of our philanthropies. I am not going to sacrifice much for any man whom I reckon as utterly and hopelessly insignificant. Christian philanthropy is not a sentiment, nor an emotion, but a practical principle; and principles are ideas vitalized and set in movement by convictions. Suppose, for instance, that you assume that men are incapable and cannot be made capable of self-government. I think your political philanthropy will not take a very democratic type. If a colored man—black, red, or whatever—is not fit, and cannot be made fit, for the political suffrage, then we shall have white men’s suffrage, and the question of fitness will inevitably determine the whole matter. If negro suffrage had any rational ground, and was not a wild and desperate venture, it was grounded in the theory that the negro could be made capable for the exercise of the political suffrage, and the men who had faith enough in him to give him the suffrage, assumed that there would be found men who would have faith enough in him to fit him for the exercise thereof.

Again, suppose you assume that the Christian churches are incompetent to manage their own ecclesiastical affairs within the limits of a true Christian and ecclesiastical fellowship. I think your ecclesiastical fellowship will not take a very Congregational type. Of course, we must have a strong central government that will manage the affairs of such incompetence. It has been assumed that the colored people of the South are unfit for the superior intelligence of our Congregationalism, or that Congregationalism is not sufficiently spectacular and sensational to fit the primitive wants of the colored people. I will not characterize such heresy as that as it seems to me it ought to be characterized. At any rate, I think it a most beggarly begging of the whole question; and if it be true, then the occupation, ecclesiastically at least, of this society is gone.

The truth is, friends, our ecclesiastical, like our political philanthropy, is grounded on faith in men—intelligent, Christian faith in the manhood, capacities and possibilities of men; and when that faith is gone, the bottom is out and we must have new foundations.

Or suppose we assume that the children in our homes are only animals, or are fit only for the mechanical drudgery of life. I think our domestic and educational philanthropy will not take, to say the least of it, a very civilized type. Yung Pow says that it is of far more importance whether an angel or a devil educate the child than whether a learned doctor or a simpleton teach him; that is, the virtue that educates is of far more importance than the intelligence that instructs—which, in a certain way, of course, is true. But what is the use of debating the relative importance of virtue and intelligence where they are co-ordinate? The highest virtue demands intelligence, and the highest intelligence demands virtue. But suppose it to be true that the child is very likely to find the doctor or the simpleton, as well as the angel or the evil demon, what then? Of course, we want the angel in our homes and in our schools; but I submit that we want the doctor, too, or his equivalent. We have got to look out for the devil in our homes and in our schools; but I submit that we have got to look out for the simpleton, too. It is not virtue, it is not goodness alone that educates; it is intelligence as well; and what we want is a broad, noble, manly and Christian intelligence that estimates aright the manhood possibilities of every man—that will assume the Christian standard of estimate, which is not, I submit, the materialist’s estimate, nor the secularist’s estimate, nor the politician’s estimate, nor the Pharisee’s estimate. We want a faith in men that will not prejudge either case against them, and undertake to determine on à priori grounds just the precise measure of men’s capacity, and just what they are able to accomplish. We want a faith that understands that we are not dealing with material substances nor merely mechanical aptitudes, but with a higher range of powers that are to fit the coming man or woman for a worthy service in the social and political world, and in the kingdom of our God.—Rev. L. O. Brastow, D.D.

A Glance at the South.—There is something interesting, as you go through the South at the present time, in watching the progress of events. It is a region, speaking of it as a whole, that strikes the Northern man with many peculiarities. One is, where is the population that made that stern resistance to the Northern arms? The cities are all small; there are no villages; whence came that force that withstood us so many years, and withstood us with such might? And then again, you are struck with many things so different from what we find at the North. You may ride whole days and find very few Southern people with whom you can have any opportunity of conversing. There is usually a car on the train which the colored people devote to themselves, but they only ride from station to station. You find but few of the white people traveling, and yet since the close of the war there has been a visible growth; and I am a firm believer in a new South that is dawning. There is coming to be a gradually renewed intercourse between the people of the North and the people of the South, and step by step we shall find new interests awakening and a closer linking than there has been for many a year.

