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 SKETCH OF BISHOP ATTICUS 
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 no. 16 
 
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THE TRUSTEES OF THE JOHN F. SLATER FUND 
 Occasional Papers, No. 16 
 
 SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 BISHOP ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. G. B. Winton, D. D. 
 
 1915 
 
 BEIL COMPANY, INC., PBINTCHS, LYNCMOUBn, 
 
.16 s 
 
 SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 BISHOP ATTICUS G. HAYGOOD 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. G. B. Winton, D. D. 
 
 1915 
 
NOTE 
 
 Dr. Haygood was elected General Agent of the John F. 
 Slater Fund at a meeting of the Trustees held on October 5, 
 1882, the year in which the Fund was established. He con- 
 tinued to serve in this capacity until he accepted the office of 
 Bishop in 1890. At the fourteenth meeting of the Board held 
 October 29, 1890, his resignation was accepted, and Dr. 
 J. L. M. Curry was elected to fill the position. Dr. Haygood 
 was not only a great preacher and a wise administrator, he was 
 also a great and wise statesman. The Trustees of the John F. 
 Slater Fund were most fortunate in being able to secure the 
 services of such a man in the beginning of their important 
 work.* It seems fitting that among the occasional papers pub- 
 lished by the Board there should appear a sketch of Dr. Hay- 
 good's life, with brief extracts from his speeches and writings. 
 As time goes on, his broad vision, his liberal spirit, his clear 
 thought, his beneficent influence, will more and more be under- 
 stood and realized. 
 
 James H. Dillard. 
 
 *At the time of Dr. Haygood's election the Board of Trustees con- 
 sisted of the following members : R. B. Hayes, President ; Morrison R. 
 Waite, Vice-President ; Daniel C. Oilman, Secretary ; Morris K. Jesup, 
 Treasurer ; Phillips Brooks, of Massachusetts ; William E. Dodge and 
 John A. Stewart, of New York; Alfred H. Colquitt, of Georgia; James 
 P. Boyce, of Kentucky, and William A. Slater, of Connecticut. 
 
A LIFE SKETCH OF BISHOP A. G. HAYGOOD* 
 
 Atticiis Greene Haygood was born at Watkinsville, Georgia, 
 November 19, 1839, and fell asleep at his home in Oxford, 
 Georgia, January 19, 1896. Into the fifty-six years of his life 
 he crowded work enough to have engaged a strong man for 
 more than threescore and ten years. He might have lived 
 longer if he had toiled less intensely. In the active and busy 
 years of his life it was not uncommon for him to omit entirely 
 to retire at night for sleep, working the night through, except 
 for a brief rest on a couch or in a reclining chair. 
 
 His people were of Methodist stock, and at the age of fifteen 
 he became a member of that church. Even in his youth were 
 manifested the marked traits of generosity, will powder, and 
 devotion to the church which characterized him as a man. 
 When it was proposed to erect a larger and more commodious 
 house of worship for the congregation in Atlanta of which he 
 was a member, he subscribed, though a mere boy, the sum of 
 twenty-five dollars. He then hired himself to the contractor 
 as a hod-carrier to pay the subscription. With reference to 
 this it has been well said, "The young shoulders of the lad, 
 which thus early bowed under the burdens of his church, were 
 never thereafter free." 
 
 In 1856 he matriculated as a Sophomore in Emory College, 
 at Oxford, Georgia, and was graduated with distinction in the 
 Class of 1859. He was associated in college with a number of 
 men who, with him, afterward became influential in the affairs 
 of his church. 
 
 He was admitted into the Georgia Conference of the Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church, South, in the autumn of the year he left 
 college (1859), and at the age of twenty years. He at once 
 took high rank in the conference, and from year to year had 
 experience of work in circuits, stations, and districts. During 
 the war he was for a time a chaplain in the Army of Virginia. 
 In later years, at Chautauqua and elsewhere, he was often 
 called upon for addresses to the veterans, alike of the North 
 and of the South. 
 
 *Adapted from the Journal of the General Conference of the Metho- 
 dist Episcopal Church, South, for the year 1898. 
 
4 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 The Conference to which he belonged was divided, in 1866, 
 into the North Georgia and the South Georgia conferences, his 
 membership remaining in the North Georgia. That Confer- 
 ence made him one of its representatives in the General Con- 
 ference of the church, which met in 1870. Though less than 
 thirty-one years of age at the time, he had already impressed 
 and w'idely influenced the church by his preaching and by con- 
 tributions to the periodicals, especially on the subject of Sun- 
 day-schools and religious education. That General Conference 
 created the office of Secretary of Sunday-schools and elected 
 A. G. Haygood to it. To him, by this election, was committed 
 the entire department of Sunday-school literature, and his 
 editing of that literature marks an era in the history of 
 Sunday-school work in his church. When he began his work 
 there was a single periodical, The Sunday-School Visitor. 
 There were no uniform lesson helps, no uniform lessons. 
 When, after five years, he gave up his position, he had added 
 two periodicals. The Sunday-School Magazine and Our Little 
 People, and had greatly increased the circulation of The 
 Visitor. During his editorship he laid out his own scheme of 
 uniform lessons, and expounded those lessons in The Magazine 
 in "Illustrative Readings," "Notes," and "Questions" with 
 exceptional brilliance and power. The periodicals edited by 
 him had a wide and growing circulation, and gave much satis- 
 faction throughout the denomination. 
 
