For the first time in the history of this nation the colored people of
America have undertaken the difficult task, of stimulating and fostering
the genius of their race as a distinct and definite purpose. Other and
many gatherings have been made, during our own two and a half centuries’
residence on this continent, for educational purposes; but ours is the
first which endeavors to rise up to the plane of culture.
For my own part I have no misgivings either with respect to the
legitimacy, the timeliness, or the prospective success of our venture.
The race in the brief period of a generation, has been so fruitful in
intellectual product, that the time has come for a coalescence of
powers, and for reciprocity alike in effort and appreciation. I
congratulate you, therefore, on this your first anniversary. To me it
is, I confess, a matter of rejoicing that we have, as a people, reached
a point where we have a class of men who will come together for
purposes, so pure, so elevating, so beneficent, as the cultivation of
mind, with the view of meeting the uses and the needs of our benighted
people.
I feel that if this meeting were the end of this Academy; if I could see
that it would die this very day, I would nevertheless, cry out—“All
hail!” even if I had to join in with the salutation—“farewell forever!”
For, first of all, you have done, during the year, that which was never
done so completely before,—a work which has already told upon the
American mind; and next you have awakened in the Race an ambition which,
in some form, is sure to reproduce both mental and artistic organization
in the future.
The cultured classes of our country have never interested themselves to
stimulate the desires or aspirations of the mind of our race. They have
left us terribly alone. Such stimulation, must, therefore, in the very
nature of things, come from ourselves.
Let us state here a simple, personal incident, which will well serve to
illustrate a history.
I entered, sometime ago, the parlor of a distinguished southern
clergyman. A kinsman was standing at his mantel, writing. The clergyman
spoke to his relative—“Cousin, let me introduce to you the Rev. C., a
clergyman of our Church,” His cousin turned and looked down at me; but
as soon as he saw my black face, he turned away with disgust, and paid
no more attention to me than if I were a dog.
Now, this porcine gentleman, would have been perfectly courteous, if I
had gone into his parlor as a cook, or a waiter, or a bootblack. But my
profession, as a clergyman, suggested the idea of letters and
cultivation; and the contemptible snob at once forgot his manners, and
put aside the common decency of his class.
Now, in this, you can see the attitude of the American mind toward the
Negro intellect. A reference to this attitude seems necessary, if we
would take in, properly, the present condition of Negro culture.
It presents a most singular phenomenon. Here was a people laden with the
spoils of the centuries, bringing with them into this new land the
culture of great empires; and, withal, claiming the exalted name and
grand heritage of Christians. By their own voluntary act they placed
right beside them a large population of another race of people, seized
as captives, and brought to their plantations from a distant continent.
This other race was an unlettered, unenlightened, and a pagan people.
What was the attitude taken by this master race toward their benighted
bondsmen? It was not simply that of indifference or neglect. There was
nothing negative about it.
They began, at the first, a systematic ignoring of the fact of intellect
in this abased people. They undertook the process of darkening their
minds.
“Put out the light, and then, put out the light!” was their cry for
centuries. Paganizing themselves, they sought a deeper paganizing of
their serfs than the original paganism that these had brought from
Africa. There was no legal artifice conceivable which was not resorted
to, to blindfold their souls from the light of letters; and the church,
in not a few cases, was the prime offender.[1]
Then the legislatures of the several states enacted laws and Statutes,
closing the pages of every book printed to the eyes of Negroes; barring
the doors of every school-room against them! And this was the
systematized method of the intellect of the South, to stamp out the
brains of the Negro!
It was done, too, with the knowledge that the Negro had brain power.
There was then, no denial that the Negro had intellect. That denial
was an after thought. Besides, legislatures never pass laws forbidding
the education of pigs, dogs, and horses. They pass such laws against the
intellect of men.
However, there was then, at the very beginning of the slave trade,
everywhere, in Europe, the glintings forth of talent in great Negro
geniuses,—in Spain, and Portugal, in France and Holland and England;[2]
and Phillis Wheatley and Banneker and Chavis and Peters, were in
evidence on American soil.
It is manifest, therefore, that the objective point in all this
legislation was INTELLECT,—the intellect of the Negro! It was an effort
to becloud and stamp out the intellect of the Negro!
The first phase of this attitude reached over from about 1700 to
1820:—and as the result, almost Egyptian darkness fell upon the mind of
the race, throughout the whole land.
