JOHN F. W. WARE, 1
AND
HIS WORK FOR THE FREEDMEN.
AN ADDRESS in THE AFRICAN METHODIST CHURCH,
Charles Street, Boston, April ii, 1881.
by
WILLIAM E. MATTHEWS,
of baltimore.
«
WITH INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY HON. JOHN D. LONG.
BOSTON :
Press of Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street.
1881.
V
mbS
JOHN F. W. WARE,
AND
HIS WORK FOR THE FREEDMEN.
AN ADDRESS IN THE AFRICAN METHODIST CHURCH,
Charles Street, Boston, April ii, 1881.
by
WILLIAM E. MATTHEWS,
of baltimore.
WITH INTRODUCTORY REMARKS BY HON. JOHN D. LONG.
BOSTON:
Press of Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street.
1881.
At the request of the officers and members of the African
Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston, Mr. William E. Mat¬
thews, of Washington, delivered an address in that church on
the evening of Monday, the 11th of April, on the life and char¬
acter of the late Mr. Ware.
REMARKS OF HON. JOHN D. LONG *
To those, and tliey are the city-full, who remember the
noble figure and the still nobler heart of John Ware, this
should be a very tender occasion, as it certainly is to us who
are here. His, too, was a noble ministry. Its early days
were spent among the sweet serenities and shades of Cam¬
bridge, and its last amid the sweeping activities of this
great metropolis. But perhaps he looked back with most
satisfaction upon the work he did in Baltimore. There, in
the closing years of the war, he put out his whole heart and
strength in behalf of the integrity of the Union and the
education of the colored race,— chivalrous to strike from
their minds the shackles of ignorance as from their feet the
shackles of bondage. And could his wishes be now uttered
in our ears, I am sure he would choose for the occasion and
surrounding, under which his eulogy should be pronounced,
this quiet and unimposing gathering of friends, who knew
him and his worth, and this humble church in which are
wont to worship the representatives of that race to whom
he devoted his bravest years ; and for the orator, one of their
#At the request of the pastor of the church, His Excellency John D. Long,
Governor of the Commonwealth, took the chair.
4
REMARKS OF HON. JOHN D. LONG.
color who was a co-worker with him in Maryland in the
cause of education and liberty, and who is prepared to tell
the story of his service there by reason of having seen and
shared it. Such a one I have now the honor to introduce in
Mr. William E. Matthews, who comes hither from one of
the executive departments at Washington, and to whom you
will listen with the same sincere pleasure with which I at
once greet him to a Massachusetts platform and present him
to a Massachusetts audience.
ADDRESS BY MR. MATTHEWS.
Mr. President,— I come with glad feet, but a saddened
heart, from my home on the border, not for the purpose of
pronouncing a eulogy, or to give a cold, critical analysis of
the powers of head and heart of the good man gone, whose
loss we so much deplore, but rather to bring the sobs and
lamentations of a race he loved so well and served so faith¬
fully, and to demonstrate that, however destitute we may
be of the higher possessions of intellectual gifts, we are not
poor in that loftiest and finest attribute of the heart,—
gratitude. And so, with fond and grateful recollections of
the good, grand man, who came to us in our hours of weak¬
ness and need, I come to bring the tribute of a thousand
ransomed hearts.
And I am gladdened in the task I am about to assume by
a sort of consciousness that, shrinking from all parade and
love of praise as he did, this tribute from the poor and
humble, whose mental night he illumined by the radiance
of his helpful sympathy and earnest leadership and co-oper¬
ation in all efforts for their amelioration, would not be en¬
tirely unacceptable to him. But, before entering upon our
outline of the work of Mr. Ware in Baltimore, it would be
well for us, if we could, to catch the spirit of the times in
and around Maryland which preceded his coming. The
red glare of cruel strife had cast its baleful light all over
our land. The slave power had made one encroachment
G
jo/ix f. u'. ir.i. 1 xi> iirs ivohk for tiif. frfedmf.s.
after another on the liberties of the people, which had at
last culminated in the firing on Fort Sumter. The miser¬
able months preceding this act had been wasted in parley
and efforts at conciliation; and even the North, instead of
a just and indignant effort to meet the great issues in a
manly manner, had demoralized its people to a very great
extent by a weak and vacillating policy, so that, on Decem¬
ber 10, 1860, the mayor of the great city of Philadelphia,
Alexander Henry, in the hope of winning back the seceded
States, and of retaining the trade, custom, and profits which
that city had hitherto derived from the slave-holders, for¬
bade, in his official capacity, the lecture of George Will¬
iam Curtis, announced to take place that night.
