LIFE AND TIMES
HENRY M. TURNER

THE ANTECEDENT AND PRELIMINARY History of
The Life and Times of Bishop H. M. Turner. His Boyhood, Education and Public Career.
and His Relation to His Associates, Colleagues
and Contemporaries.
y
-By-
Ponton, A. M., S. T. D.
Author of: "In the House of David," "An Apology for Southern Prejudice," "Religion of Religions," "How to Read the Bible," And a number of religious and social works.

I

1917.

A. B. CALDWELL PUB. CO.

Atlanta, Ga.

Entered According to an Act of Congress in the year 1917 by A. B. CALDWELL PUB. CO. Atlanta, Ga.
In the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C.

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

DEDICATION

To the surviving heroes in arms, who were comrades of

Bishop H. M. Turner on the fields of blood and carnage in the

conflict for right against wrong, which ultimately ended with

the emancipation of four millions of slaves:

To all those now living, who followed him through the

.awful days of reconstruction, to the adoption of the "Civil

Rights Bill."

And to all the Bishops, general officers, ministers and

laymen of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: To the

friends of freedom, and to the Negro race wherever dispersed

upon the globe, is the history of the greatest Negro

champion for human rights and the freedom of his race,

most respectfully inscribed.

M. M. P.

rr, t

"No porter guarded the passages of your door, T admit the wealthy and exclude the poor; For God who gave the riches, gave the heart To sanctify the whole, by giving part; Heaven, who foresaw the will, the means have wrought And to the second Son a blessing brought; The first begotten had his fathers share: But you, like Jacob, are Rebeccas heir."

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Chapter I

Page

Birthplace, Early Environments, Education, Honored

by Universities ................. 33

Chapter II.

Antecedent and Preliminary History, The Man and

the Hour .................... 37

Chapter III.

Family Life, The Man, The Husband, The Father, The

Christian Gentleman ............... 45

Chapter IV.

The Soldier and Statesman, Army Chaplain, Recon-

structionist, Freedmans Bureau and Civil Service

Agent ....................... 49

Chapter V.

Bishop Turner the Churchman, A Pioneer Preacher, A

Presiding Elder, A Genial Officer, A Lecturer, A

Bishop and Publicist, A Missionary and African

Emigrationist .................. 65

Chapter VI.

Some Peculiar Traits in the Private and Personal

Life of Bishop Turner .............. 82

Chapter VII.

Some Peculiar Traits and Prevailing Features and

Characteristics in the Official Life of Bishop Turner. 89

Chapter VIII.

Bishop Turners Defense of the A. M. E. Church and

the Ministiy .................. 101

Chapter IX.

The Character of Bishop Turners Education, His

Personal Appearance, His Literary Life, The Author

and Scholar, The Deep Thinker, The Prodigious

Writer and Publisher .............. 123

Chapter X.

The Home Life of Bishop Turner, His Last Days . . 133

Chapter XI.

Last Days and Obsequies of Bishop Henry McNeal

Turner ........................ 139

Chapter XII.

Tributes to Bishop Turner ............. 151

PREFACE. This book is the result of a desire on the part of the Author to tell the life story of a man whose life and actions impressed themselves upon the times in which he lived. It will be necessary, in this connection, to discuss the environ ments and conditions of the different periods of his life as a background to the story. It is not an easy task to portray faithfuly and trace accurately the varied activities of a man like Henry M. Turner, whom the race delights to honor as a scholar, a soldier, a statesman, an eminent Divine and an eloquent defender of human rights. Every age has produced men who, by the force of their own original genius and high aspirations, have stood as her alds in the forefront of human progress, and the develop ment of civil life and religious freedom. There have come men upon the stage of action who seemed to have been born for the occasion and for the time. One man comes upon the stage to point the prophetic finger to the coming issues which, sooner or later, are to try mens souls, as did Charles Sumner. Another man comes upon the stage to sway and lift the public mind by the power of his persuasive eloquence, as did Gladstone, in the English Parliament. In all times men have been raised up to meet the emergencies and exigencies that have con fronted mankind. These men have bravely pursued their way and performed their duty, unterrified by opposition, of force, or power of any kind, and beyond the reach of slan der or bribery, they have followed the direction of their chosen course to the end. Thus Webster and Clay, Jackson and Calhoun, Alien and Payne, and Douglass, stand out as dauntless and fearless figures in the time of our countrys greatest crisis. Such a man was Henry McNeal Turner, who passed through some of the most excruciating ordeals that men have been made to pass, and the bitterest experiences in the history of his race. In that awful struggle for human freedom, during the

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

Sixties, he stood up as a prophet of hope, as a safe leader and a wise counsellor. He stood up without a tremor as the small mans friend to relieve the oppressed. The prow ess of his genius and the power of his unflinching spirit aimed at all times to break the power of the oppressor, and let bondmen go free. And the power of his experience and in fluence was felt all along the line of conflict. He was in every contest, in war, and in peace, in the reconstruction of the States, and their restoration to their place in the Union. He was in the battle for the "Bill of Rights," and the en franchisement of his race the transferring of four millions of people from chattel to citizens of the greatest Republic on earth.
I admit that there were others who grandly fought and spoke for human freedom, but none, beginning with the earliest agitators for freedom, spoke more eloquently, more learnedly, more effectively, and enunciated more profoundly the eternal principles of human rights than did Henry McNeal Turner. Nor did any one before him nor dming his palmy days more profoundly and persistenly attempt to impress upon the public mind the plea of his race for justice, freedom and right.
The career of Henry McNeal Turner is a lesson of inspi ration to his race and to mankind, and it is the hope of the writer that this book may so present his "life and times" that it may serve as an inspiration to the lovers of manhood, home, freedom and life everywhere, and will serve to keep in memory the life of this great man.
The writer has attempted this task under many serious difficulties and inconveniences, and, therefore, regrets he was not fortunate enough to review the many very inter esting letters upon public questions which made up a corre spondence of nearly sixty years between Bishop Turner and some of the greatest men of the world. The notes of his travels in America, Europe and Africa and the islands of the sea, and thousands of other incidents in his life would make many volumes of interesting reading and valuable in
formation. But the writer hopes that this book, which but touches,
here and there, the outer skirts of his great activity, may

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER.

25

serve to point the way to larger usefulness on the part of his readers.
The writer expresses his sincere thanks to all the friends of Bishop Turner with whom he has talked, and who in any way have aided him in this compilation.

INTRODUCTION. In writing The Life and Times of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, the Author purposes to steer clear of any thought that has the tinge of a polemical nature. Such a thought would be foreign to this class of literary production, and, therefore, would not be fair to the subject of this sketch. The actions of men at particular or various times are not surprising nor out of the ordinary as long as they are right actions. Men never differ when they are right. Men differ when they are wrong, and during this period of wrong action surprises are constantly appearing. Right actions comprise the normal demeanor of all men. Believing that these fundamental conditions obtain in the whole life of man, the writer, therefore, will not take upon himself the task of opposing nor defending, approving nor abusing the actions of Bishop Turner, his contemporaries, colleagues and associates in the ministry, only as such actions shall be the means of leading to the authority for their existence. The interest in what man may or may not do at any given time is small and insignificant when compared with the right and authority for their actions. The Life and Times of Bishop Henry M. Turner, in his relation to his contempo raries, colleagues and associates, is the answer to those questions which ask a reason for every movement of his mighty life from the cradle to the grave. Hence the whole story will be told in an apologetical style, in which province the writer will have sufficient latitude not only to defend the actions of Bishop Turner, but to protect the Church for whom he acted. By this method alone can he put to flight those who because they do not understand the Church, her discipline, polity and usages, would attempt to impugn the motive for wlhich the Church exists, and condemn the min istry as unworthy men. Hence, if the writer has any fight to make, it is from the outside, and not from the inside. He is an apologist, not a polemist. Thus, he purposes to

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

rr.ake himself clear in the outset, because it is easy for a mistaken conclusion to be drawn, as well as a wrong con struction to be placed upon words which were never in tended.
The facts of all biography, as well as autobiography, r re the sr.rne in character, if the writer tells the truth; and they are the most original of all truths entering into literary composition. The difference, aside from their originality, if. in the manner and object for which they are told. But biography is the most uniform of all literature in its delinea tion of the truths touching human life and character.
The facts, however, are not always found, nor are they generally sought, because, in Writing of a man after his death, or a man writing about himself, writes in deference to his readers rather than to the facts. What he seeks to do, is to write a good story of himself or of some one else.
He who would write the true story of his own, or of another mans life, ought to know that life, and tell his story faithfully. That is, he should so portray the environments r-f that life that no possible place for doubt could be found for the consequence of that life. In short, the life story of a man is little less than a mental camera. He takes the picture of the parson as he appears before him; and that is the only real and true photograph. But such a picture, however much it resembles the original, is not of market value, and if the photographer depended upon that method of being honest and telling the truth for subsistence he vroiid soon go out of business. But, he being a student of human nature, and knowing the satisfaction deception gives. ard how it pleases people to be humbugged, flattered and deceived, he hies himself to some dark corner of his shop ?.T?d conjures up his deception; and there, in the daik, with ea?el and pallette. with paint and bioish, he touches his pic ture here and there. He tones it up here and tones it down there; in short, he spoils his picture makes it contradict itself; then it is ready for the market. It has commercial value. And so with the life story of a man. It might be embellished here, amplified yonder and magnified at this place and minimized at that and the other. That is. the world is so crooked that every man of whom we write must be

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER.

29

straightened out so that he can be seen as he is. In short, much of the biography now written is so foreign to the life and character of the person it is intended to portray, that, if it were possible for the subject to read the story of his own life, he would not know the person about whom the waiter was speaking, and would ask, as did the eunuch of Philip, "I pray thee of whom speaketh the prophet of him self, or of some other man?"
There are two criticisms, more or less severe, which a biographer must meet. First, if he tells the plain, simple facts in a mans life as he lived that life, he is liable to be charged with taking advantage of the man and saying things about him dead he would not dare say were he alive. And, second, if he adorns and beautifies the life and char acter of his subject, the public will charge him with giving his subject credit for what he is not worthy.
The writer of this portraiture, therefore, knows not what criticism may befall this little contribution to the lit erature of the race, and cares less, but be it assured that he will not swerve from telling the true story of The Life and Times of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, as that story is known to him.
It is the purpose of the writer to deal with the ante cedent and preliminary history as it was actually made; and he finds no reason why he should not. There is so much, valuable information that ought to be known, and so little in the life of Bishop Turner that ought not to be known, that one can write with perfect freedom and ease. Bishop Turner is best known by the coarseness and roughness of his nature. He was robust, as well as grotesque, in mind, and thought, and life. In fact, he was a rough ashler, as though he were a shapeless stone blasted from the quarry; and the true story of his "life and times" is here told in re lation to his environments, as well as to his associates and contemporaries. He was as restless and tireless in his effort and energies as the waves of the sea! He was ever driven and tossed.
"Tis not in the mind of the writer whom he pleases, nor whom he does not please, but the burden of his soul is to tell the truth of a saintly soul not a truth that will

30

LIFE AND TIMES OF

interpret this little book, but a truth which interprets itself, and stands alone in its own defense in a living character.
Bishop Turner, the subject of our story, fought his way up through that impassioned, impatient and maddened time of slavery the cruel days of civil war and the awful time of reconstruction, at a time when men waited not for argument, nor heard the voice of reason; when Ku-Kluxism and murder stalked abroad as a midnight pall and filled every home of our Southland with terror and consternation not far from death! He fought his way up at a time when the idea of a free man, free speech and a free press, and a free country, had not fully conquered a place in the heart of our nation. Through it all, he was loved, protected and unharmed. God was with him.
During the early days of his activity, he met men in public life, half wild and savage in conduct, and half civi lized; men half ignorant and half intelligent, half free and half slave. But Henry McNeal Turner was the "fearless Negro Navarre whose white plume" was "his glory shock of crinkled fleece surmounting a head that" had "never bowed in servile submission to any outrage." And it is upon this mans grave We lay the cultivated flowers of his own planting.
One has well said, "If a stranger should find his way into an assembly whose platform was filled with noted char acters and to be told to pick out the one who had upbraided the nation and made creation black, he would have pointed out the robust, restless, granite-skinned, line-lipped, silver-fleeced, full-veined, eagle-eyed and lion-ported man whom we call Henry McNeal Turner."
Bishop Turner had a heart which was ever aglow with the tenderest devotion for the well-being of his race, "and with an intellect no less restricted than was his emotional powers." It is but natural to find him exploring the visible and invisible realms from zenith to nadir, with the hope that his excursions would be rewarded with profit to his people, and to the discomfiture of their adversaries in any way. He was a partisan and a patriot of the staunchest type, yet these he never accorded a superior place when compared to the allegiance due his people. Wherever the hydra of caste

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

31

was seen to lift its unsightly head, or the jim crow fiend and mob law demon exposed their hideous shape, this in domitable knight of the quill, this untiring crusaders for the rights of the people, with poised and even pointed weapon, was always on the alert, to smite them down; and, when enraged, he was daring and presumptuous enough to im peach his own beloved section; and, like an enraged lion, he would arraign the nation and denounce the tribunals of the land for what he supposed to be their inactivity; and there is no essay, no book, nor pamphlet, so bitter in denun ciation in the English language ever published such scathing phillipics against those in authority and high political func tionaries as were published in his booklet entitled, "That Barbarous Decision of the Supreme Court," and in his papers, "The Southern Christian Recorder," "The Voice of Mis sions," and "The Voice of the People." Let him have the enviable place he has so gallantly and heroically won for himself, his race and the country he loyed.
The purpose of the Author in writing this book is: I. To give a true epitome touching the agitation of the slave question at the time of the birth of our subject, in order to learn, if possible, how far that agitation went as an environment to help to shape and mould his life and character and to determine his destiny. II. To give a brief history in a wide and general sweep of the relation sustained between him and his asso ciates, as well as those of an earlier date, and his contem poraries, on those great questions of human rights for which he contended. And, HI. To give a correct and complete and perfect replica of the life and character of Henry McNeal Turner as a per son, a mere social being among other men, as that life and character have been enacted by himself, and told by those who had watched his career from the beginning. We write of him thus, because he stands first and the highest in the patriotic and religious records of the Negro in modern times. Not only in the United States is his name exalted, but it is honored and revered wherever he has trav eled among the nations of the earth; and no honest student of the history of the Negro race would attempt to place an-

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

other name above that of Henry McNeal Turner, because no other name connected with the history of the struggle for human rights can bear the searchlight of human in vestigation and remain blameless. The one adjective, great, expresses the wholeness of the life of the last one of that long line of men who helped to bring the Negro from slavery to freedom, and to make our nation once more a happy and united people, and the Southland the home where the two races can live prosperously, as well as peacefuly, together.
In fine, the only apology the writer offers for writing this book has already been expressed, but for the sake of a deeper emphasis, he adds that the book can be accounted for only upon the ground that the writer desired to discuss a public man, in the midst of public men, in his relation to the activities of his age, and, without partiality or favors, discuss public issues upon their merit; and then leave the matter to posterity for the final decision touching his worth 01- worthlessness. It is of Bishop Turner, the man and his times, we write, who performed so well his duty.

CHAPTERI.
BIRTH PLACE, EARLY ENVIRONMENTS EDUCATION
HONORED BY UNIVERSITIES. Henry M. Turner was born February 1st, 1834, near Newberry, Abbeville, South Carolina, of free parentage. While he was not a slave, he was subject to slave environ ments. Ownership in himself, only, excepted. He was the grandson on his mothers side of an African Prince, who was brought to this country in the latter part of the Eighteenth Century and held in Slavery, but was soon afterward set free, because South Carolina, at that time, was a part of a British Colony, and it was contrary to British law to enslave royal blood; hence the freedom of this young Prince was accorded. David Greer, the illustrious sire of this still more illus trious descendant, not being able to procure passage back to his native country, married a free woman near Abbeville, arid planned to make this his home. To this union, aside from many other children, Sarah, his youngest daughter, was born, whom Hardy Turner wooed and wedded. From this union came Henry McNeal Turner, their firstborn, Feb ruary 1, 1834. Although young Turner was born of free parents, yet the environments of the Negro slave were of such a nature, that there was not much difference between his condition and that of those in actual bondage. He worked side by side with them. They were the companions of his youth and early manhood. He did not enjoy the advantages of the freeborn Negro of his day, because in early life he was deprived of a fathers care. Hence he became a subject of that cruel system known in the States after the British yoke was thrown off, as the Guardianship Ordinance. Thus he grew up to considerable boyhood in the cotton fields of South Carolina, where he was forced to labor. This environ-

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

ment gave him an opportunity to taste some of the bitter ness of human slavery and fitted him for those broadsides for which his after utterances are characteristic.
These earlier years were trying to him. They not only taxed his body with service, but they tested the character of his geuius. It was in the cotton patch and the corn field, working at the forge, and striking at the anvil he laid the foundation for a method of research, which never failed him during his long years of public and private life. And when in public pursuit, as anvil, he bore every blow thrust at his race with patience and fortitude. But when he was hammer, he struck, and struck hai-d. His cruel irony and penetrating sarcasm were weapons of power and might against the forces of wrong, and the enemies of his race.
At the age of fifteen, through the kindness of a white lady, and a boy with whom he played, he learned the alphaoet, and was taught how to spell the simple words then in common use. But this food which fed the flames of his mighty mind was soon stopped, as it was unlawful in those days to teach Neg^o children how to read and write. His mother decided this was not the section of country for the growing ambition of her son. She moved to Abbeville, where she employed a white lady to give young Turner les sons every Sunday. This attempt resulted in failure, for the lady was threatened with imprisonment if she further persisted in teaching a Negro boy how to read and write. This disappointment embittered young Turners mind against the haters of his race and had much to do with the contempt which he showed in after years for those who opposed the progress of his people.
In Abbeville he found employment in the office of a Jaw firm, at the Court House. Here he had free access to all the books of the firm and the current literature of that day, as well as an opportunity to hear speeches and dis courses from the most learned men of that time.
Here he learned to read and write more accurately, and the lawyers took great interest in helping him. He studied under them Arithmetic, History, the Bible, Geography and Astronomy. This is the foundation upon which he built

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

35

that education for which he is now known throughout our
country. But as he grew to manhood, the narrow, contracted
surroundings of Abbeville were too small for the concep tion of his mighty brain. He is set on fire with an ambition to see the world and enter into her service. Hence, through the aid of friends, he found employment in a Medical Col lege in Baltimore. Here he quietly studied Anatomy, Physi ology and Hygiene, and read works on law and Theology
until he got a working knowledge of them all. There is little said or known about his conversion. He
is one of those geniuses where conversion was natural. His place is so unique in his Church and the history of our
country, and his rise from obscurity to renown and fame is so regular and orderly, that the writer leaves that ques tion to be taken for granted, as it is not significant at this time.
He was born for an awful time, and his achievements so overshadowed the environments of his early life, that his struggles are often forgotten. In 1851, at the age of 17, he connected himself with the M. E. Church, South ; this membership enabled him to travel unmolested through the Southern States. In 1853, he was licensed to preach the Gospel among his people. Large crowds of white and black would come long distances to hear his sermons and listen to the power of his eloquence. Thus he traveled through
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Louisiana and up the Mississippi River as far as St. Louis.
At St. Louis, in 1858, he severed his connection from the M. E. Church, South, to join the African Methodist Epis copal Church. From the Conference, which was then in session, presided over by Bishop Daniel A. Payne, he was transferred to the pastorate of Baltimore Mission, Baltimore, Maryland. During the four years he remained here, he continued his studies, and further prepared himself for the great task before him.
While in Baltimore, he entered upon a more regular and systematic course of study at Trinity College. He pur sued a course in English Grammar, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and German, in addition to special lessons in Oratory under

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

the Rt. Rev. Bishop Cummins, of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Thus he steadily built an education upon that founda tion \vhich was laid broad and deep in the heart of the boy in the cotton patch and the corn field among the slaves at Abbeville, South Carolina. This boy of two generations ago gave place to a man of genius, of power, of ability and force and of character. No longer is he conceived of as the humble boy crouching among cringing slaves. He is now looked upon as the scholar, the orator, the statesman, diplo mat and a most grave and reverent prelate.
In 1872, on account of the greatness of his knowledge, and the power of his genius, the University of Pennsylvania conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws, and he \vas vvorthy. He was conversant w^th every conditioin of pur American life, our laws and our institutions. He was a bold and fearless champion for human rights and liberty for all men, women and children of whatever race.
In 1873, on account of his great service as a Christian minister, and his large contribution to the literature of his race, Wilberforce University conferred upon him the Degree of Doctor of Divinity. And for his great statesmanship and diplomacy, the College of Liberia, on the west coast of Africa, in 1894, conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Canonical Law. Thus he climbed the ladder round by roundr from the bottom of human degradation and obscurity, out of an environment of darkness and slavery, discourage ment, hardship and even from the mouth of the grave and the jaws of death to the highest and most responsible posi tion in the gift of his race, and the most honorable in the gift of mankind. These beautiful lines can be truly cited here as illustrative of the progress and prowess of the genius of Henry McNeal Turner, the great Pathfinder of an humble race:

; ;- :

"The height by great men reached and kept Was not attained by sudden flight;
But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night."

CH APTJE R II.
ANTECEDENT AND PRELIMINARY HISTORY. THE MAN AND THE HOUR.
The Emancipation Proclamation by President Lincoln making four millions of Negro slaves free is an event long since passed into history. But the present generation knows but little of the struggles which freedom cost, and less of the men and women by whose self-sacrficing toil that free dom was achieved.
At present, so far as the Negro is concerned, the chap ters ofthe history of that period are very imperfectly written. Hence for the true story of that time, we must rely largely upon the scraps of facts gathered from the recollection of the most venerable actors of that awful period who now live. But they are rapidly disappearing from the field where their battles were fought and their vic tory won.
And the Civil War, which terminated with the freedom of the slaves, that war in which so many mighty moral and material forces were engaged, and where the Negro took such an active part in his own emancipation, will, in the coming years, be appropriately celebrated in the history of mankind. But the underlying causes, the antecedent his tory, tha pieliminary struggles and the moral and political excitement, the agitation, passion and bitter contention, which preceded and led up to the emancipation of the slave, will not be long remembered. And many of the noble and heroic men and women who played a conspicuous and honor able part in the struggle for freedom will not receive from posterity that tribute of respect which is due them for their courageous devotion to the cause of justice, liberty and law.
But the ranks are rapidly being broken, and the long line of those who took part in that struggle is growing thin ner and thinner, as well as shorter and shorter. And soon every one who was an actor in that awful scene, and who can rehearse the story of its terribleness, will be sleeping among the mighty dead.

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

History is a repetition of the worlds events. Hence, originality does not belong to any human occurrence. Be cause all changes in human affairs, great or small, come from causes whose operation can be traced to the remotest past. Hence, all we shall claim of originality touching the life and times of Henry M. Turner lie in the fact that we compile the facts originated. by him, rather than attempt to create them.
American slavery was not a new institution, nor was the method of dealing with it a new policy in civil govern ment. It was among the oldest institutions. Its origin was not in America, nor was America the first to protest against it. There was no originality in the Anti-Slavery Movement. The underlying principles of the Anti-Slavery cause were as old as civil society. Freedom boasted of her martyrs and champions long before the discovery of Amer ica, and before Africans were enslaved in the western hemi sphere.
During the Colonial period of our country, and long after the adoption of the Constitution, in 1789, there was continualy rising a strong, as well as formidable, opposition and protest against human slavery. In the discussions against slavery, even prior to the Revolutionary War, was involved the question of the fundamental principles of human rights, as well as human liberty. The thoughtful men and women throughout the Colonies and the States were conscious of the guilt and shame involved in slave-holding. The Declaration of Independence put its seal of condemnation upon slavery, and the fathers of our country regarded it as an element foreign to human nature and a system con trary to the laws of God.
With this declaration of rights lifted before the gaze of the world, the American people put themslves on record and committed themselves to the cause of freedom. But when they enslaved and made merchandise of human flesh, their inconsistencies challenged the best judgment of man kind, and upon a few of Americas best statesmen, ministers and men of affairs and philanthropists, the sting of this crime fell like a pall in the night. Franklin, Hamilton and Hopkins, Edwards, Stiles and Jay, and many of their asso-

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

39

ciates were opposed to American slavery. Woolman, Lay and Benezet deserve an honorable place in the hall of fame for their unyielding opposition to American slavery. And as early as 1780 the Quakers, as a body, emancipated all of their slaves, which were numerous in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
But it remained for another generation to complete the work so nobly begun by these men who were the foreseeing prophets in our national life.
The only apology we offer for these preliminary state ments on the introduction of slavery and its subsequent history and the effort on the part of some of the fathers of our Republic to resist its encroachments is to show some what of the environments out of which the subject of this little volume came, and with which, in after years, by the ruling of a peculiar fate, he was forced to grapple.
Just five years before the subject of this sketch was born, or in 1829, there began a movement to abolish slavery in the United States. And this movement went forward with such constantly increasing momentum that no cessa tion came until the fetters of slavery were melted from the limbs of every slave under our flag by the hot flames of civil war.
At the beginning of this period, the agitation hardly created a ripple of excitement in any section of the country. The fathers of the republic had fallen asleep since the antislavery sentiment of the country had been defeated in the Missouri muddle in 1821. That early sentiment against human slavery was in the throes of death, and in its feeble ness, it was gasping for breath. Time rapidly passed, but no mention was made of the subject. The Press was silent from year to year, and the pulpit was muzzled. Those Antislavery societies in which Franklin and Jay and Rush were once active participants were dead and cold and forgotten.
But all was not dead; all was not lost. There was slumbering in the conscience of Benjamin Lundy a voice, destined to be heard crying in the wilderness. It was thro,ugh "The Genius of Universal Emancipation," his little news paper, that he sounded loud with the pen, as well as with his voice against the mart of the domestic slave traffic. His

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

was a brave voice. It was really tremendous, but it was not heard at first outside of the Quaker Communion, to which he belonged. These were awful times, because of the im mense profit in cotton, which was the product of Negro slavery. And Quakers and others, as well, loved and shared in these profits, and grew immensely rich. It was not easy even for the Quakers to abandon this nefarious traffic, this iniquitous commerce in human souls, because the still small voice of conscience was subdued and hushed by the coarse, ugly, shrill voice of avarice, and ill gotten gain..
At the time of the birth of Henry M. Turner, the senti ment of this country was committed to the absolute necessity of slavery for the production of cotton, because that staple filled the coffers of the country with gold, and added to the wealth of the nation. Thus was paralyzed the moral sense of the people everywhere, and upon this theory the people of the country both North and South justified themselves in committing a crime, which was what Mr. Wesley called "The sum of villainy."
The slavery question was regarded as dangerous, and the country would not survive its agitation. Hence, it re mained for Benjamin Lundy to keep the fire of anti-slavery sentiment from dying out during those dark and awful days. It was Benjamin Lundy who put the burning torch of liberty into the hands of Garrison, a man born in due time, and raised up by Providence to join this army of mighty and powerful forces against the slave power of our country and to help break the chains of the slave.
As students of history, let us take a retrospect of all this checkered past through which we have come; and let us note with what order and regularity in every crisis of human affairs men have come upon the stage, pre-eminently qualified to do the work needed to be done at that particular time, and to cany every issue to a successful conclusion. The clock of destiny strikes the hour; the wheel of Gods providence turns and, lo and behold, a man steps upon the stage of action to stop the drift of the ages and to declare the signs of the times. Such was the awful time in which our subject was born. Such was the hour and the time that Henry McNeal Turner came upon the stage.

