PRICE 25 CEiTTS.
THE GOLORED RAKE
WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE
BEING A REPLY
BY C. K. MARSHALL, D.D.,
OF VICKSBURG, MISSISSIPPI,
To the Speech of the Rev. J. L. Tucker, D.D., Rector of St. Andrew'1
Church, in Jackson, Miss., made before the Protestant Episcopal
Church Congress, held in Richmond, Va., October,
1882, and Published February, 1883.
■t.
"A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just
wei<jiit is his delight."
SECOND EDITION.
Nashville, Tenx. :
Southern Methodist Publishing House.
i'kintkd for tiie author.
1883.
< 'opyriyhtcd.
INTRODUCTION.
TO THE READER.
IN the following notes and comments o» the speech of the Eev. Dr. Tucker, T
have had in view the blighting yriiuence of such a production upon the minds
of the colored race, and I have therefore endeavored to show them that they may
take some hope from the fact that, however repulsive and hideous the portrait of
them drawn by the speech may be, it does not, upon a fair comparison with the
white race, look so very discouraging.
For, if the white people are so wicked, and yet have not worn out the patience
of God, although they have in the raasg perverted "live talents," surely, if but one
or two talents have been intrusted to the dark race, which they desire faithfully
to use, they may hopefully rely upon the same divine benignity and forbearance.
If the depraved whites have been, and still are, elevated from the lowest degrada¬
tion by Christian motives, and mental improvement—then, since both were alike
"without God, and without hope in the world," the Negro should not allow hasty
and ill-judged estimates of his character or capabilities to dishearten him, or divert
him from an earnest endeavor after the pure, the true, and the good. The condi¬
tion of the colored people arid Negroes in our midst is not an enviable one; but
it has hopefulness and Heaven to help. , What I regard as the great evils of the
black man's relations to the age and its environings, and the remedies therefor, I
have not touched upon at this time.
For more than half a century I have been connected with the ministry in this
region, and have never missed an opportunity to do what was in my power to ele¬
vate and Christianize the Negro.
Upon some things I have said more than I would have done but for the fact that
not only the Negro has been pretty roughly handled, but his teachers, the min¬
isters of the Churches, other than those of the Orator's own denomination. I have
been one of them, with thousands of my co-laborers, for very many years. And
now we are bravely told that we have given the Negro a "form of religion with¬
out the substance." Had he said the substance without " the forms," we could
have seen the force of the charge coming from that direction. But " it is a false
religion" we have taught. If the Reverend Doctor had just defined the "sub¬
stance " of religion he would have done a valuable thing. But on that essential
matter he has left us all in the dark.
Indeed, it would help me to judge of the matter if I knew to which of the sec¬
tions or divisions of the old Protestant Episcopal Church he adheres. The Eev.
Dr. Potter, a distinguished Episcopal clergyman, says there are four: * The High
Church, the Low Church, the Broad Church, and the Advanced Church. I suppose
in this neological epoch, with the speech as a guide, we should expect to find the
Doctor in the Advanced section, and the substance of religion equally acceptable
to a Huxley or a Draper, so far as we may judge by the theology of the speech
—or, possibly, to the Eev. E. Heber Newton, of, as I presume, the Broad branch
of the Episcopal Church, who, though a priest, so called, with the Prayer-book
* See North American Review for February, 1883; article by H. C. Potter, D.D., page 104.
2
Introduction.
in hand, nevertheless so trifles with the Word of Life that he seems ambitious
to be regarded as only a sort of Agnostic saint. At any rate, I am afraid of the
introduction of new methods and theories among our citizens, and especially
among our colored people.
I am aware that as a direct, brief, logical response, I might have left much
unsaid which I offer to my readers. But the Keverend Doctor opened so many
doors I could not resist the temptation to walk in and drop an observation here
and there, for which a large class of my readers will need no apology.
The race, not the Church merely, has "been my objective trend. From my
stand-point as a Methodist, I could not be expected to express the exact doctrinal
sentiments of other Churches, but I have aimed to vindicate the black race and
colored people in our midst from the galling aspersions which I sincerely believe
have been cast upon them. %
Nor am I unaware that I might have condensed, and abridged, and perhaps
simplified my observations, and left out some things that seem hardly germane to
the matter in hand. But I have not time to revise or abridge, and I prefer to
use the occasion to say some things for the consideration of the white as well as
the colored race which must be told. "I have held my peace, even from good;
while I was musing the fire burned, then spake I with my tongue." And if some
of my friends think that it has been no mere tip-fingered task, or that I have been
too pronounced, only let them consider the provocation.
But I do not for a moment suppose that it makes the colored people any better,
more respectable, or less guilty of wrong-doing because white folks are so bad; not
at all. But perpetual abuse, ridicule, caricature, and depreciation must dishearten
and discourage any man or race. Many a ruined boy owes all his grief and down¬
fall to the complaining, fretful, and disparaging words of his parents. A young
white man said to me of his parents: "They told me over and over every day
that I was bad. They even ridiculed me for being an ugly-looking imp. They
never spoke kindly to me. I worked hard, and did all I could. I was never very
strong. Still, do what I would, well or blunderingly, I could only hear, 'David,
you are a wretch;' or, 'David, you are the plague of my life;' or, 'You shall be
whipped within an inch of your life.' True I had boyish ways, and often was
wrong; but right or wrong, it made no difference. I often cried when alone, and
felt I wanted to do right and be respectable; and I tried hard to please the old
folks, but it was all the same—it seemed like a constant storm of hail on my head.
JSfow I am here in jail, and suppose I must die in the penitentiary. About the
fact is, sir, nobody ever talked kind words to me. I suppose they had no use for
a poor fellow like me."
Alas for poor, proud, self-conceited man! Cannot we see our duty to the lowly
and the needy, or cultivate, as Lord Houghton's lines suggest,
A sense of an earnest will,
To help the lowly-living.
And a terrible heart thrill
If you have no power .of giving;
An arm of aid to the weak,
A friendly hand to the friendless,
Kind words, so short to speak,
But whose echo is endless.
The world is wide—these things are small;
If they be nothing, what is there at all?
Introduction.
The color of a man does not change, the la w of kindness nor abrogate the com¬
mand to love our neighbor. Proper and amiable conduct toward the Negro does
not imply equality, and, as the Bev. Dr. Hay good says, "you cannot put the Negro
above you unlets you get below him." * Besides, the Negro is no Paul Pry. He is not
an intruder. He did not run away from Africa to till the cotton and sugar crops
of the South; and the more we can improve his manners, morals, and material
condition, the better it will be for all concerned.
To me, as it must be to all fair-minded men, it is no very pleasant thing to see
hundreds of idle, vulgar loafers and social tramps of my own race—sponging on
society, or eating the bread earned by noble wives and sisters who toil at the tasks
of slaves — forever abusing the Negro; nor they alone. Then one involuntarily
exclaims,
Woodman, spare that tree!
Denunciation and the needless magnifying of our blunders and short-comings—
what could be more disheartening? We all need encouragement, sympathy, and
support. Whose heart has not yearned for it in the sobbing days and weary paths
of life? "A word spoken in due season, how good it is;" and how important to
'know how to speak that word to him that is weary!" When such words are
"fitly spoken, they are like apples of gold in pictures (or vases) of silver." Any¬
one, black or white, may be ruined by perpetual fault-finding. Tell your children
they are worthless, they are stupid, they are young rascals, and repeat it for a.
time, and they will come to believe it, and bid farewell to hope, aspiration, and to
all good. With no race does kindness, forbearance, and justice go farther than
with the Negro. Could he as a man receive his honest dues—be fairly dealt
with in every relation of life for twenty years—he would amaze mankind with
the outcome and improvement of which he is capable. But on this Continent I
can hardly hope for such an opportunity for him.
I am sorry to see that Dr. Tucker has shown so much surprise at being criti¬
cised, and he adds, "I did not know how bad it hurt." When he sees the attacks
that will probably be made upon me, he will sympathetically say, in the words of
Virgil,
I myself, like you, have been distressed, ....
And learned to pity woes so like my own.
Then he did not consider how his lash would torture the sensibilities of his col¬
ored victims, as if they "did not know how bad it hurt." Hence the public meetings
they have held in many places, and the adoption of their indignation resolutions.
Several of the Doctor's friends think they foresee that "attacks will b<j made"
upon his speech, and seem anxious to pad him over, or poultice him in advance.
But I desire to congratulate him, since it is done, upon having made a speech of so
much independence, entirely frank, and free from namby-pamby platitudes and
threadbare commonplace; having an aim; a speech to challenge attacks. If
hasty, he is honest; if rash, yet greatly courageous; and doubtless he may feel that
'T were better to have struck and misz'd
Than never to have struck at all.
Although I doubt if he will, with his heavy indorsements, come to such a conclu¬
sion.
See "Brother in Black,'' by Dr. Haygood.
4
Introduction.
What I have said has not been with a want of love and respect for the grand
old Protestant Episcopal Church. She holds many of the dearest friends of my
life. Among her clergymen are models of zeal, piety, and consecrated toil. I
honor their very shadows. But it is a time for plain speech, especially when a
distinguished rector, indorsed by his bishop and so many other bishops and emi¬
nent persons, makes so grave and unchristian an attack upon a large class of min¬
isters of other Communions, and so disparaging a caricature of the freedman whom
we have laboriously endeavored to " teach the wa^ of the Lord more perfectly."
I must confess I like his pluck and daring. He has executed his task in a sort
of chivalric spirit, and with a purpose that commands my respect. He has sounded
a bugle-blast, and its echoes are now rolling back upon his gratified ear from the
palaces of bishops, the rectories of priests, the benches of courts, and the walks of
the learned professions.
If, then, I have sounded a feebler note from the mere reed-pipe of a local shep¬
herd, and have tried to imitate the dash and free movement of the reverend
brother—with such a host against me, and so much to arouse one to do and to
dare—if I have trenched with unseemly haste here or there, I hope to be forgiven.
And although I think the publication unwise, and afflictive to our colored citi¬
zens, I still hope it may result in awakening a fresh interest in the great questions
to be answered concerning them.
Of course, many will not agree with me—many will. I reserve much for a
future day. And if friends or opponents, and especially those who have known
the Negro well and long, who may condescend to read the following pages, will
favor me by pen or through the press with their views of the problem in hand, it may
greatly facilitate the endeavor to assist a much-neglected people to a better con¬
dition of life and a higher scale of morality and religion.
Very respectfully, C. K. Marshall.
Vicksburg, February, 1883.
P. S.—To save farther notice, all the Italics in the pamphlet are mine, except
the two words " the half," on page 14. /
THE COLORED RACE
WEIGHED IN THE BALANCE.
I HOLD in my hand one of the most remarkable pamphlets on the
colored race, or rather the Negro race, I have ever read. It is
the germinal speech of the Rev. J. L. Tucker, D.D., Rector of St. An¬
drew's Protestant Episcopal Church, in Jackson, Miss.; made before
the Church Congress, held in Richmond, Va., in October, 1882. The
speech having been stunted by the dwarfmg-bellf has been dug about
and fertilized until it has reached a pretty respectable growth. Tiny,
and prematurely arrested as it was, it was generally regarded as a kind
of ungraceful, noxious, repellent Cactus. If that estimate was just, the
full-grown and bristling tree will hardly modify that judgment. Far
better for the cause he aims to promote that the hasty product on the
floor of the Ecclesiastical Congress had perished in oblivion, and the
presiding officer's time-bell had tolled its funeral, rather than have fore¬
told the overgrowth of the barbed and ugly affair as it now appears.
THE MYSTERIOUS NEGRO
was the theme, and in the full-grown speech an attempt is made to dis¬
mantle the Sphinx and hold up the discovered wonder to the gaze of
mankind, and seemingly without pausing to notice the effect of " put¬
ting himself in their place," or thinking of the Golden Rule. Regarded
by many as a sort of veiled prophet, an attempt is made to disclose
the enigma and unriddle the riddle. Now, if the presentment must be
accepted, we are undeceived; and by the facts stated a people hitherto
regarded as teachable, gentle, respectful, often deeply religious and mor¬
al, susceptible of great improvement and anxious to learn, are held up
—in apparently no very reluctant spirit—as a race of well-nigh incor¬
rigible scamps, thieves, liars, hypocrites, whose wickedness is, as a gen¬
eral fact, so much more revolting than St. Paul's description of the Ro¬
mans "that the truth would not bear publicity."
The vilest, meanest of mankind!
I defy any impartial man, North or South, to show me as many
pages of Churchly utterance more violently bruising of a people already
(5)
6 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
deeply bruised, 'or a harsher and more offensive delineation of instances
of great evils, and even criminality, as characteristic of the race, coup¬
led with more ill-judged conclusions or contradictory and exaggerated
statements. Of these, nearly every page presents a sample. But I
do not believe they are confirmed by the experience and observation of
the better and more conservative class of Southern people, or the histo¬
ry and civilization of the two confronting races.
An address more unwise and unscriptural from a clerical pen has
rarely fallen under my eye. Yet it is designed to befriend the colored
man in his religious training and education, and it does contain much
to awaken inquiry, with some sad truths and valuable suggestions inter¬
spersed along its pages. Its author is a highly esteemed clergyman in
his own denomination, and was very recently named with considerable
favor for the high function of Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of this
State. Besides, the'speech is indorsed by a large number of eminent
prelates, priests, and laymen—the venerable diocesan, Rt. Rev. Bishop
Green, among the number. Without such indorsements as have been
piled upon it, I regard it sufficiently crushing to the hopes and sen¬
sibilities of the race; but if that was its original effect, what will be the
result of indorsing Ossa upon Pelion?
Its aim is to stir up Northern Christian philanthropists. And
deeming it the cash-producing exhibition most likely to draw, in this
speech, " warm in tint and highly decorated," he has, I think, sadly over¬
done the task; and this not only in his fearful portraiture of the Negro,
but in the emphatic depreciation of the evangelical labors in his behalf
by other than the Protestant Episcopal Church and clergymen.
All the marvelous work done in preaching, teaching, cheering, and
encouraging that people, for more than a hundred years, by non-Epis¬
copalians, is treated with the most supercilious contempt, and pro¬
nounced " a failure." The black man has been deceived, and fed upon
husks, without the corn; his teachers have been "giving him the form
of Christianity without the substance," preaching to him only a sensa¬
tional gospel, and neglecting to teach him morality as well. Thousands
of the most apostolic, self-denying ministers have, all their lives long,
sought out and taught this people, for Jesus' sake, and have not count¬
ed their own lives dear unto themselves, so they might win them to a
new life and a true morality, and were not only not assisted by the cler¬
gy and the people of the Orator's own Communion, but were by all sorts
of ways and words, means and measures, discouraged, discounted, and
discarded.
Look, now, at the long list of indorsers of the speech. The author
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 7
struck off and sent out a few copies for indorsement, or criticism, and
lias bound the indorsements in the completed edition of his pamphlet.
There are over eighty of such indorsers; and among them all, only
one solitary writer seems to know, or at any rate to admit, that other
denominations had taken some interest in the colored race. Is this the
spirit of Christianity?
Then we are told that the failure to render any valuable service to
the colored people arises from our " not having studied them to the point
of understanding them," and that we have taught them " a false relig¬
ion," and that "there is a pressure from God upon us [Episcopalians]
to carry a pure gospel and a true religion to this people."
Now, I feel it due alike to the dead and the living to vindicate their
labor and their characters from the stigma of shame and reproach with
which this reverend neophyte has aimed to smirch them; and also to
show to candid men that the ex-slave is not the monster without parallel
he would have them believe him to be.
Indeed, the learned Doctor does not tell us that they are all equally
bad; but he distills the dews of Erebus to get a shade deeper than the
native Congo, and paints with a free hand—then, standing off, like an
artist surveying his canvas, he seems shocked at the hideous picture he
has limned, and suddenly exclaims, "Please do not think that I am
speaking contemptuously, or even unkindly; I am simply trying to give
to those who do not know the Negro race a somewhat adequate idea of
their present condition!" Thus nearly every page contains sentiments
that drift to extremes, calling for qualifying exceptions—a sort of " No,
never, or hardly ever," modification, which makes the impression on
your mind that the Doctor has seen only a very base, stupid, idiotic lot
of Africans; and yet we meet just such ugly specimens of humanity
among the superior race, everywhere.
LET US TAKE A FEW SAMPLES.
Here we are told that " the most pious Negro I know is one confined in
a penitentiary for an atrocious murder, who can see no special sin against
God in his crime, though he acknowledges an offense against man."
Yes; and are there not a hundred white men there with him who find it
hard to yoke the two great ideas together? But why this surprise at the
one-sided child piety of the poor Negro, who is a little slower to learn
metaphysical distinctions than educated white men ? Another catechist
might draw from him quite a different theory from the one suggested,
or a doctrine not unknown to theologians. Farther on I shall try to
explain this Negro's theory of innocent guilt. But the author tells us
8 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
that Negroes are hypocrites, and that " the great mass of them did not
know they were hypocrites, and do not know it now." But, as he says,
to "please their masters (and much more a D.D. who visits them in a
penitentiary), they would proclaim the beauty of virtue, truthfulness,
and honesty, while not clearly understanding the meaning of words
—using the phraseology of righteousness as a cover for wrong-doing."
And yet he admits that any other race would do the same—nay, he
says " we ourselves are more or less driven into hypocrisy, or something
very like it," and then after all it comes out " never, never, or hardly
ever," in the admission that " the mass of the Negroes are very like chil¬
dren in mental development." "Why did he not add "in moral, too?"
But it is enough when he tells us we ourselves are very like the Negroes
in moral conduct.
The fact is, he seems to
W ire in and wire out,
And keep the people still in doubt
Whether the speech that made the track
Was going North or coming back.