Following came a more infamous policy. It was the denial of
intellectuality in the Negro; the assertion that he was not a human
being, that he did not belong to the human race. This covered the period
from 1820 to 1835, when Gliddon and Nott and others, published their
so-called physiological work, to prove that the Negro was of a different
species from the white man.
A distinguished illustration of this ignoble sentiment can be given. In
the year 1833 or 4 the speaker was an errand boy in the Anti-slavery
office in New York City.
On a certain occasion he heard a conversation between the Secretary and
two eminent lawyers from Boston,—Samuel E. Sewell and David Lee Child.
They had been to Washington on some legal business. While at the Capitol
they happened to dine in the company of the great John C. Calhoun, then
senator from South Carolina. It was a period of great ferment upon the
question of Slavery, States’ Rights, and Nullification; and consequently
the Negro was the topic of conversation at the table. One of the
utterances of Mr. Calhoun was to this effect—“That if he could find a
Negro who knew the Greek syntax, he would then believe that the Negro
was a human being and should be treated as a man.”
Just think of the crude asininity of even a great man! Mr. Calhoun went
to “Yale” to study the Greek Syntax, and graduated there. His son went
to Yale to study the Greek Syntax, and graduated there. His grandson, in
recent years, went to Yale, to learn the Greek Syntax, and graduated
there. Schools and Colleges were necessary for the Calhouns, and all
other white men to learn the Greek syntax.
And yet this great man knew that there was not a school, nor a college
in which a black boy could learn his A. B. C’s. He knew that the law in
all the Southern States forbade Negro instruction under the severest
penalties. How then was the Negro to learn the Greek syntax? How then
was he to evidence to Mr. Calhoun his human nature? Why, it is manifest
that Mr. Calhoun expected the Greek syntax to grow in Negro brains, by
spontaneous generation!
Mr. Calhoun was then, as much as any other American, an exponent of the
nation’s mind upon this point. Antagonistic as they were upon other
subjects, upon the rejection of the Negro intellect they were a unit.
And this, measurably, is the attitude of the American mind
today:—measurably, I say, for thanks to the Almighty, it is not
universally so.
There has always been a school of philanthropists in this land who have
always recognized mind in the Negro; and while recognizing the
limitations which individual capacity demanded, claimed that for the
RACE, there was no such thing possible for its elevation save the
widest, largest, highest, improvement. Such were our friends and patrons
in New England in New York, Pennsylvania, a few among the Scotch
Presbyterians and the “Friends” in grand old North Carolina; a great
company among the Congregationalists of the East, nobly represented down
to the present, by the “American Missionary Society,” which tolerates no
stint for the Negro intellect in its grand solicitudes. But these were
exceptional.
Down to the year 1825, I know of no Academy or College which would open
its doors to a Negro.[3] In the South it was a matter of absolute legal
disability. In the North, it was the ostracism of universal
caste-sentiment. The theological schools of the land, and of all names,
shut their doors against the black man. An eminent friend of mine, the
noble, fervent, gentlemanly Rev. Theodore S. Wright, then a Presbyterian
licentiate, was taking private lessons in theology, at Princeton; and
for this offense was kicked out of one of its halls.
In the year 1832 Miss Prudence Crandall opened a private school for the
education of colored girls; and it set the whole State of Connecticut in
a flame. Miss Crandall was mobbed, and the school was broken up.
The year following, the trustees of Canaan Academy in New Hampshire
opened its doors to Negro youths; and this act set the people of that
state on fire. The farmers of the region assembled with 90 yoke of oxen,
dragged the Academy into a swamp, and a few weeks afterward drove the
black youths from the town.
These instances will suffice. They evidence the general statement, i. e.
that the American mind has refused to foster and to cultivate the Negro
intellect. Join to this a kindred fact, of which there is the fullest
evidence. Impelled, at times, by pity, a modicum of schooling and
training has been given the Negro; but even this, almost universally,
with reluctance, with cold criticism, with microscopic scrutiny, with
icy reservation, and at times, with ludicrous limitations.
Cheapness characterizes almost all the donations of the American people
to the Negro:—Cheapness, in all the past, has been the regimen provided
for the Negro in every line of his intellectual, as well as his lower
life. And so, cheapness is to be the rule in the future, as well for his
higher, as for his lower life:—cheap wages and cheap food, cheap and
rotten huts; cheap and dilapidated schools; cheap and stinted weeks of
schooling; cheap meeting houses for worship; cheap and ignorant
ministers; cheap theological training; and now, cheap learning, culture
and civilization!
