ld, when it confines itself entirely
to the women who happen to be white. Virtue knows no color line, and the
chivalry which depends upon complexion of skin and texture of hair can
command no honest respect.

When emancipation came to the Negroes, there arose in the northern part of
the United States an almost divine sentiment among the noblest, purest
and best white women of the North, who felt called to a mission to educate
and Christianize the millions of southern exslaves. From every nook and
corner of the North, brave young white women answered that call and left
their cultured homes, their happy associations and their lives of ease,
and with heroic determination went to the South to carry light and truth
to the benighted blacks. It was a heroism no less than that which calls
for volunteers for India, Africa and the Isles of the sea. To educate
their unfortunate charges; to teach them the Christian virtues and to
inspire in them the moral sentiments manifest in their own lives, these
young women braved dangers whose record reads more like fiction than fact.
They became social outlaws in the South. The peculiar sensitiveness of the
southern white men for women, never shed its protecting influence about
them. No friendly word from their own race cheered them in their work; no
hospitable doors gave them the companionship like that from which they had
come. No chivalrous white man doffed his hat in honor or respect. They
were "Nigger teachers"--unpardonable offenders in the social ethics of the
South, and were insulted, persecuted and ostracised, not by Negroes, but
by the white manhood which boasts of its chivalry toward women.

And yet these northern women worked on, year after year, unselfishly, with
a heroism which amounted almost to martyrdom. Threading their way through
dense forests, working in schoolhouse, in the cabin and in the church,
thrown at all times and in all places among the unfortunate and lowly
Negroes, whom they had come to find and to serve, these northern women,
thousands and thousands of them, have spent more than a quarter of a
century in giving to the colored people their splendid lessons for home
and heart and soul. Without protection, save that which innocence gives to
every good woman, they went about their work, fearing no assault and
suffering none. Their chivalrous protectors were hundreds of miles away in
their northern homes, and yet they never feared any "great dark-faced
mobs," they