Читать книгу Life of Charles T. Walker, D.D. ("The Black Spurgeon") - Silas Xavier Floyd - Страница 9

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The first seven years of young Walker’s life were spent under the hard tuition of slavery, though, of course, he cannot have any very vivid recollections of the hardships of those days. It is fair, nevertheless to assume that his lot was not different from that of thousands and thousands of other black children in different parts Of the South. Richmond County, one of the large “Black Belt” counties of Georgia, which had then, and which has to this day, a larger black than white population, was in no respect different in its slave customs and regulations from other slave communities, excepting possibly the religious privileges enjoyed by the slaves. They had their own churches and enjoyed for the most part the ministrations of colored preachers, such as they were. They had their own houses of worship, their own church officials, and held regular and stated religious meetings. This was true in only a very limited number of places in the South during the slave period. In this respect, Richmond County was somewhat in advance of other localities. But only in this respect. In other matters, it was the same in Richmond County as elsewhere. The slaves received regular rations or allowances. The monthly ration consisted of eight pounds of pickled pork or its equivalent in fish. The pork was often tainted and the fish of the poorest quality. With this, they had one bushel of unbolted Indian meal, of which quite fifteen per cent. was fit only for pigs, and one pint of salt. This was the entire monthly allowance for a full grown slave. The children had no regular allowance, and often were compelled to dispute with dogs and cats and pigs over the scraps thrown into the yard or into the swill tub. Children not large enough to work in the field had neither shoes, stockings, jackets nor trousers given them. Their clothing consisted of two coarse tow linen shirts per year, and when these were worn out, they were literally naked until the next allowance day. Flocks of children from five to ten years old might be seen on the plantations as destitute of clothing as any little heathen in Africa, and this even in the cold and dreary months of winter. These children had no school advantages—certainly not. It was made a misdemeanor by law to teach a colored person to read or write. These children had no home life. The night for the slave—male and female—was shortened at both ends. The slaves worked as long as they could see, and were usually up late cooking and mending for the coming day, and at the first gray streak of the morning were summoned to the fields by the driver’s horn. Young mothers working in the field were allowed to go home about ten o’clock in the morning to nurse their children. Sometimes they were compelled to take their children with them and leave them in the corners of the fences in order to prevent loss of time. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who got his knowledge of slavery while sojourning in the colony of Georgia, did not err when he denounced slavery as “the sum of all villainies.”

In such a school as this, Charles Thomas Walker received his early training. How different from the early training of such men as Henry Wilson, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, James A. Garfield, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and other white men who were born to poverty. Though these men were born in humble circumstances, yet they were born to freedom. Charles Thomas Walker was born poor, and—what was worse—he was born a slave. These men owned at least themselves; they were free to go wherever they desired or to pursue any course of study or line of work that they wished. Charles Thomas Walker owned nothing—not even himself—and was compelled to go wherever his master ordered and do whatever his master commanded.

As to this slave system, the ancient question might well be asked, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” And the reply is,

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

And how we thank God that we can write of this dreadful system of iniquity in the past tense. It did crush and cower so much of genius and intellectual strength and moral grandeur, and did send to their graves without opportunity and without chance thousands and thousands who, under any just and equitable scheme of civilization, might have proved God’s noblest friends and humanity’s strongest helpers!

By the exigency of war and the interposition of Jehovah, slavery in America was brought to an end in 1865. One year later young Walker’s mother died. From this time on young Charles was left to his own resources. Moving about as best he could from one relative to another, finally, in 1873, he went to work as a farm hand for his uncle, the Rev. Nathan Walker. This uncle had by this time come to be a large planter in his own right, and was renting hundreds of acres of land from his former masters.

Wednesday before the first Sunday in June, 1873, while young Walker was hoeing cotton, he decided to seek the Lord. When he reached the end of the row, without saying a word to anybody, he jumped over the fence and went into the woods. Without eating or drinking, and without seeing any one, he remained in the woods until the following Saturday afternoon, when he was happily converted. He had remained in the woods three days and three nights. How like the blessed Christ, who laid in the grave three days and three nights and then rose triumphant over death, hell and the grave! This strange way of seeking the Lord, this strange conversion, as it might be called, was all the more remarkable when it is understood that there was no great wave of religious revival sweeping over Richmond County. A short time before this there had been special prayer services in which there had been numbers of conversions; but young Walker’s conversion was the result of quiet and serious meditation on his own part and an earnest desire to be a meek and lowly follower of the Lamb.

Young Walker joined the Franklin Covenant Baptist Church, near Hephzibah, and was baptized into the fellowship of that church the first Sunday in July, 1873. The ceremony was performed by his uncle, the Rev. Nathan Walker, the pastor of the church and the man by whom he was at that time employed. This was the same church of which another uncle, the Rev. Joseph T. Walker, had been pastor during the days of slavery, and of which young Walker’s father was once a deacon. At the time of his baptism, young Walker was fifteen years old.

HOME OF PETER WALKER, NEAR HEPHZIBAH, GA., WHERE CHARLES T. WALKER LIVED DURING THE FIRST EIGHT YEARS OF HIS LIFE.