From Slave to College President.
by G.o.dfrey Holden Pike.
CHAPTER I
WANTED: A MAN--THE MAN FOUND
Just at the most severe crisis of the war between France and Germany, over thirty years ago, a London newspaper, in describing the situation, remarked that France wanted not men, but a Man. During a whole generation which followed after the close of the gigantic and sanguinary conflict between the Northern and Southern States of the American Republic, a similar remark would have applied to the millions of slaves who, though nominally free, were drifting hither and thither, now groping in the wrong direction altogether, or missing opportunities they might have embraced, had there but been one commanding personality in their midst to give the word and lead the way. There seemed to be too many negroes, while they were still increasing with a rapidity which inspired misgiving. The race seemed to be "at sea" for want of a Man. At length the much-needed chief or leader was found in Booker T.
Washington, whose distinguished work on behalf of the race at the great inst.i.tution which he has founded at Tuskegee has given him a world-wide reputation. As a negro, his mission is to the men and women of his own nation.
In regard to this man with his commanding personality, the _International Monthly_ of New York says:--"At the present time he is universally recognised as the foremost representative of his race. He is eagerly sought after as a speaker. Whatever he chooses to write immediately finds a willing publisher. Newspaper eulogy declares him to be a remarkable orator. He is often spoken of as of solid, and even brilliant, intellectual attainments. How much of all this vogue and of this unusual reputation is based upon the fact that he is a negro, and how much upon his native merit when weighed and judged without regard to any other consideration whatsoever? Has he, in fact, done that which, had he been a white man, would have given him a solid and substantial claim to the esteem that he now enjoys?"
Mr Harry T. Peck, who writes thus, ventures the opinion that the estimate of the public in regard to Booker Washington is exaggerated.
"There is no evidence that his mind is in any way exceptional," he adds.... "Were he a white man, he never would be singled out for eminence.... He is not an orator; he is not a writer; he is not a thinker. He is something more than these. He is the man who comes at the psychological moment and does the thing which is wanting to be done, and which no one else has yet accomplished." This can hardly be accepted as genuine criticism. Just as we judge a tree by its fruits, so we measure capacity, and even genius, by its results. If, as is generally acknowledged to be the case, Booker Washington has practically solved that Race Problem which American politicians have hardly dared to face since the close of the Civil War, it is only fair that we accord him the distinction of possessing that original shrewdness which may even be called genius. When an idea of exceptional value is given forth, one that is all the greater on account of its simplicity, people seem to be naturally disposed to underrate the power which gave it utterance.
Booker Washington may merely be following in the footsteps of Adam Smith when, instead of regarding the negro population as an evil or a grievance, he prescribes that their labour, as a source of vast wealth, be utilised for the national advancement. Viewed from any other standpoint, there can be no doubt that the rapidly-increasing negroes inspire some disquieting apprehensions as a possible source of inconvenience or of actual danger. Once get the coloured race well under control, however, and the result would be all-round satisfaction.
Thus Booker Washington is not only the man of the hour to his own people; in him the Man who has been wanted for forty years has been found. Being somewhat over forty years of age, he was born in those portentous times towards the end of the sixth decade of the last century when the political horizon of the Republic was darkening and showing symptoms of the coming Civil War. Virginia, his native State, was the most populous and wealthy of the original thirteen, which, as colonies, separated from Great Britain after the War of Independence. In the days of his childhood, before the Civil War actually broke out, his surroundings were those of the cabin standing amid the squalor of slavery. All the sad, as well as the comic, phases of life on the Southern plantations, as they then existed, are vividly remembered by Booker Washington. Of course, to the slaves themselves very much depended on the disposition of their owners, or on the character of the overseers which those planters employed. The lot of Booker Washington was what may be called an average one. It was not so bad as that of many others who were less fortunate; nor was it so good as the exceptional experience of the few who were born amid the most favourable surroundings. It was, of course, a sad childhood, unrelieved by anything like what we should in Great Britain call the comforts of life. He was a keen-witted lad; but the shrewdest of seers could not have foreseen that he would develop into the man of hope whom the negroes, after their coming emanc.i.p.ation, would most sorely need.
