Read Ebook: Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of Slavery to the Present Time by Dunbar Nelson Alice Moore Editor

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I was slave, and by fortune scorned; I felt the whip cut into my quivering flesh and my blood rush hot to the gaping wound; I knew the agony of unrequited toil, and with aching limbs dragged my hopeless body to my hut, to think, but not to sleep.

And thus I know the bondage which men endure, the realty and the delusion in what they think and feel; and the subtlety and strength of those evil forces which color his disposition and becloud his prospect.

And I stand amidst his turbulent fortunes and above the storm and rage of his contentions and despairs to proclaim the divinity of his soul, and to herald a new awakening under which his quickened energies will yet surge forward in mighty waves of better things.

If the Republic is true to the great principles of liberty and justice which it proclaims; if you have learned the lesson of your own history, and appropriated the experience coined out of your own struggles, then will Anglo-Saxon genius and achievement glow like a mighty flame to light the path of struggling men, and Anglo-Saxon glory light angels to restore the rights of man.

THE ARMY AS A TRAINED FORCE

BY THEOPHILUS G. STEWARD, D. D.

I thank the honorable Commission from my heart for the distinguished favor they have conferred upon me in inviting me to address this august assembly. Never before, during all my forty years of public life, have I been granted so majestic a privilege; never before have I ventured to assume so grave a responsibility; and, I may add, never before have I felt so keenly my inability to do justice to the occasion.

I am encouraged, however, by the reflection that I am in the house of my friends, where I may hope for an indulgent hearing, and especially upon the subject which I have the high honor to bring before you.

The purport of my address is the conservation of life; the development of physical and moral power as well as of mental alertness; the creation of bravery and the evolution of that higher and broader element--courage; the formation of character sturdy enough to upbear a State, and intelligent enough to direct its government. What I have to say will be toward the production of a robust and chivalric manhood, the only proper shelter for a pure and glorious womanhood. Noble women are the crown of heroic men. None but the brave deserve the fair, and none but the brave can have them.

For the purpose of illustrating and enforcing these great social, physical, and moral truths, I have chosen the Army of our country, or the character and training of the American soldier. In this I do not depart from Biblical practise. How many hearts have been cheered and strengthened by the thrilling pictures painted by St. Paul of the soldiers of his times! How many have in thought beheld his armed hosts and heard his stirring exhortation: "Fight the good fight of faith!"

We owe our existence as a nation to the men in arms who for eight years met the force of Great Britain with counter force, and thus cleared the field for the statesmanship that can make the proverbial two blades of grass grow. The man with the gun opened the way for the man with the hoe. We who are here, and the race we represent, owe our deliverance from chattel slavery to the men in arms who conquered the slaveholders' Rebellion. It is a sad thought, but nevertheless one too true thus far in human history, that liberty, man's greatest earthly boon, can be reached only through a pathway of blood. The Army made good our declaration of independence; and upon the Army and Navy Lincoln relied for the efficacy of his plan of emancipation. Abstract right is fair to look upon, and has furnished the theme for charming essays by such beautiful writers as Ruskin and Emerson; but right, backed up by battalions, is the right that prevails. When the men of blood and iron come, there is no longer time for the song or the essay. It is, "Get in line or be shot." The days of rhetoricals are over. The eloquence of the soldier silences all. Even the laws are dumb when the sword is unsheathed.

Is this horrible doctrine? It is only God overthrowing Pharaoh by means more humane than His fearful plagues, and less destructive than the billows of that relentless sea over which redeemed Israel so exultingly sang. No, brethren; the sword of the Lord and of Gideon has not ceased to be a useful instrument. It is the proper thing for evil doers.

The army is the national sword, and the "powers that be" bear it "not in vain." It is a fearful engine of destruction, pure and simple. Von Moltke says: "The immediate aim of the soldier's life is destruction, and nothing but destruction; and whatever constructions wars result in are remote and non-military."

