Marsh, J. B. T. The Story of the Jubilee Singers; With Their Songs . Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co, 1880. [format: book], [genre: history; travelogue]. Permission: Northern Illinois University
Persistent link to this document: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/file.php?file=Jubilee.html

THE story of the Jubilee Singers seems almost as little like a chapter from real life as the legend of the daring Argonauts who sailed with Jason on that famous voyage after the Golden Fleece. It is the Story of a little company of emancipated slaves who set out to secure, by their singing, the fabulous sum of $20,000 for the impoverished and unknown school in which they were students. The world was as unfamiliar to these untraveled freed people as were the countries through which the Argonauts had to pass; the social prejudices that confronted them were as terrible to meet as fire-breathing bulls or the war riors that sprang from the land sown with dragons' teeth; and no seas were ever more tempestuous than the stormy experiences that for a time tested their faith and courage.

They were at times without the money to buy needed clothing. Yet in less than three years they

returned, bringing back with them nearly one hundred thousand dollars. They had been turned away from hotels and driven out of railway waiting-rooms because of their color. But they had been received with honor by the President of the United States, they had sung their slave-songs before the Queen of Great Britain, and they had gathered as invited guests about the breakfast-table of her Prime Minister. Their success was as remarkable as their mission was unique.

The civil war which broke out in the United States, in 1861, was avowedly waged, on one side to overthrow the Union of the States, and on the other to preserve it. But back of this object it was really a war, on one side to perpetuate slavery, and on the other to abolish it. The South understood this from the start. So did those at the North who were wise to read the signs of the times, and especially those who had the spiritual instinct to interpret the meaning of God's providences.

The anti-slavery reformers who had sought, through the peaceful agencies of the press, the pulpit, and the platform, to secure the abolition of slavery, went into the war with an ardor they never could have felt in the struggle of a slave-holding nation for mere political existence. No young men responded to the call for troops more heartily than those whose boyhood homes had been stations on the Underground Railway — that unique line whose stock was never offered in market; whose trains ran only by night; whose tracks were country by-roads; whose coaches were plain farm wagons; whose

passengers were fugitive slaves; whose terminus was the free soil of Canada. The first detachment of Union troops that passed through Baltimore on its way to Washington made the streets of that sullen city ring with a song in honor of old John Brown, the abolitionist of Harper's Ferry. And regiment after regiment of volunteers, the pride and flower of half-a-million Northern homes, "rallied round the flag, shouting the battle-cry of freedom."

The slaves, too, utterly ignorant as they were of common political issues and the proportions of the struggle, almost everywhere and at once read the significance of the great conflict. Tidings of every turn in the fortunes of war passed from cabin to cabin by some mysterious telegraphy, and every Union victory was the signal for secret thanksgiving services.

It was the natural result that the camps of the Union army should at once become cities of refuge for fugitive slaves. A New England general, who had been in close political alliance with the slave power until it raised its hand to strike down the Union, gave them a name and a recognized standing in the military lines as "contraband of war." And by and by there came from the good President who had so patiently bided the time, the proclamation that made the army, in the aim as well as the incident of its work, an army of emancipation.

Its advance was the signal for a rally of slaves from all the country round to follow it, they knew not whither, save that it was to freedom. They flocked in upon the line of march by bridle-paths and across the fields; old men on crutches, babies

on their mothers' backs; women wearing the cast-off blue jackets of Yankee cavalry-men, boys in abbreviated trousers of rebel gray; sometimes lugging a bundle of household goods snatched from their cabins as they fled, sometimes riding an old mule "borrowed" from "mas'r," but oftener altogether empty-handed, with nothing whatever to show for their life-time of unrewarded toil. But they were free; and with what swinging of ragged hats, and tumult of rejoicing hearts and fervent "God bless you's," they greeted their deliverers! "The year of jubilee," of which they had sung and for which they had prayed and waited so many years, had come at last!