At the time of his birth, some forty-three or forty-four years ago--the exact place or time being alike unknown--the public sentiment in regard to emanc.i.p.ation had made great advances, and this had been effected chiefly through the diffusion of millions of copies of Mrs H. B. Stowe"s _Uncle Tom"s Cabin_. Among those in this country who believed the descriptions in that work to be exaggerated, and that Legree was a non-existent character, we have to include Charles d.i.c.kens. At the same time, that famous novelist, in common with some others, probably clearly saw that the days of slavery were numbered. "In truth, it must be so," remarked one journalist at the time when _Uncle Tom"s Cabin_ was the most popular book both in the Old and the New World. "In truth, it must be so, for the very laws of population forbid the permanence of slavery in America. The black man thrives where the white man decays, and it is the knowledge of this very remarkable fact that in great part accounts for the dislike to the coloured population which is everywhere expressed in the United States." The social inequality of the negroes and the whites struck people then, as it does to-day in this country, as being one of the most marked features of American society. There is probably no remedy for that state of things, and it is partly through his recognising this fact, and knowing that the negroes must continue to be a race by themselves, that Booker Washington"s success has been what it is.
Meanwhile, what kind of existence was the everyday life on a plantation "down South" in the days of Booker Washington"s childhood? By way of reply, take this vivid word-picture from Mr Casey"s _Two Years on the Farm of Uncle Sam_, which was published in the decade of our hero"s birth:--
"The slaves are all that I had imagined, coming up to the dark outline of fancy with a terrible precision. We put in to wood at one of these places, and for the first time I saw these hewers of wood and drawers of water. A party of us went on sh.o.r.e to shoot; some distance in the wood we found two men, three women and two boys; there were twenty in all on this farm. The women were dressed in a rough, shapeless, coa.r.s.e garment, b.u.t.toned at the back, with a sort of trousers of the same material, rough shoes and stockings, the upper garment reaching nearly to the ankle; a kind of cloth, like a dirty towel, was wound round the head. One of the women drove an ox-team; she had a large and powerful whip, with which, and a surprising strength, she belaboured and tugged the unwieldy team with great dexterity. The other woman had five children, and a.s.sisted in loading the wood; the younger, about sixteen years of age, had one child, and appeared to do nothing. The women, it seemed to me, worked harder than the men. I observed the almost complete absence of memory in the elder woman; she could not remember where she had left the link-chain or goad-whip, though but a few minutes out of her hand. I must confess that, looking on that labour-crooked group, I felt a dislike, strong and definite, to that system which takes away even the hope of improvement, crushing down the principle of self-esteem in the man, until it reaches the pa.s.sive and unambitious existence of the oxen which he drives. And looking on those women, negroes though they were, so unnaturally masculine, so completely uns.e.xed, so far removed from all those attributes with which the name of woman is a.s.sociated, I felt that no reason based on an a.s.serted right, no fiction of argument, could stand in my judgment but as dust in the balance when the question is whether a human being--no matter of what colour, whether an Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him--should possess the liberty or right of securing his own happiness to the extent of his ability. Then their state, their look, bodies, mind and manner were so many self-evident arguments against the system, which no representations, however plausible, could refute; and all that I had listened to from Southerners on the voyage disappeared like gossamer in the tempest before the mute, living picture of wretchedness presented by that group."
Brought up amid such surroundings, one would not know much about his ancestry, if anything at all. A great planter gave no more heed to the pedigree of his slaves than he did to that of his cattle; all alike were bought and sold in the open market, and neither one nor the other had any rights or privileges apart from the will of their owners. The cabin of the slave family was, in a very literal sense, what its name implied--a cabin and nothing more. The household was not supposed to need more than one room; the furniture was, of course, as rude as the hovel itself, and, though the apartment would be well ventilated, gla.s.s windows were not considered necessary. A pallet on the earthern floor was the only sleeping accommodation. It was one-room life under one of its worst phases; and, in addition to other drawbacks, the inmates suffered from cold and draughts in winter and from heat in summer. It is almost needless to say that under such conditions and amid such surroundings a lad like Booker Washington fared neither better nor worse than tens of thousands of his fellows; his earliest days were not cheered by any of the sunshine of childhood. As a rule, the children of the slave-cabin knew nothing of those ordinary sports and pastimes which relieve and give variety to the early days of the young under happier circ.u.mstances. Of course, he was not more than a child when slavery came to an end, but in the case of such a child slave, at a very early age indeed, his possible service was found to be commercially too valuable to be altogether dispensed with. He could do duty as a messenger or as a porter between the great house--a sumptuous palace in comparison with the slave-cabins--and the fields where his elders were at work. With a horse he could also go on more distant errands, some of which, along lonely roads, were not unattended with danger. Thus the dense, dark woods through which he might have to pa.s.s, when taking corn to be ground at a distant mill, would be haunted by imaginary spectres; and, besides, there were said to be deserters from the Confederate Army hidden in those recesses who, by way of sport, would relieve any negro lad of his ears if they chanced to meet with him. Such were the last repellent phases of that phase of that now obsolete world of slavery in Old Virginia as Booker Washington remembers them.
