Martha Schofield

Pioneer Negro Educator

One of the benefits conferred by education is that of enlightening the mind on the subject of one’s duty. Finding what is duty the manner of discharging it will suggest itself to the alert, the active, and those of industrious and intelligent discernment. Perhaps forever hidden would remain the necessity for certain tasks were it not for the inspiration idealists receive from education. This education, if proper and well rounded, also forces all who embrace it into the line of work promising the accomplishment of the greatest achievements—achievements such as in leaving foot-prints on the sands of time leave no mark of dishonor but such as really and truly do give new heart and new hope and new courage to the weaker brother.

That Martha Schofield was inspired by the highest motives that possibly could influence any one in choosing an occupation to be made a life-work is evidenced by the personal sacrifices she made in order to engage in it. The fortitude with which she bore the poison sting of slander, the cruel whip of character assassination and braved the threats of personal violence forcibly attests the sincerity actuating her in pursuing her chosen work. The results accomplished by the fifty years of earnest endeavor by her form a tribute to efficiency of women in administrative affairs that is seldom ever equaled by other human beings claiming greater strength by reason of sex. When the final history of the war between ignorance and enlightenment, between superstition and science, between vice and virtue shall have been written of the colored race the foremost name among all will be—Martha Schofield—Pioneer Negro Educator.

Matilda A. Evans, M. D.,
Columbia, S. C.

A woman apparently thirty years of age, of mulatto skin, fell limp into a chair in the kitchen of Mrs. Oliver Schofield of Darby, Bucks County, Pennsylvania about the year 1857, with blood hounds and the voices of angry men following close upon her heels through the tangled swamps from which she had just emerged.

“Who can thee be? Who can thee be?—and what does thee want here?” inquired excited Mrs. Schofield as she dropped the dish rag and rushed to the prostrate form in the chair, eager to render aid and comfort to the suffering and afflicted woman as well as to ascertain the cause of her abrupt, unannounced entrance into her home.

Out of breath from the long run made necessary to escape the dogs and the traps laid by experienced officers of the law who had been so diligently upon her trail for more than a week, that she had had time to stop and rest and take nourishment for only a few minutes at a time, Laura Duncan was unable at first to give any coherent account of herself. She managed, however, to make it known to the kind Quaker lady that she was an escaped slave and was endeavoring with all speed possible to reach the Canadian border and enter the world of freedom, which she had been informed existed under the British flag in the Dominion of Canada for all who might enter that country.

As causes moving her to take this drastic step in defiance of the law of her own land and the possibility of involving the liberty and happiness of all who might be kind enough to assist her in the accomplishment of the task, she recited such evils as brought tears to the eyes of her enforced host. She exhibited a lash-scared back,[Pg 6] a broken bone or two and a deep cut on the head that had since been healed without serious results only by the aid of a skillful surgeon.

But the physical suffering attested by these outward signs of the practice of brutality on the woman were but a fraction of the pain and torture which Miss Schofield knew was gnashing at her heart over the parting of herself and husband and children more than a month before, when at a public sale little Gabe, her ten year old son, and Jennie, the only daughter, and her husband, “Jim,” were each sold to different masters in as many different States and carried away where she would never see or hear of any of them again.

“Martha” said Mrs. Schofield addressing her daughter, whose face was covered in an immaculate white apron that adorned her whole front, to hide the freely flowing tears that rushed from her eyes like water from the fountains, “do thee find thy father at once and tell him to come to the house as quickly as possible.”

Then laying her arms around the body of the inconsolable wife and mother she spoke words of consolation and cheer, assuring her that God in his own way and wisdom would destroy the power of the government of human beings by the lash, would break the chains that bind the hand and foot and visit a just retribution on all those responsible for the sale of babies from the breasts of mothers. She begged and pleaded earnestly that Laura abandon the attempt to escape and entreated her to surrender to the officers and return to her master, but the slave, chafing under the influence of a life of injustice and brutality, expressed a firmer determination than ever before, to continue on in her course and begged pitiably of her host that her presence in the home be not divulged. She threatened suicide if captured.

Mr. Schofield, himself, by this time had reached the house and instantly grasping the situation, requested of Mrs. Schofield a familiar old shawl and bonnet of hers. Dressed in these Laura, in company with Mr. Schofield, passed readily as Mary, his wife, among acquaintances of the latter, and successfully eluded all pursuit[Pg 7] by the officers, who a half hour after her departure had ransacked the Schofield home from turret to foundation stone in search of the fleeing fugitive.

Reaching a zone safely out of reach of harm’s way, the leader of the church of the Society Friends, deposited his burden, wishing her God-speed in her undertaking and placing in her hand one dollar in gold to assist her on her journey, turned his horse, after many days on the road, and made his way slowly back home, with a painful heart.

During the interval of her husband’s departure and return, Mrs. Schofield was kept busy in the attempt to control the indignant and outraged feelings of Martha, who had gone to her mother dozens of times with the question of the justice and mercy of God and the wisdom and power of the government in permitting the fettering of four million bodies in chains and the trampling under foot by brutal might of all the sacred relations of wife, father and child.

“Ah, my daughter, ’tis not for thee to question the mysterious workings of God,” she would reply, “in the Master’s own time and way He will touch the auction block, the slave pen and the whipping post, and in their place thee shall see what thy dear heart desires so much to see—happy homes and firesides, and school houses and books, where today thee only sees crime and cruelty and fear.”

“But mother,” Martha would protest, “for how much longer must the poor ignorant slaves endure the infinite outrages heaped upon them by reason of the barbarism of the slave-holding oligarchy? Have they not suffered enough already? Is it not time to close the door on the slave-holding class and render judgment as swift and implacable as death? Their cause was brought forth in iniquity and consummated in crime, and I for one believe God would only be served by our societies (the Society of Friends and the Abolitionist Society) hastening on the inevitable civil conflict, believed by most people as absolutely necessary in the settlement of the whole question of slavery.”

[Pg 8]

“My daughter, oh, my daughter, pray thee do not talk that way” said her mother in tones of profound anxiety; “does not the good book command thee not to kill? Eternal torment for thy portion if thou should commit murder, and to wish it to be done is father to the deed. Oh, my daughter! my daughter! thee frightens me!”

“Oh, no my mother, there’s no murder in my heart, I assure thee,” said Martha; “I only desire the government’s protection for every human being subject to its authority and I want that same authority to turn every auction block and slave pen into a school house even if its necessary to exact by bullet every drop of blood that has been spilled by the lash, in accomplishing this result. Thee must concede that the Bible also teaches us to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I wish this to be done, Mother, only to make possible a happier and blesseder existence here on this earth for a lowly race, when all other means of accomplishing so desirable an end have been tried and proven in vain.”

During the ten years intervening between the precipitate appearance of the runaway slave at the Schofield home and the coming to Edisto Island, South Carolina, of Miss Martha Schofield for the purpose of founding an industrial school for the colored race, the new form of liberty conceived by our fore-fathers and dedicated to the principle that all men are born free and equal, had been put to a severe test as to whether this new form of government could be put into practice. The great Civil War predicted by Martha as inevitable in the settlement of the problem of slavery broke out in all its fury in 1860-61 and was not only attended by the loss of hundreds of thousands of priceless lives, whose bodies filled countless hospitals of pain, and made gory the prairies and furrows of old fields, as they on the side of the South as well as they on the side of the North bled and died for the eternal right as each saw what was their duty; but the demoralization precipitated by this gigantic conflict, followed by the assassination of President Lincoln, the idol of the whole free-civilized world, was even more staggering in its influence on the lives and fortunes of those left to solve the problems created by the great revolution.

The waste of inconceivable sums of money through the awarding of contracts involving millions and millions of dollars by which fortunes, through little or no effort at all, were made in a single night was openly countenanced at Washington.

Superfluous wealth chocked the nation at the North with its mighty grip and the riot of speculation, corruption and debauchery which followed, in the voting away of the public lands free of any charge to private corporations and the granting of subsidies of millions of dollars without any compensation whatever, laid such burdens upon the people that many of them until this day (1916) remain undischarged.

The paralysis experienced by the business interests as[Pg 10] a result of this whirlwind of corruption resulted in the decline of the credit of the country to such an extent that the six per cent. bonds of the Republic dropped to about seventy-three cents on the dollar in the open market. But the disastrous financial calamity which the war produced is of no consequence in comparison with the moral degradation into which the country sank.

A few years before the panic of 1873 nearly everybody in the North and West, where conditions were prosperous in spite of the war, wanted to go to the cities where fortunes were waiting for them, and almost every farmer’s son took an oath that he would never cultivate the soil. At the age of twenty-one they left the dreary and desolate farms in droves and rushed to the cities to become bookkeepers, doctors, lawyers, merchants and sewing machine agents, anything to escape the heavy work of the farm. Those with capital wanted to engage in something promising huge and quick returns and so these built railroads, established banks and insurance companies. Some speculated in stocks of Wall Street, while others gambled in grain in Chicago with the result that the riches of the whole country flowed to their coffers in immense volume, and in their carriages and palaces the pitied their poor brothers on the farm, who as earnestly envied them.

But the lap of luxury in which these citizens were being nursed was doomed to become thread-bare as, indeed, it did do, and always will do, when the world’s advance is checked by the want of assistance and co-operation of all classes of laborers. The railroad and insurance presidents became bankrupts and their companies went into the hands of receivers by the score. Large numbers of young men who imagined they had entirely too much education to be wasted on the farm and flocked to the cities in incredible numbers became in time, either absconders and fugitives from justice, or plain tramps and hobos, a demonstrative force to prove the saying, that the only really solvent people, the only independent people, are the tillers of the soil.

At the South which had been reduced to the most[Pg 11] degraded type of poverty there were no such opportunities for the accumulation of wealth as existed at the North and in the West. The few railroads that before the war intersected this section had been torn up by the necessities of war and needed rebuilding, but there was no money to be had anywhere with which to do the work. All the strongest blood and brain had been either slain in battle or rendered incapacitated for the tasks which the new order of conditions had forced upon the country. Aside from the loss of millions and millions of dollars as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves the South was forced also to bear the burden of an exorbitant tax on all crops produced, especially the cotton tax.

The agitation set up by many of the acts of Reconstruction, impeachment proceedings against President Johnson and the foment and strife engendered by the rule of the military authorities opposed by the Ku Klux Klan, all served, to keep for years longer than necessary, the bleeding and prostrate South securely on its back, a helpless beggar at the mercy, in many instances of an army of unscrupulous and grafting office-seekers. Under such conditions it was impossible to obtain credit anywhere for the most necessary things of life and as there was almost nothing of any value produced, the greatest hardships and suffering, if not actual misery, was endured by the people of the South.

Scores of persons gave up in despair and died. Cow peas, corn bread and molasses of such quality as only a few years before would have been considered unfit food for the slaves formed the sole diet, for the first few years after the war, of delicate and cultured women. Little children often went to bed crying from hunger. An element of the Negro population, rendered conspicuously brutal and vicious by service in the army, stole and threatened even blacker crimes, just as the game of war has affected the morality of all races of men throughout the history of recorded warfare.

Into the midst of these terrible times which made weak the souls and hearts of the strongest of men, came Miss Martha Schofield, the first of the pioneers to push into the distracted South to labor, to suffer, and if need be, to die for the millions of ignorant, irresponsible Negroes. Their education, along industrial lines, she made her life-work—crowning it on the 77th day of her birth, February 1, 1916, by passing from earth to heaven. But she left to show that she did something on earth a school and campus comprising an area of two entire blocks in the beautiful City of Aiken, S. C., on which she had erected eight buildings.

The school farm, adequate for all farm demonstration work, consists of about 400 acres. The funds by which all this valuable property was acquired was raised by Miss Schofield herself, through the fluent use of her trenchant pen, which she knew how to wield as few women have ever learned to do. Everything contracted for in the interest of the school was paid for in cash as Miss Schofield, in all her fifty years of administration, never contracted the outlay of money without first having provided the means with which to meet claims. She enjoyed the good-will and friendship of men and women of wealth and influence throughout the country, especially of the old Abolitionists, who supported her institution generously as long as they lived and possessed the means with which to do so.

The Schofield School at Aiken has sent out into the world many young men and women who have gone back among their own people accomplished teachers, ministers, physicians, farmers and artisans, leading the colored race of the South to the highest appreciation of what Martha Schofield’s motto for life was—“Thoroughness,” thoroughness not only in books and the industrial arts, but in thought and action as well. No doubt the success which attended the efforts of the graduates of[Pg 13] this School is due, in the main, to the strict regard for efficiency with which this great woman inspired every student coming under her influence.

When we contemplate the wide-spread influence which the life and work of Martha Schofield has exerted on the education of the people of the South, the white as well as the colored, words become inadequate to pay proper tribute to her; to justly express the appreciation felt by those having knowledge of her achievements.

There is not a colored school in the entire South that has not acknowledged the wisdom of this Divinely endowed leader and instructor by establishing an industrial department. Recognizing the imperative importance of this sort of instruction almost all the schools and colleges for whites emphasize it by giving it first place in their curriculums. Clemson, for white men and Rock Hill Normal and Industrial Institute for young white women were established long after Miss Schofield brought home to the people of the South the crying necessity of preparing our boys and girls of all races for the actual duties met with in every day home life. The vision which she herself had of a thorough preparation for the humbler tasks lighted the intellectual skies of the whole South after years of success by her in the education of the weaker race. This fact is made more prominent by the action of many of the States in incorporating industrial courses in the common schools.

Much credit must be given to the practical success of Miss Schofield’s school work for the marvelous strides made by the education of the Negro at such celebrated institutions as Hampton, Va., with an enrollment annually of over 1,500 students and an endowment of over $1,000,000.00; and at Tuskegee, with about an equal number of students and as great or greater endowment fund. Then there are other great institutions devoted entirely to the education of the colored race, making quite a feature of the industrial department, such as Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga., Fisk University,[Pg 14] Nashville, Term., Haines Institute, Augusta, Ga., Spellman University, Atlanta, Ga., Claflin and the Agricultural Colored State College at Orangeburg, S. C. Also Benedict at Columbia and Voorhees Institute at Denmark, all of which have grown into existence and attained the top-most rung of the ladder of fame since the coming to the South of Martha Schofield in 1865.

Near the Schofield School is the Bettis Academy in Edgefield County, South Carolina, formed and modeled after the fashion of the Aiken School. Alford Nicholson, the principal, is a product of the latter and is working out with great similarity the ideas and theories of his Alma Mater. The good being accomplished here in a small way is one of the great triumphs of the life-work of Miss Schofield, it being her greatest aim in life not to create and endow great institutions of learning with money and high sounding names, but to plant in the heart and soul of every child coming under her influence those principles of efficiency that would enable them to get out into the world and actually do something to lift up the fallen. She acted always as if the taking of the name of the Lord in vain consisted entirely of praying for the Kingdom of God to come but doing absolutely nothing to bring those prayers to pass. “Deeds, deeds, my children,” she was fond of saying, “are what count, not mere words.”

The absence of faith in God, she asserted, was seen in all those who did not turn their hand to accomplish the results for which they prayed. No one can successfully accuse her of hypocracy in the least. She practiced what she taught and taught others that anything less than that was hypocracy and infidelism.

Miss Martha Schofield was born near Newton, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on the first day of February in the year 1839 of well-to-do parents, who professed and lived true the principles of religion as enunciated by the Society of Friends, or the Quakers, as they are commonly called. This stern sect of religious puritans date their arrival in America along with the earliest[Pg 15] immigrants, and in proportion to numbers can lay as heavy claim to being responsible for the civilization of the present day as any other denomination inhabiting the New World. The same cause, religious persecution, leading other denominations to seek a home on American shores, where they could worship God in their own way, inspired the Friends to come to this country. William Penn, a very wealthy and highly educated man, famous the civilized world over for his kindness of heart and generous benevolences, was a member of the Society and one of its chief supporters in England and America. He founded the City of Philadelphia, which means brotherly love. The foundation stone of the whole structure of the Quaker religion is carved out of the rock of brotherly love, and it was this love that placed Ben Abon Ahem on the highest seat in the house of the Hall of Saints when the wandering Angel of the earth went to Heaven to pick out the Archangel within the pearly gates.

The love which Martha Schofield bore for all mankind, white and black, Jew and Greek, male and female, friend and foe, was evidently inspired by a religious conviction that held her thrall.

Not since Christ has there been a man or woman of whom it can be truly said he or she could not possibly, wilfully sin, but it is believed confidently by all who knew Miss Schofield best that she would not under any circumstances knowingly commit sin. It was as natural for her to be virtuous and righteous as it is natural for the vicious to be bad, unkind, selfish and immoral.

While Miss Schofield was kind and generous to prodigality she was also as brave as a lion and quick as a tiger to fight if the occasion demanded it. While she always took counsel and weighed matters carefully she never failed to contend for what she believed to be right. Her nature seemed blended with the holiness of a sacred spirituality, imparted to it no doubt by her religious training, and an invincibleness in matters affecting social relations that bordered the stubbornness of Satan.[Pg 16] Influenced, possibly, to greatness in the latter attribute by the teachings of the Abolitionist Party, to which she belonged in heart, mind and soul?

As one of her most valued friends and one of the most brilliant of the many noteworthy people said of her at the funeral, the author wishes to repeat here: “Martha Schofield is not dead; she lives and will continue to live in the memory of her students scattered all over South Carolina and other States. She lives in their memory and in the memory of their children’s children, for there are few colored homes in which her name and deeds are not recounted in the family circle. I count some of her best work, the efforts she made to elevate and purify the home. She spent much time and endured many hardships traveling through the country speaking and teaching the value of homes and the necessity of clean homes, both physically and morally. She never tired of stressing these things and there are many good Negro homes in South Carolina and all over the Southland that are evidences that her efforts have not been in vain. Martha Schofield was helpful not alone to the Negroes but also to the whites, for good Negroes make good whites and good whites make good Negroes.”

What motive led this young woman of only twenty-six, surrounded by wealth, by culture, and every circumstance that made her not only acceptable but desirable in the highest circles of society, to abandon all—home and friends and money and the pleasures which her position in the social world brings—for a life of the most arduous toil among a barbarous, if not a savage people, whose skin, unlike hers, was black and whose habits and customs were thought to be repugnant and repelling to those of refinement? She had been fully appraised, too, of the physical dangers that lay in wait for any one who would condescend to prostitute their powers of mind in the instruction and elevation of the Negro race, at the hands of the whites of the South. Her position between the fire of social ostracism on the one hand and the fagot on the other was one not to be envied. It would have daunted the courage of any woman made of weaker stuff, but being of sterner material and obsessed with a sense of duty in a just cause, such a sense of duty as led both the blue and the gray to do and die in the cause which each conceived to be right, Martha Schofield set a star for herself and determined to go to it even if she was forced to wade through blood and fire in doing so.

Beginning her first labors on Wadmalaw Island, between Charleston and Beaufort, in South Carolina, Miss Schofield suffered every inconvenience and privation of frontier life. Aside from the annoyance and hindrances placed in her way by the few scattered white settlers in sympathy with the Order of the Ku Klux Klan, life was made unsafe by many diseases that flourish in this climate.

The enrollment in her school consisted of the children of the 1,500 Negroes who had followed Sherman in his march to the sea. She had the assistance of only one person, a white woman.

[Pg 18]

She set to work not only to educate an army of Children but the duty of clothing and feeding the naked and starving, of which there were many, fell to her lot.

It is beyond the reach of the imagination of the present generation to adequately comprehend the hardships endured by her at the time of which we write. October 24, 1865, she wrote in her diary as follows:

“This morning I took my bread to school to watch; when light enough I made it up and sent it half-mile away to be baked in the only stove in the village. We distributed clothing for 102 today.”

But for the aid of the Society of Friends and the Abolitionists who supplied food and clothing to her for free distribution, hundreds would have died from starvation and thousands have gone as naked as were the custom of some of the Negroes when captured in Africa and brought to this country as slaves.

Under the conditions which Miss Schofield created an immense amount of suffering was dissipated. Not only the Negroes but she herself, faced starvation at one time for several weeks. This occurred when the steamer from Philadelphia, laden with a cargo of groceries, clothing, shoes and books, ran aground and remained motionless for thirty-one days. During this time Miss Schofield set the Negroes to work gathering oysters and acorns. With these and a few boxes of crackers, which she had hidden away for just such an emergency, she originated a kind of porridge that prevented actual starvation. “The crackers,” she writes in her diary “had to be broken up in fine parts so as to remove the worms from them.”

The same tale of poverty and almost inconceivable hardships followed her from Wadmalaw to Edisto in 1866 and on to the Island of St. Helena in 1867. But these were things to be expected and to be born patiently as long as she had strength and health. But these gave away right here at St. Helena in the second year of her immigration to South Carolina. It was here that malarial fever, with which this section has been infected[Pg 19] ever since it was settled, attacked her, and for quite a long time her life was despaired of. “This illness,” she writes, “occasioned hemorrhages of the lungs, from which all hope of recovery was abandoned by my friends.”

