GREAT IS THE MIRACLE OF HUMAN SPEECH: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN WASHINGTON, DCWashington, D.C.

, ON 31 AUGUST 1891

Washington Bee, 5 September 1891. Other texts in Washington Evening Star, 1 September 1891; Washington Post, 1 September 1891.

The return of the Reverend John W. E. Bowen from a summer vacation furnished the occasion for a testimonial to him by the members of his Washington congregation, the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church. The evening service began at 8 P.M. with several musical selections. In attendance was “a large and distinguished gathering of white and colored citizens,” according to the Washington Bee. The Reverend William P. Ryder delivered the invocation and the Reverend Mr. Chesnut introduced Douglass who welcomed Bowen on his return to the city. Bowen responded to Douglass’s address. Ex-congressman Thomas H. Miller of South Carolina next spoke on affairs in his state. The Reverend Charles Henry Phillips, minister of the Metropolitan A. M. E. Church of Washington, presented a gold medal to church organist Charles E. Jackson and the services concluded with a banquet in the basement of the church.

Mr. Bowen:¹Son of Louisiana slave parents who had purchased the family's freedom, John Wesley Edward Bowen (1855-1933) was a member of the New Orleans University's first graduating class in 1878. He taught ancient languages at the Central Tennessee University before attending Boston University’s School of Theology from which he received a Ph.D. degree in 1887. Bowen joined the Methodist Episcopal Church ministry and supplied a series of pulpits in Boston, Newark, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. While living in the latter two cities, he also served as professor of church history at Morgan College and professor of Hebrew at Howard University. Brown taught historical theology at Gammon Theological Seminary in Atlanta from 1892 to 1932 as well as occupying that school’s presidency from 1906 to 1910. A gifted preacher and lecturer, Bowen also co-edited two widely circulated periodicals, the Voice of the Negro and The Negro, during his years at Gammon. J. R. Van Pelt, "John Wesley Edward Bowen," JNH, 19: 217-21 (April 1934); DANB, 52-53; NCAB, 14: 361.—The honor has been conferred upon me, and I feel it to be a
very high honor, to express to you as best I may, the grateful sentiment of
welcome implied in this large reception. I need not assure you that this
sentiment has in it a soul, and that it is noble, warm and sincere. This is not
a formal and mechanical demonstration, a mere theatrical display. It means
that we are really very glad to see you, that we feel stronger, better and
happier for your presence. In your return to Washington we recognize the
fact that our big brother, clear of head and strong of heart, has come home.
We feel this to be true, not merely in a temporal sense, but in an intellec
tual, moral and spiritual sense. It is no new truth that the presence of a
strong man anywhere in the world diffuses and imparts strength, and the
presence of a good man, goodness. There is an atmosphere about every
man, and he is either a blessing or a curse, a help or a hindrance to those
about him.

Sir:—You have been fortunate in your labors in Washington.²From 1890 to 1892, Bowen was the minister of the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church on K Street in Washington, DC. NCAB, 14: 361. You
have not merely received the welcome approval of your own congregation,
but you have won the respect and admiration of congregations outside of
your own. Your influence is bounded by no sectarian limitations. The
colored citizens of Washington love you for your devotion to their highest
and best interests, and the white people respect you for your talents,
learning and ability, and above all for your high character.

Sir:—In view of the low estimation in which the intelligence and worth
of the colored people are held, I deem it fortunate that we can point to
yourself, in this the Capital of this great Republic, who not only contradict
but utterly refute this low estimate. But here as elsewhere there must be line
upon line and precept upon precept, for prejudice is a stubborn enemy.

Sir:—There was a time in my life when l dreaded to hear a man of color

rise to speak in the presence of white people. I feared that he would supply
added proof of our ignorance and inferiority. That day is past. Men like
yourself, Doctor Grimke,³Francis James Grimké. Brooks,⁴Walter Henderson Brooks (1851-1945) served as pastor of the 19th Street Baptist Church in Washington. D.C., from 1882 until his death. Born a slave in Richmond, Virginia, he attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, receiving a B.A. degree in 1872 and a B.D. degree in 1873. Brooks worked as a clerk in the Richmond post office before his ordination as a Baptist minister in 1876. He filled the pulpit of the Second African Baptist Church in Richmond until 1880 and then worked two years as a Sunday school missionary in Louisiana for the American Baptist Publication Society. While pastor of the 19th Street Baptist Church, Brooks actively engaged in the temperance campaign and served as chaplain of the Anti-Saloon League of the District of Columbia. Brooks was one of the leaders of the secession of black churchmen in the late 1880s from the regular Baptist missionary and publication societies to protest racial discrimination by those bodies. Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, 2d ed. (Washington. D.C., 1945) 196, 237-38; "Walter Henderson Brooks," JNH, 30: 459-61 (October 1945); DANB, 62-64. Crummell⁵Alexander Crummell. and others, may be trusted
before the most learned and enlightened audience in the world. In such
hands our cause suffers no defeat or detriment. Whenever and wherever
such men speak a burden of reproach is rolled from the breasts of our
people and we breathe freer. More than fifty years ago when I lived in New
Bedford, Massachusetts, I went to hear a lecture by Rev. Henry Highland
Garnet.⁶Douglass perhaps recalls his attendance at a meeting of New Bedford blacks held on the evening of 7 June 1841 at the city’s First Christian Church. The Reverend Henry Highland Garnet addressed the meeting on the subjects of slavery and racial prejudice. Lib., 11 June 1841. He was in every respect a typical negro. Before hearing him I
thought I was a man, but after hearing him I knew I was a man and a man
among men.