Baltimore had been disgraced by the 19th of April riots,
when your own Sixth Regiment was attacked by a mob as
they passed through our city, en route for Washington.
New York had its draft riots, when the Orphan Asylum
was pillaged and burned, and colored children brained
against the curb, and colored men hung to the lamp-posts.
Carnage and bloodshed at the South, and a seeming Reign
of Terror at the North. The city of Baltimore contained
a colored population of sixty thousand, one half of whom
were free. Freedom in any other country under the sun
meant something, but in Maryland it was the synonyme for
despotism and tyranny. For instance, it was a penal of¬
fence for any one to teach a colored person to read or write,
so of course there were no schools. It was a penal offence
for any aspiring colored man to subscribe to any of the
great Northern papers, such as the Tribune, for instance.
A free colored man could not walk the street after ten
o'clock at night, even in a case of mercy or dire necessity,
without a permit from the mayor. But, as most of the
ADDRENS BY MR. MATTHEWS.
7
policemen, or watchmen, as they were called, could neither
read nor write, I remember, with a malicious delight, how
those of us who could read, got around them by either writ¬
ing our own passes, or showing them, on demand, scraps of
letters or receipts or any odd bits of paper we happened to
have, which the Hibernian guardian of the peace and dignity
of the State would take,— and us with it,— to the nearest
lamp-post, hold it, in many cases, upside down, and, after
duly inspecting it, tell us in the most authoritative and
official tone, "All right, pass on." What quiet chuckles we
would have ! And then, if one desired to have a few friends
spend an evening, or attend a wedding or what not, it could
only be done by a permit from the mayor, coupled with the
obligation of feeding as many " watchmen " as chose to come
upon us. They held that any number over three, besides
a man's household, was an " unlawful assembly." While
charged first-class fare, we were not permitted to ride in
first-class cars; but the most cultured gentlemen and refined
ladies were compelled to ride in the smoking-car. In travel¬
ling from Baltimore to Harrisburg, the Hon. Ed. W. Bly-
den, now Secretary of State for Liberia, and recently Minis¬
ter Extraordinary to the Court of St. James, was compelled
by the besotted brakeman of the train to leave the passen¬
ger-car and take his place in the baggage-car, and find a
seat as best he could, on box, bag, or trunk. But I think
the most pitiable feature of this sad picture is, that these
minions of the law never felt humiliated in the mean work
they were called upon to perform, but rather gloried in it,
and prided themselves on the number of insults they could
heap on a defenceless people.
The colored people of the city and State, as well as
the white Unionists, were in a sad plight. The outlook was
JOI/X F. »r. WAKE, AND HIS WORK FOR THE F HE EDM EX.
cloudy and cheerless, and the leaders seemed to be paralyzed
by a condition of affairs they could neither comprehend nor
defeat. It was, indeed, our night of utter darkness, with¬
out a star in the sky upon which to fix a hope; when the
black laws brutalized our manhood, when the teaching of
the Bible was enacted into a crime, when humanity was
determined not by largeness of heart or greatness of man¬
hood, but by the poor and pitiable standard of color, when
God's image was exposed in the public marts, when beauty
was hawked amid shameful jests for unholy purposes, and
when we seemed bereft of God and all good influences, and
plunged into a
" Hopeless, helpless brokenness of heart."