It was at this very critical period in her career that those flighty and fashionable friends in the North, some of them her nearest relatives, urged her with all their might to give up the undertaking in the South and return to her home. It was very much against the will and desires of her own people as well as against the wishes of her best friends that she sacrifice her time and life in the interest of any race or cause, and she was told so before the instinct to engage in social welfare work had totally possessed her. They now drew a picture of a frail sickly woman with one foot in the grave and the other lifted up to follow, and asked her if such a feeble body even though possessed of ample means to employ teachers, had the power to direct the work so necessary to be done. She was urged to get out of the business in order to make room for some one stronger than she, who still had the strength to carry to completion the noble undertaking set in motion by her.

But Martha Schofield answered with these words: “As long as there is life in me to work, I shall work. The coast may not be the place but I will yet find the place.”

And she did.

So in 1868 she went to Aiken, S. C, and started work again after losing her health and all her personal income. Assisted by an auxiliary branch of the “Freedman’s Commission,” a charitable organization composed of two dozen ladies, of Germantown, Pa., she soon was able to begin work on a scale of some promise.

In 1870 the United States Government, through the “Freedman’s Bureau,” took official recognition of the necessity for the kind of work being done by her by having a small frame house erected for her. This house still stands.

When Martha Schofield opened her first school in South Carolina it was impossible to secure the necessary text books and much of the instruction was oral. With the few books which the school did possess it was not an uncommon sight to see three and four pupils preparing their lessons from the same book. The children took the books home nights, until the “Blue Back” and Webster’s had gone the circuit round many times. Having advanced to the ability to write and read script, a pupil was no longer eligible to the benefits of the circulating library. He was then forced to copy at his spare time the lessons he was supposed to prepare during the night.

Notwithstanding the serious difficulties attending the acquisition of knowledge without the aid of books, the intellectual as well as the moral improvement of not only the children but their parents as well was soon apparent. “There was an eager desire among all the children to attend school” says Miss Schofield in writing of her experiences on the Coast and later at Aiken; “never a truant.”

The average attendance of the Negroes at school in the South today exceeds the attendance of 1900 by over 10 per cent. This thirsting after knowledge by the brother in black is one of his redeeming characteristics.

Miss Schofield once put the question to a class in Geography as to what the world rested on. A grown man replied that it rested on stumps and big wild animals. A ten year old boy corrected him by saying that it rested on the Power of God. These definitions will serve to show the dense ignorance of the race at the time Miss Schofield began teaching.

In a definition exercise the class was requested to define the word, husband. Volunteers were called for but no one volunteered. In an effort to lucify the subject and assist them to guess the meaning of the word, with[Pg 21] an approximate accuracy, Miss Schofield asked them to tell her what she would have were she to marry. A little girl, almost ten, replied, with much enthusiasm but unconscious of any wit at all, “A baby.”

As soon as a student mastered reading, writing and arithmetic sufficiently to enable him to read without much faltering and write at all legibly and add a sum of four or five numbers, Miss Schofield set him to teaching. The scarcity of teachers made this expedient imperative.

A middle-aged man, Isaac Kimberley, who as a slave had been taught to read and write but had greatly added to his fund of knowledge by a term at Miss Schofield’s school, was one of the first to be honored with a school. It was located near Miss Schofield’s and closely supervised by her. Isaac assumed the duties of it with all the dignity of some divinely appointed potentate and proceeded at once to make use of only the most carefully chosen words possible, and put on a haughty, undignified air that made him more ridiculous than he really was. Alford Kimberley, a son of his former master, on meeting him soon after he began teaching, addressed him familiarly as “Uncle Ike.” “I’le hab yo’ to understan,’ suh, dat Ise neaver yo’ uncle or yo antie, suh, Ise yo eacle,” said Isaac in reply. “Frum dis day on, ef yo’ pleas, suh, Ise Prof. Isaak Kimberley,” continued the new teacher.

“Well, take that, and that, Prof. Isaac Kimberley, from your equal,” responded Alford, as he bent over the prostrate form of the instructor, lying in the ditch by the roadside where he had knocked him. “I’ll teach you yet how to talk to white gentlemen, you low-down lover of blue-bellied Yankees, you!”

No report of this dramatic incident ever reached the ears of Miss Schofield as Isaac was afraid it might. He concealed it from everybody in the neighborhood as much as possible, both on account of having gotten whipped in his first encounter after becoming a free man and also on account of an increasing amount of[Pg 22] comment among both colored and white that he was daily growing too big for his breeches and would have to be whipped.

Miss Schofield’s confidence in him, at no time, it is needless to say, was very great, but it was Isaac or worse. She finally dismissed him and looked around in vain for a “worser” one.

His dismissal followed a visit to his school, which she was in the habit of making regularly.

The day was an unusually cold one for South Carolina, where the temperature in the winter seldom reaches the freezing point, and through the unsealed crevices between the poles out of which the house was built, the sleet and snow drifted joyously in. A half hundred or more half clothed and well nigh starved little black urchins shook the shackly floor with their shivering and drowned their voices with the chattering of their teeth. If ever there was a blue-lipped, blue-gummed Negro school Isaac’s was surely one on that day.

The extreme cold weather and the open condition of the house gave every student a free license to leave his seat, even without permission of the authority in charge, and crowd in close proximity around the wide open hearth at the end of the building, where with the shivering of limbs, chattering of teeth and shuffling of feet, all noise of their cries and shrieks as one would pinch the other or mash a toe or hit this one or that one over the head with a well worn book or trab ball, was drowned out.

In the midst of the greatest confusion, Isaac, with the purpose in view of dispersing the crowd and relieving the congestion around the “fire place” blurted out with an assumed air of supreme dignity: “John Thomas, why don’t yo’ add full to de flame?” With his black eyes blinking like a rabbits when shot at and trembling from head to foot and turning round like a Bob White in a trap, it was clear to Miss Schofield that the child did not understand what the master of the school wished to[Pg 23] be done. She immediately came to the relief of all, as she always seemed capable of doing in each and every predicament in which she or any of her children (children is what she called all the students) found themselves, by saying, “Isaac, tell John Thomas to put some wood on the fire and he wilt understand thee.”

Walking along home with Isaac after dismission that afternoon she informed him that it would be necessary to suspend his school until the house could be repaired. Isaac, tired of waiting for the needed repairs, returned to the Schofield school for instruction himself and taking up the study of harness making, developed into a genius for work of this kind. After years of success at the bench in one of the best shops in a large Southern city, where he earned $22.50 a week, the government of the United States awarded a contract to him for 250 army saddles. He could not teach school but he could make saddles and harness.

The greatness of Miss Schofield’s work consisted of converting men and women who could never develop into great singers and teachers into useful productive workers and making them to see beauty as well as profit in the humbler tasks.

The sad experience had with Isaac Kimberley as a teacher indicated to Miss Schofield the necessity for raising the standard of qualification for all applicants for teacher’s certificates, and with the cooperation of Mose Graham, a Negro, who could scarcely read or write but who had been made County School Commissioner by the Radical Party, then in complete control of the State and National Government, she undertook to do this, which proved a complete failure on account of the illiteracy of the Negro race and the reluctance with which competent white teachers from the North accepted the call from the South to join the ranks of the teaching profession.

Ephriam Daniels, a six months pupil of the Schofield School, where he acquired the art of reading fluently and writing legibly and also mastered the four fundamental[Pg 24] rules of arithmetic, concluded that in staying on the farm and tilling the soil he was hiding his light under a bushel and therefore, committing a sin which the Bible commanded him not commit, so he made application to Mose for a certificate to engage in the noble calling of teaching.

“Mr. Commissioner Graham,” said Ephriam, “I’se a wastin’ muh tallents behin’ de plow handles, as I is a mi’ty smart man ef I is a nigger, and so I haf com ter see yo’ ’bout gitten one o’ dem licenses to teach chillen wid. Wi’l yo’ gib muh one?”

Mose explained in detail and in a very perfunctory manner the difficulties of the teacher and discoursed considerably on the small compensation paid them. But encouraged his friend, however, by saying that the harvest was great and the laborers few, by which he meant that the office of County School Commissioner had a number of schools but no one to teach them.

“Don’t care ’bout difficultys and small pa’—dats what yo’ mean by—what did you call it?—com—something—commishion, I beleives. All I wants is ter teach. I’se going in der bizness fer de gud I kin do, not fer de muney.”

“Very good, indeed,” said Mose, “but befo’ I kin lisence yo’ ter teech I’se got to see Miss Marther Schofield and hab’ yo’ examed by her and me. Yo’ cum ter see me termorrow, ’bout ten o’clock.”

When Miss Schofield heard of the ambitions of Ephriam that afternoon her heart ran down in her shoes, both because of the impossibility which she knew existed of ever making a teacher of Ephriam and the equally impossible task of helping him to realize it. He was as stubborn as a mule in his ways and when he made up his mind to do anything he worked at it with all his poor brain till it either proved successful or fizzled out. It pained her to think of the neglect which she knew in her own mind had attended his crop throughout the spring season when it needed most attention, which she[Pg 25] was well aware from the nature of Ephriam had been diverted to the subject of school teaching.

But on the insistance of Graham, in whose favor she had often to make some concessions, though none of any importance, she at some expense of time and dignity consented to meet him at his office at the appointed hour for the purpose of examining Ephriam Daniels for a certificate to teach in the free public schools.

Dressed in a soldier’s old uniform, which was secured from the remnants of Sherman’s Army as they passed through South Carolina; with a large bandana handkerchief around his neck for a collar and an old stove pipe hat which his old master, John Rutledge Daniels, had given him on the day of his freedom, Ephriam appeared before the examining board with a pocket full of pencils and a quire or two of ruled fools-cap paper.

Miss Schofield, who was one of the kindest and gentlest of women whom the author ever knew, eyed Ephriam with a well concealed curiosity as she asked him what preparations he had made for taking the examination.

“Wull, Mis’ Sch’fields,” he said, “I’se got heap ob pencils and papur.”

“Yes, I see you have,” replied the examiner, with laughter almost bursting her throat, “but what I mean to get at is, what preparations have you made for teaching school?”

Quick as a flash Ephriam replied that he had sold his horse and rented out his farm.

The uproarous laughter which this answer produced was genuinely participated in by all present, including Ephriam, although he could not for the life of himself, as he afterwards stated, see what all the laughing was about.

Extending the examination a little more for the purpose of entertaining and amusing still further the board and its lone applicant, Miss Schofield was unkind enough to ask the definition of the noun, “word.”

[Pg 26]

“Word,” repeated Ephriam, now quite seriously perplexed, “why, Mis’ Schofiels, yo’ sholey noes dat I noes dat a word is someting dat yo’ sais.”

When she put the question of the fundamental principles of Arithmetic, Ephriam readily admitted that he did not know, and in a polite way gave the board to understand that he did not see the necessity for scholarship of a high grade for teaching “niggers what don’t ’no der A B C’s.”

Not long afterward, Ephriam, his wife and their four children were stricken with small pox—that malignant infection formerly very common in the South—and it was beautiful the way Miss Schofield attended to their wants during the period of illness and final death and burial of Ephriam. On the morning of the sixth day of the appearance of the dreaded malady, Miss Schofield appeared at the home with breakfast for all and was horrified to find the body of the father behind the door, his death occurring sometime during the night, unknown to the other members of the family.

Some time as many as a half dozen funerals a day occurred in the coast region from malarial fever or small pox. The chances for recovery were rendered difficult by the absence of any physician, the nearest one being sixty miles away.

Among the medicines sent Miss Schofield from friends of the North was a bottle of port wine. This was sent in 1876, when she was attacked by a hemorrhage of the lungs, with instructions from a physician that she must take it three times a day. But the fear of setting an example which might prove the ruin of many people in her charge caused her not to open it. She took it to Aiken, and during the construction of her residence there it was deposited in the walls and no one except Miss Schofield to the day of her death, on February 1, 1916, knew where to break the wall; no one on earth knows just where to this very day.

She despised the avarice and greed that caused men to manufacture intoxicants but hated with the venom of the devil the lust for gain by the municipalities and States which caused them to issue licenses for the manufacture of alcohol. She taught and lived that the greatest criminal in the history of criminology was the criminal who issued the license for the commission of crime. In her opinion this was not only a crime against society but a crime against criminals as well.

The pernicious influence of alcohol on the Negro was largely responsible for her antagonism to the liquor traffic. Opposed to it naturally, as every educated and thinking person must be, she was more so after observing its destructive influence among the ignorant and vicious.

It was confidently believed by her that if every Negro capable of complying with the registration laws regulating the qualification of voters, was registered and allowed to vote, uninfluenced by any outside influence,[Pg 28] that the legal sale of alcoholic stimulants in the South at least, would be a thing of the past. She believed also that if positions on the police force were available to colored men for service in the Negro sections of the cities that not only would the illegal sale of intoxicants be stopped but crimes of every character would be largely suppressed.

Martha Schofield, having lived to see accomplished the task to which her life had been dedicated on the day her father rescued Laura Duncan from the blood hounds of the slave holding oligarchy, died as happy and serene as an angel, perfectly confident that the work she had been doing would gain momentum and go on more splendidly each year, until illiteracy and physical and moral degradation would be an exceptional thing among the Negroes.

Between the years of 1890 and 1910 the percentage of Negro illiteracy had fallen from 57.10 to 30.40 per cent. among children between the ages of ten and fourteen years. For those fifteen years of age and under nineteen, the percentage of illiteracy was only 18.90 per cent.

The greater illiteracy in the higher age classes is very marked, the illiteracy of Negroes of 55 to 64 years of age being about 67 per cent. of the total, and nearly every one of those of 65 years and above were found to be unable to read or write when the 1910 census was taken.

Negroes of sixty years and above, it will be recalled, were past childhood before emancipation, when little or no provision was made to teach them to read and write, and this accounts for the high percentage of illiteracy in the old people and the rapidly decreasing percentage of illiteracy among their children.

At the rate of advance in education among the Negroes at present there will be less than 10 per cent. of the population between ten and fourteen illiterate in 1920, and every child of sane mind and sound body will be able to read and write by 1930, when the Fourteenth[Pg 29] Census shall have been taken. This all in the space of fifty years. Remarkable!

And yet there are well informed influential people who still maintain that the progress of the Negro has been slow, superficial and unworthy of the effort and money expended on it.

Maybe so, but all admit, that it is very helpful to every human being to be able to read and write, to be able to assimilate the thoughts of others and to express his thoughts and hand them on to others of his kind by other means than by the word of mouth. To deny this would be equal to denying one the right to be taught the use of his mind or tongue, the two organs which God in His infinite wisdom put no ban upon, but made free as the air of Heaven, restricting their use only to the accomplishment of honorable and noble undertakings, thus dethroning the power of all, who though possessed of powerful intellect, would use their talent in the interest of the base and ignoble.

While the peoples of all races are born with a knowledge of good and evil they are not possessed at birth with the knowledge which science is supposed to endow them with, and therefore, it should be the pleasure, as it certainly is the imperative duty of the State to provide liberally for the diffusion of knowledge among even the humblest of all its citizens.

Martha Schofield taught more emphatically than anything else the economic necessity which exists among all races for the performance of duty, one to another. She argued that unrighted wrongs retard the progress of races, and if not checked by the refinements of civilization, through the enlightenment of the mind, become the instruments which at last wreck and destroy the strongest ships of State. She wanted her work to prove to the country that great measures of service in the field of education was the price to be paid for the salvation of our land against the misery and death, which others through ignorance and greed, had sown. She made the man at the North without principle or scruple to modify[Pg 30] his ambition in the selfish accumulation of wealth equally as culpable as the man of the South, in producing the suffering and misery which attended the great civil conflict for freedom. She exhibited the chaos attending the Reconstruction period as the awful penalty for benighted stupidity and ignorance of an earlier day, for which none of the present day is accountable, and whose fruits none, in an earlier past, foresaw.

Her doctrine of the elevation of the Negro so as to meet the necessities of the new standard of civilization which freedom had thrust upon him, spread like wild fire on a western prairie, and was, of course, shocking, even inconceivable to the imagination of the Southern white mind, which had been taught and religiously believed that education impaired the usefulness of the colored people, both as productive machines in the hard field of toil and as mediums for the expression of the divine messages of power.

“No amount or kind of learning,” they argued, “can be made available to the ‘nigger’ because of his inability to assimilate it. He’s a brute, pure and simple, and has anyone ever succeeded through teaching in making a brute anything but a brute?”

“Pigs will be pigs.”

Laws by the General Assembly of South Carolina forbade the whites the privilege of teaching Negroes, but it was ignored by many good men and women who devoted much time and money to the education of the race.

An influential Southern man, a former Governor of one of the great States of the South and now an honored member of the Senate of the United States once wrote a book in which he delved deep into history and anthropology and proved to the complete satisfaction of the voters of his State and to a great number of the learned professors of the sciences in some of the Southern colleges, that the Negro by every fact known to the scientists and evolutionists was a member of the families of the lower animals, and, therefore, an impossibility in the matter of intellectual development.

[Pg 31]

The influence of this propaganda at the South exerted itself strongly to the detriment of the work undertaken by Miss Schofield, and others who came after her, in that it aroused the passions of the ignorant whites and determined them in the course of lawlessness, which but for the zeal and strength of heart expressed by Martha Schofield might have succeeded in delaying for many years the phenomenal rise and progress of the black people of the Southern States.

One Sunday morning, the sun in all its radiance and splendor lighting up the whole world, doing for the earth and every creature and plant on it (giving them light and warmth and moisture that they might develop and grow to perfection) just what God would have us do—help along everything good that we can—on such a morning as this—a band of armed men approached Miss Schofield’s home and demanded that she quit teaching Negro children and return to her home or she would be forced to do so.

To these she replied as follows: “Thee can kill my body and hide it away, but my soul is of God, that is the one invincible thing, which thee can not kill.”

A noble life consecrated absolutely, even in the face of death, to the uplift and service of a lowly, impoverished race! Everywhere she went, she reached righteousness, law, order, temperance, truth, cleanliness, thoroughness and economy.

After fifty years of toil, of social ostracism, of infinitely wicked persecution, which in later years by her patience, by her kindness and charity was greatly modified, she fell in the harness, full of achievements from the work which God had given her to do. At both the funeral service at Aiken, S. C., where she died on the night before the event arranged by friends to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of her service to the colored people and her helpfulness to all who met her socially or in a business way, and at Darby Meeting House, in Pennsylvania, where the interment of the body took place, solemn covenants consecrating mind and heart and hand,[Pg 32] amid the tears and sobs of blacks and whites alike, were made by many to keep alive forever the spark of truth and life she was first to express the courage to plant in a land of enemies, surrounded on every side by the dangers of assassination and the ravages of small pox, malaria, and dengue fevers.

Between the years of 1865 and 1876 the severest tests were put to the work of being done by Miss Schofield, to see whether it could be made practical or not. By the courage with which she met and answered them she established once and for always the truth that the progress of light and reason can not be retarded long, no matter by whom and for what purpose such an attempt might be undertaken. The outrageous murders of Negroes by white men which went on almost daily following the unwise policy of the government at Washington in putting them in power in the South before many of them could scarcely read or write, precipitated the greatest excitement throughout the country. These outrages attracted the indignation of the North and martial law was declared all over South Carolina. This was done to enforce the rights of the peaceable, law-abiding whites, as well as the rights of that class of Negroes. Of course, much blame for the haughty attitude of the Negro and the declaration of martial law was laid at the door of Miss Schofield, whose teaching it was generally believed by the ignorant whites, was responsible for the deplorable state of affairs that existed. The Northern press at the time carried over her signature many accounts of the numerous brutalities happening in and around Aiken and she was repeatedly called to account by the leading white people, all assuming a threatening attitude that would have put to flight almost any other woman. But Miss Schofield would meet her antagonists face to face and dare them to harm even one hair of her head. She would remind them that they were all chivalrous white gentlemen and could not under their own pretences attack her and do her violence without surrendering every right and claim which they might have upon knight erranty.

In a New York newspaper of the year 1876 she details one of the murders typical of the Reconstruction period.

[Pg 34]

An old man, deaf, and dumb, who had never spoken a word or heard a sound in all his seventy years of life sought protection and refuge in the Schofield home. He had scarcely entered the house before an armed body of men arrived and demanded that the old dumb man reveal the hiding place of a certain negro whom the white people had decided it was necessary to put to death for their own peace and security. As he could neither hear nor talk, he answered the threatening attitude of the crowd with unintelligent murmurs and gestures and pointed excitedly at Miss Schofield. She explained the condition of the man and plead earnestly with the mob for his life, but to no purpose. They engaged him and stabbed him to death in her back yard as he undertook to escape.

