The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 130

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

.

130

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

He Leadeth Me!

“He leadeth me in paths of righteousness”;
These words, so often tried, are still found true.
Our Shepherd’s wondrous love is ever new.

If we but boldly toward heaven press;

If we but give Christ’s Spirit free access
Into a trustful heart and gladly do

What God commandeth, then shall we be, too,

Directed in straight paths of righteousness;

If we but give the Prince of Peace our heart
And let His ways be pleasant in our sight, —
They always, in the end, prove good and right.
May gratitude, then, train us in the art
Of leading others out of helplessness
Into our Savior’s paths of righteousness!

H. Osternvs.

coe oN T~em ar

Transporting Slaves in Africa.

Reclaiming Christ’s Heritage.

XXI.
THE NEGRO IN THE UNITED STATES.

Most of the Negroes in the United States are
descended from ancestors who lived on or near the
west coast of Africa. Figures at hand do not give
us the exact number of slaves brought over from
Africa to our country. But that the whole number
_ was very great may be judged from the fact that
from 1808 to 1860, a period during which the
bringing in of slaves was forbidden, it is estimated
that 270,000 slaves were introduced into the United
States.

The Negro’s Condition in Africa.

Slavery is a native and very ancient institution
in Africa. For ages African chiefs furnished the
slave-markets of the world with their own enslaved
countrymen, whom they had captured in most cases
in raids arranged for the special purpose. Before
being brought to America,’they lived in tribes with
very little organization, and their homes were rude
huts. Their food consisted of wild fruit and such
game as they were able to take with their primitive
weapons. Their minds were filled with supersti-
tious fears of evil spirits, which they imagined to
be everywhere, and they passed their lives in con-
tinuous dread of gods that hated them and desired
their destruction.

The Coming of the Negro to America.

Though it is certain that Negro
slaves came to America with the earliest
Spanish explorers, the systematic impor-
tation of African bondsmen began with
1517. The last Negro slaves were im-
ported into Cuba and Brazil in 1880.
In 1619 a Dutch trading-vessel landed
nineteen Africans at Jamestown, Va.
The traffic in human beings thus begun
continued throughout the colonial period
and even for some years into the time
of our national existence. When the
Revolutionary War began, there were
probably half a million Negro. slaves
within the bounds of the colonies in the
North and in the South. Due to various
reasons the number of Negro slaves in
the South increased more rapidly than
in the colonies of the North.

Though slavery resulted in the civi-
lization and, in thousands of instances,
in the Christianization of the slaves, we are all
united in thanking God that human slavery is a

matter of the past among us and that the dark °

blot which slavery brought upon the fair name of
the country which boasted of its being “the land
of the free” has been permanently removed.

Present Number of Negroes in Our Country.

Since his emancipation the Negro has doubled
in number in the United States, the present Negro
population being almost eleven millions. That
means that out of every ten people in the continen-
tal United States one is colored. Most of these, of
course, still live in the Southern States. In 1920

thirteen Southern States reported Negro popula-