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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Martha Schofield pioneer Negro
-educator, by Matilda A. Evans
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Martha Schofield pioneer Negro educator
-       Historical and philosophical review of reconstruction period of
-       South Carolina
-
-Author: Matilda A. Evans
-
-Release Date: June 4, 2022 [eBook #68234]
-
-Language: English
-
-Produced by: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading
-             Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
-             images generously made available by The Internet
-             Archive/American Libraries.)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTHA SCHOFIELD PIONEER
-NEGRO EDUCATOR ***
-
-
-
-
-
-  Martha Schofield
-
-  Pioneer Negro Educator
-
-  [Illustration]
-
-  Historical and Philosophical Review
-  of Reconstruction Period of
-  South Carolina
-
-  [Illustration]
-
-  By MATILDA A. EVANS, M. D.
-  Graduate Schofield School
-
-
-
-
-  Copyright, 1916.
-  BY MATILDA A. EVANS, M. D.
-
-
-  DuPre Printing Company, Columbia, S.C.
-
-
-
-
-Dedicatory
-
-
-To the men and women who braved the dangers and suffered the hardships
-of frontier life and bore with fortitude the pain of social ostracism
-and the sting of poison slander that through their work a lowly race
-might be educated, this work is respectfully dedicated by
-
-  THE AUTHOR.
-
-
-
-
-FOREWORD
-
-
-One of the benefits conferred by education is that of enlightening the
-mind on the subject of one’s duty. Finding what is duty the manner
-of discharging it will suggest itself to the alert, the active, and
-those of industrious and intelligent discernment. Perhaps forever
-hidden would remain the necessity for certain tasks were it not for the
-inspiration idealists receive from education. This education, if proper
-and well rounded, also forces all who embrace it into the line of work
-promising the accomplishment of the greatest achievements--achievements
-such as in leaving foot-prints on the sands of time leave no mark of
-dishonor but such as really and truly do give new heart and new hope
-and new courage to the weaker brother.
-
-That Martha Schofield was inspired by the highest motives that
-possibly could influence any one in choosing an occupation to be made
-a life-work is evidenced by the personal sacrifices she made in order
-to engage in it. The fortitude with which she bore the poison sting
-of slander, the cruel whip of character assassination and braved the
-threats of personal violence forcibly attests the sincerity actuating
-her in pursuing her chosen work. The results accomplished by the fifty
-years of earnest endeavor by her form a tribute to efficiency of
-women in administrative affairs that is seldom ever equaled by other
-human beings claiming greater strength by reason of sex. When the
-final history of the war between ignorance and enlightenment, between
-superstition and science, between vice and virtue shall have been
-written of the colored race the foremost name among all will be--Martha
-Schofield--Pioneer Negro Educator.
-
-  MATILDA A. EVANS, M. D.,
-  Columbia, S. C.
-
-
-
-
-Martha Schofield
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER I.
-
-THE HUNTED BEAST.
-
-
-A woman apparently thirty years of age, of mulatto skin, fell limp into
-a chair in the kitchen of Mrs. Oliver Schofield of Darby, Bucks County,
-Pennsylvania about the year 1857, with blood hounds and the voices of
-angry men following close upon her heels through the tangled swamps
-from which she had just emerged.
-
-“Who can thee be? Who can thee be?--and what does thee want here?”
-inquired excited Mrs. Schofield as she dropped the dish rag and rushed
-to the prostrate form in the chair, eager to render aid and comfort to
-the suffering and afflicted woman as well as to ascertain the cause of
-her abrupt, unannounced entrance into her home.
-
-Out of breath from the long run made necessary to escape the dogs
-and the traps laid by experienced officers of the law who had been
-so diligently upon her trail for more than a week, that she had had
-time to stop and rest and take nourishment for only a few minutes at
-a time, Laura Duncan was unable at first to give any coherent account
-of herself. She managed, however, to make it known to the kind Quaker
-lady that she was an escaped slave and was endeavoring with all speed
-possible to reach the Canadian border and enter the world of freedom,
-which she had been informed existed under the British flag in the
-Dominion of Canada for all who might enter that country.
-
-As causes moving her to take this drastic step in defiance of the
-law of her own land and the possibility of involving the liberty
-and happiness of all who might be kind enough to assist her in the
-accomplishment of the task, she recited such evils as brought tears
-to the eyes of her enforced host. She exhibited a lash-scared back,
-a broken bone or two and a deep cut on the head that had since been
-healed without serious results only by the aid of a skillful surgeon.
-
-But the physical suffering attested by these outward signs of the
-practice of brutality on the woman were but a fraction of the pain and
-torture which Miss Schofield knew was gnashing at her heart over the
-parting of herself and husband and children more than a month before,
-when at a public sale little Gabe, her ten year old son, and Jennie,
-the only daughter, and her husband, “Jim,” were each sold to different
-masters in as many different States and carried away where she would
-never see or hear of any of them again.
-
-“Martha” said Mrs. Schofield addressing her daughter, whose face was
-covered in an immaculate white apron that adorned her whole front, to
-hide the freely flowing tears that rushed from her eyes like water from
-the fountains, “do thee find thy father at once and tell him to come to
-the house as quickly as possible.”
-
-Then laying her arms around the body of the inconsolable wife and
-mother she spoke words of consolation and cheer, assuring her that God
-in his own way and wisdom would destroy the power of the government of
-human beings by the lash, would break the chains that bind the hand and
-foot and visit a just retribution on all those responsible for the sale
-of babies from the breasts of mothers. She begged and pleaded earnestly
-that Laura abandon the attempt to escape and entreated her to surrender
-to the officers and return to her master, but the slave, chafing under
-the influence of a life of injustice and brutality, expressed a firmer
-determination than ever before, to continue on in her course and begged
-pitiably of her host that her presence in the home be not divulged. She
-threatened suicide if captured.
-
-Mr. Schofield, himself, by this time had reached the house and
-instantly grasping the situation, requested of Mrs. Schofield a
-familiar old shawl and bonnet of hers. Dressed in these Laura, in
-company with Mr. Schofield, passed readily as Mary, his wife, among
-acquaintances of the latter, and successfully eluded all pursuit by
-the officers, who a half hour after her departure had ransacked the
-Schofield home from turret to foundation stone in search of the fleeing
-fugitive.
-
-Reaching a zone safely out of reach of harm’s way, the leader of the
-church of the Society Friends, deposited his burden, wishing her
-God-speed in her undertaking and placing in her hand one dollar in gold
-to assist her on her journey, turned his horse, after many days on the
-road, and made his way slowly back home, with a painful heart.
-
-During the interval of her husband’s departure and return, Mrs.
-Schofield was kept busy in the attempt to control the indignant and
-outraged feelings of Martha, who had gone to her mother dozens of times
-with the question of the justice and mercy of God and the wisdom and
-power of the government in permitting the fettering of four million
-bodies in chains and the trampling under foot by brutal might of all
-the sacred relations of wife, father and child.
-
-“Ah, my daughter, ’tis not for thee to question the mysterious workings
-of God,” she would reply, “in the Master’s own time and way He will
-touch the auction block, the slave pen and the whipping post, and in
-their place thee shall see what thy dear heart desires so much to
-see--happy homes and firesides, and school houses and books, where
-today thee only sees crime and cruelty and fear.”
-
-“But mother,” Martha would protest, “for how much longer must the poor
-ignorant slaves endure the infinite outrages heaped upon them by reason
-of the barbarism of the slave-holding oligarchy? Have they not suffered
-enough already? Is it not time to close the door on the slave-holding
-class and render judgment as swift and implacable as death? Their
-cause was brought forth in iniquity and consummated in crime, and I
-for one believe God would only be served by our societies (the Society
-of Friends and the Abolitionist Society) hastening on the inevitable
-civil conflict, believed by most people as absolutely necessary in the
-settlement of the whole question of slavery.”
-
-“My daughter, oh, my daughter, pray thee do not talk that way” said her
-mother in tones of profound anxiety; “does not the good book command
-thee not to kill? Eternal torment for thy portion if thou should
-commit murder, and to wish it to be done is father to the deed. Oh, my
-daughter! my daughter! thee frightens me!”
-
-“Oh, no my mother, there’s no murder in my heart, I assure thee,” said
-Martha; “I only desire the government’s protection for every human
-being subject to its authority and I want that same authority to turn
-every auction block and slave pen into a school house even if its
-necessary to exact by bullet every drop of blood that has been spilled
-by the lash, in accomplishing this result. Thee must concede that the
-Bible also teaches us to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a
-tooth. But I wish this to be done, Mother, only to make possible a
-happier and blesseder existence here on this earth for a lowly race,
-when all other means of accomplishing so desirable an end have been
-tried and proven in vain.”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER II.
-
-REVOLUTION AND WAR.
-
-
-During the ten years intervening between the precipitate appearance
-of the runaway slave at the Schofield home and the coming to Edisto
-Island, South Carolina, of Miss Martha Schofield for the purpose of
-founding an industrial school for the colored race, the new form of
-liberty conceived by our fore-fathers and dedicated to the principle
-that all men are born free and equal, had been put to a severe test as
-to whether this new form of government could be put into practice. The
-great Civil War predicted by Martha as inevitable in the settlement of
-the problem of slavery broke out in all its fury in 1860-61 and was
-not only attended by the loss of hundreds of thousands of priceless
-lives, whose bodies filled countless hospitals of pain, and made gory
-the prairies and furrows of old fields, as they on the side of the
-South as well as they on the side of the North bled and died for the
-eternal right as each saw what was their duty; but the demoralization
-precipitated by this gigantic conflict, followed by the assassination
-of President Lincoln, the idol of the whole free-civilized world, was
-even more staggering in its influence on the lives and fortunes of
-those left to solve the problems created by the great revolution.
-
-The waste of inconceivable sums of money through the awarding of
-contracts involving millions and millions of dollars by which fortunes,
-through little or no effort at all, were made in a single night was
-openly countenanced at Washington.
-
-Superfluous wealth chocked the nation at the North with its mighty grip
-and the riot of speculation, corruption and debauchery which followed,
-in the voting away of the public lands free of any charge to private
-corporations and the granting of subsidies of millions of dollars
-without any compensation whatever, laid such burdens upon the people
-that many of them until this day (1916) remain undischarged.
-
-The paralysis experienced by the business interests as a result of
-this whirlwind of corruption resulted in the decline of the credit
-of the country to such an extent that the six per cent. bonds of the
-Republic dropped to about seventy-three cents on the dollar in the open
-market. But the disastrous financial calamity which the war produced is
-of no consequence in comparison with the moral degradation into which
-the country sank.
-
-A few years before the panic of 1873 nearly everybody in the North and
-West, where conditions were prosperous in spite of the war, wanted to
-go to the cities where fortunes were waiting for them, and almost every
-farmer’s son took an oath that he would never cultivate the soil. At
-the age of twenty-one they left the dreary and desolate farms in droves
-and rushed to the cities to become bookkeepers, doctors, lawyers,
-merchants and sewing machine agents, anything to escape the heavy work
-of the farm. Those with capital wanted to engage in something promising
-huge and quick returns and so these built railroads, established banks
-and insurance companies. Some speculated in stocks of Wall Street,
-while others gambled in grain in Chicago with the result that the
-riches of the whole country flowed to their coffers in immense volume,
-and in their carriages and palaces the pitied their poor brothers on
-the farm, who as earnestly envied them.
-
-But the lap of luxury in which these citizens were being nursed was
-doomed to become thread-bare as, indeed, it did do, and always will
-do, when the world’s advance is checked by the want of assistance and
-co-operation of all classes of laborers. The railroad and insurance
-presidents became bankrupts and their companies went into the hands of
-receivers by the score. Large numbers of young men who imagined they
-had entirely too much education to be wasted on the farm and flocked
-to the cities in incredible numbers became in time, either absconders
-and fugitives from justice, or plain tramps and hobos, a demonstrative
-force to prove the saying, that the only really solvent people, the
-only independent people, are the tillers of the soil.
-
-At the South which had been reduced to the most degraded type of
-poverty there were no such opportunities for the accumulation of
-wealth as existed at the North and in the West. The few railroads
-that before the war intersected this section had been torn up by the
-necessities of war and needed rebuilding, but there was no money to be
-had anywhere with which to do the work. All the strongest blood and
-brain had been either slain in battle or rendered incapacitated for the
-tasks which the new order of conditions had forced upon the country.
-Aside from the loss of millions and millions of dollars as a result of
-the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves the South was forced
-also to bear the burden of an exorbitant tax on all crops produced,
-especially the cotton tax.
-
-The agitation set up by many of the acts of Reconstruction, impeachment
-proceedings against President Johnson and the foment and strife
-engendered by the rule of the military authorities opposed by the Ku
-Klux Klan, all served, to keep for years longer than necessary, the
-bleeding and prostrate South securely on its back, a helpless beggar at
-the mercy, in many instances of an army of unscrupulous and grafting
-office-seekers. Under such conditions it was impossible to obtain
-credit anywhere for the most necessary things of life and as there
-was almost nothing of any value produced, the greatest hardships and
-suffering, if not actual misery, was endured by the people of the South.
-
-Scores of persons gave up in despair and died. Cow peas, corn bread and
-molasses of such quality as only a few years before would have been
-considered unfit food for the slaves formed the sole diet, for the
-first few years after the war, of delicate and cultured women. Little
-children often went to bed crying from hunger. An element of the Negro
-population, rendered conspicuously brutal and vicious by service in the
-army, stole and threatened even blacker crimes, just as the game of war
-has affected the morality of all races of men throughout the history of
-recorded warfare.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER III.
-
-PIONEER EDUCATOR ARRIVES.
-
-
-Into the midst of these terrible times which made weak the souls and
-hearts of the strongest of men, came Miss Martha Schofield, the first
-of the pioneers to push into the distracted South to labor, to suffer,
-and if need be, to die for the millions of ignorant, irresponsible
-Negroes. Their education, along industrial lines, she made her
-life-work--crowning it on the 77th day of her birth, February 1, 1916,
-by passing from earth to heaven. But she left to show that she did
-something on earth a school and campus comprising an area of two entire
-blocks in the beautiful City of Aiken, S. C., on which she had erected
-eight buildings.
-
-The school farm, adequate for all farm demonstration work, consists
-of about 400 acres. The funds by which all this valuable property was
-acquired was raised by Miss Schofield herself, through the fluent
-use of her trenchant pen, which she knew how to wield as few women
-have ever learned to do. Everything contracted for in the interest
-of the school was paid for in cash as Miss Schofield, in all her
-fifty years of administration, never contracted the outlay of money
-without first having provided the means with which to meet claims. She
-enjoyed the good-will and friendship of men and women of wealth and
-influence throughout the country, especially of the old Abolitionists,
-who supported her institution generously as long as they lived and
-possessed the means with which to do so.
-
-The Schofield School at Aiken has sent out into the world many young
-men and women who have gone back among their own people accomplished
-teachers, ministers, physicians, farmers and artisans, leading the
-colored race of the South to the highest appreciation of what Martha
-Schofield’s motto for life was--“Thoroughness,” thoroughness not only
-in books and the industrial arts, but in thought and action as well.
-No doubt the success which attended the efforts of the graduates of
-this School is due, in the main, to the strict regard for efficiency
-with which this great woman inspired every student coming under her
-influence.
-
-When we contemplate the wide-spread influence which the life and work
-of Martha Schofield has exerted on the education of the people of the
-South, the white as well as the colored, words become inadequate to pay
-proper tribute to her; to justly express the appreciation felt by those
-having knowledge of her achievements.
-
-There is not a colored school in the entire South that has not
-acknowledged the wisdom of this Divinely endowed leader and instructor
-by establishing an industrial department. Recognizing the imperative
-importance of this sort of instruction almost all the schools and
-colleges for whites emphasize it by giving it first place in their
-curriculums. Clemson, for white men and Rock Hill Normal and Industrial
-Institute for young white women were established long after Miss
-Schofield brought home to the people of the South the crying necessity
-of preparing our boys and girls of all races for the actual duties
-met with in every day home life. The vision which she herself had of
-a thorough preparation for the humbler tasks lighted the intellectual
-skies of the whole South after years of success by her in the education
-of the weaker race. This fact is made more prominent by the action of
-many of the States in incorporating industrial courses in the common
-schools.
-
-Much credit must be given to the practical success of Miss Schofield’s
-school work for the marvelous strides made by the education of the
-Negro at such celebrated institutions as Hampton, Va., with an
-enrollment annually of over 1,500 students and an endowment of over
-$1,000,000.00; and at Tuskegee, with about an equal number of students
-and as great or greater endowment fund. Then there are other great
-institutions devoted entirely to the education of the colored race,
-making quite a feature of the industrial department, such as Atlanta
-University, Atlanta, Ga., Fisk University, Nashville, Term., Haines
-Institute, Augusta, Ga., Spellman University, Atlanta, Ga., Claflin
-and the Agricultural Colored State College at Orangeburg, S. C. Also
-Benedict at Columbia and Voorhees Institute at Denmark, all of which
-have grown into existence and attained the top-most rung of the ladder
-of fame since the coming to the South of Martha Schofield in 1865.
-
-Near the Schofield School is the Bettis Academy in Edgefield County,
-South Carolina, formed and modeled after the fashion of the Aiken
-School. Alford Nicholson, the principal, is a product of the latter
-and is working out with great similarity the ideas and theories of his
-Alma Mater. The good being accomplished here in a small way is one of
-the great triumphs of the life-work of Miss Schofield, it being her
-greatest aim in life not to create and endow great institutions of
-learning with money and high sounding names, but to plant in the heart
-and soul of every child coming under her influence those principles
-of efficiency that would enable them to get out into the world and
-actually do something to lift up the fallen. She acted always as if the
-taking of the name of the Lord in vain consisted entirely of praying
-for the Kingdom of God to come but doing absolutely nothing to bring
-those prayers to pass. “Deeds, deeds, my children,” she was fond of
-saying, “are what count, not mere words.”
-
-The absence of faith in God, she asserted, was seen in all those who
-did not turn their hand to accomplish the results for which they
-prayed. No one can successfully accuse her of hypocracy in the least.
-She practiced what she taught and taught others that anything less than
-that was hypocracy and infidelism.
-
-Miss Martha Schofield was born near Newton, in Bucks County,
-Pennsylvania, on the first day of February in the year 1839 of
-well-to-do parents, who professed and lived true the principles of
-religion as enunciated by the Society of Friends, or the Quakers, as
-they are commonly called. This stern sect of religious puritans date
-their arrival in America along with the earliest immigrants, and in
-proportion to numbers can lay as heavy claim to being responsible
-for the civilization of the present day as any other denomination
-inhabiting the New World. The same cause, religious persecution,
-leading other denominations to seek a home on American shores, where
-they could worship God in their own way, inspired the Friends to come
-to this country. William Penn, a very wealthy and highly educated
-man, famous the civilized world over for his kindness of heart and
-generous benevolences, was a member of the Society and one of its chief
-supporters in England and America. He founded the City of Philadelphia,
-which means brotherly love. The foundation stone of the whole structure
-of the Quaker religion is carved out of the rock of brotherly love, and
-it was this love that placed Ben Abon Ahem on the highest seat in the
-house of the Hall of Saints when the wandering Angel of the earth went
-to Heaven to pick out the Archangel within the pearly gates.
-
-The love which Martha Schofield bore for all mankind, white and black,
-Jew and Greek, male and female, friend and foe, was evidently inspired
-by a religious conviction that held her thrall.
-
-Not since Christ has there been a man or woman of whom it can be truly
-said he or she could not possibly, wilfully sin, but it is believed
-confidently by all who knew Miss Schofield best that she would not
-under any circumstances knowingly commit sin. It was as natural for her
-to be virtuous and righteous as it is natural for the vicious to be
-bad, unkind, selfish and immoral.
-
-While Miss Schofield was kind and generous to prodigality she was
-also as brave as a lion and quick as a tiger to fight if the occasion
-demanded it. While she always took counsel and weighed matters
-carefully she never failed to contend for what she believed to be
-right. Her nature seemed blended with the holiness of a sacred
-spirituality, imparted to it no doubt by her religious training, and
-an invincibleness in matters affecting social relations that bordered
-the stubbornness of Satan. Influenced, possibly, to greatness in the
-latter attribute by the teachings of the Abolitionist Party, to which
-she belonged in heart, mind and soul?
-
-As one of her most valued friends and one of the most brilliant of the
-many noteworthy people said of her at the funeral, the author wishes
-to repeat here: “Martha Schofield is not dead; she lives and will
-continue to live in the memory of her students scattered all over South
-Carolina and other States. She lives in their memory and in the memory
-of their children’s children, for there are few colored homes in which
-her name and deeds are not recounted in the family circle. I count some
-of her best work, the efforts she made to elevate and purify the home.
-She spent much time and endured many hardships traveling through the
-country speaking and teaching the value of homes and the necessity of
-clean homes, both physically and morally. She never tired of stressing
-these things and there are many good Negro homes in South Carolina and
-all over the Southland that are evidences that her efforts have not
-been in vain. Martha Schofield was helpful not alone to the Negroes but
-also to the whites, for good Negroes make good whites and good whites
-make good Negroes.”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IV.
-
-INSPIRED BY HIGH IDEALS.
-
-
-What motive led this young woman of only twenty-six, surrounded by
-wealth, by culture, and every circumstance that made her not only
-acceptable but desirable in the highest circles of society, to abandon
-all--home and friends and money and the pleasures which her position
-in the social world brings--for a life of the most arduous toil among
-a barbarous, if not a savage people, whose skin, unlike hers, was
-black and whose habits and customs were thought to be repugnant and
-repelling to those of refinement? She had been fully appraised, too, of
-the physical dangers that lay in wait for any one who would condescend
-to prostitute their powers of mind in the instruction and elevation of
-the Negro race, at the hands of the whites of the South. Her position
-between the fire of social ostracism on the one hand and the fagot on
-the other was one not to be envied. It would have daunted the courage
-of any woman made of weaker stuff, but being of sterner material and
-obsessed with a sense of duty in a just cause, such a sense of duty as
-led both the blue and the gray to do and die in the cause which each
-conceived to be right, Martha Schofield set a star for herself and
-determined to go to it even if she was forced to wade through blood and
-fire in doing so.
-
-Beginning her first labors on Wadmalaw Island, between Charleston
-and Beaufort, in South Carolina, Miss Schofield suffered every
-inconvenience and privation of frontier life. Aside from the annoyance
-and hindrances placed in her way by the few scattered white settlers in
-sympathy with the Order of the Ku Klux Klan, life was made unsafe by
-many diseases that flourish in this climate.
-
-The enrollment in her school consisted of the children of the 1,500
-Negroes who had followed Sherman in his march to the sea. She had the
-assistance of only one person, a white woman.
-
-She set to work not only to educate an army of Children but the duty of
-clothing and feeding the naked and starving, of which there were many,
-fell to her lot.
-
-It is beyond the reach of the imagination of the present generation to
-adequately comprehend the hardships endured by her at the time of which
-we write. October 24, 1865, she wrote in her diary as follows:
-
-“This morning I took my bread to school to watch; when light enough I
-made it up and sent it half-mile away to be baked in the only stove in
-the village. We distributed clothing for 102 today.”
-
-But for the aid of the Society of Friends and the Abolitionists who
-supplied food and clothing to her for free distribution, hundreds would
-have died from starvation and thousands have gone as naked as were the
-custom of some of the Negroes when captured in Africa and brought to
-this country as slaves.
-
-Under the conditions which Miss Schofield created an immense amount
-of suffering was dissipated. Not only the Negroes but she herself,
-faced starvation at one time for several weeks. This occurred when the
-steamer from Philadelphia, laden with a cargo of groceries, clothing,
-shoes and books, ran aground and remained motionless for thirty-one
-days. During this time Miss Schofield set the Negroes to work gathering
-oysters and acorns. With these and a few boxes of crackers, which she
-had hidden away for just such an emergency, she originated a kind of
-porridge that prevented actual starvation. “The crackers,” she writes
-in her diary “had to be broken up in fine parts so as to remove the
-worms from them.”