The same number of this newspaper carries instances and gives dates of other atrocities of a most depraved character. All this served to stimulate the growing animosity between the whites, who regarded the outrages being committed by them as absolutely essential to the preservation of civilization, and the Northern immigrants or carpet-baggers, who through the Negro vote were in power and held all of the important offices of the County and State. Many of these disgraced with shame for the time being the offices held for enriching themselves and impoverishing the already impoverished and well-nigh destitute country.

Martha Schofield’s activities in broad-casting stories of these hideous outrages and appealing for the continuance of the reign of the military authorities in South Carolina as the only means of making life at all safe and possible under the circumstances, drew to her the contempt and hatred of the white people, who of all the people on earth were best suited by reason of their position and knowledge to assist her in her work.

The suspicion and distrust she worked under of being in sympathy with the unscrupulous and corrupt regime in complete control of local affairs was manifestly a serious handicap. No one more clearly than she realized[Pg 35] the disastrous effect their corruption would have on her school, her work and the colored people. She knew also that it meant defeat, in the South at least, of the great party whose triumph in the cause of freedom had made it possible for the first time in American history to test the possibility of elevating a lowly and much abhorred race. These influences weighed heavily upon her heart, and but for the courage and sternness of her nature, which seemed never to be at its best except when acutely vexed and infinitely tried, would have resulted in her voluntarily withdrawing from the self-imposed task almost in its beginning.

The author shall never forget but she will always remember and value her most priceless treasure, the tender religious emotion which the happenings of these times provoked. They were felt keenly at the morning service of the Schofield Normal and Industrial Institute during her first year at this institution. How fondly does she recall now as if the voices of angels, whose voices of three decades ago as the whole school would sing those comforting old plantation hymns, “Steal Away, Steal Away to Jesus,” and “Love, Come a Twinkling Down.”

The joy, the emotion and inspiration which is felt at the moment of writing these lines, over the probability of a similar joy in heaven, in the heart of her who had the heroic courage and the splendid manhood to risk her life in the unselfish and holy cause of implanting in the Negro mind and soul that which is beautiful, noble and sentimental, is unbounded.

The reflection that large numbers of her fellow-citizens now rejoice with her, and the prediction that others who do not now do so will later on, gives her likewise an even greater measure of the debt of gratitude which all owe to the mother of the movement for the courage to continue the work for the uplift of the Negro even at the peril of her life.

The work of Miss Schofield was made doubly more perilous each day by the misrule of the imported rulers[Pg 36] of State. For these she had, instead of sympathy, an unbridled contempt, and never failed to express that contempt, whenever possible. But the white people would not condescend to hear her talk, much less believe anything which she might say. Besides their prediction that deplorable conditions would follow the rule of any Yankee, no matter whether he was a Scott, a Moses, or a Chamberlain, must not be discounted by the substitution of honest men from the North. The more corrupt a Republican was the better he served to prove the contention of the Southerners that only Democrats could be safely trusted with power.

The dishonest, corrupt and unscrupulous officials in authority were equally as energetic in protecting their offices from capture by good men, by countenancing, if not actually encouraging, a spirit of lawlessness. Governor Jenkins, the Republican Governor of Alabama, was quoted as saying that he would like to have a few colored men killed every week or so, in order to provide the semblance of truth for his libels that the maintenance of the Radicals in power was the only salvation of the colored people. His work and talk, typical of that of others, served to frighten good men away and keep Jenkins and his kind in authority. And all this time Martha Schofield and her little band of Negroes, whom she was endeavoring to lead out of the depths of darkness, despair and crime into the light of reason, courage, and industry were daily praying for their enemies, for the deliverance of men of all races from the fetters of greed, avarice and revenge, which was responsible for the suffering and misery to be seen on every hand. They were praying not only, they were working also, with all their little might, that the things for which they prayed might come to pass. This school, of all others which the author ever attended, preached, if it preached anything at all, that God must never be expected to answer prayers unsupported by works.

At one of the great political rallies held in Aiken by the Democratic Party a few years before the succession[Pg 37] of Hampton to the Governorship one of the orators of the day said that the treasury of South Carolina had been so gutted by the thieves in power that nothing was left to steal except the power to stop the further enlightenment of the fool ‘nigger.’ He added also, that he wanted a change in the government in order to make a South Carolina bond equally as good on the market as a “nigger’s note.”

The legislatures of the Southern States authorized the increase of the public debt from $87,000,000 to $300,000,000. They held the right to declare martial law in every county whenever deemed advisable, to arrest and try any person by court martial and had at their disposal the right to raise regiments of soldiers, one of Negroes and one of whites, to execute their several wills. Under these circumstances it does seem that security of life, liberty and even the pursuit of happiness and the accumulation of property should have gone on undisturbed by anything which the aristocrats and poor whites might have done, in opposition to the desideratum so devoutly wished for by the authorities in power.

But history records that the authorities with unlimited power signally failed in asserting any power at all; that the party in power with unlimited means at its command for accomplishing great undertakings of public enterprise accomplished only the complete demoralization of the whole South, financially and morally.

After sitting a whole year the legislature of Alabama at the end of its session passed a bill authorizing the endorsement of the State’s credit, for the purpose of encouraging the development of railway construction and transportation to the extent of $16,000 per mile. Only one road was completed. Five were built a few miles and abandoned. Through the issue of bonds for one purpose or another, as for instance, the building of railroads organized and owned principally by the men voting the bonds, the public treasury was fleeced to the limit.[Pg 38] This, combined with the stupidity, cowardliness and corruption of the military authorities hastened on the hurried collapse of organized government and substituted in its place a reign of terror and lawlessness without a parallel in Southern history.

Several riots and some of as foul murders as ever disgraced the lives of men attended the uprisings around Aiken.

Among the most important of these were the Hamburg, the Ellenton and Ned Tennant riots, all occurring within a few miles of Miss Schofield’s school.

The Hamburg riot occurred in July, 1876, and proved to be one of the most tragic events, as it was one of the most disastrous occurrences for the Negro race and the Republican Party of the South that occurred during the entire period of Reconstruction. Seven Negroes and one white man were killed out-right, while one white man and two Negroes were seriously wounded.

This sounded the alarm of danger in the South for the experiment being made with the Negro for self-government and urged immediate action by Congress for the protection of its policy there, if not its newly made citizens who at the first challenge had shown conclusively the incapacity to protect themselves.

The riot was precipitated by two young white men, Henry Getzen and Thomas Butler, who were driving through Hamburg on the return from Georgia to their homes in South Carolina, just across the State line in the vicinity of Augusta. At the time a company of one hundred Negro men in command of Captain Dock Adams was drilling on the principal street of the town of Hamburg, and a large proportion of the Negro population, as usual, was out admiring the spectacular performance. It is claimed by the white men that the company was drilling “company front” and so filled the street from side-walk to side-walk, which permitted them no room to pass; and that Captain Adams instead of ordering his troops to fall into “Column fours” or “column platoons,” he ordered them to “charge,” at which command, Butler, a son of Mr. Robert Butler, shouted from his seat in the[Pg 40] buggy, with revolver drawn, that he would shoot to death the first man that stuck a bayonet in the horse. With a hundred bayonets gleaming in the sun and several hundred of the colored race looking on, the Negroes knew the butchery of the whites was an easy matter, but being desirous of avoiding a conflict which they knew only too well was instigated at that time for the purpose of arousing the already over enraged whites to an action that would later on mean either the annihilation of themselves or their old masters and mistresses, whom some of them still loved and admired with the same affection and admiration that caused most of them throughout the battle for their freedom to remain at the fire-side and defend the homes of those out in a war fought to continue them in a state of bondage, the Captain ordered a halt and opened the ranks so that the buggy could pass. Completing the exercises, the soldiers were marched to their armory and dismissed. Adams then went, as was his right to do, to a Justice of the Peace, “General” Prince Rivers, a Negro, an ex-Union Soldier, commander of the Negro militia, the State Senator from Aiken County in the General Assembly and also the Trial Justice for his district, and swore out warrants for Getzen and Butler, charging them with interfering with his company at drill.

Hearing of this, Butler hurried home and informed his father of what had happened, who went in haste to the same Trial Justice and secured a warrant for Adams for obstructing the highway. News of the “cowing” of the Negro militia and the subsequent issuance of warrants for the captain of the company and the white men and the setting of the trials of each for a hearing was spread all over the surrounding country in a very short time, and excitement was intense on both sides as to what the outcome would be.

Without quoting the exact words of one of the members of the rioters who was the leader in the three great riots, the settled purpose of the whites was the seizure of the first opportunity that might be made by the Negroes[Pg 41] to provoke a riot and demonstrate to the latter through blood-shed the utter hopelessness of the attempt of the Negro to rule and so rid South Carolina of the domination of Negro and carpet-bag government. For the approaching trial elaborate preparations had been made by the whites, including the employment of General M. C. Butler for the defense of Thomas Butler and Henry Getzen and the prosecution of Adams, and the calling together of all members of the Sweet Water Sabre Club, an organization of the leading white men of Edgefield and Aiken Counties for the destruction of the Negro regime locally and for use in overthrowing the State government and for the purpose of trampling under foot the laws passed by Congress, intended to give the Negro equal power with the white in the government of the State. Members of this club were not only instructed to attend the trial for the protection of the two young white men, but were ordered to be present to see to it that if no opportunity offered itself to provoke a riot, then they were to create one, anyhow. They were to go un-uniformed and armed with pistols only, but were to have their rifles near at hand and be ready at a moment’s notice to engage the blacks in deadly combat under their own vine and fig tree.

Emboldened by the apparent cowardliness of the Negroes to attack Getzen and Butler a few days before, members of the club expressed much fear that the Negroes would be bold enough to show resentment to any indignity which they might offer, and so would bring to naught the various plans and schemes previously formulated to engage them in battle. News of their presence in Hamburg and of their object had preceded their arrival, and the justice ordered the hearing postponed to a later day, when the orderly trial of the case could be assured by the protection of additional militia-men. The whites were quick to see the advantage which the Negroes would obtain by delay and promptly decided to begin the attack at once.

At about five o’clock in the afternoon, just as Adams[Pg 42] and his company had assembled in their armory, General M. C. Butler sent the captain word that his militia with guns had shown that they were a menace to the peace and good order of the community and demanded of him the surrender of his guns, informing him at the same time that the whites were resolved to put an end to the political rule of the Negro and the carpet-bagger or die in the attempt that very day. With his prompt and peremptory refusal to surrender, Adams also sent defiance to the white men. This boldness somewhat dismayed the latter as they had with them five rifles only. The remainder of their armament consisted of pistols and shot-guns, making the effectiveness of the attacking party very inferior in the matter of weapons as in numbers. But this inefficiency was more than offset by the difference in training of the opposing parties, by the inheritance of many of the whites of thousands and thousands of years of skill in the use of the weapons of war, while the only training ever given the Negro had been one of fear. This had been his by inheritance just as the white race had inherited its contempt of fear. It is as natural for some of the Negroes to show cowardliness as it is for some of the whites to show bravery, and this difference in the qualities of the two races must remain relative in proportion to the intellectual and moral development of each race.

Besides, think who they were fighting—why, their old masters and their sons, whom some of the Negro soldiers no doubt, had risked their lives in previous emergencies to protect and defend from danger.

Could it be expected, under the circumstances, that their aim would prove unerring? Wasn’t it rather to be expected at the beginning that the shots which the poor, illiterate Negroes fired would fall wide of the mark, just as they did?

All admit now, even the intelligent Negro and the radical abolitionist, that the arming of the Negroes before first teaching them the use of weapons was a mistake, but this would apply with equal force to the ignorant,[Pg 43] illiterate white race. ’Tis the condition of the mind that makes the body fit or unfit. The adder is not better than the eel, because of his painted skin, nor the blue-jay any better than the wren because of his fine plumage, as the Bard of Avon well expressed it when addressing good Kate and reminding her that she was none the worse because of her poor furniture and mean array, provided her mind and heart were perfect.

The Negro has arms and hands as strong as iron bands and with these he can punish into insensibility the men of almost any race; there are white men endowed with equally great physical powers who can, like the Negro, subdue others not so powerful in animal strength. Each of these types of men labor in the fields of arduous toil, neither having the time and, in most cases, lacking the intelligence to bathe and live a sanitary life, much less educate their poor brains. For this reason neither are the equal, either in war or in the every day intellectual occupations of life, of the men trained and dexterously skilled in the use of their muscles and brains. The psychological influence of the men of education over the ignorant and illiterate must not be overlooked neither in any attempt to account for the tremendous supremacy which the few exercise over the many.

At any rate, the superiority of the seventy members of the Sweet Water Sabre Club over the one hundred members of the Negro militia was amply demonstrated at Hamburg on July 8, 1876. It is possible that the Negroes, who could have destroyed the entire mob in a few minutes with their superior equipment, were aware of the reinforcements lying in wait at the beck and call of General Butler, and so retained their position in the armory as a means of protection against an attack by an overwhelmingly superior force. Certain it is, that from a vantage point of view the inside of the armory was no suitable place from which to shoot. The soldiers were compelled to shoot from below the windowsills, which elevated their guns, and so their bullets, except the one which killed Makie Meriwether, were spent in vain. At[Pg 44] the sound of the first firing reinforcements for the whites began to pour into Hamburg by the hundreds, and no time was lost in obtaining a piece of artillery in Augusta and bringing it into action. Two shots from this destructive machine silenced the guns of the militia and the members of the company began to retire as secretly as possible, it being well understood by all that the whites would give nor ask any quarter in the orderly rules of warfare, as in the matter of capitulation and terms of surrender. The knowledge by every Negro at the beginning of this historic event that the battle meant death to everyone captured possibly unnerved every soldier and precipitated the demoralization following the advent of the solitary field piece of artillery. Out of the forty Negroes captured only a few belonged to the militia, the members of which the mob was determined to destroy that night, but as most of these had escaped, then it was decided to kill anybody in reparation for the death of young Meriwether. So a search of the homes of all Negroes and some of the whites was made, including that of a Jew named Louis Schiller, who was friendly with the Negroes and had through their votes, under the new order of things, obtained and held the office of County Auditor of Edgefield County before the creation of Aiken County. It was decreed that Schiller should be put to death, but he escaped with his life only by climbing through a trap door leading out on the roof and hiding himself behind a parapet on top of the house. All the while he was in hearing distance of the curses and execrations heaped upon his name and the avowed intention of the mob to hang him sooner or later.

Two, among the forty prisoners held under guard while the searching party worked, who knew that their capture meant their death, attempted to escape by jumping over a fence with their guards looking on and running as fast as their legs could carry them in hope of reaching a place of safety; but white men seemed to be everywhere, and although one of them, Jim Cook, the town marshall, did escape his guards he was shot to[Pg 45] death by bullets from a shot-gun which tore in his head as he dashed through the crowds. The other had been killed by the guards having him in charge.

Cook was supremely hated by the entire white population of the County, more so, than other individuals of his race on account of his activity in the office of marshal, which the whites charged he used without provocation to humiliate and degrade them. Over his death there was the greatest rejoicing throughout the county among the whites.

Being unable to locate any more Negroes, General Butler and Colonel A. P. Butler concluded that all work was practically finished and quietly departed for their homes. They did not leave any orders and the members of the mob began to disperse in perceptibly large numbers. But the thirst for blood born of that insatiable desire to torture, to torment as in the fiery pit, and to murder implanted in the heart of individuals, half-animal and the sport of impulse, whim and conceit, until relieved by the tameness and intelligence which time and education alone can give, had not yet been satisfied, although for one life taken by the militia they had taken two.

These deluded children of the white men suffering with the same malady, ignorance, with which the children of the blacks were more seriously suffering, but recognizing the advantage which their superiority of numbers now gave them, reasoned that it was a dear piece of work to exchange one of their number for only two Negroes. It was argued that a story like that would not appease the popular clamor that now would rise like a heavy mist from the sea and gain the momentum of a cyclone. So it was solemnly agreed that, while the annihilation of the entire Negro population of the town of Hamburg would not atone for the death of Meriwether, the members of the mob would content themselves for that night, at least, with the assassination of only the meanest characters among the remaining number of prisoners held. The duty of designating these[Pg 46] “meanest” characters, and those most deserving of death, fell to the lot of Henry Getzen, one of the young men who was the original cause of the riot and whose residence in the vicinity of Hamburg brought him into the closest contact with the Negro population and so prepared him fully for the duty of passing judgment upon the destiny of the prisoners.

His hands, red with the blood from the wounds that had killed Makie Meriwether and his heart beating in unison with his rankling mind at thought of the imaginary injustices already done, or to be done, by the Negro, the state of his feelings made him anything else but fit to pass upon the lives of the men now at stake, even had he been an honest man and inspired by high and lofty ideals as it must be conceded many of the whites in the Hamburg riot were.

The purpose by the whites was to use this riot to strike terror in the heart of the Negroes and intimidate them, then and there and for all time, in their aspirations for political as well as social advancement.

At that time, as at this time, in the case of a large element of the white population, it is undeniable that it is against their express desire that encouragement for improvement of the Negro be given him. Witness, the laws passed by the several Legislatures as late as 1916 in discrimination of him, one of which forbids the employment of truckmen in the cotton mills along with other employees whose skin is white. Several bills have been introduced for passage in the General Assembly of South Carolina to make the instruction of Negroes by whites a violation of the law, but up to this date, 1916, all measures for the purpose have failed of enactment.

When such laws finally become effective it may be proposed by the Negroes to restrict the practice of medicine by blacks and whites to the respective races to which each belongs. Likewise measures may be devised and enacted into law, which will make it unlawful for white salespeople to wait upon Negroes in the stores, or for Negroes to wait upon whites as sales clerks.

[Pg 47]

The constitutionality of the proposed law relating to the restriction of Negro teachers only in Negro schools is thought by some lawyers to be as applicable to physicians and clerks as to teachers.

The same racial prejudice which showed its specter-head in demoniac form in the case of the burning at the stake of two Negroes near the town of Statesboro, Georgia, in the year 1905, and the previous death by fire at the stake near Newman, Georgia, in 1895 of another was the moving spirit that actuated the mob and guided the hearts and hands of Henry Getzen and his band at Hamburg, twenty and thirty years before. As fast as Getzen could select from among the prisoners those he considered most worthy of death, they were taken out in the streets, before the eyes of their wives and children and shot to death, in the light of a brilliant moon reflecting the love of heaven, but no wavering image of that love was anywhere to be found in Hamburg that night. God and the angels had deserted it without any apparent concern for the safety of the helpless blacks.

When the firing ceased the mob’s victims, numbering seven with the two who previously had been killed, were piled side by side in the most conspicuous part of the town, and presented a grewsome sight, lying stark, stiff and cold, when the Negroes who had fled from the town returned to their homes on Sunday morning following.

Those of the prisoners who were spared, about twenty-eight in all, were given permission to leave and told to go with all speed at their command which they were none too slow about doing. Volley after volley was fired after them, over their heads with no intention to hit or injure them.

Had it been known before they were allowed to go that one of the supposed dead was only assuming death the number freed would have been reduced to twenty-seven instead of twenty-eight, for it was the decision of the mob that nothing less than eight lives should be taken in retaliation for the life of young Meriwether. Pompey Curry, who was selected among those to be shot[Pg 48] fell dead at the first report of the guns and remained motionless and apparently breathless throughout the examination of the bodies and their disposal by the mob until the whites had all gone home, when he crawled through the high weeds which were near by and made his escape in the woods with only a slight wound in his leg. Among all the witnesses for the government in the prosecution of members of the mob which followed the conflict, none was of the importance of “Pompey Curry” as he knew by name a large number of the men and could point them out on sight. He discharged his duty as a witness in the celebrated trial, but a short time afterward he suddenly disappeared and no one knows or appears to know whatever became of him.

The success of the mob in thus attacking and annihilating a company of the government’s own soldiers and ruthlessly putting to death peaceable citizens in defiance of the law, without judge or jury, gave the greatest encouragement to the hopes of the whites. It was really of more far-reaching consequences in influencing their lives and fortunes than any incident ever occurring before or since in the history of South Carolina.

The direct opposite effect which it had upon the Negro and upon the people of the North, where it occasioned the bitterest comment, resulted in Congress appointing an investigation committee and the substitution of white Union soldiers to fill the places made vacant by the resignation of the Negroes from the ranks. Their resignation resulted from the fear they had of the whites and sincere desire to work in the interest of peace. They were also encouraged to resign by such men as Chamberlain, whose record as Governor, although placed in power by the votes of Negroes, is one of the most honorable of any Governor who ever filled the office of Chief Executive.

This tragic episode took from the Negro his last hope of being able to control the elections which followed in the fall. It gave to the whites all the freedom they desired to follow the doctrine of General Mart Gary to[Pg 49] vote early and often. By doing so, they changed a Republican majority in Edgefield County of 2,300 to a Democratic majority of almost 4,000!

