or drummer boy, that
filled the sacred mould of Gettysburg and Chickamauga. In an instant, as
it were, his career crystalized into that pure white fame which belongs
only to the martyr for justice, law and liberty. For more than a
generation his ashes have slumbered in his beloved home at Springfield,
and as the hearts of millions of the liberated turn toward that tomb,
they may well say to their liberator: "We were hungry and thou gavest us
the bread of sympathy; we were thirsty for liberty and thou gavest us to
drink; we were strangers, and thou didst take us in; we were sick with
two centuries of sorrow, and thou didst visit us; we were in the
oppressive house of bondage, and thou earnest unto us;" and the response
of Christendom is: "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the
joy of the Lord."

In closing this chapter of my reminiscences, I may be allowed to express
my strong conviction that our Congress, impelled by generous feeling,
and what they regarded as a democratic principle of government,
committed a serious error in bestowing the right of suffrage
indiscriminately upon the male negro population of the South. A man who
had been all his life an ignorant "chattel personal" was suddenly
transformed into a sovereign elector. Instead of this precipitate
legislation, it would have been wiser to restrict the suffrage to those
who acquire a proper education, and perhaps also a certain amount of
taxable property. This policy would have avoided unhappy friction
between the races, and, what is more important, it would have offered a
powerful inducement to every colored man to fit himself for the honor
and grave responsibility of full citizenship. At this time one of the
noblest efforts made by wise philanthropy is that of educating,
elevating and evangelizing our colored fellow countrymen of the South.
To help the negro to help himself, is the key-note of these efforts. The
time is coming--yea, it has come already--when to the name of Abraham
Lincoln, the grateful negro will add the names of their best benefactor,
General Samuel C. Armstrong (the founder of Hampton Institute) and
Booker T. Washington.

CHAPTER XII.

PASTORAL WORK.

The work of the faithful minister covers all the round week. On the one
day he teaches his people in the house of God, on the remaining days he
teaches and guides them in their own houses and wherever he may happen
to meet them. His labors, therefore, are twofold; th