As another sample, look on the thirteenth page. After describing their
" strange obliquity of moral vision, a strange perversion of judgment, a
curiously conglomerated religion," and caricaturing "their religion of
to-day," he adds: " It is an outward form of Christianity with an inner
substance of full license given to all desires and passions." A verdict
as shocking and cruel as it is damaging and doubtful, to call it by the
mildest terms, as was ever uttered by the profanest skeptic and Negro-
hater in the slums of persecuting contempt. " No, never, never, or hard¬
ly ever! " for he says: "There are many exceptions—thank God for
them; . . . . but in spite of all exceptions, what I have said is
true of the great mass of them."
Why, he appears to feel guilty himself of doing the Negro a great
wrong, for he immediately adds: " I beg you to believe me when I say
that I am not speaking in contempt or in anger, or any such feeling."
What then could inspire such utterances? But, in charity, I must set
it down to a total misconception of many features of the subject he dis¬
cusses ; and this I shall endeavor to make clear when I reach the stran¬
gest part of this novel speech—the remedy for all the ills the Negro's
soul is heir to.
At present I am selecting samples of the numerous startling allega¬
tions made against the dark race. He tells us, on page 18, that "the
seventeen years since the war have brought great changes to the colored
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
9
race—great improvements in many things to some of them—but no
change in morals;" "the Negro is retrograding in morality." Over and
again this statement is reiterated. Two things I find to be in the gen¬
eral true: first, that by a law of selection, or moral gravitation, certain
districts and neighborhoods have collected large numbers of loafing
Negro tramps and dead-beats, thieves, vagabonds, and worthless charac¬
ters; and of course the cry is raised that the Negro is retrograding in
morality. Whole counties, or parishes, from overflow, worms in the
crop, drought, or excessive rain, may have reaped little or no harvests.
Discouragement follows. Whisky—the white man's comforter in adver¬
sity—is consulted; trafficking robbers cross his path; he is pushed to the
wall, impoverished, and disheartened, and his employer with him. De¬
generacy follows. Our white people of kindred classes go down under
like conditions.
The second thing I find is that many Negroes in every State have
purchased and own their farms; they have invested millions of dollars;
they are tending upward, are prospering, educating their children, and
teaching them to work; and every acre of land a Negro owns contains
the ten commandments and the gospel of seasons, seeds, and harvests,
and deterioration is not, there. I mean that God's word becomes a new
book to him, and he sees how a practical and industrious life is required
and rewarded by the Divine Providence. The rewards of honest toil
are on the door-sill. He tries to prove himself worthy of respect, and
he is respected. He makes a more reliable witness, a safer juryman,
and enjoys a credit in the bank and with the merchant which many
of his white neighbors ask in vain. Similar encouragement would pro¬
duce like results elsewhere. Still it must be confessed that in some
districts morals have not improved with freedom. Nor have the white
laborers done any better.
What the Doctor says concerning the wickedness of the North in
precipitating such an avalanche of " barbarians," as he calls them, into
our ballot-box, putting the two races into a false position politically, is
not only just, but strongly put; and so of many things that pertained to
slavery. So also he does ample justice to the general theory of the en¬
tailment of the slave vices upon the lives and conduct of the freedman
and his children; and yet all hard-worked, poor white people disclose
the same tendencies.
With his environments and Caucasian examples of Sabbath-desecra¬
tion, dissipation, idleness, shiftlessness, profanity, and impiety, the won¬
der is that in large districts and special neighborhoods the Negro is any
thing but a " barbarian " now.
10 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
AN IMPOSITION.
On the fifteenth page he tells us how certain Christian gentlemen from
the North, who ftere humbugged soon after the war- by a congregation
of colored people, who in their way demonstrated their piety in the
presence of their visiting benefactors. Directly afterward, when the
visitors were gone, they " offered a so-called paschal Iamb " in " sacri¬
fice." After it was roasted, it " was cut in little pieces in the church
during the night, and the pieces were 'eagerly bought by the congrega¬
tion; some of them were eaten on the spot, and some tied up in little bags
to be worn around the neck as charms. There was considerable pecuni¬
ary profit," etc. I believe all this to be possible, but would like to
know the who, the when, the where.
Still, one blossom cannot make a harvest. It is known that unprin¬
cipled adventurers insinuated themselves into Churches, as well as other
places, soon after the war; and this case looks to me like some of their
diabolical work "for the pecuniary profit." So implicitly did the Ne¬
gro believe in his Northern magician that he Avould at one time have
plucked out his eyes and given them to him. Hence they were led into
all sorts of traps, and wronged and robbed in all imaginable ways. I
am not referring to the colossal fraud of the Freedman's Bank, but to
smaller matters. For instance: Northern men traversed the entire
South, as for as we could learn, secretly selling to the Negroes at high
prices unguents, colored liquids, charms, etc., to bleach them white—
to straighten out the kinky curls to equal beauty with the young ex-
mistress—and charms to prevent their old masters from reenslaving
them. Miniature American flags were sold to them at large prices, to
secure lands and lots of ground. They Avere told to stake off with these
flags whatever grounds they wanted, only so that the four flags could all
'be seen at one view, and the Government would see to it that they be¬
came the legal owners of the property. Many of their extravagances
were doubtless due to such impostors.
But after all, have we not known educated white people guilty of acts
as wanting in reason and common sense? I know a gentleman who
sent his son to a school called the best. For certain reasons, charms—
sacred, life-preserving charms—were on one occasion distributed among
and placed on the necks of the students. All were Avarned that if the
charm AA?as touched death Avould instantly ensue. This contumacious
young friend of mine, not having the fear of death before his eyes, soon
began to cut open the amulet, and Avas caught by a Sister Avho tried to
prevent it, and in so doing dropped the " holy thing "—a bit of cheap
candle-Avax—upon the ground. She instantly took it up on the point of
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 11
a needle, carried it to a secure place, and quickly returned with water
and baptized the young rascal, saying, " Now you will not die." There
were no Negroes about! Pray, is the Negro to be used as the univer¬
sal scape-goat for all possible nonsense? O the white man!
"AN OFFSET.
Still, that was a sorry set of Christians ( ?) with their lamb-chops and
their lamb-charms, their "hypocrisy and lying."
But as an offset to the two-legged wolf and the four-legged lamb, I
beg to submit the following fact which I have from an eminent member
of the bar: There was a settlement without any Negro church. Hun¬
dreds of Negroes resided there. Stealing was impoverishing the popu¬
lation. A Negro church sprung up, to the horror of the irreligious
citizens. A revival followed. They were " taught that they had to get
religion" by "some process of conviction and conversion." Very well.
The Rev. Doctor holds those antiquated terms and notions in su¬
preme contempt. But time wore on, and a great moral improvement
was obvious to every planter. The richest one of them was a notorious
scoffer at the Bible. But he regularly paid one hundred dollars per an¬
num to support the Negro church, because, as he said, " it had completely
put a stop to all sorts of rascality in his bailiwick, and lie considered the
church, in the light of political economy, a great moneyed advantage."
I know several cases, alike creditable to the Christian character of the
Negro, that prove him a far better fellow than many people suppose,
and capable of great excellence.
CHRIST AS A SLA VE-DRIVER!
The Doctor gets off a marvelous idea on page 11, and tells us that
"when the Negroes were taught that certain acts would displease the
Lord Jesus, they thought that the white people were trying to make
them believe that the Lord Jesus was a slave-driver too." And yet, on
the same page, he informs us that " there was one part of the religion of
the whites which they accepted with avidity, namely, the person and
errand of Jesus Christ. [Mark, as a slave-driver!] Something in the
story of the Cross appealed to them with unknown force," etc. Were
more antagonistic ideas ever before yoked together by the same pen?
Professor Lupton teaches his classes that oil and water do not commin¬
gle and unite, but Dr. Tucker shows that in literary chemistry and
Negro logic the thing is perfectly feasible.
ON MARRIAGE.
Respecting this subject, which surely demands grave consideration by
12 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
the economist and the Christian, he says some very sensible things, but
cannot "pare down to probabilities." Hear him: "Were the facts
known [on the loose holding of the marriage tie], I believe there would
run a thrill of horror—yes, and of sympathy—through the whole North,
resulting in a great movement to raise them to a higher plane of life."
And in the indorsing letter appended—kindred in style and diction
with the speech, and signed by the colored Brother Williams—somebody
says " the half has not been told." To me, such thrilling shocks would
palsy all endeavor to raise and improve the Negro, the Indian, or the
Chinaman. And with the shocking accounts we receive of the thou¬
sands of divorces among " high white folks," in the very land the Doc¬
tor is trying to horrify, I greatly doubt if they will thrill worth a cent.
But if " the half" remains untold, and cannot be told for sheer infamous-
ness, then farewTell to the " Brother in Black!" The other letter, signed
by several colored men, bears the same ear-marks, but the writer thinks
that none "except politicians, who may want to flatter the Negroes for
their votes," will deny the general indictment of unequaled depravity.
For myself, I may say I am no politician, and I do not wTant any
person's vote; but I do not want fair-minded and benevolent people
abroad to conclude that the Negro is the basest wretch that lives, and
so be discouraged from helping him altogether.
On the subject of marriage, the address contains too much that demands
notice for our time or space. But a stranger will doubtless believe,
from the statements, that every plantation wras a harem where white
masters reveled in. life-long debauchery. My information does not agree
Avith that hideous state of moral degradation. And further, it has for
half a century been observed 'that the white men that were guilty were
in nine cases out of twelve foreigners—men not natives of the soil.
"Whence these numerous mulattoes?" he asks. Has he forgotten that
near a million of Freedom's soldiers camped among the plantations for
several years? Besides, if the Negroes are Avanting in chastity, what of
their white seducers and the fathers of their mulatto offspring? Is the
degradation and doAvnletting of race, dignity, and self-respect Avith the
black or the white? The Rev. Doctor Porter, of South Carolina, says:
"If the world knew, as we parish priests know, of the immorality of
men, of the accepted and recognized habits of youths and young men
of the white race, they Avould not doubt that the Negro, as a race, is all
that you have described him." I respectfully suggest that the logic
that condemns the race of Negroes because the white men in the par¬
ishes of South Carolina are bad needs a bicycle to travel on. But it
is a curious sight to see Dr. Tucker denouncing the extreme depravity
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
13
of the black race, and the Rev. Dr. Porter handing him a Roland for
his Oliver, in showing up the unequaled debauchment of the whites.
THE MARRIAGE LICENSES.
The Doctor tells us that in " one county in Mississippi there were
during twelve months three hundred marriage licenses taken out in the
county clerk's office for white people. According to the proportion of
population, there should have been in the same time twelve hundred or
more for Negroes. There can be no legal marriage of any sort in Mis¬
sissippi without a license. There were actually taken out by colored
people just three ! "
Is not the gentleman mistaken a little? Did not the Legislature soon
after the war pass an act providing that all persons living together as
man and wife should be, and thereby were, ipso facto, married? In
law, parties have inherited as legal heirs under that provision, as if reg¬
ularly married. If I am wrong, where were the grand juries? where
the conservators of law and order?
But the picture grows blacker. He tells us on the same page (20):
"If out of every five hundred Negro families one excepts a few dozens
who are legally married, this statement will hold true for millions of
the colored people; and these things that I tell you to-night are but
hints. I dare not, I cannot, tell the full truth before a mixed audi¬
ence." But I find that he is wholly wrong.
In 1868 the same provision respecting the marriage status was made
a part of the Constitution of the State. And besides, the common law
recognizes the validity of marriage, and the legitimacy of children born,
when no license has been issued. Many Negroes were, in some counties,
imposed upon by clerks of the courts issuing these certificates by illegal
charges, and declined taking them out, as I suppose; hence, possibly,
the facts.
Very recently I have consulted with several of our largest and best
informed planters, who tell me that the great majority of the Negroes
are regularly married, although they often hold the relation too light¬
ly. If, however, the horrible condition of things prevails to the extent
stated, how does it come to pass that one who has interpenetrated the
whole State annually for near forty years, as the Rt. Rev. Bishop
Green has done, has never sounded the alarm and brought to light
this festering iniquity?
NEW LIGHT DA WNS.
Since writing the above; I learn from a reliable source that Hinds
it, the county referred to, where only three licenses for colored, vs.
14 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
three hundred for whites, were taken out; and. that upon examination
of the " Records of Licenses " it appears that for the First District alone,
from January, 1879, to January, 1883, six hundred and eighty-four
licenses were issued—of these, one hundred and sixty-nine were for
whites, and five hundred and fifteen for colored (?) ; and from January,
1871, to January, 1883, not one year on the record shows a smaller
number of licenses for colored than for whites.
The cloud-capped tower dissolves,
Nor leaves a wreck behind!
Just noAv I have read the indorsement of the Rt. Rev. Bishop Pe-
nick, D.D. (pages 57-62), of the Diocese of the West Coast of Africa
—a white man, and possessed of a high order of mind; but I should
rather call it a criticism and correction than an indorsement. He
well-nigh tumbles the whole fabric, reared by the speech, into the
ditch. He takes the part of the native Africans, as he knew them,
against its statements. In fact, he shows such a degree of real mod¬
esty and womanly deportment among them as to shame our colored
people; and judged by the speech, it would demoralize the natives to
send our colored people over there.
In his remarks (page 42), among the indorsers, the Rt. Rev. Bishop
Stephens, D.D., says very truly, and it is sadly true, and probably al-
ways will be on this continent, that the want of social position is the
reason chastity is undervalued by the Negroes. Then he speaks of the •
Americans at large, and says: " Look around you, my dear sir, and
I think that you will find that the pressure of social standing is the
control which keeps nine-tenths of non-Christian people in the path of
morality, and I am afraid a large proportion of professors also."
I confess that my estimate of the virtue of our noble American wom¬
en is not a little shocked at this low value of chastity, as a principle.
"Brutes all!" That is the outcome of such pictures on the minds
of people abroad, respecting the Negro; and yet the learned Orator
speaks so knowingly that I am shocked myself, and I wonder that I
have not learned these facts before. Still he speaks of unutterable
criminality. I have for six weeks interrogated old planters—men gray
with years—if such be their opinion, and am answered in the negative
every time, save one.
Forty years ago, a Negro was very nearly detected in some brutal
offense, I am told. But I have known a white priest, and also a white
clergyman, hurled out of the communities they had disgraced, in a much
less number of years, for nameless crimes. But I must admit there is a
great margin for improvement among both races, in morals.
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 15
This I feel all the more when I read the remarkable indorsement
of Dr. Tucker by the Rev. Dr. A. Toomer Porter, of Charleston, S.
C., one paragraph of which I have before noticed. Hear him: "It
has taken over a thousand years to produce the man of our own race
to-day; and, God knows, there is hypocrisy, deceit, lying, stealing, and
impurity, and a form of godliness without the power thereof, among
our own race—enough to call down the wrath of Heaven. What won¬
der that a people whose ancestors, one hundred and fifty years ago,
were naked savages in Africa should not have had those traits which
they brought with them eradicated under the tutelage of slavery
among us? If the world knew, as we parish priests know, of the im¬
morality of men, of the accepted and, recognized habits of youths and young
men of the white race, they would not doubt that the Negro, as a race, is
all that you have described him." So here's your white man—whose
groveling animalism has been refined by moral chemistry for "over a
thousand years" of experiments, manipulations, and improved meth¬
ods of development; by ages of evolution, and the survival of the fit¬
test—scarcely a whit better in morals than the mud-sills of Gaboon.
The reverend gentleman does not actually out-Herod Herod, but, like
a pair of twins whose mother cannot tell them apart, he joins hands
with Dr. Tucker in matching the white man's criminality, hypocrisy,
and sensualism against the same traits and vices in the African race,
of only one hundred and fifty years' sojourn in the regions of civiliza¬
tion, and leaves one in serious doubt which of the two has best suc¬
ceeded in stamping the stigma of infamy most deeply upon their re¬
spective subjects. But let us be charitable.
What pains me, however—while I know the Africans are sinners,
and descended from savages as we did—is, that they should be held up
to national inspection in lights and shades calculated to mortify, grieve,
discourage, and alienate them more and more.
MORALS ABROAD.
The Rt. Rev. Bishop Coxe, D.D., of the Diocese of Western New
York, had occasion to call the attention of his flocks to the alarming
prevalence of the crime of prenatal child-murder. These are his
words: " I have heretofore warned my flock against the blood-guilti¬
ness of infanticide. If any doubt existed heretofore as to the propri¬
ety of my warnings on the subject, they must now disappear before the
fact that the world itself is beginning to be terrified by the practical
results of the sacrifices to Moloch which defile our land. There are
scientific and statistical documents before the people which fully sus-
16 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
tain my remonstrances." Now, our Orator three or four times notified
his audience that the crimes among the negroes were unutterable in
ears polite. Bishop Coxe had reference, I presume, to the same class
of offenses, and he thundered his solemn warnings in words that "made
both ears to tingle," and alas! proved, in the same breath, that their
African sisters were not sinners above all the women of the nineteenth
century. In France, Madame de Stael characterized such a condition
of married life as the " sacrament of adultery;" in America, it may be
different. And yet the Bishop's flocks are frostily unemotional, and
laugh at "the process of conviction and conversion" of the colored
Christian brother.
ON STEALING.
My complaint here is that these evils are fearfully exaggerated.
Take this case: On page 17 he tells us that after emancipation " liber¬
ty meant license to most of them. What we call laziness and vaga¬
bondage they called freedom. Live-stock disappeared through the
whole South like magic—killed by the negroes for subsistence. A single
year of freedom caused as much or more loss to the South, in this
item, as all the gigantic loss and destruction of the four years' war."
It must be borne in mind that at the close of the war there was hardly
live-stock enough left to start the stock business again. Yet a start was
made, and now look at the late census reports and see Avhat success has
crowned the little effort made in that direction. That distinguished
Christian statesman Senator Brown, of Georgia, recently gave it as his
opinion, on the floor of the United States Senate Chamber, that the to¬
tal loss to the South by the war was equal to the sum of five billion
dollars. That was a big steal for the hungry Negro! or a nebulous spec¬
ulation of the excited imagination of his white' biographer! But so go
the metaphysics, philosophy, and theology of this wonderful speech.