 During this same period he edited a number of excellent 
 books and Sunday-school libraries. He selected, not merely 
 colorless stories, but bright, strong biographies and histories 
 adapted to the taste and capacity of young readers. In associa- 
 tion with his friend, Professor R. M. Mcintosh, he brought 
 out several acceptable and widely used song books for the 
 worship in the Sunday-school. 
 
 In the autumn of 1874 he w^as obliged, by the shattered 
 health of Mrs. Haygood, to remove his family to Oxford, 
 Georgia, the home of her girlhood. After continuing his 
 editorial work from this point for nearly a year, he gave it 
 up in September of 1875. The place of publication was Nash- 
 ville, Tennessee, and the distance was too great for satis- 
 factory work. 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 5 
 
 In December of that same year he was elected president of 
 his alma mater, Emory College. In this position he served 
 nine years, and his work as an educator and executive sur- 
 passed even his success as an editor. When he took charge of 
 the institution its patronage was small, its insufficient buildings 
 and grounds were encumbered with debt, and its endowment 
 was less than $15,000. When he laid down his work there 
 the halls of the college were overflowing with students, the 
 bulk of the debts were paid, its buildings had been increased 
 by a central structure costing $50,000, and its endowment had 
 risen to $100,000. And all this despite the fact that the years 
 from 1875 to 1884 were trying years financially. 
 
 From 1878 to 1882, while president of Emory College, he 
 edited the Wesleyan Christian Advocate. Meantime he wrote 
 two of his best-known books, "Our Children" and "Our 
 Brother in Black." The positions taken in the latter seemed 
 to some of his fellow-citizens in the South open to question 
 and even to criticism, but he stood his ground stoutly. The 
 book is now out of print, but it deserves to be commemorated 
 as a pioneer influence in the developing of the modern attitude, 
 now general in the South, with reference to the training and 
 welfare of the Negro. 
 
 In the year 1882 the General Conference of his church, in 
 session at Nashville, Tennessee, elected Dr. Haygood to the 
 office of bishop. He felt himself impelled to decline the 
 position, and on the following day, May 1 7, gave to the Con- 
 ference his reasons in characteristically frank and simple 
 words. He wrote: "I am deeply moved by your action of 
 yesterday in electing me a bishop of our beloved church. 
 Though I might fear the responsibilities of the office, I do not 
 shrink from the labors. Yet with a clear conviction and a 
 deep sense of my duty, I respectfully decline to accept the 
 position to which you have called me. I can not with a good 
 conscience lay down the work which I now have in hand." He 
 felt bound to the college until difficulties afifecting its best 
 success, if not its very existence, were removed. He did not 
 quit its service until the results upon which he had set his heart 
 were accomplished. 
 
6 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 In the same year, 1882. by the munificence of Mr. John F. 
 Slater, of Norwich, Connecticut, the fund now known as "The 
 John F. Slater Fund" was created. The agency of that great 
 interest was offered to Dr. Haygood. At first he declined it, 
 and suggested the name of another minister of his church for 
 the place. At the instance of Mr. Slater, the Trustees of the 
 Fund continued, however, to urge him to accept. Friends in 
 whom he had confidence joined in the appeal, and he finally 
 agreed to take the agency. 
 
 The General Conference of his church, which met at St. 
 Louis in the year 1890, again called him to the ofifice of bishop. 
 This time he decided to accept ordination, and entered upon 
 the responsibilities and labors of the position. As soon as 
 proper arrangements could be made he resigned the agency of 
 the Slater Fund, and for the rest of his life gave his undivided 
 attention to the service of his church. That service, as one of 
 its chief pastors, lasted less than six years, for at what for 
 many is the mere meridian of life he laid down his pen and 
 his voice was hushed. 
 
 During the years of his Episcopal service, as for a long time 
 previously. Bishop Haygood w^as much in demand for public 
 addresses. He lived for a time at Los Angeles, California. 
 He had traveled widely during the years of his work for the 
 Slater Fund. His ability as a speaker thus became generally 
 known. In the North he was recognized as a man of broad 
 sympathies, and on more than one platform cooperated with 
 his distinguished fellow-Georgian, the Hon. Henry W. Grady, 
 in healing the breach between North and South. His advocacy 
 of the welfare of the Negro made him many friends in the 
 North, and he was given wide opportunity for this advocacy, 
 both with voice and pen. 
 
 During his later years, as had indeed long been his custom, 
 he continued to "toil terribly." His pen never rested, and he 
 did not spare himself in travel, in speaking, and study. 
 Several additional volumes from his pen appeared, most of 
 them made up of addresses which he had delivered or of 
 studies in which he had engaged as teacher and preacher. The 
 principal of these, in addition to those already mentioned, are 
 "Sermons and Addresses," "Pleas for Progress," "The Man 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 7 
 
 of Galilee," "Jack-Knife and Brambles," "The Monk and the 
 Prince." Of these, doubtless the ablest is "The Man of 
 Galilee," though his collected addresses exhibit single dis- 
 courses which are the equal of any of his work elsewhere. 
 Many of them are extemporaneous utterances taken in short- 
 hand and only slightly revised, but even these show that 
 lucidity of thought, that simplicity of utterance and breadth 
 of sympathy which marked his best work. 
 
