The American Missionary | Page 9

was really justifiable.
The cruel wrong inflicted upon those who have no crime laid to their charge, no personal reproach of character, is treated as though it were but little more than a joke. If the two officials were guilty of drunkenness no one doubts that they could have been legally removed from office. If the colored people at Marion are divided into factions, then the whites could the more easily combine forces against the officials in question, or any political ring which may have existed. But there was a general Negro uprising threatened, and in order to save their own lives the whites made haste to get into the field first. This is the avowed excuse. But it is certain that no one believes there was serious danger of a Negro uprising. The men arrested and banished were unarmed, and taken by surprise. If they were in any sense desperate or dangerous characters they turned cowards suddenly, making no resistance. Indeed, there is but one excuse for their bloodless surrender. They display to the world the utter groundlessness of the charge of a conspiracy. No dynamite bombs, no loaded weapons, no evidence of organized bands were discovered.
In all the history of the shot-gun policy and the unnumbered outrages committed, there are on record few, if any, cases of conspiracy against life and property on the part of the Negro. But the true animus of the Crittenden County affair, I think, is found in the current declaration which is used at Marion on the part of the brave men who drove out these exiles, viz.: "We don't want any educated niggers, and won't have 'em here, not even to teach school."
It should not be overlooked, that in this instance there is fully revealed that singular idea which so widely prevails at the South, viz.: A Negro is in his place only and always as a subordinate. It is assumed that to educate him unfits him for his mission in life, unless that education looks simply to some hand service.
With this fact before us, we can explain the dead silence of the pulpit and the press of the South as touching the first principles of justice.
The end justifies the means when "Negro rule" is to be prevented, and to protest against this bold subversion of the great principles of citizenship in the Republic, is to "wave the bloody shirt." We will admit that it is by no means desirable that a mass of illiterate people should hold sway, but we claim that the Southern white people can break the "color line" if they will, by admitting frankly the rights of the Negro, and by encouraging him to aspire to an intelligent and worthy manhood.
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EXTRACTS.
Fifty years ago there was a boy in Africa who was taken prisoner in one of the fierce wars between the tribes, and was carried away from his home to be sold as a slave. First he was sold for a horse. Then his buyer thought him a bad exchange for the horse, and compelled his master to take him back. Then he was sold for so much rum. This was called another bad bargain by the man who had bought him, and again he was returned, to be sold for tobacco with the same result. Nobody wanted the poor, miserable slave-boy, who was on the point of committing suicide when he was bought by a Portuguese trader and carried away in a slave ship. How little that wretched boy knew what the future had in store for him as he lay chained in the hold of the crowded slave-ship! But one of England's war ships that were clearing the high seas of the slavers bore down upon the Portuguese vessel, rescued the captives, and the African boy was placed under Christian influences, baptized and educated, and to-day he is Bishop Crowther, England's black Bishop in Africa.--The Gospel in all Lands.
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A very obliging Indian.--Dr. C.A. White, Professor of Paleontology in the Smithsonian Institution, relates this pleasing incident. Being in the Ute country a year or so ago, in pursuit of scientific facts, he found himself on one occasion encamped some fifty miles from Uintah Agency. Being desirous of sending a letter to his wife in Washington, he entrusted it to an Indian who, he learned by signs, was on his way to the agency. He was not sure that the Indian understood what he desired him to do with the letter, but took the risk of that. His wife received the letter and was surprised at finding it postmarked Salt Lake City. The Doctor afterward learned that the Indian arrived at the agency just after the mail had gone, and knowing that it would be a month before another mail would