But one of the most interesting phases of the South, from whatever stand-point, is the colored population. They are a remarkable people. They number six and a half millions by the last census. You know that it used to be said that when slavery should take away its fostering care, we should find large inroads made upon their numbers, and like the Indians, they would gradually waste and disappear. But what is the story of the two censuses of 1870 and 1880? The increase of the whole population of this country for the past ten years has been a little over 30 per cent. Of this, the white population has increased 28 per cent. and a fraction over, and the colored population 34 per cent. and a fraction over. So that, although the white population has been benefited by the enormous immigration, of which we so often speak and boast, yet by almost six per cent. the colored population has won in the race.

I met the president of a railroad within a month, who has recently constructed a long road in the South against time. I asked him, “With what help did you construct this road?” He said, “With colored men entirely.” “Were they satisfactory?” “Entirely so.” “Would they do as much work per man as the railroad laborers of the North?” “Not quite as much per man, but there was no danger of a strike. They were cheerful, hearty and willing, and I was entirely satisfied with them. I completed my road many days before the time given me, with every man in the South prophesying it was impossible to accomplish that result.”

I said to a policeman not long since in the city of Savannah, “Have you any colored men on your force?” “Not one; and if a colored man were placed here, every one of us would resign.” I then asked him about the colored people in the South and in that city. He said, “They are orderly and well-behaved; we have no fault to find with them.” “How are they getting on in the schools?” “They are beating our white children in the public schools.” “How is that?” “Well, our people do not altogether patronize the public schools, and the colored mothers take much more pains to have their children prompt and constant in attendance than the white mothers; and when the children of this generation come to stand up face to face ten years hence, we are going to be put to shame by the intelligence of many a black boy that to-day walks our streets barefooted and ragged.” That is the statement of a man who said he would resign if a colored man was put upon the police force of which he was a member.

There are many things about the colored people we must be patient with. They are ignorant, and ignorant beyond what we realize. It is an ignorance which we must not be surprised at; it is an ignorance which we must be patient with. It is our duty to give them education—and not merely the duty of us who are here to-night, not merely of this generation, but of generations to come. It is a duty that is patriotic beyond what we are apt to consider. At the close of the war we gave to the colored population the ballot; but it has been the proud claim of New England always that back of the ballot must be intelligence, and that it is not safe in a republic that he who casts the vote that decides the fate of the nation shall cast a vote that he cannot read. Yet to-day there is that enormous vote of the South, a vote which the man casting it cannot read. We sometimes wonder that, in a state like South Carolina, where the colored population is almost double the white, it is possible that they should be deprived of the franchise; but you can judge how timid a man is as to his rights when he cannot read his ballot nor count it after it is cast. Therefore, as I say, that question must be a slow one as it works itself out; but it is as citizens of this nation, as patriots, that we must see to it that intelligence is furnished to that people at the earliest possible day, to enable them to both read and count the ballots which they cast.

—Henry D. Hyde, Esq.

[The Colored Man.—Fifteen years ago Gen. O. O. Howard asked a colored school, “What message will you send to the friends North?” Richard Wright, at that time a lad of thirteen, responded, “Tell ’em we’s risin’ sir.” Mr. Wright has since graduated from Atlanta University, and for several years has been engaged in teaching and editing a local paper in Georgia. Those who heard his admirable address had abundant evidence that his statement has been verified in his own case, at least. We regret that we can give our readers so small a part of it.]

You cannot imagine how much it rejoices me to stand before those who helped to shape the events whose tremendous logic forced the great patriot and philanthropist, Abraham Lincoln, to sign that necessary war measure which resulted in striking the shackles from the four million unfortunate human beings whom I have the honor to represent at this meeting.