Five billions, i. e., five thousand million, dollars' worth of live-stock—
bullocks and sheep, pigs and chickens. Was a grasshopper left? And
all in one year!
Then bullocks, sheep, and bristly porkers bled.
—Odyssey.
"While we are on the subject of stealing, I will look a little farther
into the matter, because the Orator devotes a section to it.
My first observation is that he could not have painted a more perfect
likeness of them, had white folks sat for the artist. He says the " Ne¬
gro parents taught their children how to pilfer, so as not to be sus¬
pected, . . and the parents profited by the child's dexterity." " This
was always, in all countries, one of the natural results of slavery."
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 17
Three"black crows! Every family, we are told (no exceptions here),
taught dealing as an art!
After all, however, " they would rarely steal money, even when they
had the opportunity." This shows they had an awakened conscience
and some honesty, and knew that theft was a crime. " In Africa they
had led a predatory life, and the habit and instinct of it continued."
It is a great mistake he makes in telling us the two hundred million
Africans are so stupid, and ignorant, and unlettered, and predatory.
They have cities, towns, governments and laws, trade and manufact¬
ures—jewelers, and workers in gold, ivory, iron, silver, and weavers
of cloths, builders of houses and boats—and they speak and write the
Arabic and other tongues, and do business in arithmetic as expertly as
English traders. It is not possible for so much business to be done,
governments and rights maintained, war and police conducted, where
theft is as prevalent as human fingers are numerous, and no sense of
wrong-doing be felt.
Right here I must remind the reader that the great majority of the
Africans who were brought to America and sold as slaves were far
from being the highest and best type of the natives. The warlike,
stronger, and more intelligent tribes were not enslaved, save occasion¬
ally as prisoners of war, or for wrong-doing as a legal penalty.
Why doesn't the Doctor cut it short, and say they brought the in¬
stinct from the garden of Eden, and wove it into a habit as other
races have done? For while I admit the probability that parents oc¬
casionally encouraged their children in stealing on the plantations, I
know that people who are neither slaves nor Africans are regularly
taught how to steal, in schools organized for that purpose in London,
Paris, Berlin, Rome, and in American cities.
RESPECTABLE STEALING.
Stealing is a crime as common as lying. More than half of all our
miseries arise from stealing, in one form or another; not the bagatelle
of " robbing a hen-roost" by the hungry darkey, but stealing by culti¬
vated Caucasians—men who wrap themselves in the robes of a mock dig¬
nity and defiantly claim to be regarded as gentlemen; men graduated
from the great seats of learning, and belonging to high vocations ai^d
professions; often in political positions where, under cover of office, law,
or both, they assume, like the chicken-thief, that wealth is not equally
distributed, and they have a right to equalize it. Look at the bank
robberies by their presidents, cashiers, and directories. Think of the
shameful story of the Freedman's Bank, the great defaulters of public
2
18 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
trusts, the robbery of State treasuries, and estates of widow-®, orphan?,
and confiding and unsuspecting people who intrust the collection of
funds to agents and attorneys. All the stealing in three hundied
may I not say five hundred—years, by six million colored people and
Negroes, at the late and present rates of pilfering, would not probably
equal the sums stolen by the white Americans in the past ten, or if
wre must say it—twenty veal's! Think of the stealing and lying (bed¬
fellows) in the line of the adulterations of nearly all the necessaries,
comforts, and luxuries of life. Fifty tons of kaolin* are dug from
mines in Pennsylvania daily to help merchants and manufacturers to
lie and steal. .
Lying and larceny are correlated forces out of which, as a logical
sequence, hypocrisy is evolved. Hence the lie takes the disease of the
theft, and they become twin evils. How do the two races stand on
such a platform? The white man lies in flour and meal, in meat, in
milk, in butter, in molasses, in sugar, in coffee, in tea, in lard, in yeast,
in sirup, in soap, in oil, in candles, in preserves, in sauces, in pepper,
in spices, in vinegar, in quinine, in calomel, in blue-mass, in dover's
powders, in quack nostrums, in tobacco, in cigarettes, in cigars, in
perique, in snuff, in shoddy, in silks, in every article of wrear or use;
but the inventory is too tedious for enumeration. Even the pulpit,
according to Lord Brougham, is not innocent, for he tells us that cu¬
rates and clergymen constantly palm off the sermons of others, and
those of the very masters of preaching, as their own; and the trade is
carried on across the Atlantic. If the white man has any just reason
for pelting the Negro's glass house, I shall await the proof.
VERISIMILITUDE.
I believe that God made of one pattern all living men, and yet the
Negro and the white man may greatly differ in other traits than in
color. Our philosophic historian Bancroft states precisely my belief.
He says: "In will, affection, intellect, every member of the human
race is consubstantial with every other; and no emotion, passion, or
capability of one, however base or blessed, but exists potentially in
every human soul."
And the learned Hermann Ulrici says: "Men [not only Negroes]
regard a coarse license as far more agreeable than subjection to law,
and the bad more desirable than the good." While a far higher author-
• Kaolin is a white clay used for making porcelain; it is in powder, as white
and fine as flour.
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 19
ity tells us of a representative people who but recently had been
"dead in trespasses and in sins; among whom also we all had our
conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, and of the mind;"
and also, "that neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor
abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor
drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom
of God; and such were some of you, but ye are washed . . in the
name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God."
Thus harmonize Bancroft, Ulrici, and St. Paul, in their portrait¬
ure of humanity at large of all colors, and all dwellers on the whole
earth.
Consequently the Decalogue is addressed to humanity at large. To
" love God with all the heart and soul" is required as much of the
lowliest African as of the sovereigns of science and of song, or God
had long ago made the distinction. " Thou shalt not steal" is ad¬
dressed to kings, potentates, bishops, lawyers, statesmen, and mer¬
chants, as much as to the Congo chief or slave, or the Kaiffer savage,
and for the reason that all are alike susceptible of temptation, and
liable to be tempted to commit the sin; and the sad history of the past
proves the command to have been equally essential for all peoples.
Here I am, in justice to Negro nature, compelled to state a shame¬
ful fact. One of the first inspirations burned into the Negro mind, 011
a change of his teachers, and by thousands of them (not men of high¬
est standing), was that their labor for a hundred years and more was
still unpaid for, and that all they could take of every sort it was
right to do, as the Israelites had done in a like case; and that it was
not ours, but theirs, and should be taken
Upon the good old plan
That he should take who strongest is,
And he shall keep who can.
Remember also the promise of " forty acres and a mule" to each
Negro. Whose acre? Whose mule? Confiscated plantations cut up
by the bayonet, and the white man's mule, turned over to Sambo.
In his cautious communication of comment, on page 34, the Hon. S.
S. Calhoun weighs both races in a trembling balance, with the Negro
now down, now up, now on a level, or perhaps the white man at slight
disadvantage, and says, " It is surprising that the Negro is not worse
than he really is."
ARISTOCRATIC STEALING.
Listen! Here's my morning paper. Hear what it relates of aristocrat¬
ic stealing: " It is estimated that no fewer than four thousov--' 'rmen are
20 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
annually caught stealing from Paris counters, and the number of titled
ladies seized with kleptomania while examining the fashions is almost
incredible." What will the Doctor say to that? Only females are no¬
ticed. And every one knows that to one female, in the same plane of
society, there are fifty males that steal. Now, those aristocratic '-'shop¬
lifters" were not ignorant, nomadic, and predatory Senegambians. The
"titled ladies" were not the court pets of the King of Ashantee, or of
the throne of the great Chief of Dahomey. Nor were they the sisters,
wives, and daughters of the privileged classes, of African aristocrats.
They were white people, Christians; had been baptized, wore crosses
and consecrated charms; worshiped in churches of unequaled splendor;
listened to the thrilling strains of grand organs (not cheap melodeons);
and after six days of elegant larcenies—like some poor half-witted Ne¬
gro of whom the reverend gentleman tells us, who prayed at a prayer-
meeting and stole chickens in the same hour, with equal conscience—
these fair Parisian ladies, titled and plain, will be found in the confes¬
sional, asking the holy father that listens to wash out the stains of
larceny and prepare them for another week's raid—and yet our gay-
hearted, thoughtless black population are held up to Northern eyes as
thieves that can bankrupt the realms of animated nature in twelve
months by a raid upon the flocks and herds, as
The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
and teach Mercury himself—the very god of thieves—the art of pur¬
loining. All this, too, while white thieves, guilty of gigantic thefts, go
unwhipped of justice!
Since trifie-stealing is a vulgar thing,
Steal largely, or indulge no tampering;
For minor thefts reveal a dirty spot,
But splendid larcenies wash out the blot.
Yet doubtless much of the Negro's moral obliquity was due to the
conditions and exactions of slavery, as the author very forciblv states it
He did not steal, however, as the white man does. His stealing is un¬
mixed rascality. The Negro when caught with a slaughtered pig, and
charged with stealing, replied, with an open face and an unfaltering
tongue, " No, master, I have not stolen your pig. You and I raised
this pig together." Master's corn fattened the pig—the pig must fatten
master's Negro. Taking things thus fastened a bad habit on great
numbers, and it clings to many freedmen with the usual accompani¬
ments of lying and hypocrisy, and will, until " choral song," ringing
down from the groined arches of costly churches—the Doctor's new
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 21
"Balm of Gilead"—shall renovate the moral leper, and re-create his
unregenerate nature. However, in justice to the Negro, I cannot omit
to say that in white servitude in factories, mines, fields—in a thousand
places where the poor toil for the mere privilege of preventing the
grave-digger from collecting his fee for burying them before their time
—the same dark moral deformity is often shamefully apparent.
The Rev. Dr. Pullman, of New York, says: ""We have a code of
business morals which justifies the business man in ruining his neigh¬
bor in order to get a good profit The heroic virtues have
died out, and were it not for a few self-sacrificing Christian men and
women, the world would rot under the tendencies of the age." These
terrible words refer to a higher grade of offenders.
And the Right Rev. Bishop Thompson, D.D., recently ordained as
Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Mississippi, speaking in a sermon a
few weeks ago, says: "We know what is in the constitution of man, and
we know that a people may surround itself with lies and falsehoods and
wrongs, until the feeling of that nation, its national conscience, is blind¬
ed and blunted and destroyed." This -was an admonition to the Nation ;
the poor Negro had scarcely been reckoned an auditor—at any rate not
indorsed as a Pariah.
NEGRO SUPERSTITION.
The lecturer tells us that the Negro believes in witchcraft and sun¬
dry old-fashioned goblin tales, which one might charitably hope the
white people, at least, had finally discarded. Then he says, page 12:
" The weaving of spells upon enemies, the carrying of charms, the trust
in various incantations, were mingled in a most inextricable way with
love for God and trust in Christ. I could give many instances of this
occurring from time to time within my knowledge down to the pres¬
ent year." He believes these are "the remnants qf African devil-wor¬
ship," still exerting "a stronger influence upon the race than any other
force whatever, moral or physical." "There was [and there is, of
course, "down to the present year"] the worship of God by their lips, in
prayers and hymns, but the practical worship, in fear of consequences
and acts of propitiation, was of the devil." Transcendent hypocrisy!
Swallow it who can!
Still, I admit the race, as such, believes in signs, omens, dreams, fort¬
une-telling, incantations, prognostics, and a nameless batch of nonsen¬
sical theories about days and times, and the doing or not doing certain
acts thereon for luck or love, or success in sailing, planting, fishing,
niovimr, and the like, to the end, or rather to the white man's revered
and ever-present palladium, the indispensable horse-shoe!
22 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
But for downright superstition—faith in omens, charms, signs, and
incantations, and as often mixed with religious worship as among^ the
Africans; refined it may be by science, polished by literature, dignified
by ecclesiastical affinities; observed by Catholics, Protestants, and skep¬
tics, in one form or another—I commend you to the white people of Aus¬
tria, Germany, England, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Mexico, and the gieat
Americas. Their name is legion, and they seem to have sprung from
a cross between a frenzied crank and a paralytic idiot. True, the su¬
perstitions of the Negro race, like their forefathers, need a little more
clothing to make them attractive, but in common sense, logic, truth
to nature, experience and providence, they are very little inferior to
those of the superior race. The difference is chiefly in dress and dec¬
oration. The superstitious always adorn their divinities, fairies, and
fetiches, in the habiliments of their own peculiar culture, but the idol
is the same. Negro nonsense of this class is African, and only Afri¬
can.
But the white man has ransacked the vocabularies of all races,
tongues, peoples, and ages, to find out the vagrant lunacies of their su¬
perstitions and to discover the efficient charm, the magic art, the sacred
iimulet, the weird conjuration, by which to effect the ends deemed of
vital importance in the affairs of life.* Availing themselves of these
abounding stores, if possible they have outstripped the Negro in this
undignified ethnical folly, putting science, reason, and Caucasian blood
to a perpetual shame, to say nothing of Christianity. Do not ladies of
refinement, Church-women of the Doctor's own Communion (?), and
gentlemen, too, consult fortune-tellers, gypsies, and sorcerers? Could
I not tell of some in the diocese of his own bishop, moving in the high¬
est plane of fashionable devotion, who have, " down to the present year,
mingled in a most inextricable way with love for God and trust in
Christ" the sheerest, baldest, most Christ-dishonoring superstitions?
Tlius God with idols in their worship ioined.
—Hilton.
It might do such Christians some good to study the twenty-ninth
homily of that famous old Elizabethan book of Church Homilies, so rich
in practical religion, and so full of rebukes of superstition.
Once, from home, I saw one of America s learned jurists, ■ when turn¬
ing back to attend to a forgotten duty, pause and deliberately describe
a circle on the sidewalk with the toe of his right foot, and spit in the
ring, to prevent bad luck, as I was told upon inquiry of my companion.
He also worshiped under warm tints, decorations, etc. I read of a
* See Popular Science Monthly for January, February, and March, lSt3." "
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 23
great general who, marching his troops from camp to the rescue of his
home from his country's invader, suddenly ordered a return to camp
because a fox had crossed the highway, an omen of bad luck! A white
man, too!
Friday seems to be the holiday, sacred to the worship of a Marcli
G-ras divinity, the pinnacle of transcendental nonsense, the irrational
literature of whose shrines, if written up, would challenge the shelves
of the Bodleian Library. AH these are purely Caucasian—the flimsi¬
est tramps and the most unkempt vagabonds of an anti-Christian imagi¬
nation. Where now is any margin for the Negro? Thus from the holy
grail to the consecrated charm, covering a parenthesis of many centu¬
ries, the white people have been studying auspices, astrology, myths,
fetiches, bird flights, running foxes, dancing rabbits, social and prophet¬
ic rats, and holding in solemn reverence the stupid oracles of the sav¬
ants of insane asylums. Now, in this year of our Lord, we are grave¬
ly told, as an evidence of the fearful task of tiding the African over the
shallows of his sad voyage toward a better estate, that he is very "su¬
perstitious." Very like white folks!
I have seen a flock of gluttonous vultures, fresh from the banquet
of a festering carcass, alight upon a tree of ripening fruit, which, though
beautiful and delicious, they spurned and soiled. Their perch was
brief, by no means desirable, but not alarmingly damaging. Gentle
showers and sunshine soon restored the tree to sweetness and purity
again. To the same tree came the spores of a parasite, and unostenta¬
tiously insinuated themselves under its receptive bark. The mistletoe
grew, flourished, and spread its green foliage from branch to branch, and
the tree perished of the devouring leech. In like manner have I seen
scoffers at sacred things intrude their atheistic theories and blasphemous
cant, and breathe their poisonous exhalations over " whatsoever was love¬
ly and of good report." " But they passed away, and lo! they were not."
A refreshing shower "from the presence of the Lord" renovated and
sweetened all the place again. But to the same, families, not of Afri¬
can descent, came the raven-winged spores of godless superstitions, spirit-
rapping, religious charms, fetiches, Friday myths, fortune-telling, witch¬
craft, spells, and an endless jargon of meaningless platitudes alike in¬
sulting to God, degrading to Christianity, and at eternal war with
Providence, as well as abhorrent to science and granite sense. Nor can
they, if cherished, fail, like the insatiable mistletoe, to destroy every
vestige of true spirituality and vital godliness.
Indeed, they are more damaging, as they are more disgraceful, to a
Christian civilization than all the stale and threadbare repetitions of
24 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
apostates, scoffers, and mockers of God and his people. AVhat else is it
but mocking God in another form?
What is the acceptance of such doctrines and teachings but setting at
naught the divine sovereignty, and the divine assiduity in watching the
falling sparrow; multiplying the drops of oil in the widow s cruse, and
the dust of flour in the bin, by " Him whose kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom; who upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be
bowed down?" To store the mind with such heathenish and diabolical
trumpery is to provoke the supreme and all-merciful One, for it dis¬
honors and degrades him. He has proclaimed his law to colored and
uncolored alike, against these things. See Deut. xviii. 10—12: "There
shall not be found among you anyone .... that useth divina¬
tion, or an observer of times [Fridays and similar days for such rea¬
sons], or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter Avith
familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these
things are an abomination unto the Lord." These words were original¬
ly uttered, not to the African, but to the white race, and now to all. For
one, I do not believe the American pulpit can discuss a more fruitful
source of evil, sin, and shame than the enthrallment of their people by
the multitude of these all-pervading superstitions. They are parasites
which eat out the energy and drink up the life of thousands of barren
fig-trees all unnoticed by the spiritual arborator or the Sabbath sermon.
But when a small flock of ravenous and ill-tempered vultures, from
some loathsome rookery, perch for a transitory and comparatively
harmless visit on a flourishing fruit-tree, all the land resounds with
gongs, horns, drums, fire-crackers, and the flapping of scare-crows, to
dislodge and banish them, as if some hitherto unheard of phenomenon
had disclosed the signs of the near approach of the final dissolution of
the universe.
THE GRAND REMEDY.
