The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 10, October, 1887Various
Religion
The American Missionary — Volume 41, No. 10, October, 1887
Various
Congregational churches -- Missions -- Periodicals; Home missions -- Periodicals
GEO. C. ROWE.
* * * * *
SHOTGUN IN LOUISIANA.
[The outrage referred to in the following letter was perpetrated
only a few weeks ago. We suppress names and dates for obvious
reasons. We know the writer and can vouch for the truth of the
statement. We have in our possession additional and corroborative
evidence.—Ed.]
“My very last days at school were saddened by a most distressing
outrage in which the father and elder brother of one of my own
good, manly, big boys, were shot down in unjust, merciless and
indiscriminating slaughter; the other two grown-up sons obliged
to flee; the mother, grandmother and two younger children left
desolate but not unfriended, and the large, rich and heavy crop,
which would have sufficed to send all the children to school next
year, of necessity abandoned. That was the trouble: the white men
around were jealous of his business methods, his prosperity and his
determination to educate his children—said they were ‘getting too
smart for niggers’—so, when an alleged crime by another colored
man or boy furnished a pretext, they improved the opportunity for
wholesale massacre—six or seven in all were killed, some of them
resisting and killing two white men. I was amazed at the Christian
meekness shown by my boy, the elder of the two who escaped, a
large, strong young man. He spoke with gratitude of the two white
men who tried to save his father, and he seemed disposed to leave
the murderers entirely in the hands of the great Judge of all,
saying, ‘If the Lord saw fit to punish them He could _meet up with
them_ any time.’
“I said, with a view to learning how this severe tribulation had
affected his trust in Christ—for he is but a young disciple—‘some
people, when great trouble is permitted to come upon them, feel
that the Lord has deserted them.’ He responded at once, ‘I don’t
feel that way. I think the Lord must have been _very near_ me when
I was dodging through the young corn, neither high enough nor
thick enough to hide me in the bright morning light, and they all
shooting at me as if I had been a deer, or they would certainly
have killed me.’
“In answer to some remarks of mine, he said: ‘You needn’t be afraid
of my taking to any meanness on account of this. I never can find
it in my heart to be mean to anybody. I feel too sorry for people.’
His only anxiety was to find work and make enough to get the rest
of his people away from there.
“When I went into my school room after hearing of this
heart-rending affair, a horror of great darkness came over me for
an instant, and a sound was in my ears as of a knell; then the
students’ plaintive song seemed to vibrate through the air—How
long, Master, how long? These distressful experiences weigh heavily
on the hearts and nerves of our missionaries, who are here so
nearly all the year around and have such a care for everything that
affects the school or its members.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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