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 BEING 
 
 THE ANNUAL DISCOURSE 
 
 DELIVERED AT HIE 
 
 SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 >MEBIC>N COLONIZATION, SOCIETY, 
 
 FOUNDRY METHODIST E. CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 Sunday, January 13, 1884. 
 
 REV. OTIS H. TIFFANY, D. D. 
 
 Published by Request of thc- 
 
 washington city: 
 Colonization Building, 450 Pennsylvania Avenue, 
 
 1884. 
 
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 THE ANNUAL DISCOURSE. 
 
 DKLIVKKED AT THE 
 
 SIXTY-SEVENTH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 JIMERIC>N COLONIZATION SOCIETY, 
 
 HELD IN 
 
 FOUNDRY METHODIST E. CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 Sunday. January 13, 1884. 
 
 REV. OTIS H. TIFFANY, D. D,- 
 
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 Published, by Request of the Society 
 
 WASHING rON C] iv : 
 
 Colonization Buiuhnu, 450 Pennsylvania Avenue, 
 
 1884. 
 
LETTERS. 
 
 Colonization Rooms. 
 
 Washington, D. C, January, ij, 1884. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 At the Annual Meeting of the American Colonization Society 
 held on the 15th inst.,the following resolution was unanimously 
 adopted: — 
 
 " Resolved: That the siticere ihaiiks of the Society be tendered to the Rev. 
 Otis H. Tiffa?iy, D. D.,for his able, eloquent and appropri- 
 ate Discourse delivered at our Sixty-Seventh Anniversary, and 
 that a copy of it be requested for publication." 
 Cordially uniting in the Society s expression of gratitude and 
 appreciation, and looking for an early compliance with its request \ 
 .believe me, 
 
 Truly, and with great respect and esteem, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 WM. COPPINGER, Secretary. 
 Rev. Otis H. Tiffany, D. D., 
 New York. 
 
 New York, January 21, 1884. 
 Dear Sir: 
 
 I am in receipt of your favor of ijth inst., announcing the ac- 
 tion of the Society at its Annual Meeting and requesting a copy of 
 the Address delivered at the 67th Anniversary. 
 
 I highly appreciate the compliment thus paid me, but reluctantly 
 
 yield to the request to print because my effort was but very little ?nore 
 
 than a gathering of materials for information from others a?id had 
 
 so little of original suggestion. If, however, it may be thus accepted 
 
 it is at your service. 
 
 Very respectfully, 
 
 O. H. TIFFANY. 
 Mr. William Coppinger, 
 
 Sec : Am ; Colonization Society, 
 
 Washington, D. C. ^ 
 
 \ 
 
Africa for Africans. 
 
 DISCOURSE 
 
 Mr. President :— 
 
 My earliest recollections are connected with the American Colo- 
 nization Society. I remember, with interest, that when a mere 
 child, there came to our home in Baltimore, as a present from a 
 Western merchant, a slave boy. My father's conscientious convic- 
 tions would not permit him to own a slave ; the peculiarities of the 
 boy made it undesirable that he should be a citizen at large ; and, 
 consequently, he became one of the first who went out to the Liberia 
 Colony. Occasional reports from him, and visits from those who 
 voyaged between this country and Liberia, kept the Society in constant 
 recollection, and have largely been the occasion of the personal inter- 
 est I have taken in its history and success. These things happened 
 about the time when the Colonization Society was being assailed and 
 denounced by those who were termed " Abolitionists" in this country. 
 And though it was constantly asserted ; " The Colonization Society is 
 not a Missionary Society, nor a Society for the suppression of the slave 
 trade, nor a Society for the improvement of the blacks, nor a Society for 
 the abolition of slavery: it is simply a Society for the establishment 
 of a colony on the coast of Africa," yet it attracted to itself the 
 scorn and invective of many who were engaged in the anti- slavery 
 reformation. According to his biographer, it was about this period 
 that Mr. Garrison returned to this country from England, bringing 
 with him a protest against the colonization scheme, signed by such 
 men as Wilberforce, Macaulay, Buxton, and O'Connell. In the 
 days of which I am speaking, the Colonization Society was complete- 
 ly misunderstood both in its attitude and its -aims — so completely 
 that many persons could rejoice in hearing of the prayer of " Father 
 Snowdon," as he was called, a Negro preacher of Boston, who, in his 
 fervent and earnest utterances, prayed : " Oh God, we pray Thee that 
 that seven-headed and ten-horned monster, the Colonization Society, 
 may be smitten through and through with the fiery darts of truth, 
 and tormented as the whale between the sword fish and the thrasher." 
 