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God equipped him with a vigorous, robust, coarse na ture for the coarser, rough and robust task before him. He was commissioned in the service of God and man. To him was given the keynote of freedoms rallying cry of liberty and law. To him who was not a slave was given the charge to sound forth a trumpet against prejudice, ostracism and crime that shall never call retreat. Against this foe he fought with sword and pen and battled in the thick of the fight against the mightiest of the enemy, and he fought
to the last. Such men as the subject of this story are as truly called
of God to warn the nation of the iniquity of its crimes as were the Jewish prophets. From the beginning of his public life in South Carolina to the close of his long and useful career on the wharf at Windsor, Canada, he never ceased to warn her to repent for her crimes against the Negro, and to warn her of Gods just retribution for her sins against mankind.
In his day he was truly Gods prophet to declare to his generation the mighty uplifting forces of mercy, truth and justice, of liberty and law1. But he, like all prophets, in ?11 ages, was sometimes misunderstood and misrepresented. He. too, was persecuted, maligned and prosecuted as well; and sometimes he was almost slain. But, in every instance, whether in his native State, amid the slaves and the slave owners, in the pulpit, in the councils of the nation, in bloody war or reconstruction times, God honored him, took care of him; and, at last, in Georgia, his adopted State, in whose soil where now all that is mortal that remains of him rests. he was honored in his obsequies such as no American Negro was ever honored before. The South loved Henry M. Tur ner.
The name of the subject of this sketch belongs in the catalogue with men whom the world doss not always, at first recognize. He belongs to that class of men whose bloody footsteps are the way marks of human progress. To such men as the sketch of this story portrays, the Negro race owes much of that which it has acquired which is use ful and serviceable in its own civilization. To them, we owe the very application of Christianity to our social and

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civil life. To such men the Negro race owes its loyalty to American institutions and its love for the flag of the nation.
And thus Henry M. Turner was raised up by Divine Providence, out of the awful environment of which We have been speaking to be a spokesman for his race and to help deliver the government of the United States from the crime and sin of human slavery. And how significant is the time of his appearing, the circumstances, the state of the coun try, the influence of Lovejoy, the labors of Garrison, Phil lips and Wilberforce, Whittier and Sumner and Douglass, Clarkson, Brougham and OConnell these men were about to envelop the nation into civil strife. The dissolution of the Union was heard on every side. Secession was .the watchword. The nation was just awaking from her long sleep, and was fearfully listening to the rumbling earth quake which threatened her destruction. President Buchanan did not take a decisive stand against slavery, which, he foresaw, would become, in a few years, a vital question before the American people. But thus handicapped by old age and the great issues before the country at that time, a man of his years could not hope to successfully deal. Thus he allowed the country to run down under his administra tion, and he lost control of the government. The construc tive statesmen and the patriotic leadership of the country lost confidence in him. They were demoralized. Dissolu tion knocked at the door of the Republic. Secession threat ened to sever the Union and to destroy the nation. A new era dawned. The nation was passing through a new birth of freedom and a deeper consecration to the service of mankind and a new baptism of love, liberty and law.
What an awful time is this. The State is morally cor rupt and its energy paralyzed. The pulpit is silent and dumb, and the Church hears not the cry of the slave, because the minister openeth not his mouth.
It was about this time, or in 1858, about the middle of Buchanans administration, that the main question discussed in the historical debate between Abraham Lincoln and Ste phen A. Douglass was, "Whether the Negro Was a Man." Douglass argued that he was not, and so not included in that clause of the Declaration of Independence, which de-

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clares that "All men are created equal." Chief Justice Taney, in the famous Dred Scott case, had put forth the same opinion. But, two years later, the negative of this question had become the shibboleth of a great national party, which raised an issue which was settled finally and forever, by a cruel civil war, at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. And in the midst of that awful struggle of blood and iron, which threatened to overthrow the nation and to sever the" Union, stood the towering form of Henry M. Turner as a unique figure and the most potent factor of his race, with a heart as firm as granite, and as unyielding in his purpose as steel. He was as thoroughly committed to the conviction that this nation could not endure half slave and half free as was Abraham Lincoln when he debated the question with Douglass a few years before. Upon the colossal form of Henry M. Turner all eyes were turned, and they watched him with misgivings such as no Negro had been watched before.
The commerce of our country was built upon a greed for a gain, wjiich was piled up and hoarded by the unrequited labor of the slave. Men had lost their judgment and reason and "bloody treason flourished over all." Justice no longer ruled. Truth had lost her place in the hearts of men. She had reeled and staggered and had fallen in the street. Equity had no place in civil society. The American people lad defiled themselves at the altar of slavery. Their fingers were soiled with the blood of the innocent. Their lips were made to lie on their conscience because they made their lips approve what their conscience condemned. But out of the nidst of this darkness the voice of Henry M. Turner was icard. He spoke for his race. He spoke for God. He spoke for Gods outraged law. He spoke for Justice and U>ve. He spoke and wrote and preached for the inalienable rights of man, and he has most thoroughly, as no other man ias, rebuked the sin that has preyed upon the life of the lation since the fall of slavery; and it is thus we compile iis history and write his name high up on the altar of im mortal fame. . He was a true American, filled with Southern chivalry.
It is to Henry M. Turner belongs the credit more than

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to any other one Negro for the ushering in of those oppor tunities which made possible a Robert Brown Elliott, a Jeff Long, a Cain, a Rainey, a Kyman, a Revels, a Bruce and that large army of colored men who were such potent factors in the struggle for human liberty. Ke led the way, and they fo!!o\ved in his wake. He, like an eagle, soared high above that sapient throng of noble men and women of that early day. His hour had come.

CHAPTER III.
FAMILY LIFE: THE MAN THE HUSBAND THE FATHER
THE CHRISTIAN GENTLEMAN.
The home life of Henry M. Turner was like Alexander Stephens in that its doors stood open for everybody. It was "Liberty^ Hall," where all men felt they were welcome and made to* feel at home. His home was the gathering place for that class of men who banded with him to fight slavery until it v/as driven completely from the American soil. In his home there was no compromising spirit. In it there were moulded those shafts of sentimental warfare and those bolts of opposition which meant war to the hilt. Therefore, to him his home was not a social center, nor was it so much the place of social enjoyment as it was the magazine of reason in which he forged those mighty mental projectiles which he hurled with such mighty force from time to time against the nation for her cruel treatment to his race. His home was more the reclusory for thought, the library for in formation and the Atheneum for the scholar, the place for research, rather than a social habitat. At his house every body was at home.
Thirty Yonge Street, Atlanta, Georgia, the index of his former residence, is famous not so much for its location, but on account of the famous man who lived there. It was formerly the residence of the late Bishop T. M. D. Ward.
But, like Alexander Stephens, Henry M. Turner was not a society man in the common meaning of that term. He was not an entertainer, but a great listener. He was an instructor and an advisor, a leader and a teacher. Hence, ?.is home was a university in which information of every type and character was found. It was the Mecca for all who sought information touching the Negro in all ages. He always had a full house. Aside from his large family, he <ept on hand a large clerical force, who were indispensable aids in dispatching his literary work and other public busi-

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ness, together with the local affairs of his Church. He was too busy to entertain his own family or to allow them to entertain him. His home was his work shop, and not his banqueting hall. And in there everybody worked, even "Father." His home was a fortress of strength. To him it was the shop in which he formed those bitter anathemas he hurled at an ungrateful nation and the stupdity of his own people.
As a man he was admired by all with whom he came in contact. And even those who did not believe in his teaching loved to hear him, and admired him for the earn estness of his argument and the boldness of his contention, as well as for the tenacity with which he held to what he thought was right. He was conscientious. He had strong convictions and the manly courage to express them. He would rather have gone down alone in the right than to have had the plaudits of the crowd in the wrong. He spoke and wrote as the fearless leader. For this he was admired in every part of our country.
He Was a devoted husband. This does not carry the idea that he worshiped or idolized his wife. To him, a wife was a partner in the execution of life. Devoted here means, as a husband he made provision for every enjoyment and comfort for the woman he selected as his companion and partner in life, so that no complaint could come to him from her to retard him in his God-given work. He was companionable enough to be loving, as well as devoted, and he was devoted enough to be honored, respected, loved and revered. As a husband, his will was the supreme law and the controlling influence of his home. But he never used that will as a master, but as a loving husband. His house hold lovingly, willingly and reverently abided his will, and, on account of his greatness, co-operated to make his home a veritable paradise for him. Little interest did he take in ordering and constructing his home, only as that ordering and constructing pleased his wife. She was the object of his tenderest care. To her, he was devoted in love and faith and kindness. And as rough and coarse as the exterior of his nature was, within he had a heart as tender and as loving as a laughing girl upon her mothers breast.

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As a father he loved his children and, as such, he in dulged them in the right and rebuked them in the wrong, as though they were not his children. The shadow of his greatness was so ponderous, that neither one of his children has yet approximated it. He did not encourage wrong doing in them, but his greatest desire for them was that they would become useful, serviceable and active men and women and lovers of their country.
He was married to Miss Eliza Ann Peacher, Columbia, South Carolina, 1856. A number of children blessed this union, of whom John P. and David M. Turner are the only survivors. With this union began the most critical and painstaking period of his life. He had not only traveled extensively in the North, but in the Southern States as well. He had made his home at various times in South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Missouri and Baltimore. In 1862 and 63 he pastored Israel Church, Washinjfton, D. C., and made this his home during the dark days when the nation was in the grip of civil strife. It was during his residence in Washington, he was brought in contact with all the great actors on the political stage of that day. Twas during this time he laid the foundation for that political career which ever afterward, to the day of his death, char acterized him as the most conspicuous Negro in American politics.
After the death of Mrs. Eliza Ann Turner, who had so much to do with the shaping of the destiny of her noted husband, he vfas again united in holy wedlock in 1893 to Mrs. Martha Elizabeth DeWitt, of Bradford, Pennsylvania. This union was of but a few years. At the death of this most loving character, he again, in 1900, tried his fate at Hymens altar, and was united in the bonds of holy matrimony to Mrs. Harriet A. Wayman, the widow of the late Bishop Wayman, whom he survived. After a few short but fretful years, his last marriage was to Miss Laura Pearl Lemon, of South Atlanta, Georgia, who became the loving companion and solace of his later years. She guided and protected him in his old age and protected his tottering form, as he wended his way to the close of his great and useful career. For her loving care, her patience and for-

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bearance had much to do with the preservation of his life. And for her he made a most devoted and loving husband.
But, as a Christian soldier, he never grew weary, fretful and tired. He exhibited the Christ spirit. He was busy serving others to the hour of his death. Death met him and claimed him for its own while he was on an errand of mercy and service. He fell in the harness, as he had lived, with his face toward the enemy. And as he viewed for the last time his native country the land of his fondest hopes, where he had given so many years of useful service, lest he should be idolized, God permitted him not to return, but took him from the banks of a foreign shore up to the bosom of his Father und his God.

CHAPTER IV.
THE SOLDIER AND STATESMAN ARMY CHAPLAIN RECONSTRUCTIONS
FREEDMANS BUREAU AND CIVIL SERVICE AGENT. When Bishop Henry M. Turner was pastor of Israel
Church in Washington City, he attracted the attention of some of the wisest men of his day by his public utterances from the pulpit and platform. They saw in him the embod iment of the spirit of John Quincy Adams, William Slade, Seth M. Gates and Joshua R. Giddings. These were among the earliest agitators in the Congress in the cause of freedom.
His pastorate in Washington, just at this time, fitted him in as a connecting link between the early and latter advocates of freedom, and no Negro in public life at that time was better fitted to come upon the scene in the struggle for the emancipation of his people than was Henry "McNeal Turner. Born just three years after the Nat Tur ner insurrection, which occurred in 1831, in the State of Virginia, he naturally imbibed the spirit which that event excited throughout our country. That was an awful year for the slave-holders of the South. In the 1831-32 session of the Legislature of Virginia, Mr. McDowell, who was after ward Governor of the State, said it was not the fear of Nat Turner and his deluded, drunken handful of followers that had so excited the people; it was the suspicious element attached to the slave himself a suspicion that a Nat Tur ner might be in every family, that the same bloody deed might be enacted over at any time and in any place, that the materials for it were spread through the land and were always ready for a like explosion. Twas Henry McNeal Turner, at that very time maturing in the nature of his parents and breathing their life, preparing to strike in later years a blow more formidable than that struck by Nat Tur ner but a blow more sane and more patriotiic.
And we can but be proud of his genius and prowess, when we think of those early day contemporaries, who so

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materially aided and supported him in his contention for right against might and wrong, and the men of that period of trouble and strife, who so valiantly stood out against the wrong, a few of whom are yet living actois moving and achieving great things for our people and the good of the country we love. It is with that loving grati tude, r.ear akin to devotion, we think of Slade and Giddings, Gates and Kale, Wilson and Sumner, Morris and Chase and of others who, in their day, exhausted every power of the Constitution in their reach to resist and finally to drive into everlasting exile slavery and the slave system, and thus to forever prevent its encroachment in our country to burden cur people.
But, towering above them all, when we think of Ab 1?.harji Lincoln, the patient, conscientious, firm Lincoln, like a rcighry Numidian beast, crouched to leap upon its prey Lincoln, who had waited long for the hour and the r;w. y/hen, as Commander-in-Chief of the military ar.d naval forces of the United States, he would, under the Constitution and in hearing distance of the Omnipotent Jud^e, v/ith a ring?; stroke of his pen, fully and completely strike the fet ters from the slave ar-d lift fonr million human beings from the condition of chattel to that of free men, women and children, and thus hand the Republic back to the people forever absolved from the shame and guilt of slavery. Lin coln found the man he sought in himself.
If you ask us whence this freedom, which made it po??ibls for {]>?. race to produce a Henry M. Turner, we wil! tell -on. It was the madness of the slave power which opener1, t-e door for this glorious hope. It was the confu^o- c f fh2 South and the madness of her sympathizers that \~z.-'.n '\ the way that brought the Negro into freedom this .<!-; "o:-5 consummation which we had so long devoutly wished.
r.Iany of the actors of that time are in the spirit land vrith the just men made perfect. Some few a very few o- rif-.er racs still linger here among the scenes of earth end times. And even the subject of this sketch is now numbered with the blessed, that immortal tribe of heroes and martyrs. And the author of this little volume gives

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them a passing salute of recognition for making it possible for this famous man to take such an active part in the freedom of his race from American slavery. And upon the bier of all those who toiled in this labor of love, we lay a garland. And we salute each one of the unknown dead that innumerable host who fought on both sides of the line with him and without him, to redeem this Republic and to break the fetters from the slave.
Henry M. Turner was commissioned Chaplain of the First Regiment, United States Colored Troops, in 1863, by President Lincoln. Thus he was the first Colored Chaplain ever commissioned in the United States. In 1865 he was mustered out of the service, but he was immediately reappointed Chaplain u^the Regular Army by President JohnFon. and was assigned to detail duty in the office of the Freodmans Bureau in the State of Georgia. Eut he soon re?itfned this commission and turned his attention to ths organizing of the A. M. E. Church in Georgia, thus better preparing himself to fight the battle for the rights of his people.
We shall largely depend upon those of Hemy M. Tur ners comrades in arms for information touching his life as a soldier and a statesman. Rev. R. French Hurley, D. D., an ermr.e:\ clergyman of the A. M. E. Church, who was ac quainted with Henry M. Turner for nearly sixty years, in Jii? address at the Quarto-Centennial of Bishop Turners Episcopacy in the A. M. E. Church, in 1905, spoke of him as foUows:
"Permit me to pay our Regiment vras a splendid one. It T.VSP twice favorably mentioned in general orders, once by Jifcno;1 General W;n. H. Smith and or;ce by Major Gsncip.l Benjamin F. Butler. A splendid Regiment with a pT>lerdJd record. The first Negro Regiment recognized by 1:!ie United States government. A splendid Regiment with ?f ppl.-rdJd Chaplain. The first Negro Chaplain comnrsfiorsed by President Lincoln. Henry M. Turner was a true rr?ar> at the most critical period of this nations history, and ft the most dangerous and most uncertain epoch in the
i-v of *hs American Negro." The Emancipation Proclamation was less than three

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years old when we were discharged. The condition of the country as seen by the wisest men was chaotic, but, as seen by the Negro, it Was chaos itself. How necessary it was that bold but wise leaders should throw themselves at the front of the untaught and inexperienced millions of the race, and how providential that a man of H. M. Turners courage had been commissioned Chaplain of the first Negro Regiment recognized by the government, thus af fording him the military training and experience so neces sary as a qualification for the leadership required by the condition of his people while passing through the awful ordeal of reconstruction times. Providence has preserved my life to bring this report of the conduct of the soldier and Chaplain, H. M. Turner, in the camp, and on the field, to the Church, and to the race, and to the country.
"The significance of the service rendered by this dis tinguished man is not to be measured by what we say about him; but rather by the conditions existing at the time he volunteered his service on the one hand, and in the light of the remarkable career he has led during his subsequent life on the other. At the time he enlisted, the government was refusing to enlist Negroes in its army. The Negro had been declared free, but he was not a citizen of this Republic. The Southern Confederacy had declared that she vvould show the Negro soldiers of the Federal Army no quarters. And yet he offered his services to the country. Several companies of the Regiment of which he was Chap lain drilled in Washington with wooden guns, the govern ment refusing to furnish them arms. The government having refused to enlist black men in her army, there was no pay in sight, and yet H. M. Turner, true to his race, was willing to be Chaplain of the Regiment composed of men who. without arms, no promise of pay and with threat ened slaughter by the Confederacy, insisted that they be allowed to fight for the preservation of the Union. The Confederacy on several occasions made good its threat to show the Negro troops no quarters, as the barbarity of Forts Pillow and Wagner will attest.
"I bring him to you today, not only with his acknowl edged personal bravery, but a true type of the brave men

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with whom he served so gallantly, and as an humble com rade I twine this deserved laurel about his venerable brow.
"He was always found in the thickest of the fight, when phot and shell whistled and screamed about as if the air was filled with angry demons."
Dr. Hurley says: "Four times our Regiment was cut up; four times it was recruited. But I never knew our Chaplain to evade the threatened danger. At Wilsons Wharf, Petersburg^ Chaffins Farm, Deep Bottom, Fair Oaks, Fort Harrison, Fort Fisher, Nos. 1 and 2; Wilmington, N. C.; Coxs Bridge, Warsaw and Sugar Loaf; in fact, the most of the eighteen general engagements in which the Regiment participated, H. M. Turner was present and act
ing." Rev. A. J. Gary, of Chicago, speaking of Bishop Turner
as a wise statesman, styles him as both a seer and a sage, with spiritual vision and the power to give permanency to his work, and accuracy to his vision. Bishop Turaer was sympathetic in his nature, and all his sayings had the ring of sincerity. In short, he was supremely great in the mani festation of his power and rich in the variety of his many gifts and graces.
Dr. Gary says: "His statesmanship was Gladstonian in character, and he had the faculty of perceiving the aspects of the many sides of human life and character; and he had the happy faculty to present these aspects in images which will remain and linger long after the different steps in his argument and the theories of the philosopher have passed away. Bishop Turner was in possession of a vision keen and penetrating enough to make him a statesman in the largest, the broadest and highest conception of the term."
Let us tell the story of his life as a statesman in the words of one who has watched his career from its peculiar beginning to its most illustrious end. But let us remem
ber, as we read the story of his life as a statesman, that he came upon the stage at the most awful time in the life of our nation, when the mind of her ripest statemanship was taxed to its uttermost tension to save our Republic from dissolution.
The surernder of the Southern Army and the capture

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of Jefferson Davis precipitated a crisis with which the na tion was not prepared to grapple. The freedom of the slave ^s.d been purchased at a great cost.- The Southern States had exhausted much of their resources, both in men and material wealth. The once flower of American chivalry had withered. The Southern people, being powerless, they w.:-re r.ov: seeking to take advantage of any terms that looked toward a recognition that would relieve that awful devas tated condition.
The ousstion of the hour was. How could these States, r-c recent in rebellion, be restored to equal sisterhood in the T_"::ien and, at the same time, endow the freemen with the elective frar.chipo and hold him, in every respect, equal befor? t><? law? Such a course was contemplated in Mr. Lin colns Emancipation Proclamation, and if civil freedom had b-sr. given the Negro at that time, much of the bitterness of after years would have been averted.
When Mr. Johnson came to the Presidency to succeed Mv. Lir-colr, instead of carrying out Mr. Lincolns policy, he assumed the right to decide how the Southern States should be governed and upon what terms they should return to the Union, by adopting what he termed an experiment, but afterward he called it "my policy." He went so far ,nc to dictate to Congress what it should or should not do. "-<; overlooked the fact that his duty was to see that the laws were executed and not to frame laws fov the governir?nt of the nation, nor to infringe upon the legislative depr.rtment of the Republic.
The attitude of the President so encouraged the hop?s of the South that even the late rebellious States sought representation in the National Council to assist in adjusting themselves to the new situation, and an opportunity to say upon what terms they should bs reinstated.
This reactionary course pursued by the President gave the opposers of freedom time to gather strength and rorerav= th?rn?eV<-s for the mightiest battle of the a?es. Thus by his act. he involved the question of Emancipation and the measure of Reconstruction into a long and bitter fight. And much time was spent in acrimonious debates upon the terms

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of adjustment of this, the most aggravating and vexing question of modern times.
This question called for the national statesmanship, ;is v/ell as the ripest scholarship. It was during this time, the blackest period of our nations history, Henry M. Turner arose out of the confusion as one upon whom nature had set her seal of greatness and power, with a genial and refined culture and a broad scholarship and the veiy kind the times demanded.
He had not only sympathy for his own people who were so recently emancipated, but he had the most profound re spect for the Southern people who suffered because of the changed relation between the two races. He was typically Southern in his whole make-up. Born and reared on South ern soil, he grew to manhood and was educated among Southem people, and no one of his race understood Southern condi tions and labored to better them more than he. Henry M. Turner represents purely a Southern product.
He was endowed with a statemanship which was meas ured by the loftiest patriotism, as well as the deepest sym pathy for the sufferings of the slaves. His statesmanship embodied that strength and beauty of manhood which em bellished his public career, and made him one of the best representatives of those with advanced ideas who played such a conspicuous part in adjusting the troubled conditions left by the States so recently in rebellion.
His was a statesmanship hewn out of the roughness of his nature. It was broad, large and sweeping. His abil ity was great. His statesmanship was diversified and rushed on like an unrestrained flood. He was not polished and cultured as were some of his contemporaries, and, for this reason, much doubt and mistrustfulness arose as to his ability to accomplish the things he advocated. It is true that he was not as fortunate as some of his contemporaries in procuring an education, but along other lines he was more fortunate than they. He had the experience which they could not procure. All the material otherwise which made up fitness were in him, and he had just enough education to use it to the best advantage. Of course, he needed that

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education and information which enabled him to exercise the latent forces of his mighty soul.
In the days of his supremacy, the conditions did not call for refinement and culture. And in the times of great emergency, statesmen and leaders, soldiers and loyal patriots come from among the common people, not from the univer sities. The safest leadership and the bravest soldiers come from among the common people. The trained recruit who is so indispensable in the public service comes out from amongr the people, and the United States might have been a slaveholding country now had it not been for men of an uncouth nature, like Henry M. Turner.
Henry M. Turner matured out of circumstances over which he had no control. He used his wits, his arguments and observations as best his environments permitted. And, when he did not have words to hit his meaning, he coined them for his immediate use. And, whether he discussed a question systematically or not, one thing was certain, he understood the question thoroughly, and always knew the thing about which he was talking. His mind filled with thoughts as each item of his experience had made its record and as each glimpse of the world came to him. He made a career for himself in the United States which did not cul minate with his death, because it is not by his fame he is best known as a great character, a statesman and a leader; but his greatness is a growing something, and is destined to become more and more understood as the years come and go.
But, however much he may have been criticized by the white race, and mistrusted by his own people, the necessity of the conditions with which he grappled and his own en gaging personality won for him the highest regard and the most profound respect from all his critics in and out of his race. He is now honored and respected in all sections of our country and by all classes of our people. He has not only always been a favorite with the masses, but he has always been their friend and true champion. He is now in the hearts of the people everywhere.
But a battle now begins in which no Negro had ever fought before. Twas a battle of readjustment and recon-

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struction. Heretofore he had contended with blood and iron, but now he must battle against hailstones and coals of fire. No Negro man on the American soil was better fitted for this battle than Henry M. Turner, with his peculiar brilliancy and that strong, coarse voice; he was enabled to win many battles for his outraged people. Henry M. Tur ners statesmanship made him a servant of the Union, and he regarded it to be his duty to maintain with equal in terest every section of our great country. He was opposed to any and every movement which tended to loosen those bonds which united our Republic in a sisterhood of StatesHe hated sectionalism; he loved the fellowship of the States, our fraternal union, "one and inseparable."
Twas this penetrative power which prompted him, during these troublesome times, to organize the first school" for Negroes that they might prepare themselves to grapple wtih the new conditions brought about by the Emancipation Proclamation. And when the reconstruction laws were enacted in Congress, Henry M. Turner called the first Re publican Convention in Georgia and stumped the State in the interest of the party, and he was known throughout the nation as a powerful orator.
He was elected a member of the Constitutional Con vention in 1867 and a member of the Georgia Legislature in 1868 and again in 1870. Thus briefly runs the course of his career.
It was during his pastorate at Israel Church at Wash ington, D. C., in 1862. he first heard and heeded that louder and larger call which made him a preacher not only of righteousness but of universal liberty and the emancipation of the bodies of men from the thraldom of the accursed system of human slavery. In response to this call he took the platform, as well as the pulpit; the stump, as well as the sacred rostrum, and began to lift his voice in clarion tones, oleading for his oppressed and enslaved people. Heie he let slip those fiery invectives against the sinning nation v.-hich was trafficking in human flesh. So earnest was his plea, so searching was his invective and so great the enthu siasm aroused wherever he spoke, that he was in constant demand. "The Washington Republican," a daily newspaper,

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and other prominent journals of the day gave much space to his speeches and devoted many columns of editorial com ment upon the earnest eloquence and profound discourses of this young pastor.
In order to put the picture once more before the reader, Ir.i me repeat, for clearness, as well as for emphasis, the story of the early beginning of his public life as an American statesman. But let us tell this story and follow the lines so beautifully marked out as a model by the fathers of our country; and let us see how closely Henry M. Turner adhered to their teaching.
He v:as not contending for glory and mere abstract free dom ; but he sought for himself and his people those con crete and inalienable principles and inherent rights which rl! men have to life, liberty and to the pursuit of happiness, guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence and safegr.aideci by the Constitution of the United States.
Without the Declaration of Independence and the Con stitution, there could not have been a great American Re public as it is known today. And he saw that, by these instruments of civil government, a new meaning was given to human rights and a grander hope and a more lofty range v/sre accorded to human government. He regarded the Declaration of Independence as the most glorious civil mesp?sr2 ever expressed by man to the world, and that it was intended to serve a measureless future as a model as long ?.s organized society, by consent of the governed, under Con stitution and law lasts.
Kerry M. Turner was committed to the three primal rights: to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, guar anteed to men by reason of natural endowment of the ^laker when He created all men equal. And he held that the c e rights were not only inalienable, but all the truths leading up to these rights were self-evident. He held that these three primal rights were the end and purpose for which rrear.izscl society existed and free governments were founded.
It was the hope and contention of this great man that his race during his own life time would enioy this complete r,s veil as original Declaration proclaiming the status of

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<every man under free government. And it matters not how far the people of this country may have wandered from time to time from the right course, the moment they confess they are American citizens, that moment their feet will find the true path. And the people of the United States are American citizens in proportion to their faith and devotion to these self-evident truths, as well as by title, and not by the color of their skins.
But the Declaration of Independence alone does not make history. When Benjamin Franklin was told the war for independence had been successfully closed, he said: "Say rather the war of the revolution; the war for in dependence has yet to be fought." In short the real battle for independence is fought in the hearts and lives and consciences of men, in legislative halls, in Congress and in Senate. Independence is determined by the settled opinion of mankind. A holy and consecrated public opinion. The logical conclusion from that clause in the Declaration of In dependence which enjoins "pursuit of happiness," and of the Constitution, intei*preted by its preamble, which makes it incumbent for this nation to "provide for the common defense and to promote the general welfare," are that any combination, trust, interest, traffic or conceivable movement of capital attempting by association to reap unjust profits fovn the people, or prosecuting a business detrimental to the- -public, is so essentially un-American that its legal inter diction is but a question of time. The right of personal Kborty to trade stops at the exact spot where the exercise is unsafe to the public. And all such pernicious tendencies a? caste and greed are un-American, and are not allowed under our laws, because they are eternal foes to all for whom the Declaration of Independence was written and the pur pose for which the Constitution was framed. But, while caste and greed disobey and defy the Constitution, the American people, answering to the dictate of conscience, can always be trusted to suppress the cruelties they en gender.
But when the Civil War had closed and the war for tuman rights begun, and his people were not only refused a place in the new conflict, but were denied that in many

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cases for which nature had endowed them, he became the most fearless and outspoken Negro of his times or any other times. What he did not accomplish with the sword on thefield of blood, he attempted to finish with word and pen. And from time to time he hurled bitter invectives against the nation for what he called its ingratitude. He charac terized the flag as a dirty rag so far as its protection of the Negro was concerned, and in his frenzied moments he would lampoon the Supreme Court of the nation and called its decisions concerning the negro iniquitous, and spoke of the judges as cowards. And when lynching and mob violence became so prevalent in the South, he publicly urged the Ne groes to arm themselves for self-protection. But a more patriotic spirit never lived than that of Henry M. Turner. He was loyal to the State and the nation and a defender of all the people.
Henry M. Turner was a peculiar mixture of peculiari ties. All of his activities seemed to have been tangent to something1 which did not reveal itself in his public utter ances. Therefore his race humanized him, but did not idolize. He had no advantage of education nor birth over many of his contemporaries. But he had the genius of character, but not of intellect; and it was by the genius of his character he made his way through life. Therefore, to say that he was a providential man does not reveal the cause of his success. He trained himself out of school, and was, therefore, remarkably cultured in habit as well as in man ners. Hence, the name of Henry M. Turner stands first in ^f Datriotic records of the Negro race in the United States. And no honest study of the history of the Negro race in this country would attempt to place another name above that of Henry M. Turner, because no other name connected with the history of the Negro in America and especially so far as his national experience is concerned can undergo so much investigation and remain blameless.
He lived in the awful times of great trials and dis tresses, when mens hearts were sorely tried, and the prin ciples of adjustment of the freedman to the new state of thinars had not been settled. To settle this question formed the labor of his whole life after freedom was declared.

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Therefore, with his indomitable will and unconquerable spirit, he felt that loyalty in patriotic service to his race and country was his indispensable duty. Hence, his fol lowers have had cause to look up to him as their leader and deliverer. And thus his wisdom and career will shine brighter as the generations come and go.
The pure life of Henry M. Turner impressed itself upon his race. His unselfishness and the genius of his character gave him a mastery among his people and a place in their confidence which he never betrayed. He won a place in the heart and conscience of the South as unique as was that of Calhoun, Alexander Stephens and Joe Brown. And no man in the country admired Southern statesmanship, schol arship, eloquence and oratory more than Henry M. Turner. He found his models in the pulpit, in legislative halls and on the stump in Southern white men of the highest standing and the largest degree of proficiency.
This tribute is not paid to the fame of Henry M. Turr.er; neither to the brilliancy of his genius, nor to the daz zling lustre of his exploits. He had no such lustre. He was simply great and great in simplicity. He had a great heart and a great and unassuming mind, a sweet soul and a serene life. He possessed the mental strength of a states man and the conviction and moral courage of the leader to dare and do his duty in the face of the most pronounced opposition.
His greatness consisted not so much in the respect he liad for the views and opinions of others as in the respect r-e paid to his own views and opinions and his own convic tion?. And whatever his decisions or conclusions were touching any matter, they were always the embodiment of his sense of duty and in deference to his obligation which he regarded as a sacred trust.
He always had a scheme of his own selection, born out f)e the needs of his people. He saw through the plainness of Iv.s own breeding among the common people their every need. And he struggled to relieve them.
He was a man of great ideas and always sought a means "by which he could best express them in the interest of his T^ople and the country he loved.

