St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1891-06-15
SOUTHERN IMPRESSIONS.
Rev. III. III. French Tells What He
Heard and Saw at Nashville.

Heard and Saw at Nashville.
At the Centenary church last evening
Rev. Ii. II. French prefaced his regular
sermon with little talk on his impress
sions of the South, acquired while in
attendance upon the Tennessee Y. P. S.
G. E. convention at Nashville last week.
He saw good many new and peculiar
things, and treated of them briefly.
AS soon as one crosses Mason and
Dlxon's line, he said, one is in a new
civilization, and that fact is apparent
before one has passed over twenty miles
beyond the line. Men and women.
customs and characters, are differ
ent. What struck him forclbly
was the hospitality of the South.
Northern good fellowship doesn't APP
proach it. Another thing was the peace
and harmony existing between the
white and the negro. The two races
work together, talk together, the best of
friends. There is none of that preju-
dice against the black man, no manifest
alton OF feeling of repugnance so COM
mon in the North. But the Southern
white man won't allow, if he can help
1t. the black man to progress. He
doesn't mind associating with the ne
gro to certain extent, but he wants the
negro to remain a beneficiary, person
to be patronized rather than to
become competitor. And good
old deacons will sit down, Bible
In hand, and attempt to convince
the Northerner that it is the
duty of the white man to suppress the
negro vote. But the Southern white is
the enemy of every person who comes
down from the North for the purpose of
trying to elevate the negro. Mr.. French
thought the reason for this feeling to
lie in this: The white man objects TO
the negro becoming his equal, He is
too lazy to work hard enough to remain
in advance Of the black.
Then Mr.. French told what the col
ored university at Nashville is doing.
lie spoke particularly of the medical de-
partment. There have been 100 doctors
made there, and all of them are making
over LOCO and $1,000 year. One of
them is eminent in New Orleans and
he is frequently called in consultation
with white doctors. There is a machine
shop in the university and the students
are making full set of Astronomical
apparatus for new colored college in
Wisconsin; and that class of mechanical
work is of the finest character One
colored man is making a sidereal clock.
There are but three other men in the
United States who can do the same
work. And this man is the son Of
slave-was born slave himself.
Mr.. French predicted that the negro
will yet be the superiors of the South.
They are thethrifty people of that sec
ton. Old plantations are being cut up
and sold as small farms. The negroes
are buying them. Negroes have a ten
dency TO get hold of property and hold
it. He told Of negro who got hold of
corner lot and started to bald a church
upon it for cOlored people right in The
center of Nashville. Surrounding prop
erfy owners attempted 10 buy him off.
They went so far as to offer him what
he paid for the lot, to pay him for the
work already done on the church and
build church for him at
point nearer the center of population.
He held on and built the church. His
deduction was that the white man must
work, or he will be beaten about by the
negro.
Then he told of the Y. P. S. C. E. con-
vention. 1t was Christian convention,
but delegates from some colored Y p.
). {. E. societies were not admitted.
He spoke of the fervor with wich South.
ern congregations sing. He also spoke
of the predominance of the Epworth
league i'll the South, where Methodism
is strong. He feared that large num-
Der of UNCONVENTIONAL societies was
growing up. Yet he earnestly PRAYED
that the day would come when ali would
be united into one grand interdenom
national society under the name of
Christian EndeaYor.