 Originating in a most benevolent purpose, the Society has done 
 great good in its long period of service. For sixty-three years it has 
 
given continuous aid to the emigration of persons of the colored race 
 to Africa, the whole number thus going to Liberia being 15.655. Be- 
 sides this, 5,722 recaptured Africans were, through the efforts of the 
 Society, enabled to settle in Liberia, making 21,377 persons to whom 
 the Society has afforded homes in Africa. One hundred and seventy- 
 eight voyages of emigrants have been made without wreck or loss of 
 life, and the movement iscontinuous, notwithstandingthe bettered con- 
 dition of the colored people in this country as the result of the acts 
 of emancipation, Liberia, indeed, is now more promising and pros- 
 perous than it ever has been. The general advance in the condition 
 of the population has been notable and marked. President Gardner, 
 in his last Annual Message, said : " We have been blessed r 
 during the year, with health throughout our communities, and the 
 earth has yielded more than her usual supplies. The rice crop has 
 been abundant, and the coffee trees have also afforded an unusual 
 yield. There has been a manifest improvement in our relations with 
 the Aborigines. Roads long closed have been opened. The na- 
 tive wars which have been going on in the vicinity of Cape Mount 
 have nearly ceased. These piratical wars are for the most part the 
 result of long-standing feuds arising from the horrible siave trade, 
 and they will be effectually suppressed by the progress of civilization, 
 and the increase of wealth among the people. Friendly communications 
 continue between this country and Ibrahimi Sissi, King of Medina^ 
 who has been assiduous in his efforts to open the road for trade." 
 
 So that the Republic of Liberia stands before the world an em- 
 bodiment and realization of the dreams of its founders. 
 
 Very early in the history of this country, the condition of the 
 free blacks awakened anxiety and caused discussion as to measures 
 of safety and relief. The earliest movement of which I have knowl- 
 edge was made in 1777, by a discussion in the Legislature of the State 
 of Virginia. Subsequently, when Mr. Monroe was Governor <>f that 
 State, he was instructed to enter into correspondence with President 
 Jefferson upon the means of procuring an asylum for the free blacks 
 beyond the limits of the United States. President Jefferson, approv- 
 ing the suggestion, instructed Mr. King, then representing this Gov- 
 ernment in Great Britain, to attempt a negotiation with a company 
 which had effected a settlement in Sierra Leone; but the effort was 
 without practical results. Subsequently a proposition was made to 
 secure from the Portuguese a location in South America. The Gen- 
 eral Assembly of Virginia in 1816 embodied the facts of their pre- 
 vious efforts and their judgment of what ought to be the future effort 
 in this direction, in a preamble and resolution, setting forth the fact 
 that the efforts hitherto made had been frustrated, and that a loca- 
 
tion ought to be obtained " upon the coast of Africa, or upon the 
 shore of the North Pacific, or at some other place not within any of 
 the United States, or under the control of the Government of the United 
 States, to serve as an asylum for such persons of color as now are 
 free and may desire the same, and for those who may hereafter be 
 emancipated within the limits of this Commonwealth." In 1825, Mr- 
 Tucker, a Senator from Virginia, offered in the United States Sen- 
 ate a resolution, the object of which was to ascertain through the 
 War Department the probable expense of extinguishing the Indian 
 title " to a portion of the country lying west of the Rocky Mountains 
 that may be suitable for colonizing the free people of color." It will 
 thus appear that the State of Virginia was the first to move in the 
 •direction of the work which the Society has been accomplishing. 
 Two years after Virginia, action was taken by the States of Maryland 
 and Tennessee ; in 1824 formal action was taken by the States of Ohio 
 and Connecticut, in 1827 by the State of Kentucky, and subsequently 
 thereto by almost all the States. In place of the results thus antici- 
 pated and desired, and expected to be reached by the action of Gov- 
 ernment, the Republic of Liberia was founded by Negroes from the 
 United States without government aid or authority. The eighty- 
 eight persons who sailed from New York in 1820, and who landed 
 first at the British colony of Sierra Leone, dissatisfied with the open- 
 ing there, sailed South until they succeeded in getting a foothold 
 260 miles southeast of Sierra Leone, and there acquired territory by 
 treaty and by purchase. 
 