Noble exceptions are found in the grand literary circles in which Mr.
Howells moves—manifest in his generous editing of our own Paul Dunbar’s
poems. But this generosity is not general, even in the world of American
letters.
You can easily see this in the attempt, now-a-days, to side-track the
Negro intellect, and to place it under limitations never laid upon any
other class.
The elevation of the Negro has been a moot question for a generation
past. But even to-day what do we find the general reliance of the
American mind in determinating this question? Almost universally the
resort is to material agencies! The ordinary, and sometimes the
extraordinary American is unable to see that the struggle of a
degraded people for elevation is, in its very nature, a warfare, and
that its main weapon is the cultivated and scientific mind.
Ask the great men of the land how this Negro problem is to be solved,
and then listen to the answers that come from divers classes of our
white fellow-citizens. The merchants and traders of our great cities
tell us—“The Negro must be taught to work;” and they will pour out
their moneys by thousands to train him to toil. The clergy in large
numbers, cry out—“Industrialism is the only hope of the Negro;” for
this is the bed-rock, in their opinion, of Negro evangelization! “Send
him to Manual Labor Schools,” cries out another set of philanthropists.
“Hic haec, hoc,” is going to prove the ruin of the Negro” says the Rev.
Steele, an erudite Southern Savan. “You must begin at the bottom with
the Negro,” says another eminent authority—as though the Negro had been
living in the clouds, and had never reached the bottom. Says the
Honorable George T. Barnes, of Georgia—“The kind of education the Negro
should receive should not be very refined nor classical, but adapted to
his present condition:” as though there is to be no future for the
Negro.
And so you see that even now, late in the 19th century, in this land of
learning and science, the creed is—“Thus far and no farther”, i. e.
for the American black man.
One would suppose from the universal demand for the mere industrialism
for this race of ours, that the Negro had been going daily to dinner
parties, eating terrapin and indulging in champagne; and returning home
at night, sleeping on beds of eiderdown; breakfasting in the morning in
his bed, and then having his valet to clothe him daily in purple and
fine linen—all these 250 years of his sojourn in this land. And then,
just now, the American people, tired of all this Negro luxury, was
calling him, for the first time, to blister his hands with the hoe, and
to learn to supply his needs by sweatful toil in the cotton fields.
Listen a moment, to the wisdom of a great theologian, and withal as
great philanthropist, the Rev. Dr. Wayland, of Philadelphia. Speaking,
not long since, of the “Higher Education” of the colored people of the
South, he said “that this subject concerned about 8,000,000 of our
fellow-citizens, among whom are probably 1,500,000 voters. The education
suited to these people is that which should be suited to white people
under the same circumstances. These people are bearing the impress which
was left on them by two centuries of slavery and several centuries of
barbarism. This education must begin at the bottom. It must first of all
produce the power of self-support to assist them to better their
condition. It should teach them good citizenship and should build them
up morally. It should be, first, a good English education. They should
be imbued with the knowledge of the Bible. They should have an
industrial education. An industrial education leads to self-support and
to the elevation of their condition. Industry is itself largely an
education, intellectually and morally, and, above all, an education of
character. Thus we should make these people self-dependent. This
education will do away with pupils being taught Latin and Greek, while
they do not know the rudiments of English.”
Just notice the cautious, restrictive, limiting nature of this advice!
Observe the lack of largeness, freedom and generosity in it. Dr.
Wayland, I am sure, has never specialized just such a regimen for the
poor Italians, Hungarians or Irish, who swarm, in lowly degradation, in
immigrant ships to our shores. No! for them he wants, all Americans
want, the widest, largest culture of the land; the instant opening, not
simply of the common schools; and then an easy passage to the bar, the
legislature, and even the judgeships of the nation. And they oft times
get there.
But how different the policy with the Negro. He must have “an
education which begins at the bottom.” “He should have an industrial
education,” &c. His education must, first of all, produce the power of
self-support, &c.
Now, all this thought of Dr. Wayland is all true. But, my friends, it is
all false, too; and for the simple reason that it is only half truth.
