Rensselaer Union, Volume 2, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1870 — The Fifteenth Amendment. [ARTICLE]

The Fifteenth Amendment.

Rav. W- H. Daniels, of the First Methodist Episcopal Charch of Chicago, on the l?th of April preached a sermon on the Fifteenth Amendment, from which we take the following extracts; » In the year 1020 the first negro slaves were brought to this country by a Dutch shlp-of-war, and landed in Virginia; In this year, 1870, the last restrictions of the rights of the negro as a citizen are re-' moved, and he siaiuli forth a free man and a voter.

In order that we msy better realize this mighty work which God has wrought for the negro race, we shall do Well to note the leading parts of their history. The poet Virgil tells us of a poor fellow, who, having offended some of the gods, was placed in a prison under the earth, and a mountain piled on top of him to keep him down. But the negro has had a whole range of mountains to keep him down. First, his own ignorance. He had his home in the darkest corner of the earth, and so dense was his stupidity that he would have starved to death for want of knowing how to make his living if nature had not been prodigal of her gifts in that sultry land. When the people were wanted for slaves they were hunted in the jungle like wolves, herded in the slave-pen like cattle, packed in the slaveship like herrings in a barrel, and then sold like donkeys, to cultivate the fields of American planters. They could not help learning something in their new life, and lest they should be able to escape from their prison the courts of legislation were set to work piling on laws to make the mountain higher and heavier, laws which forbade them the school, the spelling book, and the Bible. Second, There was the mountain of poverty ; a mountain exceeding great and heavy, as those who have lain under it kDOW too well. It is a terrible thing to have no money, no properly and no credit, but the poverty of the negro was more. Redid not even own himself; his eyes were Jiot his own ; his hands with which he toiled were the property of another man, and so were bis wile and his children. This mountain, too, grew in height with the growing sense ol misery which the black man endured as he saw other households grow rich by bis toil, and other men grow proud because he saved them from soiling their bands with work. And it is no wonder that lie writhed and groaned under this mountain, as the fabled prisoner did under his mountain. But there were no earthquakes in consequence. The third mountain was his color and the pride of race on the part of bis op pressors. We are all of us to blame, I fear, in this respect. We have helped to pile up this mountain; we possess some of the old spirit of caste—at least lam ashamed to confess I do, though I hope God may use the Fifteenth Amenduient as a mean s of grace to me and my people, that we may willingly believe God “ hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.’’ — Acts xvii, 26. The fourth mountain was the Democratic party. The men at the North and' at the South, who held the slaves and governed the natioD, put this doctrine into their political creeds that slavery was right; that it was a divine institution. We all know how tenaciously a man holds to his religiou, especially if his religion helps his prejudice and 'his profits, and this doctrine being preached from one end of the land to the other, the mountain grew exceeding great and high. But “God hath delivered him;” hath tumbled the mountains oft' him and lifted the poor fellow up, and now lie stands upright, a man and a voter, a citizen of the greatest nation of the world. “This is the Lord’s doings, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” We had a strange procession in Chicago the other day—a procession the like of which ten years ago we hardly hoped to see in our day, a procession the like of which no man in this land will ever see again, for, thank God, there is no other race of slaves to be set free—it was the negro race celebrating the Fifteenth Amendment,