An Austrian officer says: "Live and let live is no device for an army. Contempt for one's own comrades, for the troops of the enemy, and, above all, fierce contempt for one's own person, are what war demands of every one. Far better is it for an army to be too savage, too cruel, too barbarous, than to possess too much sentimentality and human reasonableness. If the soldier is to be good for anything as a soldier, he must be exactly the opposite of a reasoning and thinking man. The measure of goodness in him is his possible use in war. War, and even peace, require of the soldier absolutely peculiar standards of morality. The recruit brings with him common moral notions of which he must seek immediately to get rid. For him, victory--success--must be everything. The most barbaric tendencies in man come to life again in war, and for war's uses they are incommensurably good."

Perhaps the greatest of American psychologists, Professor William James, adds to these remarks: "Consequently the soldier can not train himself to be too feelingless to all those usual sympathies and respects, whether for persons or for things that make for conservation. Yet," he says, "the fact remains that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism and, being in the line of aboriginal instinct, is the only school that as yet is universally available."

Emerson says: "War educates the senses, calls into action the will, perfects the physical constitution, brings men into such swift and close collision in critical moments that man measures man."

It is not my purpose, however, to glorify war. War to me is horrible beyond description or conception, and it is for war that armies are trained; yet the training of an army, like the training of even a pugilist, is a work of great moral value.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Army gave us our independence, when the Revolution had succeeded, and the Constitution had been framed, and the country launched on her career, there was a tendency to forget Joseph. So strong was the feeling against a standing army that it was with difficulty that even a nucleus was maintained. The first legislation on this subject gave us but one battalion of artillery and one regiment of infantry, the whole consisting of 46 officers and 840 men. In 1814, because of the war with England, the army ran up to 60,000; but the next year fell to 12,000, and continued even below that number up to 1838, when it again went up to about 12,000. In 1846, during the Mexican War, it reached about 18,000. When the Civil War broke out it was about 12,000. There were in the Army, at the time of the beginning of the Civil War, over 1,000 officers. Two hundred and eighty-six of these left the service of the United States, and subsequently served in the Confederate Army. Of these 286, 187 had been educated at West Point. But so far as I am able to say now, not a single enlisted man followed the example of these officers.

Beside the staff departments, the Army now consists of 15 regiments of cavalry, 30 batteries of field artillery, 126 companies of coast artillery, and 30 regiments of infantry. These different classes are known as the three arms of the service: Cavalry, artillery, and infantry. Our whole Army to-day numbers 67,259 men. We are the greatest nation, with the smallest army. Our Army, however, is capable of rapid expansion; and, with our National Guard, we need not fear any emergency. This Army, though so small, is in one sense a trained athlete, ready to defend the nation's honor and flag. In another sense, it is a vast practical school, in which the military profession is taught. The students are not only the 60,000 who are now serving, but the many thousands also, who come and go. Men enlist for three years, and although many re-enlist, the Army is constantly receiving recruits, and constantly discharging trained soldiers. These discharged soldiers are often found among our best citizens.

The entire corps of over 3,800 officers may be regarded as professors or instructors, whose duty it is to bring the Army up to a state of perfection. To this corps of 3,800 commissioned officers must be added, also, the large number of intelligent non-commissioned officers, who are assistant instructors of the very highest utility. The work of the Army consists of study and practice, instruction and drill. It is an incessant school. There are officers' school, non-commissioned officers' school, school of the soldier, school of the company, school of the battalion, post school,--besides drills and lectures without number. The actual scientific information imparted to the enlisted men is considerable. To specify only in small part: It includes all methods of signaling, up to telegraphy; all methods of preserving and preparing food; all methods of first treatment of wounds; how to estimate distance, to map a country, to care for property and stock, and the most thorough knowledge of weapons and warfare. To become a second lieutenant in the Army, a man must either go through West Point, or have the equivalent of a college education, especially in mathematics, history, and law; and have, besides, an accurate knowledge of what is purely military. And when he is made a second lieutenant and enters upon his career as an officer, his studies begin afresh. He must study to prepare himself for subsequent promotions. Failure in this means dismission. The army officer to-day must be exceedingly thorough and accurate in his knowledge.