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Seldom, if ever, in history, do great men live to enjoy .ho full ripe fruit of their most earnest labor. But once in a crreat while S0me man tiptoes the ages and sees the Promised Land of his hopes and desires as did f Moses on r^sr.h, ?Jount Nebos lonely height. But the sage of this f:>.:rrtch. this most esteemed and honored man, lived to enjoy iv.uch for which he hoped and labored.
After all his years of sacrifice and service, he lived tos-gi the clawn of a brighter flay: a day of hope and gladness a day of coming glory, fc:: :ich he so eamestly contended. E> liver] to per? the day \v;jcn a President of these United said: "The door of opportunity shall not be shut in the f.ice of f.ny m.an because of race or color or previous condition of servitude." He lived to see the day when the President of our united country could say: "Hob rule in this country must c.-rase. If the city cannot stop it, then back of the city is the State, and back of the Sate stands the nation." And just ?. few days after the parting folds of a rugged carstr had separated, to admit him to pass into the pres ence of the Almighty, out of the mortal into the immortal, the hisrhe?t court of our country unanimously declared those measures for which he contended and the benefits of which his race had been deprived for more than forty years, to be n T)?,rt of the organic law of the land, and must be obeyed ?.s such.
Ar,d as we close this very interesting chapter, we agairr vould revert to those cheering words of Dr. Carey, if space allr.v.-ed, who himself a Georgian, because they are so full r,-f tv.e real character and life of our subject, and we would ruote these ar.d othsv words, for the purpose of instilling rl.o the young mnr-hood of our day ?. larsrer and sron^er faith ;p the possibilities of the opportunities given them. *\~ v":uld that the life of this great man be an inspiration to ire y.uth of our r?p.v.
The spirit of Christ has hastened the day when the TVMO 1-:, tli? German, the Frenchman, the Italian and ths Npcrro could meet together in the same society, and com-
r.t the same altar, as well p.s to die on the same battleand in the same trenches. It is now during these ng1 days that the character and service of Her? 1-}- M,

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Turner, the orator, the Churchman, the philosopher and statesman, are manifesting themselves as never before, and he is now being appreciated at his real worth. And when Christian statesmanship shall have fulfilled its mis sion and accomplished its end in the v/orld, than, and not until then, will Christianity, clad in garments of eternal fs -ory, shine forth, "clear as the sun, fair as the moon and terrible as an army with banners." Then will American civilisation, purified and redeemed, march forth and prsss
the chaplet of eternal praise upon the worthy brow of Henry 1*1. Turner, while posterity shall proclaim, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."
In looking over the records of his life and service, as a race leader, as well as a soldier and a statesman, we would not close this very interesting chapter without reverting to
the very lofty tribute paid Bishop Turner by Bishop Flipper
of Atlanta, Georgia. He says: "You may place other men in comparison with him, but
none ahead of him. You may single out men his equal in partial characteristics, but in the full rounded man you must beat a retreat before his numerical greatness.
"Some may surpass him in polish and politeness, but in richness of sympathy and abundance of mercy he is the image of the lowly Nazarene.
"Some may be his equal or superior in latter day train ing, but none surpass him in pantological research and knowledge.
"If you would form a conception of him as a race leader, write the name of Bruce on Mercury, 35,000,000 miles from fr.e sun: Langston on Venus, 66,000.000 miles: Elliot on Mars. 139.000,000 miles; Touissaint LOuvevture on Jupiter, 476,600,000 miles : Council on Saturn. 871.000,000 miles ; Washington on Uranus, 1,754,000.000; Douglass on Nep tune. 2,748.000,000 miles, then ask for wing of eternal flight
and so far beyond all known worlds and somewhere in ether itself embazon with a pen dipped in million-hued rainbow, the name of Henry McNeal Turner."
Reverting again to Bishop Turner, as a statesman, he says: "No one en.ioys a fight quite so well as cur Senior. He likes to be in it, if possible; but, if that cannot be, then

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he likes to be in the neighborhood where it is going on." This may explain why, with all his denunciation of America, he likes to stay here. * * * No man of our race has ever said so many harsh, unvarnished and biting things about the white American and lived to repeat it. There have been times when it seemed that his radicalism meant death to him and disaster to his followers, but, when the storm had blown over, good results were to be seen. In more than one instance, the guilty people of this land have been struck with shame as they saw this hoary-headed Elijah standing, single and alone, among their false prophets and calling down fire of a just God upon them. Sublime pic ture ! A lion heart, an imprecatory lip, an accusing finger and a righteous cause who can stand before them? * *
All hail to thee, warrior, preacher, chaplain, statesman, race-lover, Bishop, Man! Rigged and keeled for stormy seas, licked at by lightning, hurtled by tempest and foamed at by the demons of the deep, you have stood manfully on the captains bridge and are bringing your vessel into port, amid smoother waters and brighter skies. We, your lov ing- friends, wait on the wharf to ship for the next voyage, while you take rest and eternal comfort in the Christian sailors home."

CHAPTER V.
BISHOP TURNER THE CHURCHMAN. A PIONEER PREACHER A PRESIDING ELDER A
GENIAL OFFICER A LECTURER A BISHOP AND PUBLICIST A MISSIONARY
, AND AFRICAN EMIGRATIONIST. Bishop Turner as a Churchman must be estimated by the service he has rendered the Church more than by what may be said of him by his friends. I shall speak of him in his official relation to his col leagues, as well as to the ministers of the Church and other men. But what I shall say shall be the mere epitome of what can be said of him. Many volumes can be written upon the career of a man whose official life was, as long and as varied as Was that of Bishop Turners. But in writ ing the life of a man whose duties have brought him in contact with so many other men, and whose life is subjected to so much criticism, the writer must assume the role of an apologist rather than a historian. Not that he apolo gizes for the shortcomings of him whose life he portrays, but for the manner in which that life is portrayed. The novelty in the story of ones life is the truth twice told. It is the truth told about a man after his death when nothing is to be gained, that makes biography interesting reading and sought by the inquisitive mind. The nature of the matter with which we deal appears in the form of an apol ogy. In short, at many places in the life and character of Bishop Turner excuses can be made for some of the acts for which people condemned him. But a great number of those acts were the results of the conditions at that time, and dealt entirely with surface matters, and not with great fundamental principles, and therefore should not have been noticed. This form of apology is pursued in order to un mistakably portray the life and character of Bishop Tur ner, and cause them to stand out closely upon the pages of this book, which is a contribution to the memory of his great life and service.

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He was so large-hearted and ponderous in life and char acter that oftimes his true aims and purposes were over looked on account of some frivolous interpretation, of his conduct, which was no part of the thoughts of his mind. And thus we speak of him, not in that comparative sense, as we have done above; but we speak of him as a Bishop among his people leading, guiding and directing them for the best. While his Christian life as a Church member began when he joined the M. E. Church, South, in 1848, and his ministerial career began when he was licensed to preach in 1853, his Church life with the A. M. E. connection did not begin until 1858, when he severed his relation to the M. E. Church, South, to join the A. M. E. connection.
However much he may have devoted his time to minis terial service, from 1858 to 1876, his whole life was divided between the Qhurch and the State. He was a preacherstatesman a kind of a half and half.
In 1859 he left South Carolina and went to Baltimore, and there his political battles for freedom began. He was at Baltimore in 1863, when Mr. Lincoln appointed him Chap lain of a Regiment of United States Volunteers, where he served nearly three years; and, after being mustered out, at the close of the war, he was appointed Chaplain in the Regular Army by President Johnson, and sent to Georgia by Secretary Stanton to labor in the Freedmans Bureau. He came to Georgia in the Fall of 1865; but he soon resigned his governmental position and entered immediately upon the organization of the A. M. E. Church. At this time the connection had but one Church in the State St. Phillips, in Savannah, under the pastoral charge! of Rev. A. L. Standford. Thus he began the superintendency of the Church work in Georgia. But he held on to politics, and, although he worked for the spread of his Church and did Herculean service, he was equally as busily engaged in politics. Presi dent Grant appointed him Postmaster at Macon, through the influence of Senator Charles Sumner, but, having been removed by Mr. Creswell, Postmaster General, he devoted his time to the local politics of the State and the further spread of the A. M. E. Church. Aside from being a mem ber of the Constitutionalist Convention of 1868, he was

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elected to the Legislature of Georgia, and again elected December 20, 21 and 22, 1870, as the election lasted three days. And thus, from 1870 to January, 1872, he passed through the bitterest possible political experience. But it was during this period of darkness he laid deep and wide the foundation of African Methodism in the State of Georgia, which is now the Connectional Empire State. But let us read of his achievements and worth to the Church, as he modestly states them in words which fell from his own lips. On retiring from the Presiding Eldership and Superintendency of Missions in the State of Georgia, at Savannah, Geor gia, January 5, 1872. Bishop Turner said:
"Dear Brethren: I have the honor to ask that I no longer be retained in the arduous duties of Presiding Elder. I am aware that since I have signified a desire to retire from the responsible duties the office involves, grave objections have been made by the brethren to my taking such a step. I hope, however, that these objections will be reconsidered, and that I may be allowed to assume a relation to our Con ference less arduous and responsible.
Nine years ago, when our country was in the whirl of revolution and battle strife, and the immortal principles of freedom were in doubtful suspense, I left the pulpit and went to the scene of carnage to throw the weight of my influence and physical powers on the side of God and a free country. In this capacity I served both my Church ard my government to the best of my ability, with what success I will leave to other tongues to tell. I will say, how ever, I endeavored at all times to discharge my whole duty.
At the end of the rebellion, it was thought by the Chief Executive of the nation that my services were further needed in the South, in assisting to elevate my recently de livered race; and, being mustered out of service as a United States Chaplain, with my brave and gallant Regiment, I was again reappointed a Chaplain in the Regular Army and sent, by Secretary Stanton, to Georgia to labor in the Freedmans Bureau. Here I landed in the fall of 1865 ; but shortly after my arrival, I resigned this lucrative position,
consequence of some disrespect shown me on account

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of my color, on the one hand, and the better to serve my Church on the other.
I immediately entered upon the general organization of the A. M. E. Church in this State. At that time we had only one Church and congregation in Georgia, which was un der the pastoral charge of Rev. A. L. Standford St. Phillips, Savannah, Georgia. And this is the congregation to which I have reference. Brother Standford was necessa rily confined to this special locality, in view of the discord ant elements which had to be watched with a vigilant eye thus leaving almost the entire Empire State of the South to my care and supervision. But the field was ripe for the harvest, though it was large and cumbersome; and, without a dollar to start with, I shouldered the responsibili ties and, trusting: in God for help, went willingly to work
To recount my labors would necessitate the writing of a volume, which I may do at some future day, but, for the present, it must suffice to say that I have had to pass through blood and fire. No man can imagine what I have had to endure but one who has gone through it. And no man could have passed through it unless he had, as I have, an iron constitution. I started out with the determination of raising up the grandest Negro Conference in America, but I think we have the largest in the world certainly America cannot boast of an equal, for we have 189 appointments and 226 members. And as for Church government, we have no superiors for our time and chance. I made it a rule to teach and instill the highest system of Church government known to our connection from the commencement of our organization in the State. This rigid training, as many of you here well remember, caused me often to keep you up all night till day would drive us out of Church next morning; you know it was nothing unusual for me to have you study ing, praying and singing for whole nights in Quarterly Conferences, trying to teach both preachers and their of ficiary what the law of our Church required, even to the minutest point. And you need not be reminded of my pul pit labors you certainly have not forgotten how I had to preach three times every Sabbath and every night in the week, for month after month, and then come out of the

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pulpit and explain the history, character, purpose and object of our Church, for hours, to satisfy the colored and whites, who would often look at me as if I was a bear or a lion; sometimes just commencing the organization of the Church about twelve or one at night. But why attempt to enter upon a detailed review? Why, in one year alone, I trav eled over fifteen thousand miles in this State, organizing and planting Churches, and superintending the work, to gether, and preached and spoke over five hundred times. 1 have been also accused of recklessly licensing preachers by the cargo, etc., because I had to license such a number. I admit that I did, on several occasions, exercise rather ex traordinary powers in this respect, but in no instance where the emergency of the case would not justify such action. I was for a long tune Elder, Superintendent and everything else, and sometimes had to make preachers of raw material at a moments notice. I have licensed preachers while rid ing on the cars, but I always put you through an exami nation; sometimes would examine you for three or four .hours. And while it is not only gratifying to me to know that some of these arbitrarily licensed preachers are now among our most useful and intelligent Presiding Elders, but, what is more gratifying, is that not one of them has cver been expelled or silenced for any crime whatever. In deed, my hastily made preachers have been among the most useful.
And my labors have not stopped in the religious sphere; but it is well known to every one that I have done more work in the political field than any five men in the State, if you will take out Colonel Bryant. I first organized the Republican party in this State, and have worked for its maintenance and perpetuity as no other man in the State I1 ?.;?. I have put more men in the field, made more speeches, organized more Union Leagues, political associations, clubs and have wHtten more campaign documents that received large rcirculation than any other man in the State. Why, one campaign document I wrote alone was so acceptable that it took four million copies to satisfy the public. And as you are well aware, these labors have not been performed amid sunshine and prosperity. I have been the constant target

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of Democratic abuse and venom and white Republican jeal ousy. The newspapers have teemed with all kinds of slan der, accusing me of every crime in the catalogue of villainy; I have even been arrested and tried on some of the wildest charges and most groundless accusations ever distilled from the laboratory of hell. Witnesses have been paid as high as four thousand dollars to swear me in the penitentiary; white preachers have sworn that I tried to get up insur rections, etc., a crime punishable with death, and all such deviltry has been resorted to for the purpose of breaking me down, and with it all they have not hurt a hair of my head, nor even bothered my brain longer than we were going through the farce of an adjudication. I neither replied to their slanders nor sought to revenge when it hung upon my option; nor did I even bandy words with the most in veterate and calumnous enemies I had; I invariably let them have their say, and do their do; while they were studying against me, I was studying for the interest of the Church and working for the success of my party, and they would expose their own treachery and lies and leave me to attend to my business, as usual. So that, up to this time, my trials have been a succession of triumphs. I have enemies, as is natural, but, at this time, their tongues are silent and their missiles are as chaff, while my friends can be counted by hundreds of thousands. And I can boast of being one of the fathers of the mammoth Conference of the A. M. E. Church an honor I would not exchange for a royal diadem. Thus, having reached the goal of my ambition, I only ask now to be retired from weighty duties of the past, and given the humble and more circumscribed sphere of preacher in charge. I am perfectly willing, if the Bishop will consent, to let some of my sons in the Gospel be my Presiding Elder, and I trust I shall be able to honor them as highly as they honor me, for I can say I have yet to be resisted or ques tioned by a single preacher. And while I shall try to rest more regularly and comfortably in my retired relation, and en.ioy life more pleasantly than I have for the last nine years, I shall, nevertheless, endeavor to be equaly as useful to the Church in the literary department, for I purpose to give my future days to the literary work of our grand and grow-

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ing connection. Since I have been trying to preach the Gospel, I have had the inestimable pleasure of receiving into the Church on probation fourteen thousand three hundred and eighteen persons which I can account for, besides some three or four thousand I cannot give an definite account of. And I would guess, for I am not certain, that I have received during and since the war about sixteen or seventeen thou sand full members in the A. M. E. Church, by change of Church relation making in all nearly forty thousand souls that I have in some manner been instrumental in bringing to religious liberty; and yet I am not quite thirty-nine years old. Hundreds of these persons have, in all probability, fainted by the way and gone back to the world; but I am, on the other hand, happy to inform you that hundreds have since died in triumph and gone to heaven, while thousands are today pressing their wtay to a better land, scores among whom are preaching the Gospel. I make no reference to these statistics to have you suppose I am better than other men who have not been thus successful, for I am only a poor, worthless creature, and may yet be a castaway; I only men tion these facts to express my profound gratitude to God for His abundant favors which have been bestowed upon me so undeserving. If Bishops Payne and Wayman were here, I would take-great pleasure hi laying my gratitude at their feet for the support they gave me in the early establishment of this Conference; but, as they are not, I trust Bishop Brown will allow me to tender him my heartfelt thanks for the continued manifestations of respect shown me under his administration he who has so ably presided over our Con ference for the last four years, and done so much to advance and elevate the members of this Conference.
I would also say to the brethren of the Conference: You are now Deacons, Elders, Presiding Elders and many of you pulpit orators, so now you must bear your own responsibil ities and look, in addition to your Bible, Discipline and Bishop, to our Father who art in Heaven for direction and counsel; you are welcome to the benefits of my experience at any time you may wish them. But I trsut it will not be my province to exercise any further control over a single member of the Conference. With those remarks, Bishop

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and Conference, I again pray to be relieved of my heavy, taxing responsibilities. May the God of grace keep you, is my prayer.
Elder Gaines moved that Mr. Turners request be granted, and that his remarks be printed, with the minutes, and in the Christian Recorder. Passed unanimously."
During the following four years he did pastoral work in and about Savannah, and kept up his political activities at the same time. It was not an easy task for him to break en tirely away from politics, and it is thought by some of his friends and most ardent admirers that the early political spirit served him to the day of his death.
It is a strange fact, and worthy of note, that, after retiring from the arduous duties of the Presiding Eldership, he thereafter gave the Church forty-three years of the best service of his life, and thirty-five of them as Bishop in the denomination, and survived every member of the Conference of January 5-14, 1872; and during his Episcopancy, he survived nineteen of the thirty Bishops with whom he sat in council at St. Louis, Misouri, from May, 1880, to February, 1915, in St. James A. M. E. Church, New Or leans, Louisiana, where he first connected himself with the A. M. E. Church.
But Bishop Turners real work as a Churchman did not begin in the A. M. E. Church until 1876. It was at this time he laid aside all matters pertaining to politics of a local nature and all others except such as naturally concerned him as an American citizen and the citizenship of his people. From this date onward, he played politics after the order of the old school, and this method was most beautifully man ifested in some respects touching his last days.
As a Churchman, Bishop Turner was strong of will power. Herein lay the strength of his mighty brain. Like a great cataract, the thoughts of his mind rushed on, un restrained, unchecked and in spite of all opposition. No per suasion, no force and no argument turned the current of his thoughts when he was once convinced that his cause was just. All of his acts seemed to have been to prove and justify, as well as to satisfy, his own conscience and to obey the ruling influence of his own will.

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At the May, 1876, General Conference, he was elected General Manager of the A. M. E. Book Concern, located at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In this office he served with credit to himself, and the connection was fully justified in selecting him for the place. And, in 1880, at St. Louis, Missouri, he was elected one of the Bishops of the .con nection.
As a Bishop of the A. M. E. Church, he held a unique, as well as. distinct, place, altogether his own. One not knowing Bishop Turner would suppose he was a man who took pleasure in contrarieties and oddities, and was con stantly labornig to establish and to make practicable the unusual and the unprecedented; and that he differed from other men for the sake of being odd and alone. Thus he was often misjudged. He. had decided and peculiar views touching the functions of the office to which he had been elected and his relation to the men who were to be his new colleaj?ues in service. But he held no views that had not been held by the Christian Church at some time of her history. . In fact, his peculiar views were rather an evidence of his wjde knowledge of ecclesiastical law, Church usages and practices in all ages. They were historical, to say the least. Bishop Turner did draw a very clear and distinct line of difference between that which was orthodox and that which was historical. Hence, he freely expressed himself touching the claims of the Bishops in his own Church in their rights as Episcopates.
But. so far as the office related to his own Church was concerned, he adhered strictly to her polity and discipline. and, therefore, did not allow his personal and private opin ions to intrude upon his duty and obligation to propagate the doctrines, practices and usages of his connection. Yet down in his heart he was a sacerdotalist; that is to say, he not only believed in the historic Episcopacy, which in volves the nature and character of the ministry, as well as its form. He believed in an Episcopal Hierarchy and a House of Bishops, with an Archbishop, as the; highest legis lative body in the Church, with a lower assembly composed of the lesser clergy. Thus the Bishops would be the su preme lawmakers in the Church. He held that the Bishops,

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by virtue of their Apostolic authority, should exercise the same power now invested in our General Conference, which is the supreme lawmaking powter in our American Meth odism.
Therefore, he preferred the term, House of Bishops, to that of Bishops Council, because the House of Bishops, according to historical Episcopacy, constituted an ecclesi astical court, where the Bishops collectively, officially and authoritatively sat together for the purpose of adjudicating Church and religious matters, while the Bishops Council was a mere assembly of Bishops, convened for consultation, or td seek information or advice from one another, as needs may have required from time to time. But such a Council had no legislative function and no judicial authority.
It is interesting to know that while he was a strong believer in the Apostolic succession and the Historic Epis copacy, this position never affected his practices in the ful filment of his duties as a Bishop of the A. M. E. Church. He accepted all the practices and usages of Methodism. He acknowledged and bowed willingly to the one "General As sembly, the General Conference," the supreme lawmaking body, presided over by Bishops. Thus he recognized the Methodist Church as an ecclesiastical "government with Bishops, but not by Bishops."
But while he could not swing his Church around to his views, he naturally kept himself in touch with the position of his Chuvch. Although he would, at times, proclaim loudly that the1 Bishopric was an order and surrpunder with sacred and mystical rights, he showed his consistency in the fact that, according to the manner of election and induction in office, he regarded the Bishopric of his Church as an office and not an order; and the term Bishop another name for Elder when an Elder has been set apart to superintend the work of the Church, and with delegated and limited au thority to overseer the Church under prescribed rules and terminal authority. And thus he serves as a part of the ministry of the Church.
These High Church views were a source of much an noyance to Bishop Turner and sometimes were the cause of his receiving some very severe criticisms. But we

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do not mean here criticism in the sense of argument, but we mean here he was severely denounced by some of his colleagues, as well as some leading clergymen of his time; and even some in his Church did not regard his position as an expression of his sincerity, but, rather, they claimed that his utterances along this line were a part of those irrational expressions which were at times common to his nervous nature. But others called this attitude Bishop Tur ners peculiarities or his personal idiosyncracies.
This seeming inconsistency, aside from ordaining a woman to the diaconate, led Bishop Turner, under the plea of that form of emergency which makes necessity law, to ordain Owana Vicar Bishop of South Africa. For this act he had neither law nor precedent in the A. M. E. Church, but he cited a precedent in the Roman Catholic Church, in English ecclesiastical law and in the Protestant Episcopal Church.
No one attempted to meet Bishop Turner with argu ment upon these historical questions and century-old dis cussions. He held his opinions alone. And the writer has heard but two men discuss the question of the status of the Bishops of a Methodist Church on its merits; and we refer to Henry C. Sheldon, Professor of Historical Theology in Boston University, and the Turner Theological Seminary Spieey Lectures by Rt. Rev. J. S. Flipper for 1917, upon "His toric Episcopate or Apostolic Succession."
Thus, so far as the. A. M. E. Church is concerned, Bishop Turner has had the field to himself, and the opposition that has come against him has been more in the form of abuse or grumbling complaints than discussion of propositions or conclusions from premises. But Bishop Turner avoided all such modes of argument and absolutely refused even to defend himself against any and all such unwarranted at tacks. He never would disappoint his mind by allowing it to be tied to irrelevant and frivolous discussions when vital issues were at stake.
Bishop Turner was never known to be unemployed. He was a busy man all the time. He worked until he slept; then he slept until he worked. Like Aristotle, he always found something to do.

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His mind at times was cyclonic in action. His though!s would suddenly turn from the given course of reason his an tagonist seems to have had in mind to the thoughts of his own mind, and he would contend for the righteousness of his course with a tenacity that was remarkable indeed. Those v/ho did not understand him and others who were afraid to venture where he dared to lead, charged him with erraticism, wabbling and roving from one thing to another. But ft is just to his critics, as well as to him, to say of them they had but little penetration, and, therefore, could not fathom the depth of his mighty brain. And many times the mo?'c fundamental activities of his mighty mind were called Bishop Turners ramblings from side to side and from one thing to another. But these excursions of his most pro digious thoughts wjere in the new fields for reasoning and reflection, new temtory for the wandering,of his mind, new lands to be added to the plains of his activity. K*i was a busy man and as restless as the ocean. God made him that way. And could he be thought of today as rendering serv ice in the other world for information or for the instruction of the angels, we would conceive of him walking out upon the frontier of Heaven, trying to solve the mystery of the Milky Way or secreted in some quiet corner in glory con sidering time and space; and then, if our ears were acute enough, we would hear him exclaim, "God, my God! How jrreat and infinite are all thy works! The Heaven of Heavens cannot contain Thy greatness. My God! How wonderful art Thou in all Thy Being!"
These advance positions demonstrate the stretch and reach of his mighty mind. .He was not a non-conformist, neither was he a dissenter. If he lived now, he would be call-id a Progressionist. He believed the Church was so basically established in doctrine and Church government by the \riscbm of the fathers that expansion could not weaken any part of her great system of activity and life, but, rather, would serve as a means to enlarge the whole, so that African Methodism might be found wherever the Negro settled down in search of a Christian Sabbath home.
Thus was planted and grew that Missionary.spirit which has revolutionized the A. M. E. Church, which had long slept

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over her opportunities. And his position on African emigra tion is too well known for comment here. It is known wherever Christianity has planted the Cross of Calvary and civilization has walked upon the earth.
He had a keener vision than many of his contempora ries. He saw civilization as a growing and developing some thing. He explored regions of Africa, his fatherland, and heard the voice of his people welcoming him back home, in that Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us!" And thus he firmly believed and preached, lectured and wrote that God brought the Negro to America and Christianized him so that he might go back to Africa and redeem that land, and the Continent itself, before the nations of the earth would gobble it up and parcel it out among themselves. His prophecy has become true. The nations of Europe have made a great African civilization impossible.
Thus his religion and missionary zeal had a business and practical value. Twas his opinion, and part of the doctrine he preached, that the American Negro was brought here, under God, to be civilized and Christianized for the purpose of returning to Africa and building a civilization of his own, which would embody the principles of Negroid life and activity, so that, wherever he settled for permanent habitation, there would spring up the free school for his children; the right of unimpaired religious liberty; a home ruled and protected by an honest ballot; a government and a nation, with force sufficient to establish the will of the majority; and, in some way, make these rights the source for the safeguard of social order. There, race rancor and infamy would be unknown. It Wbuld be a country where the greatest possible civil and political courtesies would be exchanged between the greatest nations of the earth. A great government where religion, liberty and equity and law would reign supreme. This was his ideal Republic his Oceanica.
Bishop Turner hungered and thirsted more for political power and civil authority than he did for ecclesiastical con trol. His mind was more of a legal turn and a civil cast -than of a religious turn. He used to say any person could get religion and die, but it takes a man to live. Although

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his loyalty and devotion to the Church cannot be doubted. His work and service speak for themselves. Few men of his day, if any, where the means of bringing more people into the A. M. E. Church than Bishop Turner. And, like the Wesleys and Whitfield, his pulpit was not always found in the meeting house, but often in the open air, under a clear sky, with the stars for his taper and the sky for his sound ing board.
Thus, with the keen insight of the statesman and the wisdom of the economist, he saw the possibility to build, out of the rich, material resources of the great Continent jf Africa, the wealthiest and mightiest nation on earth. Upon this proposition, and the doctrine of African emigra tion, he was the principal agitator, as well as the leading spirit. Here he stood alone, and fearlessly battled long and hard for what he thought to be right. Dr. H. B. Parks, who, subsequently, became Bishop Parks, in speaking of Bishop Turner as a missionary and promoter of missions, speaks of him along this particular line as follows: "When in future generations, the culture and the refinement, the peculiar type of civilization, which shall be wrought out in Africa by the native, inborn, God-given spirit of the Negro race, then shall they react upon the rest of mankind, remove prejudice, excite mutual sympathy thus adding a rich stock of the fruits of the heart and intellect to the common stock of the world, and, above all, exhibiting the divine love and fatherhood of God in the real and universal brotherhood of man. How brightly, then, shall shine, in the galaxy of the worlds heroes, the name of that great man who was the real pioneer of aU this magnificent achieve ment, as the first Negro missionary to the Negro race! His place in this great movement can never be obscured. He has not only been a pre-eminent missionary in his own person, but he is the spiritual father from whom has sprung a prolific progeny of missionary children. He has kindled the fire of missionary enthusiasm in unnumbered souls. Gifted with an abiding faith in the capacity of our race; gifted with a profound insight into the immediate duties of the Church; gifted with a far-seeing vision of the future opportunities for advancing the Church and the race, Bishop

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Turner has been a mighty leader, a Moses conducting a sometimes reluctant people toward the Promised Land."
Dr. B. F. Watson, speaking of Bishop Turner, in con nection with the spread and extension of the A. M. E. Church and the progress of his race, said: "The extension of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, under Dr. H. M. Turner and his compeers during the reconstruction period, was greater by far in members and territory than all the previous years of her history." What a Herculean work for one man to accomplish during his own lifetime!
"In 1864, there wtere less than a dozen Churches south of Mason and Dixpns line, with no opportunity to enter that territory, until an invading army had laid waste the fields and broken the manacles from the enslaved laborers. In the wake of the smoke and carnage, imbued with Apostolic fervor, the African Methodist preacher lengthened the cords and strengthened the stakes of his beloved Zion.
To H. M. Turner was given the superintendency of the State of Georgia, with no Church funds to aid him in the support of his family. The people to whom he was sent were homeless, and many of them/ nameless, and yet they were eager to hear the Word of Life from one of their own race. Night and day, Sunday and week days, the heroes went forth to their task."
Dr. W. D. Chappelle, since Bishop Chappelle, said: "We would place the name of Henry McNeal Turner above that of Daniel Alexander Payne; we do not mean by this ex pression to say that the life the Apostle of Christian educa tion was imperfect in the sphere in! which he spent his ener gies, but we do mean to say that the life and work of Henry McNeal Turner touched all shores and spheres of human existence, and will shine forth forever in the characters who are to follow him. The contribution to this occasion will serve as an inspiration to the young of the Church, and, with it, they will rise to the sunlit hills of human greatness whereupon the matchless Turner stands unequaled and with out a peer."
Professor H. F. Healing takes a broad and sweeping view of Bishop Turner from a laymans standpoint, and gives an estimate of him from those who were the largest bene-

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ficiaries of his great service to mankind. He speaks of him as follows: "Let us now consider what our Turner stands for, and how he appears to the great lay world, that looks on him as a social, civic and political force outside of his ecclesiastical place and denominational preference. It is no disparagement to any one to say that, though there may be, or may have been, several within the pale of the Church who have been as potent as Churchmen as he whom we dis cuss, but none, however, so far as we know, have had so much power outside of the Church as Bishop Turner. In deed, to those who know the cosmopolitan sweep of his sym pathies and the pugnacious vitality of his temperament, it is little less than surprising that he could persuade himself to remain in any one Church; but, on the other hand, it is easy to see that, having decided to confine himself to some one, that one would be the Church that was born in a storm, like the African Methodist Episcopal Church. If the ob server knew his man, he would also be prepared to hear that the Church wfas, every now and then, in turmoil, because our subject argued that where there was no law against a thing, he Liber Homo, free to become law unto himself. * * * "In manners," he said, "Bishop Turner was sudden, abrupt and usually unexpected. But he was never weak, nor aimless. He was unconventional, and had no soft words for the man with nerve. He gave and took, but one must take from him, whether he could give or not. If a man stood up and struck back at him, blow for blow, where Bishop Turner struck most fiercely, that man would never want for a friend in the future tune; but, if he whined when Bishop Turner whacked, his place would be found among the scullions, and cowards and traitors to his race.
The attitude and deliverances of this great Churchman on prohibition and the temperance issues were often so radi cal as to both arouse his adversaries on these subjects and put his friends to their wits end to defend him. Returning from one of his triumphal campaign tours in the Southwest, one of his friends informed hi of the stinging newspaper roasting^ by a certain able lady quill driver, hoping thereby to precipitate the old Roman, as he WAS called, into a news paper conflict. I will wait, said the chivalric and far-

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sighted tactician, and he did not wait very long, but long enough to bow gracefully in turn for that ladys smiles, and declined a proffered seat in the Hymeneal car, as it slowed down for the celebrated and available passenger."
And Dr. H. T. Johnson, from whom I have just quoted, closes his address at the Quarto-Centennial of the Episco pacy of Bishop Turner, at St. Louis, in May, 1905, as fol lows: "To be sure, our hero suffers the disadvantage of too close proximity to those who would do him the fullest measure of honor, or accord him the fullest credit for robust and original mental activities. By and by, when viewed from a more distant range, and through the perspective of a dispensation less materialistic and superficial than the present, other eyes will gaze upon him, perhaps, then as now, as the aggressive Jove with poised trident, smiting right and left, casting up highways, and lifting up a stand ard for his people. Yet undoubtedly, from the arena of a loftier plain, he will look down and an admiring posterity -will survey him) resting in the shadow of the crucifix, point ing to a redeemed Continet the intrepid, tireless knight of the quill, whose pen, ever stimulated by the *in hoc signo of Constantine, has ever proven to be mightier than the sword."
Dr. J. D. Barksdale, in his comparison of Bishop Tur ner with his colleagues, says: "Nobly and majestically stands this grand old hero, overtopping the forest of great men around him. And of him it might be said, as of Napoleon, that Alone he stands, wrapped in the solitude of his own grandeur. far in advance of his age and generation, in the subtility of his thought and insight of the things yet liid in the womb of the future."