Tempest and passion ruled the hour. Secession and State
rights were the false gods the people worshipped. One
after another had the great States of the South trampled
on their Constitutional obligations, and seceded from the
Union. South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and our
near neighbor, Virginia, all had gone; and a great and des¬
perate effort was being made, not only by the rebels in
these States, but by the rebels in our own State, to win
Maryland from her allegiance to the Union. And it cannot
be denied that there was a large majority of her people
favorable to the South, who would have liked to join their
destinies with her, when uprose one of the bravest and
most resolute set of men that the country or the ages have
ever produced. Dauntless, enthusiastic, and courageous
was this handful of loyalists that held Maryland true to
the Union, when the mad waves of sectional strife would
have washed her into the vortex of secession. It was a case
ADDRESS BY MR. MATTHEWS.
9
of life or death. No half-way measures were to be tolerated.
Heroic treatment was the only treatment; and these men
were brave enough to follow out the logic of their con¬
clusions by the great act of State emancipation, which pre¬
ceded general emancipation by some months. And thus
was Maryland taken out of reach of the South, and placed
unalterably on the side of the free States, and all this for
freedom's sake.
" For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if Freedom fail?"
This movement was led and guided by one of the bravest
leaders, grandest hearts, and finest intellects that our country
has known, who died while the warm dew of early manhood
was yet on his fair brow,— Henry Winter Dayis ; while
the rank and file was made up of a peerless band of men,
who, undaunted by threats and una wed by n umbel's, dared
to defend the right as God gave it to them to see the
right,— John A. J. Cresswell, William J. Albert, Hugh L.
Bond, Archibald Sterling, A. W. Bradford, C. C. Fulton,
R. Stocker Matthews, John C. Turner, Henry Stockbridge,
John P. Kennedy, Charles Cochran, Jr., John L. Thomas,
and the great-hearted Sebastian F. Streeter, who literally
gave his life to the cause of the Union.
You will be glad to know, my fellow-citizens, that the
loyal citizens of Baltimore, not forgetting the prominent part
played by Mr. Streeter in upholding the Union cause and
giving sympathy and help to the soldiers of the Union as
they passed through our city on their way to the war, have
erected, in our beautiful " Greenmount," a fine monument
to his memory.
These formed the nucleus of that little band whose influ-
10
JOIIJf F. TV. WARE, AND HIS WORK FOR THE FREEDMES.
ence swept the State, and by its act so amended the Con¬
stitution as to prohibit the holding of slaves, and thus
emancipated the people by its own free will,— the only case
of the kind, I think, during the struggle in the South. This
was the condition of affairs which awaited the coming of
John F. W. Ware. And at once did he throw his great
energy into the cause of the Union, the cause of Freedom
and Education.
Into this desolation of heart, this hopeless strife, and the
tightening bands of inevitable conditions, came this great¬
hearted man. Like John the Baptist crying in the wilder¬
ness, but preaching a doctrine of life and hope and joy, and
proclaiming from pulpit and platform that humanity was
everywhere substantially one,— one in nature and one in
wants; and that, however different we may seem to be,—
different in aspect, culture, aspirations, thought, and work,—
we are, nevertheless, one in the final analysis of our being,
one in the facts and principles that lift us from the animal
and make us human; and that, in studying the facts outside
of ourselves, the facts of law, of nature, and of morality,
we find them uniform and everywhere the same; and that,
therefore, the same gospel and the same plane of thought
that was good for the highest was also good for the lowest,
if there be any lowest among God's children. And, when
his preparations had been completed on this basis, he de¬
voted himself to it as the object of bis life; and, once in hot
pursuit of his end, there was no withholding of his resources.
With his great heart open to the wants and needs of the
people, he poured out all the energies and talents and high
qualities he possessed, determined to go forward with un¬
shrinking persistence till the last unsolved problem had
yielded its secret; while his clear aim, securely grafted in
ADDliESS BY MR, MATTHEWS.
11
his will, gathered all his powers, and with Titanic zeal con¬
quered every obstacle. And neither conld anxieties, uncer¬
tainties, nor the most powerful opposition of public opinion
swerve him from the fixedness of his purpose.
Of his life in Boston and hereabouts, of the prominent
places he filled, not alone in the pulpit, but in the charities
and all movements for the public weal, you well know. I
come to speak of a phase of his life and labors of which
I fear you of Boston know too little.