 Herewith are given a few extracts, that the readers of this 
 sketch may test for themselves the charm and the power of 
 one of the South's great leaders. 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 THANKSGIVING IN 1880 
 
 (From a Sermon before the Faculty and Students of 
 Emory College) 
 
 "And first, we of the South have great reason to be thankful 
 to God that we are in all respects so well off, and that, too, so 
 soon after so great a war, so complete an upturning of our 
 institutions, so entire an overthrow of our industries, so abso- 
 lute a defeat of our most cherished plans. Recall briefly the 
 last twenty years. Think of what we were in 1860 and in 
 1865; then look about you and see what we are in 1880. 
 What was thought by our people after Appomattox and April, 
 1865, as to the prospect before us? Some of you can recall 
 the forebodings of that time as to the return of business pros- 
 perity, the restoration and preservation of civil and social 
 order among ourselves, and the restoration of our relations to 
 the Union. 
 
 ''You know how many of our best and bravest left our sec- 
 tion forever in sheer despair. Behold now what wonders have 
 been wrought in fifteen years ! 
 
 "Firstly, considering where and what we were fifteen years 
 ago, considering the financial convulsions and panics that have 
 swept over our country during that time — I might say. that 
 have disturbed the civilized world — our industrial and financial 
 condition to-day is marvelously good. It is not true, as certain 
 croakers and 'Bourbons,' floated from their moorings by the 
 rising tides of new and better ideas, are so fond of saying, 
 that the South is getting poorer every day. These croakings 
 are not only unseemly, they are false in their statements as 
 they are ungrateful in their sentiment. A right study of our 
 tax returns will show that there is life and progress in the 
 South. But statistical tables are not the only witnesses in such 
 a case. Let people use their own eyes. Here is this one fact — 
 the cotton crop, as an exponent of the power of our industrial 
 system. In 1879 we made nearly five million bales; in 1880 
 it is believed that we will make nearly six million bales. We 
 never made so much under the old system. It is nonsense to 
 talk of a country as ruined that can do such things. There are 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 9 
 
 more people at work in the South to-day than were ever at 
 work before, and they are raising not only more cotton but 
 more of everything else. And no wonder, for the farming of 
 to-day is better than the farming of the old days, and in two 
 grand particulars : First, better culture ; second, the ever- 
 increasing tendency to break up the great plantations into small 
 farms. Our present system is more than restoring what the 
 old system destroyed. 
 
 "The great body of our people not only make more than they 
 did before the war but they make a better use of it — they get 
 unspeakably more comfort out of it. I am willing to make the 
 comparison on any line of things that you may suggest, for I 
 know both periods. Remember that I am speaking of the great 
 mass of the people, and not of the few great slaveholders, some 
 of whom lived like princes ; not forgetting, meantime, that the 
 majority of our people never owned slaves at all. 
 
 "For one illustration take, if you please, the home life of 
 our people. There is ten times the comfort there was twenty 
 years ago. Travel through your own country — and it is rather 
 below than above the average — by any public or private road. 
 Compare the old and the new houses. The houses built 
 recently are better every way than those built before the war. 
 I do not speak of an occasional mansion that in the old times 
 lifted itself proudly among a score of cabins, but of the 
 thousands of decent farmhouses and comely cottages that have 
 been built in the last ten years. I know scores whose new 
 barns are better than their old residences. Our people have 
 better furniture. Good mattresses have largely driven out the 
 old-time feathers. Cook stoves, sewing-machines, with all 
 such comforts and conveniences, may be seen in a dozen homes 
 to-day where you could hardly have found them in one in 
 1860. Lamps that make reading agreeable have driven out 
 tallow-dips, by whose glimmering no eyes could long read and 
 continue to see. Better taste asserts itself; the new houses 
 are painted; they have not only glass, but blinds. There is 
 more comfort inside. There are luxuries where once there 
 were not conveniences. Carpets are getting to be common 
 among the middle classes. There are parlor organs, pianos, 
 and pictures where we never saw them before. And so on, to 
 the end of a long chapter. 
 
 "Test the question of our better condition by the receipts of 
 benevolent institutions, the support of the ministry, the build- 
 
10 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 ing, improvement, and furnishing of churches, and we have the 
 same answer — our people are better off now than in 1860. 
 
 "In reply to all this some one will say, 'But it costs more to 
 live than in I860.' I answer, 'True enough; but there is 
 more to live for.' 
 
 "Secondy, the social and civil order existing in the Southern 
 States is itself wonderful, and an occasion of profound grati- 
 tude. For any wrongs that have been done in our section, for 
 any acts of violence on any pretext, for any disobedience to 
 law, I have not one word of defense. Admitting, for argu- 
 ment's sake, all that the bitterest of our censors have ever said 
 upon these subjects, I still say, considering what were the con- 
 ditions of life in the Southern States after April, 1865, the 
 civil and social order that exists in the South is wonderful. 
 Our critics and censors forget, we must believe, the history of 
 other countries. They have never comprehended the problem 
 we had given us to work out after the surrender. Only those 
 who lived through that period can ever understand it. Why 
 has not this whole Southern country repeated the scenes of 
 Hayti and San Domingo? Not the repressive power of a 
 strong government only; not the fear of the stronger race 
 only ; not that suggestions have been lacking from fierce and 
 narrow fanatics ; but chiefly in this, the conservative power of 
 the Protestant religion, which had taken such deep root in 
 the hearts and lives of our people. The controlling sentiment 
 of the Southern people, in city and hamlet, in camp and field, 
 among the white and the black, has been religious. 
 