In our common, everyday talk we are accustomed to say that the darkest hour of night precedes the dawn of day. It was so in this instance. The time of Booker Washington"s birth, and for some years after, was apparently the darkest period in the history of the slaves of the Southern States. For long the negroes of the plantations not only grew up quite illiterate--it was a punishable offence for them to make any endeavour to learn to read, or for anyone to attempt to teach them. Not very long before the Fugitive Slave Law had found a place in the Statute Book of the Republic, and this Act made it illegal for any fugitive slave to find either shelter or aid in any State of the Union. Then, just about the same time, the American Chief-Justice had, in his official capacity, declared that nowhere in any one of the States had a slave any rights of citizenship. In a word, the slaves on a plantation were simply on a level, in a legal sense, with the cattle they tended or used in their everyday work. For example, the mere children had no regular meal times in the conventional sense as we understand things; and there was little or nothing of what we should recognise as family life. Thus when, after the era of emanc.i.p.ation, Booker Washington came to the experience of sleeping in an ordinary bed and sitting down at table to partake of a family meal, both were a revelation of civilised existence which were quite new to him.
In a sense the very denial to the slave population of their educational rights would seem to have had something like the effect of sharpening their wits, until they became not only interested in what was happening around them, but the shrewdest observers of the signs of the times. Like other boys of his race, Booker Washington ran wild when he was not engaged in his customary errands, and without so much as learning even the English alphabet. But this compulsory ignorance seems to have intensified that ardent desire for knowledge which was part of his nature. Among his errands he might have to go to a schoolhouse where companies of happy young people were engaged over their books, and he was naturally much affected by what he saw and heard. Why was not he privileged in a similar way? Tens of thousands of negro boys may have asked themselves that same question in the generations that preceded him, and in every instance the answer would be the same--schools are forbidden to the slave. The coloured population was fast increasing, and the planters believed that the public safety could only be guaranteed by compelling them to remain illiterate.
In point of fact, however, the slaves on the plantations were not as ignorant as their too sanguine owners supposed them to be. In a secret way one here and there may even have learned to read; and, in regard to what was going on in the outside world, they were oftentimes hardly less well informed than their masters and mistresses. As Booker Washington remembers it, the time of his childhood was a wonderful era of transition. None more fully realised than the slaves themselves that the bone of contention which occasioned the Civil War was the question of slavery. Thus, to them, the period of conflict was a time of wild, but still subdued, excitement, for fear their sentiments should be detected and be followed by pains and penalties. The traffic on "the underground railroad" was probably for the time suspended; but what was called "the grapevine telegraph" was in full operation, and on every plantation and in every planter"s palatial mansion the slaves looked for its messages with that ardent interest which cannot be described. They could not read newspapers, and would have been forbidden to do so had they been able, but whenever a messenger was sent to a neighbouring town he took care to linger about the post-office, or elsewhere where persons conversed on the current news, and everything that entered the coloured messenger"s sharpened ears soon became generally known to every soul on the plantation. There were masters who professed to believe that their people would fight for them; but in secret nocturnal meetings these slaves congratulated one another on every Northern victory, while they prayed with pathetic ardour for the success of Lincoln and his armies.