You know of his grand patriotic work for the soldiers in
tent, field, and hospital; of his sermons in summer at our
beautiful Druid Hill Park, where thousands of all climes,
tongues, colors, and conditions, would hang on his words
as he outlined some grand thought in a way which was as
charming and captivating to the simple as to the educated,
on noble living, high thinking, or passionate devotion to
one's country; of his theatre-preaching in the winter nights,
when he would for week after week hold his audiences of
two thousand spellbound, from the newsboys and shoe-blacks
who sat in the "gallery of the gods " to the solid merchant
or eminent judge who sat in the orchestra chairs.
All this you know. But I am not so certain that you
know that to the colored people of the city and State he
was our William Lloyd Garrison, because he was an eman¬
cipator, our Horace Mann, because he was an educator, our
Dr. Howe, because a philanthropist, our Father Taylor, be¬
cause a simple preacher of righteousness, and our John A.
Andrew, because an inflexible patriot. All this he was;
and I might also add a Charles Sumner, for statesman he
was also, greater and braver than many who hold seats in
the great hall at Washington.
In the shots fired on Sumter, he foresaw a tragedy which
12
JOHN F. ir. WARE, AND I/IS WORK FOR THE FREEDMEN.
was not only to end in the breaking of chains, but which
was to throw upon the country four millions of people who
were to be educated and moulded into the form and fashion
of American citizens.
And of all the great names of the Unitarian body, so rich
in the record of those who have been a blessing and a light
to my race, i know of none who has so intimately and per¬
sonally identified himself with the race, and whose presence
was such a joy and benediction as Mr. Ware. In their sim¬
plicity, the colored people learned to love this large-brained,
large-hearted man, who, under a seemingly blunt exterior,
possessed a heart so loving and tender, so sensitive to all
forms of want and woe, so true to its own ideal of duty, and
so loyal and faithful to the manifold duties and opportuni¬
ties which pressed him on all sides during his stay in Bal¬
timore. And in saying this I am not unmindful of the
magnificent service of Dr. Channing, of the sturdy work of
Samuel J. May, Dr. Furness, Theodore Parker, and other
warm and tender names which are enshrined in our mem¬
ory. Mr. Ware would come to our churches, preach in our
pulpits, speak in our schools, visit our houses, bury our
dead, perform the marriage ceremony, when asked, and all
with such a manly grace and tender interest that we began
to know and love him as tenderly as we did our own Bishop
Payne; and he did all this with no air of condescension or
patronage, but with the same manly earnestness which would
have characterized his movements in his own great church
at Charles and Franklin Streets. He never came down to
the people, but seemed to have the power to bring the
people up to the serene and elevated level on which he
stood. He neither leaned toward their prejudices, on the
one hand, or for a moment humored their superstitions, on
ADDRESS BY MR. MATTHEWS.
13
the other; and it is a marvel how easily he succeeded in
getting his lofty thoughts down into the hearts and con¬
sciences of the most humble. I am not wise enough to give
you the secret of his power, but think that it must have
been in his great simplicity of style, in his downright ear¬
nestness, and, above all, in his great heart, which ran1 out
with an untiring sympathy to help and uplift the people. I
think he was possessed by that grand utterance of Paul, as
proclaimed on Mars Hill, that God of a truth " has made of
one blood all the nations of men, to dwell on all the face
of the earth."
But I think the crowning glory of his life in Baltimore,
and one in which he took, I think, the most pride, was his
connection with the " Baltimore Association for the Moral
and Intellectual Improvement of the Colored People,"
which he himself justly describes as one of the " romances
of the war." He was not only one of the organizers of this
brave band of men, but its chief light and benefactor; and,
next to the score or so of men who held Maryland true to the
Union in the dark and tempestuous days of the war, there
is, perhaps, no brighter galaxy of names in the annals of that
haughty State than the little band who planted the first
seeds of thought and culture in the heads and hearts of the
one hundred and eighty thousand colored people of that
State. And may I not be permitted to pay a sort of " march¬
ing salute," as I proceed, to these men, or, if not to them, to
their memories, for not a few of them have passed to the
other shore, from labor to reward ? First must come at the
head of the column the name of John F. W. Ware, then
Judge Bond, William Needles, Francis T. King, Galloway
Cheston, Dr. James Cary Thomas, Richard M. Janney, John
T. Graham, George A. Pope, George B. Cole, Rev. Fielder
14
JOIIN F. Tr. WARE, AND HIS WORK FOP, THE FFiEEDMEN.