 "Thirdly, the restoration of our relations to the General 
 Government should excite our gratitude. Possibly some do 
 not go with me here. Then I must go without them; but I 
 shall not lack company, and, as the years pass, it will be an 
 ever-increasing throng. We must distinguish between a party 
 we have for the most part antagonized and the government it 
 has so long a time controlled. Whatever may be the faults of 
 the party in power, or of the party out of power, this is, 
 nevertheless, so far as I know, altogether the most satisfactory 
 and desirable government in the world, and I am thankful to 
 God, the disposer of the affairs of nations and of men. that 
 our States are again in relations with the General Government. 
 
 "Should we be surprised or discouraged because our section 
 does not control the government? History, if not reason, 
 should teach us better. Is there a parallel to our history since 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 11 
 
 1860 — war, bitter, continued, and destructive; defeat, utter 
 and overwhelming, and all followed so soon by so great 
 political influence and consideration as we now enjoy? When 
 did a defeated and conquered minority ever before, in the short 
 space of fifteen years, regain such power and influence in any 
 age or nation? And this is the more wonderful when we con- 
 sider the immeasurable capacity for blundering which the 
 leaders of the dominant party in our section have manifested 
 during these years of political conflict. And it is the more 
 wonderful still when we consider how ready the dominant part 
 of the other section has been to receive, as the expression of 
 the fixed though secret sentiment of the mass of the Southern 
 people, the wild utterances of a few extreme impracticables, 
 who have never forgotten and have never learned. I tell you 
 to-day, the sober-minded people who had read history did not, 
 m 1865. expect that our relations with the General Govern- 
 ment would be. by 1880, as good as they are. But they would 
 have been better than they are if the real sentiment of the 
 masses on both sides could have gotten itself fairly expressed ; 
 for these masses wish to be friends, and before very long they 
 will sweep from their way those w^ho seek to hinder them. My 
 congregation, looked at on all sides and measured bv any tests, 
 It IS one of the wonders of history that our people have, in so 
 short a time (fifteen years is a very short time in the lifetime 
 of a nation), so far overcome the evil effects of one of the 
 most bloody and desolating and exasperating wars ever waged 
 m this w^orld ! And the facts speak worlds for our Constitu- 
 tion, for our fon-n of government, and, above all, for our 
 Protestant religion— a religion which will yet show itself to 
 be the best healer of national wounds, and the best reconciler 
 of estranged brethren. 
 
 "Fourthly, there is one great historic fact which should, in 
 my sober judgment, above all things, excite everywhere in the 
 South profound gratitude to Almighty God: I mean the 
 abolition of African slavery. 
 
 "If I speak only for myself (and I am persuaded that I do 
 not), then be it so; but I, for one, thank God that there is no 
 longer slavery in these United States! I am persuaded that 
 I only say what the vast majority of our people feel and 
 believe. I do not forget the better characteristics of African 
 slavery as it existed among us for so long a time under the 
 sanction of national law and under the protection of the Con- 
 
12 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 stitution of the United States ; I do not forget that its worst 
 features were often cruelly exaggerated, and that its best were 
 unfairly minified; more than all, I do not forget that, in the 
 providence of God, a work that is without a parallel in history 
 was done on the Southern plantations — a work that was begun 
 by such men as Bishop Capers, of South Carolina, Lovick 
 Pierce and Bishop Andrew, of Georgia, and by men like- 
 minded with them — a work whose expenses were met by the 
 slaveholders themselves — a work that resulted in the Christian- 
 izing of a full half million of the African people, who became 
 communicants of our churches, and in the bettering of nearly 
 the whole four or five million who were brought largely under 
 the redeeming influence of our holy religion. 
 
 "I have nothing to say at this time of the particular 'war 
 measure' that brought about their immediate and uncon- 
 ditioned enfranchisement, only that it is history, and that it 
 is done for once and for all. I am not called on, in order to 
 justify my position, to approve the political unwisdom of 
 suddenly placing the ballot in the hands of nearly a million of 
 unqualified men — only that, since it is done, this also is history 
 that we of the South should accept, and that our fellow- 
 citizens of the North should never disturb. But all these 
 things, bad as they may have been, and unfortunate as they 
 may yet be, are only incidental to the one great historic fact 
 that slavery exists no more. For this fact I devoutly thank 
 God this day ! And on many accounts : 
 
 "1. For the Negroes themselves. While they have suffered 
 and will suffer many things in their struggle for existence, I 
 do, nevertheless, believe that in the long run it is best for them. 
 How soon they shall realize the possibilities of their new rela- 
 tions depends largely, perhaps most, on themselves. Much 
 depends on those who, under God, set them free. By every 
 token this whole nation should undertake the problem of their 
 education. That problem will have to be worked out on the 
 basis of cooperation ; that is, they must be helped to help them- 
 selves. To make their education an absolute gratuity will per- 
 petuate many of the misconceptions and weaknesses of charac- 
 ter which now embarrass and hinder their progress. Much, 
 also, depends upon the Southern white people — their sympathy, 
 their justice, their wise and helpful cooperation. This we 
 should give them, not reluctantly, but gladly, for their good 
 and for the safety of all, for their elevation, and for the glory 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 13 
 
 of God. How we may do this may be matter for discussion 
 hereafter. 
 