I come to tell you that your labors have not been in vain. The colored man, whose cause you have espoused, is worthy of your efforts. Numerically, the colored people form about one-seventh of this great nation. Their natural increase is greater, probably, than that of any other branch of the American family. In the South they constitute nearly one-half of the population, and in the cotton states even more. Nine-tenths of the manual or menial labor of the South is done by colored men. Freedom has not made them lazy, as has been stated by their enemies. Besides making ten million more bales of cotton than during any fifteen years of slavery, they have, during the last fifteen years of freedom, acquired in the South over one hundred million dollars worth of property. That eagerness for an education which characterized them when your first missionaries were put in the field has not left them. In 1878, Gen. Eaton reported as being in the public schools of the South 675,150 colored children, and about 100 schools devoted to secondary, normal, collegiate and professional training among the six and a-half million colored citizens. Such, in brief, is the strength of a people who are to help shape the destiny of this republic.

Ignorance, intellectual and moral, is our main weakness, a curse for which our forefathers were not responsible, but for which we, of the rising generation, are compelled to atone under the manacles of political proscription and religious and social ostracism.

It could hardly be expected that the slaveholders of the South would in their straitened circumstances undertake the education of those whom they had looked upon as their property taken violently from them. So the North, as it has abolished slavery, must also abolish ignorance.

The first need of the colored man is Christian training. The old preachers, fettered by slave habits and filled with superstition and sectarianism, will hardly be able to make their flocks much better than themselves. The colored people need spiritual advisers whose lips and lives express the holy gospel they profess. There are in the South thousands of colored preachers, controlling large congregations, too, who are unable to read correctly a single text from the book which they undertake to expound to their followers. The colored people are naturally religious and nominally Christian. They are ready to be led by the Christian teacher or the scheming Romanist, by the true patriot or the plotting demagogue. As clay in the hand of the potter, they can be made vessels fit for the Master’s kingdom, or they can be left to grow more vicious and more corrupt, and thus be lost to Christianity.

The colored man needs the facilities for becoming educated. He has the inclination, but not the means, to make a good and useful citizen. The A. M. A. has done much, and will, I hope, do more to arouse this whole nation to see the threatening danger that lurks in the ignorant masses of the South, and to feel the necessity of removing the danger by educating this element. The black man is not to blame for his hard lot, nor is he of his own accord an American; but 250 years of toil and hardship have wedded him to this soil, and here he means to stay. Docile and tractable, his industry has made the Southern wilderness productive and beautiful. He has produced the cotton, tobacco and cane of this country. Any attempt to supply his place as a laborer in the South will prove utterly futile. He is there a laborer, citizen and voter, part and parcel of the American nation, and I trust the American nation will recognize him as such. The full, complete recognition of the right and privilege of the colored man to be and do whatever any other citizen is and does, is what the republic must settle down to. The question whether the colored man shall live in this republic, on terms of perfect equality, protected in the enjoyment of every privilege and immunity accorded to any other American, is a question which has postponed the progress of the South, and will continue to until the nation shall have solved this problem. Sooner or later the republic must see its solution. Like Banquo’s ghost, down at your beck or wane it will not. It will present itself at your churches, your theatres, your legislative councils and your court rooms. It is the one question that will not and cannot be settled until it is settled rightly. It is a question embracing the development of an irrepressible race, one that cannot be starved out, driven out or killed out. When the people of the South, together with the people of the North, shall approach this subject, under the guidance of intelligent reason and an enlightened conscience, they will see that the true way to solve this vexing question is to educate the colored man and treat him as a citizen. But, aided or unaided, helped or hindered, the negro will have an influence in the government of this country, and there is now no power in the arm of the American people to keep him down. He will rise to help make this republic the grandest and noblest that has ever dotted the face of this globe, or he will sleep on a common burying-ground with his white oppressors, amid the ruins and ashes of this republic. Inseparably united with the fate and fortune of America, the words of the Hebrew maiden to Naomi express his adhesion to the white man. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried.”—Richard Wright, Esq.