N ot yet have we reached the point Avhere we want to consider his
notions about the religion of the Negro, but as far as we have gone the
reader will surely admit that the Doctor has uncovered a most fearful
case of moral leprosy. But what does he offer as a remedy for it? He
thinks he has discovered an infallible catholicon, more potent than the
waves of Jordan or the wonders of the Cross!
First, then, you are to put aside " cheap chapels (p. 22)—the Negroes
already have cheap chapels of their own; cheap plans will do no good
whatever. No, cheap things are useless." You must build cathedral
churches that is the idea. "Make the church attractive, warm in tint,
decorated, so as to please the Negro's love of color and form. Give to
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 25
it a good organ—not a melodeon, but a good church-organ. Let the serv¬
ice be full and rich with choral song, and plenty of it. These things
will be irresistibly attractive to them." Then a school. What
a panacea for the deadly evil that has filled the world with sin and
Avoe and weeping for thousands of years, while heaven and earth have
been laid under tribute to obtain a reliable balm, a demonstrable re¬
storative. Not the Cross, but an ecclesiological charm! Not "repent¬
ance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ," but decorated,
tinted, costly, and irresistibly attractive churches and church-organs.
This is so original! But no; am I not too fast? Look over the ages
past, and see. Did costly temples and gods in matchless marble, or a
ritual of solemn pomp, and ceremonials of the most "attractive" and
spectacular grandeur, reform the morals of Greece? They were capti¬
vated by the rhythmic strains of orchestral music. Did it inspire them
with a love of virtue? Did it restrain their passions, suppress lieen-
tiousness, or expel the propensity to lying and theft ? They were a peo¬
ple of " forms, and despised cheap chapels." They built for the gods,
and they built for the ages. But theft was the chief amusement of
their gods, and the philosophy of stealing the glittering fiber of their
mythology. They were not Negroes. No; they constituted the intel¬
lectual enthronement of humanity. Yet stealing, lying, and hypocri¬
sy so prevailed that priests, philosophers, and gods rioted in such de-
bauchment and excesses that, had they been enacted at our capital, a
Negro mayor, with a deep sense of the shame of derogating from the
dignity of his office, might have read the riot act to the bacchanals
and Olympian Hoodlums, dispersing them by the batons of a blushing
African constabulary, or harnessed them in the chain-gang to work
out a penalty for violating the public peace. Timbuctoo* was prob¬
ably a great city when Pericles walked the streets of Athens. The
African city still flourishes, but where is Athens? Vice dug her grave.
Five talents were stamped upon her brow, and she hid them in the
tomb of the Capulets. Timbuctoo put one talent to active use, and
many talents are her reward; sinful, yet yearning for the better status.
While we are in Africa, allow me to make another inquiry.
If magnificent churches and attractive music can blanch the Ethi-
ope, and bring his alienated nature nearer to God, how does it hap¬
pen that the mountains of that " Dark Continent," too lofty for the
eagle's perch, with the fountains, rills, cascades, and thundering cat¬
aracts, blending their wonders of a divine architecture with the cease¬
less anthems of melodious waters, abasing the pride of St. Peter's,
*By another name.
26 The Colored Race Weighed ijt the Balance.
Milan, Cologne, and St. Paul's, in splendor and music—why do they
not inspire high religious sentiments, and help the humble missionary
in his task of planting the image of Christ in the souls of the natives?
Yet there, where nature surpasses art, and laughs at the Angelos,
the Wrens, the Handels, the Mendelssohns, and the makers of stained
glass, with their "warm tints and attractive decorations, it is still tiue
that the " natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, be-
cause they are spiritually discerned," nor by scenic and spectacular
displays, beyond the capacity of "cheap chapels" to unfold, or even
the temples of God's own construction and decoration to effect, "but
by my Spirit saith the Lord."
THE GOSPEL OF MEDIAEVAL ARCHITECTURE.
Nor do I believe that great ecclesiastical organizations' have ever
produced any better results with their cathedral monuments of art
and ornamentation. Europe is everywhere bulwarked with astonish¬
ing superstructures, which, to an American eye, seem to have been
revelations of magnificence or the handiwork of God rather than of
men. Vast multitudes assemble in their naves. There the gaudy
courtesan displays her meretricious and alluring blandishments, as lit¬
tle impressed by the pomp of mediseval art and orchestral anthems
as would be the erring colored Miss, with her baby in her arms in a
"cheap chapel," by the absence of all the attractions of "color and
form." There one may see the shabby superfluities of mere numbers,
the stolidly ignorant, the unwashed lazzaroni, the solemn brigand, the
hypocritical thief, the seedy tramp—all kneeling and facing the last
incarnation, yet gazing furtively around in scenes of bewildering beau¬
ty, or looking listlessly upon pictures of the Crucifixion, or the Last
Judgment, that fill the well-instructed mind with sacred emotions; or
with eyes devoutly fixed upon the angelic host that dwells in the arch¬
ing dome in frescoed captivity; so devout! yet with their deft and
nimble fingers searching the pockets of their worshiping comrades,
plotting new raids, laying new schemes for plunder, and finding new
arts of deception; and they are not Negroes! No. not one. And
those solemn temples "are irresistibly attractive, warm in tint, dec¬
orated, so as to please the love of color and form."
Besides, they have, "not melodeons," peculiar to "cheap chapels,"
but cathedral organs; and such music! "The service is full and rich
with choral song and antiphonal choruses, whose rhythmic strains
sound like "the voice of many waters."
Still, petit larceny goes on, and the brigand selects his victims, and
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 27
hypocrisy and devotion commingle, and superstition reigns. And
even there the warmest tints, streaming through the stained glass of
saintly windows, from the very forms and faces of the apostles, the
holy Virgin, and the Lord himself, upon the multitude below, fail to
correct their morals, to make them truth-loving and honest, transpar¬
ent and sincere, or to encourage cleanliness, or a decent respect either
for themselves or mankind.
I honor the memories of the brave, sincere, and worthy men that
built and adorned those massive and attractive structures. They con¬
ceived that such agencies would prove "irresistibly attractive" to the
ignorant, the vulgar, the weary and downtrodden, to whom " cheap
plans and cheap chapels" had proved a complete failure. Alas what
a disappointment!
But after all, "the lying and pilfering Negroes," with their alleged
emotionalness, hypocrisy, and false religion, follies and misdemeanors
—the> great majority of whom never saw any other than cheap chap¬
els and very rarely even a melodeon—taken together, six million of
them, they are incomparably superior to the stolid, brutalized, ignorant,
cringing, unwashed masses of white people which gather at various
seasons in those unsurpassed temples of religion (?). And, truth to
say, "cheap plans and cheap chapels" are to-day the crying need of
the very countries and cities where elaborate and costly temples of
worship do most abound.
When John Wesley, of precious memory, turned his back upon Ox¬
ford, and Yqrk, and Canterbury, and St. Paul's, and went down to
the neglected people and built cheap chapels, "he buildcd greater
than he knew;" and the result has been, as Paul once said, "like life
from the dead." And his voice, in those undecorated, plain chapels,
on the hill-side, in the church-yard and cemetery, when driven from
his own pulpit, sounded like the challenge of a resurrection trumpet;
and twenty-five million souls have risen up and rally as Methodists to¬
day, in obedience to its solemn and awakening appeals, isov is it unnote-
worthy that neither the Great Teacher nor his apostles seemed to
have bestowed one thought upon the notion that a sumptuous ecclesi-
ology would prove the chief weapon in a spiritual warfare, and the
efficient means of grace, when from all other measures "failure had
resulted " in saving souls.
FEARFUL OBSTACLES.
My own observation and experience confirm me more and more in
the belief that the nearer you bring a man to the Lord Jesus as his
28 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
Saviour, with the feeling that there is " salvation in no other name,"
without mediums, without ceremonies, priestly or clerical intervention
—out of the reach of Church machinery, away from stained glass, and
away from blind guides, but with the Word of Life for his oracle and
light—the quicker will he learn to love him as a Divine Master; and
giving himself up as a living sacrifice to God, will, for the love of
him, ignore all lying, dishonesty, evil-doing, and hypocrisy, devoting
his life as a loving and obedient disciple to the service of God. And
before I dismiss this new gospel, I will say one thing more.
Such are the unscriptural, rose-water, and nebulous methods of
preaching Christ nowadays, in America, as heretofore abroad, that I
doubt not but there are forms of skepticism and lives of unbelievers
more approved of God and more beneficial to men than very much
that is pretentiously urged upon us as sacred measures, saving agen¬
cies, solemn worship, churchly rites, and essential ritualistic and regen¬
erating ceremonies. I believe the Church has been the prolific mother
of infidels.
What has so multiplied infidels in Germany, France, Italy, Austria,
England, and America? Churchly caricatures of the Great Master and
his doctrines. The real character of Jesus Christ and his true mis¬
sion are as little known in Europe as one could well imagine. Look
at the late brilliant Mirabeau of the French Republic, Leon Gambet-
ta, as he sleeps in an atheist's grave! Mourned by patriots, sires, and
sages—almost the Atlas of the French world! He was a magnetic
Colossus in intellect and emotional susceptibility. But why an athe¬
ist? Why did he despise the Church? Because he saw only, or chief¬
ly, shams and pretension and hypocrisy baptized as Christianity. It
is doubtful if ever he saw or read the New Testament. He was with¬
out disguise, as he was without fear, and superior to ignoble supersti¬
tion; but, very probably, he had never once in his life looked into
the face of a true follower of the Saviour alike devoid of cant, super¬
ciliousness, and bigotry; a holy man in fact, not ceremonially or offi¬
cially such—spiritual, genial, pure in heart, cosmopolitan, unsmirched
with the Pharisaic " I am holier than thou." He, like most of his
countrymen, confounded Christianity with the Church—things little
resembling oftentimes. Who would not rather take their chance
with such before the Eternal Judge than with hundreds of Church
dignitaries, whether Papal or Protestant, who blindly lead the
blind?
Sensible people are tired of the enforcement of right living by cler¬
ical penalties, espionage, and sleepless inspection.
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
29
Could Europe and America lay aside all memories of the past, dis¬
enthrall themselves from all entangling Church alliances—cast out all
mere dogma, reject all catechisms, books of prayer, creeds, confessions,
pulpits—and take the New Testament without note or comment, and
go to its study as of a book that possibly may lead a wandering, be¬
nighted soul to God; prayerfully looking for divine light and divine
love; resolved to be impartial, true 'to truth, and true to self and
Heaven; twelve months of such study would do more to unveil the
hidden Christ, draw men unto him, make them good, charitable, truth¬
ful, devout; more to promote the things that make for righteousness,
and usher in the millennium, than the existing forms of ecclesiasticism
will achieve in a hundred years.
WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS
to see, Negroes and Caucasians alike, is the undisguised Redeemer.
Strip away the scarlet robe of pagan mockery; tear down the repel¬
ling encasements; let the officers of the guard fall back; let Herod
and the high-priest hold their tongues and stand out of the way.
He is of age, let him speak for himself. And when he speaks, he
shall be his own interpreter—and, if you will attend with a willing
ear, your heart will burn within you " at the gracious words which
proceed out of his mouth," and you will go down to your house jus¬
tified—" praising and blessing God for the marvelous things you have
heard, and saying, ' Never man spake like this man!5"
Men long for the unmixed water of life, and "the bread of God
that cometh down from above," unadulterated by sacred kaolin, and
untaxed by human tariffs. Every faculty and sensibility of their
nature cries out for the words of eternal truth. Homer says, "All
men yearn after the gods," but Christ " lighteth every man that com¬
eth into the world."
BUT WE MUST PROCEED
We are making some digressions, and expanding our observations,
because the author of the speech has evidently not designed his dis¬
cussion for colored people alone. As the learned gentleman has
opened the door, we use the -opportunity to speak on these notions
plainly and freely, but I trust kindly.
NEGRO RELIGION.
The Reverend Doctor tells us the Negroes "were taught that they
had to 'get religion' by some process of conviction and conversion."
He who " got religion therefore got a sense of God's love for him,
30 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
and was thenceforward free., so far as any moral law or guilt was con¬
cerned." Two things demand notice here. One is the statement about
getting religion; the other on being free from the moral law, as a re¬
sult of having " got religion." At present let us consider this freedom
from guilt while living in open sin by Negro Christians.
This is a heretical doctrine known to theologians as Antinomianism.
It was spawned in Germany, and fathered by the Rev. John Agricola
over three hundred years ago, and wTas imported into England, making
converts in every Church, the Established or Episcopalian with the
rest, and among the ablest and most learned of the clergy of the time.
Oxford University was tainted with the poison, and it found among
its divines powerful defenders. The doctrine as then stated was this:
"That the elect cannot fall from grace nor forfeit the divine favor;
the wicked actions they commit are not really sinful, nor are to be con¬
sidered as instances of their violation of the divine laiv; and that conse¬
quently they have no occasion either to confess their sins or to break
them off by repentance. It is one of the essential and distinctive char¬
acters of the elect that they cannot do any thing that is displeasing to
God."
A very eminent Episcopal divine, a scholar of Eton, Oxford, and
Cambridge, taught in his sermons that " the sins of the elect were so
imputed to Christ as that though he did not commit them yet they
became actually his transgressions, and ceased to be theirs."
When conscientious persons, regarded as of the favored class, came
trembling under a sense of guilt to consult him, what did he tell
them? " To repent, and break off their sins by righteousness? " No,
not he. But that " it is but the voice of a lying spirit in the hearts
of believers that saith they have yet sin wasting their consciences, and
lying thereon as a burden too heavy to be borne." Look at the
teacher, then at the taught! the Oxford divine, the negro pupil.*
I want to put this fearful heresy in its full strength, and show its
origin in part. The Orator shows the havoc it has wrought among
the colored heirs of the lepered inheritance. One more quotation
from another author shall suffice. He says: " The believer may do
things wrong in themselves; hut when he does them, they are not wrong,
because he is 'a believer: so that were he to steal, the crime of theft would
not in his case be a breach of the eighth commandment." Holy steal¬
ing! Other divines of the same school rejected the entire Decalogue. And
*1 do not think the colored people kgow the theory of their faith bv the
term Antinomianism. One, poisoned, may not know the name of the virus.
The Colored Race Weighed ix the Balance. 31
this, because the apostle says, "Ye are not under the law, but under
grace," and similar perversions of the Holy Scriptures. What wonder
that to eyes half opened, that only saw men as trees walking," and
with the teaching he has received, the Negro should have said (p. 18)
he had no use for the Ten Gommandments. " Fo' de Lawd, dat air
wor an impersition. Dat mought be in white folks' Bible, but 'tworn't
no hones' Bible. Moses never spoke no sich trash. 'T worn't no sort
a 'ligion fur black folks." Alas I he little knew the eminent backing
he had in his outcry, nor from what a pulpit J
For one I do not expect the Negro to excel his brother in white.
And the latter has taught him many notions and doctrines, of which
the Book of Common Prayer is not wholly free, which in some Avay
he has, we are told, greatly perverted, Nearly all Africans were fa¬
talists, and when they found great State-Church divines and creed-
makers teaching—slightly as some say, emphatically as some think—
a kindred doctrine, they could not (though the white man can) dis¬
enthrall the tangled skein, and so they readily glided into the Anti-
nomian interpretation of the decrees; and blending them with their
original fatalism, rested m a supposed innocent guiltiness of impossible
sin.
Nor can we burden modern fanatics and heresiarchs, colored or
white, with the invention and original practice of these shocking and
blasphemous rites of so-called worship. Turn to the seventh chapter
of Jeremiah, and hear God's arraignment of old Israel. It reads thus:
" Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal,
murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense
unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not; and come
and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and
say, We are delivered to do all these abominations? Is this house,
which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?
Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord."
The word "delivered " I have Italicized because it prefers a fearful
indictment against the Infinite One.
Nor were they Negroes. So one may see that these sins are not
race sins; not in the blood, at any rate not exclusively confined to
the Negro race.
Nevertheless, the Doctor correctly reports the theology of multitudes
of the Negroes when he tells us they believed " God's law was freedom
faith would cover a multitude of sins—that he who became a Chris¬
tian had no further any fear of God's law," and that so-called sin in
believers and holiness were equally acceptable and ^ell-pleasing to God'
32 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
jBut who taught him? Where did he obtain such demoralizing no¬
tions ?
Here begins the Iliad of his wrong lessons in morals and worship—
the key to his pious criminality of life! He is to be a sort of saintly
scamp, and serve God and the devil, without losing favor with God;
although it is written, " No man can serve two masters."
The Negro's faith, then, is used under the false interpretations of the
Holy Scriptures, as Herbert Spencer tells us " Charity " is used by the
well-educated Caucasian, as a legal tender for canceling crimes. He
says they coddle themselves with " the maxim that ' Charity covers a
multitude of sins;' for in the many in whom this interpretation leads
to believe that by large donations they can compound for evil deeds,
we may trace an element of positive baseness—an effort to get a good
place in another world, no matter at what injury to their fellow-creat¬
ures in this."
This is a scientist's view of Antinomianism—or sinless sins—being
sanctified by " charity." But really it is one and the same wickedness,
whether practiced in the name of love, faith, or charity, by the ex-
slave of the South, or Spencer's European purchaser of paradise, who
has not merely " robbed a chicken-roost," but has coined the tears
and blood of the poor toil-worn laborer into ingots of gold. One pays
for the privilege of " consecrated indulgence " in donations and char¬
ity; the other, perchance, in hymns and prayers. I rather think I
would prefer the Negro's doom at the great day of reckoning, when
weighed in the balances of God's own suspending.
HEAVY BLOWS UPON THE HERESY.
As I have referred to Episcopal divines, I will cite one more—Rev.