Dr. Wayland seems unable to rise above the plane of burden-bearing for
the Negro. He seems unable to gauge the idea of the Negro becoming a
thinker. He seems to forget that a race of thoughtless toilers are
destined to be forever a race of senseless boys; for only beings who
think are men.
How pitiable it is to see a great good man be-fuddled by a half truth.
For to allege “Industrialism” to be the grand agency in the elevation of
a race of already degraded labourers, is as much a mere platitude as to
say, “they must eat and drink and sleep;” for man cannot live without
these habits. But they never civilize man; and civilization is the
objective point in the movement for Negro elevation. Labor, just like
eating and drinking, is one of the inevitabilities of life; one of its
positive necessities. And the Negro has had it for centuries; but it has
never given him manhood. It does not now, in wide areas of population,
lift him up to moral and social elevation. Hence the need of a new
factor in his life. The Negro needs light: light thrown in upon all the
circumstances of his life. The light of civilization.
Dr. Wayland fails to see two or three important things in this Negro
problem:—
(a) That the Negro has no need to go to a manual labor school.[4] He has
been for two hundred years and more, the greatest laborer in the land.
He is a laborer now; and he must always be a laborer, or he must die.
But:
(b) Unfortunately for the Negro, he has been so wretchedly ignorant that
he has never known the value of his sweat and toil. He has been forced
into being an unthinking labor-machine. And this he is, to a large
degree, to-day under freedom.
(c) Now the great need of the Negro, in our day and time, is intelligent
impatience at the exploitation of his labor, on the one hand; on the
other hand courage to demand a larger share of the wealth which his toil
creates for others.
It is not a mere negative proposition that settles this question. It is
not that the Negro does not need the hoe, the plane, the plough, and the
anvil. It is the positive affirmation that the Negro needs the light of
cultivation; needs it to be thrown in upon all his toil, upon his whole
life and its environments.
What he needs is CIVILIZATION. He needs the increase of his higher
wants, of his mental and spiritual needs. This, mere animal labor has
never given him, and never can give him. But it will come to him, as an
individual, and as a class, just in proportion as the higher culture
comes to his leaders and teachers, and so gets into his schools,
academies and colleges; and then enters his pulpits; and so filters down
into his families and his homes; and the Negro learns that he is no
longer to be a serf, but that he is to bare his strong brawny arm as a
laborer; not to make the white man a Croesus, but to make himself a
man. He is always to be a laborer; but now, in these days of freedom and
the schools, he is to be a laborer with intelligence, enlightenment and
manly ambitions.
But, when his culture fits him for something more than a field hand or a
mechanic, he is to have an open door set wide before him! And that
culture, according to his capacity, he must claim as his rightful
heritage, as a man:—not stinted training, not a caste education, not a
Negro curriculum.
The Negro Race in this land must repudiate this absurd notion which is
stealing on the American mind. The Race must declare that it is not to
be put into a single groove; and for the simple reason (1) that man
was made by his Maker to traverse the whole circle of existence, above
as well as below; and that universality is the kernel of all true
civilization, of all race elevation. And (2) that the Negro mind,
imprisoned for nigh three hundred years, needs breadth and freedom,
largeness, altitude, and elasticity; not stint nor rigidity, nor
contractedness.
But the “Gradgrinds” are in evidence on all sides, telling us that the
colleges and scholarships given us since emancipation, are all a
mistake; and that the whole system must be reversed. The conviction is
widespread that the Negro has no business in the higher walks of
scholarship; that, for instance, Prof. Scarborough has no right to labor
in philology; Professor Kelly Miller in mathematics; Professor Du Bois,
in history; Dr. Bowen, in theology; Professor Turner, in science; nor
Mr. Tanner in art. There is no repugnance to the Negro buffoon, and the
Negro scullion; but so soon as the Negro stands forth as an intellectual
being, this toad of American prejudice, as at the touch of Ithuriel’s
spear, starts up a devil!
It is this attitude, this repellant, this forbidding attitude of the
American mind, which forces the Negro in this land, to both recognize
and to foster the talent and capacity of his own race, and to strive to
put that capacity and talent to use for the race. I have detailed the
dark and dreadful attempt to stamp that intellect out of existence. It
is not only a past, it is also, modified indeed, a present fact; and out
of it springs the need of just such an organization as the Negro
Academy.