-
-The same tale of poverty and almost inconceivable hardships followed
-her from Wadmalaw to Edisto in 1866 and on to the Island of St. Helena
-in 1867. But these were things to be expected and to be born patiently
-as long as she had strength and health. But these gave away right here
-at St. Helena in the second year of her immigration to South Carolina.
-It was here that malarial fever, with which this section has been
-infected ever since it was settled, attacked her, and for quite a long
-time her life was despaired of. “This illness,” she writes, “occasioned
-hemorrhages of the lungs, from which all hope of recovery was abandoned
-by my friends.”
-
-It was at this very critical period in her career that those flighty
-and fashionable friends in the North, some of them her nearest
-relatives, urged her with all their might to give up the undertaking
-in the South and return to her home. It was very much against the will
-and desires of her own people as well as against the wishes of her best
-friends that she sacrifice her time and life in the interest of any
-race or cause, and she was told so before the instinct to engage in
-social welfare work had totally possessed her. They now drew a picture
-of a frail sickly woman with one foot in the grave and the other lifted
-up to follow, and asked her if such a feeble body even though possessed
-of ample means to employ teachers, had the power to direct the work so
-necessary to be done. She was urged to get out of the business in order
-to make room for some one stronger than she, who still had the strength
-to carry to completion the noble undertaking set in motion by her.
-
-But Martha Schofield answered with these words: “As long as there is
-life in me to work, I shall work. The coast may not be the place but I
-will yet find the place.”
-
-And she did.
-
-So in 1868 she went to Aiken, S. C, and started work again after losing
-her health and all her personal income. Assisted by an auxiliary branch
-of the “Freedman’s Commission,” a charitable organization composed of
-two dozen ladies, of Germantown, Pa., she soon was able to begin work
-on a scale of some promise.
-
-In 1870 the United States Government, through the “Freedman’s Bureau,”
-took official recognition of the necessity for the kind of work being
-done by her by having a small frame house erected for her. This house
-still stands.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER V.
-
-BRIGHTNESS OF MARTHA’S PUPILS.
-
-
-When Martha Schofield opened her first school in South Carolina it
-was impossible to secure the necessary text books and much of the
-instruction was oral. With the few books which the school did possess
-it was not an uncommon sight to see three and four pupils preparing
-their lessons from the same book. The children took the books home
-nights, until the “Blue Back” and Webster’s had gone the circuit round
-many times. Having advanced to the ability to write and read script,
-a pupil was no longer eligible to the benefits of the circulating
-library. He was then forced to copy at his spare time the lessons he
-was supposed to prepare during the night.
-
-Notwithstanding the serious difficulties attending the acquisition of
-knowledge without the aid of books, the intellectual as well as the
-moral improvement of not only the children but their parents as well
-was soon apparent. “There was an eager desire among all the children to
-attend school” says Miss Schofield in writing of her experiences on the
-Coast and later at Aiken; “never a truant.”
-
-The average attendance of the Negroes at school in the South today
-exceeds the attendance of 1900 by over 10 per cent. This thirsting
-after knowledge by the brother in black is one of his redeeming
-characteristics.
-
-Miss Schofield once put the question to a class in Geography as to what
-the world rested on. A grown man replied that it rested on stumps and
-big wild animals. A ten year old boy corrected him by saying that it
-rested on the Power of God. These definitions will serve to show the
-dense ignorance of the race at the time Miss Schofield began teaching.
-
-In a definition exercise the class was requested to define the word,
-husband. Volunteers were called for but no one volunteered. In an
-effort to lucify the subject and assist them to guess the meaning of
-the word, with an approximate accuracy, Miss Schofield asked them to
-tell her what she would have were she to marry. A little girl, almost
-ten, replied, with much enthusiasm but unconscious of any wit at all,
-“A baby.”
-
-As soon as a student mastered reading, writing and arithmetic
-sufficiently to enable him to read without much faltering and write
-at all legibly and add a sum of four or five numbers, Miss Schofield
-set him to teaching. The scarcity of teachers made this expedient
-imperative.
-
-A middle-aged man, Isaac Kimberley, who as a slave had been taught to
-read and write but had greatly added to his fund of knowledge by a term
-at Miss Schofield’s school, was one of the first to be honored with a
-school. It was located near Miss Schofield’s and closely supervised
-by her. Isaac assumed the duties of it with all the dignity of some
-divinely appointed potentate and proceeded at once to make use of
-only the most carefully chosen words possible, and put on a haughty,
-undignified air that made him more ridiculous than he really was.
-Alford Kimberley, a son of his former master, on meeting him soon after
-he began teaching, addressed him familiarly as “Uncle Ike.” “I’le hab
-yo’ to understan,’ suh, dat Ise neaver yo’ uncle or yo antie, suh, Ise
-yo eacle,” said Isaac in reply. “Frum dis day on, ef yo’ pleas, suh,
-Ise Prof. Isaak Kimberley,” continued the new teacher.
-
-“Well, take that, and that, Prof. Isaac Kimberley, from your equal,”
-responded Alford, as he bent over the prostrate form of the instructor,
-lying in the ditch by the roadside where he had knocked him. “I’ll
-teach you yet how to talk to white gentlemen, you low-down lover of
-blue-bellied Yankees, you!”
-
-No report of this dramatic incident ever reached the ears of Miss
-Schofield as Isaac was afraid it might. He concealed it from everybody
-in the neighborhood as much as possible, both on account of having
-gotten whipped in his first encounter after becoming a free man and
-also on account of an increasing amount of comment among both colored
-and white that he was daily growing too big for his breeches and would
-have to be whipped.
-
-Miss Schofield’s confidence in him, at no time, it is needless to say,
-was very great, but it was Isaac or worse. She finally dismissed him
-and looked around in vain for a “worser” one.
-
-His dismissal followed a visit to his school, which she was in the
-habit of making regularly.
-
-The day was an unusually cold one for South Carolina, where the
-temperature in the winter seldom reaches the freezing point, and
-through the unsealed crevices between the poles out of which the house
-was built, the sleet and snow drifted joyously in. A half hundred or
-more half clothed and well nigh starved little black urchins shook the
-shackly floor with their shivering and drowned their voices with the
-chattering of their teeth. If ever there was a blue-lipped, blue-gummed
-Negro school Isaac’s was surely one on that day.
-
-The extreme cold weather and the open condition of the house gave every
-student a free license to leave his seat, even without permission of
-the authority in charge, and crowd in close proximity around the wide
-open hearth at the end of the building, where with the shivering of
-limbs, chattering of teeth and shuffling of feet, all noise of their
-cries and shrieks as one would pinch the other or mash a toe or hit
-this one or that one over the head with a well worn book or trab ball,
-was drowned out.
-
-In the midst of the greatest confusion, Isaac, with the purpose in
-view of dispersing the crowd and relieving the congestion around the
-“fire place” blurted out with an assumed air of supreme dignity: “John
-Thomas, why don’t yo’ add full to de flame?” With his black eyes
-blinking like a rabbits when shot at and trembling from head to foot
-and turning round like a Bob White in a trap, it was clear to Miss
-Schofield that the child did not understand what the master of the
-school wished to be done. She immediately came to the relief of all,
-as she always seemed capable of doing in each and every predicament in
-which she or any of her children (children is what she called all the
-students) found themselves, by saying, “Isaac, tell John Thomas to put
-some wood on the fire and he wilt understand thee.”
-
-Walking along home with Isaac after dismission that afternoon she
-informed him that it would be necessary to suspend his school until
-the house could be repaired. Isaac, tired of waiting for the needed
-repairs, returned to the Schofield school for instruction himself and
-taking up the study of harness making, developed into a genius for
-work of this kind. After years of success at the bench in one of the
-best shops in a large Southern city, where he earned $22.50 a week,
-the government of the United States awarded a contract to him for 250
-army saddles. He could not teach school but he could make saddles and
-harness.
-
-The greatness of Miss Schofield’s work consisted of converting men and
-women who could never develop into great singers and teachers into
-useful productive workers and making them to see beauty as well as
-profit in the humbler tasks.
-
-The sad experience had with Isaac Kimberley as a teacher indicated to
-Miss Schofield the necessity for raising the standard of qualification
-for all applicants for teacher’s certificates, and with the cooperation
-of Mose Graham, a Negro, who could scarcely read or write but who had
-been made County School Commissioner by the Radical Party, then in
-complete control of the State and National Government, she undertook to
-do this, which proved a complete failure on account of the illiteracy
-of the Negro race and the reluctance with which competent white
-teachers from the North accepted the call from the South to join the
-ranks of the teaching profession.
-
-Ephriam Daniels, a six months pupil of the Schofield School, where
-he acquired the art of reading fluently and writing legibly and also
-mastered the four fundamental rules of arithmetic, concluded that in
-staying on the farm and tilling the soil he was hiding his light under
-a bushel and therefore, committing a sin which the Bible commanded him
-not commit, so he made application to Mose for a certificate to engage
-in the noble calling of teaching.
-
-“Mr. Commissioner Graham,” said Ephriam, “I’se a wastin’ muh tallents
-behin’ de plow handles, as I is a mi’ty smart man ef I is a nigger,
-and so I haf com ter see yo’ ’bout gitten one o’ dem licenses to teach
-chillen wid. Wi’l yo’ gib muh one?”
-
-Mose explained in detail and in a very perfunctory manner the
-difficulties of the teacher and discoursed considerably on the small
-compensation paid them. But encouraged his friend, however, by saying
-that the harvest was great and the laborers few, by which he meant that
-the office of County School Commissioner had a number of schools but no
-one to teach them.
-
-“Don’t care ’bout difficultys and small pa’--dats what yo’ mean
-by--what did you call it?--com--something--commishion, I beleives. All
-I wants is ter teach. I’se going in der bizness fer de gud I kin do,
-not fer de muney.”
-
-“Very good, indeed,” said Mose, “but befo’ I kin lisence yo’ ter teech
-I’se got to see Miss Marther Schofield and hab’ yo’ examed by her and
-me. Yo’ cum ter see me termorrow, ’bout ten o’clock.”
-
-When Miss Schofield heard of the ambitions of Ephriam that afternoon
-her heart ran down in her shoes, both because of the impossibility
-which she knew existed of ever making a teacher of Ephriam and the
-equally impossible task of helping him to realize it. He was as
-stubborn as a mule in his ways and when he made up his mind to do
-anything he worked at it with all his poor brain till it either proved
-successful or fizzled out. It pained her to think of the neglect which
-she knew in her own mind had attended his crop throughout the spring
-season when it needed most attention, which she was well aware from
-the nature of Ephriam had been diverted to the subject of school
-teaching.
-
-But on the insistance of Graham, in whose favor she had often to make
-some concessions, though none of any importance, she at some expense of
-time and dignity consented to meet him at his office at the appointed
-hour for the purpose of examining Ephriam Daniels for a certificate to
-teach in the free public schools.
-
-Dressed in a soldier’s old uniform, which was secured from the remnants
-of Sherman’s Army as they passed through South Carolina; with a large
-bandana handkerchief around his neck for a collar and an old stove pipe
-hat which his old master, John Rutledge Daniels, had given him on the
-day of his freedom, Ephriam appeared before the examining board with a
-pocket full of pencils and a quire or two of ruled fools-cap paper.
-
-Miss Schofield, who was one of the kindest and gentlest of women whom
-the author ever knew, eyed Ephriam with a well concealed curiosity as
-she asked him what preparations he had made for taking the examination.
-
-“Wull, Mis’ Sch’fields,” he said, “I’se got heap ob pencils and papur.”
-
-“Yes, I see you have,” replied the examiner, with laughter almost
-bursting her throat, “but what I mean to get at is, what preparations
-have you made for teaching school?”
-
-Quick as a flash Ephriam replied that he had sold his horse and rented
-out his farm.
-
-The uproarous laughter which this answer produced was genuinely
-participated in by all present, including Ephriam, although he could
-not for the life of himself, as he afterwards stated, see what all the
-laughing was about.
-
-Extending the examination a little more for the purpose of entertaining
-and amusing still further the board and its lone applicant, Miss
-Schofield was unkind enough to ask the definition of the noun, “word.”
-
-“Word,” repeated Ephriam, now quite seriously perplexed, “why, Mis’
-Schofiels, yo’ sholey noes dat I noes dat a word is someting dat yo’
-sais.”
-
-When she put the question of the fundamental principles of Arithmetic,
-Ephriam readily admitted that he did not know, and in a polite way
-gave the board to understand that he did not see the necessity for
-scholarship of a high grade for teaching “niggers what don’t ’no der A
-B C’s.”
-
-Not long afterward, Ephriam, his wife and their four children were
-stricken with small pox--that malignant infection formerly very common
-in the South--and it was beautiful the way Miss Schofield attended to
-their wants during the period of illness and final death and burial
-of Ephriam. On the morning of the sixth day of the appearance of the
-dreaded malady, Miss Schofield appeared at the home with breakfast for
-all and was horrified to find the body of the father behind the door,
-his death occurring sometime during the night, unknown to the other
-members of the family.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VI.
-
-EDUCATION UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
-
-
-Some time as many as a half dozen funerals a day occurred in the coast
-region from malarial fever or small pox. The chances for recovery were
-rendered difficult by the absence of any physician, the nearest one
-being sixty miles away.
-
-Among the medicines sent Miss Schofield from friends of the North was
-a bottle of port wine. This was sent in 1876, when she was attacked
-by a hemorrhage of the lungs, with instructions from a physician that
-she must take it three times a day. But the fear of setting an example
-which might prove the ruin of many people in her charge caused her not
-to open it. She took it to Aiken, and during the construction of her
-residence there it was deposited in the walls and no one except Miss
-Schofield to the day of her death, on February 1, 1916, knew where to
-break the wall; no one on earth knows just where to this very day.
-
-She despised the avarice and greed that caused men to manufacture
-intoxicants but hated with the venom of the devil the lust for gain
-by the municipalities and States which caused them to issue licenses
-for the manufacture of alcohol. She taught and lived that the greatest
-criminal in the history of criminology was the criminal who issued the
-license for the commission of crime. In her opinion this was not only a
-crime against society but a crime against criminals as well.
-
-The pernicious influence of alcohol on the Negro was largely
-responsible for her antagonism to the liquor traffic. Opposed to it
-naturally, as every educated and thinking person must be, she was more
-so after observing its destructive influence among the ignorant and
-vicious.
-
-It was confidently believed by her that if every Negro capable of
-complying with the registration laws regulating the qualification of
-voters, was registered and allowed to vote, uninfluenced by any outside
-influence, that the legal sale of alcoholic stimulants in the South
-at least, would be a thing of the past. She believed also that if
-positions on the police force were available to colored men for service
-in the Negro sections of the cities that not only would the illegal
-sale of intoxicants be stopped but crimes of every character would be
-largely suppressed.
-
-Martha Schofield, having lived to see accomplished the task to which
-her life had been dedicated on the day her father rescued Laura Duncan
-from the blood hounds of the slave holding oligarchy, died as happy
-and serene as an angel, perfectly confident that the work she had been
-doing would gain momentum and go on more splendidly each year, until
-illiteracy and physical and moral degradation would be an exceptional
-thing among the Negroes.
-
-Between the years of 1890 and 1910 the percentage of Negro illiteracy
-had fallen from 57.10 to 30.40 per cent. among children between the
-ages of ten and fourteen years. For those fifteen years of age and
-under nineteen, the percentage of illiteracy was only 18.90 per cent.
-
-The greater illiteracy in the higher age classes is very marked, the
-illiteracy of Negroes of 55 to 64 years of age being about 67 per cent.
-of the total, and nearly every one of those of 65 years and above were
-found to be unable to read or write when the 1910 census was taken.
-
-Negroes of sixty years and above, it will be recalled, were past
-childhood before emancipation, when little or no provision was made to
-teach them to read and write, and this accounts for the high percentage
-of illiteracy in the old people and the rapidly decreasing percentage
-of illiteracy among their children.
-
-At the rate of advance in education among the Negroes at present there
-will be less than 10 per cent. of the population between ten and
-fourteen illiterate in 1920, and every child of sane mind and sound
-body will be able to read and write by 1930, when the Fourteenth
-Census shall have been taken. This all in the space of fifty years.
-Remarkable!
-
-And yet there are well informed influential people who still maintain
-that the progress of the Negro has been slow, superficial and unworthy
-of the effort and money expended on it.
-
-Maybe so, but all admit, that it is very helpful to every human being
-to be able to read and write, to be able to assimilate the thoughts
-of others and to express his thoughts and hand them on to others of
-his kind by other means than by the word of mouth. To deny this would
-be equal to denying one the right to be taught the use of his mind or
-tongue, the two organs which God in His infinite wisdom put no ban
-upon, but made free as the air of Heaven, restricting their use only to
-the accomplishment of honorable and noble undertakings, thus dethroning
-the power of all, who though possessed of powerful intellect, would use
-their talent in the interest of the base and ignoble.
-
-While the peoples of all races are born with a knowledge of good
-and evil they are not possessed at birth with the knowledge which
-science is supposed to endow them with, and therefore, it should be
-the pleasure, as it certainly is the imperative duty of the State
-to provide liberally for the diffusion of knowledge among even the
-humblest of all its citizens.
-
-Martha Schofield taught more emphatically than anything else the
-economic necessity which exists among all races for the performance
-of duty, one to another. She argued that unrighted wrongs retard
-the progress of races, and if not checked by the refinements of
-civilization, through the enlightenment of the mind, become the
-instruments which at last wreck and destroy the strongest ships of
-State. She wanted her work to prove to the country that great measures
-of service in the field of education was the price to be paid for
-the salvation of our land against the misery and death, which others
-through ignorance and greed, had sown. She made the man at the North
-without principle or scruple to modify his ambition in the selfish
-accumulation of wealth equally as culpable as the man of the South,
-in producing the suffering and misery which attended the great
-civil conflict for freedom. She exhibited the chaos attending the
-Reconstruction period as the awful penalty for benighted stupidity
-and ignorance of an earlier day, for which none of the present day is
-accountable, and whose fruits none, in an earlier past, foresaw.
-
-Her doctrine of the elevation of the Negro so as to meet the
-necessities of the new standard of civilization which freedom had
-thrust upon him, spread like wild fire on a western prairie, and was,
-of course, shocking, even inconceivable to the imagination of the
-Southern white mind, which had been taught and religiously believed
-that education impaired the usefulness of the colored people, both as
-productive machines in the hard field of toil and as mediums for the
-expression of the divine messages of power.
-
-“No amount or kind of learning,” they argued, “can be made available to
-the ‘nigger’ because of his inability to assimilate it. He’s a brute,
-pure and simple, and has anyone ever succeeded through teaching in
-making a brute anything but a brute?”
-
-“Pigs will be pigs.”
-
-Laws by the General Assembly of South Carolina forbade the whites the
-privilege of teaching Negroes, but it was ignored by many good men and
-women who devoted much time and money to the education of the race.
-
-An influential Southern man, a former Governor of one of the great
-States of the South and now an honored member of the Senate of the
-United States once wrote a book in which he delved deep into history
-and anthropology and proved to the complete satisfaction of the voters
-of his State and to a great number of the learned professors of the
-sciences in some of the Southern colleges, that the Negro by every fact
-known to the scientists and evolutionists was a member of the families
-of the lower animals, and, therefore, an impossibility in the matter of
-intellectual development.
-
-The influence of this propaganda at the South exerted itself strongly
-to the detriment of the work undertaken by Miss Schofield, and others
-who came after her, in that it aroused the passions of the ignorant
-whites and determined them in the course of lawlessness, which but for
-the zeal and strength of heart expressed by Martha Schofield might have
-succeeded in delaying for many years the phenomenal rise and progress
-of the black people of the Southern States.
-
-One Sunday morning, the sun in all its radiance and splendor lighting
-up the whole world, doing for the earth and every creature and plant on
-it (giving them light and warmth and moisture that they might develop
-and grow to perfection) just what God would have us do--help along
-everything good that we can--on such a morning as this--a band of
-armed men approached Miss Schofield’s home and demanded that she quit
-teaching Negro children and return to her home or she would be forced
-to do so.
-
-To these she replied as follows: “Thee can kill my body and hide it
-away, but my soul is of God, that is the one invincible thing, which
-thee can not kill.”
-
-A noble life consecrated absolutely, even in the face of death, to the
-uplift and service of a lowly, impoverished race! Everywhere she went,
-she reached righteousness, law, order, temperance, truth, cleanliness,
-thoroughness and economy.
-
-After fifty years of toil, of social ostracism, of infinitely wicked
-persecution, which in later years by her patience, by her kindness
-and charity was greatly modified, she fell in the harness, full of
-achievements from the work which God had given her to do. At both the
-funeral service at Aiken, S. C., where she died on the night before
-the event arranged by friends to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary
-of her service to the colored people and her helpfulness to all who
-met her socially or in a business way, and at Darby Meeting House,
-in Pennsylvania, where the interment of the body took place, solemn
-covenants consecrating mind and heart and hand, amid the tears and
-sobs of blacks and whites alike, were made by many to keep alive
-forever the spark of truth and life she was first to express the
-courage to plant in a land of enemies, surrounded on every side by the
-dangers of assassination and the ravages of small pox, malaria, and
-dengue fevers.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VII.
-
-CAUSE OF MANY RIOTS.
-
-
-Between the years of 1865 and 1876 the severest tests were put to
-the work of being done by Miss Schofield, to see whether it could be
-made practical or not. By the courage with which she met and answered
-them she established once and for always the truth that the progress
-of light and reason can not be retarded long, no matter by whom and
-for what purpose such an attempt might be undertaken. The outrageous
-murders of Negroes by white men which went on almost daily following
-the unwise policy of the government at Washington in putting them in
-power in the South before many of them could scarcely read or write,
-precipitated the greatest excitement throughout the country. These
-outrages attracted the indignation of the North and martial law was
-declared all over South Carolina. This was done to enforce the rights
-of the peaceable, law-abiding whites, as well as the rights of that
-class of Negroes. Of course, much blame for the haughty attitude of the
-Negro and the declaration of martial law was laid at the door of Miss
-Schofield, whose teaching it was generally believed by the ignorant
-whites, was responsible for the deplorable state of affairs that
-existed. The Northern press at the time carried over her signature many
-accounts of the numerous brutalities happening in and around Aiken and
-she was repeatedly called to account by the leading white people, all
-assuming a threatening attitude that would have put to flight almost
-any other woman. But Miss Schofield would meet her antagonists face to
-face and dare them to harm even one hair of her head. She would remind
-them that they were all chivalrous white gentlemen and could not under
-their own pretences attack her and do her violence without surrendering
-every right and claim which they might have upon knight erranty.
-
-In a New York newspaper of the year 1876 she details one of the murders
-typical of the Reconstruction period.
-
-An old man, deaf, and dumb, who had never spoken a word or heard a
-sound in all his seventy years of life sought protection and refuge in
-the Schofield home. He had scarcely entered the house before an armed
-body of men arrived and demanded that the old dumb man reveal the
-hiding place of a certain negro whom the white people had decided it
-was necessary to put to death for their own peace and security. As he
-could neither hear nor talk, he answered the threatening attitude of
-the crowd with unintelligent murmurs and gestures and pointed excitedly
-at Miss Schofield. She explained the condition of the man and plead
-earnestly with the mob for his life, but to no purpose. They engaged
-him and stabbed him to death in her back yard as he undertook to escape.
-
-The same number of this newspaper carries instances and gives dates
-of other atrocities of a most depraved character. All this served
-to stimulate the growing animosity between the whites, who regarded
-the outrages being committed by them as absolutely essential to
-the preservation of civilization, and the Northern immigrants or
-carpet-baggers, who through the Negro vote were in power and held
-all of the important offices of the County and State. Many of these
-disgraced with shame for the time being the offices held for enriching
-themselves and impoverishing the already impoverished and well-nigh
-destitute country.
-
-Martha Schofield’s activities in broad-casting stories of these hideous
-outrages and appealing for the continuance of the reign of the military
-authorities in South Carolina as the only means of making life at all
-safe and possible under the circumstances, drew to her the contempt and
-hatred of the white people, who of all the people on earth were best
-suited by reason of their position and knowledge to assist her in her
-work.