Israel, David Creamer, Rev. Mr. Bruce, and a Jewish rabbi
whose name I have forgotten, with others.
The work seemed to employ his every leisure thought;
and his cheerful face and encouraging voice were greeted
with love and gladness in the schools of his dusky friends,
as he visited them from day to day. On went the noble
work, and he with it, until, after a year or two, we find Mr.
Ware assisting in the opening of the colored Normal School.
But it would be best to give you his estimate of this work
from his own pen, which I find in your own Boston Tran¬
script of June, 1873 : —
Immediately after going to Baltimore, I was asked to join a little band
of Maryland born and bred gentlemen, who had associated themselves in
a " society for the moral and educational elevation of the colored people."
I,have always looked upon that little organization as one of the romances
of the war, and wish that some worthy historian would make its record
public. Without a dollar or any known friend, in a hostile community,
these gentlemen resolved to do something for a people emancipated by
State edict prior to the great war measure of Abraham Lincoln. They
had lived with and understood " the colored people" ; and all their plan
and policy were different from, and better than, what first obtained in
the other States where the work was done from without.
With the minimum of help from the citizens, against social, political,
church opposition, the first schools were started in the city ; and with the
aid, mainly, of the New England Freedtnan's Association, the " Friends "
of England and Ireland, and such help as some of us were able to bring
from the North, the work went on until there were nearly two hundred
schools in both city and State, outranking white schools of the same grade.
The city schools, specially, were in charge of the best teachers that could
be obtained from the North, and were carried on upon the most advanced
Northern plan. It seems like a dream,— the bitter prejudice and opposi¬
tion we encountered, the more than indifference of Northern men and
women, the timidity of the clergy, the hostility of the churches. We
only got notice of our doings into the leading paper of the city, at last,
ADDRESS BY MR. MATTHEWS.
15
by Paying advertising rates. That paper has since claimed to be the
pioneer in advocating the cause of colored education ! Driven in part
by the condition of our finances, after a year or two, we petitioned the
city council for help, attending their sessions by committee and in a
body, and finally obtained for two consecutive years, I think, a grant of
$10,000 per annum, for the use of the city schools," upon the distinct
ground, taken and allowed, that this was but a partial refunding of a tax
levied upon the colored people and paid by them for the support of the
public schools for many years, from which their own children were ex¬
cluded. The city of Baltimore has its separate public-school system, in
no way related to that of the State. Of the State, we received nothing.
Having gained so much, the next step was to get the city to take the
schools themselves under their own charge, and place them on the same
footing with white schools of similar grades. Eventually, this was done.
We ceased from our labors, and surrendered everything to the city; and
since then it has maintained these schools and opened others, but, as I
have always heard, not at that point of excellence they had attained
under our oversight, and not carrying out the understood arrangement as
to grade. I am away from papers and from friends to assist or correct
my memory; but my impression is that the present movement with regard
to the colored schools, of which I have seen brief mention, relates to the
establishment not of public schools, but to grading the schools estab¬
lished. They are now hardly more than primary.
I felt during and after the war how much injustice was done and how
much prejudice was kept alive by mistakes of fact to the disadvantage of
one or the other section, which obtained circulation and credence through
the press. Therefore have I spoken. There was never a more gallant
or hopeless struggle than that initiated by that little knot of Maryland
radicals, and few victories have been more decided or valuable than that
they obtained. They lifted the manhood of the negro as well as en¬
lightened his mind ; they went into his home; they cared for his morals
and his family. They would not work for him, but wherever he would
work for himself they helped him. No school was opened, except the
people asking, through their own organization auxiliary, contributed
something toward its maintenance ; and there were no men so much sur¬
prised and gratified at results obtained as those who had grown with an
enslaved race, and had first given the hand of fellowship and the sympa-
16
JOHN F. W. WARE, AND HIS WORK FOR THE FREEDMEN.
thy of honest good-will. It is, I think, the only instance in which the
work was begun and managed by those " to the manor born."