 "2. I am grateful that slavery no longer exists, because it 
 is better for the white people of the South. It is better for 
 our industries and our business, as proved by the crops that 
 free labor makes. But by eminence it is better for our social 
 and ethical development. We will now begin to take our right 
 place among both the conservative and aggressive forces of 
 the civilized and Christian world. 
 
 "3. I am grateful because it is unspeakably better for our 
 children and children's children. It is better for them in a 
 thousand ways. I have not time for discussion in detail now. 
 But this, if nothing else, proves the truth of my position : there 
 are more white children at work in the South to-day than ever 
 before. And this goes far to account for the six million bales 
 of cotton. Our children are growing up to believe that idle- 
 ness is vagabondage. One other thing I wish to say before 
 leaving this point. We hear much about the disadvantages 
 to our children of leaving them among several million of 
 freedmen. I recognize them and feel them ; but I would rather 
 leave my children among several million of free Negroes than 
 among several million of Negroes in slavery. 
 
 ''But, leaving out of view at this time all discussion of the 
 various benefits that may come through the enfranchisement 
 of the Negroes, I am thankful on the broad and unqualified 
 ground that there is now no slavery in all our land. 
 
 "Does any one say to me this day : 'You have got new light ; 
 you have changed the opinions you entertained twenty years 
 ago' ? I answer humbly, but gratefully, and without qualifica- 
 tion: 'I have got new light. I do now believe many things 
 that I did not believe twenty years ago. Moreover, if it 
 please God to spare me in this world twenty years longer, I 
 hope to have, on many difficult problems, more new light. 
 I expect, if I see the dawn of the year 1900, to believe some 
 things that I now reject, and to reject some things that I now 
 believe. And I will not be alone.' " (Sermons and Speeches, 
 p. 110 fol.) 
 
14 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 NEGRO TRAITS 
 
 "It may be questioned wliether the laboring classes of any 
 country are so certain of employment as are the Negroes of 
 the South who really wish to work. They are beginning to 
 appear upon the tax books as landowners. Thus, in Georgia, 
 according to the report of the Comptroller-General for 1880 
 (and I take Georgia only because the figures were accessible 
 to me and I do not wish to guess), they own, of 'improved 
 lands,' 586,664 acres — a showing most creditable to them. 
 And of these Negro landowners this may be said with cer- 
 tainty : they are more satisfactory as neighbors and citizens 
 than are those who do not own land. A little land does more 
 to elevate him as a citizen than even the wonder-working ballot 
 itself. They live, most of them, in small and uncomfortable 
 cabins. But this gives them less trouble than Northern people 
 may suppose. They have had a good training in order to 
 contentment with small things ; the climate favors them ; most 
 of them have enough to eat, and in winter fuel enough to keep 
 them wann. They will spend their last dime for food or fuel, 
 and, if it comes to the pinch, will get it elsewise. (Some white 
 men, I have observed, employ similar methods.) The Negro 
 is constitutionally and habitually a meat-eater ; it may be well 
 questioned whether the common laborer of any countr}- has 
 as much meat to eat as the Southern Negro. A fence rarely 
 survives a severe winter if it be close to a Negro settlement in 
 a town or village where wood is scarce. The average Negro 
 will burn his own fence without compunction or hesitation. 
 I have a Negro neighbor who has burned his own fence and 
 part of mine four winters in succession. Next spring he and 
 I will make a new fence." 
 
 "Few of them are skilled workmen — the best mechanics 
 among them learned their trades when they were slaves. Free 
 Southern Negroes and Southern white boys are alike in one 
 thing at least — they are impatient of apprenticeship. This is 
 one reason why the South is so far behind in the mechanic 
 arts. 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 15 
 
 "As a class they are not systematic in their plans and labors; 
 few of them know how to lay by for a 'rainy day.' When 
 they were slaves they had no motive for economy ; when old 
 or worn out their masters provided for them as no great 
 corporation provides for its disabled servants. The exceptions 
 to this statement were few — the master who did not provide 
 for his sick or disabled Negroes lost caste. Their lack of 
 foresight and economy may be well explained by their ante- 
 cedents, some of them antedating their coming to America." 
 
 "As a class they are obliging, good-tempered, and unrevenge- 
 ful. Their disposition to help one another is wonderful. 
 They have many relief societies that help in sickness or other 
 distress. Their treasurers are held to strict accountability. 
 Few bank directors watch cashiers so closely. But some 
 Negroes are as dishonest and mean as any white man, and now 
 and then one 'absorbs' the funds of the society. But they do 
 not say, 'He has been unfortunate ; has overdrawn ; that he 
 is a defaulter.' They express themselves plainly; they say, 
 'That Nigger is a thief.' And they are right. (Whenever 
 a Negro wishes to express his contempt or to jeer at one of 
 his fellows he pronounces the word as if spelled with two 
 'g's-')" 
 
 "I should do wrong not to say a few words about the 
 religious characteristics of the Negroes in the South. No 
 matter what one may believe on the subject of religion in 
 general, or of their religion in particular, no man who would 
 understand them and their relations to the problem of our 
 national life can afford to overlook their religious character. 
 Their notions may be crude, their conceptions of truth some- 
 times grotesque and realistic to a painful degree, their religious 
 development may show many imperfections — nevertheless, 
 their most striking, important, and formative characteristic is 
 their religion. The Negro's church is the center, not only of 
 his religious, but of his social life. Their religion is real to 
 them. They believe the Bible — every line and every word of 
 it. To them God is a reality. So are heaven, hell, and the 
 judgment day. 
 