-
-The suspicion and distrust she worked under of being in sympathy with
-the unscrupulous and corrupt regime in complete control of local
-affairs was manifestly a serious handicap. No one more clearly than
-she realized the disastrous effect their corruption would have on her
-school, her work and the colored people. She knew also that it meant
-defeat, in the South at least, of the great party whose triumph in the
-cause of freedom had made it possible for the first time in American
-history to test the possibility of elevating a lowly and much abhorred
-race. These influences weighed heavily upon her heart, and but for
-the courage and sternness of her nature, which seemed never to be at
-its best except when acutely vexed and infinitely tried, would have
-resulted in her voluntarily withdrawing from the self-imposed task
-almost in its beginning.
-
-The author shall never forget but she will always remember and value
-her most priceless treasure, the tender religious emotion which the
-happenings of these times provoked. They were felt keenly at the
-morning service of the Schofield Normal and Industrial Institute during
-her first year at this institution. How fondly does she recall now as
-if the voices of angels, whose voices of three decades ago as the whole
-school would sing those comforting old plantation hymns, “Steal Away,
-Steal Away to Jesus,” and “Love, Come a Twinkling Down.”
-
-The joy, the emotion and inspiration which is felt at the moment of
-writing these lines, over the probability of a similar joy in heaven,
-in the heart of her who had the heroic courage and the splendid manhood
-to risk her life in the unselfish and holy cause of implanting in the
-Negro mind and soul that which is beautiful, noble and sentimental, is
-unbounded.
-
-The reflection that large numbers of her fellow-citizens now rejoice
-with her, and the prediction that others who do not now do so will
-later on, gives her likewise an even greater measure of the debt of
-gratitude which all owe to the mother of the movement for the courage
-to continue the work for the uplift of the Negro even at the peril of
-her life.
-
-The work of Miss Schofield was made doubly more perilous each day
-by the misrule of the imported rulers of State. For these she had,
-instead of sympathy, an unbridled contempt, and never failed to express
-that contempt, whenever possible. But the white people would not
-condescend to hear her talk, much less believe anything which she might
-say. Besides their prediction that deplorable conditions would follow
-the rule of any Yankee, no matter whether he was a Scott, a Moses, or a
-Chamberlain, must not be discounted by the substitution of honest men
-from the North. The more corrupt a Republican was the better he served
-to prove the contention of the Southerners that only Democrats could be
-safely trusted with power.
-
-The dishonest, corrupt and unscrupulous officials in authority were
-equally as energetic in protecting their offices from capture by
-good men, by countenancing, if not actually encouraging, a spirit of
-lawlessness. Governor Jenkins, the Republican Governor of Alabama, was
-quoted as saying that he would like to have a few colored men killed
-every week or so, in order to provide the semblance of truth for his
-libels that the maintenance of the Radicals in power was the only
-salvation of the colored people. His work and talk, typical of that
-of others, served to frighten good men away and keep Jenkins and his
-kind in authority. And all this time Martha Schofield and her little
-band of Negroes, whom she was endeavoring to lead out of the depths
-of darkness, despair and crime into the light of reason, courage, and
-industry were daily praying for their enemies, for the deliverance of
-men of all races from the fetters of greed, avarice and revenge, which
-was responsible for the suffering and misery to be seen on every hand.
-They were praying not only, they were working also, with all their
-little might, that the things for which they prayed might come to pass.
-This school, of all others which the author ever attended, preached, if
-it preached anything at all, that God must never be expected to answer
-prayers unsupported by works.
-
-At one of the great political rallies held in Aiken by the Democratic
-Party a few years before the succession of Hampton to the Governorship
-one of the orators of the day said that the treasury of South Carolina
-had been so gutted by the thieves in power that nothing was left to
-steal except the power to stop the further enlightenment of the fool
-‘nigger.’ He added also, that he wanted a change in the government in
-order to make a South Carolina bond equally as good on the market as a
-“nigger’s note.”
-
-The legislatures of the Southern States authorized the increase of
-the public debt from $87,000,000 to $300,000,000. They held the right
-to declare martial law in every county whenever deemed advisable, to
-arrest and try any person by court martial and had at their disposal
-the right to raise regiments of soldiers, one of Negroes and one of
-whites, to execute their several wills. Under these circumstances
-it does seem that security of life, liberty and even the pursuit
-of happiness and the accumulation of property should have gone on
-undisturbed by anything which the aristocrats and poor whites might
-have done, in opposition to the desideratum so devoutly wished for by
-the authorities in power.
-
-But history records that the authorities with unlimited power signally
-failed in asserting any power at all; that the party in power with
-unlimited means at its command for accomplishing great undertakings of
-public enterprise accomplished only the complete demoralization of the
-whole South, financially and morally.
-
-After sitting a whole year the legislature of Alabama at the end of
-its session passed a bill authorizing the endorsement of the State’s
-credit, for the purpose of encouraging the development of railway
-construction and transportation to the extent of $16,000 per mile. Only
-one road was completed. Five were built a few miles and abandoned.
-Through the issue of bonds for one purpose or another, as for instance,
-the building of railroads organized and owned principally by the men
-voting the bonds, the public treasury was fleeced to the limit.
-This, combined with the stupidity, cowardliness and corruption of the
-military authorities hastened on the hurried collapse of organized
-government and substituted in its place a reign of terror and
-lawlessness without a parallel in Southern history.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER VIII.
-
-HAMBURG AND ELLENTON RIOTS.
-
-
-Several riots and some of as foul murders as ever disgraced the lives
-of men attended the uprisings around Aiken.
-
-Among the most important of these were the Hamburg, the Ellenton and
-Ned Tennant riots, all occurring within a few miles of Miss Schofield’s
-school.
-
-The Hamburg riot occurred in July, 1876, and proved to be one of the
-most tragic events, as it was one of the most disastrous occurrences
-for the Negro race and the Republican Party of the South that occurred
-during the entire period of Reconstruction. Seven Negroes and one white
-man were killed out-right, while one white man and two Negroes were
-seriously wounded.
-
-This sounded the alarm of danger in the South for the experiment being
-made with the Negro for self-government and urged immediate action
-by Congress for the protection of its policy there, if not its newly
-made citizens who at the first challenge had shown conclusively the
-incapacity to protect themselves.
-
-The riot was precipitated by two young white men, Henry Getzen and
-Thomas Butler, who were driving through Hamburg on the return from
-Georgia to their homes in South Carolina, just across the State line in
-the vicinity of Augusta. At the time a company of one hundred Negro men
-in command of Captain Dock Adams was drilling on the principal street
-of the town of Hamburg, and a large proportion of the Negro population,
-as usual, was out admiring the spectacular performance. It is claimed
-by the white men that the company was drilling “company front” and so
-filled the street from side-walk to side-walk, which permitted them no
-room to pass; and that Captain Adams instead of ordering his troops
-to fall into “Column fours” or “column platoons,” he ordered them
-to “charge,” at which command, Butler, a son of Mr. Robert Butler,
-shouted from his seat in the buggy, with revolver drawn, that he
-would shoot to death the first man that stuck a bayonet in the horse.
-With a hundred bayonets gleaming in the sun and several hundred of the
-colored race looking on, the Negroes knew the butchery of the whites
-was an easy matter, but being desirous of avoiding a conflict which
-they knew only too well was instigated at that time for the purpose of
-arousing the already over enraged whites to an action that would later
-on mean either the annihilation of themselves or their old masters and
-mistresses, whom some of them still loved and admired with the same
-affection and admiration that caused most of them throughout the battle
-for their freedom to remain at the fire-side and defend the homes of
-those out in a war fought to continue them in a state of bondage, the
-Captain ordered a halt and opened the ranks so that the buggy could
-pass. Completing the exercises, the soldiers were marched to their
-armory and dismissed. Adams then went, as was his right to do, to a
-Justice of the Peace, “General” Prince Rivers, a Negro, an ex-Union
-Soldier, commander of the Negro militia, the State Senator from Aiken
-County in the General Assembly and also the Trial Justice for his
-district, and swore out warrants for Getzen and Butler, charging them
-with interfering with his company at drill.
-
-Hearing of this, Butler hurried home and informed his father of what
-had happened, who went in haste to the same Trial Justice and secured
-a warrant for Adams for obstructing the highway. News of the “cowing”
-of the Negro militia and the subsequent issuance of warrants for the
-captain of the company and the white men and the setting of the trials
-of each for a hearing was spread all over the surrounding country in a
-very short time, and excitement was intense on both sides as to what
-the outcome would be.
-
-Without quoting the exact words of one of the members of the rioters
-who was the leader in the three great riots, the settled purpose of
-the whites was the seizure of the first opportunity that might be
-made by the Negroes to provoke a riot and demonstrate to the latter
-through blood-shed the utter hopelessness of the attempt of the Negro
-to rule and so rid South Carolina of the domination of Negro and
-carpet-bag government. For the approaching trial elaborate preparations
-had been made by the whites, including the employment of General M.
-C. Butler for the defense of Thomas Butler and Henry Getzen and the
-prosecution of Adams, and the calling together of all members of the
-Sweet Water Sabre Club, an organization of the leading white men of
-Edgefield and Aiken Counties for the destruction of the Negro regime
-locally and for use in overthrowing the State government and for the
-purpose of trampling under foot the laws passed by Congress, intended
-to give the Negro equal power with the white in the government of the
-State. Members of this club were not only instructed to attend the
-trial for the protection of the two young white men, but were ordered
-to be present to see to it that if no opportunity offered itself to
-provoke a riot, then they were to create one, anyhow. They were to go
-un-uniformed and armed with pistols only, but were to have their rifles
-near at hand and be ready at a moment’s notice to engage the blacks in
-deadly combat under their own vine and fig tree.
-
-Emboldened by the apparent cowardliness of the Negroes to attack
-Getzen and Butler a few days before, members of the club expressed
-much fear that the Negroes would be bold enough to show resentment to
-any indignity which they might offer, and so would bring to naught
-the various plans and schemes previously formulated to engage them
-in battle. News of their presence in Hamburg and of their object had
-preceded their arrival, and the justice ordered the hearing postponed
-to a later day, when the orderly trial of the case could be assured
-by the protection of additional militia-men. The whites were quick to
-see the advantage which the Negroes would obtain by delay and promptly
-decided to begin the attack at once.
-
-At about five o’clock in the afternoon, just as Adams and his company
-had assembled in their armory, General M. C. Butler sent the captain
-word that his militia with guns had shown that they were a menace to
-the peace and good order of the community and demanded of him the
-surrender of his guns, informing him at the same time that the whites
-were resolved to put an end to the political rule of the Negro and the
-carpet-bagger or die in the attempt that very day. With his prompt and
-peremptory refusal to surrender, Adams also sent defiance to the white
-men. This boldness somewhat dismayed the latter as they had with them
-five rifles only. The remainder of their armament consisted of pistols
-and shot-guns, making the effectiveness of the attacking party very
-inferior in the matter of weapons as in numbers. But this inefficiency
-was more than offset by the difference in training of the opposing
-parties, by the inheritance of many of the whites of thousands and
-thousands of years of skill in the use of the weapons of war, while the
-only training ever given the Negro had been one of fear. This had been
-his by inheritance just as the white race had inherited its contempt of
-fear. It is as natural for some of the Negroes to show cowardliness as
-it is for some of the whites to show bravery, and this difference in
-the qualities of the two races must remain relative in proportion to
-the intellectual and moral development of each race.
-
-Besides, think who they were fighting--why, their old masters and their
-sons, whom some of the Negro soldiers no doubt, had risked their lives
-in previous emergencies to protect and defend from danger.
-
-Could it be expected, under the circumstances, that their aim would
-prove unerring? Wasn’t it rather to be expected at the beginning that
-the shots which the poor, illiterate Negroes fired would fall wide of
-the mark, just as they did?
-
-All admit now, even the intelligent Negro and the radical abolitionist,
-that the arming of the Negroes before first teaching them the use of
-weapons was a mistake, but this would apply with equal force to the
-ignorant, illiterate white race. ’Tis the condition of the mind that
-makes the body fit or unfit. The adder is not better than the eel,
-because of his painted skin, nor the blue-jay any better than the wren
-because of his fine plumage, as the Bard of Avon well expressed it when
-addressing good Kate and reminding her that she was none the worse
-because of her poor furniture and mean array, provided her mind and
-heart were perfect.
-
-The Negro has arms and hands as strong as iron bands and with these he
-can punish into insensibility the men of almost any race; there are
-white men endowed with equally great physical powers who can, like the
-Negro, subdue others not so powerful in animal strength. Each of these
-types of men labor in the fields of arduous toil, neither having the
-time and, in most cases, lacking the intelligence to bathe and live a
-sanitary life, much less educate their poor brains. For this reason
-neither are the equal, either in war or in the every day intellectual
-occupations of life, of the men trained and dexterously skilled in the
-use of their muscles and brains. The psychological influence of the men
-of education over the ignorant and illiterate must not be overlooked
-neither in any attempt to account for the tremendous supremacy which
-the few exercise over the many.
-
-At any rate, the superiority of the seventy members of the Sweet Water
-Sabre Club over the one hundred members of the Negro militia was
-amply demonstrated at Hamburg on July 8, 1876. It is possible that
-the Negroes, who could have destroyed the entire mob in a few minutes
-with their superior equipment, were aware of the reinforcements lying
-in wait at the beck and call of General Butler, and so retained their
-position in the armory as a means of protection against an attack by an
-overwhelmingly superior force. Certain it is, that from a vantage point
-of view the inside of the armory was no suitable place from which to
-shoot. The soldiers were compelled to shoot from below the windowsills,
-which elevated their guns, and so their bullets, except the one which
-killed Makie Meriwether, were spent in vain. At the sound of the first
-firing reinforcements for the whites began to pour into Hamburg by the
-hundreds, and no time was lost in obtaining a piece of artillery in
-Augusta and bringing it into action. Two shots from this destructive
-machine silenced the guns of the militia and the members of the company
-began to retire as secretly as possible, it being well understood by
-all that the whites would give nor ask any quarter in the orderly rules
-of warfare, as in the matter of capitulation and terms of surrender.
-The knowledge by every Negro at the beginning of this historic event
-that the battle meant death to everyone captured possibly unnerved
-every soldier and precipitated the demoralization following the advent
-of the solitary field piece of artillery. Out of the forty Negroes
-captured only a few belonged to the militia, the members of which the
-mob was determined to destroy that night, but as most of these had
-escaped, then it was decided to kill anybody in reparation for the
-death of young Meriwether. So a search of the homes of all Negroes
-and some of the whites was made, including that of a Jew named Louis
-Schiller, who was friendly with the Negroes and had through their
-votes, under the new order of things, obtained and held the office of
-County Auditor of Edgefield County before the creation of Aiken County.
-It was decreed that Schiller should be put to death, but he escaped
-with his life only by climbing through a trap door leading out on the
-roof and hiding himself behind a parapet on top of the house. All the
-while he was in hearing distance of the curses and execrations heaped
-upon his name and the avowed intention of the mob to hang him sooner or
-later.
-
-Two, among the forty prisoners held under guard while the searching
-party worked, who knew that their capture meant their death, attempted
-to escape by jumping over a fence with their guards looking on and
-running as fast as their legs could carry them in hope of reaching a
-place of safety; but white men seemed to be everywhere, and although
-one of them, Jim Cook, the town marshall, did escape his guards he was
-shot to death by bullets from a shot-gun which tore in his head as
-he dashed through the crowds. The other had been killed by the guards
-having him in charge.
-
-Cook was supremely hated by the entire white population of the County,
-more so, than other individuals of his race on account of his activity
-in the office of marshal, which the whites charged he used without
-provocation to humiliate and degrade them. Over his death there was the
-greatest rejoicing throughout the county among the whites.
-
-Being unable to locate any more Negroes, General Butler and Colonel
-A. P. Butler concluded that all work was practically finished and
-quietly departed for their homes. They did not leave any orders and
-the members of the mob began to disperse in perceptibly large numbers.
-But the thirst for blood born of that insatiable desire to torture, to
-torment as in the fiery pit, and to murder implanted in the heart of
-individuals, half-animal and the sport of impulse, whim and conceit,
-until relieved by the tameness and intelligence which time and
-education alone can give, had not yet been satisfied, although for one
-life taken by the militia they had taken two.
-
-These deluded children of the white men suffering with the same malady,
-ignorance, with which the children of the blacks were more seriously
-suffering, but recognizing the advantage which their superiority of
-numbers now gave them, reasoned that it was a dear piece of work to
-exchange one of their number for only two Negroes. It was argued that
-a story like that would not appease the popular clamor that now would
-rise like a heavy mist from the sea and gain the momentum of a cyclone.
-So it was solemnly agreed that, while the annihilation of the entire
-Negro population of the town of Hamburg would not atone for the death
-of Meriwether, the members of the mob would content themselves for that
-night, at least, with the assassination of only the meanest characters
-among the remaining number of prisoners held. The duty of designating
-these “meanest” characters, and those most deserving of death, fell
-to the lot of Henry Getzen, one of the young men who was the original
-cause of the riot and whose residence in the vicinity of Hamburg
-brought him into the closest contact with the Negro population and so
-prepared him fully for the duty of passing judgment upon the destiny of
-the prisoners.
-
-His hands, red with the blood from the wounds that had killed Makie
-Meriwether and his heart beating in unison with his rankling mind at
-thought of the imaginary injustices already done, or to be done, by the
-Negro, the state of his feelings made him anything else but fit to pass
-upon the lives of the men now at stake, even had he been an honest man
-and inspired by high and lofty ideals as it must be conceded many of
-the whites in the Hamburg riot were.
-
-The purpose by the whites was to use this riot to strike terror in the
-heart of the Negroes and intimidate them, then and there and for all
-time, in their aspirations for political as well as social advancement.
-
-At that time, as at this time, in the case of a large element of the
-white population, it is undeniable that it is against their express
-desire that encouragement for improvement of the Negro be given him.
-Witness, the laws passed by the several Legislatures as late as 1916 in
-discrimination of him, one of which forbids the employment of truckmen
-in the cotton mills along with other employees whose skin is white.
-Several bills have been introduced for passage in the General Assembly
-of South Carolina to make the instruction of Negroes by whites a
-violation of the law, but up to this date, 1916, all measures for the
-purpose have failed of enactment.
-
-When such laws finally become effective it may be proposed by the
-Negroes to restrict the practice of medicine by blacks and whites to
-the respective races to which each belongs. Likewise measures may be
-devised and enacted into law, which will make it unlawful for white
-salespeople to wait upon Negroes in the stores, or for Negroes to wait
-upon whites as sales clerks.
-
-The constitutionality of the proposed law relating to the restriction
-of Negro teachers only in Negro schools is thought by some lawyers to
-be as applicable to physicians and clerks as to teachers.
-
-The same racial prejudice which showed its specter-head in demoniac
-form in the case of the burning at the stake of two Negroes near the
-town of Statesboro, Georgia, in the year 1905, and the previous death
-by fire at the stake near Newman, Georgia, in 1895 of another was the
-moving spirit that actuated the mob and guided the hearts and hands of
-Henry Getzen and his band at Hamburg, twenty and thirty years before.
-As fast as Getzen could select from among the prisoners those he
-considered most worthy of death, they were taken out in the streets,
-before the eyes of their wives and children and shot to death, in
-the light of a brilliant moon reflecting the love of heaven, but no
-wavering image of that love was anywhere to be found in Hamburg that
-night. God and the angels had deserted it without any apparent concern
-for the safety of the helpless blacks.
-
-When the firing ceased the mob’s victims, numbering seven with the two
-who previously had been killed, were piled side by side in the most
-conspicuous part of the town, and presented a grewsome sight, lying
-stark, stiff and cold, when the Negroes who had fled from the town
-returned to their homes on Sunday morning following.
-
-Those of the prisoners who were spared, about twenty-eight in all,
-were given permission to leave and told to go with all speed at their
-command which they were none too slow about doing. Volley after volley
-was fired after them, over their heads with no intention to hit or
-injure them.
-
-Had it been known before they were allowed to go that one of the
-supposed dead was only assuming death the number freed would have
-been reduced to twenty-seven instead of twenty-eight, for it was the
-decision of the mob that nothing less than eight lives should be taken
-in retaliation for the life of young Meriwether. Pompey Curry, who
-was selected among those to be shot fell dead at the first report of
-the guns and remained motionless and apparently breathless throughout
-the examination of the bodies and their disposal by the mob until
-the whites had all gone home, when he crawled through the high weeds
-which were near by and made his escape in the woods with only a slight
-wound in his leg. Among all the witnesses for the government in the
-prosecution of members of the mob which followed the conflict, none
-was of the importance of “Pompey Curry” as he knew by name a large
-number of the men and could point them out on sight. He discharged his
-duty as a witness in the celebrated trial, but a short time afterward
-he suddenly disappeared and no one knows or appears to know whatever
-became of him.
-
-The success of the mob in thus attacking and annihilating a company of
-the government’s own soldiers and ruthlessly putting to death peaceable
-citizens in defiance of the law, without judge or jury, gave the
-greatest encouragement to the hopes of the whites. It was really of
-more far-reaching consequences in influencing their lives and fortunes
-than any incident ever occurring before or since in the history of
-South Carolina.
-
-The direct opposite effect which it had upon the Negro and upon the
-people of the North, where it occasioned the bitterest comment,
-resulted in Congress appointing an investigation committee and the
-substitution of white Union soldiers to fill the places made vacant
-by the resignation of the Negroes from the ranks. Their resignation
-resulted from the fear they had of the whites and sincere desire to
-work in the interest of peace. They were also encouraged to resign by
-such men as Chamberlain, whose record as Governor, although placed in
-power by the votes of Negroes, is one of the most honorable of any
-Governor who ever filled the office of Chief Executive.
-
-This tragic episode took from the Negro his last hope of being able to
-control the elections which followed in the fall. It gave to the whites
-all the freedom they desired to follow the doctrine of General Mart
-Gary to vote early and often. By doing so, they changed a Republican
-majority in Edgefield County of 2,300 to a Democratic majority of
-almost 4,000!
-
-As an example of the perfect contempt with which Gary and his mobs
-treated the authority of not only the officials of the County but of
-the State may be cited his refusal to obey General Ruger’s orders to
-have the court house at Edgefield vacated by the whites. At this time
-he openly defied the military power of both the State and National
-government when he with his Red Shirt regiment, which he organized,
-captured the Chamberlain meeting on August 12, 1876. In a fiery speech
-to the Negroes at that time he announced in no unmistakable terms that
-no power above or below earth was sufficient to prevent the success of
-the Democratic Party at the polls that year nor in any succeeding year.
-He told the white men that an ounce of “Fearnot” was worth a ton of
-“Persuasion” and exhorted them to put the ballots in the boxes and he
-would see that every one was counted.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER IX.
-
-GREAT JUDICIAL FARCE.
-
-
-The reign of lawlessness resulting in the torture and wanton murder of
-the blacks following the Hamburg riot went unrestrained in spite of
-the presence of white Union soldiers stationed in those sections where
-the greatest outrages occurred after the Negro troops had been partly
-mustered out.
-
-The reason for this was not want of ample power close at hand for
-the enforcement of law and order and respect for the rights of every
-citizen, white and black alike; but inefficiency or culpable neglect on
-the part of the military authorities to assert any authority at all.
-Through the leadership of Gary and Butler and some others, including
-Hon. B. R. Tillman, Luther Ransom and George W. Croft, a prominent
-citizen of Aiken, the whites were allowed to run rough-shod over the
-Northern white soldiers just as they had succeeded previously in
-intimidating and “cowing” the Negro militia.