By this violent emancipation of war — so different in its process from the peaceful abolition for which the friends of the slave had been so long looking and laboring — over four millions of bondmen were suddenly made free. They were homeless, penniless, ignorant, improvident — unprepared in every way for the dangers as well as the duties of freedom. Self-reliance they had never had the opportunity to learn, and, suddenly left to shift for themselves, they were at the mercy of the knaves who were everywhere so ready to cheat them out of their honest earnings. They had been kept all their lives in a school of immorality, and even church membership was no evidence that one was not a thief, a liar, or a libertine. Their former masters were so impoverished by their emancipation, along with the other costs of the war, that they had little ability — and were so exasperated by it that they had usually still less disposition — to help them.

The task of giving these freed slaves a Christian education was laid mainly, therefore, upon the Christian people of the North. It was a missionary work of such magnitude and character as no people was ever called to take up before. Schools were started — even before the close of the first six months of the war — in little cabins, in army tents, in unfloored log chapels, in abandoned slave marts, under the open sky. Hundreds of Northern ladies, many of them from homes of luxury and culture, came to teach these degraded people the A B C's of the spelling-book and of Christian citizenship.

The work was full of discomforts, difficulties, and danger. By the varying fortunes of war the schools were often broken up, and the teachers forced to seek safety for their lives in flight. Overworked, unable sometimes to obtain suitable food, shelter, or medical attendance, many of these brave women laid down their lives in the cause, as truly as a soldier who is buried on the field of battle. Even after the war they were shunned as lepers in Southern society, and more than one teacher was assassinated by the Ku Klux banditti for refusing to obey their anonymous warnings to give up the work and leave the State.

But their mission was not without its brighter side. God's Spirit was often present with converting power in the schools, and in the prayer-meetings that always went hand-in-hand with the schools. All their lives, the lash or the auction-block had been the swift penalty for slaves who were caught learning to read. Now that the fetters had fallen from mind as well as body there came an eagerness

to learn that was like a consuming fire. The world never saw such a sight before as these schools presented.

Families pinched with hunger asked more eagerly for schools than for bread. Women of threescore and ten sometimes mastered the alphabet in a week. Old men bent over the same spelling-books with their grandchildren. Fathers would work all day to support their families, and walk every night to an evening school miles away. Girls suspended from school privileges for a few days, for some wrongdoing, would plead instead for the penalty of a whipping. Their gratitude for instruction was as fervent as their desire for it was ravenous, and their attachment to their teachers was most devoted.

The first school for the freedmen was started by teachers sent out for that purpose by the American Missionary Association. This society was formed in 1846, because of the acquiescent attitude towards slavery of most of the older missionary organizations. It had sustained missions among the negroes of Jamaica and West Africa. Its home missionaries in the slave-holding States, while striving to reach both white and black with schools and the preaching of the gospel, had always faithfully borne testimony against the great sin of slavery. It had the confidence and support of the friends of freedom. And when this great task of giving more than four millions of freedmen a Christian education was suddenly laid upon the nation, its origin, its associations, and its past labors, all pointed to it as providentially trained up for the occasion. And to it a large part of the work has fallen.

In 1863 it had 83 ministers and teachers in this field; in 1864, 250; in 1868, 532. Since the work began it has expended about $3,000,000 in it. As public schools came to be opened, to some extent, for the colored people, and as the importance of permanent institutions for the training of teachers and ministers from among the freedmen themselves became more apparent, and the necessity for them more imperative, the Association withdrew for the most part from this temporary primary work, and concentrated its efforts upon a system of training-schools.

Besides the seventeen academies and normal schools which it has planted at central points throughout the South, and which require the services of nearly a hundred skilled teachers, it has under its fostering care seven chartered institutions for collegiate and theological education. These are located in as many different States, and no two of them are within three hundred miles of each other. They are Berea College, at Berea, Kentucky; Hampton Institute, at Hampton, Virginia; Fisk University, at Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta University, at Atlanta, Georgia; Talladega College, at Talladega, Alabama; Tougaloo University, at Tougaloo, Mississippi; and Straight University, at New Orleans, Louisiana.

Previous section

Next section