basely corrupted as is only too well known; yet out of it has grown, within less than three hundred years, an organic people.  Grandfathers, and great-grandfathers are among them; and personal acquaintance is exceedingly wide.  In the face of slavery and against its teaching and its power, overcoming the seduction of the master class, and the coarse and brutal corruptions of the baser overseer class, the African slave persistently strove to clothe himself with the habiliments of civilization, and so prepared himself for social organization that as soon as the hindrances were removed, this vast people almost immediately set themselves in families; and for over thirty years they have been busily engaged hunting up the lost roots of their family trees.  We know the pit whence the Afro-American race was dug, the rock whence he was hewn; he was born here on this soil, from a people who in the classic language of the Hebrew prophet, could be described as, No People.

That there has been a majestic evolution quietly but rapidly going on in this mass, growing as it was both by natural development and by accretion, is plainly evident.  Heterogeneous as were the fragments, by the aid of a common language and a common lot, and cruel yet partially civilizing control, the whole people were forced into a common outward form, and to a remarkable extent, into the same ways of thinking.  The affinities within were really aided by the repulsions without, and when finally freed from slavery, for an ignorant and inexperienced people, they presented an astonishing spectacle of unity.  Socially, politically and religiously, their power to work together showed itself little less than marvellous.  The Afro-American, developing from this slave base, now directs great organizations of a religious character, and in comprehensive sweep invites to his co-operation the inhabitants of the isles of the sea and of far-off Africa.  He is joining with the primitive, strong, hopeful and expanding races of Southern Africa, and is evidently preparing for a day that has not yet come.

The progress made thus far by the people is somewhat like that made by the young, man who hires himself to a farmer and takes his pay in farming stock and utensils.  He is thus acquiring the means to stock a farm, and the skill and experience necessary to its successful management at the same time.  His career will not appear important, however, until the day shall arrive when he will set up for himself.  The time spent on the farm of another was passed in comparative obscurity; but without it the more conspicuous period could never have followed.  So, now, the American colored people are making history, but it is not of that kind that gains the attention of writers.  Having no political organizations, governments or armies they are not performing those deeds of splendor in statesmanship and war over which the pen of the historian usually delights to linger.  The people, living, growing, reading, thinking, working, suffering, advancing and dying—­these are all common-place occurrences, neither warming the heart of the observer, nor capable of brightening the page of the chronicler.  This, however, is, with the insignificant exception of Liberia, all that is yet to be found in the brief history of the Afro-American race.