At the same time, when they were tolerably well used by their owners, there was a good deal of sympathy binding together the coloured race and the white people. Booker Washington does not think that his race have ever betrayed any trust that has been reposed in them. Being born into slavery, they grew up without being acquainted with any other condition of life, so that it must have appeared quite natural to them for the dominant whites to live in the great house and for themselves, who were merely n.i.g.g.e.rs, to herd in the cabins. But while they never undervalued freedom, and, personally, ardently longed for it, there were certain things which exercised influence over them of a softening kind, despite the master grievance of hard bondage and its occasional cruel hardships.
For example, Booker Washington, at a very early age, undertook such service as he could perform in his master"s house; and it was not only a possibility, it frequently happened, that a young servant, whether a lad or a girl, became a favourite with the members of the family. The younger white people would sometimes favour or protect a slave when he got into trouble, and thus something like genuine affection would be kindled in the hearts of the subject race. What animated conversations respecting the two great armies in the field such a boy as Booker Washington would hear at his master"s table while he was engaged in keeping the room as clear as possible of flies! This was another way of getting the current news by those who did not form any part even of the fringe of the newspaper const.i.tuency. Then, of course, there was the constant occurrence of the usual casualties of war. Bitter sorrow and mourning, like angels of darkness, would steal into the luxurious homes of the planters when the master himself, or a son of the household, was returned invalided or so sorely wounded as to be maimed for life. It was still worse when, as it actually happened, one or another of these chief people of the Southern Confederacy was killed. There was then the anguish of mourning in the household akin to that which afflicted the people of Egypt when the first-born of each family was slain. In many cases, whether the fallen or the wounded might belong to the older or the younger generation, the slaves themselves were touched by the affliction of the family, because they never forgot the good deeds of those who had befriended them. It seems to be the belief of Booker Washington that, in any case, if, as trusted servants, they had been left in charge of a house by night or day, they would never have surrendered to the enemies of their owners, even though the invaders might have been men of the Northern battalions who were practically fighting for the freedom of the oppressed race. Still, it is thought with good reason that both the white and the coloured races were losers by slavery. As was inevitable, it turned out that one race cannot oppress another without being affected for the worse. Over the best of the plantations there seemed to hover a shadow, as though something were wanting to make the prosperity complete, when wealth was ama.s.sed by doubtful means. Instead of being a pleasure and honourable, labour was looked upon as something which had degradation a.s.sociated with it. The planters and their families held aloof from it because it was the badge of slavery. The slaves themselves disliked it because it belonged to their condition of bondage.
As it has been shown, slavery reached its darkest phase in the years which immediately preceded the era of emanc.i.p.ation, during Booker Washington"s childhood. Many telling ill.u.s.trations might be given to show that this was actually the fact. I am personally well acquainted with an ex-slave, who is also a native of Virginia, who vividly remembers those days. At the time of his birth his mother was hardly more than sixteen years of age; but, notwithstanding, this girl had already tasted enough of the anguish and bitterness of slavery which might more than have sufficed for a long lifetime. She was so roughly treated by her owner that for some little time preceding her child"s birth she remained concealed in a neighbouring wood, where the only diet procurable was berries or wild fruit. In this case the painful anomaly was that the slave-girl"s husband was a free man who, loving his wife and child, made strenuous efforts to purchase them, but did so quite unsuccessfully. The master even moved away to another place, where the mother did the work of a domestic servant, and during this time her son experienced something of the gaiety of childhood while playing in the yard with coloured juveniles of his own age, who, like himself, were as young cattle in a pen growing up for a sad destiny.
In those days, as Booker Washington himself would be aware, slave-mothers would at times speak to their children of Georgia, or going "down South," in order to inspire terror. Going to Georgia meant to pa.s.s on into a land without hope, of darkness and death. Occasionally a hard-featured stranger would appear on the scene, and, while leaning on the fence with folded arms, he would watch the boys at play in the yard with the interested glances of a trader. Then, as must have appeared mysteriously to the boys themselves, after the stranger had gone away, one or another of the boys would be missing. Then it would be whispered, as though some horror had overtaken them, the missing boy had been taken "down South"--into Georgia.