Robert South, D.D.—who, with blows each of a hundred strokes,
long before Mr. Wesley's day, helped to crush this many-headed theo¬
logical monstrosity. He says: "How much the great God has been
dishonored, and how many poor souls have been murdered by such as¬
sertions as these (that believers may cheat and lie, commit murder,
adultery and theft, which many of them do, and not offend God) is sad
to consider, for they have been abused into a confidence in, and a re¬
liance upon, such supports, .... which have let them fall with¬
out remedy into the bottomless gulf of endless perdition; ....
for this sort of doctrine which once believed, like the flood-gates of
hell pulled up, lets in a deluge and inundation of all^sin and vice
upon the lives of men." And Mr. Wesley's pen came thundering
along the same path leaving the scathing proofs of his abhorrence of
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 33
this prolific parent of all evil. Referring to its preachers and propa¬
gators, "They are no other," he says, "than the first-born of Satan;
the eldest sons of Apollyon, the destroyer. These are far above the
rank of ordinary cut-throats, for they murder the souls of men. They
are continually peopling the realms of night, and whenever they fol¬
low the poor souls whom they have destroyed, 'hell shall move from <
beneath to meet them at their coming.'"
Now I beg leave to say that Avhile the Methodist pulpit has taught
the Negro as the indisputable truth of the gospel that conviction for
sin, conversion, and regeneration by the power of the Holy Ghost, were
essential steps toward God, it has never uttered one sentiment that
could be tortured into the Antinomian heresies which the Orator de¬
scribes so forcibly as the theology of the black race.
In Mr. Wesley's day, England was nearly swamped with this very
blighting craze. His great battle, with the illustrious Fletcher as his
chief coadjutor, was against this very abomination. And seeing the sev¬
enteenth Article of the "Articles of Religion in the Book of Prayer "
was a fruitful source (if not necessarily, yet suggestively) of this plan¬
tation heresy, he expunged it from the Articles when with his godly
assistants he prepared the "Articles of Religion" for the Methodist
Episcopal Church. Mr. Wesley protested, all Methodism protests, and
ignores the fallacious error as destructive alike of true religion and
sound morality. The American slave was taught it nevertheless, and
the doctrine prevails to-day among the freedmen to an alarming ex¬
tent.
This is the key for nearly all " his idiosyncrasies " and irrational
nonsense, in spending the evening in prayer-meeting, and robbing a
chicken-roost in sinless piety, within the same hour, on his way home,
as the Reverend Doctor informs us he does. Fate fixed the sur¬
roundings—the eternal decree forced him to the roost, necessitated the
theft, arranged for the lying and hypocrisy to cover his crime, of which
the English divines say " he was not guilty."
It is enough to debauch paradise! The Negro brought few more
demoralizing superstitions from the jungles of Congo. These are the
perversions of God's holy word, which have multiplied infidels among
our own race and produced a fearful harvest of fanatics among many
of the Negro Churqhes. It is no part of our beloved Methodism.
ON GETTING RELIGION.
I promised to notice the attempt to place in a ridiculous light
the common phrases "getting religion," "got religion," etc. This is
3
84 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
treated as a ridiculous utterance, conveying a very unscientific, and
in the estimation of very many, and the Reverend Author among
them, I dare say, an unscriptural idea. But backwoods, Church-
provincial, unscientific, unsesthetic as it may sound to ears trained by
the terminology of the Advanced Church Belles-lettres, it neverthe¬
less conveys to the minds of great multitudes of Caucasians, as well
as, I trust, to many Africans, a deeply significant truth. Between
"getting" and receiving there is only the difference in meaning of
the shadow of a shade. Webster gives the meaning of "get," "to
obtain; to gain possession of; to acquire; to come into possession of;
to get favor by kindness." Now, what do the New and Old Testaments
alike teach concerning this matter? "After that the kindness and love
of God our Saviour toAvard man appeared, . . he saved us by the
washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, which
he shed on us abundantly." (Titus iii. 4-6.) Now, I wTant to know
if those persons "got" or "acquired" any thing. To Israel, God
said: "A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within
you." (Ezek. xxxvi. 26.) Did Israel "get" any thing? St. Paul, in
1 Corinthians vi., draws a portrait of the Corinthians before they
were " convicted and converted "—and it is on a par, at least, with the
wicked Africans—and then adds: " Such were some of you, but ye are
washed; ye are sanctified; ye are justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." Did they "get" any thing?
or did they simply "obtain" those gracious bestowments? In 2 Co¬
rinthians v., he says, " If any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new
creature;" "gets" a new heart that old Ezekiel told us about. St.
Paul (Rom. viii. 16) tells us, " The Spirit itself beareth witness with
our spirit that we are the children of God."
Was any sensible thing experienced by those to whom the apostle
refers? Did they "get" or receive, or "come into possession" of
any thing? St. John (Rev. ii. 17) says: "To him that overcometh
will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white
stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoAveth,
saving he that receiveth [or " getteth" ] it." Then there is the re¬
turned or converted prodigal son, Avith the assurance ring on his fin¬
ger, and the father's oAvn shoes on his feet; and the father's Avardrobe
has also been made to contribute to the comfort and adornment of
this "new creature;" and more than all, the father has embraced
him, and greater still, he has kissed him!
But after all that is a kind of realistic or Methodistic Avay of pre¬
senting things to our perceptive faculties, Avide off the—what? Speak
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
out and say, " The intangible nebulosity of transcendental, unknowa¬
ble, and indefinable metaphysical distinction!" That is all there is
of it. The pulpit often ridicules true religion, as well as skeptics
and scoffers.
Then I am to conclude that the " new heart" is not what we thought
it; that one "gets" nothing but a blank ticket in a lottery; the Co¬
rinthians "got" no "washing;" the Romans received no real, only a
supposititious " witness of the Spirit," and the " hidden manna" was
but the ashes of a promise that was spoken to the ear, only to be
broken to the hope, while the " white stone and new name therein"
were as meaningless as if they had been offered the apples of Sodom!
The prodigal son also might as well have remained in the far countrv,
if he did not and could not know he had " got" home, nor that he had
shoes on his feet, and a ring on his hand; and if he did not know
he had " gotten" the best robe on his shivering loins, then, for any
good it would have done him, he might have frozen to death on his
father's bosom!
THINGS TO BE NOTICED.
When the author of this ill-considered speech denounces the Negro
preachers (p. 19) " for incest, theft, bigamy, lying," and he tells us
he could give names, dates, and witnesses for these and twenty other
similar cases, or " any required number "—" wTho are successful preach¬
ers," who were not conscious of hypocrisy, and whose sins did not di¬
minish their influence with their race"—it would be well for him to
remember two things: First, that as a general thing his informants mud
be Negroes in tvhom he has not the least confidence. For on page 16 he tells
us that " when questioned they will answer or deny as they think will
please you, and make them stand well in your eyes-. They are very
shrewd. They will give you the information you ivant, provided it be not
true. If true, and it be such as would excite your disapprobation, you
cannot get it. It seems to them that your only object in desiring to
know any thing about them is in some way to do them harm. . .
An educated negro may answer you truly, after a struggle with him¬
self, but then he will tell you no more than he perceives you know
already." This is the man from whom you are to get your knowl¬
edge. Next, the Doctor should remember that those miserable, ras¬
cally preachers were reducing to practice doctrines for which his own
Church has a solemn account to give at the bar of God.
After all,.I consider the mazes and mysteries and license of Anti-
nomianism, which has polluted the teaching the Negro has received,
the secret of all his religious absurdities, contradictions, sinless crimes,
36 The Colored, Race Weighed in the Balance.
and sanctified felonies, of which the learned Doctor so eloquently dis¬
courses.
And this doctrine explains what was the matter with his " pious
Negro murderer in the penitentiary." He admitted that he had vio¬
lated the laws of man, but not God's law. Why? Because he was a
believer; and a believer cannot sin, do what he will. This is the Ne¬
gro's theology. It may not be in the seventeenth Article of the
Prayer-book,'but it grows out of it. The Negro did not believe that
he had violated man's law, in all likelihood, but to oblige the Rever¬
end Doctor, he in hypocritical terms admitted it in his presence.
Now, if the rhythmic strains of grand Church-organs, reverberating
Through the long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults
of costly Gothic structures, can charm aAvay this one fearful adver¬
sary of the colored race, then for one I will say, God-speed the work!
Perhaps the old Byzantine style—as it admits of more colors and
richer tints, and pillars painted to resemble remotely the old barber's
pole—would be the most effective, especially as that style admits as an
ornament the cross; otherwise the Arabesque style, being capable of
warmer tints and higher decoration, will be worthy of consideration;
nor by any means must that exquisite gem of " irresistibly attractive "
splendor, the Alhambra, be entirely neglected. But I am inclined,
upon reflection, to think that the grand old Gothic will prevail, for
that is the " barbaric style"—the Negro " was a barbarian," as it
were but yesterday—and logically, as a catholicon, upon the never-
failing principle of the " adaptation " of " a hair of the same dog."
Then, after listening to Handel's Messiah, and receiving the regen¬
erating bath of prismatic light laden with the benedictions of painted
apostles, you may trust him to go home at midnight through.dark
ways lined with chicken-roosts, and he will not take even a chick as a
proof that he had been to Church. Nay, he might sail by the en¬
chanted isle and not hear the Sirens sing, and instead of being enticed
he will not know but himself is the real Jason. At any rate, there
will be no porcine metamorphosis!
CLERICAL IMPOSTORS.
But he tells us those Antinomian Negro preachers "were earnest and
successful." Successful in what? Surely not in leading sinners to
repentance, and building them up and edifying them with the knowl¬
edge of Christ? Not at all. But here a sad condition of the race is
revealed. The Negro possesses versatility of talents and capabilities
similar to the white man. He can be a mechanic, a physician, a mu-
The Colored Kace Weighed in the Balance. 37
sician, a draftsman, a jeweler, a lawyer, a teacher, a painter, an artist,
a printer, a well, any thing the white man can be. Probably not
for centuries on the same plane.
But he is shut out from trade-learning and from office-holding, and
this gradually more and more, and all the time his faculties are aroused,
his ambition awakened, and he wants to get out of the ruts, the routine
and the monotony of life, and preaching in the rural districts, and on
the plantations, is the only vent, the only field where he may display
his pent-up powers. So he takes to the pulpit. As to personal piety,
purity, and the love of souls and of Christ, those are not matters of
the least thought. The little pulpit in the cheap chapel is to him a
throne of regal power. It gives him preeminence. He becomes a
dictator. It puts money in his purse. He gets fine clothes, and is a
great Mogul! • •
His.sermons (?) are generally modeled upon the New York pulpit—
standard gauge—and he may discuss the tariff, the governorship, ex¬
ploded steamers, shipwrecks, murders, rebellion, freedom, the ballot,
Pandora's box, the priority of color in the races, the color of Satan—
black or white, the solar system, the duty of voting for the favorite
candidate, the rights and wrongs of labor, wages, Kansas, the lucidity
of the Apocalypse, the impossibility of a believer doing any wicked
thing or displeasing God by so-called criminal acts.
Nevertheless, there are hundreds of most exemplary, worthy, and
very able preachers among them, and cultivated white people often
listen to them and esteem them highly.
They have bishops, presbyters, elders, in their several denomina¬
tions, of remarkable learning, eloquence, and ability. The tendency
, upward is quite phenomenal. The town and city preachers feel their
characters guarded, and their minds prompted to improvement by the
prevailing public sentiment, and by the influence and examples of the
pastors of the white Churches.
It may also be said to their credit that they have many well-edu¬
cated and very able men in the learned professions and in numerous
departments of public pursuits. There are lawyers, physicians, diplo¬
mats, authors, artists, divines. And all well-informed citizens know
the marked impression many of them have made in the Southern
State Legislatures, and in the halls of Congress, and elsewhere.
For one I can never forget how the English people were taken by
surprise at the appearance in their great Metropolis of the JSegro del¬
egates to the Ecumenical Methodist Conference. They were not pre-
pared to see colored gentlemen who knew the value of fine apparel,
38 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
spotless linen, and faultless attire; who understood the canons of po¬
liteness, and the dignity of the episcopacy. They were amazed at
their skill and readiness in discussion, their eloquence in the pulpit,
their abilities and attainments generally. And the white Southern
delegates at least enjoyed the evident surprise, as it refuted the thousand
misrepresentations of their former owners, and proved that though
the "slave trade" may have been "the sum of all villainies," the system
of American slavery, with all its evils, was not wholly incapable of that
sort of evolution by which the "barbarian" might rise on the scale of
true development and learn to appreciate the status of the English-
speaking nations, and the Christianity of the Church of the living
God. These facts naturally stimulate habits of study and improve¬
ment, and tend to raise and hold colored preachers up to a high
standard of morality and religious consistency.
And gradual reforms with education will, in time, correct the igno¬
rance and irregularity of those ugly specimens referred to, which the
better class among them now condemn and spurn. Every year shows
great improvement. Among the regularly appointed colored preachers
of the Conferences they are held to a strict accountability to behave as
true Christian men, or they are expelled !
But I state this condition of things to show the friends of the race
why things are as we find them. There are not educated, godly, and
reliable colored preachers enough to meet the necessities of the multi¬
tude. And unfortunately some of their Northern white friends taught
them, among the first lessons of freedom, to beware of the Southern
white preachers as their worst enemies. So here were Scylla and
Charybdis over again.
GREATLY TO THEIR CREDIT.
Among the notable facts in the history of the colored race since the
war are their sacrifices and generous donations out of their deep pov¬
erty for the building of so many cheap chapels. I think I speak
not too strongly when I say they have built and paid for several thou¬
sand of them—three thousand certainly—in the Southern States. Verv
few of them have cost less than $400, and from that sum all the way up
to $10,000 and $12,000. There are seventy counties in my State, and
they average some four chapels to each county—I might sav six to each.
I presume the average would be still greater in several of our States.
They have as a people, unaided, spent out of their meager earnings
several million dollars for chapels, besides all the other expenses inci¬
dent to the maintenance of public worship, Sabbath-schools, and in¬
numerable little matters of repair, alteration, improvement, picnics, etc.
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 39
With the aid of judicious men I have come to the conclusion that the
Negroes have spent for the promotion of the matters referred to not
less than three million dollars. Very judicious and intelligent citizens
tell me I am still under the sums raised and used for the purposes
indicated. All this shows the tendency of affairs among them, and
demonstrates the necessity of giving them every possible aid and sup¬
port by economists, patriots, statesmen, and Christians. Ethiopia at
our door is stretching out her hands unto God, and in the ears of all
true men the bells strike the hour of opportunity.
And whatever criticism may be made upon the " cheap chapels"
built by the ex-slaves within the past eighteen years, it must be said
to their credit that, though they are comparatively cheap, they are
very numerous, comfortable, and cleanly. In many of our towns and
larger cities they have built rather costly churches, adding " warm
tints, and decorating" them at a cost ranging from $1,000 to $20,000,
and I doubt if our white people have expended as much money in
repairing old and in building new churches in the same number of
years.
A thousand cheap chapels, with good and godly preachers of their
own color, under proper conditions, would do this people more good
than if St. Peter's of Rome, St. Paul's of London, York Minster, or
Trinity of New York, were by miracle translated to the plantations
or the Southern cities for their conversion.
UNCONVER TED CLER G YMEN.
While on this painful theme, I beg to remind the reader that the
irreligious or unconverted, clergyman is not found alone among the Ne¬
groes and colored people. Here lies before me a book by an eminent
clergyman and rector of the Church of England, in which he gives an
account of his having been ordained to the ministry before he dreamed
that conviction and conversion were prerequisites to the proper filling
of the holy office. That after preaching some time he "got religion,"
and then visited numerous other brother clerics, and finding them
equally ignorant of the " process of conviction and conversion," like
the godly Aquila, " he expounded unto them the way of God more
perfectly." The result was that some twelve curates in one diocese,
and many in others, " got religion." Thank God for that! It has
been to those parishes " like life from the dead." So " there is hope in
Israel concerning this thing." There are godly Negroes. Once, when
in the deepest affliction, there came to our room, full of sobbing and
tears, a Christian Negro woman, and she spoke like an angel to the
40
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
stricken mourners. We knew her worth. She is now with God. Nor
has she alone spoken well. Many a time in the flight of years have
I received from the lips of godly Negroes religious edification, and I
hope to do so often to the last.
Now, if the Reverend Doctor, who knows many godly exceptions to
his sweeping censures, should happily " meet with an Aquila, or his
wife Priscilla, as the eloquent Apollos did, and they should expound
unto him the wray of God more perfectly," might not the result be
" like life from the dead?" and might he not also find that the name
of Jesus is the only name given among men whereby either we or our
brother in black can be saved?
The Rev. Dr. Porter, in his indorsement, concurs in the main, and
says, "Among them I have myself met Christians of the deepest piety,
of the most beautiful traits of character, of truth, honesty, and virtue
—rare, but actual."
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOB DOCTRINES?
Before dismissing this inquiry, I beg to ask if " having been taught
a false religion, that had only the form without the substance," caused
those Negro wolves in sheep's clothing to cast aside alike all obligations
of morality and the decency of domestic and public deportment, what
caused the unchristian conduct of the Episcopal clergy in England who
had taken their degrees in Cambridge, and Eton, and Oxford? I re¬
fer to those drunken, gambling, vulgar, swearing Reverend dead-beats.
Were they also demoralized by forms, and by a false religion? A more
godless set of formalists, without knowing the substance—" having
no comprehension of what the substance ought to be"—it seems to me,
never disgraced modern Christendom. Had I the space, I would show
from Episcopal pens the moral degradation of that pulpit in other
days, to prove that the assault upon the illiterate Negro preachers
might have come with a better grace from another direction. AY as it not
the Antinomian license, then teaching saintly (?) sacrilegists that no
servant and child of God, especial in holy orders, " could possiblv com¬
mit sin," that emboldens the colored learner in the same school of
heresy to set at naught the law of God as he believes, with innocent
sinfulness f
May I find absolution if I quote only one Episcopal author to show
the source of religious immorality? He says: "When we baptize chil¬
dren, we thank God ' that it hath pleaded him to regenerate them with
the Holy Spirit, to receive them for his own children by adoption,' etc
When the same children are presented to the bishop for confirmation, he
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 41
also addresses the Divine Being as having 'vouchsafed to regenerate
them by water and by the Holy Ghost, and hast given unto them for¬
giveness of all their sins' while he adds, ' Many of them are as vile
young rogues as ever existed;' and more, in after years proving ' as
wicked in life as men well can be out of hell.' Could Negro preaching
more dishonor the Cross and saci*ed Name?" How much of the same
practice does the reverend Orator propose to develop in our midst?
