The American Missionary | Page 5

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.
To thoughtful men North and South we urge: Take hold of this work like men. If a thousandth part of the self-sacrifice and money spent in the war were devoted to this work, the evil might be averted. Why stand over-awed at a threatened flood that if met in time may not only be averted but be turned into fertilizing waters over the broad lands?
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BOOK REVIEW.
THE REAR GUARD OF THE REVOLUTION. By JAMES R. GILMORE (Edmund Kirke). D. Appleton & Co.: New York. 1.50.
JOHN SEVIER AS A COMMONWEALTH BUILDER. By JAMES R. GILMORE (Edmund Kirke). D. Appleton & Co.: New York. 1.50.
Just one hundred years before the rebellion of the Southern States, Daniel Boone cut on a beech tree near Jonesboro, Tenn., the following words, which are still legible:
D. Boon Cilled A BAR on THE Tree in YEAR 1760
The same year that Daniel Boone "cilled" (killed) this "bar," William Bean, a former companion of Boone's, settled in the valley of the Watauga River, in what is now Eastern Tennessee. The two volumes whose titles are given above trace the history of this mountain settlement from the time that this pioneer crossed the Alleghenies down to the death of John Sevier, Sept. 24, 1815. These books are of much more than ordinary interest to the readers of the AMERICAN MISSIONARY. James R. Gilmore (Edmund Kirke) has put the same power of graphic description, the simple yet thrilling narrative, which held us spell-bound to the last chapters of Among the Pines.
Our limited space does not permit an extended review of these volumes. We only call attention to them here because they touch upon great missionary problems, and throw a flood of light upon these interesting Mountain people among whom the A.M.A. has so extensive and important a work. The first of these volumes in chronological order is the Rear Guard of the Revolution. The colony of the Mountain people in the Watauga Valley, led by John Sevier and James Robertson and Isaac Shelby, constituted this "rear guard." No better blood ever mingled in the veins of a people than that which flows in this Mountain people. French Huguenot, Scotch-Irish Presbyterian and Welsh Presbyterian were their ancestors. With such leadership as these three men furnished, the early Mountain colonists ought to have been heroes, and they were.
In the author's own words, "These three men, John Sevier, James Robertson and Isaac Shelby, * * * were like Washington and Lincoln, 'providential men.' They marched neither to the sound of drum nor bugle, and no flaming bulletins proclaimed their exploits in the ears of a listening continent; their slender forces trod silently the western solitudes, and their greatest battles were insignificant skirmishes never reported beyond the mountains; but their deeds were pregnant with consequences that will be felt along the coming centuries."
They were, and they held themselves to be, "providential men." Whether reading the Bible by the light of the great pine 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