Friday, November 27, 2009

Do Unto Others

The Thanksgiving holiday brought to mind an excerpt of a speech given in 1871 by Lt. Col. David Branson (1840-1916) of the Sixty-second U.S. Colored Infantry. He spoke on occasion of the dedication of Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Mo. He and his comrades contributed money and helped found the school known today as Lincoln University of Missouri.

In his brief comments, Branson spoke to the value of education and religious freedom in the Reconstruction era, as Americans struggled to deal with a new political, economic and social order as a result of the Civil War and the end of slavery. He states:
The future peace of our country is threatened more by the unwise zeal of religious men than by anything else, unless it be ignorance itself; and ignorance is the tool of such unwise zealots. Inquisitions, burnings at the stake, and hanging of the best men and women of their time, have been their work in the past, and will be in the future, unless prevented by just such schools as this, managed by liberal-minded men like Prof. Foster here, who, while holding strong religious convictions of his own, fully recognizes the right under our glorious Constitution of the United States, of every man, be he Christian, Jew or Mahomedan, to his own creed, untrammeled by any law whatever. And right here I cannot refrain from denouncing those men who are trying to insert a religious amendment in the Constitution of the United States.

A well-known author and close observer of events has well said that "It is the point of a wedge whose butt end is an established Church;" and an established Church in England has produced great wars in the past, and I will venture to predict, will deluge the British Isles in blood during the next generation.

But some may ask. Are we to have no religion? no morality? I have this to answer, on the best authority ever given us, and it is the sum of all the commandments, based on justice, tempered with mercy, and adorned by love: "Whatsoever ye would that men do to you, even so do ye unto them."

When we are able to live up to that law, then it will be time to think of teaching creeds and theologies in our public schools; and then they will not be needed or thought of. The future of our own free government depends on us who have the advantages of education. Whether we wish it or not, we must educate the masses pouring in from Europe on the East and Asia on the West, or they will destroy our free government and render despotic government a necessity.

It is our destiny to lift up the races that are down, and we need not be dragged down in the work, but rather buoyed up to a still higher level. Let us then each and all do what lies in our power for the elevation and happiness both of ourselves and others; and so living we shall not, when called from this world to the great unknown, fear to meet the spirits gone before; but rather approach it as we do a new country, whither our friends have preceeded us to enjoy greater happiness than in the land of our birth.
I find Branson's message as appropriate today as they were almost 140 years ago. Read the full speech.

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Thursday, November 12, 2009

"Preparing for This New Time"

By January 1866, only 200 of the original 1,000 men who enlisted in the Sixty-second U.S. Colored Infantry remained in the ranks. The War Department ordered the ten companies consolidated to four and the reduction of the regiment’s officers.

Two of the discharged officers, Capt. Richard B. Foster and 1st Lt. Aaron M. Adamson, had served in Company I.

According to Capt. Foster, soon after he learned that he would be mustered out of the army, “Lieutenant Adamson was one day talking with me, as comrades about to part will do, of the past and future, when, referring to the fact that many of the enlisted men had learned to read and write, imperfectly of course, while in the service, I remarked that it was a pity these men should find no schools when they returned to Missouri,” from where they had enlisted in 1863.

Both men reflected on the transformation of the enlisted men with whom they served. “No more shall the auction block be mounted by human chattels. No more shall education be forbidden and virtue be impossible for any part of our population. The fugitive slave law is behind us. Universal suffrage is before us.”

The conversation brought to the surface a question that burned within Foster: “Have I any special work to do, however humble, in preparing for this new time?”

1st Lt. Adamson supplied the answer: “If our regiment will give money enough to start a school in Missouri, will you take charge of it?”

Foster eventually answered in the affirmative. The officers and men raised $1,379.50, and Foster went on to establish Lincoln Institute in Jefferson City, Missouri. Today, it is known as Lincoln University.

Read Foster's historical sketch of the founding of the school.

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