-
-With the crazed white people swearing vengeance against every
-northern man or woman known to be in sympathy with the movement for
-the improvement of the Negro race, and the Negro and white soldiers
-having demonstrated such poor ability or better stated, none at all,
-in securing any decent respect for them and their work, the condition
-of Martha Schofield’s school at this period is better imagined than
-described. Located in the thick of the great white heat of the conflict
-the principal and students were subjected to insults and indignities
-that could be committed with impunity in times of great peril only. A
-few nights before the trial at Aiken for the taking of testimony in the
-case of the Hamburg rioters a number of armed men entered the yard and
-some of them occupied the porch of Miss Schofield’s home. Taking a whip
-in her hand she went out on the porch with a light in the other hand
-and inquired as politely and calmly as she possibly could, what the
-gentlemen would have, and if she could do anything for them. No one
-made any reply but all immediately arose and departed in an orderly and
-quiet manner.
-
-The tact, the power and magnetism with which this woman met and
-disarmed her enemies were the same forces wielded by her in drawing
-to herself the great following at the North so necessary in the
-accomplishment of her great educational mission in the South.
-Afterwards it served in attracting to her the help of those who only a
-few years before sought to do her injury only. With her powers of mind
-and heart, enriched and mellowed by a Christian spirit that plainly
-indicated that she held malice for none, but charity for all, she
-won the love, respect and admiration of everybody who came under her
-influence.
-
-The absolute fearlessness and splendid self control maintained by her
-during the rioting in Aiken preliminary to that great Judicial farce,
-the trial of the members of the mob at Hamburg, is said by those who
-witnessed it with her as having been courageous, if not heroic. Her
-conduct on this occasion modulated by such propriety as required the
-exercise of the greatest common sense, shows her to have been well
-fitted for leadership in a time of great unrest and supreme anxiety.
-
-Hundreds of excited Negroes on this eventful occasion flocked to her
-like biddies to the mother hen in time of danger. Her school was a
-veritable shelter in the time of storm when large bodies of white men
-on horses dressed in white uniforms decorated in red, with crosses
-and skeleton heads approached and rode through the town. The leader
-riding in front carried a huge banner made of a shirt large enough for
-Goliath. It was spotted all over with large red spots indicative of
-pistol wounds. On either side was placed a Negro dough-face ornamented
-at the top by chignons. This banner turned high in the air, round and
-round, in the swift ride through Aiken from every side that the Negroes
-looked, all that they could see was a bleeding, grinning, dying Negro.
-
-The only thought among them was, how much longer each of them had
-to live, and so they rushed in multitudes to Miss Schofield whose
-interpretation of one of the inscriptions on the banner somewhat
-allayed their fears and restored quiet among them.
-
-One of the inscriptions said: “Awake, Arise or Be Forever Fallen.” The
-other contained this: “None but the Guilty Need Fear.”
-
-Among the excited Negroes were old men, ex-slaves, and young, strong,
-manly fellows; but these, along with the weeping and moaning women and
-crying, bellowing children, rushed to the grounds and buildings of the
-Schofield school, all quaking with fear, one old fellow, exclaiming,
-“Lawd, God-er mi’ty, I sho cant stan dis!”
-
-And all the while this extravagant defiance of the police power of
-the city and military authority of the United States was happening,
-great bodies of the government’s own soldiers were standing idly by
-and looking on! The impotency of the whites in uniform had brought the
-same disgrace to the flag with which the Negro militia besmirched it at
-Hamburg.
-
-The white Union troops cheered the marauding mob, and even formed in
-line and marched to the court house with them, where the rioters, or
-many of them, were to be arraigned on the charge of murder.
-
-The company was afterwards severely reprimanded for this conduct, and
-while they never again set up cheers for the “Red Shirts” or fell
-in ranks with them, it was common knowledge that a cordial relation
-existed between them and the whites.
-
-Under this condition of affairs it should not have been expected that
-anything more than a ridiculous farce could have been made of the
-court hearing given the party of lynchers. Besides, the Radicals in
-power at the State Capitol were charged, not without much evidence to
-support the charges made, with corruption of every sort, including
-bold, out-right stealing and conspiracy to commit murder, and were,
-therefore, in no condition to throw stones. The few Negroes intelligent
-enough to present the case against the mob at the bar of justice were
-intimidated alike by the whites of the South and the Radical whites of
-the North, as well as by the action of the military authorities, who
-allowed the brutalities to proceed with impunity just as they had gone
-on before their arrival in the country.
-
-Although the evidence at this mock trial was sufficient to convict
-almost any man indicted of murder in the first degree, the kind hearted
-Judge instead of remanding the prisoners to jail, admitted them to
-bail in the sum of $2,000. This, it is believed, was done through the
-discovery by Judge Maher of the utter hopelessness of any attempt to
-prosecute the cases to a successful conclusion. Not only were the
-Negroes intimidated, but the court itself fell under the vice of this
-baneful influence, lying like a spectre, between justice and the
-freedom of the culprits. This feature of the case is made unique by the
-granting of any bail at all, and doubly so by the smallness of the sum
-fixed. It becomes a travesty upon justice, if there was ever one, when
-the character and financial responsibility of some of the men signing
-the bonds are considered. Chreighton Matheny, a man who did not own
-ten dollars in property in all the world was accepted as surety to
-the extent of $20,000.00! It is the only case on record in the whole
-judicial history of the universe where prisoners were allowed to go on
-the bond of each other. One of the leaders in the riot who delights
-in recounting the part he played in the murders at Hamburg and who
-was given his liberty on a spurious bond at this trial, says that the
-performance was a perfunctory and laughable travesty on law, but that
-the action was necessary, for if the attempt to put any of them in jail
-had been made every official in the court house and town obnoxious to
-them would have been killed and they would all have gone to Texas or
-some other hiding place.
-
-If the judicial outrage at Aiken did not show a corrupt collusion
-between the whites of the South and the white Union soldiers sent from
-the North, certainly the relations of the Red Shirts and Yankee soldier
-made this evident a few weeks later when the Ellenton riot broke out.
-The pent up prejudice and passion lying dormant in the heart of the
-Negro and whites for ages broke loose in all its fury and swept the
-whole western section of South Carolina with a fan of fire, scattering
-desolation and ruin wherever it touched. The possibility of the
-outrages committed in the bloody drama of this riot is inconceivable
-except upon the hypothesis that a thorough understanding existed
-between the whites of the South and the soldiers of the North. In
-spite of the fact that the government was supported or thought it was
-supported, by the best soldiers the world had ever seen, by the men
-who met Lee at Gettysburg and Johnston and Hood at Atlanta, Resaca and
-Chickamauga, and also in spite of the fact that the Negro population
-in the section affected out numbered the white population by about
-ten to one, the murder of Negroes, accompanied by a reign of terror
-unapproached by any in history with the possible exception of the one
-attending the French Revolution, went on almost daily, the military
-authorities being unable or possibly disinclined to afford any measure
-of relief.
-
-The failure of the government to meet its promises to the Negroes,
-especially those made by many unscrupulous imposters who immigrated
-to South Carolina and conspired with a number of native born white
-sons, among the latter ex-Governor Moses, to obtain control of
-the State government fell not so heavily upon the spirits of the
-leading, thinking colored people as the failure of the government
-to preserve law and order and insure them that security of life and
-liberty which are indispensible to peace and happiness and essential
-to the accumulation of wealth. It is not at all improbable that
-the government’s proclamation to the Negroes insuring them against
-molestation at the hands of their white neighbors was one of the
-contributory causes of the Hamburg riot and all the other disturbances
-that so seriously injured the Negro and the whole South. But the
-government and the soldiers in blue who made him the equal of his
-master and the white people among whom he lived could not or would not
-make him master of the situation in which his freedom had placed him.
-
-That distinctive quality of the Negro, predominating his character more
-prominently than any other trait, of aspiring to authority, while a
-perfectly laudable ambition, served him no good purpose at the period
-of which this is written, but inflicted on him serious injury because
-of both the untenableness of his position and the inability of his
-government to make it tenable.
-
-The majority of the educated white people of the South, as well as
-the ignorant, all speak out and say in 1916 what they asserted in
-1876--that God made them of better clay than He made colored people
-and that they will shoot Negroes and steal their votes from the ballot
-boxes just as long as murder and robbery may be necessary to maintain
-their hold on the government, but there is not nearly so much chance of
-them being able to do this now as in the years gone by, simply because
-of the preparation of the Negro for the ballot which preparation is
-rapidly making him not only fit to vote but qualified to fill the
-position in which he once utterly failed for want of efficiency.
-Through education he is making his position, both as a citizen and a
-voter quite tenable, and by industry is spreading an influence that
-will multiply the wealth of the South, in the distribution of which he
-will share in proportion to his intelligence, industry and superiority
-of numbers.
-
-No one saw more clearly than Miss Schofield that the amelioration of
-the condition of the race could be accomplished through education only
-and the disturbing effect of the riot on her work gave her deep concern
-and great anxiety. She had been in the South at the time of the mock
-trial of the Hamburg rioters long enough to know with exactness the
-prejudice and bitterness of the whites toward the cause dearest to her
-heart and observed at close range each and every move made, determined
-to courageously carry forward her work if in doing so it required the
-sacrifice of her frail little body, which she always spoke of as
-nothing but the temporary residence of a transitory soul upon which she
-was dependent here and hereafter, now and forevermore, for all earthly
-and eternal happiness.
-
-No one, either white or black, came under her influence at this gloomy
-period without being deeply impressed with the divine inspiration
-that apparently guided her. All went away feeling verily that any
-harm to that woman or her school could be inflicted only at too great
-an expense, either in the loss of all self-respect or in remorse of
-conscience, if not actual conflict in earnest, with the authorities at
-Washington. She drove her tormentors away with kindness and kept them
-at a safe distance with the philosophy of MacBeth, which made all who
-cared to do her an injury feel that in murdering her work they would
-also murder their own sleep and peace both here on earth and throughout
-all eternity.
-
-Could she have gained an audience with the men literally butchering the
-colored population alive, and have spoken to them of the enormity of
-their sins, it is possible that time at least, would have been given
-the poor distracted Negroes to bury their dead. But time for argument
-and reason was a thing of the past. Bodies lay for a week and even
-longer, uncoffined and unknelled. A Negro named Bryant who was killed
-by Captain Bush’s mob, near Ellenton, lay by the roadside from Saturday
-evening until late Monday afternoon, when a few brave colored men
-aroused sufficient courage to undertake to bury it. These had it in
-a pine box of cheap manufacture, just as the unhappy man had fallen,
-without a funeral robe or garment, in everyday old working clothes,
-perhaps all the clothes the poor fellow had in the world, and were on
-the way to a newly made hole in the ground near by, to lay it away from
-the mutilating hand of the marauders as well as to protect it from
-the pinions of the vultures on wings above, when a band of Red Shirts
-appeared on the scene and forced them to flee for their lives, leaving
-the body, stiff and stark, in all its gruesomeness to lie in state for
-the benefit of all Negroes who might pass by.
-
-While this squad of the “Red Shirts” were busily engaged in
-intercepting the interment of the bodies of men which they had slain or
-had assisted in slaying, another body just a short distance away was
-equally as busy in the manufacture of new corpses, while some of the
-unfortunates were on their knees in prayer.
-
-Among the most prominent of the Negroes falling a victim to the
-mutilators’ knives and the assassins’ bludgeons, with the dead and
-the dying lying all around and stenching the pure air of Heaven
-with the sickly odor of death, was Simon Coker, an unusually bright
-mulatto, leader of the Republican Party in Barnwell County and the
-representative of that County in the State Senate. He was shown the
-body of Bryant, dead for several days, and told that equal honors
-would be given his distinguished carcass when it had been made ready
-for exhibition. He was promised this distinction for urging Negroes to
-vote, to aspire to official position, and to stand for their rights,
-even in the face of death itself.
-
-Captain Nat Butler, a brother of General M. C. Butler, under whose
-direction the execution of Coker took place, ordered the fatal shots
-while the victim was in the middle of his last supplication on earth to
-Him who alone can give or has any right to take away.
-
-Before being horribly murdered Coker was reminded that he had but
-very few minutes to live and was asked by Captain Butler if there was
-anything which he could do for him. With great calmness, he is said by
-a member of one of his executioners to have replied: “Yes, sir, here
-is my cotton house key; I wish you would please send it to my wife and
-tell her to have our cotton ginned and pay our landlord our rent just
-as soon as she can.”
-
-Butler is reported as saying in reply; “Very well, Coker, I will attend
-to this. Now is there anything else?”
-
-“Yes, sir,” said the Negro, “I would like to pray.”
-
-“All right, get at it quick,” Butler answered by way of giving his
-consent.
-
-Before the doomed man could finish his prayer, the order, “Make ready,
-men, aim, fire,” was given and Simon Coker, still in a kneeling
-position, with pleas of forgiveness half finished on his lips, passed
-from earth into eternity.
-
-When the body was found a ghastly wound in the forehead as if it
-had been made at close range was noticed. Evidence subsequently
-disclosed that it had been made by one Dunlap Phinney, who delighted
-in acknowledging the deed and humorously remarked in recounting the
-terrible crime that he did it because he wanted no more dead “niggers”
-to come to life again and turn witness as Pompey Curry had done when he
-“played possum” with the same men in the Hamburg riot.
-
-And this outrage, like others previously perpetrated, and still others
-committed later on, occurred under the very eyes of the soldiers in
-blue stationed in the South in the interest of maintaining the rights
-of those citizens who had been made free by the force of their arms, in
-deadly combat with the same men now being allowed to deny the Negroes
-all that freedom implied and all that made the war worthy of being
-fought!
-
-Perhaps the hand of God had less to do with the non-interference of
-the government in the rioting than the influence set at work by the
-misrule of those in power of the State government. Every intelligent
-soldier knew of the chaotic condition of the country as a result of
-the open handed robbery and connivance with crime on the part of the
-State officials and decided possibly that the reign of lawlessness
-prevailing was no worse than the infamous conduct of the government
-under the constituted authorities. At any rate, the “Red Shirts” were
-allowed a wide latitude in defiance of all authority, and Mart Gary’s
-and Butler’s doctrine of spreading terror among the Negroes as the
-only means of rescuing the State from the misrule prevailing triumphed
-famously.
-
-Preceding the arrival of the national military authorities, travel
-and the peaceable pursuit of business was made as hazardous by the
-inefficiency and corruption of the constituted authorities as it had
-been made by the creation of the reign of terror by the “Red Shirts.”
-Radical officials, instead of the Negro, should be held accountable
-for many of the real grievances complained of by the white people. In
-the hope of winning his vote the Negro was promised by most of these
-time-servers and self-seekers almost everything under the sun which
-he could desire, including not only the proverbial forty acres and a
-mule but absolute protection in attempts at inter-marriage with the
-whites. He was urged not only to assert his rights but to defend them
-even if it became necessary to shoot to death whole communities of
-white people in doing so. With this instruction and the additional
-assurance that the government at Washington would protect them in
-every thing they might do, is it any wonder that the conduct of these
-simple, trusting, unsuspicious children of ignorance, ready to believe
-any thing told them and as ready to act on false assumptions as on the
-other sort, should have become very obnoxious to their former masters,
-and especially to that class known as the “Poor Buckra?”
-
-Therefore, the work Miss Schofield undertook to do and accomplished
-in spite of all opposition, that of educating the ignorant Negro and
-empowering him with the sword of reason, in order that he might not be
-led unwisely by those who sought to use him and did use him for selfish
-purposes, was the great need of the times.
-
-A former member of one of the many “Red Shirt” bands who participated
-in the outrages of the Ellenton and Hamburg riots and is at this time
-(1916) an inmate of the home for Confederate soldiers at Columbia, S.
-C., stated to the author that it was the firmness, the reasonableness
-and plausibility of the arguments of Martha Schofield that influenced
-him and his compatriots in crime from molesting the Schofield school.
-He states that he and his friends once made designs looking to the
-destruction of the school as a part of the plan in terrorizing the
-Negroes and “scallawags,” but were prevented from doing so only by
-the patriotism expressed by this little woman in a casual, brief
-conversation, at a time when she least expected their design against
-her. “We all felt, also,” added the old rebel, “that since we could
-not possibly kill all the Negroes some of them would be forced to live
-amongst us always, and since the more useful arts, such as farming,
-house-keeping, sewing and cooking which we satisfied ourselves were
-specialized in by Miss Schofield, were better done right than wrong her
-work might be helpful to us, and so we agree to let her alone.”
-
-The great mission of her work was to teach the Negro the necessity of
-preparing himself for the duties devolving upon him after freedom and
-to place in his hands the knowledge with which he would be better able
-to discharge these duties. This took him first through an elementary
-course in physiology and hygiene, as the first duty of man as Miss
-Schofield understood it, was to make of himself a good animal. The
-author, by reason of her position in the medical profession and on
-account of her attendance at the Schofield school is in a position
-to know that the principles of hygiene and sanitation as taught and
-practiced by Martha Schofield thirty years ago among the Negroes were
-far in advance of that time, so far in advance that at this day and
-time we see the same identical principles in use among us, improved
-upon but slightly, if any.
-
-The fact that Miss Schofield had the intelligence and genius to begin
-her work where it should have been begun, in the home, appealed to the
-good common sense of her white neighbors who for economic reasons,
-if not for nobler motives, desired improved living conditions to
-obtain among the Negroes. In the moral and intellectual aspect of
-the lives of the latter the white man took little or no interest,
-except to disparage the work done in this direction; but morality and
-intelligence are bred on physical prosperity. Instruction in the art
-of farming and in the laws of sanitation and health served to free
-many who came under the influence of the school early in life from
-the shackles and bonds of a form of slavery woven in the factory of
-ignorance. Immorality, superstition, disease and death are some of the
-products of this factory. Great joy is taken in the fact that not one
-of the graduates of Miss Schofield’s school has ever been convicted or
-sentenced to penal servitude. This demonstrates the wisdom of education
-as a means of stamping out crime.
-
-Robbery and murder by the Negroes in the new situation which freedom
-had placed him was very uncommon, but he did practice a form of conduct
-more humiliating to the whites than that of stealing their trashy
-purses or taking their lives, which with the loss of their slaves and
-their old aristocratic prestige, they considered worse than blasted.
-He “mustered” into the service of the army, aspired to official
-recognition and even cast votes and that at a time when his old master
-was disfranchised! Why, he even arose to the position of Sheriff and
-Attorney-General, Legislator and city Marshall. And in the execution of
-the duties of his high office he often had occasion to arrest some of
-his old masters or their best friends, and this aroused far more anger
-among the whites than any of his lesser crimes, such as assassination,
-robbery and the like. The white man resolved about like this: “The
-Negro who steals my life and purse stealeth trash but he who steals my
-high-blown greatness, takes that which shall not elevate him but make
-him lie low, indeed, beneath six foot of earth and clay.”
-
-For want of a cool, calm and deliberate judgment which education is
-supposed to give to man, regulating his action to suit occasions and
-emergencies, the Negro in office, erred egregiously in his dealings
-with the whites, as white men and the men of all races before being
-made efficient by the refining influences of enlightenment, will
-err and do err. As a legislator he enacted some very foolish and
-unnecessary legislation, impracticable if not discriminatory.
-
-Among the ordinances of the town of Hamburg, which was ruled entirely
-by Negroes, was one designed for the purpose of entrapping the white
-men into the meshes of the law, although it was ostensibly passed in
-the interest of the public health. It forbade any one to drink at a
-public spring within the limits of the town except from some vessel
-such as a gourd, cup or dipper, and was rigidly enforced by the town
-marshall who was always a Negro. As many of the whites who passed by it
-had no dipper or cup and were not disposed to use the one at the spring
-for the public use as the Negroes enjoyed the same privilege as they
-in its use, this ordinance caused the death of one of the marshalls of
-the town and may have produced many riots if the Negro authorities had
-resented extensively the defiance of this law which the whites took
-particular pains to glaringly flaunt in their faces.
-
-On one occasion a white man was arrested and taken before “General”
-Prince Rivers and fined five dollars for drinking from the spring
-without a cup. Sometime after this incident a Mr. Cockrell in
-attempting to drink from it in a similar way was arrested by the
-Negro marshall who it is charged, used insolent and abusive language.
-Cockrell resented it by stabbing the officer to death with a knife. He
-escaped capture and trial for murder only by getting out of the town in
-a coffin-box which a friendly merchant arranged for his convenience.
-No one knew till years afterwards who it was that killed the vigilant
-of the town’s peace, but everybody felt that this act also killed the
-enforcement of the “Spout” spring ordinance even as dead as the town’s
-dead marshall.
-
-Miss Schofield’s teaching included helpful instructions in the matter
-of the responsibility of those entrusted with the exercise of power and
-had for its object the work of storing the minds of the Negroes with
-correct and practical principles of government, such as would promote
-peace and contribute to the happiness and progress of both races
-alike. With equal force she applied herself strenuously to the task
-of impressing every Negro official that she could possibly reach with
-the fact that the dignity of their office required an unostentatious
-exercise of authority rather than a lavish display of power, which,
-unfortunately for the Negro, seemed to characterize his first attempt
-to rule. She taught that good government rested upon the exercise of
-intelligent judgment and was made strong or weak in proportion to the
-intelligence of those delegated to perform its functions, supposing,
-of course, that intelligence also qualifies an individual (as it most
-certainly does if it is heart deep), in moral fitness for the duties
-and honors of office.
-
-No one can know her life and work as the author knows about them
-without acknowledging that want of her divine messages is, at bottom
-the sole cause of much of our present woe, as want of them were the
-cause in 1860 and 1870 and 1880 of our suffering and misery then.
-
-In the light of this fact, with all of us, white and black alike,
-becoming more and more inclined to accept it as a fact, it is scarcely
-possible that any attempt sufficiently strong to retard the educational
-advancement of the Negro to any great extent, will ever be made again.
-
-Martha Schofield’s pupils and graduates are now scattered all over this
-broad land, the majority of them engaged in farming, and are making a
-success; but a vast number are architects, house-builders, while not
-a few are successfully employed in the manufacture of useful articles
-of all kinds. Among the best teachers of the colored race are numbered
-some of her students, while the law and medical professions each have a
-few to their credit.
-
-But the influence of her teaching in the preparation of colored men and
-women for the practice of humanitarian and religious principles, the
-forces behind all endeavor that can be depended upon to make the world
-a better place in which to live, is the greater legacy of her life to
-the South, the white as well as the colored people.
-
-If the white men of 1876 had had the regard for the doctrine of the
-brotherhood of man with which Miss Schofield’s instruction abounded,
-the brutalities and barbarities of those horrible times would have been
-impossible. Intellectual and moral advancement of both the colored
-and white race is necessary, absolutely, to a higher conception and
-a greater appreciation of this doctrine which carries with it the
-conviction that all the world is one country and no religion is worthy
-which does not compel us to do good wherever and whenever good may be
-done.
-
-Miss Schofield never seemed to question whether a solicitor of alms was
-worthy or not but devoted her time and energy to the immediate relief
-of the need. That the applicant was in need and whether it was within
-her reach to assist him or her, black or white, was all that appeared
-to concern her.
-
-It was out of the spirit of such sainted souls that the reaction in the
-North against the continuance of the profligate conditions in the South
-arose, and out of the wisdom of men and women of the North and South of
-her calibre and justness, that remedies for the healing of the wounds
-were found. But not without leaving scars, however, as a huge reminder
-that like conditions in the future will produce like disaster.
-
-The estimated killed among the colored in the Hamburg and Ellenton
-riots is between 150 and 200. The number of whites killed is less than
-twenty.
-
-But for the change in the attitude of the United States troops towards
-the whites, whom they informed that rioting must terminate, after the
-Ellenton riot had then been in progress for more than a week, the
-number of killed and wounded might have run into thousands instead of
-only hundreds.
-
-So the stationing of soldiers in South Carolina was at last justified
-even though they stained, if not disgraced, for all time the uniform
-they wore. Their failure to prevent rioting, accompanied as it was
-by a large number of infinite outrages, may be forgiven but never
-forgotten by memory.
-
-Although two thousand or more white men participated in these riots
-only about eight hundred were ever arrested. A charge of murder or
-conspiracy to commit murder was made against each one, but only a few
-were tried and none punished.
