Part 19

A third end sought in military training is to render the soldier strong and agile, so that he can move with rapidity, sustain long marches, and handle his weapon with dexterity.

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Every consideration in feeding, clothing, sheltering, both men and animals, has but one object,--efficiency. All questions of moral duty, all ideas of the spiritual or immortal interests, are completely submerged beneath the ever-present thought of material force. Power must be had by men, horses, machinery; power, aggressive power, is the all-pervading and all-controlling thought of the army.

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An army is properly an incarnation of the fiend of destruction. Every part of its legitimate work is to destroy. If it constructs bridges and builds roads, erects forts and digs trenches, these are all that it may destroy, or prevent some other incarnation from destroying _it_. Armies lay waste and destroy. Cornfields, orchards, lawns, life, and treasure are all prey for the voracious destroyer.

The motive employed in bringing the soldier to the high state of excellence here described is always that of duty. The word "duty" is very prominent and very full of meaning in the army. Military duty is made a moral obligation founded upon patriotism. This sentiment of duty is the moral force in the army that gives dignity to its obedience. The army develops, strengthens, and educates this _sense of duty_, until it becomes supreme. It is this _sense of duty_ which produces endurance to undergo privations, and leads men to be patient under the greatest sacrifices. The physical force which we see in the army depends upon the moral or spiritual which we do not see.

The whole life of the army, its very soul, the breath which animates its every part, is _preparation for war_. To be _ready for war_ is the supreme end toward which all its efforts tend. The mechanical parts of the work are so numerous and various that I can barely outline them here. There are those exercises which conduce to health and vigor, known as the setting-up drill. These exercises correct the form of the body and transform the recruit into a soldier. The constant drills all have their effect upon the bearing and gait of the men. The extensive system of calisthenics gives to the body suppleness. All this work is done under direction, so that obedience and discipline are taught at the same time with physical culture. Apart from these exercises are _voluntary athletics_, which are greatly encouraged. It is believed that athletic exercises, by bettering the bodies of the men, better also their minds; that, for the welfare of the army, these exercises rank next to training in shooting. I know you will take pride in the fact that the black soldiers, both of infantry and cavalry, occupy a place in the very front rank in all these manly exercises. They are equal to America's best on the drillground, on the athletic grounds, and on the field of bloody strife.

The practise of cleanliness is enjoined all the time, along with these exercises. The soldier is taught how to make his bed and to put all his effects in order, and is then compelled to do it; and thus there is established within him a love of order. Punctuality, cleanliness, and order are the soldier's three graces. The hygiene of his body, care of his arms and equipments, respect for his uniform, are driven into his inmost soul. Our regiment lived in the midst of cholera, without suffering from the disease. Hence the army is a great object-lesson of what care and training can make of men.

But the army in our Republic is of far greater value in a moral sense than in a physical sense. In these days when authority is departing from the home, the church, and the school, it is well that it can find refuge somewhere in the country. The working of the army rests entirely upon authority. One single will pervades every part of it, although this will is participated in by thousands. Every subordinate is independent within limits; but one general will controls all. Respect for authority is enforced, and thus taught, not in theory alone, but by practice. The corporal is not the same as a private. The man who holds a commission from the President represents the high authority of the Republic; and the true soldier yields him both obedience and respect. Everywhere the soldier is taught obedience to law. After all that I have said, it is scarcely necessary to emphasize the fact that the soldier's obedience becomes voluntary, and that he takes pride in his profession. Hence the army is a body of men, not moving according to their own wills, not a deliberative assembly, but a purely executive body, the incarnation of law and of force. It is silent, but powerful. It does not talk, but acts; army spells action.

The men who are trained in our Army are not likely to become members of the lawless element. They have learned too well the lessons of order and the necessity of subordination. The attitude of the Army upon the vexed race question is better than that of any other secular institution of our country. When the Fifth Army Corps returned from Cuba and went into camp at Montauk Point, broken down as it was by a short but severe campaign, it gave to the country a fine exhibition of the moral effects of military training. There was seen the broadest comradeship. The four black regiments were there, and cordially welcomed by their companions in arms. In the maneuvers at Fort Riley, no infantry regiment on the ground was more popular than the 25th; and in contests the men of the 25th proved their mettle by carrying off nearly every medal and trophy in sight.