Swampscott, June 20, 1873. j. f. w. w.
Few people can now or could then, in the North, realize
the difficulties and discouragements surrounding this work
in a hostile community, where only a few years before it
was a penitentiary offence to teach a negro.
Of this hostility to the work, I had myself an experience
in which, had the design culminated in success, I should not
now have the honor of standing in your presence. Happen¬
ing to have business in the lower part of the State, I was
requested by Mr. Ware to stop at Denton, Caroline County,
and see what could be done to plant a school. I arrived on
Saturday, and at the church service the next morning it was
announced that I would speak in the evening. A large au¬
dience was present, including not a few whites, the sheriff
and an influential Quaker being of the number. I spoke at
length on the changed condition of affairs, the duty of the
newly emancipated class to fit themselves for their new
duties and responsibilities, and how by industry, frugality,
and education they might hope to succeed. The people
came forward promptly, and gave of their means for the
support of the teacher. At the close of the meeting, sev¬
eral of the more influential whites came forward and spoke
to me most cordially, thought that my advice to the col¬
ored people had been most wholesome, and invited me to
repeat my talk the next evening, when they would have a
larger number of their own class present, who they thought
needed to know of their duties in the new condition of af¬
fairs also.
On the appointed evening, while sitting in my room pre-
ADDRESS BY MR. MATTHEWS.
17
paring my notes for the contemplated talk, my host rushed
in, armed with a gun in one hand and an axe in the other,
saying in the most alarmed manner, " O Mr. Matthews, you
must not go out of the house to-night. The poor whites
of the town have heard that you are here to establish a
nigger school, and they say they will kill you. I have just
been to the church, and they have already begun to assem¬
ble with shot-guns and clubs. I put them off the track by
telling them that you had gone to Darlington, but they may
find you are here. They will have to come up these stairs
single file; and, if we are to be killed, we will sell our lives
dearly. Here, which will you take, the axe or the gun ? "
I was not prepared for any such emergency; and, night hav¬
ing closed in, I thought I would go out and make a survey
from behind the bushes, and there I saw a dozen or more of
rowdies, marching the street and cursing the man who had
come to plant such dangerous seed. The steamboat " Cham¬
pion " left the dock for Baltimore at five in the morning,
while they were sleeping off the stupor of their night's
debauch. It is needless to say that the second address was
not made. A week later, I received a letter from my Quaker
friend, congratulating me on my escape, and telling me that
there was no doubt that, had I been apprehended, I should
have been massacred. Such was the condition of the aver¬
age sentiment in the State concerning emancipation and
education.
So bitter was the prejudice that even in Mr. Ware's own
church objections were raised to his urging the work. For
a long time, not a Methodist minister in that city had pluck
enough to come forward and give a helping hand to the
cause.
A circular was addressed to the ministers of every denom-
18
JOIIX F. jr. WARE, AX J) I/IN WORK FOR THE FREED HEX.
ination in the city, asking them to take up contributions on
Sunday in their churches for the cause. How many re¬
sponded to this appeal, think you ? Outside of the two or
three already mentioned, if I remember rightly, only one,
and he a Jewish rabbi. Would you believe that so afraid
were the ministers that it was found difficult to secure one
to preside at the first-anniversary of this society, held at
the Rev. Fielder Israel's Independent Presbyterian church?
The house was crowded with the people, but there was a
marked absence of the " cloth."
But Mr. Ware went on working at home, and enlighten¬
ing his friends North as to the work. Schools were opened
by the society, by means of its collections at home and dona¬
tions from Boston and other places, headed by Mrs. Ste¬
venson and Mrs. Cheney, and through Quakers and others
in England and Ireland. Many thousand dollars were col¬
lected by his efforts; and the work went nobly on, he visit¬
ing almost daily some school, to examine and encourage
teacher and pupils.
Mr. Ware, in his ministry in Baltimore, labored under
many disadvantages. Unitarians are there looked upon as
infidels, mockingly called by the people " onbelievers."