-
-The reason of the failure of the government to press the charges and
-convict the guilty was not for want of evidence nor from any fear of
-another conflict of like character but on account of the election of
-General Wade Hampton to the governorship, in whose courage and justice
-the United States Government had perfect confidence. Besides, the most
-intelligent Negroes as well as the whole radical regime of the South
-plead for moderation in dealing with these cases. The radicals utilized
-the Federal indictments against the “Red Shirts” as a scare-crow to
-intimidate them in the prosecution of themselves in the State courts
-which followed the inauguration of Hampton. The Democrats in Congress
-who were bitterly contesting, at the time the election of Hayes, a
-Republican, to the presidency over Tilden, also lent their powerful
-influence to the motion to nol pros the cases against the whites by
-agreeing not to press the cases at home against the former rulers of
-the South. It was also stipulated that the Democrats must accept the
-choice of Hayes for president if the Republicans succeeded in having
-the troops from South Carolina and Louisiana removed.
-
-These were the conditions upon which a treaty of peace was entered
-into by the Republicans and Democrats at the time of the election of
-President Hayes, but since that time laws have been passed in many of
-the States making it a felony for citizens to utter such agreements,
-and, of course, would apply for more severely in the case of officials
-whose sworn duty it is to prosecute those guilty of crime.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER X.
-
-CRIME BREEDS CRIMINALS.
-
-
-After the withdrawal of troops from the South, crime of every sort went
-regularly on much as usual, though not on nearly so large a scale as
-before. Negro men and women, as well as those of the whites who had
-sympathized with the radical regime, were whipped and even murdered
-on the flimsiest and slightest pretext and in the most wanton manner.
-Robbery was of such frequent occurrence as to occasion surprise only
-when it did not happen. Negroes became good Democrats or submitted to
-unmerciful whippings. This soon reduced the number of objectionable
-voters to such a negligent quantity as they all got lost in a
-well-hidden minority. Everybody who was not a Democrat was worse than
-an infidel. A Republican stood no more chance of success in a contest
-for political preference than a snow ball in the infernal regions.
-Social ostracism was handed out to him to the extent of ignoring him
-altogether, visiting his home in case of the direst necessity and then
-long enough only to attend to the matter in hand in the shortest time
-possible. His little children were not infrequently whipped by other
-children on account of their father being a Republican.
-
-This was the spirit existing between a South Carolina Democrat and
-Republican only a few years ago, but today the two meet on terms of
-perfect equality, provided, of course, that each are white; and discuss
-the politics of the country without a quarrel or even exciting much
-attention. The Democrat is perfectly willing to let the Republican
-run the government at Washington as long as the Republican remains
-indifferent to the rule of the Democrat in the government of the State.
-The one bribes the other and each cheats the Negro. The latter’s
-vote, under the disfranchisement laws enacted by the Democrats, is so
-negligible as to draw the contempt of the majority party and obtain a
-few false promises only from the party of the minority.
-
-But in spite of the handicap of continued injustice and persecution,
-in the face of opposition when the race was weaker and not so capable
-of bearing its burdens as now, the Negro race through the assimilation
-of knowledge is evolving at a rapid rate. Miss Schofield’s work is
-bearing fruit, enriched by the multiplication of schools all over the
-South. The habit of whipping and murdering Negroes is growing less
-and less frequent and becoming in most of the Southern States, quite
-a serious offense. Recent acts of some of the legislatures of States
-make a county in which a person is lynched responsible to the family
-sustaining the loss, and suit to recover the sum of $2,000.00 as an
-indemnity is authorized. Improvement in the moral standard of the
-whites is making for improvement in the moral standard of the Negro.
-As the condition of one race improves the other improves. The two will
-continue to go up or down together.
-
-The lesson that crime breeds criminals, taught by the brutalities of
-the “Red Shirts,” will never be forgotten by the white people of the
-South. When these people tired of robbing and assassinating Negroes,
-many of them turned on their own kind and not a few but suffered
-much. A man named Taylor for no other grievance than that he accepted
-the office of Sheriff under Chamberlain, a Republican governor, was
-shot down in his own home under the very eyes and nose of his wife.
-Conviction of the criminal was, of course, impossible as there were
-numbers and numbers of men bound together by oaths and other ties of
-secret invention ready at call to perjure themselves in any event
-affecting a member of their clan, while at that time a wife could
-testify neither for nor against her husband. The criminality of the
-times had made criminals of men formerly of gentlemanly traits, and
-splendid character, while those of an immoral nature from inheritance
-were rendered desperately and hopelessly criminal.
-
-Than “Uncle” Alex Bettis, there was never a better Negro in all the
-world. It is said of him that he could really do no wrong wilfully,
-that all his errors were to be charged to the ignorance of his poor
-brain rather than to any sinister motive of his pure heart; yet
-notwithstanding his reputation as a faithful friend to the white
-man, to all men of all races, the type of criminal produced by the
-criminality of the times was so depraved that it sought the life of
-Bettis, justifying their actions by asserting that his work as a
-minister and an advocate of education for the colored race was inimical
-to the best interests of the people, white and black alike.
-
-Although almost illiterate, “Uncle Alex” was truly a power behind the
-throne of grace on earth, for them behind that throne, when he directed
-the machinery connected with it, all imaginary blessings on earth and
-in Heaven flowed, even to over-flowing in the hearts of the Negroes.
-It is admitted now, and should have been acknowledged at the time of
-his great ministry that Mr. Bettis’ assurances of salvation to the
-Negro for a righteous life and eternal damnation for a wicked life well
-served to cause thousands of his followers to abandon their ways of sin
-and lead lives of self-sacrifice and Christian effort, as Jesus would
-have all peoples to live and act.
-
-Perhaps his preaching was not considered objectionable and had he
-confined himself solely to that alone, would not have been disturbed;
-but he had become imbued with the redeeming influence of education
-through contact with the Schofield school at Aiken and early in
-his work began the agitation for a Negro school, where, along with
-elementary literary courses, should be taught the industrial arts as
-Miss Schofield was doing. This aroused the highly criminal element of
-the whites, who wanted some pretext to further persecute the Negroes,
-and so it was ordered at one of their meetings that Bettis should be
-put to death. The day, date and place for his execution had been fixed,
-but on account of an accident or some illness to his horse, a large
-iron-gray, known to the whole country-side, the minister passed the
-band of murderers bent on his assassination, astride another horse,
-in disguise. The leader of the mob inquired of the rider if he knew of
-the whereabouts of Bettis. He replied that “preacher Bettis wus jes’
-a little way up de road at Simon Kenny’s ho’se, and wus ’er comin’ er
-long terrectly.”
-
-The mob waited all the afternoon and throughout the night for Bettis
-but he never came. So early the next morning they called in person at
-the Bettis’ home. He received them with great kindness, and although he
-knew the object of their visit, showed no excitement whatever.
-
-When informed that his death had been decided on, and that he had
-but little time in which to live, Bettis displayed a calmness and
-self-control that would have stripped Zeno of his honors at the shrine
-of stoicism.
-
-“Well, ef dat be de way der gud Lawd hab fer me ter go” said Bettis,
-“I’s re’dy, but yo’ genermen luk lak yer is pow’rful hungry, an’ befo’
-yer tends ter de bisness at han’ pleas let mer ole lady fix yer a bit’
-ter ete.”
-
-As something to eat in those days was very welcome and there was
-unusual hunger among the party, the consent of the mob to have Mrs.
-Bettis prepare the meal was readily obtained. During the interval
-between its preparation and consumption Bettis entertained his guests
-with talks relating to his crops, the condition of crops generally
-throughout his circuit of churches and kept repeating at the end of
-each subject: “But laws er mercy, youn’ marsters, its a heap wusser
-fer de po’ nigger dan it wus befo’ de wah. Now, he’s got nuttin but
-freedum, whiles fo’ freedum he hab all he wants ter ete an’ mo’ ter
-boot, an’ hab close to ware and ebbryting ter kep hissef wa’m.”
-
-If these bad men were not wholly disarmed by the simple, rustic beauty
-of the Negro’s unaffected discourse in the presence of death, during
-the whole of which not once did he evince any sign that a single
-thought of his sad fate had ever passed through his troubled brain,
-they were certainly deeply affected by it, as well as by that act of
-his in desiring to feed them, they who had come, not to feed him but
-to make food of him for the worms of old graves in the silent woods of
-sighing forest trees!
-
-When the hungry had been fed and all had returned to the sitting room
-of the humble Negro home, Mr. Bettis said, “Well, youn’ marsters, I
-g’ess yo’ is ’er wantin’ ter go, and so I’se not er goin’ ter dela’ yo’
-lon’, but I do wants ter pra’, ef yo’ pleas’es suhs.”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XI.
-
-MOB SPIRIT OF LICK SKILLET.
-
-
-At the time of this dramatic period in the life of “Uncle” Alex, the
-greatest excitement prevailed elsewhere in Lick Skillet neighborhood,
-as Allen Dodson and his neighbors, armed with rifles and led by blood
-hounds, pursued the trail of Leslie Duncan, a son of Laura, whom the
-reader met in the first chapter of this story, firmly determined to
-hang him to the first convenient limb and riddle his body with bullets.
-With a pitch-fork he had stabbed Willie Hudson, Allen’s 15 year old
-son and inflicted a severe wound in the stomach, for whipping him with
-a lash. Besides, in leaving the Dodson farm he had broken a labor
-contract which he had made with Mr. Dodson at one dollar per week and
-board, and deserved to be captured and shot without the expense and
-formality of a trial in a legalized court of justice!
-
-“Unless we make an example of this ‘nigger,’” said the leader of the
-party, as they took a short rest, propped up on their guns, “it will
-soon come to a pass that we might as well try to control the winds as
-these terrifying black brutes. If we don’t subdue them they will subdue
-us. That’s what old Ben Tillman says, and he knows. Good God, fellows,
-you ought to have heard that old one-eyed rebel speak the other night
-at Daleyville. I’d vote for him for any position he might want. I would
-even vote to change the form of government in America and make him
-Emperor if I only had the chance!”
-
-Long, loud and enthusiastic cheering followed this declaration by
-Millard Dodson, the eldest son of Allen, whose eternal enmity for
-Leslie was quite well understood by all members of the mob as well as
-by others of his neighbors. Those who refused to join in the attempted
-capture and assassination said that the boy had a right to defend
-himself, and intimated that the quarrel and fight were precipitated by
-Millard to rid the community of Leslie who was paying entirely too
-much attention to Matilda Deas, a nineteen year old mulatto employed
-as cook in the Dodson home, whose affection for Leslie dated back to
-their school days together eight years before, to suit Millard. His
-wife had on one occasion abandoned him and threatened a separation on
-account of the gossip of intimacy between him and Matilda. Leslie, who
-had departed in haste after wounding the boy, which incident took place
-three hours before it was timed by Millard to come off made good use of
-the spare moments at his disposal for eluding the mob, which he knew in
-his own mind would follow him, unopposed by the police authorities, and
-execute him if his capture could be effected.
-
-With him it was a case of life, with Matilda and children and a happy
-home, although he knew the sacred purity and virtue of his betrothed
-had been despoiled by the lust of one of the men, at least, seeking
-his life; if he could escape this was possible; otherwise it was death
-with all the tortures of the damned. So he spurred himself on and
-onward in his flight, through tangled woods and swamps, across deep and
-swift flowing streams, over hills and high precipices, down through
-the valleys and old fashioned fields, stopping only once in ten hours
-to rest at a Negro farm home, where he was given some food and a small
-bit of change to aid him along on his journey to a place of safety, if
-place of safety beyond the grave there was! Twice or thrice he heard
-the barking of dogs and the voices of men as nearer and nearer they
-approached and his heart almost stopped beating. It developed that
-what he did hear was the reports of cattle buyers from the West who
-were in the South buying up the “scrub stock” to take to the plains
-to fatten for the Chicago packing houses. As fear of being overtaken
-and summarily put to death, without a last word or look or kiss from
-his sweetheart, would tend to accelerate his speed, so would that joy
-he felt over the possibility of escape and final reunion with Matilda
-cause him to double and redouble his energies in his onward course in
-the mad race for life.
-
-His pursuers discounting the cleverness of the Negro in selecting only
-unfrequented roads and abandoned farm-houses, as places of travel and
-concealment when a rest became imperative, had lost the trail at the
-beginning of the hunt and on the second morning, although they searched
-diligently until midnight on the evening before, found the hunters and
-their bird of prey some thirty odd miles apart. Dissentions had arisen
-among the members over the conduct of the chase at the beginning which
-for a while threatened to break up the party, but about this time Ben
-Milligan, who was drunk when the party first set out and unable to go
-at first call joined them with a gallon of “Old North Carolina Corn,”
-and the information that Leslie had been seen only a few hours before
-in the Shinburnally neighborhood. Under the stimulation of the whiskey
-and the false promises of the leader of the mob to pay the party first
-to lay hands on Leslie Duncan the sum of twenty-five dollars, new
-momentum was injected into the chase and as long as the whiskey lasted
-it was energetic enough to elicit the praise of the most pronounced
-grouch among the men.
-
-But miscalculations were again made, as Leslie was many miles from
-Shinburnally and was going as fast as his tired legs could carry him on
-and on in an opposite direction.
-
-In the meantime, Mrs. Millard Dodson in a rage of indignation over the
-report going the rounds of the neighborhood and gaining credence each
-day that the ‘yaller woman’ at her home had succeeded in alienating
-the affections of her husband completely, had taken advantage of
-Millard’s absence to rid her household of the presence of the person
-she conceived to be the source of much of her domestic infelicity,
-shame and disgrace. With the aid of John Quincy, her eldest son, she
-had administered a terrible beating to the woman and at the point of a
-gun had marched her three miles from the farm and after commanding her
-to go and admonishing her never to show herself in Lick Skillet again
-on penalty of death, left her and returned to the house, stopping at
-each of the neighbor’s houses to inform them of what she had done.
-
-During her absence from the house, Millard and his party, which had
-postponed the chase for want of more whiskey, had returned and were
-ransacking the pantries and side boards in the dining room as she
-entered, in quest of food which they had gone without for nearly
-thirty-six hours.
-
-“Where’s Matilda?” inquired Millard, as his wife suddenly entered the
-house.
-
-“That Negro wench is gone” she told him in a calm, unimpassioned
-voice, “and gone forever. I have borne the disgrace of the reported
-relation between her and you as long as I can, much longer and far more
-patiently than I should have been expected to, so I gave her a whipping
-which she will never forget and took the gun and marched her away with
-such a warning that will be heeded.”
-
-Millard tried hard to conceal the effect which the temporary loss of
-his paramour had on him by approving the action of his wife; at the
-same time he assured her that the common gossip of the neighborhood
-was without the least foundation, and that it would have aided in the
-capture had Matilda been retained for a few days longer. But that
-indescribable inner consciousness which betrays guilt and convicts the
-criminal beyond the hope of escape, except through suicide, and suicide
-is not escape, marked the stain of dishonor and shame all over his
-countenance with its brush of indelible guilt.
-
-After the departure of the members of the mob, pandemonium broke loose
-in the Dodson home over Millard’s attempt to chastise his wife for
-running Matilda away, being intercepted by his two daughters and the
-energetic pugilistic activities of the wife. When the resounding,
-reverberating atmosphere had cleared away the father found two large
-bruises on his face and a slight wound in the back from a knife as
-evidence, proof and positive, that his was essentially a family of
-fighters on the mother’s side at least. Matilda, at this time, was more
-than ten miles away and happy as a bird suddenly freed from its cage
-except for one thing which burdened her soul as no other event had
-ever done since the evening that the beastly Dodson had forced her to
-surrender her body to his passion in satisfying his greedy lust, and
-that one thing was the ignorance in which she lived of the safety and
-security of her lover, Leslie, whom she felt quite sure by or before
-that hour had been captured and lynched.
-
-Maybe he had made good his escape. For the latter she had hoped and
-prayed with the earnestness, desperation and despair with which she
-so long warded off the entreaties and appeals of Dodson when he first
-made the advances which finally culminated in the degradation of her
-life. Her miserable life was spent in his home only under compulsion,
-the compulsion of a labor contract entered into by her in legal form,
-a breach of which she knew from the experience of other colored women
-employed under such terms and conditions meant only one thing--a term
-of penal servitude at the hardest of the most degraded sort of labor!
-
-So she had determined to carry out her part of the contract and at the
-end of it marry Leslie and settle down in a home of her own, to bless
-it, perhaps, with the voices of children and all the endearments which
-the relations of father, mother and child mean to mankind.
-
-But in a world of strange and unfriendly relations, the only sort of
-a world which she had ever known, having been but eight years old on
-the day of the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, in the great
-white-heat of the conflict being waged by the whites of the North and
-the whites and the Negroes of the South in that great historical drama
-known all over the civilized world as the “Reconstruction Period!” What
-blighted hopes they should have been! Meditating over the hopelessness
-of her present plight, separated from her lover, whose body at that
-moment for all she knew might be dangling at the end of a rope, stung
-to the heart by hundreds of bullets from the guns of armed murderers;
-and without the reach, comfort and consolation of her father, who was
-at that time serving a sentence in the penitentiary for disposing of
-a crop under lien, the spirit of despair was rapidly enveloping her
-troubled soul, when lo, and behold, there appeared before her no other
-a person than Dodson on his swiftest mare with Leslie in tow, tied hard
-and fast to his saddle! As unexpected as a bolt of lightning from the
-clear blue sky and with the vigor and fierceness of a tiger she sprang
-between the horse and the bound boy and began biting and knawing at the
-rope with the voracity of a starving lion in contact with its hunk of
-meat.
-
-At first Millard drew his pistol and threatened to shoot if she did
-not desist but paying no attention at all to his demands she kept on
-chewing the rope as if she had not heard, when Leslie managed to secure
-his knife from his pocket and get it into her hands with which she cut
-the rope in two, and set her lover free. Then facing her traducer and
-heaping curse after curse upon him and daring him to shoot, she managed
-to distract his attention from Leslie and give the latter time to get
-out of reach, which he did, remaining, however, near by in concealment
-ready at any moment to spring upon his adversary and engage him in
-mortal combat if further harm threatened his sweetheart.
-
-For the purpose of making Leslie’s escape secure. Matilda consented to
-return with Dodson on condition that the charges against her lover be
-withdrawn and he be allowed to leave the country unmolested by any mob
-or officers of the law; and seating herself behind him on his swift,
-gay, young horse the two had scarcely begun the journey back home when
-the girl spied Leslie in hiding. With the dexterity of a born adroit
-sleuth she extracted from one of the pockets in the back of Dodson’s
-pants the pistol with which he had failed to frighten her and dropped
-it silently in the dust before the eyes of Leslie, all unknown to
-Dodson. In the next few moments the latter was looking down the barrel
-of his own gun, his teeth chattering as if suddenly attacked by a
-chill and his whole body shaking and quivering as if in the throes of
-an ague. He very quickly consented to be bound hand and foot and tied
-to a tree in the woods some distance from the road-side and forever
-abandon the prosecution of Leslie, and permit Matilda to go in peace
-and trouble her no more, as the price of his life, now at the mercy
-of those whose liberty of body and soul less than an hour before was
-entirely in his hands to be dealt with as he wished.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XII.
-
-GREAT PROGRESS OF NEGRO.
-
-
-The predicament of Millard was rendered all the more distressing by the
-engagement of most of his friends in the conspiracy against the life of
-“Uncle” Alex Bettis. They were not in ignorance, however, of the chase
-for Leslie Duncan and the desire to get into it themselves probably
-hastened the brief consultation which resulted in the release of Bettis
-on his promise to see to it that the classes of study in his school
-included agriculture and not social and political economy. Besides
-Brother Bettis’ prayer was a masterful plea for the forgiveness of the
-sins of those bent on taking his life. It was pathetic. Some of the
-mob shed tears, real heart-felt tears, that flow from the heart in our
-moments of contemplation of the generousness of God and beauty of his
-handiwork as naturally as rain from a mountain summer cloud.
-
-Those who felt the Omnipotent power of God in the kindness and prayers
-of this simple old colored man counselled with the more marble-hearted
-and vicious of their number, and all at last agreed that while the old
-man’s magnetic influence and his powerful, mysterious control over
-himself in a period of the greatest suspense might prove a monster
-with which they would have to deal later on, none could have the heart
-wicked enough to put him to death.
-
-So Mr. Bettis demonstrated a strategic ability that should prove
-to be the admiration of white men, learned and skilled in the art
-of strategy, as well as proved conclusively in his own case, the
-efficacy and power of prayer. Until the day of his death he always
-maintained that it was not the delay which the preparation of the
-dinner occasioned giving him time to influence the men against taking
-his life; nor, indeed the kindness displayed in the act of feeding and
-nourishing his enemies, but wholly and absolutely the power of God in
-answer to prayer!
-
-This demonstration in his own case of the saving efficacy of prayer was
-worth more to him than all the volumes of theology ever written could
-have been in reaching the ears and hearts of his benighted followers,
-who had to be made to see and feel with their own sense of sight and
-touch the evidence of the tangible things which an educated mind finds,
-without literal interpretation, in everything, even in rocks and stones
-and running brooks.
-
-He preached not to the heads of his hearers, but to their hearts; not
-about Emerson, Spencer, Napoleon, or Shakespeare, but about Jesus
-Christ, His death, His resurrection and His power to resurrect even
-them, as He was resurrected if only they would believe on Him and live
-such lives as He had lived.
-
-Is it not remarkable that a man with the power to carry such a
-message to those who stood in such great need if it should have been
-singled out for destruction by those whose interest he was serving in
-disseminating the unadulterated doctrine of the lowly Nazarene? Yet
-history of sacred and profane origin all record that the men and women
-who really benefit their kind do so at the risk of martyring themselves.
-
-The power of prayer which the Rev. Alexander Bettis used so
-dramatically in rescuing himself from an ignominous death was used
-effectively in the establishment and later the development of a great
-school in which through the adoption of the methods pursued at the
-Schofield school at Aiken, the condition of thousands of children and
-hundreds of homes have been reformed, even transformed, revolutionized
-and made new. This school in honor of its founder and executive head
-until the day of his death is known as the Bettis Academy and is
-located on a farm of several hundred acres near Trenton, S. C. The
-interest taken in it at its earliest inception by Miss Schofield,
-together with the great work done by Mr. Bettis at his own expense
-without any compensation whatever, made the institution possible and a
-force from the start in the education of the Negroes from many of the
-counties of South Carolina and Georgia.
-
-The great personality of the founder attracted to the school like a
-loadstone, large numbers of Negroes, and Miss Schofield, who enjoyed
-Mr. Bettis’ confidence in full, seeing the opportunity which the school
-afforded her to accomplish the maximum of results, most heartily
-cooperated in the conduct of it. She not only wrote and lectured for
-her school but for Bettis Academy as well.
-
-In fact, every line written and every word spoken in the interest of,
-or inimical to, the interest of all related enterprise affect each
-other for good or evil, in the same proportion. This makes the attempts
-to injure one race of human beings by another race without injury to
-itself impossible, and is the foundation rock upon which the Negro
-race can stand with perfect confidence, that absolute justice will
-eventually be done it.
-
-To the intelligent supervision of the organization of the Bettis
-Academy much credit is due Martha Schofield. She was the store-house
-from which ideas of the most experienced and practical sort emanated
-for perfecting all departments, especially the industrial department.
-The school in a few years, paid her back many times by the wide
-interest its patrons took in the Farmers’ Conference, a local
-organization for every colored school in the country, original with the
-Schofield Normal and Industrial Institute, having for its object the
-encouragement of the farmers to buy land, to raise more food supplies,
-to stop mortgaging their property and to extend the term of the country
-school. At the general meetings of these Conferences which were held in
-February of each year in the chapel of the Schofield school, Bettis’
-followers were largely in attendance. This gave Miss Schofield the
-opportunity she so much desired of meeting face to face the fathers and
-mothers of those whom she regarded as the foundation-stone for the new
-structure of civilization which freedom and her educational work was
-building.