Has it not already been witnessed in our State? If so, let me call
their attention, whether colored or white, to the solemn words of a
singularly outspoken old Episcopal clergyman, addressed to his bap¬
tized brethren: " Say not then in your heart, I was once baptized,
therefore I am now a child of God. Alas! that consequence will by
no means hold. How many are the baptized gluttons and drunkards,
the baptized liars and common swearers, the baptized railers and evil-
speakers, the baptized whoremongers, thieves, extortioners? Are these
now the children of God? Nay, I say unto you, whosoever you are,
unto whom any one of the preceding characters belong, Ye are of your
father the devil, and the works of your father ye do. . . . .Ye
serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of
hell? And if ye ha.ve been baptized, your only hope is this: that ye
may yet again receive what ye have lost, by the spirit of adoption cry¬
ing in your hearts, Abba, Father! "
THE CROSS A FAILURE.
What the reverend gentleman further says respecting the Negro's
religion gives me great concern, and is, in my humble conception, one
of his most fatal errors. On page 11 he says: " There was one part of
the religion of the whites which they accepted with avidity—namely,
the person and errand of Jesus Christ. Something in the story of the
Cross appealed to them with force. . . They believed in it with all
their hearts and souls, for in it was a divine pity, a divine promise of
succor; but this belief made no difference in their daily lives." Again,
page 22: " Suppose you build a cheap chapel, and in it preach to them
of Christ, you will quickly find that they know more about him or
think they do—than you do, and out-talk you with a fervor and unctu-
ousness that will put you to shame." " Tell them the story of the
Cross—there is no white congregation that will be half so responsive.
The air will be full of thanksgivings and exclamations of worship; but
they will not therefore forsake one sin or practice one virtue."
I have explained the Antinomian opposition to law—as the compound
word implies—and need add no more, except to say that I do not believe
42
The Colored Race Weighed ih the Balance.
all denominations of the Negro Churches think and act as above set
forth on moral conduct, or religions immorality. But here the only rem¬
edy the Bible has to offer for our salvation is set at naught as coolly as
it could have been done by Herbert Spencer on a question of science,
or by Dr. Draper as a speculation on philosophic naturalism.
Has it then come to this, that Christ has also failed to reach the black
race, not "adapting the presentation of the truth to their perceptive
powers?" Is Negro depravity more than a match for the Cross?
Christ said, " If I be lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men unto
me." Is the Negro hot a man? Did he only mean to draw white men?
Our Divine tells us that "the relations of the Church are, or ought
to be, somewhat different from the relations of the Church to the white
race," and that "failure has resulted" in the hands of their teachers,
because the " same methods were used that were used with the white race!"
So the Negro needs another Revelation, perhaps another Prayer-book—
at any rate, a Gospel according to Michael Angelo or Sir Christopher
Wren, with warmly tinted Epistles as accompaniments. But what sayeth
the Divine Oracle ? " Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any
other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let
him be accursed." True, that was directly said to a white race.
The Speaker, however, knows that the attempt of a sinner to purify
himself from sin is likened by Job to washing one's self in snow-water;
and its folly is set forth the stronger because he insists that the nearest
ditch may find him so smirched and fouled that " his very clothes shall
abhor him." But he spans the ditch with a costly superstructure, and,
despising the cheap waters of the Jordan, sets the rills of Damascus to
music, and, while the cloud above props the prismatic bow that gar¬
nishes the scene with its " warm tints," the leopard changes his spots
and the Ethiopian grows radiantly white. Nevertheless, it is written:
" Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus
Christ."
Here are two men fallen into a miry pit: one is a Caucasian, the
other an Ethiopian. Both need instant help, or they must perish.
Now, the experimenter "can adapt the presentation" of his levers and
ropes to raise the brother in white, but the brother in black has such
" idiosyncrasies of an alien race" that if " the same methods were used
that were used with the white race," or comrade in trouble, in lifting
# o
him out of the ditch, "all his labor will be thrown away."
THE OLD, OLD STORY.
Repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ are
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 43
ignored. Christ's first sermon was delivered in one great word, "Re¬
pent." On another occasion he taught that "thou shalt love the
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind," and an apostle abridges the whole gospel and sets forth
the gift of the Holy Ghost, as a renewing power, in the following
words: "But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour
toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have
done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of re¬
generation, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us
abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour; that being justified by
his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal
life." But as I have said before, the whole speech is anti-scriptural,
and the substance of the gospel is wholly overlooked.
He says: "If you preach to them of Christ, you will quickly find
that they know more about him than you do" (?). That is all owing
to who preaches, and the character of the sermon. For many of the
colored people know when a preacher is spiritually-minded, and what
a sermon ought to be, as well as most white people.
So, then, as there must be " many trials, experiments, and changes
of method," this new aesthetic treatment must be tried; because the
patient—" though the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint,
and there is no soundness in him"—while he praises the Great Physi¬
cian, hypocritically rejects the scriptural remedy and necessitates the
trial of a new remedy, a mere nostrum! Max Muller would call it a
fetich!
110ME EDUCATION. ,
The Doctor wants a school. Very well. When some self-conceited
young Solon rejects the substance and the form alike of the multiplica¬
tion-table, will he contrive a new one, or repeat the lessons of the old
one, and prove up his sums and his science? The whole thing
recommended is nearly as absurd as the teachings of an old ISfegro
I wot of, who, just after the war, took to preaching and prophesying.
He said that "Jesus was all right for the white folks; but now the
Saviour of the black man was soon to come. His name "was Pam.
Great Pam would lead the black race to heaven," etc. The old
prophet "thought something ought to be done quickly," and Pam
would do it.
Now, every reader of the speech will at once understand that these
side thrusts are not principally designed for the African, but for those
who have "taught him a false religion." Nevertheless, the great act
of surrender to Christ, the giving of the heart to God, the being "jus-
44
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
tified by faith," or, in homely phrase, the "getting of religion," consti¬
tutes the greatest epoch and the most significant event in any human
life, laugh who may!
NOBODY HAS BONE ANY THING.
The colored man has been left out in the cold to perish, friendless,
helpless! The cool indifference with which our author ignores all the
toil and weary work dene for the dark race for the past hundred years
by the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist Churches, only indicates
the sectarian narrowness evinced throughout the whole performance.
Had he frankly said "the Negro was comparatively unknown to the
Protestant Episcopal Church," that the "apathy of Southern Chris¬
tians on the moral and religious condition of the Negro race" was a
characteristic of that Church, we should have remained silent on this
allegation; but enough is said in numerous ways to show that all the
Christian people and clergy, outside of his own sect, are designed for
the lash. When he says "something ought to be done by somebody,"
is it not erident that he means to say nothing has been done f In that
remarkable book, " Our Brother in Black," by the Rev. Dr. Haygood,
of Oxford, Ga., we see epitomized the vast amount of work done by
Northern liberality since emancipation, amounting to over $25,000,000,
to which last, but not the least in any single donation, is added one
million dollars given by a citizen of Connecticut.
Has nothing been done for the colored race, because not done by
Episcopalians? Surely that grand old Church is too just, too noble,
too Christian, to tolerate or indorse such sophomoric foam. How many
slaves belonged to that Communion before the war? Alas! how many?
Six hundred thousand belonged to the other denominations, and their
average character was equal to that of the members of the Corinthian
Church to which the great apostle sent two of his marvelous Epistles.
Did that work look like water spilled upon the arid sand?
Again, he says: " I cannot argue it now, but simply state the fact as
a positive one, that all your labor is thrown away until you "know the
idiosyncrasies of the alien race, and can adapt your presentation of the
truth to their perceptive powers;" and adds: "The failure has resulted
because those who labored among them were not compelled to study
them to the point of understanding them. The same methods were
used that were used with the white race," which resulted in the fact
"that the great mass of the Negro race in the South professing religion
have a form of Christianity without its substance, and further, that thev
have no comprehension of what the substance ought to be. There are
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
45
exceptions, but not many." Hence " their religion grew to be a matter
of emotion only, exerting no constraint upon their conduct."
These speculations are utterly at war with the observation of thou¬
sands of enlightened Christians in the South, as well as with the teach¬
ings of the word of God. Take a family of children. What other
truths than those of the Bible can any Christian parent employ in teach¬
ing them their duty toward God and each other? Children differ in
"many things. Idiosyncrasies are personal, as well as race, and each
child will have his own; but the great requirements to love God su¬
premely and to obey their parents are addressed, irrespective of differ¬
ences of mind or heart, to each child alike. Therefore, Christ poured
forth the saving truths, and incarnated in forms the great aims of his
life, for the eyes and ears of all sorts of people, regardless of their race
or individual characteristics; and he taught the apostles to do the same.
Had they sat down to analyze the physiological enigmas, and to unrid¬
dle the multifarious idiosyncrasies of the Parthians, and Medes, and
Elamites, the Mesopotamians and Cappadocians, the Cretes and Ara¬
bians, the Libyans and Cyreneans (who were Africans), to whom they
preached on the day of Pentecost, they would still be " making trials,
experiments, and changes of methods "—not having fully reached the
unapproachable point of " understanding them." I wonder if those
converts "comprehended what the substance of religion ought to be?"
Still nothing has been done. And yet we gave the dark race the " form
of Christianity." That was something, surely. But how and where
these outside denominations obtained the "form" puzzles me. We
treat forms as myths, or yokes that gall, and accept the words of Jesus:
" The flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I speak unto you, they are
spirit, and they are life." My observation has led me to believe that
in most cases when earnest inquirers want "the substance of religion"
they usually take one direction and seek "a peculiar people;" when
they can be diverted and satisfied with mere "forms," they generally go
in an opposite direction. Substance has ever been our boast and joy—
the man, not the apparel; the babe, not the cradle. The Presence in
the temple is greater than the temple, or its golden ornament, or its
altars.
How Dr. Tucker's sectarianism contrasts with the broad Christian
and catholic sentiments of the newly appointed Lord Archbishop of
Canterbury, the Very Rev. Dr. Benson!* In taking leave of his late
diocese, he speaks of the Wesleyan Methodists in such terms as these:
" Little justice should I do to my creed or my feelings if I did not
*In no way related to the great Dr. Benson, the Wesleyan commentator.
46
The Colored Race "Weighed in the Balance.
again, as often in the past, acknowledge with love and gratitude that
activity for Christ's sake, that open-handedness, that kindness toward
all good workers, that favor at beholding growing activities in the
Church, which have been shown by the Wesleyans and very many
others."
And if the Reverend Doctor's own Church, in this diocese, has not
prospered, it is not for the want of the same cosmopolitan, broad, and
godly sympathy of the Methodist Episcopal Church of the South?
Many of her bishops and clergy were "convicted and converted"
among us; we have loaned her our churches and melodeons where she
had none; and when we had none, by fire or otherwise, her churches
were not However, I was going to say, also, that we had given
her some very respectable preachers, and occasionally a restless mem¬
ber, and other contributions toward independence; and, not the least
act of unselfish zeal, we relieved her, to the extent of our ability, of the
task of preaching the gospel to the poor—Negroes. Like the woman
in the Gospel, " we have done what we could."
LESSONS FROM ADVERSITY.
When I remember the labors in the rice, cotton, sugar-cane, and to¬
bacco fields of our sainted missionaries, and the wonders that were
wrought upon the black population by their holy ministrations for more
than a hundred years without one word of cheer or God-speed, like the
words of Canterbury's new dignitary, from the Protestant Episcopal
Church, I am reminded of a fearful scene through which I once passed
during the late war. I started from a battle-field with nineteen box¬
cars and several old passenger-coaches loaded with wounded soldiers,
bound for a distant hospital. Curving around a hill that concealed the
railroad track, another train came dashing at full speed and plunged
into our train with a terrible crash. No battle-field could furnish a
more horrible and distressing scene. The cars were telescoped, with
intermingled human beings in every conceivable condition—dead, dy¬
ing, wounded afresh, limbs wrenched, bones broken, bodies mangled—
out of the battle into the shambles of slaughter! There were near a
thousand souls on the train. We were miles from any town. Our sur¬
gical force was very feeble, young and inexperienced. We had a few
surgical instruments. A few women—mothers and sisters, who had
hurried to the battle-field in search of loved ones engaged in the con¬
flict—were in one of the cars. The surgeons were soon at work; every
man that could put a pound's weight on a lever, or hold up the head
of a fainting comrade, was at work. We surrendered our shirts, and
the grass grew instantly white with materials for bandages supplied by
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 47
the heroic women! Messengers on foot were hurried away for surgeons,
^ine, food, etc. No telegraph near. Noon came on; the workers were
amt. Not a cracker to a hundred men; nor half enough water. On
yvent the work—removing the debris to release the imprisoned, stanch¬
ing blood, setting bones—doing all kinds of things with few and im¬
perfect means. The noon passed; we were all nearly exhausted, and
ready to surrender and lie down. Afternoon came, and with it sup¬
plies, instruments, food, wine, bandages, friends, and old-school surgeons
with gray beards and large experience. They walked around, inspected
the scene, took in the situation. Well, what did they say? Did they
put on lofty looks and professional airs, and shut their learned eyes to
what had been accomplished, and send bulletins to the homes of the
opulent, telling them " that something ought to be done by somebody,
and done soon?" Not so our visiting surgeons. They said we had no
need for them; that the work amazed them, so well had it been done;
that nursing and care and time would do the rest. They thanked us
heartily; said we had done wonders; that not merely the sufferers and
the relatives of the victims owed us all a debt of gratitude, but the Con¬
federate Congress also (it sat in Richmond, too); and one brave, unsec-
tarian old veteran M.D. added, "Yes, the thanks of mankind!"
However, there were a few exceptions—there always are. One M.D.,
who seemed to regard himself as a sort of surgical university, had
lost his spectacles on the journey. He very politely borrowed mine.
It gratified me to oblige him. Presently, my main reliance, a young
surgeon, was taking up an artery that had been imperfectly fastened
and needed a microscope. I called on the said M.D. to borrow his.
He politely replied that he must decline; that it was a sacred trust from
his old and honored preceptor, and it would be a great impropriety in
him to lend it. When my spectacles came back by the hands of a dirty
messenger, they were soiled, and no thanks came with them.
A case in point illustrates the same principle. At , a clergy¬
man of another Communion was permitted to occupy a Methodist pul¬
pit, his own people having none. He took up a collection to aid in
building a church in county, in which-he assured the audience
there was not a church. A wealthy old Methodist gentleman said that
that was a reproach to Christianity, and the stain must be wiped out;
and he made a liberal donation, only to learn a little later that there
were seven Methodist churches in that county, and several hundred
most excellent and intelligent members regularly worshiping in them!
When reputable clergymen quit lying to bolster up a mere party
Church, infidels will learn to pray and atheists to worship God!
48
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
A CHBISTLY CHURCH.
From the depths of my soul, I adore the God of my fathers that in
this world of endless shams, and above all, religious shams, there is so
great an institution as Methodism! It is so broad, so catholic, so true
to nature and freedom, on the one hand, and so loyal to Christ on the
other; so free from bigotry, so scriptural and rational in her great car¬
dinal doctrines, so capable of wielding the amplest learning and utiliz¬
ing the humblest attainments; so onward in movement and progressive
in usefulness, girdling the world with her circuits and cheap chapels, her
sermons and her songs of praise; so laborious, self-denying, and Christ¬
like in her ministry; so sympathetic, emotional, and triumphant.
Millions of souls in heaven above
Has she to Jesus brought,
And millions more are on the way
Whom she alone hath taught.
To her honored sons and daughters, colored and white, and all the
.devout worshipers at her countless altars, I would say: "Walk about
Zion, and go round about her: tell the towers thereof. Mark ye well
her bulwarks, consider her palaces; that ye may tell it to the genera¬
tion following. For this God is our God forever and ever: he will be
our guide even unto death."
If, then, Methodists, black or white, are a little emotional, better
that than frozen piety. An eminent divine abroad, of another pulpit,
says of emotion that "it is always attended with dangers, we know; it
is liable to abuse, we admit; but emotion in singing and reciting God's
name and goodness is to our mind one of the highest states of man. It
tends to the union of the soul of man with the Spirit of God. It is a
most effective check to the growth of carnality and worldliness, and fur¬
nishes a powerful counteracting influence to the many strong tempta¬
tions of life." Who shall decide when doctors disagree? For one, I
regard the popular outcry against emotion in religion as the battle of
infidelity in Sunday clothes. Emotion is the life of the heart—almost
the heart itself. It is divine enthusiasm lifting all the latent faculties
out of the frigid pit of inactivity and darkness into the light and warmth
of a ne\/life, and a higher life.
Jesus himself was the embodiment of the emotional nature of God,
and one of the specialties of his mission was to teach men that God pos¬
sessed a tender, loving, parental heart, full of yearning and sensibility.
After all, it is this Christly sympathy, another expression of emotion,
which he ever evinces for the downtrodden and those that be out of the
way, that touches and subdues and ennobles their natures; and its re¬
fining power will enable them to say with an apostle, " The love of
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 49
Christ constraineth us;" and that love will bleach the last remnant of
the ' barbarian " out of them, and make them models of morality as
^ell as of zealous worship. Love is emotion. A marble statue may
exist without sympathy, enthusiasm, tenderness, or tears, but not a re¬
newed, spiritually-minded child of God.
Bishop Wilberforce says, " Religion is not a science, but an experi¬
ence, a sense of the love of God shed abroad in the heart." I pity the
man Avho imagines that he loves God tenderly and truly, and at the
same time treats emotion in religion as a frivolous and fanatical force.
