The American Missionary | Page 6

fires, or
burning the cabins of the Cherokees, or driving the marauding

Chickamaugas into their lair at "Nick-a-Jack" cave, or beating the
British at King's Mountain, these men felt themselves called of God to
maintain for the people a free government.
There was the same reckless administration of punishment that still
characterizes these Mountain people. A tory appeared in the road one
day near the home of Colonel William Campbell, of the "Backwater
settlement." The Colonel at once gives him chase; after a brief absence
he returns to his home, and his wife eagerly asks "What did you do
with him?"
"Oh, we hung him, Betty, that's all."
These early settlers did not immediately plant churches and
school-houses, as the settlers of New England did. Still they were not
altogether illiterate. A public document still in existence has the
signature of 112 out of 114 of their number who signed the paper, two
only making their X.
In 1779, the first Court House was built at Jonesboro. At about the
same date, the author informs us, "The school mistress was to be found
at nearly every cross-road in the older settlements. She occupied a
small log-house, generally about sixteen feet square, and often without
floor or windows." The author might have added that she, or one like
her, occupies the same school-house to-day.
In 1779, the first "church-house" was erected, and Rev. Tidence Lane
became the "first settled minister beyond the Alleghenies."
To those of our readers who have recently followed the missionary
work of the A.M.A. in this Mountain region, these books will be of
great interest.
CHAS. J. RYDER.
* * * * *
We have received from Rev. Austin Willey, author of "THE HISTORY

OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY CAUSE IN THE STATE AND NATION,"
a gift of one hundred copies of the book for gratuitous distribution
among our workers in the South. We gave a brief review and a warm
commendation of the volume in the AMERICAN MISSIONARY for
June, 1886, and we renew our endorsement, and tender our thanks to
the author for his benefaction. Our field workers will be interested in
this candid sketch of the early anti-slavery struggle, and we believe that
many of our white friends in the South will be glad to read in the light
of these quiet days the sayings and doings of a class of people whom
they then misunderstood.
The book may be had of B. Thurston, Portland, Me., or of C.T.
Dillingham, 678 Broadway, N.Y. Price, 1.50, postpaid.
The reference to Father Willey and his book is suggestive. He is one of
the "old, original" abolitionists. Men who were once denounced and are
now scarcely honored, for lo! to the amazement and amusement of
some of us, we find that everybody was an abolitionist and always had
been, that everybody learned to hate slavery on the mother's lap, and
was always opposed to it! We who in those early days were treated as
outcasts by "gentlemen of property and standing," and mobbed by the
rabble at their bidding, are led to wonder what has become of all those
who thus disagreed with us! One marked exception occurs to us. A
prominent professor in a theological seminary, when the question was
put to him ten years ago: "Professor, when did you become an
Abolitionist?" replied, with a merry twinkle in his eye: "When it
became popular." We have found few, however, who are so frank or so
witty.
M.E. STRIEBY.
* * * * *
THE UNCONSCIOUS INFLUENCE OF OUR MISSIONARIES AT
THE SOUTH.
In a recent number of The Nineteenth Century, Sir William W. Hunter,
an eminent authority, reporting the influence of the missionaries in

India, says that among the people to whom they have gone they have
built up the most complete confidence and implicit faith in the purity
and unselfishness of their motives. He declares that he regards the
missionary work of the English as an expiation for wrong-doing, and he
believes that the missionary instinct forms the necessary spiritual
complement of the aggressive genius of the English race. Sir William
also claims that the advance of missionaries in the good opinion of
non-Christian peoples is a most striking evidence of their high
character and intelligence, and that no class of Englishmen has done so
much to make England respected in India as the missionaries, that no
class has done so much to awaken the Indian's intellect and to lessen
the dangers of transition from the old state of things to the new.
After this much of condensation of that profound article by the
Christian Union, we quote from the author:
"The careless onlooker may have no particular convictions on the
subject, and flippant persons may ridicule religious effort in India as
elsewhere. But I think that few Indian