 Up to 1847, the American Colonization Society fostered them, 
 and appointed their Governors. In that year they declared them- 
 selves free and independent. Great Britain was the first to acknowl- 
 edge them, and she was soon followed by the other European Pow- 
 ers. Our Government did not recognize the independence of Liberia 
 until 1862, though for many years previously a commercial agency 
 had been established there. By such slow and halting steps have we 
 advanced in the payment of our indebtedness to a land that in all 
 periods of history has attracted the attention of the world. 
 
 From the earliest times there has been a fascination in its story- 
 Its mysterious river, mysterious both in its source and its overflow 
 has associations which carry us to the beginnings of all human histo- 
 ry. On its banks, in the sepulchres of forgotten kings, stand the 
 proudest monuments of human vanity. There the sphynx. "grand in 
 loneliness, imposing in magnitude, impressive in the mystery that 
 hangs over its story." still sits gazing over and beyond the present 
 far into the past, sole remnant of empires whose creation and de- 
 struction it has witnessed, of nations whose birth, progress and decay 
 
it has noticed in five thousand slow revolving years. This interest 
 continues all through the period of the lsraelitish captivity down to 
 the time when hungry nations were fed by its harvests, and its fields 
 were the graneries of Ancient Rome. These waters have flashed 
 with light under the oars of the galleys of Sesostris, and reflected a 
 marvelous beauty from the barges of Cleopatra. The effort to trace 
 their sources has brought Egypt on the North into commercial rela- 
 tions with the dwellers in the centre of the great Continent, and thus 
 those we have deemed so different a people have their links binding 
 them to the dwellers in the interior, and there mingles with our feel- 
 ing of veneration a sense of indebtedness well expressed by Sir Henry 
 Rawlinson, who says: "For the last three thousand years the world 
 has been mainly indebted for its advancement to the Semitic and 
 Indo-European races ; but it was otherwise in the first ages. Egypt 
 and Babylon, Menes and Nimrod — both descendants of Ham — led the 
 way and acted as pioneers of mankind, in treading the fields of art, 
 literature and science. Alphabetic writing, astronomy, history, chrono- 
 logy, architecture, plastic art, sculpture, navigation, crockery: textile in- 
 dustries, seem, all of them, to have had their, origin in one or other of 
 these countries. The beginnings may have been humble enough. We 
 may laugh at the rude picture writing, the uncouth brick pyramid, the 
 coarse fabric, the homely and illshapen instruments, as they present 
 themselves to our notice in the remains of these ancient nations; 
 but they are really worthier of our admiration than our ridicule. 
 The inventors of any art are among the greatest benefactors of their 
 race, and mankind at the present day lies under infinite obligations 
 to the genius of these early ages." 
 
 We know well that "there was a time when the whole of 
 the northern belt of Africa was bright with Christian light ; when 
 Cyprian and Augustine knelt and prayed and wept and suffered and 
 ruled in the Churches there. There was a time, when with the Church's 
 rule, temporal prosperity abounded ; when that part of North Africa 
 almost rivalled Italy in being the great granery and store-house of the 
 world ; when its rich fields, its abundant pastures, its beautiful woods, 
 furnished the mistress of the world all that she needed for her pomp 
 and luxury." 
 
 Even Central Africa boasted of its antiquity, and if the legends 
 tell the truth, when "Orpheus was charming the forests into life, and 
 Hesiod was tracing the genealogies of the gods, and weaving nature 
 and time into song, and Homer was singing the wars of the Greeks 
 and the wanderings of Ulysses, then the bards of Nigretia were celebrat- 
 ing the exploits of their heroes and publishing the records of their 
 renown in the ears of listening kings and admiring nations." 
 
