The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-11-27
CONVERSATIONS AND RETRIBU-
TIONS OF THE SOUTH.
BY REV. R. A. WHITE.

RETURNING from a brief visit to
Atlanta, Ca, Rev. r. A. White, of
Englewood has this to say of the
South. We quote from the Messen-
ger:
"Every evil seems to have its COM
pensations. Nothing is wholly evil.
There is strange inter-relationship
OF good and evil. In the grinding of
progressive forces nothing is allowed
to fall from the hopper merely bran,
The mills of God grind out even from
the grain of wrong some degree of
good.
I'm the light of nineteenth centu
ry conscience slavety was desperate
wrong. The whole nation now blush
es with shame over the memory of
the slave shambles and the auction
block. But slavery was not an un-
mixed evil. First, the missionary and
philanthropic forces of this century
might look upon slavery as the tortu-
GUS pathway by which 100000 of
blacks passed to the rights and priv
ileges Of the greatest civilization on
| the globe. Could the allied mission
ary forces of Christendom have ac-
complished in the jungles of Africa
what slavery accomplished in two
centuries? How many missionaries,
how much money think you would it
have taken to raise 100000 African
heathen to the point of opportunity
now enjoyed by that number of eman-
cipated slaves. These opportunities
will accelerate. This is only another
way of saving that slavery with all
its evils has it's compensations from
the side of civilization. Seven mil
/ lion Africans caught from African
jungles and thrust into the midst of
civilization 1000 years in advance
of them.
at is to be noticed secondly that as
wrong has its retributions, right has
its rewards. If slave south bred
evils, free south is receiving its re-
wards. Rewards in which the whole
nation shares and rejoices First,
the emancipated slaves. II the slaves
suffered under slavery, he and his
descendants are slowly reaping the
rewards of a free south. In part
this has been intimated above.
'But further, the negro is growing
in education, in manhood, and in
general power and usefulness. Tour
gee has said that the negro has ac-
complished more in an industrial way
in the last twenty-five years than any
people on the earth ever accomplished
| in like time and under conditions
seemingly SO adverse. A penniless
and ignorant slave population of
twenty five years ago now pays taxes
on $14 100000 worth of property in
the south. The former slave. with
his children, is turning farmer, car
penter and professional man.
"But if the negro as race has been
benefited by free south, how much
more has the south as whole been
benefted7 Turn from the SCARED
sides of Fort Negley, where bullets
whistled and blood flowed during the
civil war, to the white exposition city
of Nashville, glistening in the sun.
light like some dream or vision but a
mile away, and the full meaning OF
southern progress in twenty-five
years appears. In its many buildings
was congested samples of southern
progress since the war. Nashville
and Tennessee may we'll be proud of
their exposition. Costing a million
dollars, all but fifty thousand of the
amount was raised by private sub.
scription. A fact in itself showing
the financial and commercial vitality
of the southland. Is there northern
state that could have done betteri"