Booker Washington is certainly one of the most extraordinary examples on record of the successful pursuit of knowledge under difficulties; but there have been many striking examples among slaves of lads showing this mettle. My ex-slave friend, to whom reference has been made, is certainly to be reckoned as one of these. It is probable that his mother may have pa.s.sed as a woman of education, seeing that she knew the English alphabet and was able to count a hundred. Be this as it may, however, like a genuine Christian mother, she determined that, in spite of planters and their laws, her child should learn whatever she could teach him. In due course the boy himself showed a flaming desire to learn. By dint of remarkable diligence and perseverance, he got ahead of his mother in knowledge. If learning was carried on in secret, there had rarely been found a more ardent pupil. Without inconvenient questions being asked, he succeeded in purchasing a copy-book and spelling primer, which were well used on all possible occasions. He actually went through the whole of the Bible when he could not master more than one in eight of the words. This man afterwards enjoyed the benefit of a college education in England, so that his case is worthy of being mentioned as being similar to that of Booker Washington. Both instances alike show that negroes may not only have good intellectual endowments, but may also succeed in high aims by dint of unflagging energy and perseverance.
At length the era of freedom came; and although at that time Booker Washington was still too young to realise what all the excitement and commotion portended, those who looked upon him saw the child who would develop into a benefactor of his race and the most distinguished negro of his time. The Man who was wanted was found.
CHAPTER II
THE ERA OF FREEDOM--REALISING THAT KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
The great, long-looked-for and ardently-prayed-for day of freedom had come at last, and probably one of the things which Booker Washington remembers is the kiss which his mother gave him after listening to the reading of President Lincoln"s Proclamation, and to which the Southern leaders were compelled to yield when the pressure of the Northern army became too great to be longer resisted. In common justice to the Southern planters, we have to remember that the crisis may have meant little if anything short of actual ruin. The human chattels, as slaves were often called, were not seldom very valuable bargains in the open market. A sum of 3000 dollars in gold was once offered for the ex-slave friend to whom reference has been made, and was at once refused by his owner. It can well be believed that one who has developed such a gift for organisation as Booker Washington would have commanded a much higher figure, although such prices were, of course, far in advance of the average.
It might also be said that the planters were not responsible for slavery having become an inst.i.tution of the Republic, and that they had to do with things as they found them. But while this may be true, it has also to be admitted that the Southern States retained that inst.i.tution longer than their neighbours. At the end of the century in which the Republic secured its independence there were under 900,000 slaves in the whole of the United States; but the total was nearly 4,000,000 in the year of emanc.i.p.ation. The Northern States had already liberated their slaves in a gradual way about a quarter of a century before that crisis. For generations slavery had been denounced as a wrong, amounting to a great evil, by a number of chief men among the Republican leaders, such as Franklin and Washington, Madison and Jefferson, and others. These men were sufficiently outspoken to regard the thing as being quite out of keeping with the principles of the Declaration of Independence.
Nevertheless, differences of opinion over this matter not only led to violent controversy but to religious division, the most notable split being that of the Episcopal Methodist Church, which henceforth had its Northern and Southern sections, the latter being founded on a pro-slavery basis.
Young as he was when the great revolution of complete abolition in the Southern States was brought about, Booker Washington was still able to show a child"s keenest interest in what was taking place. It was as if the sun had risen on new times altogether; the very winds seemed to blow more cheerfully; the sky above seemed to be bright with promise with better things to come than mere _n.i.g.g.e.rs_ had ever known before; it was as though the Golden Age itself had dawned. The sharp-witted little son of the slave-girl could heartily enter into his mother"s joy, but he could not take in the meaning of the things that were happening as he has been able to understand them since. Such a child was naturally affected by the growing boldness and enthusiasm of his elders, who for some time before the final catastrophe clearly antic.i.p.ated what the end would be. When they gathered at their nocturnal meetings there was unwonted light in their eyes; a spirit of hope and cheerfulness such as they had never known before gave new life to their hymns, which had too often been sad or weird; their feelings became irrepressible. There were signs and tokens of various kinds which the working slaves well understood, whatever this child of a slave-mother may have made of them.
There was something in the air which told that something uncommon was coming--"a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees," as it were, which betokened that the great day of freedom had come. Straggling soldiers, who had broken away from the Confederate Army, had a doleful story to tell of disaster and collapse. Then, besides, the inmates of the great house were thinking of how best they could secure their valuables if the invaders actually came. Then, on the first Sunday of April 1865, the catastrophe may be said to have really come. On that day vast quant.i.ties of stores were burned at Richmond; during the night many a slave-owner stole away, and in the early morning numbers who had been slaves found themselves no longer in bondage when they greeted the regiments of the Northern Army.