-
-Among the wide range of subjects discussed, no question was given so
-much importance as better living conditions. These discussions, in
-which hundreds present participated, discouraged the habit of living
-in cabins. With what practical knowledge the attendants gained at the
-general meeting, augmented by the instruction given the students of the
-schools, every Negro family in a wide area was greatly benefited. Miss
-Schofield, out of the funds of her school employed an organizer whose
-duty it was to organize a conference in every community, without cost
-to the members. The benefits to be derived from the work were apparent
-in a short time in many ways. One room cabins soon evolved into homes
-of at least two rooms and even three, four and five; tenants as fast as
-they could became owners of homes; many mortgages were burned and few
-were given, and increases in production of crops were very noticeable.
-Terms of schools were lengthened from two months to four, five and even
-six months, as a result of the work of the conferences. But better than
-all was the extraordinary improvement apparent in the manners, morals,
-habits and dress of all who came to the general meetings. At these
-meetings Miss Schofield, who was host to the large gathering, made
-up of delegates from each conference, presided, and each session was
-conducted in a parliamentary manner, thus educating the delegates in
-the matter of conducting the meetings of the various local conferences
-to the best advantage.
-
-Thus it will be seen that Miss Schofield’s activities embraced a wide
-range of influence and as her contemplations, of course, extended
-beyond the reach of actual performance it is to be regretted that time
-enough from the drudgery of work in her school was never found for her
-to write and publish a manual of important information for the guidance
-and direction of missionaries in welfare work. It is an extravagant
-waste of any system of social responsibility to permit the departure of
-its members before first obtaining for all time the entire treasury of
-their store house of wisdom and compiling the information in convenient
-form for future use.
-
-Miss Schofield’s organization of the Negro farmers into clubs for the
-purpose of mutual helpfulness indicates that she appreciated the fact
-that one person can do but little within herself for the benefit of
-the people, but by securing their cooperation to the extent of getting
-them to practice as a whole and teach in unity the things most needed
-to be taught, results of the most far-reaching consequences could be
-achieved. She was a labor-unionist with most practical and up-to-date
-ideas.
-
-Much of what has been accomplished by the agricultural departments
-of some of the States and by the Federal Department of Agricultural
-for the Negro of the cotton district is directly traceable to efforts
-of Miss Schofield, the pioneer of industrial training for the Negro.
-Her system to bring the methods by which the Negro could improve his
-condition within reach of all appears to the author as superior in
-practicability to any yet advanced. This idea of carrying to the people
-systems pregnant with practical uses for the regulation of their work
-in all the arts, that of printing, shoe repairing, harness making,
-carpentering, school teaching, and business of every kind contemplated
-a unity of action by each. She enjoined as she taught the principle
-illustrated by the old man with the seven sons and the bundle of sticks
-a strict regard for the community of interest underlying all related
-industry. This has made it possible for every Negro within reach of
-her influence to have gained some knowledge of a better way of getting
-along in the world, and combined with the work which is being done and
-has been done already by other schools and colleges, accounts for the
-remarkable development of the race in the occupation of farming.
-
-According to the report of the thirteenth census of 1910 there were
-920,883 colored farmers in the United States. Twenty six and two-tenths
-per cent. of these owned their farms, and 73.60 per cent. constituted
-renters, while 2 per cent. managed farms. The same report also shows
-that while the value of all farm property of white people almost
-doubled between the years of 1900 and 1910, the value of all farm
-property of colored people more than doubled, to be exact, showed
-an increase of 134 per cent. In the classes of property reported,
-conspicuously noticeable is the increase in the value of live-stock.
-The increase of the live stock of the whites showed 58.60 per cent.,
-while that of the Negroes showed an increase of 105.50 per cent. In the
-value of farm buildings the percentage of increase was 76.70 for the
-whites and 131.80 for the Negroes. The percentage of increase in the
-matter of improved farm implements and machinery was 60.80 per cent.
-for the whites and 81.70 per cent. for the Negroes.
-
-When it is considered that the Negro has had at his disposal but fifty
-years for self-improvement and growth in all the arts, limited in
-the pursuit of them by the restrictions placed around him by reason
-of his race, his progress in every direction except, perhaps, in the
-exercise of the right of suffrage, becomes more than remarkable--it is
-phenomenal, especially in the occupation of farming, to which he is
-unquestionably better adapted than to any other calling.
-
-In the matter of owners of homes both on the farm and in the city,
-the Negroes, those who did and those who did not come under Miss
-Schofield’s instructions in this, “the most important matter of their
-lives,” as she often told her students, appear from the 1910 census,
-to have made an equally creditable showing. In the Southern States the
-percentage of the white and Negro population owning their homes, was
-white 50.50, Negro, 23.10 per cent. The percentage of Negroes who owned
-their homes entirely, without encumbrance, was 18.10 per cent.; that
-of the whites 39.50. In 1900 the percentage was, whites 43.50; Negroes
-16.80. It will be seen from the official figures of the government that
-the percentage of whites owning their homes in the decade between 1900
-and 1910 decreased 4 per cent., while the percentage of the Negroes
-increased 1.30 per cent.
-
-If the Negroes were not discriminated against in the pursuit of their
-occupations in the cities; if they were encouraged to buy homes and
-beautify and improve them, instead of being discouraged by the many
-obstacles placed in their way, such for instance, as the agitation by
-some of the best white people not to rent a home built by Negro labor,
-and the probability of another riot such as that in Atlanta in 1906, it
-is entirely within his power to eclipse any race of men the Southern
-white people could possibly induce to come and make homes among them.
-In time they will do it in the morality of their lives, just as they
-now are outstripping the members of the race laying claim to the purest
-blood that ever flowed in Aryan veins, in the art of farming.
-
-The hope of the race lies in the multiplication of the opportunities
-for every member to obtain an education, such an education as Martha
-Schofield contemplated for all; and the demand by the law abiding, God
-serving element of the white race that the colored people be given
-every opportunity for the exercise of their powers that equity and
-justice dictate. The Negroes want nothing more, ask nothing more, but
-in justice to their own self respect and the rights of man can accept
-nothing less.
-
-That they have shown themselves worthy of freedom, which certainly
-cost the white people more than the cost of insuring them certain
-inalienable rights will entail, is emphatically indicated by comparison
-of Negro per capita property with that of the freed Russian serfs in
-1861, two years before the emancipation of the Negro. The Russians
-situated in the most fertile sections of the Muscovite empire,
-numbering over 14 millions, have in the same time it has taken the
-Negroes to accumulate 700 million dollars worth of property but 500
-million dollars in property. The accumulations of the two peoples freed
-at about the same time are $70 per capita for the Negro and $36.00 for
-the Russians. In the same Russian province only 30 per cent. of the
-serfs can read and write, while in the United States 61 per cent. of
-the Negroes can read and write.
-
-Yet in the face of this wonderful development of the race; in
-opposition to the aspirations necessary to make achievements of this
-kind possible, there is race prejudice, degradation and humiliation.
-This is doing more to produce poverty among both races and hold in
-check the progress of a great section of the country than all the other
-agencies for evil combined.
-
-The remedy for this will perhaps be found in the education of the
-whites, stimulation in this direction being assured by both the
-compulsory school attendance laws being passed, and the rivalry in
-education between the races already set in motion by the Negroes.
-
-Almost two million colored children are enrolled in the normal schools
-and colleges. There are 35,000 colored teachers now actively engaged
-in the common schools and about four thousand professors in the
-colleges and normal and industrial institutions. The value of the
-property devoted to education of the Negro is nearly twenty million
-dollars. There was expended in 1915 nearly $5,000,000 for the higher
-and industrial training of the race while $10,000,000 was spent
-on elementary instructions in the common schools. The stimulating
-effect which these figures should have and, undoubtedly will have on
-the education of the whites will serve to increase very largely the
-facilities for their education, which is the remedy most needed, in
-the opinion of the leading white people, as well as the author, for
-the dissipation of much of the race prejudice responsible for the
-passage of a great number of discriminatory laws and for the arbitrary
-execution of those having a discriminating effect in their operation,
-if not in their wording. This enlightening information, however,
-concerning the facilities for the education of the Negro is very much
-offset by the announcement that the number not in school in the South
-is greater than the number in school.
-
-There are 2,000,000 Negro children of school age in the South not in
-school. Let all who would aid in the solution of the Negro problem
-find a means of reaching these 2,000,000 blacks by the school, and the
-neglected ignorant whites, in self-defense, will be forced into the
-school room. Give the black child $10.23 per capita instead of $2.82
-now allotted for its education, raise the per capita to that spent for
-the education of the white child, and the white people will then double
-the money for the education of their children. This would raise the
-expenditures for Negro education in the common schools of the South
-to about $35,000,000 annually, and this amount is actually needed in
-putting the two million out of school in school and stirring the whites
-to greater activity in the education of their own race.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIII.
-
-MATILDA AND LESLIE CALL.
-
-
-At the close of one of the first meetings of the farmer’s conference
-in Schofield chapel at which was discussed more than anything else the
-growing friction between the white and colored people, there called at
-the Schofield school a young woman, accompanied by a man about her age,
-and each appeared to be exhausted from travel and greatly excited from
-some cause or other, no one knew just what.
-
-It was Matilda Deas and Leslie Duncan, the two young lovers who had
-escaped from Millard Dodson a few days before and left him and his
-horse tied securely in the woods.
-
-The story of how the young man had been given a race for his life at
-the hands of a mob and how the young woman had escaped the lust and
-power of the beastly Dodson only after her life had been despoiled
-by him and of the circumstances attending the stabbing of the young
-Dodson boy, greatly affected Miss Schofield, and with all her heart
-she sympathized with the poor helpless Negroes. Yet she knew that the
-concealment and protection of the boy meant the lighting of the bomb
-manufactured by the Dodsons to produce the explosion of race prejudice
-that the ignorant white people so much desired. She did not light it,
-but instead drove to the scene of the disturbance and ascertained
-personally the truth about the whole matter, as well as the seriousness
-of the situation to the whole Negro population. On returning she
-informed young Duncan that it would be very unwise, and exceedingly
-unjust to the thousands of others of his race, for her to conceal him
-on the school premises as the inflammatory conditions worked up among
-the people by the Dodsons demanded nothing less than his life if his
-whereabouts became known and, perhaps, by her intercession in his
-behalf would mean the extension of it to include others of his people
-and so cause the death of many instead of only one. But she promised
-him absolute protection, even at the cost of her school and all its
-property until communication with the organized authorities of the
-County and State could be had, and substantial guarantees were given by
-these that his life would be safe and he be given a fair trial on the
-charges laid against him.
-
-In due time the contingencies for the trial were arranged and Leslie
-was delivered up to the Sheriff of the County, who took him to jail to
-await the action of the Court, which would be determined largely by the
-result of the injuries suffered by the Dodson child. Under direction
-of the Governor of the State a sufficient guard had been placed around
-the jail for the protection of the prisoner at all hazards. This was
-done at the insistance of Miss Schofield whose influence with the
-head of the Democratic Party in power was great only because of her
-influence at the North in the passage of measures of a conciliatory
-nature in reconstructing the States of the South. It was of little or
-no consequence to the ruling element whether Duncan was lynched or not,
-except in so far as his murder might retard the progress the whites
-were making in gaining favor with the reactionaries in Congress.
-
-While abundant evidence was introduced at the trial to justify the
-actions of Leslie in stabbing Willie Dodson, no weight or consideration
-whatever was given it by the perjured members of the jury, all having
-formed an opinion before the trial that the “nigger” would get off
-light if he escaped with his life. After being in the jury room but
-three minutes the talesman returned with the results of their brief
-deliberations summed up in one word, “Guilty.”
-
-That, of course, was the verdict. No recommendation to mercy out of
-consideration of the age of the youthful prisoner or the acknowledged
-great provocation under which the act was committed.
-
-When replying “No, sir” to the question as to whether he had anything
-to say why sentence should not be passed upon him the Court promptly
-replied that it certainly had and proceeded to say it in these words,
-“I wish you were of age, Leslie, that I might give you the full benefit
-of the law on this charge, one of a most serious nature, murder with
-intent to kill. But on account of your youth, out of mercy of the
-Court, I will make the sentence as light as possible. You are sentenced
-to five years imprisonment in the penitentiary at hard labor.”
-
-At the same moment the Clerk of the Court was ordered to record another
-charge against the prisoner, that of violating a contract for the
-performance of labor and directed that a warrant be served on the boy
-at the expiration of his term.
-
-Miss Schofield returned to her school and consoled Matilda with the
-story of the old servant who was hanged for the loss of a costly
-necklace of beads from the household in which she had been intrusted
-with the property of her mistress. “Some years after the execution of
-the faithful maid,” said Miss Schofield, “a bolt of lightning from the
-sky struck one of the monuments on the public square near the home and
-burst it into fragments and there in the center, in a magpie’s nest lay
-the necklace, in all its parts, just as it was on the day the bird,
-instead of the old servant had stolen it away. The lady who prosecuted
-the maid for the theft stated to the judges who heard the case that she
-would be satisfied with nothing but the death of the prisoner unless
-she divulged the hiding place of the jewels, committed suicide by
-swallowing poison on learning of the fatal mistake in the execution of
-poor Jeannie Junne, for that was her name.
-
-“So you see my friends,” concluded the brilliant story teller, for such
-Miss Schofield was when she had occasion to be, “God never permits the
-infliction of great injustices, such as this which has happened to
-Leslie and you, without exposing them and compelling those responsible
-for them to repent of their sins.”
-
-Miss Schofield knew the heart of the Negroes better than they
-themselves knew them and this knowledge served her well in all her
-dealings with them. In the control of them she knew just when to use
-harshness and to what extent and equally well she knew when other means
-would prove more availing. The simple, child-like, trusting faith
-common to all colored people, she realized this faith would cause her
-story to find a lasting lodgment and would prove a source of genuine
-consolation to Matilda in her hour of despair, and so it proved to
-be, not only for the moment, but throughout the whole long period of
-Leslie’s confinement. Whenever reference to him was made she would
-in her simple way show that she understood clearly that God never
-allowed people to suffer without compensating them for it; that He
-also punished those responsible for the misery of others. The latter
-contingency, Miss Schofield had taught her was a necessary condition in
-nature fixed there by God for the protection of men in all their human
-relations, and was as inevitable as fate itself.
-
-What an immensely valuable doctrine for the control of the passions of
-men, especially those of a lowly race, steeped in ignorance and allowed
-a free reign in the exercise of the more vicious instincts.
-
-Make them afraid to do wrong; not indeed afraid of man’s law but an
-eternal law which is irrevocable even by God himself. It was the
-doctrine, believed in to the depths of his soul, that inspired the
-immortal Georgian, Alex H. Stephens, to exclaim that he was afraid of
-nothing above earth or below it except to do wrong.
-
-When one reaches this stage of belief it is not a difficult matter to
-induce him to begin doing right for righteousness sake only. He has
-already conceived firmly the fact that only virtue is any just reward
-for being virtuous. The bribes offered men for being good in the shape
-of escape from earthly punishment and the hope of earthly blessings
-are wholly inadequate to restrain them from evil as is proven by the
-many artifices resorted to in concealing crimes; but when they are made
-to see that only righteous living can produce real happiness and that
-there is absolutely no way of concealing the evidences of evil doing,
-substantial progress has been made in their reformation. They will not
-do wrong, wilfully, because, as Miss Schofield always taught, the wrong
-done will show eternally in their faces every time they look in the
-glass.
-
-Miss Schofield never permitted opportunities to impress and teach great
-moral truths to pass by unimproved. Living on them herself she depended
-upon them entirely to support her work which was her life in itself.
-The great Normal and Industrial school at Aiken is Martha Schofield
-reincarnated out and out. The lifeless body has been taken and carried
-away but the spirit which is of God, still lingers on and around all
-the place, crying out aloud as of yore for the perfection of those
-means of justice and freedom of action in both body and mind that alone
-can make life ideal and our work eternal.
-
-On the occasion of her visit to the home of Allen Dodson for the
-purpose of securing his endorsement to the petition for the pardon of
-Leslie Duncan, she was received with scant courtesy by Mrs. Dodson, who
-strange to say, bore the reputation of being one of the most zealous
-and faithful followers of Christ in Lick Skillet neighborhood. Indeed
-she was president of the local Mary Magdalene Missionary Society of
-the First Baptist Church, and besides had been honored by the national
-president of her society with appointment to the position of treasurer
-in the national association of Mary Magdaleners. Throughout the
-community and in church and benevolent circles all over the State and
-country she was well and favorably known. At home she was regarded as
-the pillar of the Baptist church and an unselfish and philanthropic
-soul in whose leadership the community could rely with perfect
-confidence that the work of salvation was abreast of that in any other
-community of like population in the whole moral vineyard of Christ.
-
-Seating Miss Schofield in the parlor while she waited on the return of
-Mr. Dodson, other duties and responsibilities of the house engaged the
-attention of Mrs. Dodson. She left her visitor to entertain herself as
-best she might, placing within her reach a few religious periodicals
-and a library of perhaps a dozen or more books, mostly of Baptist
-denominational interest, especially devoted to the work of that church
-in the foreign missionary field.
-
-Mr. Dodson’s refusal to sign the petition on his return, did not
-shock Miss Schofield’s sensibilities of the injustices of race hatred
-nearly so much as the ignorance with which Mrs. Dodson maintained her
-position of missionary worker in an enlightened church supported by an
-intelligent and supposedly cultured membership.
-
-After Mr. Dodson had given his reasons, which were like hunting mustard
-seeds in a hay stack and if found was never worth the search, for his
-refusal to lend his assistance to the righting of the wrongs done
-Leslie Duncan, Mrs. Dodson interposed herself into the conversation to
-inquire of Miss Schofield why she was so interested in the Negroes as
-to live and work wholly among them as if she were one of them herself.
-
-“I am very much obliged to thee for the opportunity to answer that
-question,” said Miss Schofield in reply.
-
-“Thou must see that the condition of the Negro is such that none, or
-few of them at this time, is able to lead the race as it should be led.
-Only a small percentage can either read or write; the most primitive
-methods of making a livelihood prevail among them and as a result their
-lives, their morals and their hopes for the future are in jeopardy. I
-most desire to do a little part in improving the conditions among them,
-in making their lives better and happier by my having lived. I firmly
-believe if I succeed in doing so, thee and all thy people will be
-equally blessed.”
-
-“To the mischief with such doctrine,” retorted Mrs. Dodson. “It is such
-as you that are putting foolish notions in the heads of these darkies,
-creating in them a hope for an equality and a social relation repugnant
-to the sense of all decent people entitled to the benefits of a
-superior civilization, and I want to tell you that if another war comes
-it will come as a result of your work.
-
-“You had better stop it and go back to your home and let the Negroes
-teach themselves. If they have been too lazy and stupid to enlighten
-themselves in the past it is quite likely such will not be the case in
-future in this free country along by the side of a superior race from
-whom they can, if they will, gain all the instruction they need for
-self improvement by observation.”
-
-Miss Schofield assured her that the question of social equality with
-the whites was never considered by her in her work except to disparage
-it; that while she had no regard herself for the color of a person’s
-skin she taught her students that a deep racial prejudice existed among
-all races everywhere, especially in the United States, but that it
-should not be allowed to interfere with their Christianity, that they
-should show a Christian spirit to all mankind--Jew or Greek, male or
-female, friend or foe, Negro or white.
-
-“Does not the Bible command thee,” questioned Miss Schofield, “to go
-into all the world and teach all nations? Does thee, then, not feel
-that the Negro is one of those to whom thou art commanded to extend thy
-instruction?”
-
-“Feeling and knowing absolutely that He is I came to the South many
-years ago to fill one of the commandments of my Lord. As a Christian
-woman, which I know thee to be, else the literature of thy home belies
-the character of this house, I ask thee to answer me before God if thee
-still considers that my work is productive of harmful results and if it
-should be given up and I go back home in my prime and live a life of
-indolence, ease and nothingness.”
-
-Mrs. Dodson was greatly perplexed. Miss Schofield convicted her of her
-neglect of duty in her own country, where as well as in far off China
-and Japan, it was admittedly very necessary to do missionary work;
-but she hid as best she could the influence of the speaker’s rebuke
-and called attention to the thousands of dollars being spent by her
-society in the cause of home missions. When pressed for a single school
-being maintained by that association in the interest of the Negro
-children or the expenditure of as much as a penny for the relief of the
-material needs of the race, she expressed considerable anger and stated
-that the taxes paid by the whites were adequate for the education of
-the colored people and for the support of the indigent among them.
-
-Among the most versatile as well as resourceful women who ever came
-South to teach Miss Schofield was well fortified with facts to meet
-Mrs. Dodson’s excuse for the indifference of her society to the need
-of the Negro. She showed her that not only was the common school fund
-wholly inadequate for the education of the white children but that
-there was absolutely no justice in its distribution--that the whites
-gave the Negroes just as little of it as possible and dignified it as
-“hush-mouth” money. She cited instances calling names, dates and places
-which proved conclusively that the system of the Southern white people
-for the education of the Negro was a farce pure and simple, in that
-there was not only no pretence at all at an equitable distribution
-of the school funds, but no regard whatever was had as to the proper
-qualification of Negro teachers. She intimated that favor was shown
-by the whites to the less capable and least deserving of the Negroes
-as teachers, and sought to close the argument by impressing the fact,
-that where conditions obtain like those in the South, there is where
-the Master’s work calls loudest, according to the teachings of her own
-church.
-
-Stung to the quick by the truth of these statements Mrs. Dodson was
-willing enough to terminate the conversation, and apparently with
-middling right good cheer bade her visitor “good day” and set about the
-work of her household.
-
-But Martha Schofield had made an impression on her. She had been made
-to feel the hypocracy of her position for the first time in the new
-relations between the two races, a position wholly incompatible with
-the teachings of Christ. It started her to reasoning, that if from
-a selfish point of view if not from a Christian standpoint, it were
-not better to encourage the work of Miss Schofield. She was not an
-ignorant woman, but on the contrary highly intellectual, and although
-but superficially educated was well enough informed to know that the
-Negro was here and here, perhaps, to stay. “Then why,” she silently
-asked herself, “would not one’s greatest defense and security be more
-certainly attained in the development of the intellectual and moral
-powers of the race?” She had been teaching all her life that to give
-was more blessed than to receive; then why not give to the needy Negro
-right at her door? Why not stimulate and encourage every effort being
-made to convert him into a useful and intelligent citizen? His labor
-she knew, even though his hands and face were black, would be worth
-a thousand per cent. more if it were skilled. Besides, that thought
-of blessings being twice blest--“blessing him that gives and him that
-takes”--continually haunted her.
-
-Such a marked change was apparent in her attitude toward foreign
-missions at the next meeting of her society after Miss Schofield’s
-visit that her fidelity to the cause was severely questioned by others
-of the faithful, from whom she concealed well the cause of her new
-devotion to the home missionary field. She told them that they should
-seek to do all they could for the heathen in foreign lands but that
-their ability to extend their usefulness in that direction was now
-limited by the newly enforced political and social conditions at home.
-She suggested that the society consider the matter of expending as much
-of its funds at home as abroad, elaborating upon the great necessity
-for the industrial training of the Negro, and the education of the
-thousands of white children in this country, whose school term at the
-time was not in excess of three months out of twelve, for want of funds.
-
-This met the approval of all members, as all of Mrs. Dodson’s
-propositions usually did, and a resolution setting forth the fact
-that the sentiment of the Mary Magdalene Society of the First Baptist
-Church of Lick Skillet was in favor of the equal division of the funds
-between the Foreign and Home Mission Boards of the National Missionary
-Association was unanimously passed.
-
-A few days later Allen Dodson accompanied by Millard, his son, called
-at the Schofield school and expressed a desire to sign the petition
-for the pardon of Leslie Duncan who had now begun serving the third of
-a five year sentence given him for stabbing Mr. Dodson’s little son,
-Willie.
-
-This completed the requirements of the pardoning board, and as soon as
-their signatures were affixed the document was sent by Miss Schofield
-to the governor who immediately ordered the prisoner released.
-
-Hundreds of instances might be mentioned where this great woman took
-the burdens of others on herself at times when she was already over
-burdened with her own work, and rendered them a service which could not
-possibly have been accomplished without her aid.
-
-When Leslie appeared at the Schofield school after his release from
-prison to thank Miss Schofield for her kindness to him and to claim
-Matilda for his wife, Miss Schofield ordered him arrested on the charge
-docketed by the Judge at the time of his former conviction, that of a
-breach of contract.
