The American Missionary | Page 7

and their aspiration for thrift in every sense, they have exerted a profound unconscious influence upon the white people of that Southland. They, too, have built up among the whites a confidence in the purity and unselfishness of their motives. At first they were suspected as emissaries of a political party. By many even of the best people there they were held as necessarily persons of low-down condition and character to be willing to do that "low-down work." "With our views of the case, how could we believe anything else?" was the answer to the remonstrance against the current mode of treatment. Gradually this feeling has been giving way to one of growing confidence, until for several years such men as Rev. Dr. A.G. Haygood and Mr. G.W. Cable, and such papers as the Memphis Appeal, and such a State Board of Examiners as that of the Atlanta University have been publicly declaring the high intellectual quality and moral standing of these once despised teachers, while many of the most respectable citizens are privately saying the same thing, and multitudes believe it, though making no announcement of the same.
By this crucifixion of feeling through which those workers have passed, and by their self-denying endurance of hardness, they too, in no small sense, have been making expiation for the wrongs done the slaves. Their missionary instinct also forms the necessary spiritual complement of the aggressive genius of the Puritan civilization which is now taking possession where its sword had cleared the way. Their advance in the good opinion of the best people of the South is also a striking evidence of their high character and intelligence. No class of Northern people going South have done so much to make the North respected as the missionaries, and none are doing more to lessen the danger of transition from the old state of things to the new. Going, not as "carpet-baggers," but as citizens, to be identified with the moral reconstruction of the South, they translate there the real spirit of the North, and represent the spiritual side of the new life which is going into that fair portion of our own dear country. By the peculiar people to whom they especially go, and who prove to have a natural affinity for Puritan ideas and institutions, they are doing more than any others to set up, not a New England in the South, but a New South, wherein shall be rejuviant the principles of that civilization which was planted at Plymouth Rock.
JOSEPH E. ROY.
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EXPULSION OF NEGROES FROM MARION, ARKANSAS.
It is not our custom to publish details of alleged outrages upon the colored people at the South. We have no wish to stir up strife by recalling memories of the past, or by giving incidents of recent aggression against the helpless. But this case in Marion is free from bloody details and is a simple illustration of the determination of the white people to maintain their sway in the South.
The simple facts in the case are, that in Crittenden County, Arkansas, of which Marion is the county town, the population is chiefly colored, the ratio being seven negroes to one white man. For several years the office of Judge of the County and Probate Court, and the Clerk and under officers of the court, were colored men. The more important county offices were held by white men. On a given day, fifty or more heavily-armed white men appeared at the county seat and drove from their offices and homes the colored officers named above, together with the colored local doctor, the lawyer, the schoolmaster of the colored school, the editor of the colored newspaper and a number of other prominent colored citizens.
The farther details of the transaction are given in a thoughtful and calm article in a recent number of The Independent by Rev. B.A. Imes, the colored minister of the church at Memphis, Tenn., under the care of this Association. We give below all of the article that relates to the facts:
THE CRITTENDEN COUNTY OUTRAGE.
BY THE REV. B.A. IMES.
From the bluff at Memphis we look across the river, where along the western shore stretch the forests of Crittenden County, Arkansas, and Marion, about fourteen miles from Memphis, is the county-seat. The story of the recent banishment of fifteen prominent colored office-holders, professional men and farmers has gone to the world.
The whites, well armed, took their game by surprise, bagged and shipped it without bloodshed. Now the "empire is peace" they say, although for a time terror reigned among the startled colored people.
With a Negro population six or seven times as large as the white, it is not strange that the County Court Judge, the County Clerk and his deputy should be Negroes, nor that they should aspire to other