CHAPTER VI. SOME PECULIAR TRAITS IN THE PRIVATE AND
PERSONAL LIFE OF BISHOP TURNER. While Bishop Turner was honored and revered by his race, possibly as no other Negro was, he never, however, allowed that honor and reverence to take advantage of him. lie could not be bought so cheaply. He was the same H. M. Turner in the society of the high and affluent as he was with the humble and the lowly. In fact, .his crude and awkward manners fitted him better for the latter than for the former. While he was not selfish nor jealous in his manner and method of dealing with people, yet he was not passionately friendly in his appearance and deal ings with any one. The disposition to yield to flattery which has marred the life of so many great men was nopart of his career. This disposition not to yield is accounted for by the fact that in his training in the school of poverty and adversity he did not have the advantage of associating with those circles of thought which group themselves in college men when they are preparing themselves for lifes work. Hence he lacked the polish of the scholar, as well as of the school room. The real fact that made his relation to other men pecu liar was that he owed his achievements to no one person, but to all with whom he came in contact; and thus he had the uttermost confidence in the ultimate success of mankind. Hence, the men with whom he had the most to do in his private and public life, as well as in his social career, were more his attaches, persons who served his pur pose, rather than mere social friends and neighbors, of whom he was passionately fond. He was a good neighbor and was generally looked upon as the first man in the com munity, by white and black. His education and training were of such a peculiar na ture that no one professor was willing to claim him as

, BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

S3

his student. They divided him among themselves in order to give him a place in the literary world. And ill this par ticular he was a unique character, in a class to himself. In the traits of his character, his manner and methods of de porting himself, he resembled no Bishop of his Church, no minister in the connection. He was just like himself, and what nature had made him. He was Bishop Turner; that was all. And it is highly doubtful if his like will ever rise up in the Church again. It is prophesied that the race will not have another Bishop Turner. Like Caesar, he was the greatest of his class, and the end of a most illustrious line.
Thus Bishop Turner was the most misunderstood Bishop in the A. M. E. Church, and was looked upon with more misgivings than any man of his day in America. And he was misinterpreted by some of his colleagues on the bench, as well as by some of his co-laborers on the field. He was regarded by many persons of both races as a dan gerous man. Bishop Daniel A. Payne once said: "Turner will scourge the Church." But subsequent events have proven that he came nearer purging the Church; for it was his bold stand on many of the great public questions, such as the temperance and missionary movements, that aroused the Church to activity and service. Some of his closest friends doubted whether he was the proper person to assume the authority of Senior Bishop, when the time came. Many were the ugly prophecies, but the Church grew right on; peace and harmony prevailed, and her borders were enlarged more rapidly than they had ever been before.
He belonged to that class of men who span centuries, like Asbury and Simpson, like Washington and Lincoln. Hence, he naturally falls in line with Alien and Payne. These three Alien, Payne and Turner stand out upon the pages of the unwritten ecclesiastical history of African Methodism as clear and distinct as the peaks which adorn the Alps. Each of these men stand single and alone in his peculiar work for the Church and the race. Alien, the pioneer and founder; Payne, the educator; and Turner, the expansionist and missionary. These men tower above their surroundings like the peaks in a mountain range. But Bishop Turner, in his own conceptivity, stands out like Mt.

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Blanc, towering away above his colleagues up into the regions of eternal snow.
The first half century of African Methodism was pre eminently dominated by the spirit of Bishop Richard Alien; the second half by the spirit of Bishop Daniel A. Payne. The half century now beginning will be dominated by the spirit of Bishop H. M. Turner. But, because of the fact that Bishop .miner trained no successor, and he was not a particular ideal of any one of his colleagues and survivors, therefore it will be a long time before his real spiritual suc cessor comes. He is yet to be born. No Bishop in his Church today can approximate him in permanent activity, usefulness and service. His genius towered so high above his surviving colleagues that they look like little hills baneath a mountain peak.
While Bishop Turner reverenced and respected all his colleagues, yet he evinced a peculiar liking for Bishop Shaffer, Bishop Parks and Bishop Jones not, however, that he disliked any one of the others. And it might have been that Bishop Shaffer would now be practicing medicine in Philadelphia had it not been for the advice and persuasion of Bishop Turner, who was Gods messenger to him. He assumed a relation to Bishop Parks and Bishop Jones unlike that he held to any other of his colleagues, and this is ac counted for by the fact that Bishop Turner loved to be indulged and they knew how to handle him. He cared nothing for flattery and much of the twaddle with which Bishops are over-smeared and which have weakened some of our strongest men. The peculiar indulgence and respect Bishon Parks and Bishops Jones showed Bishop Turner were regarded by him as the proper deference for his worth to the race he had served so faithfully and so long. Hence, he appreciated their deportment toward him.
A lasting impression was left upon his mind whenever he visited them, or they visited him. Bishop Jones not only treated him as a colleague and showed him those courtesies which belonged to him as a Bishop and a high Church func tionary, but, in his Conferences, Bishop Turner was given the right of way: and on measures, when and where doubt aroeared respecting a ruling, Bishop Turners advice was

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freely sought, and it was as freely given. For hesitation formed no part of his nature, and yet he was a most modest man slow to speak, only when occasion required.
It is doubtful whether there were three other men whose career was watched so closely by Bishop Turner as was of Bishop Shatter, Bishop Parks and Bishop Jones. At the 1896 General Conference, at Wilmington, North Carolina, no man there worked harder for the election of Dr. H. B. Parks, who subsequently became Bishop Parks, for Mis sionary Secretary than Bishop Turner. And in this canvass the good Bishop Turner resorted to some of his old time political manoeuvering and wire-pulling; for Dr. Parks had a very strong opponent, in Dr. EL W. Lee, from Georgia. But even this friendship was so peculiarly guarded that it was not always noticed by the casual observer, and Bishop Parks himself did not always understand Bishop Turner. And I dont know any one person who ever did. But his friendship was none the less sincere and genuine ; and sometimes he confided to them things he did not trust to any one else.
But Bishop Turner was peculiar in the fact that he did not unbosom himself to any one person. Whenever he had a matter of secret import to reveal, he told it in parts and sections to a number of his friends, so that any one of them betraying his confidence would only betray him in part. Hence, it was not easy to prove an accusation against him, because his accuser would have only a fragment of the mat ter charged against him. Bishop Turner revealed himself to groups of friends and singly to each member of the group, and the individuals in the group were known only to him; and because of this method of dealing with men in public life he was not understood by many who were, otherwise, very close to him and regarded him the greatest political trickster of his time. He was bold, daring, venturesome; in nothing daunted. His method of revealing himself was on the installment plan.
He was careful and exclusively guarded with sacred in terests ; those of his thoughts which were precious and dear to him. He revealed such thoughts to but few persons, and to such only as wtere widely unknown to each other, as

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well as widely separated from each other. In matters per taining to his own personal interest, he was a most careful and painstaking man. Few people, aside from his creditors, knew anything about his private affairs, his debts and obli gations, and still fewer knew what he owned and controlled. He was not inquisitive, nor a busy-body, in other mens mat ters, nor did he allow other men to busy themselves in his matters. Yet he was always ready to receive new ideas or information; and at times he received information from an informant which had already been given him with that readiness and surprise as though he was listening to it for the first time and, therefore, ignorant of the story being told him.
While he was not a social entertainer, yet, when he souhgt information about matters of great concern, he adapted himself to the situation and, when occasions re quired, he discussed questions pro and con in a social way until he got the information he sought. But more often, in his seemingly seeking information, it was not at all times to add to his already full stock of information; but he was seeking it rather as a confirmation of his own opinion or some conclusion about a matter upon which his mind had been fully made up; or he would listen in order to verify a story he had already heard.
Bishop Turners social life had a tinge of jocularity about it that was really admired, and it was a great feast to some of his good friends to get him started off as the introduction of this kind of conversation was called, and then he could talk all night and not tire. He enjoyed a good joke, and, like Abraham Lincoln, he was a splendid story teller. His memory was accumulative. He could call up what he once knew and wished to use on any specific occasion at will, and in detail as he had heard it years before. This power of will made him an interesting talker and also enabled him, in his jocular moods, to rehearse many of those old fireside tales with a weirdness almost akin to reality. He told these stories as they were told by his suffering people, under the dim glare of a flickering light, when he was a lad; and it was these stories and tales of suffering, of torture and hardships that helped to make him the great champion for

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human rights he became in after-years for they fired his heart and stirred his soul.
But out of that jocular ntood and period of story-telling, he would become as ugly and as furious as a prowling hyena. He would then utter some of the bitterest invectives against the nation for her cruel treatment of the Negro and her dis regard of the Constitution, that language and thought could create. Then, feeling himself imprisoned and hemmed in on every side by the unjust laws of his country and the deplor able condition of his race, he, like Spartacus to the Gladiator at Capua, would attempt to stir and arouse the spirit of madness and resistance against wrong done his helpless people by branding the Negroes as brutes, cowards and scul lions, if they stood silently and suffered the afflictions the country imposed, without a protest. Then he would encour age them, by appealing to their pride and patriotism, as no other Negro ever dared to do before nor since. He urged them to be men and band together for self-defense; gain, lawfully and honorably, every vantage point possible to keep in memory the bloody work of their sires at Roanoke Island, Port Wagner and Fort Pillar. He urged his people not to be scullions and cowards and crouch and crawl like "bela bored hounds beneath their masters lash;" but, if they were forced, and "must fight," fight for themselves and their country; and, if they must slaughter, then slaughter their oppressors and the enemies of their country; and, if they must die, then die "in noble, honorable battle" for right against wrong; for peace against oppression.
Thus Bishop Turner, with perfect ease and seeming composure, could pass from the ridiculous to the sublime, and from the frivolous to the most profound; and these periods of transition cast no shadows before them they came without warning, like thunder in a clear sky. But the disappointment was greater when they did not come than was the surprise when they did come. And yet Bishop Tur ner was not as sour and morose as the exterior of his nature seemed to indicate; but, rather, behind that coarse and rough exterior, was a soul as sweet and serenely gentle as the zephyrs at eventide.
Some mens lives run evenly and smoothly, like the

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gentle flow of the brook, even from the cradle to the grave. Other lives begin with the forming of the first storm-cloud and end where the last whirl of the cyclone has passed and the wailing winds have died away.
Bishop Turner canje upon the scenes of activity in an awful time a time of war, in which he was destined to fight in many battles, and he did not know defeat. When he did not accomplish his purpose in the first effort, he suspended energy, but he did not abandon the field. He took a retreat and waited patiently for the hour to strike another blow, and to strike hard.
His life whs not like a steady flowing stream, smoothly and uninterruptedly, between its banks. But it was like an^ry waters, pitching and dashing over jagged rocks, water falls and cataracts, until it mingled with the waters of the troubled sea. Hence, to tell the story of his life faithfully, the writer finds himself oftimes in a whirlpool of activities and a tangled web of movements, from which it is not easy to extricate himself and, at the same time, do justice to his subject.
In telling the story of Bishop Turners career, we are compelled to constantly refer to the beginning of that career, in order to learn just what particular part we are discussing and to make our story connected and consistent, as well as consecutive.
Bishop Turner was like a many pointed star, with each point emanating from a different center.
Thus we have endeavored to give somle of the prevailing features and peculiar characteristics in the life of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner, which embellished his career and magnified his service to mankind.

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

CHAPTER VII.

SOME PECULIAR TRAITS AND PREVAILING FEA TURES AND CHARACTERISTICS IN THE OFFICIAL LIFE OF BISHOP TURNER.

Having discussed briefly the peculiar traits in the pri

vate and personal life of Bishop Turner, let us, in the second

place, review the peculiar features in the trend of these

traits, review the peculiar features in the trend of these

get an unobstructive view from all points of his life and

character and learn what he began to dp and to be.

This character of writing is a peculiar type of literary

production, and, if the real truth in its fulness is told, the

writer is woefully condemned either for what he says or

for what he does not say. He is only free from the abuse of

the subject of his story who can raise no objection to any

thing that may be said of him, right or wrong.

It is not an easy matter, however, in the light of a

well trained and cultured sentiment, to say things about

that which an antecedent sentiment has condemned, because

sentiment is a severe weapon in the armor of our civilization,

and men seldom go contrary to it. Thus he who attempts

to write a story of a mans life, or even his own autobiog

raphy, attempts no easy task. Men are so fragile as well as

fleeting in their life and career, that it is difficult at all times

to place them where they really belong. They wont stay

placed, because they are vacillating and careless in their

life. In short, men know but little of how much they are

watched while passing through life.

Therefore, sometimes, with all the efforts of the writer

to make them a fixture, they wont stay fixed; that is, they

must be known to the world by some peculiar purpose, aim

or endeavor or some peculiarity of the workings of their

own genius. They must deposit themselves by some old"

trick of their own pattern. They cannot be other than

themselves. They wont down.

.

It can be said of Bishop Turner, however, that he*

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started right, and was trained amidst an environment with Which he was forced to grapple for more than sixty years. He needed no polish of thought, character nor expression for the coarse and rough work awaiting him. The fact df his starting life right was the foundation upon which, in after .years he built a successful career. Success cannot be hoped for from a wrong beginning. A child,born sickly, will be a weakling all its life, because of its inability to throw off the disease; so wrong never accomplishes anything worth while. If a young man would be successful, he must learn well what he does learn before he starts out in life. Then be himself at all times. This lesson Bishop Turner thor oughly learned. In fitting himself for lifes work, he studied the work best fitted for him and for which he was best adapted. And no one can ever accuse him of being any other, at any time, except H. M. Turner. This knowl edge formed the basis for all t>f his future work, which he loved, and upon which he concentrated his mind, his life and all of his energy. This was the kit of tools with whuih he started life and with which he worked out his destiny. This was all the capital with which to start life and the largest bank account he ever had.
Reverting again to writing the life of a man, it is op portune to say here the writer is in danger of having the wrath of the living poured upon his head, because there are men in public life who are jealous of the dead, as well as of the living; and the stealing of flowers from the graves of the dead is not confined to non-professional men; and there are others who would dare to become jealous of what one may say of the dead. It is courteous, indeed, to allow the dead to rest, and say as few bad things about them as possible, because they cannot rebut what is said. There is no need of publishing the wrong-doings of people who are dead, for, whether it is planned or desired, "The evil that men do lives after them. Tis the good that is oft interred with their bones." The true life story of the dead is the story of the dead, told in its relation to the story of the living.
And thus we write the true story of the life of Bishop Turner, who regarded that which was sometimes called a

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difference among men not a real difference but a kind of mental mirage, an inverted trick of the imagination, a cre ation wholly in the air. The only difference he conceived in men that was real and appreciable, was a difference of mind manifestations; all other differences were assumed. He was in harmony with Pope in the belief that the greatest thing in the world was man and the greatest thing in man is mind. "My God!" he would exclaim, "what is .mind ?" and his answer to his own query would ultimately be, Mind is what man is, and man is no greater, nor lesser, than his mind; mind power and mind force and mind manifesta tion make the only difference that exists between one man .and another the size of the brain has nothing to do with it; as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he he is what his "thoughts make him. Bishop Turner considered, "Speak, that I might see thee," with more interest than hie did "Speak, that I might hear thee," because he knew that "Thy language betrayeth thee," could be said of each man, woman and child with equal truthfulness, as it was said of the Gal ilean fisherman. So he made language the gateway to his mighty mind, the home of his ponderous thought and the working of his mighty brain.
Bishop Turner looked upon man as the middle fact between God and the earth, which was created for a human home. And he believed, that it is to that same God, every man alike must seek and find his preservation. Hence he treated all men alike in his official dealings in the fear of God, as brothers and sons of a common father. He was gentle - and kind to all alike. He was unlike some of his associates, colleagues and contemporaries, in that he did not magnify his office, but magnified and exalted his service to mankind. Hence he had no square holes for round pegs, and no round "hoes for squuare pegs. But he ever strove to adjust mat ters according to their nature, and to help men fit them selves where they belonged, and to seek their own place in life. He was a leader of men. He was not a coward. He sought to take advantage of no one. He met every man, the humble and the exalted, squarely upon the level plain of life he walked. He did not use the function of his office to punish his enemies, nor to reward his friends. That misuse

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of power, and abuse of authority, which stultify and irnpaiithe usefulness of public servants were never laid at his door, and were no part of his short comings. He regarded char acter as the very language of life, and about all, that was worth knowing about any man, was, after all, character building. Bishop Turner was a strong believer in the study of the language of life, as well as in the study of the lan guage of the races, because, as a student of human nature he had learned that the language of life gives expression to the deepest needs of the soul, as well as to the most perfect harmony. To him it was the language of growth and prog ress of the purest morals, and the divinest of all govern ments, and that which inspires religious faith. To him, the language of life was the most holy and sacred thing in all human nature, and of this language no one race, be it ever so high or low, could claim a monopoly. And in his Confer ences, he allowed every one who would to talk. The more at the same time, the better he enjoyed it. And what was confusion to othrs was harmony to him. He could accom plish more in one storm, than some men could work out in the calm of a lifetime.
But that man is weak, indeed, and is an impostor, who would attempt to assume the position of a teacher, and that coveted relation of a leader of a people, when he himself is ignorant of that science which deals with the delineation of" human life and character. These two elements which are so essential to the development of human happiness, and human progress, he posessed in large measure.
Bishop Turner could speak of but little he had read in books: while he had an extensive library, he never was re garded as a bookworm. His library was a shapeless mass of unclassified books. He spoke out of an ex perience of many years of travel, extensive observation, as well as of investigation. He moved in and out amongevery condition and phase of Negro life in all sections of the country. He knew their inner life, and was acquainted with their needs. Therefore, he could easily claim, without res ervation, but with pardonable pride, that he who had noknowledge of the peoples needs, and their true condition, \v?.s rot qualified to be their leader. This accounts for his;

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opposition to the placing of inexperienced and inefficient men jnto place of responsibility and obligation. Experience meant .more to him than the brain of the University. This accounts for his bitter opposition from time to time, to inexperienced men, unfit for leadership, who aspired to the office of Bishop .in his church, and ultimately to leadership in his race. But unfortunately for him, and possibly for the Church, he could not stem that tide, but subsequent events justified the wis dom of his opposition.
And thus we have learned from this exalted position of Bishop Turner, that elevation to a position is not a sign nor a substitute for experience, nor can it take the place of the knowledge of a peoples condition, a peoples hope, and a peoples needs. Such a man elected to office, even though it be the highest in the gift of a people, he can never become a leader because the elements of leadership are not in him. He may be able to draw people. But there were a large numbsr of Bishop Turners contemporaries, colleagues and asso<eiattrs ignorant of the difference between leadership and bossis!r.. In short, many of them were drivers of men, instead of leaders of the people. And no man knew the seriousness of this weakness better than Bishop Turner. And no man sought more vigorously to discourage it than he. He knew its veakness and danger points. He had served under it and had suffered much of its infliction and inconveniences. Therefore, he never approved of such conduct in any class.of men. A driver was as odious and offensive to him as the worst enemy of mankind. And he regarded men who sub stituted drivership in the place of leadership, as proud, arrofrant and foolish, and liable to create great mischief. And he regarded that mnn as weak indeed, who spends the whole "tenure of his official life magnifying the office to which he "had been elected, at the expense and opportunity that that office gave him to serve his fellow-man.
Bishop Turners life was one continuous round of use fulness, service and duty. He regarded an idle brain not only as the Devils workshop, but the source for arrogance, indolence and ignorance. Ignorance and indolence in official life make men tyrannical and despotic toward those over whom they exercise authority. And instead of serving

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their fellowmen, they are seeking to be served at the expense of those they should|Serve. Bishop Turner was a busy man. His whole life w!as a net-work of service. He worked night, and day, and filled up the entire time of his official career,, to help relieve in some way his burdened fellows. And many haunted, harassed and tormented ministers have fled to him as though they left the city of destruction, and were fleeingfrom the snare of the fowler. Bishop Turner was a city of refuge to fleeing ministers during the whole of his thirtyfive years service in the Episcopal office. So prone was he in his opposition to oppression, he always gave the weaker man the benefit of the doubt, and usually took the part of the complainant.
Because of his open heart, his broad sympathies, and love for peace, freedom and right for all men, he was charged by some who Were less humane, with indulging ministers in wrong doing. But his inevitable reply each time was that it is better that many guilty men go free, than one innocent man should suffer. Bishop Turner did not regard greatness, as a personal acquisition to enhance personal comforts and self-aggrandizement. He looked upon it as the indices of greater obligations, of greater responsibility and a new force affixed to duty and services; therefore, it was no part of hi* service to merely

"Gratify whateer the great desire, Nor grudgingly give what public needs require; All who deserved his love, he made his own, And to be beloved himself, needed only to be known."

Bishop Turner, because of the stand he took against the oppressors in his own church, and so strong was his opposi tion to presiding elders who mistreated their brethren; and so much opposed was he to any such deportment on1 the part of Hs colleagues, that he brought upon his head a kind of an Episcopal ostracism, which belonged alone to the council, and many were the instructive things he has written for the Bishops eyes only. And even in the Bishops council, behind closed doors Bishop Turner battled for the rights of the people. The democracy of the church, and the rights of

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the humblest, as well as the most exalted member of the con nection, to be heard. He held that under the discipline, polity and laws of the A, M. E. Church, everything was subordinate to membership, and mebership alone made all equal under the law. and every member should be heard, from the Bishop to the humblest member, before any arbi trary action could be taken concerning him. And duringthe thirty-five years of his Episcopacy, he was doubtlessly apnealed to more for advice and instruction touching unjus tifiable, impartial and arbitrary treatment, than all the Bishops in Methodism during the same time.
Bishop Turner held and publicly proclaimed that Bishops were bound to respect all the rights of the people, and when they refused to respect their rights, they forfeited" the right to preside over them.
While Bishop Turner was a strict disciplinarian, that is, we do not mean he was always in harmony with the position of his colleagues, touching the management and control of the A. M. E. Church; we mean he was a Methodist strictly after the Wesleyan order. He regarded the General Rules. The Letter of Instruction given to Bishop Coke, and the abridged form, of the Articles of Religion of the Church of England, for the government of the American Societies, jriven by Mr. Wesley, as the three fundamental elements in the Constitution of American Methodism, and the basis upon which the church in America took conventional form, or in other words assumed a democratic form of government. And he held that this right of the people to rule themselves by methods of their own choosing, could not be abrogated" without the will and consent of the people thereby governed.
But Bisop Turner also held that there was a tendency in the church, very prevalent, to mistake the purpose of delegated authority by the people in convention assembled, for an absolutism, more dangerous than anything he had" ever advocated, to the contrary notwithstanding, and amongst the Bishops, and by their expressions and dealingamong themselves and those over whom they exercised" authority, they were not always consistent with his views.
But his official Episcopal deportment of manners, was not always intended for the public ear. Like other official

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secrets, however, they leaked out of the Bishops council. The organization of the Bishops Council was a source of much annoyance to Bishop Turner, because of its limited authority, and its actions or findings were not sufficiently obligated or binding. Not even on its members. And it had no legislative nor judicial function. Thus, as organized, there was given the opportunity for a certain part of the ministry and some of the people as well, to attempt to humili ate a Bishop, as his only redress is the General Conference, the supreme legislative body of the church.
Congregations have refused to retain pastors, Districts have refused to retain Presiding Elders, and even Episcopal Districts have become dissatisfied, and have refused to retain certain Bishops as their head. Such dealing is not good Methodism, but it was good common sense, and human nature. Such action was a disregard of the appointing power. But the right of the appointing power doss not abrogate the rights of the people. In short, such action is revolution. But when we seek the cause for revolution, it is clear that it is not the worst thing that can happen to the church nor to the state. Such action has been the cause of much bitterness, but it was purely private bitterness, on account of personal injury. For the Church, as well as the State, has a right to set aside her leaders when they fail to obey the will of the people. But the leaders cant set aside the people. There never was, nor ever will be, a revolution among the leaders. If the Bishops had more authority, they would not be thus humiliated.
But Bishop Turner contended that there was no place in the A. M. E. Church for Autocracy in any form, and the Annual and General Conferences were the authorative con ventional assemblies in the connection, and were subjected to the -will of the people, and their authority was delegated to their representatives. The will of the people represents the "highest authority in the Church, as well as in the State. And this is a lesson Bishop Turner taught the race through his church as she was growing in power and affluence, although the A. M. E. Church has had a parallel growth with the de velopment of our nation, yet she has not been accorded that larger sphere of freedom and activity due her. The rule of

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the people has not had a hearing in all the public walks of church life. Just a few men have been heard to speak out.
And thus she moves like the counter-currents of Cape Hatteras, more or less stormy all the time, either prone within or from without. But good is always on the side of the people. He hears their voice, and so must that man, who even presumes to represent God on earth. He must hear those things to which God would listen and incline His ear, as did the Almighty to hear the people cry out of their needs.
Bishop Turner was strictly a Methodist and adhered closely to all the teachings and traditions of his church. But he could not bring himself around to see the utility of the Bishops Council, as it was organized or-rather, unorganized, and not a part of the organic life of the church.
Thus he saw no place for it in the church, and consider ed it a body of peers in a convention, where each was power less to make laws or rules binding the other to observe them; and no authority to compel a Bishop to attend, nor to punish him for not attending the council ', because he was not responsible to the Bishops Council, nor to the Bishops for the faithful performance of his duty, but to the pro visions of the General Conference, which ultimately puts him in the hands of the people. Bishop Turner regarded the Council as an unauthorized institution, and not legalized nor responsible to anybody for its actions. He argued that if the Bishops could meet behind closed doors to determine their actions and then foist their decisions upon the church as law, and thus ask the General Conference to indulge them in thus violating the law, by accepting their rulings as au thority, or to accept their ruling, as a court of appeals or final jurisdiction, then any other ten or twelve members of the church under our law, be they Elders or laymen, would have the same right. Under the law of the A. M. E. Church, he held that the Ministers have as much right to assemble and change the action and enactment of the General Confer ence as the Bishops have. In short, the Bishops in the A. M. E. Church are not a priviliged class. They are the servants of the connection. The central, sovereign power, and the temporal government of the church is in the people. The A.