7 
 
 Africa is to-day the object of more interest on the part of a larger 
 number of people than any other quarter of the globe. England, 
 France, Portugal, Germany and Italy are attempting to obtain titles 
 to the country. England has made annexation of the coast lying ad- 
 jacent to her colony of Sierra Leone; France is forcing her way on 
 the Senegal and toward the head-waters of the Niger : she thieatens 
 to annex the coast from the Gaboon to the Congo, some 250 
 miles, and is running her lines on the Upper Congo. Her Chamber 
 of Deputies has granted the De Brazza Mission, by a vote of 449 to 3, 
 a credit of a million and a quarter of francs. The Portuguese Gov- 
 ernment has appointed explorers and examined the Congo country^ 
 and assumes to exercise control over all the territory at the mouth of 
 the Congo. The German Reichstag has increased its annual appro- 
 priation for the exploration of Africa. Italy has despatched a party 
 to Abyssinia for geographical and mercantile purposes. She has also 
 concluded treaties which promise to make Assab a centre of com- 
 merce. The Sultan of Morocco has authorized Spain to take possess- 
 ion of Santa Cruz del Mar, and the Sultan of Zanzibar has purchased 
 six superior steamers to constitute a regular coast service, in the in- 
 terest of commerce and for the suppression of the slave trade. The 
 International African Association, which owes its origin to the phi- 
 lanthropic initiative of Leopold II, King of the Belgians, has received 
 large subscriptions and pushed forward exploring expeditions to start 
 and equip the line of hospitable and scientific stations which are to 
 bound the East and West coast, and form a civilizing girdle around 
 Central Africa. And the results following the explorations of Living- 
 stone and Stanley and De Brazza are attracting the attention of the 
 civilized world. What was a " Dark Continent," by the indomitable 
 energy of these explorers seems likely to prove the richest quarter of 
 the globe. Not only does the land produce, with slight persuasion 
 of tillage, admirable crops of cotton and coffee, but the soil is rich in 
 diamonds on its southern coast, and in iron on its northern. Cap- 
 tain Burton has asserted that he knows nothing to equal the pro- 
 digeous wealth of the land, even in California, or in t4ie Brazils. 
 "Gold dust is panned by native women from the sands of the sea 
 shore. Gold spangles glitter after showers in the streets of Axim. 
 Gold is yielded by the lumps of yellow swish that rivet the watte! walls 
 of hut and hovel." 
 
 The capitalists of the world are alive to its wonderous possibili- 
 ties. The President of the United States, rightly estimating the 
 magnitude of the political and commercial questions centering about 
 the Congo, said in his recent mssage : "The rich and populous valley 
 of the Congo is being opened to commerce by the Society called 
 
8 
 
 • The International African Association,' of which the King of the 
 Belgians is the President, and a citizen of the United States the chief 
 executive officer. Large tracts of territory have been ceded to the 
 Society by the native chiefs, roads have been opened, steamboats 
 placed on the river, and the nucleus of States established at twenty-two 
 stations, under one flag. The objects of the Society are philanthropic. 
 It does not aim at permanent political control, but seeks the neutrality 
 of the valley. The United States cannot be indifferent to this work or 
 to the inter ests of their citizens involved in it. It may become advisable 
 for us to co-operate with other commercial powers in promoting the 
 rights of trade and residence in the Congo Valley free from the 
 interference or political control of any nation." 
 
 While these topics are all of general interest, the maintenance and 
 development and strengthening of the State of Liberia, which came 
 into existence under the fostering care of this Society, demands our 
 special attention ; and it becomes us to ascertain, if it be possible, by 
 what process the Liberian Republic can be made sure and its influ- 
 ence widened, so that not only its present inhabitants may remain in 
 safety with the opportunities of advancing commerce and increasing 
 civilization, but may continuously in all the future, furnish an asylum 
 for the oppressed and a home for the exile. She has now reached a 
 period in her history when she seems able to bear and sorely to need 
 an influx of enlightened descendants of African parentage from the 
 land of their exile. An important addition to the population is de- 
 manded, if she is to extend her influence and push her free institu- 
 tions and hold her own against the encroachments of foreigners. 
 The natives in the interior seem to be anxious for the planting of 
 •civilized settlements on their hills and in their valleys. Their charac- 
 teristics seem to have been misunderstood. Stanley, in a private let- 
 ter written in July of last year, goes on to say that those whom, in his 
 book "Across the Dark Continent'" he called the "infuriates of 
 Arebu " appealed to him to stop an internecine war, submitted to his 
 arbitration, and paid the fine he imposed. 
 