-
-When the trial was called the Dodson family failed to appear against
-the prisoner and the prosecution was abandoned.
-
-Thus through the power and magnetism of Miss Schofield, was the
-influence and good-will of a large and influential white family secured
-for the benefit of the Negro population of Lick Skillet neighborhood,
-at least.
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XIV.
-
-LYNCHING OF NEGROES.
-
-
-Miss Schofield had great confidence in the ultimate conversion of the
-white people of the South to the cause which she represented and looked
-to the support of her work by them as one of the essentials to the
-achievements of the highest success. She, however, went about securing
-the cooperation of the whites in a manner entirely different from the
-means employed by Booker T. Washington in accomplishing the same end.
-She drew attention of the white people to the necessity for her work
-by making them mad; by expressing to them the inconsistencies of their
-position on the race question and demonstrating to them the hypocrisy
-of their actions, she caused a great deal to be done for the Negroes
-that would have been delayed for years had more persuasive measures
-been taken to reach them. She told the Christian missionary workers
-that the presence of the Negroes here provided the best means possible
-for them to show by actual demonstration rather than by words of
-mouth, tongue or pen, that Christianity was literally and figuratively
-true. That it really did mean the showering of blessings on men of all
-kinds and races. “If the Negro is an enemy” she told them, “show the
-benighted heathen here and carry the message to his friends in China
-that thee love thine enemy. By your actions before his eyes here in
-this country prove to him that thee are the people that tell the truth;
-that Christians will not take advantage of even Negroes; that thee
-are patient, kind and generous in thy dealings with that part of thy
-own population that is ignorant and benighted. Above all prove to him
-by thy treatment of the Negro that thee has no prejudice on account
-of race, color or previous condition of servitude. Let them see by
-thy relation to the Negroes that thee looks upon mankind as brethren,
-indeed, in whose service thee are not only willing to work but to
-suffer for the good thee may do not alone to the Negro but to the
-heathen as well.”
-
-She went to the intelligent, cultured white people, leaders of the
-churches, schools and Southern civilization itself, all that she
-could reach, and told them plainly and bluntly that any course other
-than that outlined would surely bring Christianity into disrepute,
-especially if they themselves approved a different course, or permitted
-a different course to be pursued without their protest. She showed them
-their responsibility and their duty both as a Christian and a member of
-civilized society, and left them without a single prop upon which to
-stand in defense of the position taken to keep the Negro down.
-
-Having no patience with anyone who for gain would sacrifice
-righteousness or who would not suffer pain that justice be done she was
-rather uncharitable in her criticisms of the Southern white people.
-But the sternness and rough, rugged honesty and sincerity she used
-in expressing her convictions appealed to them, as they are a people
-essentially frank in their manners and actions. One of the great men
-in the United States Senate from the South has won and retained the
-respect of the people of the whole country by reason of his frankness
-on this question of race prejudice. His radicalism is common to most of
-the people of the South and seeing this characteristic of the people,
-Miss Schofield pandered to it early in her work and drew to herself a
-large measure and esteem and respect that could have been earned in no
-other way. She made people respect her by respecting herself in holding
-fast to her conception of the principles of honesty.
-
-Miss Schofield was not less severe on the people of the North than
-of the South in her arraignment of the prostitution of the power of
-government in permitting the commission of outrages and injustices to
-go unpunished. In assailing the sin of race prejudice and hypocrisy in
-the Southern people she was assailing with equal force the same thing
-wherever it existed and as it is more prevalent at the North that
-section of the country really received the burden of her denunciation.
-The fact that the power to punish the crimes against the Negro race lay
-in the hands of the people of the North but was seldom exercised, gave
-her greater cause for denouncing her folks, which she did unmercifully.
-She felt that the crime of lynching Negroes could be largely suppressed
-by the Federal authorities and was not reluctant in advocating the
-intercession of the general government in the enforcement of the
-Federal statutes guaranteeing every citizen the protection of life
-and liberty, even if “States’ Rights” were trampled under foot. Being
-absolutely honest in all her promises she did not look for dishonesty
-in others, especially not in the people of the North who had spilled so
-much blood and expended hundreds of millions of dollars in extending
-the guarantee of life, freedom and liberty to the Negroes. Their
-failure to make their promises in this matter good was shocking to her
-sense of honor and inspired her greatest contempt.
-
-In words of eloquence, made eloquent by both the truth in them and the
-manner of delivery, she told the people of the North that the rights of
-man rose above the rights of state government as the Alps rise above
-the valleys; that government, both state and national, is only good in
-so far as it respects and protects human rights. “If a state government
-fails to measure up to its duty in its functions affecting the most
-vital rights of the people,” said she in an address in the North, “then
-it becomes the duty of the general government to interfere. If the
-latter likewise fails then it is the duty of the people to overthrow
-it, not, indeed, by powder and shot and shell but by the votes of
-citizens.
-
-“But in the South thousands and thousands entitled to vote under
-authority of the general government are disfranchised; their rights are
-not being respected by either the general government or the state. If
-this is permitted to continue thee can not respect thyself, much less
-expect those perpetrating the fraud to respect thee. During the last
-quarter of a century the number of deaths at the hands of mobs in this
-country has averaged 184 annually, eighty to ninety per cent. of which
-has occurred in the South.
-
-“Can thee respect thyself or expect the respect of the Southerners if
-these crimes are allowed to go unpunished?
-
-“If the government of the several States were sincere in the
-representations of their attempt at government that would not be any
-excuse for no action being taken by the general government. Failure to
-govern is alone sufficient for action.
-
-“We can not permit incompetency to triumph on the basis that the rulers
-of the South are sincere in their attempts at law enforcement. Too much
-emphasis can not be laid on this fact. Respect for the law must be
-demanded and enforced at all hazards.
-
-“The spread of lynch law all over the land may be looked for if this is
-done.”
-
-How prophetic these words uttered years ago as the records kept will
-show.
-
-Before the war and immediately after, Negroes were now and then put to
-death but the law was generally allowed to take its course.
-
-For rape or attempted rape there were only four Negroes lynched between
-the years 1830 and 1840. It was not until 1850 to 1860 that lynch law
-attained any high degree of danger to the success of free government.
-Out of forty-six Negroes put to death during this time, twenty-six were
-lynched and twenty legally executed. Nine of those destroyed by mobs
-were burned at the stake. The crimes with which they were charged were
-murders of owners and overseers. It does not appear that rape, which is
-now made the cause of nearly every lynching was very frequent before
-the war.
-
-It has become the cause or the alleged cause of mob violence only since
-the year 1871 to any great extent.
-
-Had Martha Schofield’s suggestion, for the interference of the national
-government in the enforcement of the laws of the country wherever the
-State proved inefficient to do so been adopted and put into practice,
-the shame and disgrace which now attaches to American civilization
-would have no basis or foundation. There would not be as many orphans
-as there are; there would not be the humiliation and injustices that
-there are; neither would there be the poverty and misery among the
-blacks and whites that there are.
-
-The remissness of the national government to supervise wisely the
-execution of the laws has permitted the officials to do what they
-accuse the Negro of desiring to do, to take a foot for every inch and
-a mile for every yard; Discriminatory laws affecting the most vital
-interest of the colored race have been enacted and generally enforced
-without the suggestion of a protest from the federal authorities, and
-many of the national laws that enforced would give great relief to the
-oppressed are apparently “dead letters,” so far as their practical
-application is concerned.
-
-In 1885 there were 184 people lynched in this country, 106 white and
-78 colored. Ten years later mobs murdered 112 Negroes and 56 whites;
-in 1892, 100 whites and 155 blacks, making a total of 255. The year
-following exactly 200 were lynched. In 1905 two were burned at the
-stake. In 1906 civilized Atlanta, Ga. murdered 28 in one night.
-
-Less than one-third of these lynchings, nearly all of which occurred in
-the Southern States, were for the alleged crime of rape. No offense at
-all had been committed by anyone of those mobbed in Atlanta in 1906.
-
-In the Atlanta riot no attempt was made by any of the rioters to
-conceal their identity. They slew every Negro in sight openly and
-before the eyes of the officers charged with the enforcement of the
-laws against disorderly conduct and murder, yet not a single individual
-of the mob was ever punished. The governor of the State took no action
-to apprehend the guilty and execute the laws he had sworn to uphold and
-execute.
-
-At Statesboro, Ga., in 1905, the boldness of the mob was only exceeded
-by the heinousness of the crime committed. Two negroes being tried
-for murder under guard of a company of State militia soldiers, were
-removed from the court room during the progress of the trial and burned
-at the stake.
-
-Although the sheriff of the county and every officer of the law in that
-section knew personally numbers of the mob no prosecution was ever
-attempted by them.
-
-During the winter of 1916 five Negro prisoners were taken from the
-county jail at Sylvester, Ga. and hanged to the same tree. Later the
-criminal who committed the crime for which the five were lynched was
-also summarily put to death.
-
-Six lives of Negroes, five of whom were in no wise connected with the
-crime for which vengeance was wreaked, in retaliation for the life of
-one white man!
-
-The case has too many parallels for recitation here.
-
-In none of the open, undisguised atrocious crimes against the blacks is
-prosecution even remotely probable.
-
-With like impunity are almost all the laws respecting the welfare of
-the Negro violated throughout the Southern States. Especially notable
-are the violations of the act to make effective the Fifteenth Amendment
-to the Constitution of the United States adopted by Congress May 31,
-1870.
-
-This act declares, that all citizens who are or shall become qualified
-by law to vote at any election shall not be denied the right to vote
-at all elections, on account of race, color or previous condition of
-servitude, by any constitution, law, custom, usage or regulation any
-State or territory may make.
-
-Various subterfuges in the guise of law are resorted to in the effort
-to disqualify the Negroes, but as the race is becoming able to qualify
-rapidly discrimination in the application of the registration laws are
-openly admitted by the authorities.
-
-All the laws for qualification of voters contemplate the qualification
-of a sufficient majority of the whites as to make the Negro a nullity
-in the elections, and this even in those communities where the Negroes
-out-number in population and wealth the whites by large majorities.
-
-There are tax tests, property tests, educational tests, grand-father
-clauses and understanding and character clauses. Of course under
-the educational tests such requirements as a constitutional lawyer
-might not be able to meet could be made with the same facility that
-requirements which a fifteen year old boy could meet are made. The
-former requirements are for the educated and ignorant Negroes alike,
-while the latter, if occasion demands it, are for the whites of all
-degrees of intelligence. The intention of all the laws regulating the
-registration of voters is to disqualify as many Negroes as possible. No
-attempt is made to conceal the true intent of the laws by their authors
-or by those charged with the duty of their application.
-
-There are members of the United States Senate owing their elevation
-to the disfranchisement laws of the Southern States who will not
-only acknowledge that their States are nullifying some of the acts
-of Congress but boast that they have done so and defy the executive
-department of the government to interfere.
-
-Miss Schofield was greatly affected by the tendency of the government
-to ignore its solemn duty respecting the enforcement of many of the
-acts intended to degrade and humiliate the Negro race, because she said
-it could mean only the degradation and humiliation of all mankind.
-Vanderbilt and Rockefeller in their palaces of gold, she maintained,
-had no more right to protection than the humblest Negro in his little
-log hut. Humanity with her was a sacred thing and she believed in
-protecting it. She looked to the exercise of the franchise as the only
-means of securing this protection, and when she saw the right to it
-being stolen openly and the theft acknowledged and the court defied to
-do its worst by the guilty themselves, no wonder her confidence of the
-manhood in men was seriously shocked.
-
-But she never ceased to hope nor ever lost an opportunity to fight for
-the rights which she demanded of the government for all men. One of
-the proposals to minimize the number of lynchings, original with her,
-is now a statute of some of the States. It makes the county in which
-the lynching of a person occurs liable to the members of the deceased
-family for his or her loss, and recovery may be had by action in the
-courts. Another important measure advocated strenuously by her was the
-reduction in the representatives in Congress from those States limiting
-the suffrage of its citizens.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XV.
-
-NATIONAL SEGREGATION OF NEGRO.
-
-
-Miss Schofield was most solicitous concerning the future difficulties
-which the Negro problem would occasion when the colored race reaches
-that stage of development when requests as are made at the present
-time for certain rights become demands which can not be ignored or
-disposed of by trickery and hypocritical legislation. As she was in
-advance of her time about thirty years in valuing the importance of
-industrial training for the Negro, and as early as 1890 was teaching
-and practicing the principles of hygiene and sanitation as they are now
-in force by the United States government at the Army and Navy stations,
-in the camps and homes of its employees wherever governmental authority
-extends, so she saw that the Negro will not always be satisfied with
-whatever his white friends chose to give him. She felt and believed
-that enlightenment, through education, the day would come when the
-Negro would be controlled only by according to him every right to which
-he may be entitled, and had great confidence that education also would
-so improve the intelligence and morals of the white people that they
-would have too much respect for their own manhood to prostitute it by
-declining to grant absolute justice to the race.
-
-Upon the enlightenment of both races she depended absolutely for the
-fulfillment of that divine declaration of 1776, which declared that all
-men are created free and equal. She relied upon it wholly for making
-the war between the States worth its cost in blood and treasury; and
-considered that her work would prove in vain if it did not prepare the
-Negro for the highest responsibilities of life and create within him an
-unconquerable desire to assume them.
-
-She maintained that man’s highest development could be achieved only by
-holding out to him rewards commensurate with the industry necessary for
-his development. This principle in political economy she asserted, was
-responsible for the antagonism of plutocracy to the education of the
-masses.
-
-As her work, to which she was called by God as she sincerely believed
-and as the author whom she reared from a little child and educated as
-sincerely believes, was among the latter, plutocracy was, of course,
-the most frightful monster to be encountered and overcome. But overcome
-it must be at all hazards in the philosophy of Martha Schofield, and
-education instead of violence she taught was the weapon for that
-purpose.
-
-The doctrine that by imparting to the colored man the knowledge which
-the white man has gained by laborious processes and the painful travail
-of centuries would stir ambitions, passions and new emotions in the
-colored race which would cause the Negro to refuse to submit to the
-domination of the white race was preached by her, and she dreamed
-dreams and formed plans for the solution of the problem that it is
-expected will arise in the final struggle of the Negro for complete
-and absolute justice under the flag of the republic. It was her most
-earnest desire that the two races occupy, if possible, one common
-country as they are now doing but on terms of perfect equality in the
-pursuit of happiness and the accumulation of wealth, which means an
-equal division with the Negroes of everything produced for the common
-good through the united strength and action of the masses. It also
-demands the same freedom of action for the Negroes in the exercise of
-every function of a citizen that is allowed the whites and contemplates
-their assimilation in the political life of the nation to the extent
-of their being eligible to the highest office of trust without regard
-to any qualification other than that of all citizens. Of course, it
-is worse than useless to say that the demand carries with it the
-observance of every principle of equality before the law without
-discrimination on account of race or color. The reservation of the
-right to impose restrictions on account of race in the application of
-the laws, customs and usages enacted to regulate the control of all
-would mean the surrender of the basis upon which rests the fundamental
-guarantee of certain rights without which no government could or should
-be acceptable to men of any manhood or courage.
-
-Failing in the effort to live together on terms of reasonable
-compatibility, such as would conduce to the betterment of each race
-in all intellectual, moral and political aspirations, Miss Schofield
-advocated for the colored people segregation in a state or territory
-of its own, in which only people of color or those as now defined by
-national authority as Negroes, might become citizens.
-
-This plan is made practicable, she thought by the right of Eminent
-Domain which the government retains to itself in the final acquisition
-and possession of territory through the means of condemnatory
-proceedings which certain contingencies might make imperative in the
-interest of the public weal.
-
-Under authority of Congress the Secretary of the Interior might acquire
-by purchase through peaceable transfer, if possible, or if necessary
-through condemnation proceedings a territory of sufficient area to
-settle the entire colored race for all time and place it under a
-territorial form of government until such time as statehood might be
-considered more feasible. In this territory only could a Negro become
-a sovereign citizen with the rights of a citizen which now belong to
-any person residing in any of the States of the Union and complying
-with the requirements regulating citizenship. White men who remained
-in the territory could under no circumstances become a sovereign
-citizen. Only the Negroes should be allowed to vote or hold office.
-They should be allowed all the benefits and privileges that citizens of
-a constitutional state now enjoy, being represented in Congress on the
-same basis that any State is now represented.
-
-No person, either white or colored, should be forced to move in or out
-of Negroland, except through deportation for offenses such as are now
-punished by exile. This would leave it optional with the Negro to live
-wherever he wished and still be under the protection of the United
-States flag and give the whites of the country a similar choice. If
-the Negro choose to remain in the States of the white man he would be
-at liberty to do so, but under no circumstances could he be allowed to
-perform the duties of a sovereign. The white men in Negroland would
-not be allowed to vote in that State on the same principle that a
-Georgian is not qualified to vote in Oregon; and a Negro living in
-South Carolina would not be allowed to vote in that State on the same
-principle that a white man is disqualified from voting at an election
-in Negroland.
-
-It might be argued against this plan for the final settlement of the
-Race Question that it is not only revolutionary but confiscatory in
-that it seeks to deprive the white citizens of the territory to be
-created into a Negroland, of their property without their consent. In
-answer to this, reply should be made that it contains no more elements
-of a confiscatory nature that the common every-day application of the
-laws now in force for the condemnation of property in the construction
-of railways and the opening up of public highways.
-
-That the public demands are sufficient to justify the extension of this
-law, even if it is undemocratic, to include the purchase of a wide
-area of territory is seen in the continued persecution of the Negro on
-account of his color, and the growing resentment of the race at the
-open discrimination practiced by the whites of all sections. It is more
-likely that the causes for the friction between the races will multiply
-rather than decrease as each becomes wiser, unless it were possible to
-make angels of men on earth as well as in Heaven.
-
-The whites of the South by a large and increasing majority make no
-pretense at the determination of that race to keep the Negro down
-politically, at least; they depend upon their ability to do this as the
-only means of continuing themselves in power. When the Negro demands a
-share in the affairs of the government as he inevitably will and most
-assuredly should do, then will come concrete examples which will not
-only justify the separation of the two peoples through some plan of
-segregation, but make their separation imperative.
-
-The climax of the antagonism, which may be dissipated by separating
-the two peoples, will be reached when the Negro shall not only demand
-but force the constituted authorities to grant absolute equality in
-the administration of justice; when he shall not only demand the right
-to vote, to sit on juries and represent his country in its legislative
-deliberations and actions but shall force his rights in these premises.
-
-The determination of the white people now is to dominate predominately,
-and in all human probability this determination is to become intensely
-more fixed, even at the cost of their lives, their fortunes and their
-honor; while the Negroes will be equally determined, after equal
-fitness with the white man for the performance of the duties of
-citizenship, so determined that no power on earth or Heaven except
-extermination shall deny them certain inalienable rights which all
-instruction teaches them are cheap at any sacrifice. They will never
-assimilate Patrick Henry’s great speech until they are ready to act
-it. They can never act it until they are ready to accept death rather
-than slavery. Without the patriotism and love of liberty inspiring this
-immortal Virginian they can never develop the ideal that is in them.
-
-Who would smother the ideals and aspirations of any race does so at
-the expense of their immortal souls. God could not be just unless
-He protected the emotions of human beings with the same degree of
-efficiency with which He protected the organs within them. Protecting
-the brain is a mass of bone and fiber; in front and behind the heart
-and lungs, are breastworks of superior construction, and around the
-longings and aspirations of the human heart are the bulwarks of
-self-condemnation and eternal damnation for any man or race of men who
-desecrate those sacred chambers by closing the opportunities for their
-development.
-
-It may be argued that if this psychological law is true in practice
-the necessity for segregation exists in the imagination only--that the
-Race Problem will solve itself on the principle of self preservation
-and self interest if let alone and given time. The trouble with this
-argument is that it fails to take into account the value of the most
-effective means of preserving the integrity of both races. If God
-in His wisdom contemplated the commingling of races never before in
-physical touch it was for a temporary period only, each race, in
-the meantime, being endowed with reason sufficient to find a common
-solution for the evils which the Creator knew physical contact would
-produce.
-
-That solution is segregation. It offers intact all the advantages which
-the opportunities of life among a highly civilized race create without
-the demoralizing and humiliating influences at work on account of race
-prejudice. It frees the whites and Negroes alike and enlarges the
-opportunities for the development of each race, under a common flag,
-that will no longer be under the necessity of polluting the pure air of
-Heaven by withholding its protection from among even the humblest of
-its citizens.
-
-We often hear it said that the Negro is not yet ready for
-self-government, that he has not the fitness yet to govern under a
-territorial form of government; but less intelligent and far inferior
-races are at this time governing themselves. Were the Cubans as capable
-of self-government as the Negroes are now when the government of Cuba
-was assumed by them? Did not the United States Government entrust the
-Indians with a measure of self-government when the Indian territory
-was created and this race was settled in the West? There is no nation
-south of the United States with the possible exception of Brazil whose
-citizens have the intelligence and efficiency of the Negroes of North
-America for self-government. Besides, under the plan for segregation
-a territorial form of government is proposed until such time as
-statehood is more desirable. While the Negroes are being prepared for
-controlling their own affairs government under territorial laws would
-make life safe and insure equal rights to all. At least, the government
-of the territory, it is safe to say, would not be worse than the
-government obtained in the Southern States today.
-
-But the Negro race is entirely capable at this time of managing its own
-affairs, supervised by a wise and just administration at Washington.
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER XVI.
-
-EFFICIENCY OF NEGRO.
-
-
-The records of the conduct of Negroes in office, with the exception of
-the rascality of those in power in the South during the Reconstruction
-Period, are creditable indeed, to the race from which they sprang.
-Responsibility for the scandals attaching to the rule of the race in
-some of the Southern States directly after the war are chargeable
-not to the Negro but to the corruption of the white men who imposed
-on the Negro by taking advantage of his ignorance and making him the
-cat’s paw with which they attempted to extricate themselves from many
-difficulties without the stain of dishonor.
-
-The first Negroes to become members of the legislature of any State
-in the Union were Edward G. Walker and Charles L. Mitchell of
-Massachusetts in 1866. The records show they discharged their duties
-with intelligence and honor.
-
-The first holding a position under appointment by the government was
-Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett of Philadelphia who was appointed minister
-resident and consul general to the government of Hayti in 1869.
-
-He was an educated Negro of great ability and was engaged in teaching
-for many years. The “Hand Book of Hayti,” of which he was the author,
-has been translated into many languages.
-
-He was a member of the American Geographical Society and of the
-Connecticut Historical Society.
-
-The number of colored officers, clerks and other employees in the
-service of the United States Government at the present time is 22,440
-with salaries aggregating an annual income of $12,456,760.00.
-
-The qualification of the large majority of these employees was tested
-under civil service rules and so it is seen this large number got into
-the service through merit alone.
-
-Out of a population of 12,000,000 people, with a force of 20,000
-trained in the government of the country it is idle to assume a
-sufficient number for the proper administration of the laws of the
-territory could not be secured.
-
-In the matter of military genius and personal bravery as well as in
-preparation for statesmanship by reason of education and patriotism the
-records show the Negro to be well equipped.
-
-There are eleven colored officers in the regular army of the United
-States at the present time. Three Negroes have been graduated from West
-Point.
-
-At the order of the government for service in Mexico, the first to go
-to the front in search of Villa and his bandits was the Tenth cavalry
-composed of Negroes which has distinguished itself for service in this
-punitive expedition as it distinguished itself at the battle of Las
-Guasimas in Cuba when it came to the rescue of Colonel Roosevelt and
-his Rough Riders.
-
-The first to go to the front in the Spanish-American War, in 1898, were
-the four NEGRO regiments, the Tenth Cavalry, the Twenty-fifth Infantry,
-which took a prominent part in the battle of El Caney, the Ninth
-Cavalry, which with the Twenty-fourth Infantry and the Tenth Cavalry,
-rendered heroic service in the battle of San Juan Hill. The Ninth and
-Tenth Cavalry have the reputation of being the best Indian fighters in
-the United States Army.