His old church was cold and cheerless, a bad place for such
a spirit as his; and he chafed under the restraint of the old
regime, that seemed to govern it. But, when he became
unfettered, and was left to do his Master's will in such a
manner as was to him wisest, then came forth the hidden
force that was in him. In the hall of the Masonic Temple,
he preached many of his best practical sermons, filled with
love, charity, and sympathy with his fellows, to crowded
houses of all nationalities and religions. There were black
and white, Jew and Gentile. There he opened up to his
ADDRESS BY MR. MATTHEW.
19
hearers their every-day life, filled with sympathy for their
trials. He seemed to be able to go down into the very
depths of their previous week's life as no other man could.
There was nothing of the beautiful oratory of the man
that usually draws the crowds. His sermons were matter of
fact, every-day existence, but delivered in peculiarly persua¬
sive words and tones that made you feel a friend was talk¬
ing to you. The magnetism was so great in him that soon
the hall, though a large one, had to be superseded by the
large building known as Ford's Opera House.
Here flocked to hear his persuasive but manly voice im¬
mense crowds. One instance of many, about his preaching,
I remember to have heard. It was that of a Jew, a con¬
stant attendant at his church, who one day stopped on the
street Mr. Jno. T. Graham, an active and warm friend and
a parishioner of Mr. Ware, whom he recognized as an offi¬
cial in the church, and said, "Sir, will you tell me how
Mr. Ware's church is supported?" and, when informed that
it was by voluntary subscription, answered, "Well, sir,
here are $50 toward it, and when you want more come to
me." And he added, " Did you ever hear such preaching ?
What is it that draws one there ? Do you know, it is the
hardest preaching to live up to I ever heard, but one can't
help trying. I manage to live up to it until Wednes¬
day night, but Thursday morning the Jew will crop out."
" Then Mr. Ware ought to have two Sundays in a week,"
suggested Mr. Graham.
Mr. Ware preached right at you, in such a brotherly way,
not scolding and menacing and fault-finding, as is the custom
in many of our pulpits. He preached also in our parks,
and held little meetings in halls, where he got near the
people, and made them feel good toward their God and
fellow-man.
20
JOIIN F. ir. WARE, AX J) IIIS WORK FOR THE FREED if EX.
But his preaching was only one good part of him. His
work told, for he was always finding poor, weary souls, who
needed him : they not only got the kind and cheering word,
but, when satisfied of their honesty, he was ready to give
substantial help. Some men, I am told, called him cold
and unsympathetic. They knew him not. The people of
Baltimore who were not afraid of Unitarianism being
dragged down to a common humanity level, who did not
think it was a religion only for the rich, knew him as a
genial, open-hearted, generous, but straight up and down
friend. Any who think him cold and unsympathetic or
unyielding should go to the people who knew him, where
he was free to work as his Maker directed. Go to the one
rich man of his little church, now passed beyond his four¬
score years, ask him- of Mr. Ware's character, and he will
tell you,— A firm and ready friend. Go to the poor, infirm,
and crippled, who hobbled every Sunday to drink in his
words, go to those who worked with him, and they will tell
you that, after his embarrassment of first acquaintance wore
off, no more genial companion could be found.
Mr. Ware was as sensitive and as appreciative as a child
to any consideration offered him, for
" The bravest are the tenderest,
The loving are the daring."
One of the most helpful and important labors was his
connection with the missionary and educational work of
the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Seeing for himself
the noble work this organization was doing in the religious
and educational advancement of its two hundred and fifty
thousand members in the South, he became interested in
their work, and through his interest secured the influence
ADDRESS BY MR. MATTHEWS.
21
of Rev. Edward E. Hale, Rev. Dr. Bellows, the late Rev.
Charles Lowe, and others. So it is that for quite fifteen
years the Unitarians have been helping to spread the gospel
of right living and education through the channels of this
church by gifts of books to its ministers and educational
institutions, by money to aid in the support of preachers
and teachers in places where the people are too poor to sus¬
tain such influences, and in the support of a regular course
of scientific lectures to the students at Wilberforce, by the
professors of Antioch College. Mr. Ware was on the most
cordial terms with Bishops Payne and Brown of this
church; and, in a note recently received, Bishop Brown thus
speaks:—
The death of Mr. Ware is a great loss to me and our cause. I made
his acquaintance in 1867. From that time, he has been our ardent friend.