As an example of the perfect contempt with which Gary and his mobs treated the authority of not only the officials of the County but of the State may be cited his refusal to obey General Ruger’s orders to have the court house at Edgefield vacated by the whites. At this time he openly defied the military power of both the State and National government when he with his Red Shirt regiment, which he organized, captured the Chamberlain meeting on August 12, 1876. In a fiery speech to the Negroes at that time he announced in no unmistakable terms that no power above or below earth was sufficient to prevent the success of the Democratic Party at the polls that year nor in any succeeding year. He told the white men that an ounce of “Fearnot” was worth a ton of “Persuasion” and exhorted them to put the ballots in the boxes and he would see that every one was counted.

The reign of lawlessness resulting in the torture and wanton murder of the blacks following the Hamburg riot went unrestrained in spite of the presence of white Union soldiers stationed in those sections where the greatest outrages occurred after the Negro troops had been partly mustered out.

The reason for this was not want of ample power close at hand for the enforcement of law and order and respect for the rights of every citizen, white and black alike; but inefficiency or culpable neglect on the part of the military authorities to assert any authority at all. Through the leadership of Gary and Butler and some others, including Hon. B. R. Tillman, Luther Ransom and George W. Croft, a prominent citizen of Aiken, the whites were allowed to run rough-shod over the Northern white soldiers just as they had succeeded previously in intimidating and “cowing” the Negro militia.

With the crazed white people swearing vengeance against every northern man or woman known to be in sympathy with the movement for the improvement of the Negro race, and the Negro and white soldiers having demonstrated such poor ability or better stated, none at all, in securing any decent respect for them and their work, the condition of Martha Schofield’s school at this period is better imagined than described. Located in the thick of the great white heat of the conflict the principal and students were subjected to insults and indignities that could be committed with impunity in times of great peril only. A few nights before the trial at Aiken for the taking of testimony in the case of the Hamburg rioters a number of armed men entered the yard and some of them occupied the porch of Miss Schofield’s home. Taking a whip in her hand she went out on the porch with a light in the other hand and inquired as politely and calmly as she possibly could, what the gentlemen would have, and if she could do anything for[Pg 51] them. No one made any reply but all immediately arose and departed in an orderly and quiet manner.

The tact, the power and magnetism with which this woman met and disarmed her enemies were the same forces wielded by her in drawing to herself the great following at the North so necessary in the accomplishment of her great educational mission in the South. Afterwards it served in attracting to her the help of those who only a few years before sought to do her injury only. With her powers of mind and heart, enriched and mellowed by a Christian spirit that plainly indicated that she held malice for none, but charity for all, she won the love, respect and admiration of everybody who came under her influence.

The absolute fearlessness and splendid self control maintained by her during the rioting in Aiken preliminary to that great Judicial farce, the trial of the members of the mob at Hamburg, is said by those who witnessed it with her as having been courageous, if not heroic. Her conduct on this occasion modulated by such propriety as required the exercise of the greatest common sense, shows her to have been well fitted for leadership in a time of great unrest and supreme anxiety.

Hundreds of excited Negroes on this eventful occasion flocked to her like biddies to the mother hen in time of danger. Her school was a veritable shelter in the time of storm when large bodies of white men on horses dressed in white uniforms decorated in red, with crosses and skeleton heads approached and rode through the town. The leader riding in front carried a huge banner made of a shirt large enough for Goliath. It was spotted all over with large red spots indicative of pistol wounds. On either side was placed a Negro dough-face ornamented at the top by chignons. This banner turned high in the air, round and round, in the swift ride through Aiken from every side that the Negroes looked, all that they could see was a bleeding, grinning, dying Negro.

The only thought among them was, how much longer[Pg 52] each of them had to live, and so they rushed in multitudes to Miss Schofield whose interpretation of one of the inscriptions on the banner somewhat allayed their fears and restored quiet among them.

One of the inscriptions said: “Awake, Arise or Be Forever Fallen.” The other contained this: “None but the Guilty Need Fear.”

Among the excited Negroes were old men, ex-slaves, and young, strong, manly fellows; but these, along with the weeping and moaning women and crying, bellowing children, rushed to the grounds and buildings of the Schofield school, all quaking with fear, one old fellow, exclaiming, “Lawd, God-er mi’ty, I sho cant stan dis!”

And all the while this extravagant defiance of the police power of the city and military authority of the United States was happening, great bodies of the government’s own soldiers were standing idly by and looking on! The impotency of the whites in uniform had brought the same disgrace to the flag with which the Negro militia besmirched it at Hamburg.

The white Union troops cheered the marauding mob, and even formed in line and marched to the court house with them, where the rioters, or many of them, were to be arraigned on the charge of murder.

The company was afterwards severely reprimanded for this conduct, and while they never again set up cheers for the “Red Shirts” or fell in ranks with them, it was common knowledge that a cordial relation existed between them and the whites.

Under this condition of affairs it should not have been expected that anything more than a ridiculous farce could have been made of the court hearing given the party of lynchers. Besides, the Radicals in power at the State Capitol were charged, not without much evidence to support the charges made, with corruption of every sort, including bold, out-right stealing and conspiracy to commit murder, and were, therefore, in no condition to throw stones. The few Negroes intelligent enough to present the case against the mob at the bar[Pg 53] of justice were intimidated alike by the whites of the South and the Radical whites of the North, as well as by the action of the military authorities, who allowed the brutalities to proceed with impunity just as they had gone on before their arrival in the country.

Although the evidence at this mock trial was sufficient to convict almost any man indicted of murder in the first degree, the kind hearted Judge instead of remanding the prisoners to jail, admitted them to bail in the sum of $2,000. This, it is believed, was done through the discovery by Judge Maher of the utter hopelessness of any attempt to prosecute the cases to a successful conclusion. Not only were the Negroes intimidated, but the court itself fell under the vice of this baneful influence, lying like a spectre, between justice and the freedom of the culprits. This feature of the case is made unique by the granting of any bail at all, and doubly so by the smallness of the sum fixed. It becomes a travesty upon justice, if there was ever one, when the character and financial responsibility of some of the men signing the bonds are considered. Chreighton Matheny, a man who did not own ten dollars in property in all the world was accepted as surety to the extent of $20,000.00! It is the only case on record in the whole judicial history of the universe where prisoners were allowed to go on the bond of each other. One of the leaders in the riot who delights in recounting the part he played in the murders at Hamburg and who was given his liberty on a spurious bond at this trial, says that the performance was a perfunctory and laughable travesty on law, but that the action was necessary, for if the attempt to put any of them in jail had been made every official in the court house and town obnoxious to them would have been killed and they would all have gone to Texas or some other hiding place.

If the judicial outrage at Aiken did not show a corrupt collusion between the whites of the South and the white Union soldiers sent from the North, certainly the relations of the Red Shirts and Yankee soldier made[Pg 54] this evident a few weeks later when the Ellenton riot broke out. The pent up prejudice and passion lying dormant in the heart of the Negro and whites for ages broke loose in all its fury and swept the whole western section of South Carolina with a fan of fire, scattering desolation and ruin wherever it touched. The possibility of the outrages committed in the bloody drama of this riot is inconceivable except upon the hypothesis that a thorough understanding existed between the whites of the South and the soldiers of the North. In spite of the fact that the government was supported or thought it was supported, by the best soldiers the world had ever seen, by the men who met Lee at Gettysburg and Johnston and Hood at Atlanta, Resaca and Chickamauga, and also in spite of the fact that the Negro population in the section affected out numbered the white population by about ten to one, the murder of Negroes, accompanied by a reign of terror unapproached by any in history with the possible exception of the one attending the French Revolution, went on almost daily, the military authorities being unable or possibly disinclined to afford any measure of relief.

The failure of the government to meet its promises to the Negroes, especially those made by many unscrupulous imposters who immigrated to South Carolina and conspired with a number of native born white sons, among the latter ex-Governor Moses, to obtain control of the State government fell not so heavily upon the spirits of the leading, thinking colored people as the failure of the government to preserve law and order and insure them that security of life and liberty which are indispensible to peace and happiness and essential to the accumulation of wealth. It is not at all improbable that the government’s proclamation to the Negroes insuring them against molestation at the hands of their white neighbors was one of the contributory causes of the Hamburg riot and all the other disturbances that so seriously injured the Negro and the whole South. But the government and the soldiers in blue who made him[Pg 55] the equal of his master and the white people among whom he lived could not or would not make him master of the situation in which his freedom had placed him.

That distinctive quality of the Negro, predominating his character more prominently than any other trait, of aspiring to authority, while a perfectly laudable ambition, served him no good purpose at the period of which this is written, but inflicted on him serious injury because of both the untenableness of his position and the inability of his government to make it tenable.

The majority of the educated white people of the South, as well as the ignorant, all speak out and say in 1916 what they asserted in 1876—that God made them of better clay than He made colored people and that they will shoot Negroes and steal their votes from the ballot boxes just as long as murder and robbery may be necessary to maintain their hold on the government, but there is not nearly so much chance of them being able to do this now as in the years gone by, simply because of the preparation of the Negro for the ballot which preparation is rapidly making him not only fit to vote but qualified to fill the position in which he once utterly failed for want of efficiency. Through education he is making his position, both as a citizen and a voter quite tenable, and by industry is spreading an influence that will multiply the wealth of the South, in the distribution of which he will share in proportion to his intelligence, industry and superiority of numbers.

No one saw more clearly than Miss Schofield that the amelioration of the condition of the race could be accomplished through education only and the disturbing effect of the riot on her work gave her deep concern and great anxiety. She had been in the South at the time of the mock trial of the Hamburg rioters long enough to know with exactness the prejudice and bitterness of the whites toward the cause dearest to her heart and observed at close range each and every move made, determined to courageously carry forward her work if in doing so it required the sacrifice of her frail little body,[Pg 56] which she always spoke of as nothing but the temporary residence of a transitory soul upon which she was dependent here and hereafter, now and forevermore, for all earthly and eternal happiness.

No one, either white or black, came under her influence at this gloomy period without being deeply impressed with the divine inspiration that apparently guided her. All went away feeling verily that any harm to that woman or her school could be inflicted only at too great an expense, either in the loss of all self-respect or in remorse of conscience, if not actual conflict in earnest, with the authorities at Washington. She drove her tormentors away with kindness and kept them at a safe distance with the philosophy of MacBeth, which made all who cared to do her an injury feel that in murdering her work they would also murder their own sleep and peace both here on earth and throughout all eternity.

Could she have gained an audience with the men literally butchering the colored population alive, and have spoken to them of the enormity of their sins, it is possible that time at least, would have been given the poor distracted Negroes to bury their dead. But time for argument and reason was a thing of the past. Bodies lay for a week and even longer, uncoffined and unknelled. A Negro named Bryant who was killed by Captain Bush’s mob, near Ellenton, lay by the roadside from Saturday evening until late Monday afternoon, when a few brave colored men aroused sufficient courage to undertake to bury it. These had it in a pine box of cheap manufacture, just as the unhappy man had fallen, without a funeral robe or garment, in everyday old working clothes, perhaps all the clothes the poor fellow had in the world, and were on the way to a newly made hole in the ground near by, to lay it away from the mutilating hand of the marauders as well as to protect it from the pinions of the vultures on wings above, when a band of Red Shirts appeared on the scene and forced them to flee for their lives, leaving the body, stiff and stark, in[Pg 57] all its gruesomeness to lie in state for the benefit of all Negroes who might pass by.

While this squad of the “Red Shirts” were busily engaged in intercepting the interment of the bodies of men which they had slain or had assisted in slaying, another body just a short distance away was equally as busy in the manufacture of new corpses, while some of the unfortunates were on their knees in prayer.

Among the most prominent of the Negroes falling a victim to the mutilators’ knives and the assassins’ bludgeons, with the dead and the dying lying all around and stenching the pure air of Heaven with the sickly odor of death, was Simon Coker, an unusually bright mulatto, leader of the Republican Party in Barnwell County and the representative of that County in the State Senate. He was shown the body of Bryant, dead for several days, and told that equal honors would be given his distinguished carcass when it had been made ready for exhibition. He was promised this distinction for urging Negroes to vote, to aspire to official position, and to stand for their rights, even in the face of death itself.

Captain Nat Butler, a brother of General M. C. Butler, under whose direction the execution of Coker took place, ordered the fatal shots while the victim was in the middle of his last supplication on earth to Him who alone can give or has any right to take away.

Before being horribly murdered Coker was reminded that he had but very few minutes to live and was asked by Captain Butler if there was anything which he could do for him. With great calmness, he is said by a member of one of his executioners to have replied: “Yes, sir, here is my cotton house key; I wish you would please send it to my wife and tell her to have our cotton ginned and pay our landlord our rent just as soon as she can.”

Butler is reported as saying in reply; “Very well, Coker, I will attend to this. Now is there anything else?”

“Yes, sir,” said the Negro, “I would like to pray.”

[Pg 58]

“All right, get at it quick,” Butler answered by way of giving his consent.

Before the doomed man could finish his prayer, the order, “Make ready, men, aim, fire,” was given and Simon Coker, still in a kneeling position, with pleas of forgiveness half finished on his lips, passed from earth into eternity.

When the body was found a ghastly wound in the forehead as if it had been made at close range was noticed. Evidence subsequently disclosed that it had been made by one Dunlap Phinney, who delighted in acknowledging the deed and humorously remarked in recounting the terrible crime that he did it because he wanted no more dead “niggers” to come to life again and turn witness as Pompey Curry had done when he “played possum” with the same men in the Hamburg riot.

And this outrage, like others previously perpetrated, and still others committed later on, occurred under the very eyes of the soldiers in blue stationed in the South in the interest of maintaining the rights of those citizens who had been made free by the force of their arms, in deadly combat with the same men now being allowed to deny the Negroes all that freedom implied and all that made the war worthy of being fought!

Perhaps the hand of God had less to do with the non-interference of the government in the rioting than the influence set at work by the misrule of those in power of the State government. Every intelligent soldier knew of the chaotic condition of the country as a result of the open handed robbery and connivance with crime on the part of the State officials and decided possibly that the reign of lawlessness prevailing was no worse than the infamous conduct of the government under the constituted authorities. At any rate, the “Red Shirts” were allowed a wide latitude in defiance of all authority, and Mart Gary’s and Butler’s doctrine of spreading terror among the Negroes as the only means of rescuing the State from the misrule prevailing triumphed famously.

[Pg 59]

Preceding the arrival of the national military authorities, travel and the peaceable pursuit of business was made as hazardous by the inefficiency and corruption of the constituted authorities as it had been made by the creation of the reign of terror by the “Red Shirts.” Radical officials, instead of the Negro, should be held accountable for many of the real grievances complained of by the white people. In the hope of winning his vote the Negro was promised by most of these time-servers and self-seekers almost everything under the sun which he could desire, including not only the proverbial forty acres and a mule but absolute protection in attempts at inter-marriage with the whites. He was urged not only to assert his rights but to defend them even if it became necessary to shoot to death whole communities of white people in doing so. With this instruction and the additional assurance that the government at Washington would protect them in every thing they might do, is it any wonder that the conduct of these simple, trusting, unsuspicious children of ignorance, ready to believe any thing told them and as ready to act on false assumptions as on the other sort, should have become very obnoxious to their former masters, and especially to that class known as the “Poor Buckra?”

Therefore, the work Miss Schofield undertook to do and accomplished in spite of all opposition, that of educating the ignorant Negro and empowering him with the sword of reason, in order that he might not be led unwisely by those who sought to use him and did use him for selfish purposes, was the great need of the times.

A former member of one of the many “Red Shirt” bands who participated in the outrages of the Ellenton and Hamburg riots and is at this time (1916) an inmate of the home for Confederate soldiers at Columbia, S. C., stated to the author that it was the firmness, the reasonableness and plausibility of the arguments of Martha Schofield that influenced him and his compatriots in crime from molesting the Schofield school. He states that he and his friends once made designs looking to the[Pg 60] destruction of the school as a part of the plan in terrorizing the Negroes and “scallawags,” but were prevented from doing so only by the patriotism expressed by this little woman in a casual, brief conversation, at a time when she least expected their design against her. “We all felt, also,” added the old rebel, “that since we could not possibly kill all the Negroes some of them would be forced to live amongst us always, and since the more useful arts, such as farming, house-keeping, sewing and cooking which we satisfied ourselves were specialized in by Miss Schofield, were better done right than wrong her work might be helpful to us, and so we agree to let her alone.”

The great mission of her work was to teach the Negro the necessity of preparing himself for the duties devolving upon him after freedom and to place in his hands the knowledge with which he would be better able to discharge these duties. This took him first through an elementary course in physiology and hygiene, as the first duty of man as Miss Schofield understood it, was to make of himself a good animal. The author, by reason of her position in the medical profession and on account of her attendance at the Schofield school is in a position to know that the principles of hygiene and sanitation as taught and practiced by Martha Schofield thirty years ago among the Negroes were far in advance of that time, so far in advance that at this day and time we see the same identical principles in use among us, improved upon but slightly, if any.

The fact that Miss Schofield had the intelligence and genius to begin her work where it should have been begun, in the home, appealed to the good common sense of her white neighbors who for economic reasons, if not for nobler motives, desired improved living conditions to obtain among the Negroes. In the moral and intellectual aspect of the lives of the latter the white man took little or no interest, except to disparage the work done in this direction; but morality and intelligence are bred on physical prosperity. Instruction in the art of[Pg 61] farming and in the laws of sanitation and health served to free many who came under the influence of the school early in life from the shackles and bonds of a form of slavery woven in the factory of ignorance. Immorality, superstition, disease and death are some of the products of this factory. Great joy is taken in the fact that not one of the graduates of Miss Schofield’s school has ever been convicted or sentenced to penal servitude. This demonstrates the wisdom of education as a means of stamping out crime.

Robbery and murder by the Negroes in the new situation which freedom had placed him was very uncommon, but he did practice a form of conduct more humiliating to the whites than that of stealing their trashy purses or taking their lives, which with the loss of their slaves and their old aristocratic prestige, they considered worse than blasted. He “mustered” into the service of the army, aspired to official recognition and even cast votes and that at a time when his old master was disfranchised! Why, he even arose to the position of Sheriff and Attorney-General, Legislator and city Marshall. And in the execution of the duties of his high office he often had occasion to arrest some of his old masters or their best friends, and this aroused far more anger among the whites than any of his lesser crimes, such as assassination, robbery and the like. The white man resolved about like this: “The Negro who steals my life and purse stealeth trash but he who steals my high-blown greatness, takes that which shall not elevate him but make him lie low, indeed, beneath six foot of earth and clay.”

For want of a cool, calm and deliberate judgment which education is supposed to give to man, regulating his action to suit occasions and emergencies, the Negro in office, erred egregiously in his dealings with the whites, as white men and the men of all races before being made efficient by the refining influences of enlightenment, will err and do err. As a legislator he enacted[Pg 62] some very foolish and unnecessary legislation, impracticable if not discriminatory.

Among the ordinances of the town of Hamburg, which was ruled entirely by Negroes, was one designed for the purpose of entrapping the white men into the meshes of the law, although it was ostensibly passed in the interest of the public health. It forbade any one to drink at a public spring within the limits of the town except from some vessel such as a gourd, cup or dipper, and was rigidly enforced by the town marshall who was always a Negro. As many of the whites who passed by it had no dipper or cup and were not disposed to use the one at the spring for the public use as the Negroes enjoyed the same privilege as they in its use, this ordinance caused the death of one of the marshalls of the town and may have produced many riots if the Negro authorities had resented extensively the defiance of this law which the whites took particular pains to glaringly flaunt in their faces.

On one occasion a white man was arrested and taken before “General” Prince Rivers and fined five dollars for drinking from the spring without a cup. Sometime after this incident a Mr. Cockrell in attempting to drink from it in a similar way was arrested by the Negro marshall who it is charged, used insolent and abusive language. Cockrell resented it by stabbing the officer to death with a knife. He escaped capture and trial for murder only by getting out of the town in a coffin-box which a friendly merchant arranged for his convenience. No one knew till years afterwards who it was that killed the vigilant of the town’s peace, but everybody felt that this act also killed the enforcement of the “Spout” spring ordinance even as dead as the town’s dead marshall.

Miss Schofield’s teaching included helpful instructions in the matter of the responsibility of those entrusted with the exercise of power and had for its object the work of storing the minds of the Negroes with correct and practical principles of government, such as would[Pg 63] promote peace and contribute to the happiness and progress of both races alike. With equal force she applied herself strenuously to the task of impressing every Negro official that she could possibly reach with the fact that the dignity of their office required an unostentatious exercise of authority rather than a lavish display of power, which, unfortunately for the Negro, seemed to characterize his first attempt to rule. She taught that good government rested upon the exercise of intelligent judgment and was made strong or weak in proportion to the intelligence of those delegated to perform its functions, supposing, of course, that intelligence also qualifies an individual (as it most certainly does if it is heart deep), in moral fitness for the duties and honors of office.

