# The Amistad Captives, AND THE Origin and Growth of the American Missionary Association.

By REV. J. E. TWITCHELL, D.D.,
Pastor of the Dwight Place Church, New Haven, Conn.

I have a bit of history in which I am sure you will all be interested. It was in the autumn of 1839 that a strange-looking craft was seen off the east coast of Long Island. For several days the movements of those on board were watched, and the conclusion was reached that she was a pirate vessel, and a United States revenue cutter in the near waters was sent out to capture the craft.

This cutter brought her into the New London harbor. There she was found to have on board forty-two Negroes and two white men—one of whom claimed these Negroes as his slaves. Everything about the craft and the captives was suspicious. It was soon discovered that a certain Negro of the number, said to have a giant frame and fierce countenance, was their chief or leader. At once a messenger was dispatched to New Haven to inform the United States Marshal of the capture and their suspicions.

The chief was sent in irons to New Haven on a Government vessel, and the rest of the company taken off on a schooner which anchored in our harbor on Sunday, September 1st, of that year, 1839. These forty-two Negroes were taken ashore and lodged in the New Haven jail, which stood on the present site of our City Hall.

On examination of the case it was found that in the early spring these Negroes had been kidnapped on the west coast of Africa, and shipped for Havana to be sold as slaves. Here they were sold to two Cubans, Don José Ruiz and Don Pedro Montez, who started with them to Guanaja, another Cuban port. On the second night out these Negroes made a bold strike for freedom; killed the captain of the ship, and sent the crew adrift in one of the small boats. They bound the cook and cabin-boy, and, later, unbound them and made them take

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The wheel. Neither the cook nor cabin-boy knew how to sail the ship,
and they had been beating up and down the coast and drifting out to
sea for several weeks, until at last, as stated above, they were captured
at the eastern end of Long Island. Of these forty-two captives one
was a little boy of perhaps eight years, three were little girls, ranging
in age from eight to twelve, and the rest were full-grown men, whose
language none could understand.

An amusing but pathetic incident here occurs. It is said that a
few days after they were put in jail the militia were called out for
drill and muster on the Green, in order to be ready for any emergency
that might arise—for the people of the city and surrounding regions
were greatly excited—not knowing what might be the outcome of
events. The windows of the jail where these captives were confined
looked out on the Green and were crowded with these men of unknown
tongue, who were seen wringing their hands, and were heard uttering
wildest lamentations—evidently thinking that preparations were
making for their slaughter. They were, however, quieted by motions
and signs which assured them that they were safe.

The question now was—What should be done with these captives?
and it was of course a legal question. Prof. Gibbs, of Yale College,
tried to communicate with them, but in vain, for never before had such
sounds been heard in Connecticut from those who were trying to talk.

Finally the professor went to New York, and there, on a Spanish
vessel, found a man who understood the language. This man he
brought back with him to New Haven and these poor captives looked
into the face of one with whom they could talk. They were at first
alarmed, but finally became wild with joy, being assured that they
were among their friends.

The Spanish government now came forward claiming these cap-
tives as lawful slaves, and the case was tried before Judge Thompson,
of the Circuit Court. His decision was that "Slavery is not tolerated
in Connecticut, therefore the Spanish claim could not be investigated
here."

While these weeks were passing, Professor Gibbs and others, of
Yale College, also Lewis Tappan, of New York, came forward with
funds for their defence, and for the purchase of food and other com-
forts. Meanwhile they were taken in charge by a committee composed
of Tappan, Jocelyn and Leavitt, of New York, and George E. Day—
then a recent graduate of Yale College and instructor in the same,
now still living among us, the honored professor emeritus, whose
face is always a benediction—was appointed their teacher. He gave

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them lessons every day at the jail, and preached to them through an interpreter on Sundays for several weeks. Later they were placed in school in Westville, and still later in Farmington, Connecticut.

After considerable delay the case went up to the United States Supreme Court, on demand of the Spanish consul, in behalf of the Queen of Spain. John Quincy Adams and Roger Baldwin—the father of Judge Simeon Baldwin of New Haven—appeared for the defence at one of the most important trials of the time. The decision was reached that “The captives should be delivered up to the President of the United States, to be sent back to Africa.” In 1842 they were landed on their native shores, and with them, two Christian missionaries who founded the “Mendi Mission”—the first mission on the Dark Continent—started and fostered by the New York Committee—Tappan, Jocelyn and Leavitt—the funds being furnished chiefly by Tappan, who was one of the most noted Christian laymen of New York.

It was about this time, 1842, that Dr. Charles G. Finney came to New York, causing the atmosphere of the city, as Dr. Cuyler puts it, “to be charged with a sort of divine electricity.” The religious movement, growing out of this, as you know, became widespread, causing the churches to be greatly increased in membership and power, by the addition of many peculiarly practical, generous and devoted men of wealth and influence, whose philanthropic zeal and moral courage came in play for freedom and the advance of Christian truth.

