I feel that I am an intruder here. I am sure everyone would rather
listen to this music than to any tune that I can play. I came to hear it
myself. I have never been so fortunate as to be able to hear your
singers in the North, and I have been immensely gratified in hearing
them to-day.
I look upon this Hampton School as one of the most interesting
exhibitions in the United States. I regard my friend, General Armstrong,
as having accomplished more for this country than almost any man who
fought for it has done since the war. The war, which settled some
questions, left us a great problem which had to be solved by other
means. The time for the guns and bayonets and cavalry charge was past.
The time had come when a most interesting and perplexing condition had
to be met and overcome. It is a fortunate peculiarity of the American
people that they never hesitate to grapple with a problem because it is
untried. and difficult. We are a nation of experimenters; the more
difficult the situation, the more interesting it is to us. Because it
seems impossible is the best reason to us for our determination to prove
its possibility. This is the spirit that has given the world all the
great American inventions. When something new was needed, American
talent was roused to supply the want. When there was some great need of
humanity, America was ready with advocates, teachers, and
self-sacrificing missionaries. This was the spirit that led an American
to apply steam to navigation, which has bridged oceans. This was the
spirit that led another American to apply electricity to telegraphy,
which has belted the globe with lightning. This is the spirit which has
given us the sewing machine, and all other American machinery that so
multiplies the power of man and the forces of nature. But there was a
problem that machinery could not reach and science could not solve, a
problem that affected whole races of people. That problem my friend
General Armstrong set himself to solve at the close of the war. This
assembly before me, and these songs I have heard, tell the spirit that
has solved this problem. Nothing permanent had been done to alleviate
distress or elevate mankind in general, until Christianity came with its
spirit of helpfulness and good will, with its recognition of the equal
value, before God and before the law, of every individual of every race.
At the time of the birth of Christ, two-thirds of the inhabitants of the
globe were slaves. It was the habit of the Roman conquerors, when they
captured a city, to carry away captive men, women, and children, and
sell them to slave dealers who always followed the army. They took them
to the markets and sold them-men, women, and children of every
race-whatever might be their culture and learning and position and
refinement.
During the reign of the Caesars the conquests of Rome became so
frequent, and the accumulation of slaves was so great, that in the
island of Sicily cultivated young men and young women were sold for
twenty-five cents apiece, branded with a hot iron on forehead and check
and sent on the plantations, where their average length of life after
they got there was one month. Nobody cared; it being. cheaper to work
them to death and buy others than to feed them and take care of them. In
one of your songs here to-day you have sung how Christ,
King of kings, Lord of lords,
Broke the Roman Kingdom down.
That is the whole secret and the whole history of our Christian
civilization. It has taken two thousand years, but the accumulated
superstition and jealousy of ages had to be overcome.
We in America had slavery imposed upon us, and it cost millions of
lives and thousands of millions of dollars to get rid of it. When
America did get rid of it, then it speedily ceased throughout the
civilized world; and now there is no civilized nation where slavery
exists. The civilized nations of the world send out their navies to
prevent the slaver from reaching port. Civilized nations combine to
stamp out this evil where it still exists in Asia and Africa.
But when the war struck the shackles from the limbs of the slave,
it left us millions of people who had not been educated to fit them for
self-government or for citizenship, or for taking care of themselves and
earning their own living. To these millions were given at once freedom
and its responsibilities the right of suffrage, and all the privileges
of full manhood and American citizenship. It was to them the most
critical period of their history. They had to show the world whether
they were worthy or unworthy of all these great privileges. The world
always moves steadily on, and never stops for anyone. If people have
capacity or disposition to move on with it, it carries them along; if
they have not the capacity or disposition to move on with it, like one
of those great steam rollers they flatten the street with, it just rolls
on, and rolls over them. Thus it became necessary for the colored people
of this country to demonstrate that they could be other than children;
to demonstrate that they had minds that could be taught; that they had
souls that could be purified and ought to be saved. It is safe to say
that, twenty-five years ago, out of fifty millions of people of this
country, not five millions believed that the colored people could be
brought to a point where they could safely be trusted with the powers of
citizenship. More than half believed that they had not minds and
intelligence to become useful, responsible, free men and women. There
was but one way to test the question. It must be tried on a plane large
enough for demonstration. It could not be decided in the country
schoolhouse with a few half-trained teachers; or in the plantation
church with a minister ignorant as his people, where white people would
come only to laugh at the show he would make of himself. The work had to
be done by the same processes that other races are tested by. How is it
proved that the white race is worthy of citizenship and the powers of
free men and women? It is done through schools where there are competent
teachers, through opportunities to learn and to demonstrate that they
are fitted for citizenship.
Twenty-two years have passed, I am told, since this experiment was
tried by General Armstrong. So it is of age. And what are the results?
The results are that hundreds of graduates have gone forth, in the same
spirit as the first apostles of Christianity; for the same purpose; each
one a beacon light of truth, intelligence, and morality, to lead their
race up to higher and better planes of living, and point out to them the
larger opportunities which had come to those who had educated minds and
trained hands, and to aid in their uplifting through teaching and
training and example to happiness in this world and eternal happiness in
the world to come. Had this experiment failed, into which General
Armstrong has put his life, twenty-five years would not have passed
before the power of the government that gave would have taken away again
every political privilege and relegated them to a position of wards and
children of this country, but children uncared for and unprotected.