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M. E. Church is not a despotism, but a democracy. The A. M. E. Church is not a church of Bishops, but a church with Bishops. Thus Bishop Turner was honestly and squarely outspoken about his own position as well as that of others.
Bishop J. S. Flippers published position, some years ago, touching the province of the Bishops Council, reviewed and brought out clearly Bishop Turners idea of their own council. His defence of his actions at Wilberforce is but another chapter of the position held by Bishop Turner.
At the February mid-winter meeting of the Bishops Council at New Orleans, a large number of ministers from all sections of the church gathered in a hall adjacent to the church where the Council was in session. After duly organ izing into a conventional ministerial and lay body, to do con ventional service for the church, we notified the Bishops Council that we had organized, and were ready to receive any communication they desired to lay before us for consider ation. This step along the line of progress; this emergement from the chaotic medievalism of the dark ages, struck some of the Bishops with amazement. They saw the beginning of the end of their private closed door social ecclesiastical autocracy. And there went out from New Orleans to the uttermost bounds of the church, that the Bishops would hold no more mid-winter sessions. But if the Bishops had deter mined to hold no mjore mid-winter, nor mid-summer sessions or any other council, that would not have stopped the repub licanism of the A. M. E. Church. She would continue to move and be controlled by popular government. And unless the democratic spirit prevails throughout the connection, she cannot long survive the best man the church has ever pro duced. A man who has stood up like a prophet of old to foretell the coming doom.
The A. M. E. Church will never become so autocracised that a Bishop will consider that he has been singularly honor ed by being addressed by such distinguished appellations as, "My Lord," "His Lordship," "His Grace," "His Eminence," and "His Aggregious." Who constituted these men, these superintendents, over the work of the ministry of the church, Lords, Graces, Eminences and Aggregious? These appella tions Bishop Turner regarded as odious and foreign to

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American Methodism, and as an insult to American citizen ship. He was often thus addressed, but he did not encourage it, and yet we heard a minister call a Bishop "brother," on one occasion, but that Bishop stopped the running machinery of his convention and severely reprimanded that minister, and ordered that he, and no> other minister, call him brother again. "I want you to understand," he said, "I am the BISH OP." That minister called the Bfehop something else, but it was not brother, then both of them were out of order.
But the prophets no more fearlessly rebuked Israel and Judah for their sins, than did Bishop Turner rebuke his church, and the nation for what he believed to be their sins against his Race. Bishop Turner had only two thoughts, namely: the freedom of his Race, and the redemption of Africa. And it made no difference upon which of these thoughts he began his discourse, he would invariably end his speech on the other. He accepted the motto of the church: God our father; man our brother, and Christ our Redeemer. That was his creed.
It has been our purpose, and it will be our aim through the further pages of this book on the life and times of Bish op Turner, to use his associates, colleagues and contempora ries, as a background, to show more clearly the most beauti ful outlines of his great career, and the genuineness of his character. Bishop Turner never spared any person, high nor low, contemporary, associate nor colleague, if he thought they were wrong in their public service to the people. He had no secrets to hide from the people. Just a few months prior to the 1908 General Conference at Norfolk, Virginia, he had been attacked by some of his colleagues and very severely, in a quiet, and possibly, in a secret way; but his reply to them was sent to a large number of the delegates elect, to that General Conference under the caption, "For the Bishops Eye Only." Thus he ridiculed and showed the absurdity of their attack on him. But with that attack still in status quo, he reached the General Conference a few days late, but the moment of his entering the Conference assem bled was singular, for the outburst of such adulation and shouts from Bishops, Ministers and Laymen, as was never given in honor of a Bishop of the Church before. It was a

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triumphal entry of the garland browed "Old Roman," battlescarred, but victorious. Thus he won all his battles by doing what he thought right: performed his duty, then retired to his lair and awaited results. But he was the lion when he did emerge.

CHAPTER VIII. BISHOP TURNERS DEFENSE OF THE A. M. E.
CHURCH AND THE MINISTRY. Having spoken above of the peculiar traits, first in the private life of Bishop H. M. Turner and, in the second place, of the peculiar traits of his public life, we come now, in the third place, to the discussion of his relation to the men of his Conferences and the people in general. In the first place, as an introduction to this very import ant part, let us refute a false charge against our Church, which leaked in by reason of the irregular conduct of some thoughtless person in authority. 1. The Bishops are not the A. M. E. Church. They are just a part of her. They are no more all there is to the A. M. E. Church, as some of her enemies seem to think, than the Czar was all there was to Russia. The Czar has gone, but Russia still lives. Because, after the Czar, is the Duma; and, back of the Duma, are the Russian people, the real rulers of the country. And thus, behind the Bishops of the A. M. E. Church, is the General Conference, and, back of the General Conference, is the ministrty, and, back of the ministry, are the people, the real A. M. E. Church. 2. Ministers are not Bishops slaves. In short, min isters in the A. M. E. Church are not slaves to any one. Her very origin and the elements in her organization constitute a fight for liberty, justice and equality. And this has been a fundamental doctrine for which the Church has contended for a few days more than an hundred years. A person can not breathe African Methodist air and remain a slave. Each man. woman and child has rights in the Church and under her laws, that Bishops, in common with other members, if they would retain their relation to the Church, are bound to respect. The A. M. E. Church is a combination of one membership, one law for all, one doctrine and one Great Head, the common and universal Father of us all. To Him, and to Him alone, do the members of the A. M. E. Church

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give homage, glory and honor, and dominion, for evermore. This is a fixed principle from which the Church cannot swerve.
3. There are no circumstances, extenuating nor other wise, to prevent any member of the Church from asserting his or her rights, from the Sexton to the Bishop; or, in other words, the law of the Church is so careful in its provisions and relations to the members, that the moment any pail of these provisions is withheld by any adminis trator of that law, he becomes, at once, a subordinate and maladministrator, and is liable to trial and expulsion.
We speak in defense of the Church because of that great mind who was opposed to every charge set forth above a::d who, for more than sixty years, contended that the reverse should obtain.
We purpose only to discuss the merits of these three questions, as they relate to the official life of Bishop Tur ner, and tend to throw a shadow over his already brilliant record; r,ot so much, however, for the purpose of refuting the charges, nor to satisfy the critics an hundred years of incessant growth and progress are sufficient. They speak for themselves. But we shall take this occasion, as did the best man the Church has ever produced, and one of the greatest men of the human race, to encourage and in still in the membership of the Church a deeper devotion and a new consecration to the cause of human progress and uplift, through the influence of African Methodism. In short, this whole literary production is written primarily to encourage and to inspire young men and women who are looking forward to race leadership to prepare themselves fcr a life of larger usefulness and service to mankind. And thus, we hold Bishop Turner up as a model of sacrifice and service a man whose life was ever on the altar.
In this conclusion, let us note, first, Bishop Turners conception of the ministry. There is no doubt that he re garded the ministry the most exalted occupation among men. His favorite terms for ministers were "Gods Ambas sadors," "Ministers Plenipotentiaries." He claimed that the leadership of the race was in the Negro ministry; not, however, on account of external or parliamentary arrange-

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ments, but such by the logic of fate. This leadership comes first as the choice of the people. They alone make leaders. The man who becomes the center of his group is their leader. And, second, the Negro makes choice of the ministry for his race leaders upon economic grounds, and this internal choice grows out of the fact that the ministry helps to make up the largest institution in which the Negro takes part in common with men everywhere. The minister is arnoiig the leading and controlling forces in the Church, and the Church is the leading and most influential institution among men. Therefore, he taught, in all his Conferences and institutes among the men and women over whom he presided, that such a leadership, if it would maintain its place among men, must be fitted and prepared to do the worlds work. And the race could hope to accomplish but little without this leadership. Thus he laid before them the absolute necessity of being posted and abreast with the times, and thus conserve the best interest of the people. The shackles of bondage had been broken, so that the race was free to walk. The muzzles had been removed from their mouths, the lock from their lips and the stifler from their thoughts; hence, they were free to think and to speak, and to speak loud, until they were heard. And thus he taught that the spirit of the age was freedom, equality and justice, and, with such a spirit, all the evil influences could be resisted and by it the race could be made strong, power ful and influential.
He urged the ministers to guard with sacred care their privileges and opportunities to make better the conditions of their race. His words were relied upon and obeyed. His advice was acceptable to all classes of people; for he met and conversed with all classes and conditions of his race. Bishop Turner was no kid glove leader, and no hat box Bishop. There was nothing of the smell of the parlor and drawing room about him. He was the most awkward man at the banquet. He was a mere rustic. But, while others were feasting and satisfying that smaller self, beneath an embroidered vest, Bishop Turner would be "prowling around," as his methods were called, by night and day, among a people whose environments were far removed from

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his. In shop and field, in the slums of the city, out in the back woods, among those of small opportunity and poor ad vantages, he would wander. Hence, his friends were found among all classes and conditions of people everywhere. Thus did Bishop Turner live in the hearts of the people he served. He was admired and loved by the common people; and they thought he was the foremost man of the world.
But I speak particularly of the ministry from the view point of Bishop Turner and out of his great experience with the ministers and the people of his race. Therefore, he not only claimed that the minister was the leader of the people, but that whatever act of the minister, overt or otherwise, which tended to shake the peoples confidence, had the counter tendency to destroy the influence and leadership of such a minister; and, when the people once lost confidence, the mans influence is destroyed; his usefulness ended; his service as a leader closed; he just as well stop the man is dead! I care not who the man is, nor what he has been he may have at one time worn the sacred ermine of power and authority; but, though he be the highest officiary in the Church, his days have been numbered he has died; his ministry ought to be given to another; he cannot come back.
Bishop Turner was a man of a very large heart. He was indulgent and sympathetic. But he was not a hypocrite. He hated ingratitude and despised a traitor and gave no quarters to them whatever^ He noted, with a large amount of acrimonious feeling, that a tendency was in the Church not to encourage Judas penalties for Judas crime of greed, ingratitude and treason among the ministry of the A. M. E. Church. But, instead of punishing ministers for wrong doing, there was allowed to grow up in the Church, for the incorrigible brother, a kind of a sympathy and charity exer cised only by the brotherhood, but we do not mean genuine, bona fide charity; but we mean a kind of an ignorant, dis honest hypocrisy which aims to cover up crime with the cloak of innocence. Bishop Turner regarded this as the most dangerous tendency to find place among the ministers of his Church. He had no place in his heart for a traitor and the ungrateful person. With the bitterness of his soul

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he denounced the traitor, and urged that death was the only justifiable punishment for such a crime. Such was the military trend of his mind.
He contended that true sympathy meant to bear with a condition as it really existed; to suffer with; and true charity was the most sacrificial service possible to be ren dered mankind. It is a labor of love. We do not mean here that Noahic sympathy and charity which grows around the guilty for the purpose of covering up crime without atonement, because it matters not how much one may ex press sorrow for wrong-doing, and however much one loves the guilty and sympathizes with him, that does not expiate for crime. There is nothing in tears except water. Thus Bishop Turner was merciful almost to a fault, but he al lowed his mercy and justice to go hand in hand. Hence, he claimed that there were men in the ministry, under the guise of sympathy, who ought to be expeted from the Church. He stood out for a pure ministry and advocated that the ministers, above all men, must lead clean lives, if they would remain in office. He did not consider sympathy and charity substitutes for fitness and preparation for serv ice any more than the covering of Noahs nakedness by his sons was an atonement for his sins. The most sane sym pathy and the profoundest charity one person can have for another is to be honest with him and tell him the truth. When men are spoiled in office, they should be dismissed from office before they spoil the office. Therefore, to con tinue an unfit person in office, whether that office is of lim ited term or of life tenure, would be more detrimental to the life and progress of the world than would be the evil that person was elected to avert. In all instances of this kind, Bishop Turner regarded the remedy to be more dan gerous than the disease. And to him there was no office too high from which a man cannot be hurled when he is wrong. In short, he had learned, by experience, that the election or appointment of men to places of honor and trust was not intended as an improvement on their qualifications, if they were unfit for the place to which they had been as signed; rather, it retarded their chances for preparation by putting more upon them than they could bear. There-

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fore, he urged men everywhere to study and prepare them selves. He looked upon the unfit and unprepared man as the ignorant man, and the ignorant man clothed with power and authority as the dangerous man for such a man is liable to rise up at any time and shrug his shoulders to gether, Samson-like, and pull down the temple of progress ?vrid destroy more, in his own death, than he could kill during his lifetime outside of the temple.
Bishop Turner regarded ignorance the most dan gerous old wizard that has ever tormented and be witched the human race by the most dastardly tricks. He has fretted and tormented mankind from time irr.memorial. He is the knave. He acts the buffoon and plays the fool at one and the same time. He does not give quarter and asks for none. His end is destruction. This is the class of men of which we speak as unfit and unprepared for race leadership, and which Bishop Turner so bitterly denounced.
Ignorance is so prevalent that it can easily be discussed here without prejudice, and no one needs to become alarmed cr excited. All grades and ranks of mankind have been more or less affected by it. Hence, there is no one class of men branded with this malady to the exclusion of the other. It is common property, and the source of it is found in all the learned professions, secular as well as sacred en-lings. It is a disease, infectious as well as contagious. From its spread there are no immunes; and it has been more through this weakness that the race has erred than any other: and through this door some of the worst men have found their way to the professional life of the race.
We know it has been said that the errors of a wise man are more to be desired than the virtues of a fool. But that is a mere matter of choice, and by such choice, the race has been accustomed to throw the mantle of charity over its own shoulders, and walk backward, with an averted look to cover its own deformity of ignorance, unfitness and an unpreroared condition to do and dare for the race and human ity. The true minister rises above all suspicion, and super stition, and teaches the people he would lead, that flippancy of speech, sympathy and charity are not elements in the

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foundation of race building, and were not intended to sup plant true honesty, fitness and character.
It is not our purpose to torture the question of ignor ance, nor to weary the patience of the reader. We have tarried so long upon this question to show not only how heinous it is in itself, but to show what a bitter enemy, a strong opposer, it had in Bishop Turner. He stood for the highest possible intelligence, and Morris Brown attests the truthfillness of this assertion.
Ignorance lives long, and dies hard, because it has so many sympathizers in high places, who oppose every at tack made against it. It has actual defenders in and out of the church. In and out of the school room. In the minis try and out of it. When the people asked Bishop Turner for an intelligent or cultured and refined man, he put forth every effort to accommodate the minister to the wish of the people, as well as to their needs. But if the minister was inexperienced and ignorant, we care not how cultured and refined his people were, he was an ignorant man. There fore, could not fit. And Bishop Turner held the same view respecting the election of Bishops. If the man was ignorant and inexperienced before his election, he was ingorant and inexperienced after his election. The laying on of hands is not an acquisition of knowledge, nor is it a form of anything but the laying on of hands. If a man was mean before his election, he is mean afterwards. He is just a mean man, that is all. He will make a mean Bishop. And it would be well for the critic who claims that the Bishop is all there is to the A. M. E. Church, to know that the election of a minister to the Bishopric accords the right to the delegates of the General Conference to inaugurate, in stall and confirm him in office, and set him apart for a pecu liar and specific branch of the Church service, and authority to exercise certain power within the constitutional bounds of the law of the church. It may be that some Bishops are responsible for this erroneous idea, and have caused some people to believe, on account of some unguarded action that ministers were little less than Bishops slaves. But the actions of ignorant men are not the prevailing influence in the A. M. E. Church. Their day has passed. To

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this critic we would say, if you want to know who and what the Bishops of the/ A. M. E. Church are, examine their ante cedents, and the material out of which they are made. These will tell that a mans life cannot be changed by election. He must be born again.
In short, it is not fair to criticise the A. M. E. Church because she has made mistakes at times in electing men to high office. The origin of mistakes is not in the A. M. E. Church. They are as old as the race. Parents make mis takes in selecting trades and professions for their children. People make mistakes in selecting from among their own number, law-makers, presidents and rulers, and churches have made mistakes in electing their bishops. And the A. M. E. Church is no exception.
There is nothing strange nor unusual about occurrences and mishaps and short-comings in high places. They have been and always will be. There is not an Eden without an Adam. And there is no apostleship without a Judas. AH the members of the A. M. E. Church are human. Then why expect more of them than is expected! of the human nature of which they form a part? Nadab and Abihu "offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not." And the sons of Eli were sons of Belial, they knew not the Lord. We ask the critics of the A. M. E. Church, in all seriousness, how can the Bishops of the church escape? Are they less human? Let them alone. They are doing the best they can, and touch them not with a destroying hand.
There is no such thing as equality of power and influence anywhere in this world. Identically does not exist any where in creation. Men in the various walks of life have ranged in power and influence all the way from a digit to a cipher, and from a decimal point to a dollar mark. And here men of all rank and walk of life rest their case. There are men in high places, but they are mere figure heads, exclama tion points and question marks. It would be the part of wis dom, if the critic on the inside, as well as on the oustide, of the church, would learn that all the foxes are not grown. There are a number of little foxes who are more dangerous than the old ones. In the first place there are more of them.

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They do not interfere with the grapes, in short, they spurn them. But the necessity for this aversion is because they cant get them. In fact, the grapes are sour, and the little foxes can not climb up to them, hence in their ignorance and blindness they content themselves with the spoiling and destroying the vines.
The deception of the member on the inside of the church is more harmful and dangerous, and even detrimental to the progress of the church, than the bitterest enemy on the out side. It is not that which goes into the Church that spoils and destroys its influence, but that which comes out. And the only claim some people make to their membership in the church is the authority they assume to destroy and lay waste the heritage the fathers have bequeathed. And these people, though members of the African Methodist Church are her worst enemies, and they cause not only confusion on the inside, but mistaken notions are formed from the outside because of the destructive methods of living and expressing themselves. No infamy brought upon the church could soil and sully the life and character of our hero. He was too large. The gnawing of the little foxes upon the vine of his life was harmless to that life.
Bishop Turner was not only a unique character, but he was a kind of a mediator, a middle man between the Bish ops of his church and the ministry. And then, he stood be tween the ministry and the people. He was so easy to approach that the humblest ministers would bring their complaints and grievances and pour them out to him, as .though they were talking to their most familiar friend. But he, never encouraged such complaints. But for every griev ance he would point them to a remedy, even if it was against himself. Any ruling of his that had the least ap pearance of partiality, he would tell his ministers to appeal from his decision and take him before the General Confer ence. That is, he taught the ministry, as well as the laymen, that there was a redress for every wrong perpetrable. But in spite of his instruction, there were ministers in the church small enough to see a Bishop through the narrow contractions of their own conceptions, and regard him as a kind of an ecclesiastical merchant, a mere dispenser of

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bread and butter. Some of these little foxes are in the church now, who after their flattery and twaddle have fail ed to compensate them, have attempted to avenge them selves by charging the Bishops with cutting off mens heads, as though the African Methodist Church was the "Old Bail ey," and the pulpit a chopping block, and the Bishop is the axe man.
Such ministers were regarded by Bishop Turner as the most dangerous enemies of the church, however much tiiey may have been considered by some in authority as obedient and loyal members. In short, they might have been used to whip other members in line. But the real genuine Bish op, the man who is an honor to the office to which the church has elected him, looks upon such a man as a freak and with much suspicion and will not place in his hands a matter of responsibility and trust.
A minister who will unduly flatter a Bishop is that Bish ops enemy. He flatters as long as flattery serves his per sonal purpose, and the Bishop will sooner or later be humili ated and carricatured before a thinking and enlightened world. Some Bishops may assume they are the real em bodiment of this charge for the purpose of creating more fear of this nature. But the ministers who make such charges are the worst enemies of the church, and the as sumption that the charge is true is dangerous. They are violators of the law of the church, which discourages the speaking of evil against those in authority without cause. These sweeping charges against the Bishops of the A. M. E. Church by the critics without, as well as the ministers within, we condemn as the chimera of the veriest deception, because there is no possible place in the constitution of Afri can Methodism for such a condition to exist.
The A. M. E. Church it not a chopping block nor a slaughter pen. The Bishops of this grand old Zion, the heritage of that great man, H. M. Turner, and his compeers, who proceeded him to the goodly land. She is a Church, and v.-as tested and has proven her right to a place in the sister hood of denominations, by an hundred years of rugged, up hill struggle, to the forefront of progressive world monu ments of our times.

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Bishop Turner regarded all such charges, as the cries of abject slaves, who could not be used for any good purpose in the Church, nor without it. He would style them grumb lers, and fault finders, going around whining about what somebody has done to them. He regarded any man as a slave, and a scullion in this free and enlightened age, who would crawl around on. his stomach between mens legs, begging for bread. Such men were worse than slaves, and there was no place in the A. M. E. ministry for them. There is not a Bishop in the Church, and we mean Bishop with every letter in his name a capital, who would be so low, so mean, and so vile a wretch, as to assume such a relation to their brethren, and the people they were elected to serve. This condition among the same ministers of the church is the result of blind leadership.
We take this occasion to sound an alarm. The A. M. E. Church cannot endure with Bishops alone. She could more easily dispense with the Bishops, than she could with her faithful ministers. Ministers on the field who are mak ing the church what she is, in co-opevation with the people. The church could not long endure half slave and half free anymore than could the state. She must be the one thing or the other, if she would survive the test of the coming age. The spirit of the age is freedom from burdens imposed by centralized power, in the church as well as in the state. The efficiency of the A, M. E. Church is invested in her ministry, and the Bishopric only designates a constitutional element in the service of that ministry, and not a new order of clergy with mystic rites. The Bishopric means service that is faithful, honest, incessant service.
These false accusations brought against the church, not only by outsiders, but by weak men, on the inside, ought to be discouraged and condemned. Silence upon such accusa tions cause them in time to crystalize into beliefs, by which mens actions will be governed. And when once a precedent is set, by a weak people, there is no way to break it, to them it is stronger than statute law.
The only apology we offer for denouncing these critics is first to preserve the honor and integrity of the episcopacy of the A. M. E. Church. If the Bishops of the church con-

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stitute an order with mystical rites, due to apostolic succes sion, they might not have need of this defense. But they are not a hierarchy, nor the chief priests of a sacred order. They are our human brethren. As Bishop Turner used to call them, "our big elders," to superintend the work of the ministry and the church, as the church elder superintends the work of the people. And the seventh question in the Annual Conference is clear and unmistakable. It is self-interpreting. "Who have been elected by the General Conference to exer cise Episcopal office, and to superintendent the African Methodist Church ?" Would not general superintendent be the highest official appellation possible to truthfully be ap plied to the Bishops? It is indeed foolish to discuss the pos sibility of the existence of a condition as charged, within the borders of the Church, and yet it is true that men are igno rant enough in the Church, to believe Bishops can cut off their bread and butter, and send them out to starve. No man in all African Methodism rebuked this cowardly whining more than Bishop Henry McNeal Turner. And it is also in defense of him and his surviving colleagues we thus write these denunciations.
We care not what a ministers offense may be, nor does it matter who that offense is against, a way is judiciously provided by which to deal with that minister and this provis ion is made for all the members of the Church, the Bishops not excepted. We denounce, therefore, the charge that the Bishop has authority and power to mercilessly leave men and their wives and children to grow up in ignoance and starve, as groundless, and without a modicum of truth. But being human, as they are, and out of the abundance of their human weakness, Bishops may have thoughtlessly left such an impression, or may have been tempted to commit such a crime. But there would have been nothing done out of the common and usual condition of man. All men, from Adam to the present day have been tempted to do wrong. So strongly did human nature incline in this direction, even the blessed Christ did not escape the temptation of the wick ed one.
It must be remembered that errors and mistakes are not power; nor are they licenses and authority to do wrong.

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An institution is not responsible for the actions of its indi vidual members, only as those acts are within the curtilage of the rights which make that individual a member of the institution.
There could be conceived of no crime more heinous among men representing the worst walks of life, than these charges. Think of the cruelty of such crimes and the evil they would breed! What a disaster would befall the church and the race, if by the mere force of might, and unauthorized authority, a man, wrapped in the garb of a spiritual father, would keep his children in abject slavery and ignor ant of their right to freedom and life! Public opinion and the laws would not tolerate ecclesiastical peonage any more than they would human slavery in America. Men ought to know that no such condition, religious nor civil, can exist in a highly civilized Christian country. Such conduct would have been less acceptable to our times than the persecutions of the church in the dark ages. It is nauseating to genuine Christian faith.
In this apology we do not claim that the A. M. E. Church is faultless. But we dp claim that the Bishops are not responsible for the weaklings in the church, who are fuming aud fawning and playing the slave. Nor can the church be charged for such conduct. It is just the weakness of men, that is all. These abnormal, as well as anomalous relations will exist between men and men, so long as men are human. We care not to what height or rank to which a man may go in society, religious or civil, the longing for human revenge will ever remain open. It it a part of that human nature which was mangled and bruised by the fall, from which no son of Adam has escaped. Bishops are no exception. Treat them wrong; they will not feel kindly to ward you. Oppose them; and they will resist you if it re quires the mustering of all the official authority. They are no less Bishops because they seek to get even with the fellow who opposed them, or voted the other way. It makes no difference, if the man is a Bishop, he does not feel that he owes consideration to the man who voted against him. This is the practical side of weak, helpless sinning human nature. Then the man who opposed ought to be ready, with sword

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in hand, ready to meet a foe at any time, worthy of his steel. For as long as they live, the one will try to ebb, while the other will attempt to overflow. These are human weak nesses, which human progress and Christianity have pot eradicated. We are as anxious as Bishop Turner ever was to press the one fact home, not only to the Bishop, but to the ministers and people, that Bishops are merely human beings: no more, nor, no less. We do not assume the role of finding princes at our pleasure, nor of teaching senators wisdom. But we speak because it is not impossible in our own day to see servants upon horses, and these princes walking, as ser vants upon the earth. In a state of war, no one knows what will happen next.
Bishops are not made out of dehumanized men. The spirit of political life is breathed into their nostrils after their election just the same as it was before their election to office. Revenge is as sweet all the time, whether in or out of office. And retaliation gives one man as much self-inflat ed satisfaction as it gives another man. And why notWhy exempt any man from the weakness of his own nature? When a man is heard to say, "I will take care of my friends; but my enemies must look out for themselves," why condemn him ? Is he not giving expression to a universal trait in human nature? Is he not telling the truth? Has mortal man ever done otherwise when he had the opportunity? Then why are men so narrow as to attempt to circumscribe a Bishop as to make him an immune from sin against his brother man? Is he not human? Has he not walked the path of sin, corruption and mortality all the days of his life until he is brought down to the grave and the house appoint ed for all living?
Man is a civil being with a political nature, and as that nature develops, the mans idea of his own importance grows as well as does his false conception of ownership in that which he merely holds in trust. And thus we pause here to emphasize and to set forth clearly, Bishop Turners position on the use of power and the exercise of authority, as well as the misuse of power and the usurpation of author ity. No man in the A. M. E. Church played politics as did Biehop Turner. With him politics required the shrewdest

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brain, and the most active mind to play the game success fully. And no man in his church, as a Bishop, or what not, had a greater right to arrogate to himself the presumption that the awards of the church were emoluments to pay off political henchmen. But to his name, no such infamy was ever attached. This is an assumption he never assumed. In all of his political career, in and out of the church, he wasnever heard to say, "Rev So and So can get anything I have got during my administration.. And it mattered not how much patronage he controlled through the appointing power of his church. And however much the requirements of the church life and her officiary indulged him, he never allowed his political spirit to assume domination over the work of Gods house. He claimed the right of possession in nothing pertaining to Gods house. But in tones akin to thunder he would condemn and denounce the "Me and mine" idea in the church, and the "My Conference and my administration," as the rebuke of authority and the dissipation of power. And "My God!" Bishop Turner would exclaim, "you have no con ference and no administratoion! It is the churchs confer ence .and the administration of the church of God." And he held that the church appointments were not coin with v/hich to settle political debts. And thus that saintly man arranged his church as well as his state and taught them through a life time of more than sixty years of rugged ser vice for mankind, that all that a Bishop had to give to any one, was his life of impartial service to mankind. And if he had enemies to punish he was unfit to be a Bishop in the church or to preside over those enemies. He contended that tyrants, traitors and libertines had no place in the church, and if known, could exercise in no part of her officiary. The church is not a political headquarters, nor are her appoint ments rewards for political services, and any movement in that direction is the beginning of her decline.
Having passed himself through all the conditions of his race in American hardships, he could not bear to see those conditions revived in his church. He saw the patrol pass away. He saw the dawning of the day of duty. He lived see the moral law enter in as a part of the constitutional bases and the rapidly approximating rule of right in the

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brotherhood of man. He became a bitter enemy to oppres sion on every hand.
But at times Bishop Turner was an alarmist, because of so many irregularities in his church, and in the reli gious life of the race. Therefore, he was pessimistic touch ing the autonomy of the race, as well as of the A. M. E. Church. He was not fearful of any particular weakness, however peculiar to the race, nor to the A. M. E. Church. But he seems to have seen a prevailing human weakness sweeping over the world, and effecting mankind everywhere. And before that onward sweep of unrestrained power, he saw his race with the others, his denomination with others, confronted with the evil forces of the age, against which they had no power to resist. Thus his predictions and ut terances came as the result of a prophetic eye, and the vision of the seer. And no events have done more to verify his predictions than the dying hours of the first one hundred years of the life of the A. M. E. Church, and if the one hun dred and twenty-eighth part is true of that which was re ported of the 1916 General Conference, at Philadelphia, then he had justifiable grounds for his pessimism.
Bishop Turners most favorite resort for reflection was to the fathers of his church, and as he saw them dropping off one by one, he regarded them lost to the church and race forever. He had labored so assiduously side by side with his co-laborers, that he found himself standing alone battling for what they once contended for together. Hence he was made many times to feel that all had gone and he alone was left to battle for the cause that once engaged their services. Those mighty men like Gaines and Grant and Arnett had gone. Thus he seems to have stood alone and heard the thunder tones of his power, in the silence of his own might.
A premonition crept over his nature, warning1 him that he would not see the 1916 General Conference, because there was not a sufficient amount of imperial momentum brought over from the closing century to sound forth the trumpet for the ushering in of the opening century. His service was not needed. The business of that conference did not require it. And for this position that General Conference supplied ample grounds.