-
-It does not appear from the records of the Military Secretary at
-Washington that the Negro is lacking in any essential quality for the
-performance of the duty of a soldier.
-
-The people of that section of the country where most of the argument
-against his ability as a soldier originates were quite willing enough
-to enlist him in the Confederate States Army, or that portion of the
-race which had been made free previous to the Emancipation Proclamation.
-
-In 1864 the Confederate Congress, at Richmond, passed an act making all
-male Negroes, with certain exceptions, between the ages of eighteen and
-fifty liable for the performance of such duties in the Confederate
-Army, in the way of work in connection with the military defenses as
-the Secretary of War might prescribe, and provided for them in rations,
-clothing and compensation. Provision was also made at the same time for
-the employment of 20,000 Negro slaves for similar duty by the Secretary
-of War.
-
-In November, 1861, at a review of 28,000 Confederate troops in New
-Orleans, one of the most prominent regiments was colored, consisting
-of 1,400 free Negroes. The members of the companies comprising this
-regiment according to The Picayune of that city, supplied themselves
-with arms without aid from the Confederate Government.
-
-The worst that can be said against this regiment is that it existed at
-all for the defense of a government that sought to continue its members
-in perpetual slavery.
-
-Nearly 200,000 Negro soldiers were employed in the United States Army
-in the Civil War. These formed 161 regiments of which 141 were infantry
-or cavalry, 12 heavy artillery and 1 light artillery.
-
-The Negro troops fought gloriously in many of the bloodiest battles
-of the war. Among the engagements in which they were particularly
-distinguished for bravery and heroism were the battles of Milliken’s
-Bend on the Mississippi River near Vicksburg, in July 1863, the
-assault on Port Hudson near Baton Rouge, La., in 1863, at Fort Wagner,
-a Charleston, S. C., defence, in 1863, and at all the assaults on
-Petersburg, Va., in 1864 as well as in the battle of Nashville, Tenn.,
-fought in December 1864.
-
-In the Revolutionary War as well as in the War of 1812, Negroes were
-enlisted and served with such distinction in the latter as to inspire
-the following address by General Andrew Jackson, afterwards President
-of the United States.
-
-“To the men of color--Soldiers: I knew before your enlistment that you
-could endure the hardships of hunger and thirst and brave the dangers
-of war. I knew that you loved the land of your nativity, and that, like
-ourselves you had to defend all that is most dear to man. But you have
-surpassed my hopes. I have found in you, united to these qualities,
-that noble enthusiasm which impels to great deeds.
-
-“Soldiers! The President of the United States shall be informed of your
-conduct on the present occasion; and the voices of the Representatives
-of the American nation shall applaud your valor as your General now
-praises your ardor.”
-
-It was the distinguished service of two battalions of 500 Negroes that
-elicited this eulogy from the Commander in Chief of the forces engaged
-in the second war with England.
-
-Commodore Perry used equally forcible language in his praise of the
-bravery and conduct of the Negroes under his command at the battle
-of Lake Erie. He said that Negro soldiers seemed to be absolutely
-insensible to danger.
-
-There were about 3,000 Negroes employed in the Revolutionary War by
-General Washington. An equal or greater number were employed by the
-British.
-
-Some of the most heroic deeds of the war for Independence were
-performed by the men of color. Major Pitcairn, in charge of the British
-forces at the battle of Bunker Hill, was killed by a Negro named Peter
-Salem. A petition was drawn by some of the principal officers of the
-American Army to secure recognition by the Massachusetts Colony for
-Solomon Poor, a Negro, for distinguished service at the battle of
-Bunker Hill. Crispus Attucks, a Negro, was the first American to become
-a martyr in the Boston massacre.
-
-The Black Legion of Count D’Estaing saved the defeated American and
-French Army from complete annihilation at the siege of Savannah on
-October 9, 1779, by covering the retreat and repulsing the charge of
-the British.
-
-In every war fought on American soil, the Negroes whenever allowed to
-participate, have displayed a courage and heroism that is not only a
-credit to the race but a credit to mankind.
-
-In poetry and literature, as well as war, the Negro has arisen to
-distinction. Indeed, the first woman, either white or black, to attain
-to literary distinction in this country was a Negro, a slave at that.
-
-She was Phyllis Wheatly of Boston, who wrote poems on various subjects,
-religious and moral, of high literary value. One of the poems was
-addressed to General Washington and was appreciated by him as reference
-to it by him was made in a letter to Joseph Reed under date of February
-10, 1776. Through the endorsement of several men distinguished in
-literature her poems were collected and published in London under the
-title, “Poems of Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phyllis
-Wheatly, a Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatly of Boston, in New England.”
-
-Paul Lawrence Dunbar, born in 1872, was a noted Negro poet.
-
-William Stanley Braithwaite, author of “The Book of Georgian Verse” and
-the reviewer of poetry appearing in the standard magazines is classed
-among the geniuses of American verse writers.
-
-“A Little Dreaming” is a volume by Fenton Johnson of Chicago that has
-been favorably commented on in this country and Europe.
-
-The most famous of the Negro Shakesperian scholars was Ira Aldridge
-of Bel Air Maryland. He is said to have had no equal in the
-personification of Othello, the Moor. He was awarded the Gold Medal
-of the First Class for “Art and Science” by the King of Prussia, a
-distinction that had never before been awarded to any but Humbolt,
-Spentini, the composer and Liszt, the musician. His title in England
-was that of “Royal Saxe Ernest House Order,” a title of higher degree
-than that of “Sir” so much coveted in Britain. He was a member of the
-Academy of Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg.
-
-Bert Williams, another Negro actor, bears the distinction of being the
-“Greatest Comedian on the American Stage.”
-
-The inventive genius of the Negro is to be seen in the records of the
-patent office at Washington. These show the application of a wide range
-of inventive talent, including agricultural implements, in wood and
-metal working machines, in land conveyances on road and steel rail
-tracks, in ocean going vessels, in chemistry and chemical compounds,
-in electricity in all its wide range of uses, in aereonautics, in new
-designs of house furniture and bric-a-brac, in mechanical toys and
-amusement devices.
-
-It is said that a Negro really invented the cotton gin, or gave to Ely
-Whitney, who was the patentee of it, the suggestions which aided in the
-completion of this invention. As early as 1834 a Negro, Henry Blair, of
-Maryland, secured a patent on a corn harvester.
-
-Soon after the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 the Patent Office rendered a
-decision that a Negro could not take out a patent on an invention, but
-since 1862, when the decision was rescinded, no restrictions have been
-placed on the use of the office by Negroes and a great number of useful
-inventions have been patented by them.
-
-Robert Pelham, of Detroit, an employee in the Census Bureau, has
-devised a machine that tabulates the statistics from the manufacturer’s
-schedules in a way that displaces a dozen men in a given quantity
-of work, doing the work economically, speedily and with faultless
-precision. The returns in royalties from his invention, which is
-patented, greatly exceeds the income Mr. Pelham receives from the
-Government salary paid him for services in the office of the Census
-Bureau.
-
-At the present time there are nearly 50,000 Negro business enterprises
-of various kinds, some requiring a knowledge of banking, insurance,
-manufacturing, undertaking and hospital training.
-
-The combined business of these enterprises total over one billion
-dollars annually.
-
-There are about 66 banks in all with a capital and surplus of over
-$2,000,000.00.
-
-Reference elsewhere made in this book to the progress of the Negro
-in farming operations indicates that he is advancing more rapidly
-in agriculture than any of the other pursuits. In educational and
-church work it is shown, also, that he is well prepared to take care
-of himself should the separation of the races ever become a reality.
-The church denominational statistics show there are about 40,000
-Negro Churches of Christ in America, with communicants numbering over
-4,000,000. The value of Negro church property is about $60,000,000.00.
-
-From $200,000.00 to $250,000.00 is spent annually on home missions.
-For foreign missions the race spends from $100,000.00 to $150,000.00
-annually.
-
-By every test or qualification and efficiency the Negro, in government,
-in the science of war, in the art of agriculture, in manufacturing,
-invention, medicine, law and literature is well prepared to assume the
-government of his race in a territory of his own. This insures him the
-same protection from the persecution and injustices of the stronger
-race that enabled the latter to succeed so famously when they, too,
-in the course of human events, found it necessary to dissolve the
-political bonds that united them to a dominant authority that gave them
-no justice.
-
-
-
-
-INCIDENTS IN MISS SCHOFIELD’S LIFE.
-
-
-Martha Schofield’s conception of an education included a great deal
-more than the mere matter of acquiring a fund of knowledge. She
-taught that knowledge without the ability to use it was worthless,
-and inspired every one coming under her influence with the necessity
-for a means of practicing what they were taught. This made her work
-intensely practical and enabled her students to succeed in overcoming
-difficulties as they saw her overcome them. The operation of her
-school, including the farm, the store and boarding house dormitories
-became a part of the curriculum and each student was provided with
-practical, concrete examples of every day business life with a solution
-for each worked out before the eyes of the whole school. The success
-which has and is attending the efforts of her students in many lines
-of endeavor is one of the best arguments we have to advance for the
-extension of practical instruction, especially among the Negroes who
-have evidenced a singular ability in assimilating it and imparting its
-usefulness afterwards.
-
-While every Schofield scholar received a deep impression of the power
-which knowledge gives no want of attention was directed to the evil
-which invariably attends the wrong use of it. This developed a course
-in moral philosophy which, it is to be supposed, is responsible
-for the high average maintained by the graduates of this school in
-the deportment of their lives. Not one of the many receiving their
-education at the school has ever been convicted of crime or sentenced
-to jail or servitude in a penal institution. This contradicts and
-discredits the statement often heard that the education of the Negro
-has been attended by an increase of crime among the members of the
-race. While unsupported by the facts with regard to the students of
-all other Negro schools the statement could have basis only in those
-schools and colleges where the relation of morals to breeding is
-ignored altogether or made of secondary importance only. Certain it is
-that Martha Schofield impressed each one of her students with a higher
-regard for truth and virtue than for anything else in this world.
-
-Without the morality to live and act honorably education to her was a
-curse, and she had the faculty of making her students a co-partner with
-her in sharing her convictions along lines of right conduct and moral
-grandeur as well as excelling in efficiency in all the arts taught.
-
-Martha Schofield was impelled by a power in her heart which inspired
-sympathy to give the very best of her life in help of the Negro. So she
-was very particular in her work that what she imparted really should
-inspire her disciples to think right and live right. This enforced the
-necessity for a discipline that may be considered severe by some but
-many are there today who bless her from the bottom of their hearts for
-holding them strictly to account in their work that in the final result
-they might be the possessors of a future worthy of the instruction
-received at her hands. She never enforced iron-hand discipline without
-the glove of charity and her advice always sparkled with such sincerity
-and sympathy as to make it palatable.
-
-Not only was the work of Miss Schofield opposed by the antagonism of
-race prejudice, but opposed by a want of a precedent. There were few
-Negroes of education to refer to as examples of what education may be
-expected to do for one with the intelligence and industry necessary
-to acquire it. Only a few years before Miss Schofield began her work
-the instruction of Negroes was made unlawful by some of the States
-in the South and as a result the greatest ignorance prevailed among
-them. Not five per cent. could either read or write and quite a number
-possessed no Christian name at all. They lived principally in one room
-cabins, whole families of them, and subsisted on the coarsest and most
-unwholesome food imaginable. There was no respect anywhere for sanitary
-science laws and all this had the effect to greatly handicap Miss
-Schofield at the beginning of her effort.
-
-One of the rules of her school which she enforced early in her career
-was that no child could enter school who did not have a name. As all
-were eager to learn and made tremendous sacrifices that their children
-might do so this rule produced a mild sensation among some of the older
-people who had not the intuition to go about the work of obtaining a
-name for their offspring. But the ruling finally served to obtain names
-for all, and these in time became legal, some of them appearing just as
-Martha Schofield gave them on the tax books to this very day.
-
-Perhaps the origin of the name Rahab Obedience, for many years an
-employe in Miss Schofield’s room, was one among the most unique.
-Accompanied by her child, who had been sent home the day before for
-want of a name, Rahab called early one morning on Miss Schofield and
-expressed great distress over the possibility of her not being able to
-comply with the entrance regulations and keep her little boy in school.
-
-“Missus,” spoke Rahab, “Banjo be’n tellin’ me dat yo’ sais he mus’ hab
-some trimmins’ ’fore he kin com’ to yo’ sc’ool an’ clear befo’ dee
-Lawd, Missus, he aint got non’ ’side frum Banjo’ and hee jist caint git
-non.’ Dat chile nebber aint had any daddy, Missus!”
-
-“Every child that enters this school” said Miss Schofield, “must have a
-name or be given one, else we can not teach him. Perhaps, we may give
-your son a name.
-
-“What is your name? All children without a father bear their mother’s
-name.”
-
-“Mer name, Missus?” queried Rahab in surprise. “I be’n tinkink yo’ no’
-mer name lon’ time.”
-
-“Yes, I know; but what is your Christian name--the other part of your
-name? Rahab who?”
-
-“O, yas’am, I ’noes w’at yo’ means now, but dats all de name I
-habs--jest Rahab,” said the woman as she looked hopefully at Miss
-Schofield for some means by which a name could be found for her son
-and he be allowed to remain in school.
-
-“Well, can’t you suggest some name for your son?” asked Miss Schofield.
-“What name would you like for him to be known by?”
-
-“We’l Missus,” said Rahab, “mer old marster allus tol’ us dat Obedience
-wus der bes trate in de karecter of a cullud pusson an’ so I bleeves
-I’d jest lak to hab mer boi call’d Banjo Obedience.”
-
-“Very well,” replied Miss Schofield, “hereafter he shall be known as
-Banjo Obedience and we shall know you as Rahab Obedience.”
-
-“Dat’s jest alritee ef Banjo kin cum ter sc’ool wid dat name. Don’t
-care w’at yo’ cal’ ’em nor how much yo’ beats ’em jest so yo larns em
-sometings, som’ gud man’ers lak he ole marster had.”
-
-In a very few days after this unusual interview Rahab herself was given
-a position in the Schofield household where she was employed for many
-years.
-
-Among all the mourners at the funeral none there were more deeply
-affected by the passing of Miss Schofield than the servants of her
-household.
-
-One of the most beautiful traits of Miss Schofield’s character is
-to be seen in her treatment of the Negro servants in her employ.
-The excellent service which “Aunt Amy” rendered to her gave her a
-high appreciation of the Negro for domestic duties, and inspired the
-sentiment now common over the country that the Southern white people
-do not appreciate the value of Negro servants because they have never
-had the dissatisfaction attending the employment of other domestics of
-different nationality.
-
-“Aunt Ann,” another employe for thirty-five years, equally
-distinguished the race by excelling in the art of domestic service.
-Rahab Obedience, Darius Bauknight and Charlotte, all so well pleased
-Miss Schofield with the quality and quantity of their services that
-each received recognition in her Will.
-
-Martha Schofield was not only admired and loved by all her students
-and servants--she was idolized by them. Wherever she went in the South
-or North she always found a number to do her honor, and honor shown her
-by the humblest and lowest of the Negro race was to all appearances as
-much appreciated as that shown by the great poets and writers, many of
-whom knew her and delighted in showing her the respect which one great
-mind has for another.
-
-Among the distinguished people who expressed a deep appreciation of her
-strength of character and firmness of purpose in carrying on her work
-was John G. Whittier, the Quaker Poet, who wrote her several pleasing
-commendatory letters, and dedicated all his works to the spirit which
-inspired her to carry on her work in the face of difficulties that
-would have discouraged into inactivity anybody but Martha Schofield.
-Other notable people who paid tribute to Miss Schofield were Lucretia
-Mott, the distinguished reformer and Miss Francis Willard.
-
-At her home in Aiken she was highly respected for her strength of
-character in holding fast to her convictions and for her intelligence
-and absolute honesty.
-
-The following resolutions by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, a
-white organization to which Miss Schofield belonged, were passed at a
-recent session:
-
-
- “RESOLUTIONS.
-
-  “Aiken, S. C., April 17th, 1916.
-
- “_Whereas_, God, in His infinite wisdom, has seen fit to take from
- us, our sister and earnest co-worker, Miss Martha Schofield; We,
- the members of the W. C. T. U., Aiken, S. C., do hereby offer the
- following resolutions:
-
- “1st. That in her passing away the W. C. T. U. has lost one of its
- earnest workers.
-
- “2nd. That we extend to her neice and to her companion, Mrs. Taylor,
- our deepest sympathy.
-
- “3rd. That a page in our Minute Book be inscribed to her memory.
-
- “4th. That a copy of these resolutions be sent to her neice, to Mrs.
- Taylor and to the County papers for publication.
-
-  META SUMMERALL,
-  HATTIE P. HILL,
-  TWEETIE M. CARTER,
-  Committee.”
-
-
-If one ever questioned whether the services of Miss Schofield were
-appreciated by the colored people of Aiken all doubts must have been
-removed by the demonstration of Negroes at the funeral on Monday,
-February 3, and again on the same day as the casket was borne from the
-Schofield home to the railroad station. The line of march included
-over 1,000 school children and citizens and the mass was so great at
-the train shed as to interfere with the movement of all traffic. As
-the train moved off the citizens joined in the favorite song of the
-lamented lady and sang so sadly and feelingly as to bring tears to the
-eyes of all: “Steal Away, Steal Away to Jesus.”
-
-Among hundreds of telegrams, letters and personal messages received
-at the school following the death of Miss Schofield, the latter are
-typical:
-
- “I am here to give my testimony of the value of the life of Martha
- Schofield to my race. She was one of the bravest, kindest women I
- ever knew. It is true that Martha Schofield was a fighter. She dared
- to contend for what she believed was right, but always took counsel,
- weighed things carefully, and, when she took a stand that she believed
- was right, believing she was right, there was no earthly power to
- turn her from her course. Martha Schofield is not dead--she lives
- in the memory of her students scattered all over South Carolina and
- other States. She will live in the memory of their children and their
- children’s children, for there are few colored homes in which her name
- and deeds are not recounted in the family circle.”
-
-  LUCY LANEY,
-  Principal Haines Institute, Augusta, Ga.
-
- “In the death of Miss Martha Schofield the Negroes have lost a true
- friend of long standing, and the cause of the great social uplift here
- in the South has lost an earnest and effective worker.
-
- “Miss Schofield was my personal friend and adviser for many years.
- I think she has accomplished a most unselfish life work and very
- effective.”
-
-  WALTER S. BUCHANAN,
-  President Agricultural & Mechanical College,
-  Normal, Alabama.
-
-
- Miss Schofield did a valuable, a useful, a noble work for my race,
- and I am glad so many of the colored people in Georgia and South
- Carolina have joined in the general chorus of sorrow and sympathy
- in consequence of her death. A hundred years from now, when the
- history of the South shall be written anew, the brightest page in the
- story will be that on which shall be recorded the lives, labor, and
- sacrifices of the white men and women from the North who came into the
- South directly after the war and brought the torch of civilization to
- a freed race and taught them the way of truth and righteousness.
-
-  PROF. S. X. FLOYD,
-  Principal Gwinnett School,
-  Augusta, Ga.
-
-
-The following resolution was unanimously adopted by the faculty of the
-Schofield school, in respect to the memory of Miss Schofield:
-
- “_Resolved_, That the Schofield School most sorrowfully realizes that
- in the translation of the spirit of this truly great woman, it has
- sustained an irreparable loss. In the departure from our midst of this
- illustrious character, we solemnly obligate ourselves to ever reserve
- prominent places in our memories for the most worthy example set
- before us by the founder and friend of the great work. The greatest
- monument to the life of Miss Schofield is the school which bears her
- name. This most splendid plant, now in the flower of its prosperity,
- marks the fruitful result of the untiring zeal and the dauntless
- courage possessed, and the patient efforts put forth by the Founder
- who so faithfully labored for and among the freedmen of our community.”
-
-[Illustration]
-
-
-
-
-Transcriber’s Notes
-
-Page 7: “envitable civil conflict” changed to “inevitable civil
-conflict”
-
-Page 8: “dsirable an end” changed to “desirable an end”
-
-Page 10: “moral degredation” changed to “moral degradation” “in immense
-volumne” changed to “in immense volume” “pitted their poor brothers”
-changed to “pitied their poor brothers”
-
-Page 12: “trenchent pen” changed to “trenchant pen”
-
-Page 13: “at Tuskeegee” changed to “at Tuskegee”
-
-Page 17: “life as made” changed to “life was made”
-
-Page 18: “Wadlamaw to Edisto” changed to “Wadmalaw to Edisto”
-
-Page 19: “instinct to enage” changed to “instinct to engage”
-
-Page 20: “Brightnesss of Martha’s Pupils.” changed to “Brightness of
-Martha’s Pupils.” “Nothwithstanding” changed to “Notwithstanding”
-
-Page 24: “concluded trat” changed to “concluded that”
-
-Page 27: “on Februay” changed to “on February” “by the municipalites”
-changed to “by the municipalities” “oustide influence” changed to
-“outside influence”
-
-Page 29: “science is suppossed” changed to “science is supposed”
-
-Page 31: “phenominal rise” changed to “phenomenal rise”
-
-Page 40: “his dristrict” changed to “his district”
-
-Page 41: “had preceeded” changed to “had preceded”
-
-Page 42: “the communty” changed to “the community” “prompt and
-preemptory” changed to “prompt and peremptory”
-
-Page 44: “precipitated the demorilization” changed to “precipitated the
-demoralization”
-
-Page 45: “recognizing the advanage” changed to “recognizing the
-advantage”
-
-Page 46: “Mackie Meriwether” changed to “Makie Meriwether”
-
-Page 47: “domoniac form” changed to “demoniac form” “most conspecious
-part” changed to “most conspicuous part”
-
-Page 48: “which followd” changed to “which followed” “resulted in
-Conress” changed to “resulted in Congress”
-
-Page 49: “firey speech” changed to “fiery speech”
-
-Page 50: “reign of lawlessnes” changed to “reign of lawlessness”
-
-Page 52: “gov-government’s” changed to “government’s?” “be arrainged”
-changed to “be arraigned”
-
-Page 53: “wha was given” changed to “who was given”
-
-Page 54: “between the the” changed to “between the”
-
-Page 56: “the maurauders” changed to “the marauders”
-
-Page 60: “enconomic reasons” changed to “economic reasons”
-
-Page 62: “the enforcemnet” changed to “the enforcement”
-
-Page 64: “barbaraties of those” changed to “barbarities of those”
-
-Page 66: “disfranchisemnt laws” changed to “disfranchisement laws”
-
-Page 67: “that that” changed to “than that”
-
-Page 69: “althuogh” changed to “although”
-
-Page 71: “firmly deternmied” changed to “firmly determined” “make him
-Emporer” changed to “make him Emperor”
-
-Page 72: “his bethrothed” changed to “his betrothed” “his jounrey”
-changed to “his journey”
-
-Page 78: “generousnes of God” changed to “generousness of God”
-“stragetic ability” changed to “strategic ability”
-
-Page 81: “manuel of important information” changed to “manual of
-important information”
-
-Page 83: “is phenominal” changed to “is phenomenal”
-
-Page 87: “inflamatory conditions” changed to “inflammatory conditions”
-“she sympatized” changed to “she sympathized”
-
-Page 89: “compeling those responsible” changed to “compelling those
-responsible”
-
-Page 93: “for off China” changed to “far off China” “espcially” changed
-to “especially”
-
-Page 95: “well enough inwormed” changed to “well enough informed”
-
-Page 97: “own populatoin” changed to “own population”
-
-Page 110: “the fitnss” changed to “the fitness”
-
-Page 115: “seige of Savannah” changed to “siege of Savannah”
-
-Page 116: “the genuises” changed to “the geniuses”
-
-Page 117: “Patent Offce” changed to “Patent Office”
-
-Page 120: “her diciples” changed to “her disciples” “palatible” changed
-to “palatable”
-
-Page 123: “Lucreta Mott” changed to “Lucretia Mott”
-
-*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTHA SCHOFIELD PIONEER NEGRO
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