The same is true in regard to the Indians. We found the Indian in
possession of the soil, and we took it away from him. We have abused him
in every possible way that an intelligent people could a wild people, by
sending agents to rob him and then soldiers to shoot him. These two
processes have been going on ever since Captain Miles Standish
inaugurated the gospel of the shotgun. But I am going to be careful not
to mention any particular shotgun, for I always get into trouble when I
mention names. I alluded to Winchester rifles in a speech once, and the
next day I received from the manufacturing company a letter and a
catalogue. I thought at least they might have sent me a gun. Another
time I alluded to the Kodak, remarking that there comes a time in every
man's life when he only has to press a button and the rest is done. A
few days after, my little boy received a Kodak. And once I had occasion
to just mention Pierce's Pellucid Pills, and I received a box by the
next mail. So now, in alluding to guns, it is the shotgun in general
that I do not believe in.
I once had the curiosity to ask General Sherman if he was the
author of the saying that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." He
said no, that Miles Standish was the author of it and he only stole it
from him, though he firmly believed in the doctrine. General Armstrong
undertook the most difficult of his problems when he attempted to prove
that the Indian could be fitted for citizenship.
The experimental period is past. We have the records of Indian
Commissioners, and of intelligent army officers that have seen the work
of returned Indian students from Hampton and Carlisle and other schools,
and it is most encouraging. The best of tests was that of the
ghost-dance craze last year, when the people were carried away by the
same sort of wave of popular sentiment, of the influence of environment,
hereditary and tribal relations, which carried thirteen States at once
into rebellion; and, with one exception caused by ties of relationship,
every single student from Hampton stood up bravely, manfully before his
people, to warn them against their insane frenzy, and the destruction
into which they were blindly rushing, and to lead them into practices
which would make them intelligent, useful, and law-abiding citizens of
the Republic.
I want to say this to all you young men and all you young women:
the only thing that succeeds in this world is work! Nobody is ever
pushed along by anyone else or by circumstances. I remember when I
started in life in a little village on the Hudson River, with some fifty
other boys of about my own age, with much the same opportunities, and
the same schooling. None of us had any money. Some of us worked, and
worked hard and cheerfully; others didn't work. Some lounged about
taverns, some played, while others worked. I look back and I count up
those who took to the taverns; every one of them is dead; they led
miserable lives; they made their wives miserable and their children
paupers, and they sank into drunkards' graves. Then, those that were
always looking for something to turn up, and never used a spade to turn
something up for themselves-every one is sitting now holding a chair
down in some corner grocery; holding it down hard, and talking about
this man and that one, who in the village or out of it has been
successful: "That man has got to be a great preacher," and "that man has
got to be a judge," and "that man has got to be a millionaire - well,
there's nothing like luck in this world." Every time I go to my native
town and go round among those fellows, they say to me: "O Chauncey!
well, there's nothing like luck in this world, and you've got it."
Yes, there is luck in this world, but nobody ever had it unless he
reached for it; unless he seized it, and with all his mind and all his
might developed his opportunity when it came. There are plenty of apples
on the trees, but it's only those fellows who make a spring and climb
for them that get them.
There's another thing I want to say to you. Every man and woman
should have an honest pride in the country, or the State, or the town he
lives in, or the institution where he was educated; an overwhelming sort
of pride, that makes him think, "There never was such a great country as
ours. Nobody has lived in such a good State or town. Nobody was ever
graduated from an institution that was quite so good as Hampton." It is
the same spirit you see above all in a Boston man. A Boston man went to
a little village once and spoke at a Sunday-school picnic. Some years
afterward he went again and spoke to the same Sunday-school. And he
said, "Oh, the last time I was here, there was such a dear little
flaxen-haired boy sat over there. He was a fine little boy, so good, so
studious; the finest little boy I ever saw. He always came to
Sunday-school, he always knew his catechism; he never was naughty?
Children, where do you suppose he is now?" "In heaven," the children all
shouted. "Oh, no, children, better than that; he is a clerk in a store
in Boston."
This is the spirit - and I want you to remember it who are
educated in Hampton school - that all young men of Yale or Harvard or
Princeton have an enormous pride in all the days of their lives. There
is nothing which causes so quick a movement of the pulse, such a rising
flood in the veins telling of joy and pride, like the mention of Yale to
a Yale man, or of Harvard to a Harvard man, or Princeton to a Princeton
man, even if he has passed the allotted age of man - threescore years
and ten. Now, I tell you there is more to be proud of in Hampton
Institute for a Hampton boy or girl than there is for a Yale or Harvard
or Princeton student in Yale or Harvard or Princeton. Why? Because the
young man of Yale or Harvard or Princeton is borne up by the whole
influence of his family and society. His family pushes him along. The
best schools educate him; so when he enters college he is fully
prepared. Eight-tenths of the prizes at those colleges are taken by
graduates of high schools are not by the graduates of magnificent
academies. If his family is poor, some church sees his talent, and puts
him through. So his whole atmosphere is an atmosphere of help and
encouragement and applause. But for the colored boy or girl, or the
Indian, there is naught of this. Their families have had no
opportunities and have no understanding of education. No school or
educated minister is behind them; no public contribution is taken up to
pay their way. They must have something in themselves which is born for
success; and when at last they have passed through the course of this
school, passed their examinations, graduated from the school and from
the manual trade shops; when at last they have their diploma - it is a
diploma that has been won by themselves, struck out of nothing, as Morse
caught the lightning from heaven. All such young men and young women,
when they look at their diploma hanging on the wall of their home,
should feel:- "I am commissioned by this school, and by all there is
behind it, to make a good name myself and accomplish something in the
world for my people. I must lead my people to higher lives. I must own
my own home; I must own my own farm; I must become a good carpenter, or
mechanic, or milliner, or housekeeper, or merchant, and be one of the
useful citizens who go to make up the life of this nation. I must teach
my people what education and religion and morality can do." And you must
learn this, that the real power and position of men or women is the
measure which the community puts upon them, according to how they live,
and think, and act, and speak.
This glorious Republic has made you free citizens, and it is the
best land in which any man or woman ever lived, the best land for which
any man or woman can live or die.
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