BY REV. H.M. TENNEY, D.D., CHAIRMAN

The committee to which was referred the paper of Secretary Beard
respectfully report that the "Missionary View of the Southern Situation"
therein presented impresses us profoundly with the fact that the
sincerest piety is the most exalted patriotism. It commends itself to us
as worthy of the most serious attention of the thoughtful of both races
in the North and in the South. The gravity of the Southern problem, as
set before us, is little less than appalling. The colored race now looks
back over a quarter of a century of freedom and recognized rights. The
traditions and customs and conservative ties of slavery are broken with
its chains. The ideas, aspirations and manly instincts of liberty have
taken hold upon the colored people and are becoming controlling. The
intellectual progress of the many, the political and national prominence
of the few, the acquisition of wealth, and the marvelously
disproportionate increase in their numbers, serve to awaken the colored
race to self-consciousness and a sense of power. It is beginning to
demand its rights and to be impatient of their resistance and
suppression. The Samson of the past, bound, shorn and blinded, stands
to-day with fetters broken, with locks grown long, and with eyes yet
dim, but with the dimness of returning vision, as one who sees men as
trees walking. And whether he shall be carried on to complete
emancipation, intellectual and spiritual, a true manhood, or goaded to
madness, and driven to bow himself against the pillars of our national
and social temple, and pull it down to the common ruin of us all, is the
question of the hour. A race so situated, were there no other factors in
the problem, would be a peril to any people, and would call for the most
helpful effort and self-sacrificing zeal and Christ-like patience.