General Corbin says: "Never before in the history of the Army have there been so many acceptable candidates for promotion as there are at this time. Never before has the Army been in a higher state of efficiency and in more perfect accord than it is to-day. Until within a short time, an officer graduated at the Military Academy at West Point was looked upon as a man with 'a finished education'; but to-day, and for the last four years, we accept that education merely as the foundation upon which a more advanced education is to be built. This theory is in general practice, and has been so accepted. The service schools at Fort Monroe, Fort Totten, Fort Riley, Fort Leavenworth, and the War College at Washington are, in most respects, high-class post-graduate schools. In addition of this, every post is a school of application, educating officers and men for the duties now required of them."

A second end of the training is to habituate the men so firmly in the performance of certain movements that no emotion can interfere with their action. Upon the battle-field there is nothing left of the exercises of the times of peace, but that which has become a habit, or in a word, an instinct. The soldier must be so trained that he will go on with his work as long as he has the ability to do so. One has said: "It must be the aim of the new discipline to make the private soldier capable of keeping steadfastly in mind for the whole of the day, or even for several days, and striving with all his might to carry out, what he has been told by a superior who is no longer present, and who, for all he may know, is dead."

A third end sought in military training is to render the soldier strong and agile, so that he can move with rapidity, sustain long marches, and handle his weapon with dexterity.

Every consideration in feeding, clothing, sheltering, both men and animals, has but one object,--efficiency. All questions of moral duty, all ideas of the spiritual or immortal interests, are completely submerged beneath the ever-present thought of material force. Power must be had by men, horses, machinery; power, aggressive power, is the all-pervading and all-controlling thought of the army.

The practise of cleanliness is enjoined all the time, along with these exercises. The soldier is taught how to make his bed and to put all his effects in order, and is then compelled to do it; and thus there is established within him a love of order. Punctuality, cleanliness, and order are the soldier's three graces. The hygiene of his body, care of his arms and equipments, respect for his uniform, are driven into his inmost soul. Our regiment lived in the midst of cholera, without suffering from the disease. Hence the army is a great object-lesson of what care and training can make of men.

But the army in our Republic is of far greater value in a moral sense than in a physical sense. In these days when authority is departing from the home, the church, and the school, it is well that it can find refuge somewhere in the country. The working of the army rests entirely upon authority. One single will pervades every part of it, although this will is participated in by thousands. Every subordinate is independent within limits; but one general will controls all. Respect for authority is enforced, and thus taught, not in theory alone, but by practice. The corporal is not the same as a private. The man who holds a commission from the President represents the high authority of the Republic; and the true soldier yields him both obedience and respect. Everywhere the soldier is taught obedience to law. After all that I have said, it is scarcely necessary to emphasize the fact that the soldier's obedience becomes voluntary, and that he takes pride in his profession. Hence the army is a body of men, not moving according to their own wills, not a deliberative assembly, but a purely executive body, the incarnation of law and of force. It is silent, but powerful. It does not talk, but acts; army spells action.

The men who are trained in our Army are not likely to become members of the lawless element. They have learned too well the lessons of order and the necessity of subordination. The attitude of the Army upon the vexed race question is better than that of any other secular institution of our country. When the Fifth Army Corps returned from Cuba and went into camp at Montauk Point, broken down as it was by a short but severe campaign, it gave to the country a fine exhibition of the moral effects of military training. There was seen the broadest comradeship. The four black regiments were there, and cordially welcomed by their companions in arms. In the maneuvers at Fort Riley, no infantry regiment on the ground was more popular than the 25th; and in contests the men of the 25th proved their mettle by carrying off nearly every medal and trophy in sight.

"Perhaps the most notable series of events, in the light of the popular notion of Negro inferiority, were the athletic sports. The first of these was the baseball game for the championship of the Department of the Missouri and a silk banner. This contest had gone through the several organizations, and was finally narrowed down to the 10th Cavalry and the 25th Infantry. On October 27th, which was set apart as a field day for athletic sports, the officers of the encampment, many women and civilians, as well as the soldiers of the regular Army present, assembled on the athletic grounds at 10.30 A. M. to witness the game. A most interesting and thoroughly scientific game was played, the 25th winning in the eleventh inning by a score of 4 to 3. The banner would have gone to colored soldiers in either case."