 These facts and others to which attention has been called, give to 
 the suggestions of President Gardner, in his last Message to the Sen- 
 ate and House of Representatives of Liberia, an increased weight and 
 importance. He says : 
 
 'The importance of increasing our friendly intercourse with the 
 powerful tribes of the country is a matter that cannot claim too much 
 of our attention. So important do I regard our relation to these our 
 brethren, and so desirous am I of seeing this vast aboriginal popula- 
 tion share with us the rights, the privileges, and the joys of civiliza- 
 
tion and a Christian government, thus giving permanency to the 
 republican institutions on our coast, that I consider it really the great- 
 est work of Liberia at present to pursue such a policy as will cement 
 into one mass the many tribes about us, and bring them under the 
 moulding influence of our laws and religion." 
 
 In this suggestion there is practical wisdom, and it seems to me 
 that the permanency and quiet of Liberia depend upon wisely adopt- 
 ing such a policy. The late Lord Bishop of London, in speaking, in 
 1858, of the disasters which overtook the Christian Church in North- 
 ern Africa, attributes them to the fact that that Northern belt of 
 Africa was content to be a belt. " She thought that the light of the 
 Gospel had been given to her for herself instead of for others; she 
 did not understand the great benefit which would come back to her 
 as the inevitable reaction of aggressive movement. She stood on the 
 border of the desert and made no sign to the heathen around her, 
 and did not try to gather them in. She was content to be an Italian 
 offshoot, instead of striving to become a living branch. Making no 
 effort there was no reaction, no growth, no development. A wall of 
 darkness hid the light of Christian truth ; a wall of barbarism lay be- 
 yond the district of civilization, which Christianity had so abundantly 
 watered. The earthquake began to heave the land ; there was dark- 
 ness overhead ; there were rumblings beneath ; the people were terri- 
 fied, but did not heed the lesson. They went on in their dream of 
 having a church for themselves, and their religion for themselves' 
 never seeing or knowing that they were to receive by imparting, and 
 to grow bv the reaction of their own activities. The danger thick- 
 ened, the day darkened, and so when the Mohammedans swept 
 as God's avengers over the land, this neglect became the instrument 
 of vengeance. They had no one to fall back on ; there was no gather- 
 ing of nations or 01 tribes, who, converted by their teachings, might 
 have checked the Mohammedan invasion. The wave of invasion 
 rolled on ; church after church was uprooted, city after city was de- 
 stroyed, until the light of the Cross was hid, and the Crescent alone 
 was triumphant. The failure to develop strength became weakness ; 
 the attempt to confine the light occasioned darkness, and so great 
 has been the darkness, that for centuries they have had no Christianity 
 except as it has been carried to them by the missionary zeal of others." 
 
 If Liberia is to maintain the foothold she has gained, and to de- 
 velop into a commercial State, it must be more than a mere strip of 
 sea-border. It must send back its arms of influence, and its reaches 
 of authority toward the interior, where, by mingling with the native 
 tribes and exhibiting to them the superiority of Christian civilization, 
 
IO 
 
 they may be attached as friends and be connected as allies; and thus 
 the movement for a State may become the occasion for a religion, 
 and commerce and friendly intercourse, which are essential for pro- 
 tection, may open the way for the enlargement of religious principles, 
 and the development of eternal hopes. 
 
