Various - The American Missionary. Volume 42, No. 10, October, 1888

The danger of a war of races is scouted at the North; it is not at the South. This is natural. The North is not in immediate contact with the danger; the South is. When the war of the rebellion was impending, the North refused to believe in its coming; and when it came, one of the wisest statesmen of the North, Mr. Seward, predicted that it would "not last sixty days." No such delusion prevailed in the South. Many of the best men there, nay, nearly all the border States, dreaded its coming and held back as long as possible, but they were swept into the flood they foresaw and could not avert.

Thoughtful men at the South now have no rose-colored views about the Negro problem. They fear the impending conflict. With them the supremacy of the white race is the settled point, but they see in the growing numbers, intelligence and restlessness of the Negroes an increasing danger that will only be aggravated by delay. Why should not the North and South alike manfully face the question of a war of races? What will it mean? What will be its end? If the whites and the blacks of the South alone engage in it, the blacks will be exterminated. Nothing less will meet the case. If the North mingle in the struggle, it must be to help the whites or the blacks. If to help the whites, that will mean the more rapid defeat and slaughter of the blacks; if the North help the blacks and save them from destruction, then we shall be worse off than we are now, the two races will be together with enmities aroused a thousand fold!

But why not face the more hopeful question: Is there a remedy? There is! The teacher and the preacher, the spelling-book and the Bible, the saviours of men, the reformers of society, the uplifters of races, are spreading over the South. They go to the manufacturing towns—the Birminghams and the Annistons—they go to the large cities with their common and normal schools, their medical, law and theological seminaries. When the pupils become teachers, they go into the smaller towns, they go into the rural districts, on the small farms, everywhere instructing, encouraging and stimulating the people, leading them to more intelligent industries, to economy, to the purchase of land, the erection of better houses, to a higher aim in life, and to the formation of a right character. Of such stuff men are made, citizens, Christians; men who can use the ballot, who own property that must be protected by the ballot; men who have homes that must be refined and pure, churches where God is worshipped intelligently and where a practical morality is taught and attained. Such a people will be safe, for they will be bone and muscle of the South, they will be needed in its wide expanse of fertile soil, needed in its practical trades, needed for the accumulated wealth, intelligence and cultivated piety they will bring into all the walks and avocations of life.

But it will be some time before these educational and religious means reach all the blacks, and in the meantime much patience and toil will be needed. To the blacks we would say: You won the admiration of men and the blessing of God by your patience under the yoke of slavery when there seemed to be no hope; now win both again by bearing in like spirit your lesser present ills, while hope dawns and help is near.

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