Booker Washington testifies to the wild excess of joy with which the slaves on all the plantations accepted the freedom which had come to them in this remarkable, but no doubt providential, way. For the moment they took no account of the future; they were altogether intoxicated while trying to estimate the reality of that new condition in which they found themselves--that inestimable blessing about which their forefathers had prayed through long and weary generations. The thing seemed to be too good to be true, and yet it was actually with them--it was their own blissful possession!
Then, as was inevitable, human nature being what it is, there came a somewhat strong reaction to this outburst of feeling and irrepressible excitement. What about the future? Practically, a whole nation of something like 4,000,000 persons had suddenly been set free, severed from their employment and their masters, who in their way had looked after them. Those masters had been sorely reduced by the war; many members of the great houses had been killed or wounded. What was to become of those millions of coloured people who had never come in contact with the outer world, who, with a few exceptions, were quite illiterate and knew nothing of the outside world? No wonder that a certain amount of gloom and misgiving soon took the place of that exuberance of joy which the sense of freedom had at first inspired. The crisis was sufficiently serious for those who were young and strong, but what was to become of the aged or those who were worn out in the hard service of the plantations?
Probably the gloom which now overtook so many of the coloured people was as exaggerated as their wild ideas about their good fortune when freedom first came to them. These coloured folk were apt to run into extremes. Booker Washington well remembers them in both moods; and he also can call to mind how they came to see that, after all, liberty was an inheritance of sterling worth when it was fairly estimated. One advantage of the new-found freedom consisted in possessing the right to choose a respectable surname; and another gain was the right, if they felt so disposed, to leave the old haunts and, in some measure, to look round the outside world. Otherwise, they could hardly tell how it might feel to be free. As is the case with agricultural labourers in general, these poor coloured slave folk, with whom Booker Washington was acquainted, had never been far afield from the place of their birth, and, having seen so little of the world, they found that the world was a wide place and, in some respects, different from what they had expected.
Of course, a large number were glad to return to the plantations and to agree with their old employers to work as labourers. In choosing their new names, the ex-slaves showed some good taste as well as ambition.
Having the patronymic list of presidents, statesmen, soldiers and others to select from, they bedecked themselves in becoming style, not forgetting a middle and, apparently, an initial letter, which usually did not represent a name at all, but, as showing the American manner, was still indispensable. Even in the case of the distinguished negro, an account of whose life and work is given in this volume, he had no such name as Booker T. Washington while he remained in a state of slavery; he chose it for himself after he became free, and all must admit that he made a good selection.
Mrs Washington--as by courtesy she may be called--did not return to the fields after gaining her freedom, as was the case with so many of her old companions. Circ.u.mstances led to her removal to Malden, in West Virginia, and which is also in the suburbs of Charleston. Still being quite a young lad, Booker Washington accompanied his mother, as did also his brother John, the object being to join their mother"s husband--the man being only their stepfather--who was then employed in the salt industry.
Notwithstanding that all were now free, the temporal prosperity of the family so far showed no improvement. Amid the huts and furnaces of the salt-producing little town there was even less comfort, and far more repulsive squalor, than there had been on the plantation among fellow-slaves. Being a mixture of coloured and white people, the main part were a degraded set; so that, after all the toil and rough adventure of some weeks of travelling, the wonder is that the future benefactor of his race was not utterly demoralised amid his new surroundings. Perhaps it turned out to his advantage that he had to work hard through very long days.
Ever since the time that he began to think about anything, Booker Washington had been inspired by a very strong desire to learn to read.
He resolved that, come what might, he would, if possible, so far distinguish himself as to become competent to read the periodicals and newspapers of the day. This was a very praiseworthy resolution to make, but to ordinary persons how utterly impossible of attainment it must have seemed when all things were against them. By a roundabout way he so far advanced as to be able to understand what certain figures on a salt-barrel meant; but he had not even a primer or spelling-book until, on being earnestly requested to do so, his mother was successful in her strenuous endeavours to obtain one. In the whole circle of his coloured acquaintance the ex-slave child knew of no individual who could read, his mother being no exception. This fact, however, seems to have the effect of bringing out in bolder outline the sterling traits of this negro woman"s character. She was evidently uncommonly shrewd in worldly matters, and, instead of advising her child not to attempt what might well have seemed to be impossibilities, she showed that wholesome ambition for the boy"s future which proved her to be of a superior nature, while she was a genuine, loving mother. We may be sure that Booker Washington inherited his gifts and indomitable perseverance from his mother. A long line of distinguished men have borne similar testimony. Men who have lived and laboured for the benefit of others have been, in very many instances, what their mothers made them.