I do not know who planned that pro--Cession. liiit jt Wiis a work of. genius, a poem lull of tears and laughter, "of memories of horror and omens of glory. Many an Old-Line Abolitionist felt Ins hair rising and blood tingling, and wanted to shout, and did shout, as that line of dark faces, men, and women, and children, with many of the marks of their poverty, as well as of their joy, about them, wound its quiet way through our streets. He had sometimes hoped that his grandsons, or perhaps his sons might live to see it, but lie expected to be looking down from Heaven when the notes of its music should be heard. But there it was, right before his eyes, a nation come to life, and, what, is more, come to liberty I It was a good day, my brethren, a day for songs and rejoicing, and if it was a joy to us, what think you, was it to them? The good time coming, and so bitterly long in coming, had burst upon them, and they did well to celebrate with music and banners; to turn out en mouse, old and O, rich and poor, in coaches and on lack, in carts and wagons, with bells ringing and the old flag flying, and yet with a strange silence of voices as if they were too happy to sing, or as if their new honors were a dream which a shout might frighten away. That procession was historic and it was prophetic. First in order came a platoon of police signifying law—government. It was right that law should walk at the head of their procession, for law had made slaves of them, and government had helped to hold them in bondage. Yet these people always respected law: they have not been rebellious. John Brown raised a little insurrection, but, as a mutiny, it was a failure. They.waited patiently for law to deliver them, and for government to adopt them, and it would have been well if the man who gave the famous Dred Scott decision could have had a place among the policemen. Law once crushed this people; now it lifts them i they have obeyed law while It was poverty and bonds to obey. How gladly will they obey It when it commands them to be prosperous and free. The procession was In part composed of various representatives of the trades. Toil has been one of the rights of the black man ; and it has been claimed as one of the rights of the white men to drive him to toil. Laziness is the great crime of slaves in the eyes of their masters; but who could work with much vigor, when work brought no wages! And is laziness a crime only in black men ? Are the loafere with white faces at the South and North to go unblamcd ? , But from this time a new motive will enter into the life of these sons of toll, viz.: tho right to enjoy to the fullest extent the fruit of their labor, and, if the half of this nation was made rich by their labor as slaves, what grand results may come from their labor as freemen ? There was one significant emblem in that procession, which is worth a passing notice; a man with his whol? family crowded into a little wagon, drawn by a wretched horse, being, perhaps, unable to buy an artistic banner to represent the implements of his trade, bore aloft the implement itself—a whitewash brush., Ah ! my man, there is a great deal of whitewashing to be .done in the archives of this natipn; a great many black letters to be effaced, letters which have written the great disgrace of this Government by writing the records of the slavery of your people. It will take something more po

tent than lime and water to wipe out the crimes of the strong against the weak which have been committed in this land; they have entered Into history; they are cut into the walla of our national temple, and never to much whitewashing will hide them. So let ns have no whited sepulchres, but rather a new life in onr nation, a life which shall help us >to count the right of all men sacred, a life which shall regenerate our politics and cause us to insist forever on liberty for all men. So the world may forget the darkness of our past by rcaaon of the g ory Hint is dawn lng on our futuro. We shall do well to remember the doctrine of that old pat riot. “He only loves liberty who wishes-all mi n to be free.”

There was the colored secret societies, too, in the line, and I thought of the won derful secret brotherhood among the slaves, by means of which they helped one another to bear the horrors of their servitude. Any important fact, any new danger to one of their race coming to the ever-listen lng ears of his people, was told to him though he were leagues away, and through all the nights of th<>sp dark years that weird ..system of communication was kept up all over the Southern States, so that without telegraphs or printing presses, or even an alphabet, these poor slaves talked together across couaties and States, sharing in each other’s sorrows and cheering each other’s souls. And when the war broke out it was often the black men who had the fullest and earliest information. A slave would carry the news of “ Massa Linkum’s victories” a long way in a night; he had learned to run with heavy tidings, but he cauld almost fly when he had such goo# news to tell. Another noticeable thing about the procession was the prominence given in It to the Union. There were veteran soldiers who fought for the Union, there was the pageant of dusky maidens, one for each State of the Union, there were “ Brothers of Union,” with their banners, and a long line of carriages full of “Daughters of Union,” and the flag of the Union was everywhere in the procession, as was doubtless an honest and sincere love for the Union. The politics of these people are not doubtful; they believe in liberty and union ; they made a glorious record to this effect during the war, and who shall say they do not now deserve a place among the citizens of the Union * They were oiir allies everywhere, and our friends always. A poor fugitive irom Andersonville, skulking along at night, would stop and hide, at the sound of ap proaching footsteps, until convinced that the stranger was of the same eolor as the night, and then he would come out and ask his way. “ A negro” was to our boys synonymous with “a friend,” and now that the war is over, let us not be ashamed to own our friends, to stand by them in their new relations, and instruct them in their new duties. They have had a training for citizenship which is unequalled ; they have been taught by torture and tears what it is to be a slave; and they know, as we never can know, what it is to be free; and for this reason they are to be relied upon in the use of the ballot in time of peace, or of the rifle in time of war. Liberty reinforces itself by making citizens of the black race, for by instinct born of sorrow they will be true to liberty. And now I think with shame of the record of some of our own color, as compared with that of the negro, in the war. There are men among us who were traitors then; whose hearts were with our enemies in our struggle for life; who did not thank God f>r Union vic’ories, or work and pray for our armies when they suffered defeat. Yes, white men at the North have made such a shamefui record for- themselves, and yet these men and some of their ill mannered sons, had the effrontery to laugh at that procession, and scoff at the new citizens of the nation.