"Perhaps the most notable series of events, in the light of the popular notion of Negro inferiority, were the athletic sports. The first of these was the baseball game for the championship of the Department of the Missouri and a silk banner. This contest had gone through the several organizations, and was finally narrowed down to the 10th Cavalry and the 25th Infantry. On October 27th, which was set apart as a field day for athletic sports, the officers of the encampment, many women and civilians, as well as the soldiers of the regular Army present, assembled on the athletic grounds at 10.30 A. M. to witness the game. A most interesting and thoroughly scientific game was played, the 25th winning in the eleventh inning by a score of 4 to 3. The banner would have gone to colored soldiers in either case."

We must not expect too much of the army. It is not a church, not a Sunday-school, not a missionary society. Its code of morals is very short, very narrow, but it enforces what it has. Its commandments are:

1. Thou shalt not fail to obey thy superior officer. 2. Thou shalt not miss any calls sounded out by the trumpeter. 3. Thou shalt not appear at inspection with anything out of order in thy person, clothing, or equipment. 4. Thou shalt not lie. 5. Thou shalt not steal. 6. Thou shalt not leave the post or garrison without permission.

I would say, further, that warfare now requires so much from the man who carries it on, that it is impossible to unite the general and the statesman in one person. The army must be purely executive, carrying out the mandates of the State. The moral and political questions must be resolved by men of other professions. The soldier has all that he can do to attend to the exigencies of the battle.

The Army of our Republic has a great moral mission which it is performing almost unconsciously. It is a most influential witness against lawlessness. By its own perfect order and obedience to discipline it gives the force of a powerful example in favor of loyalty to the Republic and respect for the laws. The best school of loyalty in the land is the army. Every evening in the camp, to see ten thousand men stand in respectful attention to our song to the national banner is a lesson of great moral force. In still another sense our Army is also a great moral force. When men see what a terrific engine of destruction it is, the good people rejoice because they know this engine is in safe hands; and the evil-disposed look on and are enlightened. Fierce anarchists will stop to count ten, at least, before they begin their attack upon the government.

Lastly, the Army, by the very aristocracy of its constitution, contributes much to make effective the doctrines of equality. The black soldier and the white soldier carry the same arms, eat the same rations, serve under the same laws, participate in the same experience, wear the same uniforms, are nursed in the same hospitals, and buried in the same cemeteries. The Roman Catholic Church, by its priestly aristocracy, has always been a bulwark against caste. So, in the same manner, the Army of our Republic, by its aristocracy of commission, has proven itself the most effectual barrier against the inundating waves of race discrimination that the country has as yet produced.

THE SUNDAY-SCHOOL AND CHURCH AS A SOLUTION OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM[35]

BY D. WEBSTER DAVIS, D. D.

_of Richmond, Virginia_

[Note 35: Delivered at the International, Interdenominational Sunday-school Convention, Massey Hall, Toronto, Canada, June 27, 1905.]

If I were asked to name the most wonderful and far-reaching achievement of the splendid, all-conquering Anglo-Saxon race, I would ignore the Pass of Thermopylæ, the immortal six hundred at Balaklava, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Quebec, Bunker Hill, Yorktown, and Appomattox; I would forget its marvelous accumulations of wealth; its additions to the literature of the world, and point to the single fact that it has done the most to spread the religion of Jesus Christ, as the greatest thing it has accomplished for the betterment of the human family.

The Jews preserved the idea of a one God, and gave the ethics to religion--the ten commandements, the Lord's Prayer, and the Sermon on the Mount; the Greeks contributed philosophy; the Romans, polity; the Teutons, liberty and breadth of thought; but it remained to the Anglo-Saxon implicitly to obey the divine command: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."

If some man would ask me the one act on the part of my own race that gives to me the greatest hope for the Negro's ultimate elevation to the heights of civilization and culture, I would not revel in ancient lore to prove them the pioneers in civilization, nor would I point to their marvelous progress since Emancipation that has surprised their most sanguine friends, but I would take the single idea of their unquestioned acceptance of the dogmas and tenets of the Christian religion as promulgated by the Anglo-Saxon, as the highest evidence of the future possibilities of the race.