 "The religion of the Southern Negro, slave or free, was and 
 is a divine reality. During the late war it was pure and 
 
16 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 strong enough to secure peace and safety to women and 
 children on the plantations while the men were away fighting 
 under a flag which did not promise freedom to them. For this 
 the just and good hold them in everlasting and grateful 
 remembrance. And we may be quite sure that they understood 
 what the war meant in its relations to them. 
 
 "They may not have outgrown their superstitions, but the 
 school-house and the Bible will do for them what they have 
 done for all people — drive out the evil and cruel spirits of 
 superstition." (Sermons and Speeches, passim.) 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 17 
 
 in 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 "If I had my way, and could command the means to make 
 the end possible in our schools, there should be no diplomas 
 
 that did not certify to ability to do some work 
 Opening of an properly, as well as to read some Greek 
 Industrial passably — ability to earn, by handwork of 
 
 School. some sort, a living, as well as to solve some 
 
 sort of problem with difficulty. There are 
 some old fogy teachers who will have no work-teaching in 
 their schools. Some ridicule such teaching, affirming in their 
 ignorance that work-teaching and book-teaching can not go on 
 together, whereas they do go on together. There are some 
 conductors of schools for Negro youth who go to the length 
 of this absurdity. They do not seem to understand that the 
 greater the educational needs of any people the greater their 
 need of not only being taught books but of being taught to 
 make a living, and, if they are to rise in the scale permanently, 
 to make more than a living. Very wisely has the Board of 
 Trustees of the John F. Slater Fund resolved to 'prefer' those 
 schools that couple 'industrial training' with head and heart 
 training." 
 
 "My advice is : Do in this college the sort of work that the 
 people who send to it most need, not what somebody else who 
 
 does not send to it needs. Let the college 
 Building a shape its plans by the real wants of its 
 
 Christian College, people, not by the supposed wants of some 
 
 other people. It will take good sense and 
 courage to do this, more than the managers of most white col- 
 leges have. The temptation will be to try to do just what 
 ought not to be done. If you resist the temptation you will 
 deserve honor for your good sense and courage. Suppose this 
 college should try to pattern after Yale or Harvard or Prince- 
 ton. It will fail, and it ought to fail, for it will be trying to 
 do to-day what may be well enough a hundred years from 
 to-day. Yale and Harvard are more than one hundred years 
 old, and their patrons have been sending sons and daughters 
 to college for a hundred years. I have known schools try to 
 
18 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 teach boys and girls Greek and Latin that failed to teach them 
 English, that failed to teach them how to keep accounts, that 
 failed to teach them how to make a living and to be good 
 people. Such a school needs teaching — common sense and 
 honesty." (Pleas for Progress, p. 183. ) 
 
 "In seeking to better the religious life of our colored brethren 
 we will gratefully employ all the instrumentalities that God 
 
 gives us to use. Schools, more and 
 Advice to a better, will help; all the opportunities 
 
 Theological Seminary, that come with freedom will help. But 
 
 if their church life be weak or corrupt, 
 all will be in vain. Accepting, for argument's sake, any notion 
 that may be advanced as to the real character of the church 
 life of the colored people in this country — the notion of 
 fanatics who think it well-nigh perfect, the notion of other 
 fanatics who see no good in it — this remains indisputably true : 
 In any nation. Christian or heathen, its religion is its control- 
 ling force. 
 
 "As to my own opinion — with as good opportunities as most 
 men to know what the religious life of the colored people really 
 is — I say unhesitatingly that his religion is his strongest and 
 best characteristic. All there is of hope for him in this 
 country will rise or fall with the healthy development or the 
 decay of his religion. Without true religion pure home life 
 is as impossible to the Negro as it is to the white man ; with- 
 out pure home life Christian civilization is inconceivable." 
 (Pleas for Progress, pp. 126, 155, 183.) 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 19 
 
 IV 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM ''OUR BROTHER IN BLACK" 
 
 9 oi'fi? !^' f ' "'^^ '^" '"' °' '^^'^''^^ ^^'^'^ ^^^^'-oes ^--e in the 
 bouth to stay. Common sense, in considering this problem. 
 
 T« fi, c *!. *^^" "°^ ^^^""^^ ^ supernatural intervention to 
 In the South move them elsewhere. Left to the natural con- 
 to May. ditions that enter into such questions, there is 
 . no reason to expect that these Americanized 
 Atricans will remove or be removed from the regions where 
 we now find the great mass of them. If such a not-to-be- 
 expected migration should occur, still leaving them within the 
 United States, the problems that grow out of their presence in 
 this country must be worked out all the same. Change of 
 place can no more eliminate this factor in our national equation 
 than it can change the past history of these people in the United 
 btates. 
 
 'There is much reason to believe that the problem can be 
 better solved without a change of locality. The South is the 
 best place for these emancipated Negroes, and the people of 
 the South will yet prove themselves to be, of all people in the 
 world, the fittest to deal with this very difficult and delicate 
 race problem. What we want is not a change of blackboards, 
 but a thorough study and an understanding of the problem 
 Itself; also the right spirit all round. 
 