There was a Sunday School in that procession. Now a Sunday School signifies two things,—religion and education. The most of us have obtained our religion by means of education, but the black race in this country have been religious without education. Their faith, so simple and undying, in spite of generations of watting tor answers to their prayers, seems to have been a special inspiration of the Spirit of God ; and their faith has saved them. Their religion was wild and full of superstition, but it was hearty, and founded upon a few simple truths which they had learned while some white men read the Bible in their hearing. -■ ‘ ; , The grace of patience they possessed to a great degree, and for a spirit of forgiveness under injury, there is nothing in these days that equals theirs. They have for centuries prayed for those who persecuted them; when smitten on the cheek they have turned the other also, crimes have been committed against them habitually and continually which a white man feels justified in avenging by murder, and yet they have endured and waited, always sustained by a great trust that Jesus would send them deliverance. If tjps were a revengeful people, what horrors would haunt the dreams of those enemies of this race by whom they have been so long outraged ? They have an occasion for vengeance that might well make their former masters tremble; but no one fears them unless it be a certain class of politicians who are anxious about the effect of the negro vote upon their prospects for office. They are peaceable, because they are Christians—very ignorant Christians, it is true—but tried iu the f urnace and not found wanting. And there were the bells ringing out their joy at the new era. The negro has alwa>s been a jolly, happy fellow in spite of his miseries. A special dispensation of joy and buoyancy «f spirit seems by a merciful Providence to have been given him, and.but for this he must have perished under the Weight of his woes. Hitherto, in this nation, bells have rung foi everybody but him—now he has a chime of his own. The nation hears it, and good meu rejoice in the sound; the world hears it, and Christendom echoes back the notes in songs and prdises to God for Ills new gospel of liberty; heaven hears it—the heaven where so many of their sable brethren found the free land ; the heaven where so many of our sons and brothers went, when they laid down their lives fighting God’s battles; the heaven where every eye brightens, and every voice has a song of joy at the news of God’s great work for his other Israel, a race delivered from slavery, “ a nation born at Once.” And now at last, at the end of this strange line, comes old Father Nicddenvus, or one very like him, who seems to have been waked from the gum-tree, according to the song, and to have come forth to assist in the great jubilee. • A resurrection indeed—a new birth is here. Let us rejoice before the Lord today ; and from this grand deliverance of His people, let us take new courage that the time shall come when all nations shall find the new life, the liberty of the Gospel, and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of onr God. In my judgment, we have occasion to offer devout thanksgiving to the Lord of Hosts for the event which our negro citizens have so recently celebrated. He knows how to carry on the world better than we, ami this providence of His is no less divine arid less glorious than the bringing of Israel out of Egypt, which a read so reverently in onr Bibles. Let then, rejoice with our colored brethren, be exceeding glad; and while we see new race marching under the columns of dur temple of liberty, let ns standby to give them a welcome, and more, let us

give them schools, and lands, and churches. and trained teachers, and ministers pf religion, that they may become Intelligent and prosperous among us. Long time have they waited for the Lord; at length He haa come to save them. They do well to rejoice, for In God’s good providence the days of their mourning are ended, and the occasion of their joy is a pledge of Jehova to us all that Iniquity shall not go unpunished, but that those who trust in the Lord shall never be confounded.

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