Political agitation now grew intense. William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Charles Sumner were in the prime of their majestic manhood, hurling their thunderbolts against the curse and crime of African slavery.

The nation was aroused. The South began to threaten the dissolution of the Union. Timid and conservative people here at the North were alarmed. Abolitionists were stoned, scourged, imprisoned, shot. Harriet Martineau calls that time “The Martyr Age of America.”

It, however, came to be the age in which great missionary enterprises had their inception—“The American Home Missionary Society,” “The American Tract Society,” “The American Sunday-school Union,” “The American Seaman’s Friend Society,” The American Temperance Society,” and others, these following, in about thirty years, the birth of our beloved “American Board.”

There were then about three million slaves in America, apparently

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in hopeless bondage; more than two hundred thousand Indians—
wards of the nation—pillaged, robbed, murdered, according to the
greed and lust of unprincipled and brutal agents—with little govern-
mental restraint. The struggle between slavery and freedom had
begun. Political life was feverish all over the land. Already
mutterings of an approaching tempest were in the air. It was in the
midst of conditions like these, and with such men as these in the fore-
front as statesmen and philanthropists, that the "American Missionary
Association" was organized at Albany, N. Y., in 1846—the society
for which I speak this morning.

The Association was born without observation; but was in har-
mony with the stirring scenes of the time—scenes which rapidly led
up to the crisis of 1861-1865.

It was in that year, 1846, that the war with Mexico began, for the
express purpose of extending slave territory. But a political organi-
zation had grown up which was to stem the tide of these destructive
waters. Such men as Joshua R. Giddings, John Quincy Adams, Charles
Sumner and others of their like, who were patriots as well as Chris-
tians, and prophets of God, to whom the near future unrolled as a
scroll, not only foresaw, but fashioned for the fast-approaching
ages. Hence it came to pass, by a kind of fore-ordination, that
the constitution of the American Missionary Association was com-
mitted to the cause of freedom, and to the preaching of the Gos-
pel to all people, irrespective of rank or color, class or condition.
Three other societies had been formed for a similar purpose. These
turned over their missionaries and their funds to the newly-organized
American Missionary Association, and so the Association began its
princely but pathetic work.

It would be interesting here to sketch the character and lives of
some of the leaders of this Association, but time forbids. Suffice it to
say that the new organization bravely went forward, until, in 1854,
it had seventy-nine laborers located in Western Africa, on the island
of Jamaica, in the Sandwich Islands, in Siam, Canada, Egypt, Ken-
tucky, North Carolina, and among the Indians of the Northwest.

Missionaries in the South, as was to be expected, encountered
great opposition and persecution. They were ostracised and insulted
everywhere; but in the presence of mobs, clamoring for their lives,
they blew the bugle-blast which echoed through the vales and among
the hills, where wives were sold away from their husbands, and hus-
bands from their wives, parents from their children and children from
their parents—where all immoralities were practiced and all cruelties

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endured. Those were the decades of American disgrace, when the
world looked on in wonder.

At length, in 1859, came the fanatical raid and the tragic death of
John Brown, to be followed by the expulsion of all missionaries from
the South. The nation now was shaken from center to circumference
by the War of the Rebellion, in which hundreds of thousands of noble
men, both of the North and South, went out of sight in the awful
calamity.

Now, it might seem, that amid the clash of arms, there could be no
room for Christian mission work—no place for the peaceful message of
the Son of God. But far otherwise had been ordained.

Within seven months after the storming of Fort Sumter a school
was organized by the American Missionary Association at Fortress
Monroe for the trembling refugees who sought protection within the
Union lines; and this school afterwards, under the magnetic leader-
ship of the late General Armstrong, has become the famous "Hamp-
ton Institute." From that time on the American Missionary Associa-
tion followed close on the footsteps of the Northern armies—teach-
ers and preachers occupying every vantage-ground gained by the
soldier.

The ranks of the Union army were thinned in battles on land and sea; but they were filled again by fresh enlistments. Women here at the North sent lint and bandages and supplies to crowded hospitals. Sanitary and Christian commissions were organized for their work among the fighting and falling soldiers. Nurses went down amid the desolating scenes of camp and field to care for the dying and the dead, and all over the North were praying souls—some in the house of God, some at the family altar, and some in the secret place—remembering with tearful beseechings their loved ones who were exposed, and the cause of the Union growing dearer every day to the hearts of liberty-loving men and women.

As God would have it, our Chief Executive was a man for the
ergency. Born on Rock Creek farm, in Kentucky, February, 12th,
1809, elected to Congress in 1836, chosen President in 1860, Abraham
Lincoln met the armed outbreak of the Rebellion in 1861, stood like
a rock in the midst of raging storms, until, in 1863, he issued
his proclamation which emancipated four million slaves and insured
not only the freedom but also the protection of all who should reach
the Union lines.

