The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1898-09-16

is the lamp Of experience; and, if we
have no experience Of our own, the
best substitute is the experience of
other peoples as preserved for US in the
writings of the worlds chroniclers.
Just at this time, while many Of the
good people Of North Carolina are APP
parently moving on to the permanent
installation Of the negro as the con-
trolling factor in the government of
the state, it may not be unacceptable
to them to recall some Of the worlds
experiences. l do this not with any
spirit of unkindness towards the negro
or any purpose OF wounding his pride:
he is Gods creature as we'll as | am
and is working out his destiny under
the guidance Of the illumination which
has come to him | do it because |
believe the negro himself will be led TO
see ahead Of him the dangerous
Q~uicksands to which he is surely
marching under the blind leadership
of unenlightened or unprincipled Of
fce-holders and ofice-seekers.
l. In 1897 the western portion of the
island of San Domingo, now called
Hayti, was coded to France by the
king of Spain. During the next hun
dred years the French settlers import
ed vast numbers of African slaves.
Under the influence of the French rev.
Olution the negroes and mulattoes be-
gan the most vindictive struggle on
ron0rJ - and hv tho ho0inninp IF tho
present century they had eXterminated
the French. Then, having in a few
years been recognized as an indepen-
len people, these negroes and mulat-
toes entered upon an attempt at self
government; but, with occasional
periods of peace, they have from that
day to the present '~alternated, through
instrumentality of one revolution af-
ter another, between despotism and
anarchy, between monarchy and re-
p~ublicanism, between a kingdom and
an empire" In "Hayti or the Black
Republic" published in 1884, Sir Spen-
Ger St. John, some years British rep
resentative there, gives a picture at
once melancholy and l~udicrOus, of the
utter savagery dominant in the west
ern state Hayti.) Official peculation,
judicial murder, and utter corruption
of every kind, underlie the forms and
titles of civilized government; the re-
ugion, nominally Christian, is largely
vaudouX OF serpent worship, in which
actual and horrible cannibaliSm Eve
now is reported 10 exist in some places.
Some of the people are not much ele-
waited above African barDarism."
2. Sierra Leone was established in
1887 as a home for negroes who had
been or should be liberated in the
British dominiOns. In that year "47O
destitute negroes were removed to it
from London" and around this nue.
leus have gathered many thousands Of
them. In 1920 there were 1900, and
in 1881 there were over $4,000.
The colony is ruled by a governor
appointed by the British sovereign, and
assisted by a council; and during the
century of their tutelage the ex-slaves
and their descendants have heen sub
jected to the best influence which Brit
ish piety and philanthropy could send
to them. I'm 1880 there we're in Sierra
Leone 1860 Episcopalians, 1908 Wes-
leyans and Methodists, 2,717 Of Lady
Huntington's connection, and 369 RO-
man Catholics. Fourah Bay College
near Freetown, Wesleyan High school
Annie Walsh Female Institution, and
the grammar school opened in 1916
werethe chief educational Institutions"
And yet when Henry NJ. Stanley, the
African explorer, went there in 1874,
he found a state Of society of which
he wrote as follows: After a hun
dred years the jealous English mis-
s~ionaries have not been able to incul-
ate in the negro's mind hat it is sin
full to lie, to steal, and to be lazy! II
1 were asked where | could find the
most insolent, lying, thieving negroes,
| should undoubtedly say Sierra
LeOne."
3. The republic of Liberia, founded
in 1921 by the American Colonization
Society, was intended as a home for
blacks emancipated in the United
States. 1t has always been under the
guardianship of faithful friends in the
United States, including the members
of the above mentioned organizations;
and thus far the freed negro has found
there the most favorable conditions
for this development into the highest
human type of which he is capable.
But with all the reports SEM US by
partial friends, there is no satisfactory
evidence that the ex-slaves have ever
reached a creditable degree of civili-
cation of a respectable fitness for self
government. On the contrary, the re-
ports we occasionally receive from
cOlored people who came back to ex-
change their free ballot and a fair
count" in Liberia for the shot gun
policy" of the southern whites, indi-
cate a lamentable scarcity of evidences
of hopeful progress in Liberian moral,
intellectual, industrial, or political life.
4. The Dominican Republic-the
eastern part of the island Of San Do
mingo-with a population in 1880 Of
about 400. 900, chiefly negroes and
mulattoes," threw off the Spanish
yoke in 1922, and linked itself more
or less closely with Hayti; but in 1843
it assumed a separate standing as the
Dominican Republic" But it was a