No one can know her life and work as the author knows about them without acknowledging that want of her divine messages is, at bottom the sole cause of much of our present woe, as want of them were the cause in 1860 and 1870 and 1880 of our suffering and misery then.

In the light of this fact, with all of us, white and black alike, becoming more and more inclined to accept it as a fact, it is scarcely possible that any attempt sufficiently strong to retard the educational advancement of the Negro to any great extent, will ever be made again.

Martha Schofield’s pupils and graduates are now scattered all over this broad land, the majority of them engaged in farming, and are making a success; but a vast number are architects, house-builders, while not a few are successfully employed in the manufacture of useful articles of all kinds. Among the best teachers of the colored race are numbered some of her students, while the law and medical professions each have a few to their credit.

But the influence of her teaching in the preparation of colored men and women for the practice of humanitarian and religious principles, the forces behind all endeavor that can be depended upon to make the world a better[Pg 64] place in which to live, is the greater legacy of her life to the South, the white as well as the colored people.

If the white men of 1876 had had the regard for the doctrine of the brotherhood of man with which Miss Schofield’s instruction abounded, the brutalities and barbarities of those horrible times would have been impossible. Intellectual and moral advancement of both the colored and white race is necessary, absolutely, to a higher conception and a greater appreciation of this doctrine which carries with it the conviction that all the world is one country and no religion is worthy which does not compel us to do good wherever and whenever good may be done.

Miss Schofield never seemed to question whether a solicitor of alms was worthy or not but devoted her time and energy to the immediate relief of the need. That the applicant was in need and whether it was within her reach to assist him or her, black or white, was all that appeared to concern her.

It was out of the spirit of such sainted souls that the reaction in the North against the continuance of the profligate conditions in the South arose, and out of the wisdom of men and women of the North and South of her calibre and justness, that remedies for the healing of the wounds were found. But not without leaving scars, however, as a huge reminder that like conditions in the future will produce like disaster.

The estimated killed among the colored in the Hamburg and Ellenton riots is between 150 and 200. The number of whites killed is less than twenty.

But for the change in the attitude of the United States troops towards the whites, whom they informed that rioting must terminate, after the Ellenton riot had then been in progress for more than a week, the number of killed and wounded might have run into thousands instead of only hundreds.

So the stationing of soldiers in South Carolina was at last justified even though they stained, if not disgraced, for all time the uniform they wore. Their failure[Pg 65] to prevent rioting, accompanied as it was by a large number of infinite outrages, may be forgiven but never forgotten by memory.

Although two thousand or more white men participated in these riots only about eight hundred were ever arrested. A charge of murder or conspiracy to commit murder was made against each one, but only a few were tried and none punished.

The reason of the failure of the government to press the charges and convict the guilty was not for want of evidence nor from any fear of another conflict of like character but on account of the election of General Wade Hampton to the governorship, in whose courage and justice the United States Government had perfect confidence. Besides, the most intelligent Negroes as well as the whole radical regime of the South plead for moderation in dealing with these cases. The radicals utilized the Federal indictments against the “Red Shirts” as a scare-crow to intimidate them in the prosecution of themselves in the State courts which followed the inauguration of Hampton. The Democrats in Congress who were bitterly contesting, at the time the election of Hayes, a Republican, to the presidency over Tilden, also lent their powerful influence to the motion to nol pros the cases against the whites by agreeing not to press the cases at home against the former rulers of the South. It was also stipulated that the Democrats must accept the choice of Hayes for president if the Republicans succeeded in having the troops from South Carolina and Louisiana removed.

These were the conditions upon which a treaty of peace was entered into by the Republicans and Democrats at the time of the election of President Hayes, but since that time laws have been passed in many of the States making it a felony for citizens to utter such agreements, and, of course, would apply for more severely in the case of officials whose sworn duty it is to prosecute those guilty of crime.

After the withdrawal of troops from the South, crime of every sort went regularly on much as usual, though not on nearly so large a scale as before. Negro men and women, as well as those of the whites who had sympathized with the radical regime, were whipped and even murdered on the flimsiest and slightest pretext and in the most wanton manner. Robbery was of such frequent occurrence as to occasion surprise only when it did not happen. Negroes became good Democrats or submitted to unmerciful whippings. This soon reduced the number of objectionable voters to such a negligent quantity as they all got lost in a well-hidden minority. Everybody who was not a Democrat was worse than an infidel. A Republican stood no more chance of success in a contest for political preference than a snow ball in the infernal regions. Social ostracism was handed out to him to the extent of ignoring him altogether, visiting his home in case of the direst necessity and then long enough only to attend to the matter in hand in the shortest time possible. His little children were not infrequently whipped by other children on account of their father being a Republican.

This was the spirit existing between a South Carolina Democrat and Republican only a few years ago, but today the two meet on terms of perfect equality, provided, of course, that each are white; and discuss the politics of the country without a quarrel or even exciting much attention. The Democrat is perfectly willing to let the Republican run the government at Washington as long as the Republican remains indifferent to the rule of the Democrat in the government of the State. The one bribes the other and each cheats the Negro. The latter’s vote, under the disfranchisement laws enacted by the Democrats, is so negligible as to draw the contempt of the majority party and obtain a few false promises only from the party of the minority.

[Pg 67]

But in spite of the handicap of continued injustice and persecution, in the face of opposition when the race was weaker and not so capable of bearing its burdens as now, the Negro race through the assimilation of knowledge is evolving at a rapid rate. Miss Schofield’s work is bearing fruit, enriched by the multiplication of schools all over the South. The habit of whipping and murdering Negroes is growing less and less frequent and becoming in most of the Southern States, quite a serious offense. Recent acts of some of the legislatures of States make a county in which a person is lynched responsible to the family sustaining the loss, and suit to recover the sum of $2,000.00 as an indemnity is authorized. Improvement in the moral standard of the whites is making for improvement in the moral standard of the Negro. As the condition of one race improves the other improves. The two will continue to go up or down together.

The lesson that crime breeds criminals, taught by the brutalities of the “Red Shirts,” will never be forgotten by the white people of the South. When these people tired of robbing and assassinating Negroes, many of them turned on their own kind and not a few but suffered much. A man named Taylor for no other grievance than that he accepted the office of Sheriff under Chamberlain, a Republican governor, was shot down in his own home under the very eyes and nose of his wife. Conviction of the criminal was, of course, impossible as there were numbers and numbers of men bound together by oaths and other ties of secret invention ready at call to perjure themselves in any event affecting a member of their clan, while at that time a wife could testify neither for nor against her husband. The criminality of the times had made criminals of men formerly of gentlemanly traits, and splendid character, while those of an immoral nature from inheritance were rendered desperately and hopelessly criminal.

Than “Uncle” Alex Bettis, there was never a better Negro in all the world. It is said of him that he could[Pg 68] really do no wrong wilfully, that all his errors were to be charged to the ignorance of his poor brain rather than to any sinister motive of his pure heart; yet notwithstanding his reputation as a faithful friend to the white man, to all men of all races, the type of criminal produced by the criminality of the times was so depraved that it sought the life of Bettis, justifying their actions by asserting that his work as a minister and an advocate of education for the colored race was inimical to the best interests of the people, white and black alike.

Although almost illiterate, “Uncle Alex” was truly a power behind the throne of grace on earth, for them behind that throne, when he directed the machinery connected with it, all imaginary blessings on earth and in Heaven flowed, even to over-flowing in the hearts of the Negroes. It is admitted now, and should have been acknowledged at the time of his great ministry that Mr. Bettis’ assurances of salvation to the Negro for a righteous life and eternal damnation for a wicked life well served to cause thousands of his followers to abandon their ways of sin and lead lives of self-sacrifice and Christian effort, as Jesus would have all peoples to live and act.

Perhaps his preaching was not considered objectionable and had he confined himself solely to that alone, would not have been disturbed; but he had become imbued with the redeeming influence of education through contact with the Schofield school at Aiken and early in his work began the agitation for a Negro school, where, along with elementary literary courses, should be taught the industrial arts as Miss Schofield was doing. This aroused the highly criminal element of the whites, who wanted some pretext to further persecute the Negroes, and so it was ordered at one of their meetings that Bettis should be put to death. The day, date and place for his execution had been fixed, but on account of an accident or some illness to his horse, a large iron-gray, known to the whole country-side, the minister passed the band of murderers bent on his assassination,[Pg 69] astride another horse, in disguise. The leader of the mob inquired of the rider if he knew of the whereabouts of Bettis. He replied that “preacher Bettis wus jes’ a little way up de road at Simon Kenny’s ho’se, and wus ’er comin’ er long terrectly.”

The mob waited all the afternoon and throughout the night for Bettis but he never came. So early the next morning they called in person at the Bettis’ home. He received them with great kindness, and although he knew the object of their visit, showed no excitement whatever.

When informed that his death had been decided on, and that he had but little time in which to live, Bettis displayed a calmness and self-control that would have stripped Zeno of his honors at the shrine of stoicism.

“Well, ef dat be de way der gud Lawd hab fer me ter go” said Bettis, “I’s re’dy, but yo’ genermen luk lak yer is pow’rful hungry, an’ befo’ yer tends ter de bisness at han’ pleas let mer ole lady fix yer a bit’ ter ete.”

As something to eat in those days was very welcome and there was unusual hunger among the party, the consent of the mob to have Mrs. Bettis prepare the meal was readily obtained. During the interval between its preparation and consumption Bettis entertained his guests with talks relating to his crops, the condition of crops generally throughout his circuit of churches and kept repeating at the end of each subject: “But laws er mercy, youn’ marsters, its a heap wusser fer de po’ nigger dan it wus befo’ de wah. Now, he’s got nuttin but freedum, whiles fo’ freedum he hab all he wants ter ete an’ mo’ ter boot, an’ hab close to ware and ebbryting ter kep hissef wa’m.”

If these bad men were not wholly disarmed by the simple, rustic beauty of the Negro’s unaffected discourse in the presence of death, during the whole of which not once did he evince any sign that a single thought of his sad fate had ever passed through his troubled brain, they were certainly deeply affected by it, as well as by that act of his in desiring to feed them,[Pg 70] they who had come, not to feed him but to make food of him for the worms of old graves in the silent woods of sighing forest trees!

When the hungry had been fed and all had returned to the sitting room of the humble Negro home, Mr. Bettis said, “Well, youn’ marsters, I g’ess yo’ is ’er wantin’ ter go, and so I’se not er goin’ ter dela’ yo’ lon’, but I do wants ter pra’, ef yo’ pleas’es suhs.”

At the time of this dramatic period in the life of “Uncle” Alex, the greatest excitement prevailed elsewhere in Lick Skillet neighborhood, as Allen Dodson and his neighbors, armed with rifles and led by blood hounds, pursued the trail of Leslie Duncan, a son of Laura, whom the reader met in the first chapter of this story, firmly determined to hang him to the first convenient limb and riddle his body with bullets. With a pitch-fork he had stabbed Willie Hudson, Allen’s 15 year old son and inflicted a severe wound in the stomach, for whipping him with a lash. Besides, in leaving the Dodson farm he had broken a labor contract which he had made with Mr. Dodson at one dollar per week and board, and deserved to be captured and shot without the expense and formality of a trial in a legalized court of justice!

“Unless we make an example of this ‘nigger,’” said the leader of the party, as they took a short rest, propped up on their guns, “it will soon come to a pass that we might as well try to control the winds as these terrifying black brutes. If we don’t subdue them they will subdue us. That’s what old Ben Tillman says, and he knows. Good God, fellows, you ought to have heard that old one-eyed rebel speak the other night at Daleyville. I’d vote for him for any position he might want. I would even vote to change the form of government in America and make him Emperor if I only had the chance!”

Long, loud and enthusiastic cheering followed this declaration by Millard Dodson, the eldest son of Allen, whose eternal enmity for Leslie was quite well understood by all members of the mob as well as by others of his neighbors. Those who refused to join in the attempted capture and assassination said that the boy had a right to defend himself, and intimated that the quarrel and fight were precipitated by Millard to rid the[Pg 72] community of Leslie who was paying entirely too much attention to Matilda Deas, a nineteen year old mulatto employed as cook in the Dodson home, whose affection for Leslie dated back to their school days together eight years before, to suit Millard. His wife had on one occasion abandoned him and threatened a separation on account of the gossip of intimacy between him and Matilda. Leslie, who had departed in haste after wounding the boy, which incident took place three hours before it was timed by Millard to come off made good use of the spare moments at his disposal for eluding the mob, which he knew in his own mind would follow him, unopposed by the police authorities, and execute him if his capture could be effected.

With him it was a case of life, with Matilda and children and a happy home, although he knew the sacred purity and virtue of his betrothed had been despoiled by the lust of one of the men, at least, seeking his life; if he could escape this was possible; otherwise it was death with all the tortures of the damned. So he spurred himself on and onward in his flight, through tangled woods and swamps, across deep and swift flowing streams, over hills and high precipices, down through the valleys and old fashioned fields, stopping only once in ten hours to rest at a Negro farm home, where he was given some food and a small bit of change to aid him along on his journey to a place of safety, if place of safety beyond the grave there was! Twice or thrice he heard the barking of dogs and the voices of men as nearer and nearer they approached and his heart almost stopped beating. It developed that what he did hear was the reports of cattle buyers from the West who were in the South buying up the “scrub stock” to take to the plains to fatten for the Chicago packing houses. As fear of being overtaken and summarily put to death, without a last word or look or kiss from his sweetheart, would tend to accelerate his speed, so would that joy he felt over the possibility of escape and final reunion with Matilda cause him to double and redouble his energies in his onward course in the mad race for life.

[Pg 73]

His pursuers discounting the cleverness of the Negro in selecting only unfrequented roads and abandoned farm-houses, as places of travel and concealment when a rest became imperative, had lost the trail at the beginning of the hunt and on the second morning, although they searched diligently until midnight on the evening before, found the hunters and their bird of prey some thirty odd miles apart. Dissentions had arisen among the members over the conduct of the chase at the beginning which for a while threatened to break up the party, but about this time Ben Milligan, who was drunk when the party first set out and unable to go at first call joined them with a gallon of “Old North Carolina Corn,” and the information that Leslie had been seen only a few hours before in the Shinburnally neighborhood. Under the stimulation of the whiskey and the false promises of the leader of the mob to pay the party first to lay hands on Leslie Duncan the sum of twenty-five dollars, new momentum was injected into the chase and as long as the whiskey lasted it was energetic enough to elicit the praise of the most pronounced grouch among the men.

But miscalculations were again made, as Leslie was many miles from Shinburnally and was going as fast as his tired legs could carry him on and on in an opposite direction.

In the meantime, Mrs. Millard Dodson in a rage of indignation over the report going the rounds of the neighborhood and gaining credence each day that the ‘yaller woman’ at her home had succeeded in alienating the affections of her husband completely, had taken advantage of Millard’s absence to rid her household of the presence of the person she conceived to be the source of much of her domestic infelicity, shame and disgrace. With the aid of John Quincy, her eldest son, she had administered a terrible beating to the woman and at the point of a gun had marched her three miles from the farm and after commanding her to go and admonishing her never to show herself in Lick Skillet again on penalty[Pg 74] of death, left her and returned to the house, stopping at each of the neighbor’s houses to inform them of what she had done.

During her absence from the house, Millard and his party, which had postponed the chase for want of more whiskey, had returned and were ransacking the pantries and side boards in the dining room as she entered, in quest of food which they had gone without for nearly thirty-six hours.

“Where’s Matilda?” inquired Millard, as his wife suddenly entered the house.

“That Negro wench is gone” she told him in a calm, unimpassioned voice, “and gone forever. I have borne the disgrace of the reported relation between her and you as long as I can, much longer and far more patiently than I should have been expected to, so I gave her a whipping which she will never forget and took the gun and marched her away with such a warning that will be heeded.”

Millard tried hard to conceal the effect which the temporary loss of his paramour had on him by approving the action of his wife; at the same time he assured her that the common gossip of the neighborhood was without the least foundation, and that it would have aided in the capture had Matilda been retained for a few days longer. But that indescribable inner consciousness which betrays guilt and convicts the criminal beyond the hope of escape, except through suicide, and suicide is not escape, marked the stain of dishonor and shame all over his countenance with its brush of indelible guilt.

After the departure of the members of the mob, pandemonium broke loose in the Dodson home over Millard’s attempt to chastise his wife for running Matilda away, being intercepted by his two daughters and the energetic pugilistic activities of the wife. When the resounding, reverberating atmosphere had cleared away the father found two large bruises on his face and a slight wound in the back from a knife as evidence, proof[Pg 75] and positive, that his was essentially a family of fighters on the mother’s side at least. Matilda, at this time, was more than ten miles away and happy as a bird suddenly freed from its cage except for one thing which burdened her soul as no other event had ever done since the evening that the beastly Dodson had forced her to surrender her body to his passion in satisfying his greedy lust, and that one thing was the ignorance in which she lived of the safety and security of her lover, Leslie, whom she felt quite sure by or before that hour had been captured and lynched.

Maybe he had made good his escape. For the latter she had hoped and prayed with the earnestness, desperation and despair with which she so long warded off the entreaties and appeals of Dodson when he first made the advances which finally culminated in the degradation of her life. Her miserable life was spent in his home only under compulsion, the compulsion of a labor contract entered into by her in legal form, a breach of which she knew from the experience of other colored women employed under such terms and conditions meant only one thing—a term of penal servitude at the hardest of the most degraded sort of labor!

So she had determined to carry out her part of the contract and at the end of it marry Leslie and settle down in a home of her own, to bless it, perhaps, with the voices of children and all the endearments which the relations of father, mother and child mean to mankind.

But in a world of strange and unfriendly relations, the only sort of a world which she had ever known, having been but eight years old on the day of the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, in the great white-heat of the conflict being waged by the whites of the North and the whites and the Negroes of the South in that great historical drama known all over the civilized world as the “Reconstruction Period!” What blighted hopes they should have been! Meditating over the hopelessness of her present plight, separated from her[Pg 76] lover, whose body at that moment for all she knew might be dangling at the end of a rope, stung to the heart by hundreds of bullets from the guns of armed murderers; and without the reach, comfort and consolation of her father, who was at that time serving a sentence in the penitentiary for disposing of a crop under lien, the spirit of despair was rapidly enveloping her troubled soul, when lo, and behold, there appeared before her no other a person than Dodson on his swiftest mare with Leslie in tow, tied hard and fast to his saddle! As unexpected as a bolt of lightning from the clear blue sky and with the vigor and fierceness of a tiger she sprang between the horse and the bound boy and began biting and knawing at the rope with the voracity of a starving lion in contact with its hunk of meat.

At first Millard drew his pistol and threatened to shoot if she did not desist but paying no attention at all to his demands she kept on chewing the rope as if she had not heard, when Leslie managed to secure his knife from his pocket and get it into her hands with which she cut the rope in two, and set her lover free. Then facing her traducer and heaping curse after curse upon him and daring him to shoot, she managed to distract his attention from Leslie and give the latter time to get out of reach, which he did, remaining, however, near by in concealment ready at any moment to spring upon his adversary and engage him in mortal combat if further harm threatened his sweetheart.

For the purpose of making Leslie’s escape secure. Matilda consented to return with Dodson on condition that the charges against her lover be withdrawn and he be allowed to leave the country unmolested by any mob or officers of the law; and seating herself behind him on his swift, gay, young horse the two had scarcely begun the journey back home when the girl spied Leslie in hiding. With the dexterity of a born adroit sleuth she extracted from one of the pockets in the back of Dodson’s pants the pistol with which he had failed to frighten her and dropped it silently in the dust before the eyes of[Pg 77] Leslie, all unknown to Dodson. In the next few moments the latter was looking down the barrel of his own gun, his teeth chattering as if suddenly attacked by a chill and his whole body shaking and quivering as if in the throes of an ague. He very quickly consented to be bound hand and foot and tied to a tree in the woods some distance from the road-side and forever abandon the prosecution of Leslie, and permit Matilda to go in peace and trouble her no more, as the price of his life, now at the mercy of those whose liberty of body and soul less than an hour before was entirely in his hands to be dealt with as he wished.

The predicament of Millard was rendered all the more distressing by the engagement of most of his friends in the conspiracy against the life of “Uncle” Alex Bettis. They were not in ignorance, however, of the chase for Leslie Duncan and the desire to get into it themselves probably hastened the brief consultation which resulted in the release of Bettis on his promise to see to it that the classes of study in his school included agriculture and not social and political economy. Besides Brother Bettis’ prayer was a masterful plea for the forgiveness of the sins of those bent on taking his life. It was pathetic. Some of the mob shed tears, real heart-felt tears, that flow from the heart in our moments of contemplation of the generousness of God and beauty of his handiwork as naturally as rain from a mountain summer cloud.