It was then that a sense of justice to the long-oppressed awoke an
enthusiasm, second only to that which filled the Union ranks with

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soldiers. But what of these millions, ignorant, penniless, shelterless, fanatical? They must be sheltered, fed, taught. The American Missionary Association was ready, and had been waiting for this divine summons. And so, hundreds of refined and cultured ladies—teachers in our Northern schools—volunteered their services, and took up their abode on Southern plantations, where they taught and wrought with a heroism rarely equalled—never surpassed by women of America or of the world—enduring privations and persecutions which made GLORY of their shame. Thus the work of this society went on, until every field that was opened in all the South was entered with the emancipating gospel of our blessed Lord. Christian schools for these refugees extended from the seaboard at Hampton and Norfolk to scattered camps on the Mississippi, and down to New Orleans.

The long and cruel war ended in 1865, and these four million emancipated slaves, wisely or unwisely, were immediately invested with the privileges of citizenship. They had been born and held in utter dependence, without self-cultnrre, or the training for it; were ignorant of the world in which they lived—their vision bounded by the cotton-field or the cane-brake, and their minds as narrow as their vision.

The South, after a most heroic struggle, had lost their cause, and could do practically nothing for these millions, had they been disposed. The duty, therefore, of the North was plain, and the responsibility was plain.

"There were cripples at the gate who must have crutches, and starving there who must have bread;" and somehow the ignorant must be taught and the sensual be shown the Christ, whose pure life would become an inspiration, and whose forgiving love would fill them with intelligent hope and lead them into an intelligent worship.

For such a work as this the American Missionary Association was alive and equipped, and upon it it entered—never to quit the field until there should be no call for its uplifting power.

At present it has six chartered institutions in the South, with many industrial, normal, collegiate and theological schools.

Its students are now (in 1898): theological, 69; collegiate, 70; college preparatory, 330; normal, about 1,500; grammar, about 2,700; intermediate, about 3,000; primary, 5,000.

Of the higher institutions you will recall Fisk University, Nashville, one of whose buildings was sung into being by the students there—a school magnificently equipped, and doing a work which compares favorably with any Northern university; Talladega College,

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Alabama; Tougaloo University, Miss.; Straight University, Louisiana; and Tillotson, in Texas; all of them economically administered, but all poor and pleading for help. These splendid institutions are living upon the lowest margin of expenditure, and every one of them is worthy of our generous aid.

The work of this Association is also being carried on in the moun-
tain districts, among what are called "Our American Highlanders,"
where the poor whites in some respects are as badly off as the Negroes
of the plain; and is also carried on among the Indians in Nebraska,
Montana, among the Dakotas, in Washington and Alaska.

Such, in brief, is the origin and growth of this society—having
mission fields from Florida to Alaska, among the neediest millions—
the pioneer in planting Christian institutions for the education and
Christianization of the people. In my judgment, the work of this
society, in importance, is second to no other, for educational and
religious ends, and these are our only safety as a nation.

Upon its banner it has inscribed "An Intelligent Faith," and
"America for Christ," and that banner is being borne aloft from
where the surges of the Atlantic beat against our eastern seaboard
to where the sun touches with its yellow radiance the waters of the
"Golden Gate"; from the orange groves of Florida to the far-away
frozen regions of the North, and everywhere the breath of Heaven
floats that banner. The society comes to the black man, and in the
name of Christ, "takes in its warm palm that withered hand, and
quickens it through the spirit of Christ, until it becomes skillful and
powerful." In the name of Christ "it touches the brain that has
never seen," and gives it a glimpse of great things to be acquired. It
speaks to the dead soul, and leads it up into a life radiant with
immortal love.

There is a picture, painted by Tanner, a graduate of one of the
American Missionary schools, in the old Luxembourg Gallery, en-
titled "The Raising of Lazarus." That painting may stand for this
society; for it shows what it is doing. Men and women and children
are coming forth, bound hand and foot with grave clothes, to be
unbound and let go, to sit down in Christian homes that are filled
with Christian praise.

I cannot detain you this morning to give results in detail, either
in figures or facts. Read the statement of our society officers, listen
to the stories of those who come from the field; give ear to those who
have seen blind eyes opened, deaf ears unstopped, the lame made to
walk, lepers cleansed and the dead raised,

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The problems for America are political, but they are equally religious; indeed, political problems must be solved according to religious principles, or they will never be permanently solved. The Negro, the Indian and the Chinaman are tremendous factors among us.

Over all this ignorance and superstition must be shed the light of a living gospel, and down into these depths of darkness we must go with the torch of eternal truth, if America is to abide.

The call is imperative upon us for funds with which to carry on this work. Let us as a Christian people respond worthily and gratefully. We shall want a share in the sure victory. Let us have a share in the great work.

AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION,
CONGREGATIONAL ROOMS,
FOURTH AVE. AND 22d ST., NEW YORK.