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For bishops, ministers and laymen vie with each other in saying it was the stormiest General Conference in the history of the church, and nothing of value was accomplish ed. But even while it was in session and for six or eight months after it adjourned, it was branded as the most bois terous and unruly General Conference: in the history of the church, and it was charged that among its delegates were some of the most irreligious men. Men drunk with ambition for Episcopal honor, and stooping to every mean and vile method to win. If what was published could have been be lieved by the public sentiment of our day, African Methodism would have been known to-day only in name. And if the first century of the church terminated so disastrously in its centennial General Conference, and if these conditions, so deleterious to spiritual life and Christian progress were al lowed to remain unopposed, there will not be another cen tennial General Conference of the A. M. E. Church. Let us turn on the light and reason well.
But there is no reason for despair. All is not lost. Let us forget, if we will, the last hundred years of her up build! Destroy her discipline, forget the history and blot the name of any bishop from memory. Then let us take the Bible, and the life and character, the career and achievements of Henry McNeal Turner as our guide, and we shall have a foundation broad enough, and the material sufficient to build an A. M. E. Church greater than that which has passed away. And the glory of the latter will be greater than the former.
The struggles at Philadelphia in 1916 were the results of the new birth. There the church received her second baptism and consecration to service and duty.
But the conduct and deportment of the delegates at the 1916 General Conference, throws no disparagement upon the Church. The noise and boisterousness was not a question of irreligion nor immorality. The question of Quality doss not enter. Twas a question of experience. The majority of the delegates were young and inexperienced in ecclecsiastical legislation; the great bulk of whom had never attended a General Conference before, and the only reason for their presence at this one was the curiosity for nhe ex perience of being a member of the Centennial General Confer-

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ence. And there was only one man on the Episcopal roll, who had had an Episcopal experience to exceed sixteen years and he was eight years the senior of his twelve colleagues.
The General Conference at Norfolk, Virginia, was composed of a large number of the older and more ex perienced men of the Church, as well as a large number of Bishops with longer service in the Episcopal office. At Nor folk there was one bishop who had served in the Episcopal office thirty-five years, three who had served twenty-five years and two who had served in the Episcopal office twenty years. Thus, there is a psychological differentiation that puts the 1916 General Conference in a class to itself.
The bishops of the Philapelphia General Conference, the majority of them, at least, were younger men. They were not men hardened and toughened to service, but young men borne up by the popular glare and clamor of the age. The absence of those old methods and ways of conducting the affairs of the Church made the spirit of Arnett, Grant, Gaines and Turner conspicuous for that absence. At Phila delphia in 1916, their surviving colleagues contended with the result of an experience of a hundred years of spiritual life and spiritual growth of whose true value they knew little.
Upon economic grounds, Bishop Turner was a staunch adherent to the rotation system for Episcopal supervision. He could conceive of no other remedy for the extravagant use of ministerial power, and the misdirected authority of the church and thus long before his death he had committed himself to the rotation idea. In the first place, he was a rolationist because he believed that whatever the choice would be between rotation and the itinerant form of ministerial succession, the choice would not be a positive good. Be cause the tendency of the Church activity is more toward the congregational form; and that local individual independ ent church government would ultimately obtain to it, and instead of an appointing power, the people will elect their pastor. While he did not proclaim his position very loudly, yet he expressed himself to the extent that he thought the usefulness of the itinerant system was ended, because so many abuses had arisen hi the church on account of it that

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it became a burden to the appointing power, and offensive to both ministers and the people, and was the source of much annoyance, and some times humiliation and disgrace to the appointing power.
He contended that the itinerant system under our Epis copal form of church government was not in harmony with the free institutions of our country, but were rather inclined toward a bias, a one man rule and a one man authority, which finally would lead to a monachial form of church gov ernment, against which mankind would revolt, because it is opposed to our free popular government, and is disastrous as well as destructive to the perpetuity of good government Bishop Turner hated anything that looked toward despotism.
He believed in the rotation of the bishops because an opportunity would be afforded for a better set of men to be developed in the Conferences, not men trained by Bish ops, but men trained for Bishops. And thus lessening the evil which grows out of what is termed the Bishops Cabinet and the Presiding Elders Council. And second, the men of the conference would learn that the success of the Confer ence and the work of the church depended more upon their untiring service than upon a thousand men standing around with their hands in their pockets giving orders and attempt ing to boss the job.
In the service of the Church there is an army of soldiers, but there is only one General. In the army of the Lord, all are in the ranks. Hence the church could easily dispense with her leaders and still remain a church, but she cannot dispense with God and the people. God has ever been zealous for the cause of his people. Little space is accorded the leaders upon the pages of sacred history. Twas to the rulers of the synagogue Christ was offensive. It was their conduct which caused the Holy Spirit to depart from the house of God.
Third, the minister will more willingly and gladly serve the church, because each .minister of the Coinference will be encouraged to work in proportion as he receives credit for the service he renders. To credit the men for their own ser vice has never been a part of the economy of the A, M. E. Church. As a denomination, she has not taught her com municants that earthly rewards are an inspiration to the

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brother who serves unless these rewards are going from the brother lowest down to the brother highest up. With the bitterness of his soul Bishop Turner would rebuke and con demn the crime, as he regarded it, of his colleagues and oth ers in authority in the church for their sweeping claims for every achievement the church makes, as though they were the spiritual dynamo, the central power, and the main cur rent that kept the church alive and active. It was Napoleons soldiers upon whom forty centuries looked and not upon Na poleon, per se. England expected her navy at Trafalgar, and not Nelson, to do her duty, per se. Hence the soldiers must be encouraged by what they do now, as well as by a reward in another world. The work of the A. M. E. Church is done by the people, and the people ought to be encouraged by their leaders, by throwing a flower at them while they live in stead of falling over each other to preach their funeral ser mon. In some communities two or three men walk off with the honor and credit for building a church, a college, or for being behind some great movement which requires the com bined effort of the country and then dispute over who first started the enterprise. For this seemingly trite position, Bishop Turner was called childish, old and in his dotage. But underlying this position occupied by Bishop Turner is a principle of inspiration, courage and comfort as old as man. To the beacon light of hope and promise the child of God has looked in all ages. He serves God because he is looking forward to the recompense of reward, something substan tial and tangible out of his own experience. This is where Abel, Enoch, Abraham and Moses stood. This was that, sure hope of promise to Rahab, Gideon, Samson, David and Jeptha. This is Gods "comfort ye, comfort ye my people." What the people want to know is, will there be an end to their toiling and their sorrow? What the poor ministers want to know is when will the deliverer come? Bishop Turner regarded it foolishness, going around telling people they ought not to expect credit and honor for their services in the Church in this world when, at the same time, those who teach that uncanny doctrine are seeking every inch of laudation one person can heap upon the head of another. Such hypocrisy he despised, and rebuked this element in the

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life of the A. M. E. Church as a menace to the development of the race.
There is a custom common in the Church, however, and especially among the high officiary, to tell the person who works, he ought to do service for the love of the church and the glory of God. Bishop Turner conceived this doctrine to be common in the Negro Church, while those who gave the advice sought the joys and comforts and the dollars and the pleasure of earth. And it is true today that the man who bosses the job gives the order and pops the whip, does not only regard this, however, as a part of his reward, but he wants his praise sounded under double column head lines in the newspapers throughout the connection by high priced reporters, when in fact, he has not exerted one iota of energy to bring to pass the thing for which he seeks all the credit. Bishop Turner styled such men as robbers and grave dig gers.
In the fourth place, the rotary system would lessen this vain ambition for worldly fame, and ill gotten applaudits on the part of the high functionaries of our church.
In short. Bishop Turner believed that there should be one rule for the ministers of the church, and that rule should govern all alike. In fact, he regarded the ministry as a unit, and not of fractional parts. Thus the ministry of a church represents a body completely and perfectly joined together for special service, with organic functions absolutely inde pendent the one of the other, and yet each absolutely necessary for the perfect existence of the body. Therefore, neither could claim priority nor supremacy over the other. What he meant was, that the ministry did not consist so much in the number of ordinations as it did in the oneness of its aims and purposes, and the oneness of the responsi bility and obligation. No high, nor low; no large nor small, but a common brotherhood with well defined duties; and an organism filled with responsibilities, and an institution found ed by the most binding obligations.
In the earlier days of Methodism, these names in what seems to make up the order and rank of the ministry, rather designated thought, ability, preparation and fitness for ser vice. In short, they did not represent that well defined rank

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that stands out so proudly and boastfully in the church to day. This is the rank that was in the mind of the Master, when he said, Tbut whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister," your clergyman, your pastor, your servant. These names were links in the chain of service, duty and activity.
Bishop Turner held that the enjoining of duties was not synonymous with granting power and bestowing authority, but the enjoining of duties was simply intended to define obligations. That those who serve in Gods house might kr-ow the binding power of duty. And that which is some times called ministerial rank, is not a higher position in the church than that of minister. But it is merely a reference to ministerial responsibility. For instance, in our church we have local preachers, exhorters, deacons, elders and Biahops. In short, the definition for minister defines the common duty of all these names. In fact, these are names designat ing duties and defining obligations. Otherwise, they have ro meaning.

CHAPTER IX. THE CHARACTER OF BISHOP TURNERS EDUCA
TION HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE HIS LITERARY LIFE THE AUTHOR AND SCHOLAR
THE DEEP THINKER THE PRODIGIOUS WRITER AND PUBLISHER.
If education as applied to Bishop Turner has reference to the order of the schools, then it is safe to say he had no education. He was learned, wise and judicious after the order of the world. He understood men and things, but he knew nothing after the order of collegiate curricula, and academic traditions. His singular and peculiar gifts and deep insight and strong ambition enabled him, under the most adverse and straightened circumstances, even in slav ery and poverty to get more out of his life, than many boys who had the best opportunities for a formal education.
His education was a matter of slow growth among the common, plain and untrained people, who were his friends and constant associates. They were simple people, with few wants. The future held out but little for them. Hence his literary preparation for lifes work was slow. But there was in him the latent power for a mastery over the minds of men, that revealed itself in later years, and gave him a pre eminence in the assembly of men which he maintained with perfect composure until his death.
In procuring his education he was a most painstaking man. Whatever subject he undertook to study, he was like a German, he went to the heart of it. He understood thor oughly what many of the school men but half understood. He studied, and even worried over things the school man would dismiss as childs play. He would go a thousand miles to hear a man speak, or to get a new idea on an important subject, and like Horace, he sought words from every possi ble source to express his meaning. And when he could not

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find them in the dictionary, he coined a, few in order to drive home his meaning, and to make clear his analysis.
Hence, like Abraham Lincoln, Bishop Turners "mind had filled, as each item of his experience had made its record, and as each glimpse of the world came before him." Thus he was fully ready and prepared to be a leader, when his race needed him most.
Bishop Turners education did not consist of the bril liancy of geniuses, nor the dazzling luster of character which so successfully served many of his contemporaries. No great exploits are accredited to him. He was simply great, and great in the simplicity of his heart, and great in mind. He had a sweet soul and a vigorous life. His education gave him the mental strength of the statesman, and the moral conviction and courage of the leader who dares to do his duty in the face of the most pronounced opposition. No one was jealous of his attainments, because he was always struggling to get an education. He at all times assumed the role of the student.
His education largely consisted not in the respect he gave to the views of others, as to the deference he paid to his own views; his own opinions and convictions. And after thoroughly investigating a proposition and having it dis cussed, pro and con, whatever decision or conclusion he reached it was in deference to his sense of duty, and in ac cord with his obligations and responsibility.
Bishop Turners education was of a fragmentary nature. Therefore, in the early days of his leadership he lacked the confidence of some of his closest friends. They did not al ways hold him to strict account for the fulfillment of an agreement upon which in party or political council they had settled. The strength of his political knowledge, and the sufficiency of his public experience were doubted. In short, Bishop Turner was a riddle even to himself. He was a sort of a "novus homo incivitate." He was a puzzle to his friends, many of whom surpassed him in culture, refinement and training, because those latent forces and powers which later revealed themselves in him were as silent as the sphinx. When they began to reveal themselves, the eyes

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of the nation were turned upon him, and he was watched as no Negro ever was before.
He had many misgivings concerning himself, and his ability to manfully grapple with the exegencies of his time. He achieved success by an inherent bravery, and faultless courage, and an indomitable will. Bishop Turner was a most determined and venturesome man. He would attempt to do and dare, what other men regarded as the impossible. He knew his educational qualifications had not provided him with that weapon of learning so necessary with which to grapple with the grave questions of that early day. Also many of his best friends, those who considered him the greatest champion for the freedom of his people, the country had produced. But on the other hand there were others who looked upon him with much misgiving, and regarded him more as a calamity than a blessing to the cause he cham pioned.
Bishop Turner was not only a puzzle to himself, but he was a continual surprise, and a most satisfactory disappoint ment to .his friends. They did not see in that huge elephan tine, awkward, and rotund form, the real master he after wards proved himself to be. They did not see in H. M. Turner a great man for an awful time. Because human reason was so narrow, and human vision was so short. But beneath his rough form and rugged nature there was hidden a soul destined to tower above its environments like an eagle, soaring beyond the mountain peaks. They did not believe his education produced in him the "timber needed to bear the strain of affairs touching his race, in their relation to the nation." But subsequent history has proven that they did not understand his diversified experience, because it did not fully show itself until the hour had arrived for him to act, and to take his place in the public life of the nation. Not until it was decreed by the Southern Army to give no quarters to Negro soldiers, nor their white officers who fought in the federal army, did the real metal in Bishop Turner reveal itself. Not until then did he bare his breast and unbosom his whole nature and lay his life upon the nations altar, when he knew if he was ever captured it meant death. He went to the front, and bravely fought for the preservation of

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his race. This was the test of his patriotism toward his country and his loyalty to the Negro race.
Thus the greatness of character and nobility of life manifested itself in that unobtrusiveness and simplicity of soul, which gave him an insight into the affairs of the nation, familiar to but few of the politicians of his day. And this insight was not known to some of his closest friends. But it was the redeeming feature of his mighty life, and was greater to him and served him far better than any office in the gift of the nation. And by that insight he all along shaped and planned his course, and formulated the schemes to which he clung so closely in his later years, because they had served him so well in early life.
Bishop Turner was wise and always thoughtful. He never dreaded a man who knew more than he did. Rather, he would become a student of such men, and feast upon their thoughts. It was an easy matter for him to say he did not know, but if the thing was worth research, he would never rest until he knew it, even if he was forced to travel a thou sand miles at his own expense to learn it. He was a cham pion for education, and the civil lights of his people. It was this dual example of his leadership which tested the charac ter of his education, and the strength of his mental ability. Thus he taught the Negro everywhere the necessity of ac quiring- the highest and best training possible if they would enjoy the full right of citizenship in this country. He urged them to be loyal to the nation, and be prepared at all times to die for it, if necessary, that it might endure. He enjoined loy alty to the State, willingness to live for it, as well as willing ness to make any sacrifice to maintain it, without compromise or the surrender of one iota of its reserved rights. And to that example, and that teaching of Henry McNeal Turner, the Negroes of America "still cling, as to the pavement upon which they daily walk, and to the homes upon which they so fondly look."
During the twelve years of his Chancellory of Morris Brown College, Atlanta Georgia, he was not only instrument al in paying the institution out of debt, and completing its main building, but he put the best teachers in the schools that the limited amount of money on hand could procure.

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The faculty was not large but it was strong and well pre pared in all the departments. And the school had a high rating among the institutions of that time.
The educational efforts on his part were as herculean and laborious as any service he ever rendered. He found nothing easy for him to do. All his work was hard, irksome, as well as arduous. This habit was formed, because he lived daring the awful time of great trials and distresses. Times when mens hearts were sorely tried. For from the begin ning of his career to the close of his life, he was in constant storm, surrounded by clouds and darkness, and thunder. The nations life was threatened to be destroyed by a cruel war. Then came the reconstruction period, that awful time when the right of franchise was given to his people. Then the ballot denied, and the Negro driven from the poles, all to gether, made one round of the sorest trials, through which he had ever been made to pass. But so fired and stirred was his will and unconquered was his spirit, that he began anew to perform his patriotic duty in such a manner that he left no cause for his followers and friends to doubt his sincerity, nor the safety of his leadership. And thus his power and the force of his education, his wisdom and public career shine brighter and brighter as the generations come and go.
Bishop Turner was not a handsome man. He had no comeliness for which he was admired. He was a plain, blunt man. He had a herculean frame, with a massive head an an open broad prominent face, cleanly shaven and resembled more the profile of the Greek than that of the Roman. He was slightly corpulent. His complexion was not sufficiently bright to hide the fact that he was of Negro origin, both on his fathers and mothers side. Yet he was not of pure blood. He was a product of the anomalous condition which once existed at the South between master and slave.
In his younger days he had a quick, elastic gait, at most times after the order of the stage manager. But, as he grew older, his gait slowed, and he became more measured in his steps, as he would sway and rock from side to side, as he moved along; his shoulders slightly drooped, but not to the extent that he was round shouldered. His platform deportment was of the old school. His voice was a deep

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guttural; his favorite figure of speech wag sarcasm, which

he could use with great force and power, and cut his antag

onist to the quick; and, by this method, he uttered his bit

terest denunciation against wrong, and, because of this

method of denunciation, few cared to meet him in joint

debate, and none survived his angry tirades. He was as

furious as a tigress.

Bishop Turner was not aesthetic in his habit nor man

ners. He cared nothing about dress, and thought less

about his personal appearance. He seemed out of place

when he was said to be dressed up, and the swaggy move

ment he developed in later years caused his clothes to hang

carelessly and loosely, as well as "thoughtlessly," about

his large and compact "frame." He used good language,

and could cover much ground in one set speech. He was

deliberate at times, but, at other times, he would become

forensic and his voice would sound like peals of thunder and

his tirades like the growling of an angry lion.

He had the mouth of an orator, a prominent nose and

the piercing eyes of the eagle, and looked his audience in

the face and read their thoughts. He used a great many

gestures, not so much to emphasize his thoughts as from

the habits of his vital temperament and his most nervous

and excitable nature. He had the magnetism of the orator.

He could entertain his audience for hours at the time.

He was persuasive and eloquent. He used few illustrations

and seldom, if ever, reverted to story-telling to relieve his

hearers. And he was never without an engagement to

perform some useful service, not only to his own Church,

but to all the Churches and his race in general; and, even

in the heart of the South, as well as at the North, he was

often called upon to address exclusively white audiences ;

and these opportunities to say a word for his race he would

never allow to pass. Thus ran the uneven course of his

rugged career.

..

For the intellectual life of Bishop Turner, that foun

dation upon which he built his literary career, little can be

said, aside from the fact that he had but little time and

still less opportunity to develop that side of his life. What

ever place his intellectual life occupies in the world of

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

129

thought and activity, he made it for himself against the greatest odds and the stubbornest opposition. He read largely and especially popular literature; in this he became conversant with many subjects and the current thoughts of his day. He knew many things in detail and minutiae which many of his colleagues, associates and contemporaries knew only in the aggregate, and of many things he knew well they were ignorant. Therefore, he could successfully, interestingly and to the satisfaction of his hearers lecture and write upon mathematics, astronomy, geology, physi ology, zoology, ethics, theology, science of government and psychology seemingly with perfect ease and no embarrass ment whatever.
Bishop Turner was a combination of the author, the orator, the warrior and preacher. He was at different stages of his career chaplain in the army, campaigner on the stump, statesman in legislative halls, leader of his race, Bishop of a great Church. He was the man and student of men and things, as well as a student of books; and there were but few things coming to the mind about which Bishop Turner did not seek to know something. He kept abreast of the times, even to the day of his death.
His education was of that kind which did not know all about any one thing, but something about many things. He whs thorough in what he did know, and, therefore, ac curate and more practical in all of his public and private utterances than many people imagined.
Bishop Turner was the most voluminous writer of his race; and, when he could not get a publisher for his matter, he would make a mouthpiece of his own. In short, the Southern Christian Recorder and the Voice of Missions, now organs of the A. M. E. Church, were first owned and controlled by him, and the Womans Christian Recorder is the product of his brain. He also published the Voice of the People and a Theological Digest, which were eagerly sought, and were widely read by both races.
His most popular literary productions were "Meth odist Polity" and "The Catechism of the A. M. E. Church," which have been indispensable to the Church for nearly forty years.

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His poem, "The Conflict for Civil Rights," was writ ten in 1874, as an effort on his part to give a running sketch of the principal incidents connected with the great struggle which finally terminated in the statutory recognition of the equality of all men before the law.
The plot and general construction of this poem showed much thought and penetration, and revealed the fact that its author was familiar not so much with rhythmical har mony as he was with the poetry of facts. The preface to this poem by the author is a perfect classic and portrays a modesty for Which he did not always get credit.
He published many of his speeches and lectures in pam phlet form, and distributed them throughout the country. Thu? has was read and known of all men.
There are romances in human history the student of thought cannot overlook. These occur in one country Rr.d under certain conditions that could not have occurred in another country at another time. Under our system o~ government, it has been made possible for a man. at one end of his life, to be the driver of a canal boat ar.d a resi dent in a log cabin, and at the other end an occupant of the White House at Washington and the ruler of the great est Republic on earth. It has been made possible by our system of government for a rail splitter from the back woods, at one end of his life, to be the greatest emanci pator the world ever saw at the other end; and thus, through the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln, it was made cossibe in o~.~ cour.fr .y for a man, at one end of his life, to be an associate of slaves and live in the quarters and to be subject to all the iniquities of slave condition, but, at the o!"he." end. to be a literary genius, an author and a profcii^.- se^ohv.
P-sho") Turner was a self-trained man. He lacked the educational advantages which were so pronounced in other nen of his time. His opportunities, as has already been shown, for acquiring a systematic education, after the regu lar order of the schools, were comparatively limited, indeed; but he saw* the advantages that would arise by establishing echools, hence he encouraged his Church to found and es tablish 33 many schools as it could well support, in order

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

131

to give the coining generations the advantages such as he had not received. And the educational system and the magnificent chain of schools of the A. M. E. connection is largely the outgrowth of his wise foresight. He was con stantly urging his colleagues to improve the educational standards, so that the coming generations might have a closer observation and a truer understanding of the com mon burdens upon the common membership of the Church and the common citizens of a great country.
His literary ideals were lofty. He never allowed an opportunity to hear a great man escape him, if by any means it was possible to get to hear him. Prejudice against his race in his own section sometimes shut off this oppor tunity. In his search for information, no humiliation was too low. His oft-repeated expression was "Stoop to con quer!"
He was familiarly knowli to every great man in the public life of the State and the Church from 1862 almost to the close of his career; and not only men in this country, but in England and France, where he has been known to make some very valuable and important observations.
Bishop Turner was great on account of his achieve ments with his limited education, rather than for the amount of his training; and when the literary history of our country shall have been fully written, the name of Henry McNeal Turner will be written among those who achieved so much wfith the little education they had then will he take his place among that illustrious few who are known as the world builders and pathfinders for men.
He had clear and pronounced views of Evolution, the creation of the earth, the age of the world, the time man had lived on earth and the origin of man. Away, deep down in his heart, he was a believer in the Pre-Adamite theory, and questioned the Biblical chronology set forth by Archbishop Usher. He was the most independent thinker of his or of any other race. But, while few, if any, of his conclusions wSl! be referred to as precedents, he will ever be referred to as a man of strong convictions and undaunted courage. It is by no means to be construed that Bishop Turner was a free thinker.

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In short, Bishop Turner will be best remembered for what he has done; he will go down in the history of his race, rather for what he was in the aggregate, and not be known in any particular feature or prevailing charac teristic of his life.
Bishop Turner was a fearless writer. He did not fear his critics; it made no difference whatever to him how severe their criticism. The late Dr. H. T. Johnson, speak ing of him in this particular, said, "Being alarmed at the fusilade of devouring tongues, with fear and trembling, we interrogated the great doctor as to his apprehension of danger, under the circumstances. The cold comfort con veyed by his philosophical rejoinder was as chilling as that of the latest cold wave. Let them criticise and curse me all they please; God bless you, while they are slinging mud, I am revelling among the stars and soaring through moving worlds." And such is the only answer he has ever made to those who attempted to meet his arguments and discus sions with spleen and madness.

CHAPTER X.

THE HOME LIFE OF BISHOP TURNER HIS LAST DAYS.

One visiting Bishop Turner, at his residence, 30 Yonge

Street, Atlanta, Georgia, would not give Bishop Tur

ners home a passing notice. His mind and attention would

be wholly absorbed on Bishop Turner the spirit which filled

every part of that house. In fact 30 Yonge Street was the

number of the house Wfhere he sometimes stayed. But he

was one of those peculiar geniuses who had no home, if

!

home meant a social habitat. Thirty Yonge Street was his

workshop. The world was his home; and he was as well

ij

contented in one part of it as in another. He did his work



in his shop, but he lived in the world. Whether on land or

\\

on the high seas, he moved about with that unconcerned

contentment, as though a call from him, a rap on the wall,

ji

a tap on the floor or the ringing of a bell would immediately

I

summon a member of his family to his presence.

|

He w!as a citizen of the world, but no particular part

j

of it. He was a commoner. He moved and acted as

though he belonged to the world at large, and to no one

particular, contracted spot in it.

In the early days of his Episcopate, he perceived that

Atlanta, the scenes of that awful struggle of slavery in

the death throes and the fires of the cruel war, would not

only become the metropolis of Georgia, but the Central City

of the Southeast, and in the path of the civilization between

the East and the Far West. To him beautiful was Atlanta

for situation as a place from which to hurl those bitter in

vectives against his nation for her disregard of human

rights and allowed lynch law and .iim crowism to thrive in

this country, for whose preservation so many of his race

gave their lives.

Number 30 Yonge Street was not his home it was the

residence where his family lived and the sun never looked

IS4

LIFE AND TIMES OF

COV.TI upon a happier and a better arranged abode; it was happy in its arrangements, in that it was the place for the accommodation of all classes of mankind who sought him whose immortal name it bore. Its arrangement was char acteristic of the greatness of the great man whose life overshadov/ed the whole.
The walls of that residence wtere fitter for an art gallevy than for a dwelling place, for there hung out in clear view the world as it is today; and as the eyes of the visitor scanned those walls, there would come before his vision every condition of the Negro race as he has been from the building of the pryamids and the carving of the sphinx to Abraham Lincoln breaking the shackles from the American slave. Bishop Turners residence was a veritable cyclorama for the exhibition of what the world has been in all ages. He was a curio gatherer and a relic seeker.
Bishop Turners residence was the repository for the many peculiar and odd curios and relics he gathered, from time to time, at home and abroad, presenting, not only the life of his people in America, but his ancestors in Africa. HJ3 residence became the resort for the museum lover and the art admirer.
The interior of his residence resembled that of an old style New England library, for books and papers and pam phlets and manuscripts of every nature and on many sub jects ware scattered in every part of his house.
Thirty Yonge Street, in Atlanta, Georgia, was to the A. M. E. Church and the Negroes in this country, as well as in Africa, what Faneuil Hall is to America; it is the very cradle of the Negros religious and civil freedom. All paths from whatever direction of the Negros interest lead to SO Yontre Street. This name was as well known in his day as is the name of the illustrious owner of the residence which bears this number; and to have seen 30 Yonge Street was but to have seen Bishop Turner, whether he was in or out of town. So firmly, as well as permanently, did ho stamp his personality upon, and so familiarly did he stamp his image upon the place, that the visitor feels now that he is in the presence of the sapilent seer, the sayer and

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the sage who once lived there, although he has really passed from the scenes of earth and time.
When Bishop Turner lived in Atlanta, his residence was all his home could be it was just a little more than a home in the sense of a social habitat; it was a magazine, wherein mental, spiritual and moral ammunition was kept dry for ready and immediate use. Twas his castle, where he en tertained the greatest thoughts of his mighty brain; it w&s his fort, behind which he fortified himself for every attack physical, as well as spiritual and intellectual. All the great games he played in Church and State during his last and more mature years were arranged and planned and staged at 30 Yonge Street, Atlanta, Georgia. And here he tugged away, night and day, in sweat of brain, of muscle and mind, as well as of blood and body, to rally and inspire his people.
He purchased the old Ward estate. This property was formerly owned by Bishop T. M. D. Ward. The house orig inally was a square, one-story, four-room, box-frame build ing; but, after Bishop Turner purchased it, he added im provements from time to time to meet the growing demand for more space, until, at the time of his death, instead of four rooms, the house had twenty, and every room oc cupied and in daily use. Every available part of its many feet of wall space was covered with pictures of his family, the distinguished men of his day and the venerable col leagues who served with him on the Episcopal Councils, as well as the whole, number of the Bishops of the Church, and many of the noted ministers of his Church, and such other pictures as are illustrative of the work he accomplished in his day.
This house represented the refined taste and cul ture of Bishop Turners inner nature. His hospital ity and kindness to friends, his generous heart and liberal soul made him fae friend of everybody; for a little child could approach him with equal familiarity of the philoso pher. In that fcouse, his children, grand-children and .great-grandchildren rose up to do him honor, and thus "the gracious sweetness of his own nature was in perpetual flow."