 An officer of this Society, in a recent publication, has announced 
 Africa to be a virgin market, saying "that religion and philanthropy 
 have something to do with the interest that the European world has 
 of late years taken in the exploration of Africa, is unquestionable. 
 That Continent may now be regarded as the only virgin market of 
 any extent remaining for the rapidly increasing surplus everywhere 
 of manufacturing industry. If the United States do not at present 
 feel the want of such a market as much as other nations, the time will 
 come when they will no longer have the advantage of England and 
 France and Germany in this respect ; and they should not forget that 
 they have a foothold in Africa which no other nation enjoys. From 
 the mouth of the Mediterranean southward to the English settlement 
 at the Cape of Good Hope, there is no one spot that offers greater 
 facilities for introducing trade and commerce into the interior of the 
 Continent than Liberia. Slowly, but steadily and surely, a nation is 
 growing up there, whose sympathies, if we retain them, will give 
 us practically the benefit of a colony, without the responsibilities of a 
 colonial system — a nation that at the end of 63 years is further ad- 
 vanced than were many, if not all the colonies of America, after the 
 same lapse of time. Surely such a nation is not to be regarded with, 
 indifference, but may be considered as no unimportant factor in the 
 commercial and manufacturing future of the United States, to say 
 nothing of its peculiar fitness for conferring upon Africa the benefits 
 of Christian civilization." 
 
 Professor Blyden, the able President of the College of Liberia, 
 said, in his Address last year, "People who talk of the civilizing in- 
 fluence of mere trade on that Continent, do so because they are unac- 
 quainted with the facts ; nor can missionaries alone do the work. 
 •We do not object to trade, and we would give every possible encour- 
 agement to the noble efforts of the missionaries. We would open 
 the country everywhere to commercial intercourse; we would give 
 everywhere hospitable access to traders. Place your trade factories 
 at every prominent point along the coast, and even let them be 
 planted on the banks of the rivers ; let them draw the rich products 
 from remote districts. We would say also, send the missionary to 
 every tribe and every village; multiply throughout the country the 
 evangelizing agencies ; line the banks of the rivers with preachers of 
 
T I 
 
 righteousness — penetrate the jungles with those holy pioneers — crown 
 the mountain tops with yonr churches, and fill the valleys with your 
 schools. No single agency is sufficient to cope with the multifarious 
 needs of the mighty work. But the indispensable agency is the colony. 
 Groups of Christian and civilized settlements must in every instance 
 bring up the rear if the results of that work are to be widespread, 
 beneficial and endunng." 
 
 It is depressing to have to feel that notwithstanding all that has 
 been done by missionary effort, but limited success has attended 
 Christian endeavor. Bishop Nicholson has asserted: "That the Ro- 
 man Catholic Missionaries tried it for 214 years, and have not left a 
 vest age of their influence behind; that the Moravians, beginning in 
 1736, tried it for 34 years, making five attempts, at a cost of 11 lives, 
 and did nothing: Englishmen tried it in 1792, with a loss of a hundred 
 lives in two years; the London, Edinboro' and Glasgow Societies 
 tried it in 1797, but their stations were extinguished in three years, 
 and five or six missionaries died. Many other missionary attempts 
 were made before the settlement of Liberia, all of which failed. Sev- 
 eral Protestant missions tnere have done a good work, but it has been 
 at a cost of many lives. White men cannot live and labor there" 
 
 And yet in many parts of the country there have been partial 
 successes. The mixed and difficult problems which have embarrassed 
 the missionary work in the interior lake country have been apparently 
 solved. The successes have been purchased, however, at a sacrifice 
 of health and life, as well as by the endurance of toil and privation. 
 Sixteen years ago heathenism and barbarism prevailed in the Niger 
 Mission, where now 4,000 are under Christian instruction, and where 
 a king has ordered his people to observe the Sabbath. Steamers 
 have been built in Europe for the express purpose of carrying the glad 
 tidings, and are now sailing on he rivers Niger, Congo and Zambezi 
 and lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika. American missions have been 
 planted and earnestly prosecuted by the American Board, by the 
 Presbyterian Board, and by the Protestant Episcopal Board, as well 
 as by the Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church. A Methodist 
 Church was formed on board ship in the first company of Liberian 
 emigrants who sailed in 1820, of which David Coker was pastor. 
 In 1824 the Missionary Board proposed to send a white missionary 
 when a suitable person should be found. In 1832 Melville B. 
 Cox was appointed to the work. He was filled with missionary 
 zeal. He said, "It is the height of my ambition and highest 
 vision of my life to lay my bones in the soil of Africa, It" 1 can 
 only do this, I will establish a connection between Africa and the 
 Church at home that shall never be broken till Africa is redeemed." 
 Arriving at Monrovia March, [833, he entered vigorously upon his 
 