Those who felt the Omnipotent power of God in the kindness and prayers of this simple old colored man counselled with the more marble-hearted and vicious of their number, and all at last agreed that while the old man’s magnetic influence and his powerful, mysterious control over himself in a period of the greatest suspense might prove a monster with which they would have to deal later on, none could have the heart wicked enough to put him to death.

So Mr. Bettis demonstrated a strategic ability that should prove to be the admiration of white men, learned and skilled in the art of strategy, as well as proved conclusively in his own case, the efficacy and power of prayer. Until the day of his death he always maintained that it was not the delay which the preparation of the dinner occasioned giving him time to influence the men against taking his life; nor, indeed the kindness displayed in the act of feeding and nourishing his enemies, but wholly and absolutely the power of God in answer to prayer!

[Pg 79]

This demonstration in his own case of the saving efficacy of prayer was worth more to him than all the volumes of theology ever written could have been in reaching the ears and hearts of his benighted followers, who had to be made to see and feel with their own sense of sight and touch the evidence of the tangible things which an educated mind finds, without literal interpretation, in everything, even in rocks and stones and running brooks.

He preached not to the heads of his hearers, but to their hearts; not about Emerson, Spencer, Napoleon, or Shakespeare, but about Jesus Christ, His death, His resurrection and His power to resurrect even them, as He was resurrected if only they would believe on Him and live such lives as He had lived.

Is it not remarkable that a man with the power to carry such a message to those who stood in such great need if it should have been singled out for destruction by those whose interest he was serving in disseminating the unadulterated doctrine of the lowly Nazarene? Yet history of sacred and profane origin all record that the men and women who really benefit their kind do so at the risk of martyring themselves.

The power of prayer which the Rev. Alexander Bettis used so dramatically in rescuing himself from an ignominous death was used effectively in the establishment and later the development of a great school in which through the adoption of the methods pursued at the Schofield school at Aiken, the condition of thousands of children and hundreds of homes have been reformed, even transformed, revolutionized and made new. This school in honor of its founder and executive head until the day of his death is known as the Bettis Academy and is located on a farm of several hundred acres near Trenton, S. C. The interest taken in it at its earliest inception by Miss Schofield, together with the great work done by Mr. Bettis at his own expense without any compensation whatever, made the institution possible and a force from the start in the education of the[Pg 80] Negroes from many of the counties of South Carolina and Georgia.

The great personality of the founder attracted to the school like a loadstone, large numbers of Negroes, and Miss Schofield, who enjoyed Mr. Bettis’ confidence in full, seeing the opportunity which the school afforded her to accomplish the maximum of results, most heartily cooperated in the conduct of it. She not only wrote and lectured for her school but for Bettis Academy as well.

In fact, every line written and every word spoken in the interest of, or inimical to, the interest of all related enterprise affect each other for good or evil, in the same proportion. This makes the attempts to injure one race of human beings by another race without injury to itself impossible, and is the foundation rock upon which the Negro race can stand with perfect confidence, that absolute justice will eventually be done it.

To the intelligent supervision of the organization of the Bettis Academy much credit is due Martha Schofield. She was the store-house from which ideas of the most experienced and practical sort emanated for perfecting all departments, especially the industrial department. The school in a few years, paid her back many times by the wide interest its patrons took in the Farmers’ Conference, a local organization for every colored school in the country, original with the Schofield Normal and Industrial Institute, having for its object the encouragement of the farmers to buy land, to raise more food supplies, to stop mortgaging their property and to extend the term of the country school. At the general meetings of these Conferences which were held in February of each year in the chapel of the Schofield school, Bettis’ followers were largely in attendance. This gave Miss Schofield the opportunity she so much desired of meeting face to face the fathers and mothers of those whom she regarded as the foundation-stone for the new structure of civilization which freedom and her educational work was building.

[Pg 81]

Among the wide range of subjects discussed, no question was given so much importance as better living conditions. These discussions, in which hundreds present participated, discouraged the habit of living in cabins. With what practical knowledge the attendants gained at the general meeting, augmented by the instruction given the students of the schools, every Negro family in a wide area was greatly benefited. Miss Schofield, out of the funds of her school employed an organizer whose duty it was to organize a conference in every community, without cost to the members. The benefits to be derived from the work were apparent in a short time in many ways. One room cabins soon evolved into homes of at least two rooms and even three, four and five; tenants as fast as they could became owners of homes; many mortgages were burned and few were given, and increases in production of crops were very noticeable. Terms of schools were lengthened from two months to four, five and even six months, as a result of the work of the conferences. But better than all was the extraordinary improvement apparent in the manners, morals, habits and dress of all who came to the general meetings. At these meetings Miss Schofield, who was host to the large gathering, made up of delegates from each conference, presided, and each session was conducted in a parliamentary manner, thus educating the delegates in the matter of conducting the meetings of the various local conferences to the best advantage.

Thus it will be seen that Miss Schofield’s activities embraced a wide range of influence and as her contemplations, of course, extended beyond the reach of actual performance it is to be regretted that time enough from the drudgery of work in her school was never found for her to write and publish a manual of important information for the guidance and direction of missionaries in welfare work. It is an extravagant waste of any system of social responsibility to permit the departure of its members before first obtaining for all time the entire[Pg 82] treasury of their store house of wisdom and compiling the information in convenient form for future use.

Miss Schofield’s organization of the Negro farmers into clubs for the purpose of mutual helpfulness indicates that she appreciated the fact that one person can do but little within herself for the benefit of the people, but by securing their cooperation to the extent of getting them to practice as a whole and teach in unity the things most needed to be taught, results of the most far-reaching consequences could be achieved. She was a labor-unionist with most practical and up-to-date ideas.

Much of what has been accomplished by the agricultural departments of some of the States and by the Federal Department of Agricultural for the Negro of the cotton district is directly traceable to efforts of Miss Schofield, the pioneer of industrial training for the Negro. Her system to bring the methods by which the Negro could improve his condition within reach of all appears to the author as superior in practicability to any yet advanced. This idea of carrying to the people systems pregnant with practical uses for the regulation of their work in all the arts, that of printing, shoe repairing, harness making, carpentering, school teaching, and business of every kind contemplated a unity of action by each. She enjoined as she taught the principle illustrated by the old man with the seven sons and the bundle of sticks a strict regard for the community of interest underlying all related industry. This has made it possible for every Negro within reach of her influence to have gained some knowledge of a better way of getting along in the world, and combined with the work which is being done and has been done already by other schools and colleges, accounts for the remarkable development of the race in the occupation of farming.

According to the report of the thirteenth census of 1910 there were 920,883 colored farmers in the United States. Twenty six and two-tenths per cent. of these owned their farms, and 73.60 per cent. constituted renters, while 2 per cent. managed farms. The same report[Pg 83] also shows that while the value of all farm property of white people almost doubled between the years of 1900 and 1910, the value of all farm property of colored people more than doubled, to be exact, showed an increase of 134 per cent. In the classes of property reported, conspicuously noticeable is the increase in the value of live-stock. The increase of the live stock of the whites showed 58.60 per cent., while that of the Negroes showed an increase of 105.50 per cent. In the value of farm buildings the percentage of increase was 76.70 for the whites and 131.80 for the Negroes. The percentage of increase in the matter of improved farm implements and machinery was 60.80 per cent. for the whites and 81.70 per cent. for the Negroes.

When it is considered that the Negro has had at his disposal but fifty years for self-improvement and growth in all the arts, limited in the pursuit of them by the restrictions placed around him by reason of his race, his progress in every direction except, perhaps, in the exercise of the right of suffrage, becomes more than remarkable—it is phenomenal, especially in the occupation of farming, to which he is unquestionably better adapted than to any other calling.

In the matter of owners of homes both on the farm and in the city, the Negroes, those who did and those who did not come under Miss Schofield’s instructions in this, “the most important matter of their lives,” as she often told her students, appear from the 1910 census, to have made an equally creditable showing. In the Southern States the percentage of the white and Negro population owning their homes, was white 50.50, Negro, 23.10 per cent. The percentage of Negroes who owned their homes entirely, without encumbrance, was 18.10 per cent.; that of the whites 39.50. In 1900 the percentage was, whites 43.50; Negroes 16.80. It will be seen from the official figures of the government that the percentage of whites owning their homes in the decade between 1900 and 1910 decreased 4 per cent., while the percentage of the Negroes increased 1.30 per cent.

[Pg 84]

If the Negroes were not discriminated against in the pursuit of their occupations in the cities; if they were encouraged to buy homes and beautify and improve them, instead of being discouraged by the many obstacles placed in their way, such for instance, as the agitation by some of the best white people not to rent a home built by Negro labor, and the probability of another riot such as that in Atlanta in 1906, it is entirely within his power to eclipse any race of men the Southern white people could possibly induce to come and make homes among them. In time they will do it in the morality of their lives, just as they now are outstripping the members of the race laying claim to the purest blood that ever flowed in Aryan veins, in the art of farming.

The hope of the race lies in the multiplication of the opportunities for every member to obtain an education, such an education as Martha Schofield contemplated for all; and the demand by the law abiding, God serving element of the white race that the colored people be given every opportunity for the exercise of their powers that equity and justice dictate. The Negroes want nothing more, ask nothing more, but in justice to their own self respect and the rights of man can accept nothing less.

That they have shown themselves worthy of freedom, which certainly cost the white people more than the cost of insuring them certain inalienable rights will entail, is emphatically indicated by comparison of Negro per capita property with that of the freed Russian serfs in 1861, two years before the emancipation of the Negro. The Russians situated in the most fertile sections of the Muscovite empire, numbering over 14 millions, have in the same time it has taken the Negroes to accumulate 700 million dollars worth of property but 500 million dollars in property. The accumulations of the two peoples freed at about the same time are $70 per capita for the Negro and $36.00 for the Russians. In the same Russian province only 30 per cent. of the serfs can read[Pg 85] and write, while in the United States 61 per cent. of the Negroes can read and write.

Yet in the face of this wonderful development of the race; in opposition to the aspirations necessary to make achievements of this kind possible, there is race prejudice, degradation and humiliation. This is doing more to produce poverty among both races and hold in check the progress of a great section of the country than all the other agencies for evil combined.

The remedy for this will perhaps be found in the education of the whites, stimulation in this direction being assured by both the compulsory school attendance laws being passed, and the rivalry in education between the races already set in motion by the Negroes.

Almost two million colored children are enrolled in the normal schools and colleges. There are 35,000 colored teachers now actively engaged in the common schools and about four thousand professors in the colleges and normal and industrial institutions. The value of the property devoted to education of the Negro is nearly twenty million dollars. There was expended in 1915 nearly $5,000,000 for the higher and industrial training of the race while $10,000,000 was spent on elementary instructions in the common schools. The stimulating effect which these figures should have and, undoubtedly will have on the education of the whites will serve to increase very largely the facilities for their education, which is the remedy most needed, in the opinion of the leading white people, as well as the author, for the dissipation of much of the race prejudice responsible for the passage of a great number of discriminatory laws and for the arbitrary execution of those having a discriminating effect in their operation, if not in their wording. This enlightening information, however, concerning the facilities for the education of the Negro is very much offset by the announcement that the number not in school in the South is greater than the number in school.

There are 2,000,000 Negro children of school age in[Pg 86] the South not in school. Let all who would aid in the solution of the Negro problem find a means of reaching these 2,000,000 blacks by the school, and the neglected ignorant whites, in self-defense, will be forced into the school room. Give the black child $10.23 per capita instead of $2.82 now allotted for its education, raise the per capita to that spent for the education of the white child, and the white people will then double the money for the education of their children. This would raise the expenditures for Negro education in the common schools of the South to about $35,000,000 annually, and this amount is actually needed in putting the two million out of school in school and stirring the whites to greater activity in the education of their own race.

At the close of one of the first meetings of the farmer’s conference in Schofield chapel at which was discussed more than anything else the growing friction between the white and colored people, there called at the Schofield school a young woman, accompanied by a man about her age, and each appeared to be exhausted from travel and greatly excited from some cause or other, no one knew just what.

It was Matilda Deas and Leslie Duncan, the two young lovers who had escaped from Millard Dodson a few days before and left him and his horse tied securely in the woods.

The story of how the young man had been given a race for his life at the hands of a mob and how the young woman had escaped the lust and power of the beastly Dodson only after her life had been despoiled by him and of the circumstances attending the stabbing of the young Dodson boy, greatly affected Miss Schofield, and with all her heart she sympathized with the poor helpless Negroes. Yet she knew that the concealment and protection of the boy meant the lighting of the bomb manufactured by the Dodsons to produce the explosion of race prejudice that the ignorant white people so much desired. She did not light it, but instead drove to the scene of the disturbance and ascertained personally the truth about the whole matter, as well as the seriousness of the situation to the whole Negro population. On returning she informed young Duncan that it would be very unwise, and exceedingly unjust to the thousands of others of his race, for her to conceal him on the school premises as the inflammatory conditions worked up among the people by the Dodsons demanded nothing less than his life if his whereabouts became known and, perhaps, by her intercession in his behalf would mean the extension of it to include others of his people and so cause the death of many instead of only one. But she promised[Pg 88] him absolute protection, even at the cost of her school and all its property until communication with the organized authorities of the County and State could be had, and substantial guarantees were given by these that his life would be safe and he be given a fair trial on the charges laid against him.

In due time the contingencies for the trial were arranged and Leslie was delivered up to the Sheriff of the County, who took him to jail to await the action of the Court, which would be determined largely by the result of the injuries suffered by the Dodson child. Under direction of the Governor of the State a sufficient guard had been placed around the jail for the protection of the prisoner at all hazards. This was done at the insistance of Miss Schofield whose influence with the head of the Democratic Party in power was great only because of her influence at the North in the passage of measures of a conciliatory nature in reconstructing the States of the South. It was of little or no consequence to the ruling element whether Duncan was lynched or not, except in so far as his murder might retard the progress the whites were making in gaining favor with the reactionaries in Congress.

While abundant evidence was introduced at the trial to justify the actions of Leslie in stabbing Willie Dodson, no weight or consideration whatever was given it by the perjured members of the jury, all having formed an opinion before the trial that the “nigger” would get off light if he escaped with his life. After being in the jury room but three minutes the talesman returned with the results of their brief deliberations summed up in one word, “Guilty.”

That, of course, was the verdict. No recommendation to mercy out of consideration of the age of the youthful prisoner or the acknowledged great provocation under which the act was committed.

When replying “No, sir” to the question as to whether he had anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon him the Court promptly replied that it certainly[Pg 89] had and proceeded to say it in these words, “I wish you were of age, Leslie, that I might give you the full benefit of the law on this charge, one of a most serious nature, murder with intent to kill. But on account of your youth, out of mercy of the Court, I will make the sentence as light as possible. You are sentenced to five years imprisonment in the penitentiary at hard labor.”

At the same moment the Clerk of the Court was ordered to record another charge against the prisoner, that of violating a contract for the performance of labor and directed that a warrant be served on the boy at the expiration of his term.

Miss Schofield returned to her school and consoled Matilda with the story of the old servant who was hanged for the loss of a costly necklace of beads from the household in which she had been intrusted with the property of her mistress. “Some years after the execution of the faithful maid,” said Miss Schofield, “a bolt of lightning from the sky struck one of the monuments on the public square near the home and burst it into fragments and there in the center, in a magpie’s nest lay the necklace, in all its parts, just as it was on the day the bird, instead of the old servant had stolen it away. The lady who prosecuted the maid for the theft stated to the judges who heard the case that she would be satisfied with nothing but the death of the prisoner unless she divulged the hiding place of the jewels, committed suicide by swallowing poison on learning of the fatal mistake in the execution of poor Jeannie Junne, for that was her name.

“So you see my friends,” concluded the brilliant story teller, for such Miss Schofield was when she had occasion to be, “God never permits the infliction of great injustices, such as this which has happened to Leslie and you, without exposing them and compelling those responsible for them to repent of their sins.”

Miss Schofield knew the heart of the Negroes better than they themselves knew them and this knowledge served her well in all her dealings with them. In the[Pg 90] control of them she knew just when to use harshness and to what extent and equally well she knew when other means would prove more availing. The simple, child-like, trusting faith common to all colored people, she realized this faith would cause her story to find a lasting lodgment and would prove a source of genuine consolation to Matilda in her hour of despair, and so it proved to be, not only for the moment, but throughout the whole long period of Leslie’s confinement. Whenever reference to him was made she would in her simple way show that she understood clearly that God never allowed people to suffer without compensating them for it; that He also punished those responsible for the misery of others. The latter contingency, Miss Schofield had taught her was a necessary condition in nature fixed there by God for the protection of men in all their human relations, and was as inevitable as fate itself.

What an immensely valuable doctrine for the control of the passions of men, especially those of a lowly race, steeped in ignorance and allowed a free reign in the exercise of the more vicious instincts.

Make them afraid to do wrong; not indeed afraid of man’s law but an eternal law which is irrevocable even by God himself. It was the doctrine, believed in to the depths of his soul, that inspired the immortal Georgian, Alex H. Stephens, to exclaim that he was afraid of nothing above earth or below it except to do wrong.

When one reaches this stage of belief it is not a difficult matter to induce him to begin doing right for righteousness sake only. He has already conceived firmly the fact that only virtue is any just reward for being virtuous. The bribes offered men for being good in the shape of escape from earthly punishment and the hope of earthly blessings are wholly inadequate to restrain them from evil as is proven by the many artifices resorted to in concealing crimes; but when they are made to see that only righteous living can produce real happiness and that there is absolutely no way of concealing the evidences of evil doing, substantial progress has[Pg 91] been made in their reformation. They will not do wrong, wilfully, because, as Miss Schofield always taught, the wrong done will show eternally in their faces every time they look in the glass.

Miss Schofield never permitted opportunities to impress and teach great moral truths to pass by unimproved. Living on them herself she depended upon them entirely to support her work which was her life in itself. The great Normal and Industrial school at Aiken is Martha Schofield reincarnated out and out. The lifeless body has been taken and carried away but the spirit which is of God, still lingers on and around all the place, crying out aloud as of yore for the perfection of those means of justice and freedom of action in both body and mind that alone can make life ideal and our work eternal.

On the occasion of her visit to the home of Allen Dodson for the purpose of securing his endorsement to the petition for the pardon of Leslie Duncan, she was received with scant courtesy by Mrs. Dodson, who strange to say, bore the reputation of being one of the most zealous and faithful followers of Christ in Lick Skillet neighborhood. Indeed she was president of the local Mary Magdalene Missionary Society of the First Baptist Church, and besides had been honored by the national president of her society with appointment to the position of treasurer in the national association of Mary Magdaleners. Throughout the community and in church and benevolent circles all over the State and country she was well and favorably known. At home she was regarded as the pillar of the Baptist church and an unselfish and philanthropic soul in whose leadership the community could rely with perfect confidence that the work of salvation was abreast of that in any other community of like population in the whole moral vineyard of Christ.

Seating Miss Schofield in the parlor while she waited on the return of Mr. Dodson, other duties and responsibilities of the house engaged the attention of Mrs. Dodson.[Pg 92] She left her visitor to entertain herself as best she might, placing within her reach a few religious periodicals and a library of perhaps a dozen or more books, mostly of Baptist denominational interest, especially devoted to the work of that church in the foreign missionary field.

Mr. Dodson’s refusal to sign the petition on his return, did not shock Miss Schofield’s sensibilities of the injustices of race hatred nearly so much as the ignorance with which Mrs. Dodson maintained her position of missionary worker in an enlightened church supported by an intelligent and supposedly cultured membership.

After Mr. Dodson had given his reasons, which were like hunting mustard seeds in a hay stack and if found was never worth the search, for his refusal to lend his assistance to the righting of the wrongs done Leslie Duncan, Mrs. Dodson interposed herself into the conversation to inquire of Miss Schofield why she was so interested in the Negroes as to live and work wholly among them as if she were one of them herself.

“I am very much obliged to thee for the opportunity to answer that question,” said Miss Schofield in reply.

“Thou must see that the condition of the Negro is such that none, or few of them at this time, is able to lead the race as it should be led. Only a small percentage can either read or write; the most primitive methods of making a livelihood prevail among them and as a result their lives, their morals and their hopes for the future are in jeopardy. I most desire to do a little part in improving the conditions among them, in making their lives better and happier by my having lived. I firmly believe if I succeed in doing so, thee and all thy people will be equally blessed.”

“To the mischief with such doctrine,” retorted Mrs. Dodson. “It is such as you that are putting foolish notions in the heads of these darkies, creating in them a hope for an equality and a social relation repugnant to the sense of all decent people entitled to the benefits of[Pg 93] a superior civilization, and I want to tell you that if another war comes it will come as a result of your work.

“You had better stop it and go back to your home and let the Negroes teach themselves. If they have been too lazy and stupid to enlighten themselves in the past it is quite likely such will not be the case in future in this free country along by the side of a superior race from whom they can, if they will, gain all the instruction they need for self improvement by observation.”

