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Title
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Baltimore Association broadside, Dec. 15, 1864
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Date
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12-15-1864
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Description
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A broadside pamphlet given out by the Baltimore Association describing its purpose, accomplishments/goals of the Association, and rhetoric about recently freed African Americans to encourage financial contributions from the public. Also lists President, Vice Presidents, Secretaries, Treasurer, and Board of Managers of the organization.
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Transcript
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Baltimore, December 15th, 1864. Sir: —Your attention is called to the Association formed in this City for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People. The Address of the Association to the public is hereto appended, and your aid and countenance in furtherance of its charitable object is earnestly requested. Any amount of money you feel able to contribute may be handed to any member of the Finance Committee, and will aid the Association in their effort to educate the Colored People. ROOMS OF THE BALTIMORE ASSOCIATION FOR THE MORAL AND EDUCATIONAL IMPROVEMENT OFTHE COLORED PEOPLE, ROOM NO. 8, BIBLE HOUSE. Fellow Citizens: —Since the adoption of the New Constitution very grave issues are submitted for your consideration. That instrument, by its benevolent provisions, has added to the eighty thousand free colored people of our State eighty-seven thousand others, recently slaves. These two classes constitute the greater portion of the labor of the State. They are likely to remain among us, for they are attached to their homes, and no Government has ever consented to the violent removal of one-fourth of its population. For the most part they are ignorant. The habits of their former industry have not been such as to teach them ideas of thrift, carefulness or providence. Thrown upon their own resources, though their labor is in great demand, they cannot be expected to know the necessity of Industry or how to seek at home permanent occupation and employment. We are forced to think it the duty of every citizen of Maryland to seek to make this population most useful to the State, as it is the bounden duty of Christian men to seek their moral improvement. There are but two courses to be pursued. The one is to leave these persons in the ignorance and moral destitution in which many of them now, unhappily, are, and the other to endeavor by education to improve their habits, instruct them in their industry, make diligent the idle, reform the vicious and stimulate the good, that they may rise in the scale of being, and be better fitted for the varied duties they are called on to perform. The first course may at first seem the least troublesome and expensive, but ignorance is the mother of vice, and unless these people are taught their duties to the State, and their more important duty to God, and are not suffered to remain in the helpless state in which slavery has left them, the necessity for almshouses, jails and penitentiaries will teach the folly of such economy. Educated labor produces more than uneducated labor. It is, therefore, the interest of the State that all labor should be instructed. One of the hopes of the friends of Emancipation was that that measure would induce immigration into the State, raise the price of our lands, give demand for our labor in erecting mills and dwellings, and in manufacturing the various utensils necessary for the increased population of Maryland. But it cannot be expected that any number of the class of emigrants we desire will leave their homes to dwell in Maryland if they know they are to be surrounded by an illiterate, ignorant population, whose ignorance and vice are to be daily increased by withholding all instruction in the arts of labor, all educational improvement and every teaching of morality which would lead them to higher ideas of duty to God and to their neighbor. To pursue this plan would deprive the State in the first place of the productive labor of one hundred and sixty thousand people, and would prevent desirable emigration into her borders, and oppress those of us now residents of the State with additional taxation to furnish what the expense of education would have entirely prevented. Perhaps those of the colored people whose circumstances require daily toil for the support of their families can receive but little direct benefit at their time of life from any effort now put forth, but we believe the influence of the education of their children will be felt upon the home and the household, that family respect will increase, that thrift and cleanliness will be promoted, and the same beneficent effects which education produces upon other populations will be felt among the colored people. They have been taxed for a long while for public schools, but have been allowed none. Their present condition, when we consider what has been denied them, and how little means of opportunity they have had for self-improvement, is a standing rebuke to those who think they are incapable of moral or mental culture. They long for opportunity to show how readily they become a people no longer degraded by, but useful to, the State. The Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People, intends to do what it can to give them such opportunity. Its members will give their best efforts to this charitable purpose. Those of our fellow-citizens who feel any interest in a people upon whom their vote has thrust the responsibilities of life, and those in whom Christianity prompts kindness and duty toward these people, are invited to give us their support in such manner as they may think the most useful, that we, if necessary, by private benevolence may do what long since ought to have been done, and we hope soon will be done, by the State, i.e., provide means for the moral and educational improvement of one-fourth of our population. We annex a list of the officers of the Association: President— Evans Rogers. Vice-Presidents— Archibald Stirling, Thomas Kelso, William J. Albert, Francis T. King, John W. Randolph. Recording Secretary— George A. Pope. Corresponding Secretary— Joseph M. Cushing. Treasurer— Jesse Tyson. Board of Managers. Rev. F. Israel, Rev. Wm. Bruce, Rev. F. L. Brauns, Rev. T. Stork, D.D., Rev. J. F. W. Ware, Hon. H. L. Bond, Dr. C. C. Cox, Dr. R. W. Pease, Dr. J. C. Thomas, Galloway Cheston, William J. Albert, Wm. Kennedy, Hazlett McKim, G. T. Hopkins, Daniel Holliday, Ashur Clarke, James Carey, Alex M. Carter, Richard M. Janney, Henry Stockbridge, Wm. Daniel, Jas. Carey Coale, A. Stirling, Jr., Jno. A. Needles, Jno. T. Graham, E. Stabler, Jr., George B. Cole, Alex T. Johnson, W. K. Carson, John S. Gilman. Finance Committee. Wm. J. Albert, Archibald Stirling, Sr. F. T. King, John W. Randolph, James Carey, Wash K. Carson, Wm. Daniel, Edw. Stabler, Jr., Alex T. Johnson, Geo. B. Cole.
Hugh Lennox Bond