12 
 
 work i;i regulating the existing Methodist Church according to the 
 Discipline, in establishing Sunday-schools, and planning additional 
 mission stations. He perished of the fever July 21st, of the same year. 
 Twenty lie beside him in the little missionary burying ground at 
 Monrovia. Since then others have been sent out, and two Episcopal 
 visits of supervision have been made. Bishop Scott going in 1853, 
 and Bishop Gilbert Haven in 1876. Good has no doubt been accom- 
 plished, but the work has grown slowly. Many heroic lives have 
 been sacrificed, and much money has been expended in it, and the re- 
 sults are not encouraging. — (.lf/ss. Report, M. E. CJi.) 
 
 The Missionary Bishop of Cape Palrnas, writes: "Four out 
 of seven of the white missionaries in this jurisdiction will return 
 to America for their health this year. Whi f e men must grow 
 fewer and fewer in proportion to the workers from among the Ne- 
 gro brethren, until the whole shall be turned over to the people 
 whose home is here." " We cannot count on more than three years in 
 the field of every four of the white missionary's term of service, and of 
 these three years there are large deductions to be made of the time 
 one is sick here." 
 
 The difficulty largely lies in the fact of the unhealthfulness of the 
 climate. The excessive luxury of the vegetation along the river 
 banks raises them above their proper level, and cuts of drainage from 
 the plains; and this must probably always be, necessarily preventing 
 the doing of this work by white men. But it is a work that must be 
 done. The Spring Hill Baptist Association of Alabama, ( colored,) 
 has said, "To remain dormant and leave it for God to use other means 
 and others as agents in the evangelization of Africa is to be in every 
 manner possible criminal, and wholly recreant to the most sacred 
 trust committed to our car^." Also, the same Association calls 
 attention to the fact that God always redeems a people by mem- 
 bers of the people to be redeemed. When He would emancipate the 
 Jews, Moses is selected; and all through history this truth stands out 
 most prominently. Ethiopia will never stretch out ner hands to God 
 until Ethiopians shall have been used as agents. " Africa is to be re- 
 deemed through the instrumentality of Africans." 
 
 Rev. Dr. Henry M. Turner, of the African Methodist Episcopal 
 Church, says, through the Christian Recorder : 
 
 " There never was a time when the colored people were more con- 
 cerned about Africa in every respect than at the present time. In all 
 portions of the country it is the topic of conversation ; " and he he- 
 lieves "that if a line of steamers were started from New Orleans, Sa- 
 vannah, or Charleston, they would be crowded to density every trip 
 they made to Africa. There is a general unrest and a wholesome 
 dissatisfaction among our people, in a broad section of the land, to 
 
*3 
 
 my certain knowledge, and they sigh for conveyances to and from the 
 Continent of Africa. Something has to be done." And this feeling 
 seems to attach itself to the American character. The yearning for 
 home would seem to have outlasted all the years of exile, and the ex- 
 actions of bondage. For if Bishop Turner is not mistaken, the same 
 traits are exhibited now and here as were observed by Mungo Park 
 in his early visits. "The poor Negro," he says, "feels the desire in 
 its full force. No water is sweet to him but what is drawn from his 
 own well, and no tree has so cool and pleasant a shade as the Tabba 
 tree of his own hamlet. When war compels him to leave the delight- 
 ful spot where he first drew breath, and seek safety in some other 
 country, the time is spent in talking of the land of his ancestors, and 
 no sooner is peace restored than he turns his back on the strangers, 
 and hastens to rebuild his fallen walls, and exults to see the smoke 
 arising from his native village." 
 