Moses, the psalmist, the apostles, and the Great Teacher himself, were
as much characterized by the manifestation of emotion as by any other
moral excellence. That "Jesus wept" is a greater and more efficient
fact for the uplifting of all races of men than that St. Paul wrote.
Witness the champions of the Church in every age. They were not
made of ice, or iron, or marble. They were not emotionless. Witness
Chrysostom, Augustine, Savonarola, Luther, Calvin, Whitefield, Wes¬
ley—and millions more. An emotionless Church is a frost-bitten
Church, a dead Church.
I have heard Canterbury's great Primate of all England—the Most
Rev. Lord Archbishop Tait, D.D., LL.D.—and it amazed me to see
and hear one so learned, so exalted and world-renowned, from deep
communion with God and profound penetration into the spirituality of
religion, scandalize (?) his high office, the whole body of the clergy, and
the entire Establishment, by the exhibition of so much emotion as to
prove himself to be as much a Methodist in the pulpit as he was a.
heavenly-minded Christian when out of it.
SIMILARLY RECEPTIVE.
If the black man appears to be more emotional than the other race,
it is not because he is constitutionally more religious, or capable of
greater spiritual receptivity, but because less cultivated, and less preoc¬
cupied by a thousand engagements, pursuits, and studies, than is his
brother in white. No man on earth, in a normal condition of body and
mind, is, nor can be, destitute of a religious faculty, any more than a tree
bearing quinces can live and not be, in its roots and trunk, a quince-tree.
It may be grafted with the upas, quassia-, belladonna, or nightshade,
and the baneful usurper will thrive, while the quince, the banished or
imprisoned heir to the preeminence and the crown, shall be hid in
prison. So have we seen the soul's religious susceptibilities grafted
with the noxious growths of superstition, infidelity, and agnosticism, or
loutish indifferentism, a sort of cactus, upas, or deadly nightshade, and
flourishing upon purloined sap—a perverted tree I
4
50 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
The gulf of separation between a man and his dog is the fact that
man is a religious creature and his dog is not. Subtract the worship¬
ing, praying, praising, God-loving, religious faculty from the human*
soul, and the status of the dog, and his relations to life's environments,
would be better than man's. No brute can obey the command to
" love God with all the heart, and soul, and mind, and strength."
But men were made in the image of Gcd, and the races are all religious
alike in natural organization, tastes, and felt necessities. Like any
other faculty, the religious faculty may be paralyzed, and carried to
the grave like an arm or a foot which has ceased to perform its normal
functions. And this verisimilitude of humanity, in spiritual attributes,
makes the " preaching of Christ the wisdom of God and the power of
God " for the salvation of all men, irrespective of race, color, or previ¬
ous condition. Consequently, St. Paul says he " came not with excel¬
lency of speech or of wisdom," lest the cross of Christ should be under¬
valued or set aside for the inventions of men, and Christ be forgotten.
Hence, in preaching Christ and him crucified, the Baconian scheme of
inductive philosophy, as a gospel of trials, " experiments, and modifi¬
cation of method," is wholly ignored by true gospel preachers, and
" Christ and him crucified " is taught along the river's side, on the rice-
field and sugar-plantation, the cotton-patch and the tobacco-farm,
under the trees or under the stars, without even the welcome melodeon,
or even the cover of the cheap chapel; and among the colored race
countless souls have thus been found and brought to repentance. I ad¬
mit that superior churches are very desirable, but they can never take
the place of the irresistibly attractive cross of the Crucified One!
WHAT SHALL WE TEACH THE NEGROESf
The Rev. Edward W. Blyden, LL.D., a full-blooded Negro, one of
the ripest scholars of the age, President of the Liberia College, and
Minister from the Republic of Liberia to the Court of-St. James, has
devoted many years to this very question; and he tells us that " the in¬
strument for Africa's evangelization must be the African himself. All
attempts of European or other races have been failures. The most suc¬
cessful Church of the past was the Abyssinian, which was founded by
a native, and whose influence is felt to the present day." Then he
adds this significant remark: "As to the method of evangelization, all
that was necessary was the simple preaching of Christ's words—this and
nothing more. The inhabitants of the interior were eager and willing to
be taught." This he learned by traveling among them in Africa. I may
also add that the Wesleyan (Methodist) native Negroes, in West Africa,
contributed from their own churches last year over thirty thousand
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 51
dollars for the spread of the gospel among their race and people, and
they have no costly churches either. Other Christian denominations
iave also reaped like precious fruit from the bread cast upon those
m aters; and the same is true of our black people at home, so far as the
method of evangelization " is concerned, as thousands of living cler¬
gymen and laymen can testify.
AN UNLOOKED-FOR WITNESS.
Now, imagine our surprise to find Dr. Tucker himself, after having
pronounced the same means used to Christianize the white race entirely
inadequate to meet the fearful depravity of the dark race, recommend¬
ing the ordinary services of his own monotonous forms of worship as
the true balm. He has told us that the failure hitherto to renovate
and Christianize the Negro arose from the fact that the same methods
had been employed that were used to save the white race. Alas for
human consistency! He says that, owing to " the vast mental and
moral difference between the races," " the relations of the Church to the
colored race are, or ought to be, somewhat different from the relations
of the Church to the white race" (?). Then, seeing that such a theory
would necessitate a new Prayer-book, perhaps new sacraments and a
new ministry, as well as costly churches and massive organs, he pauses,
and says: "Build a transept for the colored people, if it be thought best
for the two races to worship together, separate, yet upon one floor, and
under one roof, and toward one altar—as they are separate in race, yet
worship one God, which seems to me to be the catholic idea." That is his
beau ideal of congregational worship. Here, the same old gospel, the
same hymns and prayers, or nearly so—which have been used by the
white race heretofore and failed so signally on the colored—are to be
tested and experimented Avith again, without the addition of a solitary
new measure, doctrine, form, or substance, " the vast mental and moral
difference " to the contrary notwithstanding.
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO.
Of course education is not to be overlooked; but then there is nothing
in the multiplication-table nor in geometry to correct morals; nor in
astronomy to increase the durability of the marriage bond; and hile
the public school is inadequate to the necessities of the dark race, they
are neverthless the chief beneficiaries of the system. He, however, goes
in for a Church school. All right. Still, listen: " It is a heartless
thing to blame the Southern whites for not doing that which, had they
been twice as numerous and twice as rich, would still have been, far be¬
yond their means." And yet he very emphatically blames Mr. John
52
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
F. Slater, of Norwich, Conn., for bestowing a million of dollars for the
education of the Negro, and adds: " If my understanding of the dispo¬
sition of that gift be correct, it might almost as well have been tliroim
into the sea" The understanding of the Doctor is correct. Mr. Slater
did not intrust the money to his " disposition;" but a more judicious,
catholic, wise, and beneficent bestowment, "if I understand the disposi¬
tion of that gift," was never made for the " benefit of the Negro." The
animus of the Orator's chagrin may perhaps be found in the closing
paragraph of the Tucker-Williams letter: " O send over and help
us! The colored people are very tired of the past! The Bibles, Prayer-
books, and Catechisms are doing a good work, but so much more might
be done with more to do with" (?).
"Tired of the past f" It would be refreshing to hear those good col¬
ored men explain, all by themselves—no writing put before them to
sign, to please the overshadowing dignity, nor suits of clothes to distrib¬
ute—just those few words: Tired of the past! " Prayer-books" for the
unlettered millions of plantation Negroes! Next would have possibly
been a Breviary. Ah, Mr. Slater, you should have taken counsel of
the wise. Nobody escapes the Damascus blade of our theological Ne-
grophilist.
I wish I could find another heart and purse of the Slater mold and
dimensions, as ready " to help the lowly living "—not that I wish to
handle so grand a sum, but I think that I could tell him where and
how to place it, so that, in still another line of usefulness, it might be
of equal advantage in improving the dark race to the end of the ages.
But the colored schools, so patronized and so numerous, as Ave
are infornjed, were clothed with the azure hues of an enchanting
remoteness yet to be overcome. Alas! the speech, as we learn, has
closed the temples of knowledge,
Nor left a wreck behind.
Consider, now, that for some fourteen or fifteen years past these
" Unique " schools have been kept up, and for some five of these years
under the immediate supervision and tuition of Dr. Tucker, who tells
the world that the Negroes have been badly taught hitherto; and yet
what is the sad fruit of his own teachings? Here is his confession, made
only a few weeks since. Hear: "All this is indescribably pathetic.
. The pathos of it is mingled with other feelings when they go out
from this very meeting to commit some sin, to steal a Hymnal perhaps,
or carry home some sticks from a neighbor's wood-pile, or to rob my
hen-roost (?). Experiences of this sort discourage most white people
from laboring among them, and often discourage me. In fact, we have
Tiie Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 53
• |^en °^iged to give up trying to keep chickens at the rectory on account
° the constant stealings* Some of those most eager to learn, and most
U ^ pi°us talk, are most notorious and skillful thieves." Why did
not rG('tor send for " warm tints," and decorative attractions, and
an honesty-inspiring organ, sooner? or, better still, he might have taught
tiem to get religion" through the power of the Holy Ghost, and how
to li\e as " new creatures " by the grace of God.
THE PURE AND THE TRUE!"
Now, he warmly urges his brethren " to carry a pure gospel and a
true religion to this people."
Here it occurs to me that the gentleman owes it to himself and the .
whole community to furnish us with an exposition of what he really
regards as a " pure gospel and a true religion." Doubtless he regards
the white people, outside of his own denomination, as being in the same
ditch with the Negro. Will he wash us with snow-water, or with
" fuller's soap," of which the prophet speaks? What shall be the nat¬
ure of the scriptural exposition? Is a new answer to be given to the
inquiry, "What must I do to be saved?" Now that the Episcopal
Church is split up into four divisions, it may be a matter of vital inter¬
est, since heretofore the Negro has been taught a false religion, to know
what sort of doctrine is to differentiate the several branches, and how
the Negro is to be affected by their new ministrations and teachings.
To which branch of the once glorious old Church does the Doctor be¬
long? Knowing that, we may take his cue. The highest authority
assures us there are four—the High Church, the Low Church, the
Broad Church, and the Advanced Church. ^
Christian citizens, planters, and employes of Negroes, need to know
" his relations to the Church," and which wing he recognizes. I he
proper indoctrination of the colored people is a serious question, e"\ en
in the light of political economy. There are some doctrines that at5
naturally demoralize the ignorant masses as they bewilder the fashion¬
able aesthetic worshipers in the sunflower walks of religious society.
Hence, it is no light matter to introduce " a pure gospel and a tiue le-
ligion" into an old Christian community. We may get only mere
" form without the substance"—Church mantua-makers instead of pas¬
tors full of the Holy Ghost, with spiritual bread and living water for
hungry souls. We have Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature. If the
author of the speech will publish his ideas of a pure gospel and a true
*My experience is just the other way; and yet in years a theft may occur—i
has occurred.
nay,
54 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
religion, I have little doubt but it would long live as one of the curi¬
osities of "Advanced Church Theology," and finally preserve his name
from oblivion. But while he so severely takes us to task for our false
teaching, and warns his brethren of the perils of the " apathy of South¬
ern Christians concerning the moral and religious condition of the Ne¬
gro race," have wTe no reason to fear the introduction of forms and cer¬
emonies—husks and chaff—by which the existing evils shall be greatly
exaggerated?
I think the Episcopal Church in England ought to give a warning
to-our citizens, for has she not fearfully failed of the accomplishment
of her great mission? and chiefly because of the reliance upon "tint
and decoration," splendid equipage, and Church aristocracy. I would
respectfully call attention to the following sad analysis of that Estab¬
lishment, from the pen of one of the great leading spirits of the age, as
it comes sounding over the sea in notes of forewarning: "The great
moral struggle progressing in the British Islands needs that every
man and every Church should be at the highest point of power. The
Established Church has many noble Christians both within and without
the chancel, but it has such entangling alliances as to leave it uncertain
whether, on the whole, at home and abroad alike, its influence is favor¬
able or detrimental. This may seem a hard judgment, but no one can
study the whole bearings of the problem without reaching some such
conclusion. This does not deny that many are benefited even by its
ritualism; but where it benefits in one direction, it harms in ten. It
substitutes form for power; it nourishes pride and exclusiveness; it puts
baptism for regeneration; it engenders neglect and contempt of spirit¬
uality; it harbors immorality and infidelity; it substitutes pompous
charity for brotherly-kindness; puts its Prayer-book above its Bible;
it perverts religion. The Christianity it propagates is not the Chris¬
tianity of Christ, but a ceremonialism as remote from his simplicity as
its formalism is unlike his spirituality. It is a fetich put in the place
of God. Were the influence of the Dissenting bodies removed from
England, under the Established Church England would rapidly lapse
into absolute infidelity and practical atheism."
As a denomination, it has been our joy and boast that, while we have,
so to say, no forms, we have received the Bread of Life, the real sub¬
stance, and have tried, and to a great extent successfully, to break that
bread to the Negro Christian. Let us now more than ever steer clear
of all entangling alliances, and more than ever cling to the gospel as
expounded by our own Church.
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
55
GENERAL REFLECTIONS.
I think I know nearly all that can be said against the Negro. In
one form or another, the complaints have been a thousand times reit¬
erated; but has he not been, and is he not now, what the white man
and society have made him? He is naturally peace-loving, docile, and
mutative. If kindly and justly treated, with due allowance for the
peculiar elements that make up his life, he will render back in kind at
least equally with the brother in white in like surroundings. Every¬
body knows some reliable, trustworthy Negro man and woman; and
John Randolph said that of two of the politest men he ever saw one
was a Negro. Gentleness is a wonderful agency in managing a Negro:
I know it tells powerfully upon white folks. The psalmist, addressing
his Maker, says, " Thy gentleness hath made me great." It is a mighty
lever; it moves the Avorld; it moved it before Archimedes; it moves it
still; but peevishness, fault-finding, scolding, cursing, premature cen¬
sure, haughty and assuming ways, sullenness, ill-temper, whether in the
field, the kitchen, the nursery, or parlor, will legitimately result in
thriftlessness, revolt, departure, and contempt for white people! Many
of the young generation have not yet found their places in the new
order of things; and their silly parents work themselves nearly to
death to keep their sons from the plow and to make ladies of their
daughters, just like white folks; but time, gentleness, bread, and neat
homes will, with religion and culture, bring great changes. And I say
it to the credit of their former owners, and their own instincts and ca¬
pabilities, that they constitute to-day the best peasantry, holding similar
relations to the ruling classes, on the face of the earth. Their vices are
no greater; their respect for law about the same; and their care for
their children little inferior. Besides, they speak the language of their
country better, are less cringing and craven, freer from begging; more
manly, more polite, less priest-ridden, less obsequious; have a higher
estimate of human rights and obligations; understand farming, cook¬
ing, house-work, and manual labor, in which they have been trained
better, I insist, than any similarly conditioned race or people. They
are less profane—very much less-—-than white people; less bitter, vin¬
dictive, and blood-thirsty; less intemperate, and far, far less revengeful;
and less selfish than what they contemptuously snub as " poor white
trash." But he is a sinner! I believe the old stale rhyme tells some
truth, in a modified sense, " In Adam's fall we sinned all;" but I do
not believe the serpent's tooth struck a more deadly and depraving
virus into the Negro's share of the apple of Eden, dooming him as a
sinner to a lower plane of wickedness than others. He commits not
56 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
all, but many, of the sins, crimes, and misdemeanors, and indulges many
of the vices, of polished humanity—cultured Caucasian humanity!
They have had but moderate experience in the sole management of
their own affairs. Their former owners took care of their children,
and watched over all the sick of the old and the young. These duties
now rest with the Negro heads of families, and they lose a smaller num¬
ber of children than when their white owners took care of them;, but they
are not yet fully awake to the importance of training them in ways of
truth, honesty, virtue, industry, nor are they themselves frugal and
saving as they should be. (Very like other races.) They are easily
flattered by political leaders, and led where betterment is promised, but
have been so disappointed, confused, and shamefully fleeced by those in
whom they have confided like children, that they are fearful of rocks
on the one hand and whirlpools on the other; and hence many of those
anomalous phases that cause unfriendly criticism upon them.
He is pronounced an inscrutable being; I often think him a perplex¬
ing problem; but, though secretive as we are told he is—all business
men are so—loquacity is a fool's advertisement. Burns advises a
young man to
Always keep something to himself he '11 scarcely tell to any.
After all, nothing strikes us as a greater mystery in character than
entire transparency; though I am not analyzing his mental peculiarities.
Again, they are cut off from the diversified pursuits and vocations of
the ruling race, and confined almost exclusively to menial occupations
and field or plantation labor, without elevating social environments; ex¬
posed to great temptations with few mental resources; their reflections
and musings confined chiefly to social and domestic matters, gossip,
and superstitious nonsense; the affairs of Church and religion, the cheap
chapel being the rallying-place for half the interchange of the friendly
relations of life. Nor is this phase of social Church life peculiar to the
black people. A book fresh from the Boston press develops the latest
forms of mere Church sociology, or emotionless and aesthetic religion,
in which the prayerless saints of the author's whereabouts conduct their
worship. " The Church is now," he says, " for the most part, a depos¬
itory of social rather than religious influences. Its chief force, or vital¬
ity, is no longer religious." We trust that is true only in a limited de¬
gree ; indeed, we so believe. But to a limited degree it is true in the
South, and this especially Avith some city congregations of Negroes.
THE NEGROES HA YE MANY VIRTUES.
