American Missionary | Page 3

in number than the blacks or
whites of the South, and their future will sooner be determined by their
being incorporated into the national life as citizens, yet that problem is
not settled, and a large fund could be wisely used for their benefit. Then,
too, our higher schools and colleges need endowment, and our church
work should be indefinitely expanded.
If this review does not succeed in drawing large gifts for these several
objects, it may at least serve to show that our wants are not all provided
for, and that smaller contributors have still the duty and the privilege of
aiding by gifts and prayer this good work of patriotism and
Christianity.
* * * * *
THE SOUTHERN SITUATION.
The position of the South is becoming once more clearly defined.
Before the war, it was fully formulated thus: The Negroes are an

inferior race, and slavery is their divinely ordained condition. To this
was added: The Negro question is purely local, and with it no one
outside of the South has any right to interfere. To these axioms agreed
the press, the pulpit and the politician. But the war came as an
earthquake, with the utter upheaval of these firm foundations.
During the years of reconstruction and political agitation, uncertainty
prevailed, but now again the Southern position is becoming settled. It is
the old position with a variation. It runs: The Negroes are an inferior
race, and must be held as a peasant class in subjection to the superior
white race. To this the warning is again added: This is purely a
domestic affair, and all outsiders must keep tongues and hands off. This
revised version of the old theory is proclaimed by Senator Eustis in his
now somewhat famous article in the Forum. More recently it has been
re-affirmed in the fervid eloquence of Mr. Grady, of Atlanta, in his
address at Dallas, Texas.
This is the same orator (he is an orator) who a few years since
electrified the whole country by his speech at the New England dinner,
on the "New South." But the logic of Southern events has driven him
down again to the platform of the "Old South." More recently still, the
Governor of South Carolina, in his message to the Legislature, has
taken the same position.
These three gentlemen, representing the press and the politician, are
sustained by the pulpit in the South. For example, the Presbyterian
church South repels all overtures for re-union with the Presbyterian
church North, because such a re-union would involve a practical
recognition of the equal manhood of the inferior race. The Presbyterian
church South does not stand alone on this platform. Other
denominations are arrayed side by side with it, and we fear that even
the Congregationalists in the South, with two Conferences in the same
State, one white and the other black, are in danger of being numbered
with them.
This is the Southern position. It portends the renewal of the old
antagonism. It repels the North, denying its right to interfere, and thus
draws again the sectional line; and above all, it sets up sharply the
antagonism of races, consigning the Negro permanently to an inferior
place. This implies, of course, that if the Negro will not quietly accept
this place, he must be compelled to do so by force of arms, and in this

struggle the North is notified that it has no right to interfere. We can
only express our amazement at this theory! With the memory of the
war so fresh, when the North broke over all warnings against
interference, and stepped in to aid the helpless slave, can the South now
hope to make these warnings any more efficacious? Can it hope that the
North will acquiesce in a quasi slavery, that sets aside substantially all
that it gained and established by the long war?
And if the struggle comes again, what hope of success can the South
cherish? If in the last national struggle, it was overpowered when the
slave, as Mr. Grady acknowledges, guarded the house while his master
fought for his perpetual enslavement, what can it do when the Negroes
have tasted freedom for a quarter of a century, and now number nearly
as many as the whites in the South? It is for the white people of the
South to say whether that struggle shall come. The North does not
desire it, the Negro does not desire it, and we sincerely believe that a
large share of the people of the South do not want it. Rev. Dr. Haygood,
the efficient agent of the Slater Fund, in a recent article in The
Independent, in reply to Senator Eustis, voices, as we hope, the
sentiments of thoughtful and influential Southerners. But it remains to
be seen whether these