Miss Schofield assured her that the question of social equality with the whites was never considered by her in her work except to disparage it; that while she had no regard herself for the color of a person’s skin she taught her students that a deep racial prejudice existed among all races everywhere, especially in the United States, but that it should not be allowed to interfere with their Christianity, that they should show a Christian spirit to all mankind—Jew or Greek, male or female, friend or foe, Negro or white.

“Does not the Bible command thee,” questioned Miss Schofield, “to go into all the world and teach all nations? Does thee, then, not feel that the Negro is one of those to whom thou art commanded to extend thy instruction?”

“Feeling and knowing absolutely that He is I came to the South many years ago to fill one of the commandments of my Lord. As a Christian woman, which I know thee to be, else the literature of thy home belies the character of this house, I ask thee to answer me before God if thee still considers that my work is productive of harmful results and if it should be given up and I go back home in my prime and live a life of indolence, ease and nothingness.”

Mrs. Dodson was greatly perplexed. Miss Schofield convicted her of her neglect of duty in her own country, where as well as in far off China and Japan, it was admittedly very necessary to do missionary work; but she hid as best she could the influence of the speaker’s rebuke and called attention to the thousands of dollars[Pg 94] being spent by her society in the cause of home missions. When pressed for a single school being maintained by that association in the interest of the Negro children or the expenditure of as much as a penny for the relief of the material needs of the race, she expressed considerable anger and stated that the taxes paid by the whites were adequate for the education of the colored people and for the support of the indigent among them.

Among the most versatile as well as resourceful women who ever came South to teach Miss Schofield was well fortified with facts to meet Mrs. Dodson’s excuse for the indifference of her society to the need of the Negro. She showed her that not only was the common school fund wholly inadequate for the education of the white children but that there was absolutely no justice in its distribution—that the whites gave the Negroes just as little of it as possible and dignified it as “hush-mouth” money. She cited instances calling names, dates and places which proved conclusively that the system of the Southern white people for the education of the Negro was a farce pure and simple, in that there was not only no pretence at all at an equitable distribution of the school funds, but no regard whatever was had as to the proper qualification of Negro teachers. She intimated that favor was shown by the whites to the less capable and least deserving of the Negroes as teachers, and sought to close the argument by impressing the fact, that where conditions obtain like those in the South, there is where the Master’s work calls loudest, according to the teachings of her own church.

Stung to the quick by the truth of these statements Mrs. Dodson was willing enough to terminate the conversation, and apparently with middling right good cheer bade her visitor “good day” and set about the work of her household.

But Martha Schofield had made an impression on her. She had been made to feel the hypocracy of her position for the first time in the new relations between the two races, a position wholly incompatible with the teachings[Pg 95] of Christ. It started her to reasoning, that if from a selfish point of view if not from a Christian standpoint, it were not better to encourage the work of Miss Schofield. She was not an ignorant woman, but on the contrary highly intellectual, and although but superficially educated was well enough informed to know that the Negro was here and here, perhaps, to stay. “Then why,” she silently asked herself, “would not one’s greatest defense and security be more certainly attained in the development of the intellectual and moral powers of the race?” She had been teaching all her life that to give was more blessed than to receive; then why not give to the needy Negro right at her door? Why not stimulate and encourage every effort being made to convert him into a useful and intelligent citizen? His labor she knew, even though his hands and face were black, would be worth a thousand per cent. more if it were skilled. Besides, that thought of blessings being twice blest—“blessing him that gives and him that takes”—continually haunted her.

Such a marked change was apparent in her attitude toward foreign missions at the next meeting of her society after Miss Schofield’s visit that her fidelity to the cause was severely questioned by others of the faithful, from whom she concealed well the cause of her new devotion to the home missionary field. She told them that they should seek to do all they could for the heathen in foreign lands but that their ability to extend their usefulness in that direction was now limited by the newly enforced political and social conditions at home. She suggested that the society consider the matter of expending as much of its funds at home as abroad, elaborating upon the great necessity for the industrial training of the Negro, and the education of the thousands of white children in this country, whose school term at the time was not in excess of three months out of twelve, for want of funds.

This met the approval of all members, as all of Mrs. Dodson’s propositions usually did, and a resolution setting[Pg 96] forth the fact that the sentiment of the Mary Magdalene Society of the First Baptist Church of Lick Skillet was in favor of the equal division of the funds between the Foreign and Home Mission Boards of the National Missionary Association was unanimously passed.

A few days later Allen Dodson accompanied by Millard, his son, called at the Schofield school and expressed a desire to sign the petition for the pardon of Leslie Duncan who had now begun serving the third of a five year sentence given him for stabbing Mr. Dodson’s little son, Willie.

This completed the requirements of the pardoning board, and as soon as their signatures were affixed the document was sent by Miss Schofield to the governor who immediately ordered the prisoner released.

Hundreds of instances might be mentioned where this great woman took the burdens of others on herself at times when she was already over burdened with her own work, and rendered them a service which could not possibly have been accomplished without her aid.

When Leslie appeared at the Schofield school after his release from prison to thank Miss Schofield for her kindness to him and to claim Matilda for his wife, Miss Schofield ordered him arrested on the charge docketed by the Judge at the time of his former conviction, that of a breach of contract.

When the trial was called the Dodson family failed to appear against the prisoner and the prosecution was abandoned.

Thus through the power and magnetism of Miss Schofield, was the influence and good-will of a large and influential white family secured for the benefit of the Negro population of Lick Skillet neighborhood, at least.

Miss Schofield had great confidence in the ultimate conversion of the white people of the South to the cause which she represented and looked to the support of her work by them as one of the essentials to the achievements of the highest success. She, however, went about securing the cooperation of the whites in a manner entirely different from the means employed by Booker T. Washington in accomplishing the same end. She drew attention of the white people to the necessity for her work by making them mad; by expressing to them the inconsistencies of their position on the race question and demonstrating to them the hypocrisy of their actions, she caused a great deal to be done for the Negroes that would have been delayed for years had more persuasive measures been taken to reach them. She told the Christian missionary workers that the presence of the Negroes here provided the best means possible for them to show by actual demonstration rather than by words of mouth, tongue or pen, that Christianity was literally and figuratively true. That it really did mean the showering of blessings on men of all kinds and races. “If the Negro is an enemy” she told them, “show the benighted heathen here and carry the message to his friends in China that thee love thine enemy. By your actions before his eyes here in this country prove to him that thee are the people that tell the truth; that Christians will not take advantage of even Negroes; that thee are patient, kind and generous in thy dealings with that part of thy own population that is ignorant and benighted. Above all prove to him by thy treatment of the Negro that thee has no prejudice on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. Let them see by thy relation to the Negroes that thee looks upon mankind as brethren, indeed, in whose service thee are not only willing to work but to suffer for the good thee may do not alone to the Negro but to the heathen as well.”

[Pg 98]

She went to the intelligent, cultured white people, leaders of the churches, schools and Southern civilization itself, all that she could reach, and told them plainly and bluntly that any course other than that outlined would surely bring Christianity into disrepute, especially if they themselves approved a different course, or permitted a different course to be pursued without their protest. She showed them their responsibility and their duty both as a Christian and a member of civilized society, and left them without a single prop upon which to stand in defense of the position taken to keep the Negro down.

Having no patience with anyone who for gain would sacrifice righteousness or who would not suffer pain that justice be done she was rather uncharitable in her criticisms of the Southern white people. But the sternness and rough, rugged honesty and sincerity she used in expressing her convictions appealed to them, as they are a people essentially frank in their manners and actions. One of the great men in the United States Senate from the South has won and retained the respect of the people of the whole country by reason of his frankness on this question of race prejudice. His radicalism is common to most of the people of the South and seeing this characteristic of the people, Miss Schofield pandered to it early in her work and drew to herself a large measure and esteem and respect that could have been earned in no other way. She made people respect her by respecting herself in holding fast to her conception of the principles of honesty.

Miss Schofield was not less severe on the people of the North than of the South in her arraignment of the prostitution of the power of government in permitting the commission of outrages and injustices to go unpunished. In assailing the sin of race prejudice and hypocrisy in the Southern people she was assailing with equal force the same thing wherever it existed and as it is more prevalent at the North that section of the country really received the burden of her denunciation.[Pg 99] The fact that the power to punish the crimes against the Negro race lay in the hands of the people of the North but was seldom exercised, gave her greater cause for denouncing her folks, which she did unmercifully. She felt that the crime of lynching Negroes could be largely suppressed by the Federal authorities and was not reluctant in advocating the intercession of the general government in the enforcement of the Federal statutes guaranteeing every citizen the protection of life and liberty, even if “States’ Rights” were trampled under foot. Being absolutely honest in all her promises she did not look for dishonesty in others, especially not in the people of the North who had spilled so much blood and expended hundreds of millions of dollars in extending the guarantee of life, freedom and liberty to the Negroes. Their failure to make their promises in this matter good was shocking to her sense of honor and inspired her greatest contempt.

In words of eloquence, made eloquent by both the truth in them and the manner of delivery, she told the people of the North that the rights of man rose above the rights of state government as the Alps rise above the valleys; that government, both state and national, is only good in so far as it respects and protects human rights. “If a state government fails to measure up to its duty in its functions affecting the most vital rights of the people,” said she in an address in the North, “then it becomes the duty of the general government to interfere. If the latter likewise fails then it is the duty of the people to overthrow it, not, indeed, by powder and shot and shell but by the votes of citizens.

“But in the South thousands and thousands entitled to vote under authority of the general government are disfranchised; their rights are not being respected by either the general government or the state. If this is permitted to continue thee can not respect thyself, much less expect those perpetrating the fraud to respect thee. During the last quarter of a century the number of deaths at the hands of mobs in this country has averaged[Pg 100] 184 annually, eighty to ninety per cent. of which has occurred in the South.

“Can thee respect thyself or expect the respect of the Southerners if these crimes are allowed to go unpunished?

“If the government of the several States were sincere in the representations of their attempt at government that would not be any excuse for no action being taken by the general government. Failure to govern is alone sufficient for action.

“We can not permit incompetency to triumph on the basis that the rulers of the South are sincere in their attempts at law enforcement. Too much emphasis can not be laid on this fact. Respect for the law must be demanded and enforced at all hazards.

“The spread of lynch law all over the land may be looked for if this is done.”

How prophetic these words uttered years ago as the records kept will show.

Before the war and immediately after, Negroes were now and then put to death but the law was generally allowed to take its course.

For rape or attempted rape there were only four Negroes lynched between the years 1830 and 1840. It was not until 1850 to 1860 that lynch law attained any high degree of danger to the success of free government. Out of forty-six Negroes put to death during this time, twenty-six were lynched and twenty legally executed. Nine of those destroyed by mobs were burned at the stake. The crimes with which they were charged were murders of owners and overseers. It does not appear that rape, which is now made the cause of nearly every lynching was very frequent before the war.

It has become the cause or the alleged cause of mob violence only since the year 1871 to any great extent.

Had Martha Schofield’s suggestion, for the interference of the national government in the enforcement of the laws of the country wherever the State proved inefficient to do so been adopted and put into practice, the[Pg 101] shame and disgrace which now attaches to American civilization would have no basis or foundation. There would not be as many orphans as there are; there would not be the humiliation and injustices that there are; neither would there be the poverty and misery among the blacks and whites that there are.

The remissness of the national government to supervise wisely the execution of the laws has permitted the officials to do what they accuse the Negro of desiring to do, to take a foot for every inch and a mile for every yard; Discriminatory laws affecting the most vital interest of the colored race have been enacted and generally enforced without the suggestion of a protest from the federal authorities, and many of the national laws that enforced would give great relief to the oppressed are apparently “dead letters,” so far as their practical application is concerned.

In 1885 there were 184 people lynched in this country, 106 white and 78 colored. Ten years later mobs murdered 112 Negroes and 56 whites; in 1892, 100 whites and 155 blacks, making a total of 255. The year following exactly 200 were lynched. In 1905 two were burned at the stake. In 1906 civilized Atlanta, Ga. murdered 28 in one night.

Less than one-third of these lynchings, nearly all of which occurred in the Southern States, were for the alleged crime of rape. No offense at all had been committed by anyone of those mobbed in Atlanta in 1906.

In the Atlanta riot no attempt was made by any of the rioters to conceal their identity. They slew every Negro in sight openly and before the eyes of the officers charged with the enforcement of the laws against disorderly conduct and murder, yet not a single individual of the mob was ever punished. The governor of the State took no action to apprehend the guilty and execute the laws he had sworn to uphold and execute.

At Statesboro, Ga., in 1905, the boldness of the mob was only exceeded by the heinousness of the crime committed. Two negroes being tried for murder under[Pg 102] guard of a company of State militia soldiers, were removed from the court room during the progress of the trial and burned at the stake.

Although the sheriff of the county and every officer of the law in that section knew personally numbers of the mob no prosecution was ever attempted by them.

During the winter of 1916 five Negro prisoners were taken from the county jail at Sylvester, Ga. and hanged to the same tree. Later the criminal who committed the crime for which the five were lynched was also summarily put to death.

Six lives of Negroes, five of whom were in no wise connected with the crime for which vengeance was wreaked, in retaliation for the life of one white man!

The case has too many parallels for recitation here.

In none of the open, undisguised atrocious crimes against the blacks is prosecution even remotely probable.

With like impunity are almost all the laws respecting the welfare of the Negro violated throughout the Southern States. Especially notable are the violations of the act to make effective the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States adopted by Congress May 31, 1870.

This act declares, that all citizens who are or shall become qualified by law to vote at any election shall not be denied the right to vote at all elections, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude, by any constitution, law, custom, usage or regulation any State or territory may make.

Various subterfuges in the guise of law are resorted to in the effort to disqualify the Negroes, but as the race is becoming able to qualify rapidly discrimination in the application of the registration laws are openly admitted by the authorities.

All the laws for qualification of voters contemplate the qualification of a sufficient majority of the whites as to make the Negro a nullity in the elections, and this even in those communities where the Negroes out-number[Pg 103] in population and wealth the whites by large majorities.

There are tax tests, property tests, educational tests, grand-father clauses and understanding and character clauses. Of course under the educational tests such requirements as a constitutional lawyer might not be able to meet could be made with the same facility that requirements which a fifteen year old boy could meet are made. The former requirements are for the educated and ignorant Negroes alike, while the latter, if occasion demands it, are for the whites of all degrees of intelligence. The intention of all the laws regulating the registration of voters is to disqualify as many Negroes as possible. No attempt is made to conceal the true intent of the laws by their authors or by those charged with the duty of their application.

There are members of the United States Senate owing their elevation to the disfranchisement laws of the Southern States who will not only acknowledge that their States are nullifying some of the acts of Congress but boast that they have done so and defy the executive department of the government to interfere.

Miss Schofield was greatly affected by the tendency of the government to ignore its solemn duty respecting the enforcement of many of the acts intended to degrade and humiliate the Negro race, because she said it could mean only the degradation and humiliation of all mankind. Vanderbilt and Rockefeller in their palaces of gold, she maintained, had no more right to protection than the humblest Negro in his little log hut. Humanity with her was a sacred thing and she believed in protecting it. She looked to the exercise of the franchise as the only means of securing this protection, and when she saw the right to it being stolen openly and the theft acknowledged and the court defied to do its worst by the guilty themselves, no wonder her confidence of the manhood in men was seriously shocked.

But she never ceased to hope nor ever lost an opportunity to fight for the rights which she demanded of the[Pg 104] government for all men. One of the proposals to minimize the number of lynchings, original with her, is now a statute of some of the States. It makes the county in which the lynching of a person occurs liable to the members of the deceased family for his or her loss, and recovery may be had by action in the courts. Another important measure advocated strenuously by her was the reduction in the representatives in Congress from those States limiting the suffrage of its citizens.

Miss Schofield was most solicitous concerning the future difficulties which the Negro problem would occasion when the colored race reaches that stage of development when requests as are made at the present time for certain rights become demands which can not be ignored or disposed of by trickery and hypocritical legislation. As she was in advance of her time about thirty years in valuing the importance of industrial training for the Negro, and as early as 1890 was teaching and practicing the principles of hygiene and sanitation as they are now in force by the United States government at the Army and Navy stations, in the camps and homes of its employees wherever governmental authority extends, so she saw that the Negro will not always be satisfied with whatever his white friends chose to give him. She felt and believed that enlightenment, through education, the day would come when the Negro would be controlled only by according to him every right to which he may be entitled, and had great confidence that education also would so improve the intelligence and morals of the white people that they would have too much respect for their own manhood to prostitute it by declining to grant absolute justice to the race.

Upon the enlightenment of both races she depended absolutely for the fulfillment of that divine declaration of 1776, which declared that all men are created free and equal. She relied upon it wholly for making the war between the States worth its cost in blood and treasury; and considered that her work would prove in vain if it did not prepare the Negro for the highest responsibilities of life and create within him an unconquerable desire to assume them.

She maintained that man’s highest development could be achieved only by holding out to him rewards commensurate with the industry necessary for his development. This principle in political economy she asserted,[Pg 106] was responsible for the antagonism of plutocracy to the education of the masses.

As her work, to which she was called by God as she sincerely believed and as the author whom she reared from a little child and educated as sincerely believes, was among the latter, plutocracy was, of course, the most frightful monster to be encountered and overcome. But overcome it must be at all hazards in the philosophy of Martha Schofield, and education instead of violence she taught was the weapon for that purpose.

The doctrine that by imparting to the colored man the knowledge which the white man has gained by laborious processes and the painful travail of centuries would stir ambitions, passions and new emotions in the colored race which would cause the Negro to refuse to submit to the domination of the white race was preached by her, and she dreamed dreams and formed plans for the solution of the problem that it is expected will arise in the final struggle of the Negro for complete and absolute justice under the flag of the republic. It was her most earnest desire that the two races occupy, if possible, one common country as they are now doing but on terms of perfect equality in the pursuit of happiness and the accumulation of wealth, which means an equal division with the Negroes of everything produced for the common good through the united strength and action of the masses. It also demands the same freedom of action for the Negroes in the exercise of every function of a citizen that is allowed the whites and contemplates their assimilation in the political life of the nation to the extent of their being eligible to the highest office of trust without regard to any qualification other than that of all citizens. Of course, it is worse than useless to say that the demand carries with it the observance of every principle of equality before the law without discrimination on account of race or color. The reservation of the right to impose restrictions on account of race in the application of the laws, customs and usages enacted to regulate the control of all would mean the surrender[Pg 107] of the basis upon which rests the fundamental guarantee of certain rights without which no government could or should be acceptable to men of any manhood or courage.

Failing in the effort to live together on terms of reasonable compatibility, such as would conduce to the betterment of each race in all intellectual, moral and political aspirations, Miss Schofield advocated for the colored people segregation in a state or territory of its own, in which only people of color or those as now defined by national authority as Negroes, might become citizens.

This plan is made practicable, she thought by the right of Eminent Domain which the government retains to itself in the final acquisition and possession of territory through the means of condemnatory proceedings which certain contingencies might make imperative in the interest of the public weal.

Under authority of Congress the Secretary of the Interior might acquire by purchase through peaceable transfer, if possible, or if necessary through condemnation proceedings a territory of sufficient area to settle the entire colored race for all time and place it under a territorial form of government until such time as statehood might be considered more feasible. In this territory only could a Negro become a sovereign citizen with the rights of a citizen which now belong to any person residing in any of the States of the Union and complying with the requirements regulating citizenship. White men who remained in the territory could under no circumstances become a sovereign citizen. Only the Negroes should be allowed to vote or hold office. They should be allowed all the benefits and privileges that citizens of a constitutional state now enjoy, being represented in Congress on the same basis that any State is now represented.

No person, either white or colored, should be forced to move in or out of Negroland, except through deportation for offenses such as are now punished by exile.[Pg 108] This would leave it optional with the Negro to live wherever he wished and still be under the protection of the United States flag and give the whites of the country a similar choice. If the Negro choose to remain in the States of the white man he would be at liberty to do so, but under no circumstances could he be allowed to perform the duties of a sovereign. The white men in Negroland would not be allowed to vote in that State on the same principle that a Georgian is not qualified to vote in Oregon; and a Negro living in South Carolina would not be allowed to vote in that State on the same principle that a white man is disqualified from voting at an election in Negroland.

It might be argued against this plan for the final settlement of the Race Question that it is not only revolutionary but confiscatory in that it seeks to deprive the white citizens of the territory to be created into a Negroland, of their property without their consent. In answer to this, reply should be made that it contains no more elements of a confiscatory nature that the common every-day application of the laws now in force for the condemnation of property in the construction of railways and the opening up of public highways.

That the public demands are sufficient to justify the extension of this law, even if it is undemocratic, to include the purchase of a wide area of territory is seen in the continued persecution of the Negro on account of his color, and the growing resentment of the race at the open discrimination practiced by the whites of all sections. It is more likely that the causes for the friction between the races will multiply rather than decrease as each becomes wiser, unless it were possible to make angels of men on earth as well as in Heaven.