Ours was indeed a wonderful faith that overleaped the barriers of ecclesiastical juggling to justify from Holy Writ the iniquitous traffic in human flesh and blood; forgot the glaring inconsistencies of a religion that prayed, on Sunday, "Our Father which art in heaven," and on Monday sold a brother, who, though cut in ebony, was yet the image of the Divine. The Negro had in very truth,

"That faith that would not shrink, Tho' pressed by every foe; That would not tremble on the brink Of any earthly woe. That faith that shone more bright and clear When trials reigned without; That, when in danger, knew no fear, In darkness felt no doubt."

If it is indeed true that "by faith are ye saved," not only in this world, but in the world to come, then God will vouchsafe to us a most abundant salvation.

It is my blessed privilege to-night, while you are pleading for the "Winning of a generation," and at this special session for "the relation of the Sunday-school to missions, both home and foreign," to plead for my people, and my prayer is that God may help me to make my plea effective. For the people for whom I plead are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. I plead for help for my own bright-eyed boy and girl, and for all the little black boys and girls in my far-off Southern home.

If the great race problem is to be settled (and it is a problem, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary), it is to be settled, not in blood and carnage, not by material wealth and accumulation of lands and houses, not in literary culture nor on the college campus, not in industrial education, or in the marts of trade, but by the religion of Him who said, "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me." These things are resultant factors in the problem, but the problem itself lies far deeper than these.

Calhoun is reported to have said, "If I could find a Negro who could master the Greek syntax, I would believe in his possibilities of development." A comparatively few years have passed away, and a Negro not only masters the Greek syntax, but writes a Greek grammar accepted as authority by some of the ablest scholars of the States. But Abbé Gregori of France published, in the fifteenth century, "Literature of the Negro," telling of the achievements of Negro writers, scholars, priests, philosophers, painters, and Roman prelates in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Holland, and Turkey, which prompted Blumenbach to declare it would be difficult to meet with such in the French Academy; and yet, literature and learning have not settled the problem. No, the religion of Jesus Christ is the touchstone to settle all the problems of human life. More than nineteen hundred years ago, Christ gave solution when he said, "Ye are brethern," "Love is the fulfilling of the law," and "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."

Is the Negro in any measure deserving of the help for which I plead? The universal brotherhood, and common instincts of humanity should be enough. I bring more. Othello, in speaking of Desdemona, says, "She loved me for the dangers I had passed, I loved her that she did pity me." If pity and suffering can awaken sympathy, then we boldly claim our right to the fullest measure of consideration. Two hundred and fifty years of slavery, with all its attendant evils, is one of our most potent weapons to enlist sympathy and aid.

I come with no bitterness to North or South. For slavery I acknowledge all the possible good that came to us from it; the contact with superior civilization, the knowledge of the true God, the crude preparation for citizenship, the mastery of some handicraft; yet, slavery had its side of suffering and degradation. North and South rejoice that it is gone forever, and yet, many of its evils cling to us, like the Old Man of the Sea to Sinbad the sailor, and, like Banquo's ghost, they haunt us still.

As I stand here to-night, my mind is carried back to a plantation down in "Old Virginia." It is the first day of January, 1864. Lincoln's immortal proclamation is a year old, and yet I see an aunt of mine, the unacknowledged offspring of her white master, being sent away from the old homestead to be sold. The proud Anglo-Saxon blood in her veins will assert itself as she resists with all the power of her being the attempts of the overseer to ply lash to her fair skin, and for this she must be sold "Way down Souf." I see her now as she comes down from the "Great House," chained to twelve others, to be carried to Lumpkin's jail in Richmond to be put upon the "block." She had been united to a slave of her choice some two years before, and a little innocent babe had been born to them. The husband, my mother with the babe in her arms, and other slaves watch them from the "big gate" as they come down to the road to go to their destination some twenty miles away. As she saw us, great tears welled up in her big black eyes; not a word could she utter as she looked her last sad farewell. She thought of one of the old slave-songs we used to sing in the cabin prayer-meetings at night as we turned up the pots and kettles, and filled them up with water to drown the sound. Being blessed, as is true of most of my race, with a splendid voice, she raised her eyes, and began to sing:

"Brethren, fare you well, brethren, fare you well, May God Almighty bless you until we meet again."

Singing these touching lines she passed out of sight. More than forty years have passed, and she and her loved ones have never met again, unless they have met in the Morning land, where partings are no more.