 "This, I think, may be settled down upon: these Neo-roes 
 ever increasing, will, for the most part, stay right where" they 
 are, in the South. But if they should be. as is most unlikely 
 diffused with something like equality of distribution throuo-h- 
 out the United States, the problem would be diffused, that is 
 all, and with much increment of confusion and difficulty. 
 
 'Tt seems very clear— this race problem is likely to be our 
 problem as a nation always. It is certainly, at this time, a 
 prob em that the whole people should, and that the Southern 
 people must, seriously but calmly consider." (p. 17.) 
 
20 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 "I will not entangle my argument with the question of the 
 relative capacity of the white and black races, nor will I specu- 
 late about the African's capacity for 
 The Negro Intellect, 'high culture.' My argument has noth- 
 ing to do with these questions ; let the 
 schools and colleges make out of him the utmost that it is in 
 him to make. Then let the world measure him by what he 
 does. If any fear that he will, when at his fullest growth, be 
 too great a man, let them grow, or organize an 'exodus,' and 
 find a place where they will be free from his overshadowing 
 greatness. My argument concerns his education in the three 
 'R's.' If anything in the world is settled, it is settled that 
 the Negro can learn to read, to write, and to 'cipher.' And 
 he learns well and rapidly. I want no proof beyond what I 
 have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. 
 He can learn a good deal more, but these parts of knowledge 
 he must learn for his safety and ours. These are the keys ; 
 give them to him and let him unlock all the doors of wisdom 
 he can. This is fair; it is wise; it is necessary; it is 
 right." (p. 133.) 
 
 "The colored schools should have the support, countenance 
 (there is much in the word countenance), indorsement, and 
 cooperation of Southern white people. Reason- 
 How Whites able and good people must feel kindly toward 
 Can Help. schools for Negroes; if they do not, they are 
 ignorant. To do its best work in a community 
 a colored school needs more than money-help and the mere 
 toleration that allows it to exist — it needs moral and social 
 support. How this is to be afforded must be determined by 
 sensible people on the merits of each case. 
 
 "Some things I may mention as illustrations of many 
 methods of encouragement and help. The school may be 
 visited by proper persons at reasonable hours. The pastor 
 of the white church close by could do good in this way. Some 
 of them do ; all of us might and ought. Official people might 
 encourage the school by an occasional visit, as the mayor, the 
 village squire, the teacher of the white school, and other per- 
 sons of influence and local consideration. The teacher should 
 be treated kindly and respectfully, and made to understand 
 that he has the favor and support of all good people. Any 
 outrage bv 'lewd fellows of the baser sort' should be taken in 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 21 
 
 hand and punished promptly, certainly, and with such severity 
 as the law provides and the case demands." (p. 146.) 
 
 "The Negro is a neighbor. Perhaps there is little or no 
 intercourse between the cabin and the mansion, or between the 
 cabin and the cottage, or even between two 
 Intercourse, cabins, a white family in one and a colored 
 family in the other. I do think there is more 
 intercourse betw^een 'mansion' and 'cabin' in the South than 
 between 'brown-stone front' and 'garret' in the great cities. 
 But the Negro is a neighbor all the same, and, by his very 
 existence and presence, a power for good or evil. If we leave 
 the higher considerations of duty, and find the lowest place 
 for our argument — the self-interest, the mere convenience and 
 comfort of the dominant race — it is important that this Negro, 
 this humblest member of the community, be a good man, a 
 man of right views, sentiment, habits, and associations. It is 
 important to both races that their relations be not only friendly 
 but mutually helpful and affectionate. If this Negro be a bad 
 man, with false views, corrupt sentiments, vicious habits, and 
 evil associations, he is a constant menace to peace and good 
 order. Neither more nor less a menace on account of color, 
 but a menace on account of his character. 
 
 " 'But,' says the irrepressible one, be he Northern or 
 Southern, 'how about the social question ?' This question indi- 
 cates a sort of hysteria. But if you must be answered, it is 
 easy : Daniel Martin never asks anything of me as to social 
 life that I am not willing to give. I respect him in his place; 
 he respects me in my place. He is master in his house (except 
 when his wife gets the upperhand) ; I am master in mine (all 
 exceptions understood ) . No test that brought embarrassment 
 to me or mortification to him ever occurred, or ever will. 
 Wise people never make these issues ; they do not come up 
 spontaneously — not once in a thousand times. 
 
 "There never was a subject so much discussed that has so 
 little in it, except, it may be, the invention of perpetual motion. 
 It gives no trouble to either race when let alone. People of 
 good sense, good breeding, and of unmeddlesome temper do 
 let it alone." (pp. 183-188.) 
 
22 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 "Some of the benefits that would accrue to the whole people, 
 
 to the state, if a large number of negro families should become 
 
 the owners of their own farms, I sug- 
 
 Negro Proprietorship, gest. There are others of importance 
 
 that will suggest themselves to tlic 
 
 reader — some, no doubt, that have not occurred to me. 
 
 "Owning land tends to foster the virtues that make a people 
 happy, strong, and prosperous. It encourages industry and 
 promotes economy. _ It furnishes the right soil for all those 
 affections and sentiments that are the life and soul of homes. 
 The one-year tenant has the poorest chance to make a home : 
 the long-lease tenant is in far better case; the landowner, 
 although of only a very small 'parcel of ground,' is in the 
 best case of all. The best homes grow out of ownership of 
 the soil. 
 