Having obtained his spelling-book, Booker Washington commenced his education without a teacher, the consequence being that he was occupied for some weeks in overcoming the difficulties of the alphabet, which, under the most favourable conditions, would have detained him but a few hours. In due course he made more rapid progress under the teaching of a negro boy who had the rare distinction of being able to read a printed page; and, as was quite natural, such an example of literary attainments in youth was no less envied than admired.
Then something else occurred which cannot fail to strike us as being almost a phenomenon--at all events, a thing altogether extraordinary under the circ.u.mstances. What, through the vista of a third of a century, looks like a perfect _furore_ for education took complete possession of the ex-slaves, and, what made this the more singular, the burning desire for school teaching extended to aspirants of all ages.
Before philanthropists came forward to help them the coloured people were found to have their own appointed tutor, and care was taken that he should fare well. Thus, in the case of Booker Washington, the first comparatively competent teacher with whom he came in contact was a quondam soldier who had served in the war. Surely no tutor ever had more enthusiastic pupils; and whether the age of the learner was seven or seventy-five, it seemed to make no difference in damping their enthusiasm. Indeed, it may be seriously questioned whether any other race of people would ever have rivalled this extraordinary ardour in learning to read. And circ.u.mstances made it necessary that even the Sunday schools, in common with the day schools, should, first of all, give the most elementary of teaching. What a contrast such a state of things presents to anything of the kind with which we are familiar in connection with any other country! How many there are who remain illiterate, or semi-illiterate, in spite of the schools which are provided and admirably equipped under any national system of education!
In their darkest days of ignorance and bondage the negro slaves showed the most lively desire for education. In what measure is that true of any other race? We know that through a long succession of centuries our own peasantry remained, for the most part, quite illiterate, all the while showing a kind of sullen content or stolid indifference. That negroes should show other characteristics should inspire the encouragement coming from the hope that they are destined for better things than have usually entered into the calculations of American politicians. It is because Booker Washington so thoroughly well understands his race that he can harbour such bright hopes of their future, provided that common-sense means are used to train and educate them, so as to give them an opportunity of making the best possible use of their capacities. He is quite an ingenuous man, who says just what he thinks, and who would never think of aiming at the impracticable. What may at first have seemed to be quite a Utopian enterprise to quidnuncs in American social and political circles is to him a very ordinary business. He has solved what has been to others a dark problem, because he has failed to see that there was any problem which needed solution.
He sees in the labour of the millions of negroes who people the Southern States a source of vast national wealth. Only turn this to good account and the whole country will be benefited and enriched, while the descendants of the ex-slaves themselves will remain contented and good citizens. To carry out this idea is certainly one of the greatest of enterprises to which social reformers in the New World have ever set their hand.
When a school was established and a supposed competent tutor was appointed, Booker Washington did not find that his course had ceased to be a pursuit of knowledge under difficulties. His mother and stepmother were so poor that it was not thought that his services at the salt works could be altogether dispensed with in order that he might attend school.
Then a kind of compromise was made, and without the work being entirely suspended, he was allowed to pa.s.s some portion of each day at the school. Having thus risen to this respectable standing, he found it desirable to wear a cap which his mother made for him; for it would seem that a Virginian planter no more thought of providing such head-dress for boy slaves than he would of clothing his colts or calves. It was then, moreover, that he gave himself the name which he has ever since retained and honoured. He had been called Booker as a child-slave; for some reason his mother had added Taliaferro, but the final Washington was a becoming euphonism of his own.
With so much manual labour to be done, the difficulties in the way of education were continually becoming intensified. Soon it became impossible to continue in attendance at the day school, and he had to be content with attending an evening cla.s.s after completing the day"s toil.