For the sufferings we have endured, leaving their traces indelibly stamped upon us, I claim your aid that we may have for our children this blessed Gospel, the panacea for all human ills.

The Negro has elements in his nature that make him peculiarly susceptible to religious training. He stands as a monument to faithfulness to humble duty, one of the highest marks of the Christ-life. He is humble and faithful, but not from cowardice, in evidence of which I recall his achievements at Boston, Bunker Hill, New Orleans, Milikens Bend, Wilson's Landing, and San Juan Hill.

He fought when a slave, some would say, from compulsion, but would he fight for love of the flag of the Union? God gave him a chance to answer the question at San Juan Hill. The story is best understood as told to me by one of the brave 9th Cavalry as he lay wounded at Old Point Comfort, Va.

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Up go the splendid Rough Riders amid shot and shell from enemies concealed in fields, trees, ditches, and the block-house on the hill. The galling fire proves too much for them and back they come. A second and third assault proves equally unavailing. They must have help. Help arrives, in the form of a colored regiment. See them as they come, black as the sable plume of midnight, yet irresistible as the terrible cyclone. As is the custom of my race under excitement of any kind, they are singing, not

"My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of Liberty, Of thee I sing,"

though fighting willingly for the land that gave them birth; not, "The Bonnie blue flag," though they were willing to die for the flag they loved; they sing a song never heard on battle-field before, "There's a hot time in the old town to-night." On they come, trampling on the dead bodies of their comrades; they climb the hill. "To the rear!" is the command. "To the front!" they cry; and leaderless, with officers far in the rear, they plant the flag on San Juan Hill, and prove to the world that Negroes can fight for love of country.

They were faithful to humble duty in the dark days of the South from 1861 to 1865. When Jefferson Davis had called for troops until he had well-nigh decimated the fair Southland, and even boys, in their devotion to the cause they loved dearly, were willing to go to the front, my young master came to my old mistress and asked to be allowed to go. Calling my Uncle Isaac, my old mistress said to him, "Isaac, go along with your young Mars Edmund, take good care of him, and bring him home to me." "I gwy do de bes I kin," was his reply. Off these two went, amid the tears of the whole plantation, and we heard no more of them for some time. One night we were startled to hear the dogs howling down in the pasture-lot, always to the Southern heart a forewarning of death. A few nights thereafter, my mother heard a tapping on the kitchen window, and, on going to the door, saw Uncle Isaac standing there--alone. "What in the world are you doing here?" was the question of my mother. "Whar's mistis'?" was the interrogative answer. My mother went to call the mistress, who, white as a sheet repeated the question. "Mistis', I done de bes' I could." Going a few paces from the door, while the soft southern moon shone pitilessly through the solemn pines, he brought the dead body of his young master and laid it tenderly at his mother's feet. He had brought his dead "massa" on his back a distance of more than twenty miles from the battle-field, thus faithfully keeping his promise. Such an act of devotion can never be forgotten while memory holds its sacred office. Not one case of nameless crime was ever heard in those days, though the flower of the womanhood of the South was left practically helpless in the hands of black men in Southern plantations.

"But as a faithful watch-dog stands and guards with jealous eye, He cared for master's wife and child, and at the door would lie, To shed his blood in their defense, 'gainst traitors, thieves, and knaves, Altho' those masters went to fight to keep them helpless slaves."

Some have claimed that, instead of putting so much money in churches, the Negro, after the war, should have built mills and factories, and thus would have advanced more rapidly in civilization; but I rejoice that he did build churches, and to-day can say that of the three hundred millions he has accumulated, more than forty millions are in church property in the sixteen Southern States. This shows his fidelity and gratitude to God, and that by intuition he had grasped the fundamental fact that faith and love and morality are greater bulwarks for the perpetuity of a nation than material wealth; that somehow he was in accord with God's holy mandate that "man does not live by bread alone." Guided by a superior wisdom, he first sought the kingdom of heaven, and it does seem that "all these things" are slowly being added to him. Education and wealth, unsanctified by the grace of God, are after all, curses rather than a blessing. We are to rise, not by our strong bodies, our intellectual powers, or material wealth, although these are necessary concomitants, but by the virtue, character, and honesty of our men and women.