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

When the Work of his life was done, and the fruitage of his labor began to ripen with his ripened years, he sur rendered himself more and more to the enjoyment of the social side of his nature, because he found in this the best tonic for a man of his years and the best salve for old age.
Age was no burden to him; nor did descrepitude ever disturb his nature. He was constantly on the go, night and day, as of old. Although eighty-one years of age, he walked the streets of our American cities alone and traveled from one end of the country to the other without a com panion. Yet it was with great tenderness and an earnest solicitude his family watched his every movement; and through all of his checkered life, for the woman who cared for his every interest, he was a most devoted husband and an unstinted provider and made every plan and every ar rangement to be contributory to her welfare. His unselfish thouhgtfulness of his family is known only to his most inti mate friends. He purposed all through his life that no shadow should fall on the household enjoyment of those he loved, and for whom he labored. He made his house hold bright by smiles and cheerful words. His voice was coarse, but his heart was refined, and his soul was cultured. His death, at Windsor, Canada, in the Spring of 1915, left a void in his household and in the hearts of his friends and the great Church he loved; but the knowledge of his faith in another household and in other friends, and an eternal familihood in the better and larger life beyond, gives hope and cheerfulness to those he left behind. His residence, 30 Yonge Street, will be remembered as the scene of the larg est hospitality a place free and confiding; a house in which every virtue that adorns humanity was possible to be ex emplified. The private ripples on the stream of his family life never disturbed nor marred the onward current of his life. It moved on unscathed, as well as uninterruptedly, until his death.
Bishop Turner had strong convictions touching the use fulness and service of Women in and out of the Church. He had the greatest reverence for them, and so gallant was he in his conception of them that no one ever heard him

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

137

express one thought that would bring a blush to the cheek. He had a tender and sympathetic feeling for others, and
was always solicitous for their welfare, and thoughtful for their care and comfort. He was not only kind and gentle to others in this general sense, but he was kind to those who served about his house. He had a sort of sympathetic respect for the cat, the chickens, the horse, the cow and the dog; and all seemed to have missed him when he was ab sent and welcomed his return home.
The illness of Bishop Turner wlas of short duration. When found on the wharf at Windsor, Canada, at sixoclock on the morning of Saturday, May eighth, 1915, conscious ness had departed and, at 12:30 in the afternoon, he breathed his last and peacefully passed into eternity to the bosom of his father and his God.
From the hospital where he died, his remains were moved to Bethel A. M. E. Church, Detroit, Michigan, where appropriate services were held, conducted by Rt. Rev. C. S. Smith, assisted by ministers from the Michigan and Ontario Conferences, over which the late Bishop Turner presided, and to whom, when he died, he was on a mission of service and duty.
His body was placed in the care of Rev. W. C. Sheltpn, of the Michigan Conference, who accompanied the remains to Atlanta, Georgia, reaching there Monday evening, May 10. He turned the body over to his wife and a delegation of ministers from the Atlanta A. M. E. Ministers Union, who, under he direction of Rt. Rev. J. S. Flipper, took im mediate charge and conveyed the body to the undertaking parlor of Howard and Son, where it was prepared for burial, after which it was removed to the residence of the deceased, 30 Yonge Street, where it lay in state until the morning of the 18th, when it was laid in state at Big Bethel, where thousands viewed the remains of the dead chieftain. More than twenty-five thousand people, white and colored, looked uuon his face during the eight days his body lay in state in Atlanta, and more than fifteen thousand people were in attendance at the funeral representative men and women from every section of the country, who came to do him reverence. It was a touching scene when the

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

children of the Yonge Street public school, on the morning of the 18th, formed two lines, one on either side of Yohge street, as the hearse with the remains of Bishop Turner passed betareen them. He was a favorite with the children of this school, because Yonge street school was made possible, because Bishop Turner surrendered to the city the land which was a part of his own home place, to erect the school.
A large number of ministers constituted a guard of honor, who, with military precision, kept vigil over the remains of Bishop H. M. Turner, from May 12th until they were lowered to their resting place in South View cemetery May 19th, 1915.

CHAPTER XL LAST DAYS AND OBSEQUIES
of BISHOP HENRY McNEAL TURNER. On the morning of May 19th, long before the hour set :for the funeral, Bethel Church was crowded almost to her .fullest capacity, with exception of a few seats reserved for the family and the Church dignitaries. At 10:30 a. m. the soft notes of the organ rolled along -the emblazoned walls of the church he loved so well and -served so long, told that the funeral cortege of him who had been instrumental in making those walls possible was -approaching. The procession filed into the church, led by Bishop Benjamin Franklin Lee, who by actual time and service, became the illustrious successor of the still more illustrious dead. Then followed his colleagues, led by Bishop J. S. : Flipper, under whose management the funeral was conducted. Then in regular order came the general officers, the ministers, visiting clergy, the family, and the public. .The church was profusely decorated to suit the occasion -and in deference of the great personage in whose memory the obsequies were being held. The most costly, as well as the most magnificent floral offerings came from all parts ^of the country to decorate the casket of Americas greatest Negro. Thus was clearly demonstrated that he who was loved during his life time was not forgotten in his death. Bishop J. S. Flipper, a colleague, and fellow townsman -of Bishop Turner, and whose acquaintaince he shared for nearly half a century, said to the photographer, who was in waiting, "We are ready for a flash light picture of the -.assembly." Bishop Flipper then said to the congregation: "Now, my friends, please let everybody be quiet. "Give us perfect order if you please."

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LIFE AND TIMES OF

Bishop Flipper announced the hymn, "Servant of Godr Well Done," lined by Bishop C. T. Shaffer, Presiding Bishop of the Third Episcopal district.
Bishop Flipper: "We wlill be led in prayer by Bishop L. J. Coppin, D. D., Presiding Bishop of the Second and Seventh Episcopal Districts."
Bishop L. J. Coppin :"O, Thou, who hast been our dwelling place in all generations; before the mountains were brought forth or even thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God. We thank Thee that we can have a claim to Thy Sonship and Heirship and all blessings that those blessed relations imply. We know that in every condition of life, in sickness and in health; in joy and in sorrow; in life and in death, we can look up to Thee with that blessed assurance that there are outstretched arms to sustain, and that there is a great loving heart to comfort, and that the blessed Holy Spirit is given to lead us through the meanderings of life; that in our sorrow and our trouble Thou art even more ready to bestow upon us the comfort of Thy blessed presence than we are to ask or receive, and so we pray that Thou wbuldst be with us now in this, our bereavement. Be with those who are bereaved; comfort their hearts as Thou alone canst comfort them. May they be comforted when they remember that He of whom they are bereaved has been spared to them many long years. Let them be comforted when they remember the activity of those years; how nobly he has wrought for God and for man; how he has toiled and labored, and how Thou hast been pleased with and hast blessed the labor of his hand, and how the influence of his life has gone forth, bringing many from darkness to light, and from sin and sorrow, to the Blessed Redeemer. So we thank Thee that upon this day we can come, not as those who mourn, but as those who rejoice because of the possibility of triumphing and overcoming the world, the flesh and the devil, and being able to stand entire. We come singing, "Servant of God. Well done." We come thanking Thee for the victory that Thou dost give to those who know Thee and love Thee and serve Thee. And now, grant that Thy word may coir.fort us; that the precious comfort of

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the Bible may be ours, that we may receive Thee into our hearts and lives, and that we may put forth greater efforts to build up the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We pray, dear Lord, for the presence of the Holy Spirit, that we may be strong in all the activities of life. May we triumph so that when all our conflicts are passed, in dying, find our resting place in Thee. The Lord comfort us; the Lord be with us in all the ways of life, in all its toils, labors r.nd battles, and grant us victories over the world, flesh and the devil, and bring us all at last to the saints ever lasting rest, where there is no sorrow, sickness, pain nor death, and we will praise Thee through Grist our Redeemer, Amen.
Bishop Flipper: "It was the request of Bishop Turner, during his life time that Dr. B. F. Watson should sing some of his favorite songs at his funeral. We will now have a song, by Rev. B. F. Watson, D. D.; Secretary of the Church Extension Society."
Dr. Watson: "During the conference being held in Durant, Mississippi in 1894, when we sang, He Knows, the Bishop said, If you will just sing that song when I die, the devil cannot touch me with a forty foot pole. "
Bishop Flipper: "The Scripture reading, the 90th Psalm, will be read by Bishop John Hurst of the Eleventh Episcopal District."
Song, "Lead Kindly Light, by the choir of Bethel A. M. E. Church.
The obituary was read by Bishop H. B. Parks, Presiding Bishop of the Fifth Episcopal District.
Bishop Flipper rose and said: "I have chosen for my text, Job 14:10, But man dieth and wasteth away, yea, man jriveth up the ghost, and where is he?
"My brethren, sisters :and friends, I am occupying possibly a most trying position upon this occasion because of the fact that I have been laboring for a week with the family, having the details of the funeral to look after. It w>xs Bishop Turners request that Bishop Evans Tyree or myself should preach his funeral sermon. Bishop Tyree, beirg my senior, was requested to preach the funeral sermon, but could not be present by reason of the fact that

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his Annual Conference convened at Dover this morning,. and he couid not be present. Therefore, this sad duty fell upon your humble servant, notwithstanding all the other hard work and labor he has had to undergo for the past v/sek.
"It is the wish of the family that the services shall be
as brief as possible. There will be other speakers among the Bishops, and they are reminded now that each is limited to five minutes. I am sure they will not necessitate being
called down upon a sad occasion like this. We trust they will confine themselves strictly to five minutes. The family has been under a great strain, the body of Bishop Turner lying in state for over a week, and of course, in this hour
of sorrow and sadness, We ourselves must exercise common sense.
"I have known him for forty-five years. I knew him when he was a member of the Georgia Legislature. His wife, together with myself, used every effort possible not to have him take the long trip to Canada because we felt that he was physically unable to take such a long journey, but I am satisfied that Bishop Turner had a premonition of his death, and that the reason neither his wife nor myself could persuade him from taking that journey was because he had said in his life that he did not want to die under the American flag, and he did not. Therefore, I believe that is the reason he could not be persuaded to remain in Atlanta.
He felt that he was going to die, and he did not want to die on a poil where the American flag waved.
"For a few moments we invite your attention to the
hook of Job, the 14th chapter and 10th verse, But man deth and wssteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? I would have selected another text, possibly one that would, have been more appropriate to a person occupying1 the exalted position that Bishop Henry McNsal Turner occupied, but I have selected this text for the reason that it was the last text from which Bishop Turner himself preached a funeral sermon. Tuesday after the first Sunday in last January, at rr.y request, he preached the funeral senr.OTi of A. G. Garoesry. at Alien Temple, A. M. E. Church, and he took this text, Where is he?

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"In most every phase of life there is an interrogation point or a question mark. When Christ stood before Pilate, Pilate asked him, What is truth ? and David in the eighth Psalm asks the question, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him; and so Job, after saying that man dieth and wasteth awy; that he giveth up the ghost, asks: "vVTiere is He? Man, in all of his wisdom and knowledge, has not been able to answer either of these questions, and he has only been able through divine revelation to know yv&ac is truth, to know what is man, and to know where he is when he passes from this world, from this stage of mortal activity.
"In the opening of this chapter Job speaks concerning life. Man that is born of woman is of few: days and full of trouble, but God is the author of life; He breathed into mans nostrils and he became a living soul. In him, sayeth the Apostle Paul, we live and move and have our being, but each individual life is reckoned from the day of birth. Job, likewise, speaks of the shortness of life. Man goes forth as a flower and is cut down. The flower will blossom and bloom and send forth its fragrance, but in a short time its beauty will fade, wither and pass away. So man falleth as a shadow and his continuance in life is not only short, but it is uncertain. Not a single individual can count on any certain number of days, for each day may be his last.. God has fixed the bounds of every being over which he cannot pass. His days will certainly come to an end, and as God Almighty wrote on the walls of Belshazzars palace, Mene, thy kingdom is numbered and finished, so God has determined the length of our days and the period of our lives.
"But in our text, Job speaks of death the passing forever from this world of human activity, and it does not need any scientific research or philosophic reasoning to determine whether we shall die; it is an actual experience of every day life and the result of daily observation. Job looks out at nature and say, There is hope of a tree. If it be cut down it will sprout again, that the tender branch, .thereof will not cease, though the stock thereof die in the ground, yet through the efforts of water it will bud and"

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Jbring forth boughs like a plant. The moisture of the earth, the heat of the sun and its like, will cause it to spring forth; but such things have no effect upon the dead body of a man. But where Job looked at the tree and says that though it might be cut down and the stump should die in the ground, .yet through certain elements of nature and certain environ ments, it would spring forth again. But I repeat, that no such thing had been known when the dead body of a human being had been placed in the soil of the earth. But he felt within himself that if the tree, that which was material, would die, and yet in its death, would spring forth and bring forth boughs like a plant, there must be some place, some where that man would be again, and he realizes that in himself, and he said, I know my Redeemer liveth, that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. Though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Mine eyes shall behold him and not another.
"And so I say, my brothers and sisters, the Spirit of man is too great, too high, it is like God himself, and it will "take greater influences than those of nature to resurrect the body. It will take nothing less than the omnipotence of the Almighty God to bring the body out of the grave. While living man wastes away; he dies daily; sickness and old age cause the flesh, physical strength and manly appear ance to waste away, and when death comes, man gives up the Ghost, the Spirit passes from this house of clay and returns to the God who gave it, and when he dies, Where is he? Think this morning that Henry McNeal Turner, from the day of his birth, February 1, 1831, in his old age, began to waste away and to die daily. Where is he this morning? The w)ord of God that stands as eternal truth bids us to know this morning that he is in the spirit world that God has prepared for his children. He is not at home; he is not at 30 Yonge street; he talks and walks no more with friends and loved ones; he does not engage in the activities of the physical world. He is somewhere, and that somewhere has been fixed by the Almighty God. Jesus Christ, the Re deemer of the world, said, I go to prepare a place for you that where I am, there ye shall be also. If Jesus Christ, the conqueror of death, hell and the grave, throughout the

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years prepared a place for us, then Henry McNeal Turner is walking with the angels, cherubim and seraphim in the land of light. Do you think this morning wihen we put the body of Henry McNeal Turner in South View Cemetery, that that will be the last of him? No. Jesus Christ stood at the grave of Lazarus, and said, I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he is dead, yet shall he live. God is going to call the body of Henry McNeal Turner out of the grave. Is this all? In the 17th chapter of St. John, in that immortal prayer of Jesus Christ, he said, Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given me be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. Do you think Jesus Christ would pray a prayer like that in vain? No, in the morning of the resurrection, when Gods children shall rise out of their graves, Henry McNeal Turner will stand in the strength of the blood-washed saints and stand in eternal glory. He is not dead this morning. A man like Henry McNeal Turner can never die. I am not here this morning to preach his funeral sermon; he preached it himself, for sixty-two years a minister of the Lord Jesus Christ everywhere, under all conditions, in sunshine and shadow, amid friends and enemies, Henry McNeal Turner blew the trumpet in Zion to draw men and women from the sins of this world unto the marvelous light of the Gospel of the Lord; for in the early days of the history of our Church in Georgia, Henry McNeal Turner gathered to Christ more people in the state of Georgia under trees, under brush arbors and on the road side than any one man. Henry McNeal Turner licensed men on the street, and sent them out to preach the Gospel of the Lord, Jesus Christ. He traveled from Atlanta to Chattanooga when there was not a single Negro that would keep the minutes of the Conference, when the first Confer ence met, in 1867. Every man of that number this morn ing sleeps in the grave. Henry McNeal Turner has passed -to his reward* . *****
"He was not only a great churchman, but Henry McNeal Turner was a statesman and not a politician. He

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had a broad conception, not only of the form of government, but that which nfes required to sustain the government. No man kept in touch with the affairs, not only of the state of Georgia, but of the American nation as Henry McNeal Turner, and rising above the storms and gale of public sentiment imbued with courage and boldness., Henry McNeal Turner stood before this American nation and hurled the anathemas of his mighty tongue against the injustice of the Supreme Court of the United States in taking away the rights of the Negro race in this country. I know at one tune in his life people tried to bring about a scene in this country when it was said that he said the American flag was a dirty rag. He uttered no such expression. I heard the words as they fell from his lips. He said, So far as protection was concerned to the Negro in this country, the American flag was no more than a dirty rag, and not that it was a dirty rag. And every Negro this morning, from the lakes to the gulf, from the Atlantic to the Pacific can testify to the truthfulness of the statement of Henry McNeal Turner when they behold Old Glory that the stars stand for the white man and the stripes stand for the Negro.
"Henry McNeal Turner was a scholar. But let me not get to that. I want to refer to Averys history of Georgia, Every Negro ought to have one in his home. Read in the History of the State of Georgia from 1851 to 1881. Avery, a white man of this state, speaks of the life of Henry McNeal Turner in the Georgia Legislature, as he stood there when they had expelled the Negro members from the Legis lature, and had the boldness to say, I will break up the Legislature, and he led his people. Henry McNeal Turner was a champion of his race, but he was criticised. If any man who ever stood on American soil loved his race, it was Henry McNeal Turner. In those days, when he was in the Georgia Legislature, Henry McNeal Turner slept in the woods, mobs after him. Mobs have stood under trees that he had climbed to hide himself. He has jumped ditches and been covered with mail sacks; he has stood in the woods on the side of the railroad that he might flee for his life, and if Henry McNeal Turner was not an object of special providence, then there is no special providence in the world.

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He was an orator and a scholar. Henry McNeal Turner burned the midnight oil. While other young men would sit around laughing and spending their time in idleness, this man was pouring over art and science, and there was no subject in the human field of knowledge but what the mind of Henry McNeal Turner touched some point, and so great was he in his individuality that he set up to defy the theory of the centrifugal and centripetal forces of our solar system. He was a man that marked out a way for himself, not only in church, but in state.
"In 1896 James M. Dwtane and Jacob G. Xaba came to this country, and Bishop Turner received them and the Ethiopian Church into the A. M. E. Church, and at his home, at 30 Younge street, without orders and before the thing was made known. In the presence of two individuals, Bishop H. B. Parks, who was then Missionary Secretary, and myself, "then the Pastor of Alien Temple Church, in defiance of all law, in defiance of all customs, he had James M. Dwane to kneel down to his knees, and ordained him Vicar Bishop for South Africa. And there were no bounds to his activity; there were no bounds to his knowledge. In West Africa he traveled, in Cape Colony, Kaffraria,- Natal, Matabele Land, Basutoland, Rhodesia, Pretoria, Transvall and up into the Zambesi Country.
To the family, this morning you are in sorrow1; you are in sadness; but we ought to say to you that not only is there sorrow in your hearts, but it is national and inter national. Henry McNeal Turner. was an international character, and this sorrow spreads on both sides of the Atlantic. You have the prayers and blessings and sympa thy not only of the A. M. E. Church over which he presided so long as Senior Bishop, but you have them of the entire Negro race. No family this morning is so rich in a glorious heritage as the family of Henry McNeal Turner. You might write the name of Douglas upon one of the farther stars; you might write the name of Booker T. Washington on another, and you might write the name of LOuverture on another, and then you would have to go to heaven and ask God Almighty to give you power to pluck a feather from the wing of an angel and dip it in a million-hued rainbow

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and then give you power to fly up and up a vigitillion of years, and there somewhere write the name of Henry McNeal Turner.
"May God in His infinite mercies and grace, take care of you in this life and in the life to come to meet this sainted man hard by the throne of God."
At the close of the sermon, the following remarks were made:
Bishop W. D. Chappelle of the Twelfth Episcopal District, said: "My friends, I do not know that there is anything for me to say. While Bishop Flipper was preach ing, I thought of this concourse of people, and our sadness, and I tried to picture in my mind the contrast of the con course with which Bishop Turner is now connected. And I reached the conclusion that while we sorrow in sadness, he is rejoicing this morning. So I have but one thing to say, and that is after all, there is something sweet in death and that sweetness has come to Bishop Turner. He would not, if he could, sorrow with us this morning. So I say "Gods will be done." I rejoice now in this fact that we shall see him again, and I would write on his bier and leave with him the word, "Resurrection." And I thought of one more thing while the good Bishop was preaching that splendid sermon when he asked, "Where is he?" As he spoke about the body, etc. The idea came into my mind that God is going to use Bishop Turners body and he is going to use all of our bodies and at the general resurrection he is going to get us together again. I see in that splendid verse in the 15th chapter of Corinthnans, Paul saying, "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." So with the dissolution of the body of Bishop Turner. He has changed his position, shuffled off mortality and coupled with immortality. God bless him and his. So live that when your time comes you may see him again in that land of rest. God bless you and take care of you." i_ Bishop J. H. Jones said:

"As some tall elm* that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,

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Eternal sunshine settles on its head. God bless you."
_ The following resolutions were read: From Twelfth Episcopal Church, by Dr. J. L. Robinson. From Savannah Branch Union, Dr. L. A. Townsley. From Alien Temple, Dr. R. V. Branch. A communication from the Womans Home and Foreign Missionary Society, by Mrs. W. D. Chappelle. From Bethel Church, Dr. J. R. Porter. From M. E. Ministers Union, Dr. L. H. King. From Atlanta Womans Missionary Society, Mrs. Julia
Fountain. Bishop Flipper said: "We have more resolutions, but
they cannot all be read. I will ask Prof. John R. Hawkins, Financial Secretary of the A. M. E. Church to announce all letters and telegrams and resolutions. These telegrams, letters and resolutions came from every branch of the church, as well as from every section of our country, and from distinguished persons, white and black, representing every walk of life from every corner of our republic.
The closing adress was made by Bishop B. F. Lee, the new Senior Bishop. He ordered that all the ministers throughout the connection, see to it, that all churches, schools and departments of the denomination be draped in mourning for sixty days in memory of the dis tinguished dead.
Bishop Flipper said: "We have been here two hours and two minutes. The balance of the ceremony will be held at the South View Cemetery."
Arriving at South View Cemetery, the body of Bishop H. M. Turner, which lay in a metal coffin, was lowered into a receiving vault, a cement structure, made impervious to water and other destructive elements. The members of the Bishops Council, who accompanied the remains to the cemetery, together with an escort of general officers, pre siding elders and ministers, gathered about the grave, while the burial ceremony was being read by Bishop B. F. Lee, assisted by Bishops John Hurst, C. T. Shaffer and H. B. Parks, and L. J. Coppin. While the remains were being

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lowered to their last resting place Dr. B. F. Watson sang, "Flee As A Bird to Yon Mountain."
Benediction by Bishop H. B. Parks. Mrs. Bonner sang, "Asleep In Jesus," and "God Will Take Care of You." Thus ended one of the most celebrated funeral services over the most celebrated Negro who ever lived on the American continent. All the music for this occasion was furnished by Bethel choir, under the direction of Dr. J. R. Porter. By special request, Morris College Glee Club sang an appropriate selection. Dr. B. F. Watson, a comrade in arms, with Bishop Turner during the Civil War, very effectively sang the following selections: "Home At Last," "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say," "God Be With You Til We Meet Again," "Flee As A Bird to Yon Mountain."

CHAPTER XII. TRIBUTES TO BISHOP TURNER. Bishop W. P. Thirkield, D. D., LL. D.: Bishop Turner was a man of unusual native vigor and natural gifts. These could not be repressed even in bondage. His early training was in the school of slavery, but not until the bonds that held him were broken were his slumbering and undeveloped powers released. He was a man of mighty power of imagination, of strong, passion and of eloquence in speech. If he had enjoyed the advantages of college, he would have taken rank among .men as a scholar, for he showed unsual intellectual powers. Selfmade as he was, his endowments and gifts soon won him a place of leadership in his Church, which he held for so many years, as to make him the connecting link between the Old and the New.
Dr. Kelley Miller, of Howard University: Bishop H. M. Turner was truly one of natures noble
men. He possessed boundless energy, courage and conse cration. If the rising young men of this generation,-with full educational advantages should display like powers under the guidance of trained intelligence, our race would rise rap idly to higher levels.
Bishop C. R. Harris, D. D., of the A. M. E. Z. Church: One of the noblest traits of Christian character it was
the rare good fortune of Bishop Turner to possess in a high degree was that of courage. It is the distinguishing fea ture of every one who really attains leadership among men.
His enlistment in the Union Army during the Civil War was an evidence of physical courage which multifold utter ances upon platform and through the press, upon topics which provoked adverse criticism of some who were ac-

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counted as leaders of the Negro race, marked him as a man of great moral courage. He was one who indeed had the "courage of his convictions." Consequently, he was ad mired even by his opponents who, though not convinced by his arguments, were yet willing to admit the sincerity of his intentions and the force of skill by which he maintained the propositions he advanced.
His residence in a former slave State, which is still dominated by opinions of former slaveholders, did not re press his bold and continuous advocacy of the equal rights of the Negro and his full participation in all the privileges and immunities of American citizenship. Many a man in similar circumstances would have hushed his voice or low ered his demands; but, like his compeer in North Carolina, he ceased not to proclaim his demands for justice and clem ency to a deserving patriotic people.

Bishop J. W. Hood, D. D_ LL. D., of the A. M. E. Z. Church: Fayetteville, N. C., May 13, 1915. Mrs. H. M. Turner,
Atlanta, Ga.: The evening paper brings the sad tidings of the death of your beloved husband. Mrs. Hood unites with me in tendering sincere sympathy to you in this affliction. We sorrow with you in the loss of this great, courageous race leader a man who always had the courage of his convic tions, and dared to express his opinion anywhere and at any time.
While we mourn his loss, we sorrow not as jthose who have no hope, for we have the assurance of a re-union in the bright and better land. We commend you to the favor of our blessed Heavenly Father, who is too wise to err and too kind to afflict beyond what He will give us grace to bear. Bishop R. S. Williams, D. D., of the C. M. E. Church:
I am happy to have this privilege of testifying to the worth and greatness of the late venerable Bishop H. M. Turner. In my home there has always been a strong per sonal regard and love for Bishop Turner. It was he who baptized my wife when she was an infant, and for several years was the pastor of her parents Church in Washington

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Bishop Turner was a man of many sides and powers, all of which were influenced and directed by a great inner force that ceaselessly impelled him to the assumption" and faithful discharge of varied and weighty responsibilities in his splendid program for the general upliftment of his people. I have always considered the Hon. Frederick Douglass, Bishop H. M. Turner and Dr. Booker T. Washington as being in a class to themselves; Mr. Douglass, as the great prohibitionist, race leader and race orator; Bishop Turner, as the great statesman and prelate of the race, and Booker T. Washington, as the great economist and educator of the race. Bishop Turner was a fearless race man, who fought unremit tingly for the rights and larger freedom of our people; he never espoused a cause which involved less than the highest and best for the Negro race and with a rugged stubbornness maintained his position and advocated his principles with a courage and conviction born of the consciousness of their righteousness and the approval of high heaven. In his great, strong heart he carried ever a prayer for his people; his mind was tireless in efforts for their development; he was a Christian gentleman; there wbs much in his life to commend and emulate. Peace to his venerable ashes.

Booker T. Washington, LL. D.: By the death of Bishop Henry M. Turner, the Negro
race has lost one of its ablest leaders, the country one of its most useful citizens. It is in this latter respect that I wish to say some words of appreciation. There were few, if any, individuals who, during reconstruction times and the period immediately following, did more than he to get the Negroes of the South to settle down and to go to work. Immediately following the close of the" Civil War, the South was in a chaotic state. The enfranchised Freedmen were unsettled and inclined, in many instances, to wander about. Rallying centers needed to be established for them. The Churches became such centers. It was in the establishing of Churches throughout Georgia which then, as now, had the largest Negro population of any State in the nation, that he ren dered the South a signal service. Appointed, I believe, by President Johnson and sent to Georgia to work under the

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Freedmens Bureau, Chaplain Turner soon recognized that he could do a greater work by getting out of the Bureau, be coming again an active minister of the Gospel and traveling over the State to organize the Freedmen into Churches. His success is a matter of history. In a few years, I un derstand that the Church which he organized had become not only the largest Conference in his denomination, but also the largest Conference of Negroes anywhere in the world. It is difficult today to appreciate the great import ance of local Church organizations to the Freedmen in re construction times. These Churches were not only places where the people were taught the truth of the Gospel, but they were, most important of all, the Negros first social centers; their organization for general uplift. Here they were taught what it was necessary for them to do to become useful citizens. The importance of settling down and going to work, of acquiring property and getting an education was impressed upon them. Thus it was that the foundation was laid for that phenomenal progress which, in later years, the race in the South was able to make. In 1874, nine years after the close of the war, the Negroes of Georgia had accumulated over six million dollars worth of properly. The very large part which Bishop Turner had in laying these foundations makes him worthy of being classed as an useful citizen in its largest sense.

Bishop L. J. Coppin, D. D.: I first saw Rev. H. M. Turner when I was a young man,
actively engaged in Church work as choirmaster. I was fuH of zeal for the cause in a general way, but had no special plans for the future, nor any critical views upon theology. I heard him preach and was impressed. His text was from I Thessalonians V:19, "Quench not the spirit." I did not think I was capable of passing judgment upon a sermon, but I was ready to pronounce that one of the masterpieces of originality, eloquence and force. Even now I remember some of the exact words spoken. I remember his character ization of a man who preferred to be religious. His ability to impress and influence men was wonderful This power \vas both natural and original. A hard student, he was con-

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tinually adding to natures store. By this power many have been influenced and brought into the Church, who other wise might not have become awakened. But this is not all; many who have thus been moved to action have been, at the same time, impressed with the notion that what their ideal was they could become. And so the eloquent, forceful, studious ideal has gone on multiplying itself into other lives.
The Rev H. M. Turner that I heard when a lad and who so impressed me with his magnetic power of speech became one of the foremost men in his Church as general officer and Bishop; gained national and international repu tation as an independent thinker and pioneer in both Church and State; introduced his Church officially to the Conti nent of Africa; reached by official age the Seniority in the Episcopal office, and by the years of his life, the four-score years, attained only by reason of strength, labor and sorrow, his influence cannot end at the grave.