We must not expect too much of the army. It is not a church, not a Sunday-school, not a missionary society. Its code of morals is very short, very narrow, but it enforces what it has. Its commandments are:

I would say, further, that warfare now requires so much from the man who carries it on, that it is impossible to unite the general and the statesman in one person. The army must be purely executive, carrying out the mandates of the State. The moral and political questions must be resolved by men of other professions. The soldier has all that he can do to attend to the exigencies of the battle.

Lastly, the Army, by the very aristocracy of its constitution, contributes much to make effective the doctrines of equality. The black soldier and the white soldier carry the same arms, eat the same rations, serve under the same laws, participate in the same experience, wear the same uniforms, are nursed in the same hospitals, and buried in the same cemeteries. The Roman Catholic Church, by its priestly aristocracy, has always been a bulwark against caste. So, in the same manner, the Army of our Republic, by its aristocracy of commission, has proven itself the most effectual barrier against the inundating waves of race discrimination that the country has as yet produced.

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND CHURCH AS A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM

BY D. WEBSTER DAVIS, D. D.

If I were asked to name the most wonderful and far-reaching achievement of the splendid, all-conquering Anglo-Saxon race, I would ignore the Pass of Thermopylae, the immortal six hundred at Balaklava, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Quebec, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, and Appomattox; I would forget its marvelous accumulations of wealth; its additions to the literature of the world, and point to the single fact that it has done the most to spread the religion of Jesus Christ, as the greatest thing it has accomplished for the betterment of the human family.

The Jews preserved the idea of a one God, and gave the ethics to religion--the ten commandements, the Lord's Prayer, and the Sermon on the Mount; the Greeks contributed philosophy; the Romans, polity; the Teutons, liberty and breadth of thought; but it remained to the Anglo-Saxon implicitly to obey the divine command: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."

If some man would ask me the one act on the part of my own race that gives to me the greatest hope for the Negro's ultimate elevation to the heights of civilization and culture, I would not revel in ancient lore to prove them the pioneers in civilization, nor would I point to their marvelous progress since Emancipation that has surprised their most sanguine friends, but I would take the single idea of their unquestioned acceptance of the dogmas and tenets of the Christian religion as promulgated by the Anglo-Saxon, as the highest evidence of the future possibilities of the race.

Ours was indeed a wonderful faith that overleaped the barriers of ecclesiastical juggling to justify from Holy Writ the iniquitous traffic in human flesh and blood; forgot the glaring inconsistencies of a religion that prayed, on Sunday, "Our Father which art in heaven," and on Monday sold a brother, who, though cut in ebony, was yet the image of the Divine. The Negro had in very truth,

"That faith that would not shrink, Tho' pressed by every foe; That would not tremble on the brink Of any earthly woe. That faith that shone more bright and clear When trials reigned without; That, when in danger, knew no fear, In darkness felt no doubt."

If it is indeed true that "by faith are ye saved," not only in this world, but in the world to come, then God will vouchsafe to us a most abundant salvation.

It is my blessed privilege to-night, while you are pleading for the "Winning of a generation," and at this special session for "the relation of the Sunday-school to missions, both home and foreign," to plead for my people, and my prayer is that God may help me to make my plea effective. For the people for whom I plead are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I plead for help for my own bright-eyed boy and girl, and for all the little black boys and girls in my far-off Southern home.

If the great race problem is to be settled , it is to be settled, not in blood and carnage, not by material wealth and accumulation of lands and houses, not in literary culture nor on the college campus, not in industrial education, or in the marts of trade, but by the religion of Him who said, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." These things are resultant factors in the problem, but the problem itself lies far deeper than these.