 "Owning land will, in most respects, at least, have the same 
 effect upon the Negro that it has upon the white man. It will 
 create in him so deep a personal and family interest in honest 
 and capable government as greatly to raise his character as a 
 voter. A man who owns a farm, be it ever so small, is not so 
 apt to sell his vote for a dollar or a dram as is the man who 
 owns nothing but his muscle. Such a voter begins to consider 
 the character of the man he votes for. Bad legislature will, he 
 sees, come back to his farm. There can be no doubt that 
 owning a little property, especially landed property, greatly 
 sharpens a voter's wits, in town or country, in choosing rulers. 
 In this one instance, at least, self-interest serves to clarify the 
 judgment and to support the conscience. What is equally 
 important, the man who feels that the acre he works is his 
 own is more independent in his choice and action. We may 
 be very sure that one hundred Negroes owning little farms, 
 and one hundred owning nothing are very different forces 
 in society and government. It is just as true of white 
 men. . . . 
 
 "The South needs a large number of Negro fanners, settled 
 on their own farms, for a reason that will some day become 
 exigent; w^e need them as a grand self-sustaining and efiicient 
 moral and social police against the idle and vicious of their 
 own race. The landowning Negro is the sworn foe of 
 'tramps.' The antagonism is as natural as that between 
 
Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 23 
 
 shepherds and 'sheep-kilhng dogs.' It is a very rare thing 
 that a desperado belongs to a family settled on its own 
 land. . . . 
 
 "There is. I believe, no condition so favorable to the develop- 
 ment of patriotic feeling among a people with the antecedents 
 and surroundings of Southern Negroes as the ownership of 
 land. In every nation patriotism is rooted in the soil and 
 nourished by it." (pp. 212-218.) 
 
 "The hope of the African race in this country is largely in 
 its pulpit. The schoolhouse and the newspaper have not 
 substituted the pulpit, as a throne of 
 The Negro Preacher, spiritual power, in any Christian nation. 
 I do not believe they ever will. But for 
 this race the pulpit is preeminently the teacher. Here they 
 must receive their best counsels and their divinest inspiration. 
 I say its pulpit. I mean this : White preachers have done 
 much and ought to have done more ; they can now do much 
 and ought to do a hundredfold more than they do; but the 
 great work must be done by preachers of the Negro race. 
 Tongues and ears were made for each other; in each race 
 both its tongues and its ears have characteristics of their own. 
 No other tongue can speak to a Negro's ear like a Negro's 
 tongue. All races are so ; some missionaries have found this 
 out. In every mission field the 'native ministry' does a work 
 that no other can do. 
 
 "How urgent the need and how sacred the duty of preparing 
 those of this race whom God calls to preach to their people ! 
 Heaven bless the men and women who have given money and 
 personal service for their education ! Heaven bless their 
 'schools of the prophets' ! May they ever be under the wisest 
 guidance and the holiest influences ! 
 
 "Mistakes were inevitable; some unwholesome influences 
 have, in some cases, marred the good w^ork. This should not 
 surprise us. But, after all, never was money better spent than 
 in founding training-schools for a native African ministry. 
 Would God that some Southern men and women counted 
 themselves worthy to take part in this ministry of consecrated 
 gold and holy teaching!" (p. 223.) 
 
24 Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood 
 
 OCCASIONAL PAPERS PUBLISHED BY THE TRUSTEES OF 
 THE JOHN F. SLATER FUND 
 
 1. Documents Relating to the Origin and Work of the Slater Trustees. 
 
 1894. 
 
 2. A Brief Memoir of the Life of John F. Slater, by Rev. S. H. Howe, 
 
 D. D., 1894. 
 
 3. Education of the Negroes Since 1860, by J. L. M. Curry, LL. D., 1894. 
 
 4. Statistics of the Negroes in the United States, by Henry Gannett, of 
 
 the United States Geological Survey, 1894. 
 
 5. Difficulties, Complications, and Limitations Connected with the Edu- 
 
 cation of the Negro, by J. L. M. Curry, LL. D., 1895. 
 
 6. Occupations of the Negroes, by Henry Gannett, of the United States 
 
 Geological Survey, 1895. 
 
 7. The Negroes and the Atlanta Exposition, by Alice M. Bacon, of the 
 
 Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute, Va., 1896. 
 
 8. Report of the Fifth Tuskegee Negro Conference, by John Quincy 
 
 Johnson, 1896. 
 
 9. A Report Concerning the Colored Women of the South, by Mrs. E. C. 
 
 Hobson and Mrs. C. E. Hopkins, 1896. 
 
 10. A Study in Black and White, by Daniel C. Oilman, 1897. 
 
 11. The South and the Negro, by Bishop Charles B. Galloway, of the 
 
 Methodist Episcopal Church, South, 1904. 
 
 12. Report of the Society of the Southern Industrial Classes, Norfolk, 
 
 Va., 1907. 
 
 13. Report on Negro Universities in the South, by W. T. B. Williams, 
 
 1913. 
 
 14. County Teacher Training Schools for Negroes, 1913. 
 
 15. Duplication of Schools for Negro Youth, by W. T. B. Wilhams, 1914. 
 
 16. Sketch of Bishop Atticus G. Haygood, by Rev. G. B. Winton, D. D., 
 
 1915. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF NC AT CHAPEL MILL 
 
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