Rt. Rev. L. H. Holsey, D. D., of the C. M. E. Church: It cannot be very far from the truth when we assert
that the name of Henry McNeal Turner presents to our consideration the greatest and most remarkable personality that the Negro race has ever produced.
Of course all of the history of the Planet, with its teeming millions of people, languages and tongues, cannot now be read or deciphered; the broken tables and hidden threads that yoke the dead past with the present decade and their activities cannot now be read, weighed or meas ured. Neither do we know how many and what great men may have acted in the drama of life or played on the stages of ages. Neither have we any sure and accurate methods by which we may roll back the pages of history and analyze and dissect those great radical characters that have lived and played their parts upon the face of the centuries.
Sweeping through the whole scope of the periodicalities cf the past, with the keenest occultism, we linger in the courts and palaces of great kingdoms and kings. We doff our hats in the presence of the mighty Sesostries and tread softly in the temple of the priests of Osiris and deeply pierce the veil of Isis, but, when we step backward and through

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the span of thirty centuries, measured by the awful flights of three hundred decades, we reach the sublime halo of modern life in which we find but one one only H. M. Tur ner, the true, the noble and the brave.
I have known him, watched him and loved him for fiftysix years. When I wfcs fourteen years of age, in the dark night of the slave period, I was converted by his preaching in Athens, and for these long fifty-six years of labor, toil, privation and suffering I have never forgotten him. And now, after the roll of nearly seven wondrous decades of mod ern life, his unfading shadow, like some ancient knight of iron mould, his terse form and well-knit frame, is still mir rored in the deep precincts of my soul and carved deep on the tablets of the heart. Away across the span of fifty-six years, I still hear his sounding, clarion voice calling sinners to repentance and the wicked to forsake his way.
So great, so noble, so unique was this personality that a philosophical analysis would require the best efforts of the most acute scientists in science and wordism to portray the intricate whole and give us an insight to those sublime attri butes upon which the ramparts of his templed spirit rested.
His was a brilliant sun that glowed and burned in golden splendor in a galaxy of princely heroes that reversed senti ment, changed laws and thundered against the evils and perversities of a giant civilization.
His physique was of cast-iron mould, his mind of rug ged parts, belted and rimmed with a sea of energy, thought and logical skill that gave his diction an irrepressible force in the arena of thought and action. But why dwell upon these attributes of his holdings? The mould that gave him knit form and girth was but one and single, but now broken upon the wheels of fate, but the personal reality still lives to mark the pathway for the goings of that race he so long loved, cheered and defended.
Where is he now? Do the prophets live forever? "He is gone but not forgotten." He cannot be forgotten. His earnest and honest voice still rings, re-echoes and vibrates in hall and chamber, and in ancient, fiery stream of eloquence and matchless defense for manhoods rights, and will long

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live and glow in the hearts of his people and ring in the annals of his race and nation.
Bishop Turner was Bishop Turner. He had a selfhood and a concatenation of terse and master parts parts that were Napoleonic on one side and Apostolic on the other.
He lived in his convictions and fought out his conclu sions in battle array that made him illustrious and powerful even when in defeat; and all who knew him knew where to find him at all times, no matter what the position, attitude and environment.
One of the most remarkable traits of this man was his perfect freedom from hypocrisy, indecision and cant. He was a man and he knew it. He felt it and he said it. He wrote it down deep upon the scroll of his archives and chanted it in the soft zephyrs of his evening thought and thundered it in the arena of conflict in the daylight hours.
He was a brave man and seemed at times to have been made without fear and without fright. The flash of steel and the gleam of arrows only nerved him for the conflict.
- As a race leader he was unequaled and unexcelled in the real genuine qualities that belong to real leaders and re formers. He knew no compromise, makeshifts, temporary plan or policy, but demanded all separate and single that belong to his race no less than others. In the broadest sense Henry M. Turner did not belong to any separate and dis tinct organization.
Although a great Churchman and magical chief prelate of the great A. M. E. connection, yet he belonged to the Negro race in general and his sphere of thought and activi ties were a common inheritance with universal application. Indeed, his devotion to his race, and the broad patriotism which unceasingly held sway and dominated all his efforts, thoughts and actions, made him too big for the realms of a single Churchism and the narrow scope of denominationalism. He was too big for a single Continent and too big for a single hemipsphere.
The immense girth and measure of his love for his Church and race carried him to Africa several times, and yet he was never tired or felt that his efforts were in vain or fruitless.

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Bishop Turner was a magical inspiration for all Amer ican people of color, while his tall mountain shadow flashed the Dark Continent and left the imprint of his unique indi viduality upon a civilization yet to be born.

EXTRACTS FROM TRIBUTES TO BISHOP TURNER We regard Bishop H. M. Turner as one of the greatest
men that the race has produced, and one of the greatest men of all race varieties. Rev. W. J. Laws, San Antonio, Texas.
All in all, was not Bishop Turner the strongest, the truest and the most virile character African Methodism ever produced? As Chaplain in the United States Army, as Business Manager of the Book Concern, as Pastor, Presiding Elder and as Bishop, as Commissioner to our Foreign Fields, in West Africa, South Africa, in South America, in Ber muda and in Canada. When he fell asleep in Jesus, he rendered his highest and best service to his Church and race, and his nigh sacred footprints are found today almost anywhere, everywhere, to the good of his people and to the advancement of the Kingdom of Christ. Rev. Floyd Grant Snelson, Ph., D. D., Columbus, Ohio.
A life of such untiring and consecrated zeal, of such brave and sturdy endeavor, one of such glorious conquest, to dramaticaly close in a foreign clime, fighting like a brave warrior to the last, and falling, sword in hand, in the Mas ters service, at the age of over four-score years, could merit no higher encomium than "Well done, thou good and faithful servant;" and as we think of the heroism of the groat race leader whose body now lies slumbering in the silent dust until the resurrection morn, we say of him, "Requiescat in pace." Rev. J. B. Herewood, GaUipolis, Ohio. Bishop R. A. Carter, D. D., of the C. M. E. Church:
As President Lincoln breathed his last, William H. Seward, his Secretary of State, turned to the weeping family

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and friends around the bedside and said: "And now he be longs to the ages." Without doubt that was true of the Negro race when it became known that Bishop Henry McNeal Turner had passed over the river. He no longer be longs to the ages. It was my privilege to know Bishop Tur ner more or less intimately for many years. To know
intimately for many years. *Hc him was to admire him, whether you agreed with all he said or not. There was something regal about his stature and carriage and something compelling and majestic in the sway of his mighty mind which forced admiration. To look upon him one could well believe the tradition that his mother was the scion of a royal African house, for he bore the hallmark of royalty in every movement and look of his magnificent personality. Yet he was in every sense of the word the great commoner, for his love for those who are called the common people was intense and unfailing. The last time I saw him he was sitting upon a dray laughing and talking with the drayman upon terms of familiarity which many other men of his high station and fame would have scorned. When one recalls the time in which Bishop Turner was born, his early struggle to acquire knowledge, his high aspirations, his passionate devotion to his race, the stirring and fateful times in which he did his greatest Work, his hatred of shams, his fearless denunciation of in justice, the splendid tribute of Edwin Markham to Lincoln instinctively comes to his/mind :
"When the Norse Mother Saw the Whirlwind Hour. "Greatening and darkening as it hurried on She bent the strenuous heavens and came down To make a man to meet the mortal need A man that matched the mountains and compelled The stars to look our way and honor us. The color of the ground was in him, the red earth, The tang and odor of the primal things The rectitude and patience of the rocks ; The gladness of the wind that shakes the corn; The courage of the bird that dares the sea; ;. The justice of the rain that loves all leaves;

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The pity of the snow that hides all scars; The loving kindness of the wayside wteed So came the captain with a mighty heart; He held his place Held the long purpose like a growing tree Held on through blame and faltered not at praise." Bishop Turners great career will be an inspiration to every Negro youth who aspires after real greatness and true worth through the ages. He is not dead. Such an one can not die. He has entered into rest.

Bishop Alexander Walter, D. D., of the A. M. E. Z. Church:

Bishop Henry McNeal Turner was a great man not

bom great, if to be born great is to be happily environed at

the start of life, but by persistency, self-reliance, hard study,

a prayerful spirit and an indomitable will, he achieved great

ness. Bishop Turner was a diamond in the rough a unique

character. Many considered him eccentric. He was a man

with a rough exterior, but with a heart as tender and kind as

a child. A splendid man, with a fine physique, strong in in

tellect, remarkable for his courage.

Bishop Turner was a man of wonderful vision, always

ahead of his generation, broad and liberal in his views of

men and things; a well informed man; one always loyal to

-his race. His was no cringing, subservient character. He

was always ready for the fray. He was an innovator, cared

little for customs and rules; had standards of his own, and

dared to follow them, even if his actions, at times, did all

but take our breath.

I considered him one of my staunchest friends. He was

so pleased with my defense of the race before the Ecumeni

cal Conference of Methodism, which met in London, Eng

land, in 1901, that ever afterwards, when he would meet

me, before shaking my hand, he would take off his hat. In

the demise of Bishop Turner, the race and Methodism has

sustained a great loss.

----

Rev. Theodore Gould, D. D.: It would be almost impossible for me to give my first
impression of Bishop Turner as a business man; for, while I

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had met him in the early seventies, yet his ability had not, at that time, taken any definite form, but when, in 1876, he was elected business manager of the A. M. E. Book Con cern, I came more in contact with him as a business man, and it was then that my impressions were formed and, to a great extent, verified. I then saw in him a man of force and will a man calculated to move anything that could be moved; a man whose mind, once made to believe he was right in any business proposition, worked to the end of its accomplishment. Bishop Turner .was a close student of books and, as such, was the more interested in the advance ment of the Book Concern.
The Book Concern, at the time he was elected General Business Manager, had a meagre support from a small cir culation of the "Christian Recorder," a few sales of the A. M. E. Hymn Books, a small Catechism and a few other books of more or less consequence. After spending eighteen months or two years at this concern, he decided that there was far more need of his taking the field and sending the money in to the place than to sit and wait for it to come to him, and he forthwith decided to seek a person to stay at the establishment and carry put his instruction, while he tried to make business in traveling to the Conferences.
By the advice of Bishop Brown and Bishop Shorter and Bishop Campbell, Doctor Turner asked for myself to assist him, and, for the first and last time, the Book Concern was installed with a Deputy Manager by the Publication Board.
It was while deputy for Manager Turner that I saw more than ever his alertness to the necessities and interests of the concern from a business point of view; he stirred the whole Church into business activity; it was true he was handicapped greatly from previous failures and neglects of those who should have been foremost in the advancement of the Book Concern, but with a bulldog tenacity he held on and succeeded in publishing The Recorder and bringing out a new edition of the Hymn Book and Discipline.
In his business ventures he was, as a rule, successful; he was honest in his statement of goods to be sold and to his customers, ordering goods, was exact that they should re ceive dollar for dollar. The business ability and knowledge

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of Doctor Turner have been demonstrated several times since his election as Bishop, of which the Church in general knows. Therefore, I will riot dwell upon that part, but still say, to the mind and thinking of those who have not been specially trained in the business world, Bishop Turner has, in his day, been able to stand in the front ranks of the business ministry of our Church.
In the management of the business propositions of our Church, special training should be had; yet while such has. not been, nor is now the case, we say Bishop Turner did well as a business man and as Business Manager of the A. M. E. Book Concern.

Rev. R. French Hurley. D. D.: Since Bishop H. M. Turner struck tent and moved from
his earthly camping ground, I have been thinking, thinking shall I, or shall I not, join in the number of persons who have and will continue to heap encomiums upon his memory?
I had many reasons for hesitating, but when I recalled that scarcely twenty-four hours passed between my enlist ment in Company B of the First United States Colored In fantry, on June 21st, 1863, and my meeting him as Chap lain of the Regiment, it occurred to my mind that possibly there is not a person living in the A. M. E. Church today who sustains the relation to him that I did during those eventful years and during many subsequent years, I decided to make my humble contribution to the memory of one of the most remarkable men of the Church and the race.
For two years and four months I knew him as a com rade, in camp, on the field, in the hospitals and, in fact, at all the points at which the true soldier is expected to be.
I knew him in his family, for it was my pleasure to be an inmate of his temporary home on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, during the three closing months of the war.
Then it was my pleasure to vote for him when, in 1880, the A. M. E. Church elevated him to the most exalted and most sacred position in her gift. I also served as pastor under him as presiding Bishop.
It will be seen, therefore, how practically my whole life was more or less in touch with his matchless influence.

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Even my religious life had its beginning with his powerful preaching in camp.
I was shocked to learn of his death. True, he had lived to a ripe age and reports of his declining strength had been frequently heard; yet I was not prepared to hear of his death. Soon after his death I was asked by a distin guished man, "Is Bishop Turner really dead?" This ques tion, I think, was asked in jest, but I answered, "No! he is not dead; he will never die." His identity with all the effort put forth to develop and elevate the race and his devotion to self-sacrifice and service for the African Methodist Epis copal Church, that great monument to self-help, will cluster around the tender tendrils of the heart-strings of the Negro people till time shall be no more.
He was at times considered extreme in his defense of the race, but even this should go down to his credit.
It will be a long time before his useful life will be fully understood by the people; his loyalty, heroism and sound judgment wil be revealed and vindicated by the future. The race and the Church will need more Turners.
A unique character, he did a unique work, and fills a unique place in the history of the race, in Church and the country. Peace to his ashes!

Rev. J. W. E. Bowen, Ph. D.: Henry McNeal Turner was cast in an exclusive mould,
and, to all appearance, that mould is broken. He was sent into the world by his Maker for a special mission, and was endowed with special gifts for the performance of that mission.
Upon listening to him upon any occasion and in any place, one could see and feel the mighty Roman Tertullian in his implacable opposition to all forms of meanness and dev iltry that was practiced against his race. His language ran like hot lava and his anger kindled like a belching volcano that had been long sleeping and gathering force for its de structive quake.
Bishop Turner was never known to be silent or even moderate. He had seen the evils of slavery and had passed through the murky days of reconstruction, and he knew

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no compromise. He had a kind of courage that was auda cious and even reckless. He could easily have repeated of himself the famous declaration that the Iron Chancellor uttered upon one occasion in the German Parliament con cerning tha German people: "We Germans fear nobody but God I" That was the characteristic of this African Tertuliian. Changing Bismarcks language, he could say ap propriately, "I fear nobody but God!"
But there was more to Bishop Turner than reckless audacity and unquiveving courage he was a student of books; he had not the discipline and scholasticism of the schools, nor did his mind show the logical training of tech nical culture. His day was a dark day and school advan tages were impossible for his kind; but he had a mind that grasped everything in sight he accumulated a stock of knowledge that surprised book men. He read voluminously, digested thoroughly everything he read and was capable to discourse upon learned subjects with an acumen and full ness of speech that astonished the so-called schoolmen of his day. He was bigger than a book.
Bishop Turner was an ecclesiastic who believed in doing things. If lule favored his course, well and good; if it was in his way to bring about what his great soul longed to do, so much the worse for the rule. And he did things. Aside from these considerations Henry McNeal Turner was greater than a fearless leader or a mighty man in books or a great Bishop: he was a man. To those who did not know him, ho appeared difficult of approach and a man of iron. His sternness was not .in his heart or in his treatment of men. His roughness was all on the outside. He loved men ir.d he was a simple brother at heart. His kind is no more for his times are no more.
I walk with uncovered head and sandaled feet and place upon his open grave my tribute of respect for the heroic soul that God Rave the Negro race and the world in the per ron of Henry McNeal Turner.

Ktv. E. C. Morris, D. D., President National Baptist Con vention:
In response to your request that I write a brief article

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on the life and public service of the late Bishop Henry M. Turner, I beg to assure you that I appreciate the op portunity and feel, as I write, that I am honoring myself in attempting to pay a tribute to so good and great a man as I believe Bishop Turner to have been.
It had been my privilege to know Bishop Turner for more than forty years, and to count him among my friends, which friendship I greatly cherished. But, Mr. Editor, permit me to say that no man can do justice to a life so full of good works as was that of Bishop Turner in the brief space al lotted to these papers.
As a High Churchman, whose activities cover a period of more than fifty years, he had no superiors, and but few, if any, equals.
If I may be permitted to use the words of Mordecai to Esther, when the life of her race had been threatened, I v/ould say, "Who knoweth whether he came to the kingdom for such a time as this?" A time when the Negro race needed, a man with deep and sanctified convictions and with sufficient courage to express them; a time when the issues which brought on the Civil War were trembling in the balance and when the edict had gone forth from the pen of the immortal Lincoln to enlist black men into the Union Army, it was then that our martyr President called into service Henry McNeal Turner, to become a Chaplain in a Regiment of gallant Negro troops. The commission which he received from Mr. Lincoln marked the beginning of the eventful life of the rjis/.-i who was to become one of the most valuable servants of a new-born race of people.
I think I can say with pardonable pride that the activi ties of the public life of Bishop Turner were not confined to the Church of which he was a conspicuous leader, but that he stood forth as a great leader in all things which concerned the people of our race and in matters civic and political his name will henceforth be borne alongside the names of DougJass, Langston, Bruce and a host of others who gave the best efforts of their lives for the civil and political rights of their people.
No r?an of any race had any broader yiews on the ques tion of Universal Brotherhood than did Bishop Turner, and

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he believed that this great principle could be sooner brought into full fruition by lifting up the African than in any other way; hence he became an advocate of African emigration.
His great patriotism for the perpetuity of American institutions became somewhat weakened, as he laid his own and the valor of many thousands of black men who sacrificed their lives for this country alongside the treatment being clary meted out to the people of his race. But, notwith standing these things, he could always be found advising his people to go forward.
His name will ever occupy an exalted place among Ne gro people of two continents, and will form a conspicuous puangbeiasiend thhaendh.istory o_f_t_he__co_u_n_try__when written by an
Hon. John R. Lynch, United States Army (Retired): In the death of Bishop Henry M. Turner, the country
has lost one of its best and most valuable citizens, the A. M. E. Church one of its strongest and most influential lead ers and the colored race one of its bravest and most out spoken champions and defenders. To me his death is some what in the nature of a personal loss, because I have known him intimately, fabvorably and well for a period of more than thirty years. During the important and eventful days of reconstruction, he took an active and influential part in the reconstruction of the State of Georgia.
To my personal knowledge, Henry M. Turner could have been and perhaps should have been elected to the United States Senate from the State of Georgia; but, like many other strong and influential colored men of that period, he voluntarily sacrificed his own ambition in that direction upon the altar of what he believed to be his partys good. He was known to be so strong, so popular and so influential that he could have easily commanded a sufficient following to land him in the United States Senate had he consented to allow his name to be used for the position, but since what was known as the Congressional plan of reconstruction was then passing through its experimental stage, he deemed it best, from a standpoint of party expediency, to defer the gratification of that ambition to a future period which never came.

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In later years, especialy after he became an active leader in the Church of his choice, he became somewhat estranged from the Republican party, but he could never see his way clear to support the Democratic party. His deflection was due to the decision of the United States Supreme Court de claring the Civil Rights Bill unconstitutional and void. He was so thoroughly disgusted, disheartened and discouraged that he openly and publicly advised the colored people of this country to leave the United States and go to Africa, but, in this, he was never taken seriously, even by his most inti mate friends. He believed this to be the most effective and potential way in which he could give expression to his righteous indignation at the treatment accorded his race by the highest judicial tribunal in the land, believing, as he did, that the decision was intended to humiliate and degrade his people and to reduce them to a condition of vassals and serfs. Very few of the Bishops friends and admirers took the same hopeless view of the situation that was taken by him. It is a great pity that this great and good man could not have lived a few months longer, so that he could have read, with pleasure, satisfaction and delight, as he evi dently would have done, a decision by the same high judicial tribunal which deals a death blow to the different schemes and devices that have been adopted in several States to evade the Fifteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. Had he lived until this fair, just and righteous decision had been rendered, his views with reference to that court would have, no doubt, been materially changed and modified. But he was not spared long enough for that purpose. His strong voice will be heard and his powerful pen will be used no more forever. No one now living can fill, in every import ant particular, the place made vacant by the death of Bishop Henry M. Turner. Peace be to his sacred ashes!

Rev. J. A. Jones, D. D.: Others will write of Bishop Turner, portraying his many
different characteristics, for they were legion, and there will never be another like him. He stood in a class essentially by himself.
Bishop Turner did things and said things respecting

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both Church and State that probably no other man ever thought of, or, having thought of, would dare to say. In fact, he was so peculiarly constituted, and so positive, earnest and conscientious in what he said and did, that we are almost forced to admit the strange paradox that men were compelled to agree with him in spite of their differ ences.
He was one of the best informed men of the age in fact, he was a great scholar. As a philosopher he easily ranked with the most astute men of the schools. As a logician, he could easily rank with the authors.
Some say that Bishop Turner lived a hundred years ahead of the age in which he acted. One thing is reasonably certain: ha had little or no regard for precedents when a certain object was to be attained. If there had been no way previously mapped out to accomplish certain ends, if Bishop Turner believed that the best interests of the Church and people would be served by bringing that thing about, he made a way. He would solve the problem in his own way, and leave the methods to be discussed by the critics afterwards.
Bishop Turner was the "Old Hickory" of the A. M. E. Church. To be bent was not in his make-up. At one time, while on the platform, or in the pulpit, he would "shock the sensibilities of the refined," and in the next sentence he \vculd entrance them with flights of eloquence and profundity of lojnc.
Ke was easily the most magnetic Bishop that has occu pied the Episcopal bench for the last forty years, and, when he was stirred up, he was a veritable electric battery.
I do not think that it is too bold an asesrtion to say that Bishop Turner has done more to spread the A. M. E. con nection and give it standing among the sisterhood of Churches than any man that has lived within the last fifty years. He set on foot more varied activites within the bor ders of African Methodist Church life than any other man in the history of the connection. African Methodist inter ests in South Africa owe their existence to him. The quaint, the daring method of bringing this about is well known to rrany. Turners Polity, The Southern Christian Recorder, The Voice of Missions are all products of his genius.

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Under his direction and guidance, Turner College, the cpnnectional school in Tennessee, was founded. This institu tion will ever stand as a monument to the greatness and sagacious foresight of this peerless leader.
Bishop Turner cannot die. He has gone from us, but his work goes on. He belongs to that number of whom it is said, "Their works do follow them."

Bishop Elias Cottrell, of the C. M. E. Church: I deem it an honor to contribute an article to the worth
of such a remarkable character as the subject of this sketch. I have known Bishop Turner as associated with the most prominent leaders of the race since back in the seventies. His political record is so well known and has been eulogized in his life, that it needs no commendation here. I may say, however, that the race has never produced a more fearless leader; he had the courage of his convictions and dared to express them; he rarely figured on consequences of his public utterances, but hewed to the line, regardless of where the chips fell. He was a learned and profound thinker, and, when he arrived at a conclusion, he expressed himself with out regard to public sentiment. It seemed at tunes from the amount of sarcasm and ridicule thrown into his public utterances, whether spoken or written, that he meant only to spread fire brands to aggravate an already tense situa tion. No man ever lived who more seriously indicted the political demagogues for their discrimination against the colored race than Bishop Turner. He was not much in clined to segregate religion and politics; he was a humanita rian who believed that a mans ecclesiastical prelacy does not necessarily divorce him from the other phases of life that tend to racial uplift. He appeared at times to be blunt beyond endurance, accustomed to making a break at any time to disturb the placid waters, but a more jovial and affable spirit was never embodied in a man.
Tie was a tireless, indefatigable worker. The world sympathizes with our sister Church in the loss of such a frer.t leader. But the A. M. E. Church alone does not only lay claim to this matchless leader he belonged to Methodissr, end more, he belonged to the race. Bishop Turner was

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a national character. When he uttered his voice or moved his versatile pen, it was for Christ and the race. If there ever was a man who lived and died belonging to the race that deserved a marble slab, with the following inscription as a token of national respect: "He gave his life for his fellows," it is H. M. Turner. And if the leaders of the A. M. E. Church take the initiative and allow every man, woman and child of the race to contribute, it will be an expression of our appre ciation of the valuable service he so nobly performed for the race.

Bishop M. F. Jamison, of the C. M. E. Church: As much higher than heaven is higher than earth is the
evangelizing work above all other kinds of employment. We feel the loss of Bishop Turner and we weep with our
sister Church. As a philosopher he was the truest; as a thinker, the most profound; as a born leader of men, he stood in the foremost ranks. Too broad in usefulness to be confined to one church.
He worked hard to overthrow the power of darkness, and stood for the fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man.
The race has lost a leader, the country a statesman, and the Church a Christian hero.

Bishop J. S. Caldwell, D. D., of the A. M. E. Zion Church. Many years before I met him in person, I knew him by
reading his published addresses and newspaper articles. I always admired his characteristic manner in expressing himself and the courage he possessed in making known his convictions. As a Churchman, he was equal to the best in the Race. In fact, I might go further and say, that as an orthodox and sound theologian, no church could boast of better. I heard him preach on several important occasions, and was always profoundly impressed with his earnestness, eloquence and clear-cut statements. As a race leader, he was sound in his advice, always courageous,, keeping clear of everything that looked like selling out his people for personal gain. As a writer, he was thoughtful and profound. One could read his emanations with great profit, for he

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always had something to say worth attention when he essayed to write. He was also companionable and of easy approach, making one feel at perfect ease in his company.
The Church has lost one of its best pulpiteers, and the Race one of its best defenders, but let us thank God that the Church and Race are better because Henry McNeal Turner lived.

Bishop Isaac Lane, D. D., L.L. D., of the C. M. E. Church. When the death of Bishop Henry M. Turner, D. D.,
D. C. L., was flashed over the country, a distinct loss to his Church and Race was felt by us all. I had known him personally for many years and had learned to admire his many excellent traits of character. His kingly appearance, his towering intellect and his splendid attainments com manded attention and consideration at once among his fellowmen. His career was not that of a meteor rising unexpect edly above the horizon, scintillating and sparkling with beams of radiant gold and then going out to shine no more in the firmament; but he was that of a star of the first magnitude that commanded the attention of his people for more than forty years, guiding them through their struggles and their sorrows, giving hope and inspiration all the time.
As a lecturer and pulpiteer, Bishop Turner was power fully effective. At one time, no other man in all the country attracted more attention than he. This was due to his strong personality and the positiveness with which he set forth his ponderous thoughts.
As a leader of men, Bishop Turner, perhaps, attained his greatest renown by his agitation for the rights of his people, and his scathing criticism and rebuke administered to those who were most hostile to his people. In making his plea before the bar of public opinion, he invited criticism, and courted opposition. Knowing that he was right, he was a fearless leader. In all that may be said of him, no one can ever charge that Bishop Turner was an apologist, or truckler. Outspoken on the rostrum and through the press, he never surrendered a principle for which he stood. In the South, as In the North, he delivered the very same speeches and addresses, and although threatened with bodily violence, he

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did not cease to cry aloud against the wrongs, injuries and. injustices heaped upon his people.
Bishop Turner was my contemporary in that he wasonly one month older than I, and we often talked over the early days of freedom and the many common struggles and experiences through which both of us had passed, and. compared the early history of our churches. Our association, during all of these years, has been pleasant and thoroughly enjoyable. The C. M. E. Church and entire Race mourn with the A. M. E. Church the demise of this great hero of many a. battle for his people against a common foe.

By Bishop George W. Clinton, of the A. M. E. Zion Church. At the ripe age of 83, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner,
D. D., L.L. D., the foremost man of the A. M. E. Church, one of the greatest Negroes this country has produced and a very distinguished and eminent American citizen, passed tohis final reward on Canadian soil.
He was kind of heart; of brilliant intellect; of forceful speech; a thoughtful and vigorous writer; and always true to his convictions, and in every respect one of the greatest men it has been my privilege to know. I have shared the hospitality and comfort of his home, felt the inspiration of his heroic life and large achievements for his Race, his country, of which he was an illustrious citizen. I knew him to admire and love him. His taking away at this particular time is a positive loss to a great Church, a struggling Race, a host of friends and admirers on three continents and a country, whose prevailing public sentiment and some of its-; laws, made it impossible for him to render to the nation the-. service for which he was capable. Peace be to his ashes.

BISHOP HENRY M. TURNER

173

APPENDIX.

I am indebted, first of all, to Bishop Turner himself for the authenticity of much of the information I have given in the compilation of facts. Al also owe much to his friends and admix ers who have aided me so much in this feeble effort of mine to give to the Church and the race, at least an epitome of the life and labors of the greatest Negro who ever lived.
The following well known distinguished men, whose names I here append, are among those upon whose utter ances I have largely depended for a correct interpretation of the life and character of Bishop H. M. Turner.

Editor R. R. Wright

B.shcp J. H. Jones.

Bishop M. F. Jamison.

Bishop J. S. Flipper.

Bishop J. S. Caldwell. Bishop L. J. Coppin.

Bishop H. B. Parks. Rev. C. E. Morris.

Bishop Isaac Lane.

Editor R. C. Ransonm.

Rev. M. M. Ponton.

Hon. John R. Lynch.

Dr. Booker T. Washington.

Editor H. L. Johnson.

Prof. Kelly Miller.

President H. T. Kaeling.

Pres. J. A. Jones.

ROT. R. F. Hurley.

Rev. I. N. Ross.

Rev. A. J. Cary.

Bishop R. A. Carter.

Rev. D. S. Cincore.

Bishop J. W. Hood.

Ruv. R. H. Singleton.

^"-Bishop L. H. Holsey.

RPV. W. D. Johnson, Sr.

Bishop R. S. Williams.

Rev. J. D. Barksdale.

Bishop C. R. Harris.

Bishop B. F. Lee.

Bishop Ellas Cottrell.

Bishop C. S. Smith.

Prof. J. W. E. Bowen.

Bishop W. D. Chappelle.

Bishop G. W. Clinton.

Bishop H. B. Parks.

Bishop O. W. Thirkield. Bishop Alexander Walters. Bishop Evans Tyree.

R v. J. W. Rankins. Mr. Daniel Murray,
Assistant Librarian of Congress.