Now, gentlemen and friends, seeing that the American mind in the
general, revolts from Negro genius, the Negro himself is duty bound to
see to the cultivation and the fostering of his own race-capacity. This
is the chief purpose of this Academy. Our special mission is the
encouragement of the genius and talent in our own race. Wherever we see
great Negro ability it is our office to light upon it not tardily, not
hesitatingly; but warmly, ungrudgingly, enthusiastically, for the honor
of our race, and for the stimulating self-sacrifice in upbuilding the
race. Fortunately for us, as a people, this year has given us more than
ordinary opportunity for such recognition. Never before, in American
history, has there been such a large discovery of talent and genius
among us.
Early in the year there was published by one of our members, a volume of
papers and addresses, of more than usual excellence. You know gentlemen,
that, not seldom, we have books and pamphlets from the press which, like
most of our newspapers, are beneath the dignity of criticism. In
language, in style, in grammar and in thought they are often crude and
ignorant and vulgar. Not so with “Talks for the Times” by Prof.
Crogman, of Clark University. It is a book with largess of high and
noble common sense; pure and classical in style; with a large fund of
devoted racialism; and replete everywhere with elevated thoughts. Almost
simultaneously with the publication of Professor Crogman’s book, came
the thoughtful and spicy narrative of Rev. Matthew Anderson of
Philadelphia. The title of this volume is “Presbyterianism; its
relation to the Negro” but the title cannot serve as a revelation of
the racy and spirited story of events in the career of its author. The
book abounds with stirring incidents, strong remonstrance, clear and
lucid argument, powerful reasonings, the keenest satire; while, withal,
it sets forth the wide needs of the Race, and gives one of the strongest
vindications of its character and its capacity.[5]
Soon after this came the first publication of our Academy. And you all
know the deep interest excited by the two papers, the first issue of
this Society. They have attracted interest and inquiry where the mere
declamatory effusions, or, the so-called eloquent harangues of aimless
talkers and political wire-pullers would fall like snowflakes upon the
waters. The papers of Prof. Kelly Miller and Prof. Du Bois have reached
the circles of scholars and thinkers in this country. So consummate was
the handling of Hoffman’s “Race Traits and Tendencies” by Prof. Miller,
that we may say that it was the most scientific defense of the Negro
ever made in this country by a man of our own blood: accurate, pointed,
painstaking, and I claim conclusive.
The treatise of Prof. Du Bois upon the “Conservation of Race” separated
itself, in tone and coloring, from the ordinary effusions of literary
work in this land. It rose to the dignity of philosophical insight and
deep historical inference. He gave us, in a most lucid and original
method, and in a condensed form, the long settled conclusions of
Ethnologists and Anthropologists upon the question of Race.
This treatise moreover, furnished but a limited measure of our
indebtedness to his pen and brain. Only a brief time before our assembly
last year, Prof. Du Bois had given a large contribution to the
literature of the nation as well as to the genius of the race. At that
time he had published a work which will, without doubt, stand
permanently, as authority upon its special theme. “The Suppression of
the Slave Trade” is, without doubt, the one unique and special
authority upon that subject, in print. It is difficult to conceive the
possible creation of a similar work, so accurate and painstaking, so
full of research, so orderly in historical statement, so rational in its
conclusions. It is the simple truth, and at the same time the highest
praise, the statement of one Review, that “Prof. Du Bois has exhausted
his subject.” This work is a step forward in the literature of the Race,
and a stimulant to studious and aspiring minds among us.
One further reference, that is, to the realm of Art.
The year ’97 will henceforth be worthy of note in our history. As a
race, we have, this year, reached a high point in intellectual growth
and expression.
In poetry and painting, as well as in letters and thought, the Negro has
made, this year, a character.
On my return home in October, I met an eminent scientific gentleman; and
one of the first remarks he made to me was—“Well, Dr. Crummell, we
Americans have been well taken down in Paris, this year. Why,” he said,
“the prize in painting was taken by a colored young man, a Mr. Tanner
from America. Do you know him?” The reference was to Mr. Tanner’s
“Raising of Lazarus,” a painting purchased by the French Government, for
the famous Luxembourg Gallery. This is an exceptional honor, rarely
bestowed upon any American Artist. Well may we all be proud of this,
and with this we may join the idea that Tanner, instead of having a hoe
in his hand, or digging in a trench, as the faddists on industrialism
would fain persuade us, has found his right place at the easel with
artists.