 It may be that even the harsh rigors of slavery and the effects of 
 a protracted bondage have not obliterated from the minds of the de- 
 scendants of Africans the feelings which were instinct in their fa- 
 thers ; and if, having acquired freedom, they shall use that freedom 
 in acquiring citizenship in the land of their fathers, the skies will smile 
 above them more sweetly there than they can here, and the soil of 
 Africa shall be to them a sacred soil. There they may lay the founda- 
 tion of an empire in silence and in peace, and in far distant ages it 
 may stand amid the gloom of tnat now desolate Continent a lighthouse 
 of cheer and beneficence, a monument of praise immortal and beauti- 
 ful as the stars. 
 
 If the Republic can be strengthened by reciprocated fraternity 
 with the tribes and nations that are about it, and if it be maintained 
 in purity and in enlightenment by Christian doctrine and by Christian 
 sentiment, it may be in all the future an asylum where he who has 
 wandered and wept from his childhood may again exult in the smoke 
 of his village; and again — 
 
 " Shall drink at noon 
 The palm's rich nectar, ami lie down at eve 
 In tin- green pastures of remembered days, 
 
 And v\akc to wander and to weep no more 
 
 On Congo's mountain coast, or Gambia's golden short-." 
 
 It seems to me that we are called to renewed activity by these 
 considerations. We may not labor there, but here we are required to 
 toil. The fashioning of the blocks and beams at a distance permitted 
 
 of old the erect ion of the temple at Jerusalem without noise or hammer. 
 
 May we not here prepare the timber of African liberty? White men must 
 be excluded from tin; mission field, and also very larger) from com- 
 mercial activitv. But the character of the work, the overabundant 
 resources, the remunerative gains will attract the world, win shall 
 
14 
 
 not men of color step in and reap all these advantages ? Why should 
 not a people, generous and just, who have heretofore profited by the 
 unrequited toil of enforced bondage, provide the opportunity andthe 
 means for their so doing? I know that colored men have a perfect 
 right to dwell here ; I know that freedom has been won for them and 
 citizenship granted them. It maybe that " all the wealth piled by 
 the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil" was 
 not too large a price to pay for it. I honor and respect the pluck and 
 determination which causes many of them to resolve "to fight it out 
 on the line " of " social recognition ; " but I also know the strength 
 and endurance of caste ideas and prejudices. I know that genera- 
 tions must pass away ere ever this (call it prejudice, call it folly, call 
 it sin, if you please) can be done away. It appears where you would 
 least expect it, It has power even over those who pray against it. It 
 will continue even to the distant future a blight and a curse. Over 
 against this it seems to me stands a continent where all possibilities 
 are open, and where no social ostracism can come; a land of freedom 
 and of recognized independence ; a land so situate that it may be- 
 come a highway to the riches and stored wealth of a hitherto un- 
 known continent; a land in which the sad experiences of former dis- 
 abilities shall be teachers of wisdom, where the lessons of a civiliza- 
 tion they have largely promoted shall be helpers in producing more 
 honorable results, and in more equally distributing them ; and where 
 there shall be full opportuuity of demonstrating all the hopes that 
 they have cherished, and achieving a high destiny, Africa for Afri- 
 cans, but not the "dark continent" from which their fathers were 
 stolen, but Africa explored by Christian zeal, laid open by human en- 
 deavor, and a field for the competition of the nations ; the spires 
 of Christian churches rising among its palms and banyans, the beaten 
 play ground of village schools upon its shores. Here are the possi- 
 bilities of realizing a grand future — a period when the jungle and the 
 desert shall blossom with a richer and brighter garniture of beauty 
 than has ever yet greeted her radiant skies ; when influences mightier 
 t,han armies shall conquer her barbarism, and the miserable Caffirs 
 and the reeking Hottentots shall be regenerated and disenthralled, 
 and the wild Arab scouring the illimitable desert shall not be able to 
 outstrip the rattling engine and the rumbling car of commerce, when 
 the oldest and darkest of the continents shall last of all see the great 
 light ; the Sphynx interpret the mystery of the civilizations, and the 
 Nile and the Congo, as they pour out their mighty currents into the 
 oceans, shall be highways for Christian commerce under the direction 
 of the sors of those who once were slaves, but who shall be in full 
 possession of the lands, reigning in peace, exacting in righteousness.