He often visited our churches and conferences, and did much to bring
our work before the American Unitarian Association and denomination,
which brought thousands of dollars to our work in aiding the freedmen
in pious habits and education. In company with Eev. Dr. George E.
Ellis, he visited our conference at Washington, in May, 1868, and, at a
similar conference of his church, held at the Church of the Messiah, New
York, in the fall of 1868, it was mainly through the efforts of Mr. Ware
that a committee was formed who organized a number of libraries. Mr.
Ware and myself were appointed to see to the distribution of these books,
and to do other joint work in the South. No one can tell the good this
reading matter has done. Many of our best ministers of to-day were
quickened to higher ideals and manlier work. He ever exhibited the
most intense interest in our efforts at doing good. He largely aided the
Museum of Natural History at Wilberforce, which bears his name.
This church is to be congratulated on the spirit which
prompts this memorial meeting, holding, as it does most thor¬
oughly, to its own peculiar views and tenets, but yet broad
enough to acknowledge the Christ spirit in a man who
22
JOILV F. W. WARE, AND IIIS WORK FOR TIIE FREE/) MEN.
worked on another line, but leading, let us trust, to the
same great end,— the upbuilding of man and the glory of
God.
The aspiring nature of the soul, the continued longing
and seeking after truth which will not put up with anything
short of conviction, is one of the most hopeful signs of the
vitality and faithfulness of the religious sentiment in man.
And so the conviction is at last borne in on the mind that
religion is greater than any particular form of it, and does
not depend for its existence upon our conceptions, but our
deep and eternal need of it.
And, surely, if religion be what we think it is, the greatest
fact in the universe, there should be weapons enough in the
arsenal of the gospel to put to flight its strongest foes, and
to establish deep and broad its reign in our hearts and in
the world.
But I hasten to a close. And how shall I close,— with
vain regrets at the loss of a life so useful and exalted, or
rather by thanking God for the example of such a life ?
A noble life ended, a noble work performed ! His majes¬
tic form we can no longer see, and his kindly voice we can
no longer hear; but his memory is to those who knew him a
strength and inspiration which will impel us to the attain¬
ment of that higher manhood, that wider usefulness, and
that broader charity, which he so nobly represented.
In the great cathedral of St. Paul in London may be seen
a tablet in honor of the architect and builder of that stu¬
pendous structure, Sir Christopher Wren, upon which is the
inscription in Latin: —
Reader, dost thou seek his monument, look about
you.
ADDRESS BY MR. MATTHEWS.
23
And so, my fellow-citizens, if you would look upon the
monument to John F. W. Ware, come to Maryland and
"look about you," at the happy faces of the forty thousand
children, as they merrily wend their way in city and town to
the hundreds of schools which now dot the State; at the
rapid advancement of an enlightened public sentiment; and
at the regard for law and order, the dignity and self-respect
with which these new citizens carry themselves. This bear¬
ing recently evoked from His Honor Judge Pinckney this
most hearty and generous compliment,— that, while the col¬
ored people of the State form one-fifth of the population,
their misdemeanors and crimes, as compared to the whites,
is less than one-sixth. Look at their progress in material
development and wealth, which amounts to over ten millions.
O good friend gone ! thy work and faith and love were
not in vain, but have brought forth a most rich and abundant
harvest in a race who have grandty learned the hard but
useful lessons in the alphabet of life -— industry, energy,
honesty, promptness, frugality, patience — and in all the ele¬
ments which lead to a well-ordered and dignified life.
Farewell, noble and great-hearted man! When the histo¬
rian of the future shall write broadly and candidly of the
times in which we live, and the struggles of a poor and ill-
used people upward from their house of bondage and out¬
ward from their dark night of ignorance, side by side with
Channing and Parker and Garrison and May will appear in
characters of living light the name of John Fothergill Wa-
terhouse Ware, the admiration of the American people, and
an inspiration for the cause he so earnestly espoused and so
magnificently served.