The whites of the South by a large and increasing majority make no pretense at the determination of that race to keep the Negro down politically, at least; they depend upon their ability to do this as the only means of continuing themselves in power. When the Negro demands a share in the affairs of the government as he[Pg 109] inevitably will and most assuredly should do, then will come concrete examples which will not only justify the separation of the two peoples through some plan of segregation, but make their separation imperative.

The climax of the antagonism, which may be dissipated by separating the two peoples, will be reached when the Negro shall not only demand but force the constituted authorities to grant absolute equality in the administration of justice; when he shall not only demand the right to vote, to sit on juries and represent his country in its legislative deliberations and actions but shall force his rights in these premises.

The determination of the white people now is to dominate predominately, and in all human probability this determination is to become intensely more fixed, even at the cost of their lives, their fortunes and their honor; while the Negroes will be equally determined, after equal fitness with the white man for the performance of the duties of citizenship, so determined that no power on earth or Heaven except extermination shall deny them certain inalienable rights which all instruction teaches them are cheap at any sacrifice. They will never assimilate Patrick Henry’s great speech until they are ready to act it. They can never act it until they are ready to accept death rather than slavery. Without the patriotism and love of liberty inspiring this immortal Virginian they can never develop the ideal that is in them.

Who would smother the ideals and aspirations of any race does so at the expense of their immortal souls. God could not be just unless He protected the emotions of human beings with the same degree of efficiency with which He protected the organs within them. Protecting the brain is a mass of bone and fiber; in front and behind the heart and lungs, are breastworks of superior construction, and around the longings and aspirations of the human heart are the bulwarks of self-condemnation and eternal damnation for any man or race of men who desecrate those sacred chambers by closing the opportunities for their development.

[Pg 110]

It may be argued that if this psychological law is true in practice the necessity for segregation exists in the imagination only—that the Race Problem will solve itself on the principle of self preservation and self interest if let alone and given time. The trouble with this argument is that it fails to take into account the value of the most effective means of preserving the integrity of both races. If God in His wisdom contemplated the commingling of races never before in physical touch it was for a temporary period only, each race, in the meantime, being endowed with reason sufficient to find a common solution for the evils which the Creator knew physical contact would produce.

That solution is segregation. It offers intact all the advantages which the opportunities of life among a highly civilized race create without the demoralizing and humiliating influences at work on account of race prejudice. It frees the whites and Negroes alike and enlarges the opportunities for the development of each race, under a common flag, that will no longer be under the necessity of polluting the pure air of Heaven by withholding its protection from among even the humblest of its citizens.

We often hear it said that the Negro is not yet ready for self-government, that he has not the fitness yet to govern under a territorial form of government; but less intelligent and far inferior races are at this time governing themselves. Were the Cubans as capable of self-government as the Negroes are now when the government of Cuba was assumed by them? Did not the United States Government entrust the Indians with a measure of self-government when the Indian territory was created and this race was settled in the West? There is no nation south of the United States with the possible exception of Brazil whose citizens have the intelligence and efficiency of the Negroes of North America for self-government. Besides, under the plan for segregation a territorial form of government is proposed until such time as statehood is more desirable. While the Negroes[Pg 111] are being prepared for controlling their own affairs government under territorial laws would make life safe and insure equal rights to all. At least, the government of the territory, it is safe to say, would not be worse than the government obtained in the Southern States today.

But the Negro race is entirely capable at this time of managing its own affairs, supervised by a wise and just administration at Washington.

The records of the conduct of Negroes in office, with the exception of the rascality of those in power in the South during the Reconstruction Period, are creditable indeed, to the race from which they sprang. Responsibility for the scandals attaching to the rule of the race in some of the Southern States directly after the war are chargeable not to the Negro but to the corruption of the white men who imposed on the Negro by taking advantage of his ignorance and making him the cat’s paw with which they attempted to extricate themselves from many difficulties without the stain of dishonor.

The first Negroes to become members of the legislature of any State in the Union were Edward G. Walker and Charles L. Mitchell of Massachusetts in 1866. The records show they discharged their duties with intelligence and honor.

The first holding a position under appointment by the government was Ebenezer Don Carlos Bassett of Philadelphia who was appointed minister resident and consul general to the government of Hayti in 1869.

He was an educated Negro of great ability and was engaged in teaching for many years. The “Hand Book of Hayti,” of which he was the author, has been translated into many languages.

He was a member of the American Geographical Society and of the Connecticut Historical Society.

The number of colored officers, clerks and other employees in the service of the United States Government at the present time is 22,440 with salaries aggregating an annual income of $12,456,760.00.

The qualification of the large majority of these employees was tested under civil service rules and so it is seen this large number got into the service through merit alone.

Out of a population of 12,000,000 people, with a force of 20,000 trained in the government of the country it is[Pg 113] idle to assume a sufficient number for the proper administration of the laws of the territory could not be secured.

In the matter of military genius and personal bravery as well as in preparation for statesmanship by reason of education and patriotism the records show the Negro to be well equipped.

There are eleven colored officers in the regular army of the United States at the present time. Three Negroes have been graduated from West Point.

At the order of the government for service in Mexico, the first to go to the front in search of Villa and his bandits was the Tenth cavalry composed of Negroes which has distinguished itself for service in this punitive expedition as it distinguished itself at the battle of Las Guasimas in Cuba when it came to the rescue of Colonel Roosevelt and his Rough Riders.

The first to go to the front in the Spanish-American War, in 1898, were the four NEGRO regiments, the Tenth Cavalry, the Twenty-fifth Infantry, which took a prominent part in the battle of El Caney, the Ninth Cavalry, which with the Twenty-fourth Infantry and the Tenth Cavalry, rendered heroic service in the battle of San Juan Hill. The Ninth and Tenth Cavalry have the reputation of being the best Indian fighters in the United States Army.

It does not appear from the records of the Military Secretary at Washington that the Negro is lacking in any essential quality for the performance of the duty of a soldier.

The people of that section of the country where most of the argument against his ability as a soldier originates were quite willing enough to enlist him in the Confederate States Army, or that portion of the race which had been made free previous to the Emancipation Proclamation.

In 1864 the Confederate Congress, at Richmond, passed an act making all male Negroes, with certain exceptions, between the ages of eighteen and fifty liable[Pg 114] for the performance of such duties in the Confederate Army, in the way of work in connection with the military defenses as the Secretary of War might prescribe, and provided for them in rations, clothing and compensation. Provision was also made at the same time for the employment of 20,000 Negro slaves for similar duty by the Secretary of War.

In November, 1861, at a review of 28,000 Confederate troops in New Orleans, one of the most prominent regiments was colored, consisting of 1,400 free Negroes. The members of the companies comprising this regiment according to The Picayune of that city, supplied themselves with arms without aid from the Confederate Government.

The worst that can be said against this regiment is that it existed at all for the defense of a government that sought to continue its members in perpetual slavery.

Nearly 200,000 Negro soldiers were employed in the United States Army in the Civil War. These formed 161 regiments of which 141 were infantry or cavalry, 12 heavy artillery and 1 light artillery.

The Negro troops fought gloriously in many of the bloodiest battles of the war. Among the engagements in which they were particularly distinguished for bravery and heroism were the battles of Milliken’s Bend on the Mississippi River near Vicksburg, in July 1863, the assault on Port Hudson near Baton Rouge, La., in 1863, at Fort Wagner, a Charleston, S. C., defence, in 1863, and at all the assaults on Petersburg, Va., in 1864 as well as in the battle of Nashville, Tenn., fought in December 1864.

In the Revolutionary War as well as in the War of 1812, Negroes were enlisted and served with such distinction in the latter as to inspire the following address by General Andrew Jackson, afterwards President of the United States.

“To the men of color—Soldiers: I knew before your enlistment that you could endure the hardships of hunger[Pg 115] and thirst and brave the dangers of war. I knew that you loved the land of your nativity, and that, like ourselves you had to defend all that is most dear to man. But you have surpassed my hopes. I have found in you, united to these qualities, that noble enthusiasm which impels to great deeds.

“Soldiers! The President of the United States shall be informed of your conduct on the present occasion; and the voices of the Representatives of the American nation shall applaud your valor as your General now praises your ardor.”

It was the distinguished service of two battalions of 500 Negroes that elicited this eulogy from the Commander in Chief of the forces engaged in the second war with England.

Commodore Perry used equally forcible language in his praise of the bravery and conduct of the Negroes under his command at the battle of Lake Erie. He said that Negro soldiers seemed to be absolutely insensible to danger.

There were about 3,000 Negroes employed in the Revolutionary War by General Washington. An equal or greater number were employed by the British.

Some of the most heroic deeds of the war for Independence were performed by the men of color. Major Pitcairn, in charge of the British forces at the battle of Bunker Hill, was killed by a Negro named Peter Salem. A petition was drawn by some of the principal officers of the American Army to secure recognition by the Massachusetts Colony for Solomon Poor, a Negro, for distinguished service at the battle of Bunker Hill. Crispus Attucks, a Negro, was the first American to become a martyr in the Boston massacre.

The Black Legion of Count D’Estaing saved the defeated American and French Army from complete annihilation at the siege of Savannah on October 9, 1779, by covering the retreat and repulsing the charge of the British.

In every war fought on American soil, the Negroes[Pg 116] whenever allowed to participate, have displayed a courage and heroism that is not only a credit to the race but a credit to mankind.

In poetry and literature, as well as war, the Negro has arisen to distinction. Indeed, the first woman, either white or black, to attain to literary distinction in this country was a Negro, a slave at that.

She was Phyllis Wheatly of Boston, who wrote poems on various subjects, religious and moral, of high literary value. One of the poems was addressed to General Washington and was appreciated by him as reference to it by him was made in a letter to Joseph Reed under date of February 10, 1776. Through the endorsement of several men distinguished in literature her poems were collected and published in London under the title, “Poems of Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, by Phyllis Wheatly, a Negro Servant to Mr. John Wheatly of Boston, in New England.”

Paul Lawrence Dunbar, born in 1872, was a noted Negro poet.

William Stanley Braithwaite, author of “The Book of Georgian Verse” and the reviewer of poetry appearing in the standard magazines is classed among the geniuses of American verse writers.

“A Little Dreaming” is a volume by Fenton Johnson of Chicago that has been favorably commented on in this country and Europe.

The most famous of the Negro Shakesperian scholars was Ira Aldridge of Bel Air Maryland. He is said to have had no equal in the personification of Othello, the Moor. He was awarded the Gold Medal of the First Class for “Art and Science” by the King of Prussia, a distinction that had never before been awarded to any but Humbolt, Spentini, the composer and Liszt, the musician. His title in England was that of “Royal Saxe Ernest House Order,” a title of higher degree than that of “Sir” so much coveted in Britain. He was a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences of St. Petersburg.

Bert Williams, another Negro actor, bears the distinction[Pg 117] of being the “Greatest Comedian on the American Stage.”

The inventive genius of the Negro is to be seen in the records of the patent office at Washington. These show the application of a wide range of inventive talent, including agricultural implements, in wood and metal working machines, in land conveyances on road and steel rail tracks, in ocean going vessels, in chemistry and chemical compounds, in electricity in all its wide range of uses, in aereonautics, in new designs of house furniture and bric-a-brac, in mechanical toys and amusement devices.

It is said that a Negro really invented the cotton gin, or gave to Ely Whitney, who was the patentee of it, the suggestions which aided in the completion of this invention. As early as 1834 a Negro, Henry Blair, of Maryland, secured a patent on a corn harvester.

Soon after the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 the Patent Office rendered a decision that a Negro could not take out a patent on an invention, but since 1862, when the decision was rescinded, no restrictions have been placed on the use of the office by Negroes and a great number of useful inventions have been patented by them.

Robert Pelham, of Detroit, an employee in the Census Bureau, has devised a machine that tabulates the statistics from the manufacturer’s schedules in a way that displaces a dozen men in a given quantity of work, doing the work economically, speedily and with faultless precision. The returns in royalties from his invention, which is patented, greatly exceeds the income Mr. Pelham receives from the Government salary paid him for services in the office of the Census Bureau.

At the present time there are nearly 50,000 Negro business enterprises of various kinds, some requiring a knowledge of banking, insurance, manufacturing, undertaking and hospital training.

The combined business of these enterprises total over one billion dollars annually.

[Pg 118]

There are about 66 banks in all with a capital and surplus of over $2,000,000.00.

Reference elsewhere made in this book to the progress of the Negro in farming operations indicates that he is advancing more rapidly in agriculture than any of the other pursuits. In educational and church work it is shown, also, that he is well prepared to take care of himself should the separation of the races ever become a reality. The church denominational statistics show there are about 40,000 Negro Churches of Christ in America, with communicants numbering over 4,000,000. The value of Negro church property is about $60,000,000.00.

From $200,000.00 to $250,000.00 is spent annually on home missions. For foreign missions the race spends from $100,000.00 to $150,000.00 annually.

By every test or qualification and efficiency the Negro, in government, in the science of war, in the art of agriculture, in manufacturing, invention, medicine, law and literature is well prepared to assume the government of his race in a territory of his own. This insures him the same protection from the persecution and injustices of the stronger race that enabled the latter to succeed so famously when they, too, in the course of human events, found it necessary to dissolve the political bonds that united them to a dominant authority that gave them no justice.

Martha Schofield’s conception of an education included a great deal more than the mere matter of acquiring a fund of knowledge. She taught that knowledge without the ability to use it was worthless, and inspired every one coming under her influence with the necessity for a means of practicing what they were taught. This made her work intensely practical and enabled her students to succeed in overcoming difficulties as they saw her overcome them. The operation of her school, including the farm, the store and boarding house dormitories became a part of the curriculum and each student was provided with practical, concrete examples of every day business life with a solution for each worked out before the eyes of the whole school. The success which has and is attending the efforts of her students in many lines of endeavor is one of the best arguments we have to advance for the extension of practical instruction, especially among the Negroes who have evidenced a singular ability in assimilating it and imparting its usefulness afterwards.

While every Schofield scholar received a deep impression of the power which knowledge gives no want of attention was directed to the evil which invariably attends the wrong use of it. This developed a course in moral philosophy which, it is to be supposed, is responsible for the high average maintained by the graduates of this school in the deportment of their lives. Not one of the many receiving their education at the school has ever been convicted of crime or sentenced to jail or servitude in a penal institution. This contradicts and discredits the statement often heard that the education of the Negro has been attended by an increase of crime among the members of the race. While unsupported by the facts with regard to the students of all other Negro schools the statement could have basis only in those schools and colleges where the relation of morals to[Pg 120] breeding is ignored altogether or made of secondary importance only. Certain it is that Martha Schofield impressed each one of her students with a higher regard for truth and virtue than for anything else in this world.

Without the morality to live and act honorably education to her was a curse, and she had the faculty of making her students a co-partner with her in sharing her convictions along lines of right conduct and moral grandeur as well as excelling in efficiency in all the arts taught.

Martha Schofield was impelled by a power in her heart which inspired sympathy to give the very best of her life in help of the Negro. So she was very particular in her work that what she imparted really should inspire her disciples to think right and live right. This enforced the necessity for a discipline that may be considered severe by some but many are there today who bless her from the bottom of their hearts for holding them strictly to account in their work that in the final result they might be the possessors of a future worthy of the instruction received at her hands. She never enforced iron-hand discipline without the glove of charity and her advice always sparkled with such sincerity and sympathy as to make it palatable.

Not only was the work of Miss Schofield opposed by the antagonism of race prejudice, but opposed by a want of a precedent. There were few Negroes of education to refer to as examples of what education may be expected to do for one with the intelligence and industry necessary to acquire it. Only a few years before Miss Schofield began her work the instruction of Negroes was made unlawful by some of the States in the South and as a result the greatest ignorance prevailed among them. Not five per cent. could either read or write and quite a number possessed no Christian name at all. They lived principally in one room cabins, whole families of them, and subsisted on the coarsest and most unwholesome food imaginable. There was no respect anywhere for sanitary science laws and all this had the[Pg 121] effect to greatly handicap Miss Schofield at the beginning of her effort.

One of the rules of her school which she enforced early in her career was that no child could enter school who did not have a name. As all were eager to learn and made tremendous sacrifices that their children might do so this rule produced a mild sensation among some of the older people who had not the intuition to go about the work of obtaining a name for their offspring. But the ruling finally served to obtain names for all, and these in time became legal, some of them appearing just as Martha Schofield gave them on the tax books to this very day.

Perhaps the origin of the name Rahab Obedience, for many years an employe in Miss Schofield’s room, was one among the most unique. Accompanied by her child, who had been sent home the day before for want of a name, Rahab called early one morning on Miss Schofield and expressed great distress over the possibility of her not being able to comply with the entrance regulations and keep her little boy in school.

“Missus,” spoke Rahab, “Banjo be’n tellin’ me dat yo’ sais he mus’ hab some trimmins’ ’fore he kin com’ to yo’ sc’ool an’ clear befo’ dee Lawd, Missus, he aint got non’ ’side frum Banjo’ and hee jist caint git non.’ Dat chile nebber aint had any daddy, Missus!”

“Every child that enters this school” said Miss Schofield, “must have a name or be given one, else we can not teach him. Perhaps, we may give your son a name.

“What is your name? All children without a father bear their mother’s name.”

“Mer name, Missus?” queried Rahab in surprise. “I be’n tinkink yo’ no’ mer name lon’ time.”

“Yes, I know; but what is your Christian name—the other part of your name? Rahab who?”

“O, yas’am, I ’noes w’at yo’ means now, but dats all de name I habs—jest Rahab,” said the woman as she looked hopefully at Miss Schofield for some means by[Pg 122] which a name could be found for her son and he be allowed to remain in school.

“Well, can’t you suggest some name for your son?” asked Miss Schofield. “What name would you like for him to be known by?”

“We’l Missus,” said Rahab, “mer old marster allus tol’ us dat Obedience wus der bes trate in de karecter of a cullud pusson an’ so I bleeves I’d jest lak to hab mer boi call’d Banjo Obedience.”

“Very well,” replied Miss Schofield, “hereafter he shall be known as Banjo Obedience and we shall know you as Rahab Obedience.”

“Dat’s jest alritee ef Banjo kin cum ter sc’ool wid dat name. Don’t care w’at yo’ cal’ ’em nor how much yo’ beats ’em jest so yo larns em sometings, som’ gud man’ers lak he ole marster had.”

In a very few days after this unusual interview Rahab herself was given a position in the Schofield household where she was employed for many years.

Among all the mourners at the funeral none there were more deeply affected by the passing of Miss Schofield than the servants of her household.

One of the most beautiful traits of Miss Schofield’s character is to be seen in her treatment of the Negro servants in her employ. The excellent service which “Aunt Amy” rendered to her gave her a high appreciation of the Negro for domestic duties, and inspired the sentiment now common over the country that the Southern white people do not appreciate the value of Negro servants because they have never had the dissatisfaction attending the employment of other domestics of different nationality.

“Aunt Ann,” another employe for thirty-five years, equally distinguished the race by excelling in the art of domestic service. Rahab Obedience, Darius Bauknight and Charlotte, all so well pleased Miss Schofield with the quality and quantity of their services that each received recognition in her Will.

Martha Schofield was not only admired and loved by[Pg 123] all her students and servants—she was idolized by them. Wherever she went in the South or North she always found a number to do her honor, and honor shown her by the humblest and lowest of the Negro race was to all appearances as much appreciated as that shown by the great poets and writers, many of whom knew her and delighted in showing her the respect which one great mind has for another.

Among the distinguished people who expressed a deep appreciation of her strength of character and firmness of purpose in carrying on her work was John G. Whittier, the Quaker Poet, who wrote her several pleasing commendatory letters, and dedicated all his works to the spirit which inspired her to carry on her work in the face of difficulties that would have discouraged into inactivity anybody but Martha Schofield. Other notable people who paid tribute to Miss Schofield were Lucretia Mott, the distinguished reformer and Miss Francis Willard.

At her home in Aiken she was highly respected for her strength of character in holding fast to her convictions and for her intelligence and absolute honesty.

The following resolutions by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, a white organization to which Miss Schofield belonged, were passed at a recent session:

If one ever questioned whether the services of Miss Schofield were appreciated by the colored people of Aiken all doubts must have been removed by the demonstration of Negroes at the funeral on Monday, February 3, and again on the same day as the casket was borne from the Schofield home to the railroad station. The line of march included over 1,000 school children and citizens and the mass was so great at the train shed as to interfere with the movement of all traffic. As the train moved off the citizens joined in the favorite song of the lamented lady and sang so sadly and feelingly as to bring tears to the eyes of all: “Steal Away, Steal Away to Jesus.”

Among hundreds of telegrams, letters and personal messages received at the school following the death of Miss Schofield, the latter are typical:

The following resolution was unanimously adopted by the faculty of the Schofield school, in respect to the memory of Miss Schofield: