The American Missionary. Volume 43, No. 03, March, 1889

NOTES FROM NEW ENGLAND

BY DISTRICT SECRETARY C.J. RYDER

Here comes a gift of five dollars from an aged friend ninety-one years old! He has contributed to the A.M.A. every year for a generation. Who will step into the place of these grand veterans when they are called from the ranks? Such examples ought to thrill younger men and untie their purse strings.

At a recent visit to Wellesley College, the great company of students listened patiently more than an hour to the story of the "American Highlanders; where they are, who they are, and what the A.M.A. is doing for them."

This interest on their part is characteristic of the intelligent people throughout New England. The churches are asking for information concerning these most interesting mountaineers, and are prayerfully considering their duty toward them. In view of this general interest, I give in these notes this month the following review of a book which I have been requested by several New England pastors to present in THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY.

The Loyal Mountaineers of Tennessee. By Thomas William Humes, S.T.D. Ogden Brothers & Co.: Knoxville, Tenn.

Another interesting book on the Mountain people of the South. Those who are familiar with the mountain missions of the A.M.A. will hail this new volume with special delight. Those who read it will understand better the magnitude and importance of this great field into which the A.M.A. has pushed out its vanguard, and the necessity of following up these advances with a solid phalanx of intelligent and enthusiastic missionaries. This historical sketch brings prominently before us the heroic manhood of these American Highlanders during the years of bitter and systematic persecution by the rebel government. There is stuff in these Highland chieftains and their clans!

Three facts that stand out from the pages of this history must intensify our interest in these American Highlanders. One, the systematic and brutal outrages inflicted upon them by the rebel authorities and their heroic endurance; second, their unimpeachable and unswerving loyalty to the country; third, the tremendous debt the loyal Christian people of the North owe them. Take the following order issued by J.P. Benjamin, Secretary of War, November 25, 1861, which appears on the 140th page of this book;

"First. All such as can be identified in having been engaged in bridge-burning are to be tried summarily by drum-head court martial, and, if found guilty, executed on the spot by hanging. It would be well to leave their bodies hanging in the vicinity of the burned bridges."

The State had voted in February, by sixty thousand majority, to remain loyal to the Union. These Highlanders had sought to save their section of the State from rebellion, and to defend their cabin homes from outrage and butchery. In doing so, they had burned bridges, and for this the government at Richmond deliberately instructs its army officers to hold a mock trial, to hang, and to brutally expose the bodies of those who had been executed, so that surviving friends would have to look upon these sickening horrors! It seems almost impossible that any man could deliberately perpetrate such monstrous cruelties. But the order was issued by the rebel government and carried into effect. Indeed, the brutalities went even farther than this. In December, 1861, two men by the name of Harmon, father and son, were hanged. Only one gallows was provided, and the authorities compelled the father to stand by and see his own son pass through the horrors of strangulation while awaiting his own execution. (Page 151).

The diary of Parson Brownlow, from which abundant quotations are given in this volume, furnishes many similar instances of cruelty perpetrated against these loyal mountaineers; but they were true to the flag from beginning to end. They left their homes, and camped in the forests and "down the coves" of their own wild mountains. Parson Brownlow encamped for days in concealment in Tuckaleeche and Wear's Coves in the great Smoky Mountains. Had fair and honorable means been used, these loyal mountaineers would have saved Tennessee from that disgraceful chapter in her history which records the dark story of her treason. This book must stir the patriotism and Christian enthusiasm of every one who reads it. It ought to lead us to make genuine sacrifices to show our appreciation of their supreme devotion to the country by sending to this Mountain Work, opened by the A.M.A., generously of men and of means.

ENGLISH AS IT IS NOT TAUGHT

He didn't crack a smile.

I feel many gratitudes to you.

His forgiven name is John.

Help us to bring forth meats for our repentance.

I won't fool with the Lord no more.

Help us to pray as the Republican did, "God be merciful to me a sinner."

At one of our schools, students had been learning the Beatitudes to recite at the table, and one Sunday they were asked to write the meaning in their own language. One wrote, "To be poor in spirit means weak but willing." Another, "Poor in spirit means that a person who has religion and don't make a great to-do over it, has as much as one who cuts up over theirs." ("Cutting up" means the noisy demonstrations in meeting).

A pupil gives us the following insight into the precise appearance of the beings of the future world. "An angel is two lines which intend to meet," in response to the question, "What is an angle?"

According to one of our growing historians here, Gen. Gage, of Revolutionary fame, didn't altogether believe in the then existing styles, for we were told the other day, that, "Gage, learning that there were millinery stores at Concord, at once sent a force to destroy them."

CLIPPINGS

FROM PAPERS EDITED BY COLORED MEN

The only colored daily paper in America is printed at Columbus, Ga. It is a four column folio, neat in make-up and well edited.

COLORED EXHIBITIONS TO THE FRONT.—At the recent Virginia Exposition Mr. J.C. Farley, the colored photographer, was awarded the first premium for his work, for which he is to receive a diploma and medal. Our esteemed townsman has entered a new field and ascended to the topmost round of the ladder at one bound.

A COLORED PRIZE WINNER.—Give a colored man a fair show and he is certain to give a good account of himself. One of the notable college contests in Illinois is known as the Swan Oratorical Contest, and is held annually at Lombard University, at Galesburg. This contest was held Thursday night of last week. The first prize was awarded to Burt Wilson, a colored student, who lives at Galesburg, and is one of the most promising scholars in the university. His oration is said to have been an unusually brilliant effort.

WHAT THE NEGRO HAS DONE.—In the South there are now 16,000 colored teachers, 1,000,000 pupils, 17,000 in the male and female high schools, and 3,000,000 worshipers in the churches. There are sixty normal schools, fifty colleges and universities, and twenty-five theological seminaries. The colored people pay taxes on nearly $200,000,000 worth of property valuation. This is a wonderful showing for a race that has two hundred years of slavery and four thousand years of barbarism back of it; it needs no silent sympathy or patient waiting, when in twenty years it makes such a showing. American generosity has done for the South in twenty years what statesmanship has failed to do in over a century; but generosity should not be depended upon, as even that can reach a limit.

SUCCESSFUL IN BUSINESS.—North Carolina has a colored man whose business success is hard to find surpassed by even the white people. The Concord Times, a white journal, gives the following interesting sketch of his career:

He was born a slave, and until he was twenty-one years of age, never had a copper of his own. Possessed of a keen and adaptable mind, he has by his energy and untiring efforts accumulated a competency, equalled by few of his race in the South.

Warren Coleman commenced business here in 1879. He has lost everything by fire three times,—one time meeting with a loss of $7,000 and no insurance. Various purses of money were made up and sent him at this time, all of which he very nobly returned. But by pluck and energy he rose again.

He owns four farms, amounting in all to some 300 acres of land, and employs on them twenty regular hands. He is the owner of ninety-eight tenement houses and is still adding to the list, having in his employ at this time twenty carpenters and eight or ten brick masons, laborers, etc.

THE SOUTH

REVIVAL AT LE MOYNE INSTITUTE

PROF. A.J. STEELE

It has been my privilege and my great joy to write you often during my nearly twenty years of continuous service under the Association, of God's blessing upon our work. We are now in the midst of one of the most gracious visitations that I have ever experienced, and I recall "times of refreshing" not a few. In 1875, the first great revival in connection with this school saw over a hundred and twenty-five of our pupils hopefully converted to Christ, and the young converts, by their faithfulness, overcame all the fixed notions and ways of the old churches on the subject of early conversions.

I have since that time, year by year, followed many of these young people, and know that the great majority of them have proven faithful followers of the Saviour, and many have lived lives of exceptional influence and usefulness. Since that notable year in the history of the school, but one year has passed without most evident tokens of God's gracious presence in the conversion of pupils attending the school. In some years the number has been large, and in others not so many have made open profession of faith in Christ. I think I am safe in saying that not a year, nor a month, has passed in which the school has not been markedly under the influence of the Spirit, giving guidance and instruction, and drawing, as with cords of love, many of our pupils to see in the religion of the cross a peace and joy to be found nowhere else. To this influence, the school owes all its success in every direction. For myself I can truly say that in the midst of the sorrow that has been my constant and only companion, besides my Saviour, the joy of this work and the consciousness of its acceptance with God have alone held me to the task laid upon me these years. I rejoice now, with all my fellow workers, that we are in the midst of another season of reaping, after months of sowing precious seed.

During the past week, two members of the senior class, young men, professed their faith in Christ in the quiet prayer meeting of the school, as did also a young lady of a lower class, and now, this week, Brother Wharton is with us, and to-day, at the first meeting led by him in the school, sixteen of our students, three more of the senior class, quietly but hopefully profess to become followers of the Master, with scores more earnestly seeking to enter in.

Since writing the above, two days of great but quiet interest have passed in our work. Between thirty and forty of our scholars, including five of the seniors and nearly every pupil of the other higher classes, have learned the joy of Christian experience, and there are yet others to follow.

The night meetings at the church are very interesting and in them conversions are occurring in considerable numbers. The class work of the school has not been interrupted, as half-hour meetings only have been held, morning and noon. We rejoice greatly in this work that crowns and confirms all the other work of the school.

EVERY-DAY LIFE

MRS. A.W. CURTIS

Put on your best glasses, dear friends, and take a peep at the regular, every-day life of some of the workers among the colored people South.

Rap, rap, rap.

"Come in!"

It is a toil-worn, sad-faced woman, with hard, bony hands, and that look of patient endurance that is so pathetic. She is poorly clad, with only a thin bit of an old shawl around her shoulders, and a hat so disreputable that she instantly removes it, and drops it behind her on the floor. After a few kindly words of greeting, she tells her story. A sickly husband, deranged for the last nine years of his life, whom she had to support and care for; a daughter who married a wretch who treated her so cruelly that she, too, lost her mind, when he left her entirely, with their child. She kept the daughter confined to bed or chair, while she worked out as cook, to support them all. She had several other children. Finally the crazy daughter got away, and she does not know whether she is dead or alive.

What had she come to us for? Money, old clothes, help of some kind?

No, indeed. She came to see if we would take her grand-daughter and her own daughter, both about twelve years old, into our school. She had never been able to make them fit to go to any school, so they could not even read, but she would do her very best, if we would take them now. I wish Mr. Hand could have seen her shining face and tearful eyes, when we told her of the kind friend who had provided so grandly for just such cases as these.

A patter of small feet, a hasty rap at the door.

"Please ma'am, send little sister some medicine."

"What ails sister?"