Calhoun is reported to have said, "If I could find a Negro who could master the Greek syntax, I would believe in his possibilities of development." A comparatively few years have passed away, and a Negro not only masters the Greek syntax, but writes a Greek grammar accepted as authority by some of the ablest scholars of the States. But Abb? Gregori of France published, in the fifteenth century, "Literature of the Negro," telling of the achievements of Negro writers, scholars, priests, philosophers, painters, and Roman prelates in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Holland, and Turkey, which prompted Blumenbach to declare it would be difficult to meet with such in the French Academy; and yet, literature and learning have not settled the problem. No, the religion of Jesus Christ is the touchstone to settle all the problems of human life. More than nineteen hundred years ago, Christ gave solution when he said, "Ye are brethern," "Love is the fulfilling of the law," and "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."

Is the Negro in any measure deserving of the help for which I plead? The universal brotherhood, and common instincts of humanity should be enough. I bring more. Othello, in speaking of Desdemona, says, "She loved me for the dangers I had passed, I loved her that she did pity me." If pity and suffering can awaken sympathy, then we boldly claim our right to the fullest measure of consideration. Two hundred and fifty years of slavery, with all its attendant evils, is one of our most potent weapons to enlist sympathy and aid.

I come with no bitterness to North or South. For slavery I acknowledge all the possible good that came to us from it; the contact with superior civilization, the knowledge of the true God, the crude preparation for citizenship, the mastery of some handicraft; yet, slavery had its side of suffering and degradation. North and South rejoice that it is gone forever, and yet, many of its evils cling to us, like the Old Man of the Sea to Sinbad the sailor, and, like Banquo's ghost, they haunt us still.

As I stand here to-night, my mind is carried back to a plantation down in "Old Virginia." It is the first day of January, 1864. Lincoln's immortal proclamation is a year old, and yet I see an aunt of mine, the unacknowledged offspring of her white master, being sent away from the old homestead to be sold. The proud Anglo-Saxon blood in her veins will assert itself as she resists with all the power of her being the attempts of the overseer to ply lash to her fair skin, and for this she must be sold "Way down Souf." I see her now as she comes down from the "Great House," chained to twelve others, to be carried to Lumpkin's jail in Richmond to be put upon the "block." She had been united to a slave of her choice some two years before, and a little innocent babe had been born to them. The husband, my mother with the babe in her arms, and other slaves watch them from the "big gate" as they come down to the road to go to their destination some twenty miles away. As she saw us, great tears welled up in her big black eyes; not a word could she utter as she looked her last sad farewell. She thought of one of the old slave-songs we used to sing in the cabin prayer-meetings at night as we turned up the pots and kettles, and filled them up with water to drown the sound. Being blessed, as is true of most of my race, with a splendid voice, she raised her eyes, and began to sing:

"Brethren, fare you well, brethren, fare you well, May God Almighty bless you until we meet again."

Singing these touching lines she passed out of sight. More than forty years have passed, and she and her loved ones have never met again, unless they have met in the Morning land, where partings are no more.

For the sufferings we have endured, leaving their traces indelibly stamped upon us, I claim your aid that we may have for our children this blessed Gospel, the panacea for all human ills.

The Negro has elements in his nature that make him peculiarly susceptible to religious training. He stands as a monument to faithfulness to humble duty, one of the highest marks of the Christ-life. He is humble and faithful, but not from cowardice, in evidence of which I recall his achievements at Boston, Bunker Hill, New Orleans, Milikens Bend, Wilson's Landing, and San Juan Hill.

He fought when a slave, some would say, from compulsion, but would he fight for love of the flag of the Union? God gave him a chance to answer the question at San Juan Hill. The story is best understood as told to me by one of the brave 9th Cavalry as he lay wounded at Old Point Comfort, Va.

Up go the splendid Rough Riders amid shot and shell from enemies concealed in fields, trees, ditches, and the block-house on the hill. The galling fire proves too much for them and back they come. A second and third assault proves equally unavailing. They must have help. Help arrives, in the form of a colored regiment. See them as they come, black as the sable plume of midnight, yet irresistible as the terrible cyclone. As is the custom of my race under excitement of any kind, they are singing, not

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