Under the most favourable circ.u.mstances this was exhausting; and his experience proved still more trying when he was removed from the salt works to serve in a coal mine, which supplied the furnaces with fuel.
Booker Washington has very vivid recollections of the horrors and even constant dangers attending such subterranean work. The darkness alone was almost such as might be felt; and the mishaps, through taking a wrong path, through falling coal, or a candle getting extinguished, were ever threatening those engaged in the works. It was in such an atmosphere and amid such surroundings, however, that the dawn of a new era sent its beams across his chequered pathway. It was there that he heard for the first time of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Inst.i.tute, which was destined to shape for him his life-course. The inst.i.tution in question is near to the small town and bathing resort of Hampton, in Virginia, and the channel, commanded by Fortress Monroe, was the scene of some lively naval fights during the Civil War. The inst.i.tution was founded in 1868 by General S. C. Armstrong, and two years later was incorporated by the State of Virginia. Its object is stated to be "to train young men and women of the negro and Indian races to become teachers among their own people." Booker Washington happened to overhear two men in the coal mine conversing together about this school, and he resolved to find out everything possible about it. The revelation had for him something more than pa.s.sing interest; strange new hopes had been kindled in his soul. If he had asked, Who was Samuel Chapman Armstrong? he might have learned that he was an officer who had served in the Civil War, and that he was born in the Hawaiian Islands in 1839. The General was a genuine, warm-hearted friend of the coloured races, and as he became to Booker Washington an exemplar, or even something like an apostle, who did more than any other human teacher to mark out his pathway of life, some reference may be made to the pressing needs of the freed negroes in the years which immediately followed the close of the Civil War. There are now some ten million coloured people in the Southern States, but at the time in question there were less than half of this number. Nevertheless, the crisis was sufficiently serious to be even alarming. Thus a contemporary writer says:--
"Such sudden emanc.i.p.ation, on so vast a scale, is unequalled in the annals of history. The nearest parallel to it is the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. A nation, numbering about two millions, was then suddenly emanc.i.p.ated. But as for their sustenance and preservation a succession of miracles took place, it is not necessary for our present purpose to pursue the parallel. No instance in secular history equals the present position of the freed negroes of North America. The crisis has come in a manner and at a time that could hardly have been antic.i.p.ated by the wisest forecaster of political events."
Great as was the need for earnest effort after hostilities ceased, however, the want and suffering had been far more acute in days that had gone before. The contemporary writer just quoted adds:--
"From the very beginning of the war hundreds have suddenly poured in, as at an hour"s notice, upon the cities of the Northern States. One of the camps was inundated by a thousand of these naked and starving fugitives in a single day, and this whilst the snow was coldly and silently covering the surrounding landscape. After the Federals had gained possession of Memphis, there speedily turned into it a long train of negroes, so miserably dest.i.tute that, having nothing whatever with them of food or clothing but the rags of two or three years" wear, and only the clouds and the trees to shelter them, these human mult.i.tudes were far worse off than the comfortably-kennelled dogs of their white brethren. When General Sherman pa.s.sed through Georgia, he was asked how many negroes had followed his army. The reply was, "Ten miles of them.""
Charitable and Christian people were moved to do what lay in their power not only to relieve present sufferings, but to enable the coloured folk to make a new start in the world. a.s.sociations were formed, money was collected, even the Government took care that rations should be distributed. The result was that the outlook soon showed signs of improvement. At one time Levi Coffin of Cincinnati reported that there were thirty-five camps in the Mississippi Valley which contained about 650,000 coloured fugitives, but these camps soon became self-supporting.
The more acute want and suffering were soon relieved, but it soon became more and more apparent that service of a more permanent kind would have to be undertaken if the coloured people were to be raised from the low condition into which slavery had reduced them. People of the shrewder sort clearly saw that great results might be expected from education and industrial training. Although the prevailing ignorance was of the densest kind, all were most anxious to learn. Wherever a camp appeared it was certain that schools would speedily follow; and in what must have appeared an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time no less than 250 schools were established in that Mississippi Valley alone. The contemporary anonymous writer in the _Leisure Hour_ who has already been quoted, and who appears to have been thoroughly well acquainted with the negroes"
characteristics and condition in their transition state, adds this word-picture of the general outlook at the time to which reference is being made:--