The Negro is neither a beggar, nor a pauper, nor a tramp; and if
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 57
honestly dealt with, he can make his own way. Where they are idle
and profligate, execute the law vigorously against them, and they will
approve and aid in the work. We can lift them up, or cast them
down. For one, I think we owe them a debt of gratitude and impartial
justice for their faithful conduct during the war; and when disposed to
criticise and reproach them for not coming in all things up to your sen¬
timental.notions, just put yourself in their place. Then you will, if your
scales are true and your weights just, settle the question with little diffi¬
culty. I cannot serve my readers better, perhaps, than by quoting the
words of the Rev. Dr. Callaway, lately Professor in Emory College, Ox¬
ford, Ga., and now President of Paine Institute, Augusta, Ga., a native
of that State, and to the manner born. In a late address, he says:
"We have spoken of the Negro as related to the conduct of the war, but
it remains to be said that, in his relation tp us as a friend during that
period, and to our wives and children as guardian, the testimony of his
fidelity is on the lips of every surviving soldier. It is easy to conject¬
ure how, with a race less loyal to home and patron, the testimony in the
case might have been a narrative of lawlessness and license. What he
refrained from, therefore, is to his credit. But in the four years of dark¬
ness and demoralization, when, besides those of military age, every boy
whose muscles were equal to the support of a musket, and every old
man with vigor enough to mark time, was called to the front, the Ne¬
gro, commanding as a patriarch and reverent as a priest, kept sacred
vigil at our homes. Besides this, with a foresight not developed for
himself or his 'family, but evoked by virtue of his office, and the pite¬
ous destitution of our loved ones, he provided for their wants. ' They
were a-hungered, and he fed them.' What he did is to his honor.
What we refrain from in our place of power as the superior race shall
be to our credit; what we do in return shall be proof of our apprecia¬
tion. The conduct of the Negro during the war proves him kindly,
temperate, trustworthy; his conduct since the Avar reveals in him con-
siderateness, purpose, capacity, an order of growing good qualities.
During the war his inferior courage, it may be assumed, inured to his
superior serviceableness, his fears giving counsel to his courtesy and
care. So set it down, if you will, though the logic is as lame as the
charge is ungrateful."
We can afford, if he will allow it, to be his friend as ever hitherto.
He needs unselfish, discreet counselors. He needs help. He deserves
it. He needs sympathy. He needs protection against trading robbers.
But not now will I enter upon what I deem the great material and es¬
sential reforms and improvement essential for him. That hereaftel,
58
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
perhaps. Of course in religion I would teach him Arminian theology;
any other will, I think, demoralize him. I would tone down his bois¬
terous modes of worship. I would raise the standard of manliness and
womanliness. It can be done. It has been done, and can be repeated
indefinitely to the end.
The lit. Rev. Bishop Stephens furnishes ample proof of the reliable¬
ness of these statements by the folloAving facts taken from under his own
careful observation, and as part of his own reward for truly evangel¬
ical labor. I quote from his indorsement of Dr. Tucker: "In 1875 I
entered the Reformed Episcopal Church, and was put in charge of a
work among these people. I began with two men who had been under
my ministry for ten years; four others I took for daily instruction—they
could scarcely read. It was slow work, but after about four years I had
some six or seven at work, radiating from a center. I now have twelve
ordained men of good moral character, of good report from all around,
with nineteen organized congregations, and about fifteen hundred com¬
municants. All in these congregations are not of course models of
Christian propriety; now and then some fal-1, but on the whole there is
a wholesome influence emanating from every congregation. I mention
this to illustrate two points—first, white influence and control must be
exerted; second, this must be mainly impressed upon colored ministers,
who can reach their own people and impart to them the truth first im¬
pressed upon themselves by constant, daily, prayerful exposition of
God's Avord."
Just as I am putting my papers to press, another and complete edi¬
tion of the pamphlet, with twenty-three additional pages of indorse¬
ments, comes to my desk from a colored friend. I confess were I an
African I should feel forever indorsed out of the pale of the Protestant
Episcopal Church. And were I to accept the theory that my race
was so utterly and without parallel depraved and villainous, I should
conclude that our salvation would bankrupt the wealth of the Cross,
and give up in despair.
What makes the new installments peculiarly striking is the signa¬
tures of several colored persons attached to an evidently prepared docu¬
ment, lauding this cruel performance as "a defense of their race," and
thanking the Orator for "his humane and unselfish effort to obtain help
for us from the North."
And " thereby hangs a tale." " The roasted lamb " may not have
been handed round, but when intelligent and unbiased colored men
speak out they will inform us as to what the best class of them think
of the matter. This paper, so signed, modifies and almost takes back
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 59
the whole speech, and is apparently designed to turn the edge of criti¬
cism. I have neither space nor time to notice more than two or three
of the other indorsers at present.
The London Spectator's notice of the Portuguese expedition to West
Africa is quoted to support what was said of the " native barbarians,"
and presents a picture of several small, vulgar, low-typed tribes. Why
not quote from Dr. Livingstone also, and others, showing far superior
types, and from Commodore Shufeldt's Report, or from the African
Repository? Ivens and Capello never saw the higher and more civ¬
ilized tribes—the Mendinas, the Veys, the Galinas, and many other of
the better tribes.
There is, and ever was, as great a difference between the native
tribes of Africa as is found among the various tribes of American In¬
dians—as between the Arapahoes, the Comanches, and the Apaches, of
the lower grade, and the Choctaws, Cherokees, and Creeks, of the high¬
er. Just lately Mr. King, a teacher of a Presbyterian institution in
Liberia, made a journey into the interior as far as to Bopora, where
the Mohammedan religion prevails, and he says: " I circulated every
copy of the Gospels I had among the native young men who read and
write the Arabic as readily as I can the English," etc.
Samuel W. Baker, the Nile explorer, is quoted, and says very manly
and impartial things of the African. Pie asks: " What is the African
in his savage home? Certainly bad, but not so bad as ichite men would
(Z believe) be under similar circumstances. He is acted upon by the bad
passions inherent in human nature, but there is no exaggerated vice,
such as is found in civilized countries." That is gentle, charitable, and
discriminating. Then he proceeds: "He is callous and ungrateful.
In Europe is there no ingratitude? He is cunning, and a liar by nat¬
ure. In Europe is all truth and sincerity? Why should not the
black man be equal to the white? In childhood, I believe the Negro
to be in advance in intellectual quickness of the white child of a simi¬
lar age, but the mind does not expand. It promises fruit, but does not
ripen."
Dr. Tucker represents him as a sort of symposium of passions and
sensibilities, and Mr. Baker as callous, obdurate, ungrateful. All seem
to regard him as impenetrable and unknowable. What a study for a
philosopher! Suppose it should turn out that he is like my glass win¬
dow, through which a pet kitten tries ever and agiiin to pass, not un¬
derstanding how a transparent window-pane could hold her in abey¬
ance. The simple absence of mystery being the mystery.
So far, so good. Then Mr. Baker says: " The Negro has been and
60
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
still is thoroughly misunderstood The results of emanci¬
pation have proved that the Negro does not appreciate the blessings of
freedom, nor does he show the slightest feeling of gratitude to the hand
that broke the rivets of his fetters. . . . He only regards the anti-
slavery movement as a proof of his own importance."
Now I ask what, to the ex-slave, have been the results of emancipa¬
tion? So much had been said of the transcendent glories of freedom,
and when it came it overwhelmed him with disappointment. It was
like the tottering tradesman who dreamed he had drawn a large prize
in a lottery and that the sheriff would never trouble him, only to awake
and find the writ of seizure at the door. True, it has put the ballot
into his hand—the ashes of power! Is he better protected ? Has he
firmer friends? More food; better lodgings; better clothes? Hundreds
of thousands who once could, on Sunday, dress nearly as well as the
whites cannot now dress fit for any occasion. For a long time he was
misled by the Freedman's Bureau, which was to him like the Hindoo
goddess from whose thousand breasts flowed perennial rills of milk (and
honey too, one may think), supplying every want, rendering labor un¬
necessary, frugality a folly, and ushering in the millennium of idleness
and jollity. In the fearfulness of these disappointments, surely they
might say with him of old, "All thy waves and thy billows are gone
over me!"
' " Not the slightest feeling of gratitude." Put yourself in his place.
See yourself as a freedman counted, courted, caressed for the almighty
vote. See yourself robbed of your honest toil, feel friendless, pass wea¬
ry days waiting for the good time coming, and only realize cold, and
adversity, and hope deferred, and then be told that you were not eman¬
cipated as a right, as a great act of divine philanthrophy, but as a war
measure to conquer an antagonist. Would it be wonderful if the freed¬
man hesitates and does not gush with gratitude, since he hardly knows
the motives of his real benefactors, or who they are? Ah! Mr. Baker,
you must' not ply the lash too freely to the galled loins. The freedman
is not a dullard, nor wanting in sensibility or gratitude.
Once mote. He says: " He was suddenly freed, and from that mo¬
ment he refused to work, and instead of being a useful member of so¬
ciety he became a useless burden to the community." Mr. Baker has
been totally misinformed. This is as far from the truth as it could well
be. It is true that a small proportion of them were crazed and stag¬
gered for awhile under ~th$ administration of the Freedman's Bureau,
Bank, etc., still they went't& work generally aiid behaved astonishingly
well notwithstanding they had been shamefully demoralized. But they
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 61
&le generally as clever and moral, aa truly religious, and as comforta-
e and cheerful as they were formerly as slaves.
I must now take some notice of one more indorser of our Orator's ad¬
dress, and the last.
A NEW YORK INDORSER
Frank Wilkeson, Esq., the correspondent of the New York Sun, now
traveling in the South, is introduced (p. 76). He has visited St. Hele¬
na s Island, S. C., and tells us with a racy free-pen-edness about the Ne¬
groes there in a way to make a stranger wonder, and yet nearly all he
says may be said of white people under like circumstances. " These
black people," he says, " are without religion, and I greatly doubt if
they have sufficient capacity to understand the principles that underlie
the Christian faith. As a race they are devoid of a sense of gratitude.
They are thoroughly dishonest."
I demur. If they are incapable of religion and gratitude—and they
are wholly incapable of the former, if not capable of the latter—then
they cannot be dishonest, nor will one of the blistering charges he pre¬
fers hold good against them. If they are such dolts as not to be capa¬
ble of gratitude—which is often shown by the dog, the elephant, and
other animals—nor to be able to understand the principles of the
Christian faith, which are as simple as the alphabet, viz., To love God
and their neighbor; or, to " deal justly, love mercy, and walk humbly
with God." If they have not " sufficient capacity " for these simple du¬
ties, then they are not morally responsible. If so, they are mere ani¬
mals. Ariel was right, whether jesting or in earnest, when he under¬
took, with learning and logic, to deny them a soul. Then they are as
blameless as a cat or a crocodile, and as far from the reach of the gos¬
pel as was Dives from the bosom of Abraham. Gratitude is as essen¬
tial to religion as religion is to a rational soul; and to go outside of the
Bible, I find Cicero saying that "I can scarcely think that man in his
right mind %uho is destitute of religion."
If the Negro has no capability of true worship, gratitude, and con¬
sistent religiousness, then Thomas Paine and Col. Ingersoll are log¬
ically his teachers, and his only song should be,
Let's eat and drink, whatever comes to hancl(f),
Death ends the farce of life; the soul is naught but sand !
I leave some true poet to finish the song.
But "they also sand their cotton and habitually put sticks and stones
in cotton-bags." Just so; and why? Since the war (or flood), the Ne-,
gro has met new-comers, foreigners as shop-keepers, and he finds him¬
self mercilessly swindled, cheated, defrauded, and wronged in a hun-
62
The Colored Race Weighed i>t the Balance.
drecl foxy ways; and to get even with them he, in turn, plies his wits at
their own game. And with sorrow aud shame I must own that the
foreigners are not the only sharks that spread their jaws to devour the
confiding African. Treat Ireland in the same way, and instead of send¬
ing back evil for evil in mere bagatelles, she would put those sticks
and stones to a very different use, if it cost a thousand funerals.
On he goes: " In the stores the clerks cannot take their eyes off their
black customers without some small article disappearing, and one clerk
must watch the Negroes. An iron rod runs along the outer edges of the
counters to protect the goods." Why, Frank, those foreign merchants
brought that iron-rod plan of defense from Europe, where their fathers
and forefathers learned its use to guard against the larcenies of white
folks. Pshaw! Then he tells us of a lot of colored women who stole
Irish potatoes when not watched; and as a story it is good, and doubt¬
less true, well told and laughable.
Now, Mr. Wilkeson, please explain the stories we used to hear about
a New York merchant prince, and many others, keeping detectives of
both sexes (female detectives! to such base uses!) to watch the silk and
satin side of the great metropolis (not of St. Helena, but) of the New
World? Explain the methods of constant espionage, personal search,
turning of pockets, bells and signals to tell when cases and tills were
clandestinely opened, and iron lattice to keep far off delicate white fin¬
gers. Please explain, not the simple iron rod of a gingerbread stand,
but the bronzed cast-iron or woven-wire gratings that shut down so
close to the counter that no tiny hand of a baby boy, but only a check,
may pass under, and thin greenbacks slide out, in the banking houses
and moneyed strongholds all over the North and West, in which Ne¬
groes and white crows are almost equally rare visitors; and not only
there, but in England, Paris, Berlin, and around the world, and in
places where a Negro was never seen?
He says: "As house-servants, they are the most aggravating creat¬
ures in existence." That is largely owing to who keeps the house and
how they manage their tongues and tempers. No people on earth read
character quicker or more accurately, and few appreciate the real gen¬
tlewoman or the true gentleman—not pretense, not shoddy, not pinch¬
beck, but the genuine article—more readily and highly than that very
class. Thousands of them were hired to go North after the Avar as
house-maids, nurses, and cooks, waiting and office men, coachmen, etc.
Many Southern families that moved Northward returned, owing to the
fact that the white help there proved " the most aggravating creatures
in existence." Then comes more about their robberies, pilfering, etc.
The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance. 63
Well, then, they are bad fellows! which proves that Mr. Wilkeson
18 Wl"ong when he says they are so stupid, or wanting " sufficient capaci¬
ty to understand the principles that underlie the Christian faith;" for
if so, then they had never learned their lessons so quickly and so well,
for his liberators (or enough of them of an inferior type), to reach and
leaven the whole lump, taught them that every thing in the South that
had belonged to the white folks now belonged to them. It was theirs,
and theirs to pay for over a hundred years of labor charged up, and
not paid to that day—the lands, houses, cattle, horses, mules, sheep,
goods, furniture, and even the wives and daughters of the white citi¬
zens ; and many actually made their selections of such things as they
desired, and patiently awaited the signal for seizure.
I wonder the ex-slave is not a demon! But he is far from it, and is
a clever, amiable, well-meaning fellow, without malice, revenge, or any
" hankering after back pay." As soon as he found that he was misled
and imposed upon, he dropped his political teachers,
Hung up the fiddle and the bow,
And took up the shovel and the hoe,
and has won for himself the respect of all just men, and deserves better
than to be held up to the scorn and contempt of mankind either as an
idiot, a demon, or a satyr.
Our friend of the New York Sun further says: " I was strongly and
unfavorably impressed by the pretense of knowledge made by the black
youths and by their self-satisfied air." Just so. Haven't we seen and
felt the same annoyance at academy, college, and university displays,
where no darkey ever dared, not even as a janitor, to put in an appear¬
ance? Besides, who can wonder at his innocent airs? Has he not been
dandled on the knees of republics, kingdoms, and empires? Have not
armies fought and thundered over the land, and navies shaken the seas
and made them blush with the blood of the bravest and the best, to hew
a path for his free feet to the ballot-box, and to the unimaginable felic¬
ity and right of " manhood suffrage? "
Airs, indeed! But then he had something of his own to " air " him¬
self on. Senator Brown, of Georgia, says that at the Atlanta Univer¬
sity he witnessed examinations of classes in mathematics and in Greek,
and saw young black men grapple problems in the one and grammat¬
ical intricacies in the other with an ability equal to any young man s,
which forced him to surrender his preconceived opinions about their
want of capacity for the higher education.
Oar correspondent says: "The determining factor in the problem
offered for solution by these sea island Negroes [and I suppose, by pari-
64 The Colored Race Weighed in the Balance.
ty of logic, all others] is their morals." 'But I fear the greatest ele¬
ment in the factor will be found in the demoralizing doctrine of Anti-
nomianism in their religious creed, which I have, in my notes on Dr.
Tucker's speech, had occasion to develop and explain. Expel that
upas poison from his faith, and the race may be saved; otherwise, then
otherwise! Carlyle says "a man's faith is the chief factor concerning
him;" while a higher authority tells us that "as a man thinketh, so
is he." The sap in the vine is the faith of the grape, and determines
its flavor and value. This swells the problem to Alpine heights. Only
a new creed, a new heart, and a new life—which God must bestow—-can
achieve the work!
Architectural tinsel! Grand church-organs! Chain an earthquake
with a rosary! or charm a cyclone with a " cheap " Jew's-harp!
Mr. Wilkeson opened a fresh field, and we could not well pass it by
in silence. He seems to have heard so much of the sunny South, the
live-oak and magnolia, the orange and the palm, that as he journeyed
he fancied he was on his way—especially when sailing under the scent¬
ed breezes of adjacent groves—to St. Helena's Island, the isle of the
blest; that when he should step on shore he would enter paradise, but,
. in an evil hour, stepped into the other place!
CONCLUSION.
I desire to say I think the speech of Dr. Tucker, with all its faults,
contains much to provoke reflection and investigation. It evidently
cost the speaker much thought, and is presented in a forcible and strik¬
ing manner. His zeal commands my admiration. He will yet, I trust,
achieve some noble work in behalf of the long-neglected and weary-
footed Negro.
But he must rise above the dwarfing power of his Church; above
the narrowness of religious bigotry; above the exclusiveness that has
slaughtered so many opportunities; above the affectation of sanctified
superiority. He must rise as high as Christian liberty; as high as
Christian brotherhood after the shackles of sectarianism have been dis¬
solved; as high as the cloudless heights of genuine Christian philan¬
thropy! Then we may see in him a leader, a reformer, an apostolic
teacher, on whose name the benedictions of future generations of Af¬
ricans, as well as of our own race, may fall with embalming fragrance.
So may it be.
Vicksburg, February, 1883.