Page:The Story of the Jubilee Singers (7th).djvu/20

 were ever more tempestuous than the stormy experiences that at first tested their faith and courage.

They were at times without the money to buy needed clothing. Yet in less than three years they returned, bringing back with them nearly one hundred thousand dollars. They had been turned away from hotels, and driven out of railway waiting-rooms, because of their colour. But they had been received with honour by the President of the United States, they had sung their slave-songs before the Queen of Great Britain, and they had gathered as invited guests about the breakfast-table of her Prime Minister.

This book, however, is not written to sound the praises of the Singers, and here it drops its introductory illustration drawn from a heathen myth. In Jason's time the inspiration to such a mission would have been lacking; its accomplishment would have been impossible in a world moulded only by Grecian culture. The quaint songs at the close of this volume owe their peculiar charm, as the story which it tells owes its peculiar interest, to those benignant influences by which Christianity is surely moving on to the final redemption of the world.

The civil war which broke out in the United States, in 1861, was avowedly waged, on one side to overthrow the Union of the States, and on the other to preserve it. But back of this object it was really a war, on one side to perpetuate slavery, and on the other to abolish it. The South understood this from the start. So did those at the North who were wise