Not less distinguished in the world of letters is the brilliant career
of our poet-friend and co-laborer, Mr. Paul Dunbar. It was my great
privilege last summer to witness his triumph, on more than one occasion,
in that grand metropolis of Letters and Literature, the city of London;
as well as to hear of the high value set upon his work, by some of the
first scholars and literati of England. Mr. Dunbar has had his poems
republished in London by Chapman & Co.; and now has as high a reputation
abroad as he has here in America, where his luminous genius has broken
down the bars, and with himself, raised the intellectual character of
his race in the world’s consideration.
These cheering occurrences, these demonstrations of capacity, give us
the greatest encouragement in the large work which is before this
Academy. Let us enter upon that work, this year, with high hopes, with
large purposes, and with calm and earnest persistence. I trust that we
shall bear in remembrance that the work we have undertaken is our
special function; that it is a work which calls for cool thought, for
laborious and tireless painstaking, and for clear discrimination; that
it promises nowhere wide popularity, or, exuberant eclat; that very much
of its ardent work is to be carried on in the shade; that none of its
desired results will spring from spontaneity; that its most prominent
features are the demands of duty to a needy people; and that its noblest
rewards will be the satisfaction which will spring from having answered
a great responsibility, and having met the higher needs of a benighted
and struggling Race.
Footnotes:
[1] Baptism, for well nigh a century, was denied Negro slaves in the
colonies, for fear it carried emancipation with it. Legislation on
Education began at a subsequent date. In 1740 it was enacted in SOUTH
CAROLINA: “Whereas, the having slaves taught to write or suffering them
to be employed in writing, may be attended with great inconvenience, Be
it enacted, That all and every person or persons whatsoever who shall
hereafter teach or cause any slave or slaves to be taught to write, or
shall use or employ any slave as a Scribe in any manner of writing,
hereafter taught to write; every such person or persons shall forever,
for every such offense, forfeit the sum of £100 current money.”
The next step, in South Carolina, was aimed against mental instruction
of every kind, in reading and writing.
A similar law was passed in Savannah, Georgia. In 1711, in the Colony of
Maryland, a special enactment was passed to bar freedom by baptism and
in 1715, in South Carolina! See “Stroud’s Slave Laws.”
[2] At the time when France was on the eve of plunging deeply into the
slave trade and of ruining her colonies by the curse of Slavery, the
ABBE GREGOIRE stept forth in vindication of the Negro, and published his
celebrated work—“The Literature of Negroes.” In this work he gives the
names and narrates the achievements of the distinguished Negroes,
writers, scholars, painters, philosophers, priests and Roman prelates,
in Spain, Portugal, France, England, Holland, Italy and Turkey who had
risen to eminence in the 15th century.
Not long after BLUMENBACH declared that “entire and large provinces of
Europe might be named, in which it would be difficult to meet with such
good writers, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the French
Academy; and that moreover there is no savage people, who have
distinguished themselves by such examples of perfectibility and capacity
for scientific cultivation: and consequently that none can approach more
nearly to the polished nations of the globe than the Negro.”
[3] “Oberlin College” in Ohio was the first opening its doors to the
Negro in 1836.
[4] “I am not so old as some of my young friends may suspect, but I am
too old to go into the business of ‘carrying coals to Newcastle.’ * * *
* The colored citizen of the U. S. has already graduated with
respectable standing from a course of 250 years in the University of the
old-time type of Manual labor. The South of to-day is what we see it
largely because the colored men and women at least during the past 250
years, have not been lazy ‘cumberers of the ground,’ but the grand army
of laborers that has wrestled with nature and led these 16 States out of
the woods thus far on the highroad to material prosperity. It is not
especially necessary that the 2,000,000 of our colored children and
youth in the southern common schools should be warned against laziness,
and what has always and everywhere come of that since the foundation of
the world.”
The Rev. A. D. Mayo, M. A., LL. D.
Address before State Teachers’ Association (Colored)
Birmingham, Ala.
[5] I owe Mr. Anderson an apology for omitting this references to his
book on the delivery of this address. It was prepared while its author
was in a foreign land; but had passed entirely from his memory in the
preparation of this address.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Other than the corrections noted by hover information, printer’s spelling and hyphenation usage have been retained.
An unmatched quotation mark has been left as presented in the original text (“Hic haec, hoc,”
is going to prove the ruin of the Negro” says the Rev. Steele, an erudite Southern Savan.).