It is often asked, by ignorance what have such men as Garnet, Ward,
Remond⁷Samuel Ringgold Ward and Charles Remond. and others done for the colored race? and ignorance has an
swered its own question: They have only talked; but talk is itself a power.
We hold in grateful memory Wm. Lloyd GarrisonGarrison, William Lloyd

William Lloyd Garrison (1805-79) was the foremost white abolitionist of the nineteenth century and was credited with the discovery of Douglass as a speaker at an antislavery meeting in Nantucket in 1841. He began his career as an apprentice printer on the Newburyport (Mass.) Herald at the age of thirteen. Garrison became editor of the Newburyport Free Press in 1826, but the paper closed within a year. He was then associated with a series of periodicals in Boston that advocated reform before Benjamin Lundy offered the young journalist the opportunity to write for his antislavery newspaper. Garrison joined Lundy in editing the Genius of Universal Emancipation in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1829, during the last year of the paper's 1821-1830 run. In 1830 a libel suit against the editors forced the paper to close and landed Garrison in jail. After his release, he courted the wealthy merchants of New York and Boston in order to start the Liberator (1831-65), a weekly journal based in Boston in which he advocated an immediate end to slavery. Garrison's brand of abolition condemned any institution that would tolerate the existence of slavery, including churches, political parties. and even the United States itself and any scheme aimed at removing black people from the country. Instead, Garrison hoped to raise the public's awareness that slavery was morally wrong and thereby force its end in an almost millennial moment of emancipation. His approach appealed to both white and black antislavery advocates but earned him many enemies among those only moderately opposed to slavery and slaveholders alike. Seeing the need for greater action and organization beyond the pages of the Liberator; Garrison joined with other abolitionists to form the New England Anti-Slavery Society in 1831. Two years later he helped found the larger American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he established ties with English abolitionists after a trip to Great Britain, and he later brought the noted and notorious speaker George Thompson to the United States for a tour. Garrison also dedicated himself to women's rights, encouraging women to enter the public sphere by inviting them, via the Liberator, to form female antislavery societies. In addition to the thirty-three women's antislavery societies that flourished by 1838, Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society welcomed women as well as blacks into its ranks. However, female delegates were excluded from the World's Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London. The issue of women's participation in the antislavery movement and Garrison's absolute refusal to turn to politics to end slavery caused a division in the American Anti-Slavery Society. Brothers Lewis and Arthur Tappan, who opposed women's acting as speakers and who hoped to use politics toward abolition, broke with Garrison's American Anti-Slavery Society, forming the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, or the "New Organization" in 1841. Garrison's ideas were so closely associated with the "Old Organization" that the American Anti-Slavery Society became known simply as the "Garrisonians." With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Garrison believed that he had accomplished his life's work and that of the antislavery movement. He then resigned from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society and closed the Liberator. Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children, 4 vols. (New York, 188589); Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York, 1998); James Brewer Stewart, William Lloyd Garrison and the Challenge of Emancipation (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1992); John L. Thomas, The Liberator: William Lloyd Garrison (Boston, 1963); Dictionary of American Biography, 20 vols. (New York, 1928-36), 7:168-72. , Wendell PhillipsPhillips, Wendell

Boston-born and Harvard-educated Wendell Phillips (1811-84) ranked second only to Garrison in influence in the American Anti-Slavery Society in the 1840s and 1850s. Bored with the legal profession and influenced by his antislavery fiancee, Ann Terry Greene, Phillips dedicated himself to abolitionism beginning in 1837. A highly gifted orator, Phillips was in demand as a lecturer even in nonabolitionist circles. Besides abolition, Phillips championed woman suffrage, prohibition, penal reform, Indian rights, and legislative protection for workers. When Garrison retired from the presidency of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1865, Phillips assumed the post and led abolitionists until passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870. James Brewer Stewart, Wendell Phillips: Liberty's Hero (Baton Rouge, La., 1986); Irving H. Bartlett, Wendell Phillips: Brahmin Radical (Boston, 1961); DAB, 14:546-47. ,
Charles SumnerSumner, Charles

Best remembered as the victim of a vicious attack by a congressional colleague, Charles Sumner (1811-74), U.S. senator from Massachusetts (1851-74), was dedicated to the cause of emancipation. Born in Boston, Sumner attended and then taught at Harvard College. He engaged in a semi-successful law practice until his outspoken opposition to the United States war against Mexico thrust him into politics. He was a founder of the Free Soil Party in Massachusetts, and a coalition of Free Soilers and Democrats elected him to the U.S. Senate in 1850. Immediately embroiling himself in the heated topic of slavery, Sumner became an outspoken advocate of emancipation and repeatedly refuted compromises proposed by Henry Clay and others. After one particularly scathing speech in the Senate against slavery, Sumner was brutally beaten with a cane by a Southern representative, which necessitated years of recovery before Sumner was able to reenter the Senate. Sumner’s lasting legacy was to turn popular sentiment in the North toward emancipation, and after the Civil War, he continued to fight for the individual freedoms of blacks until his sudden death in 1874. Frederick J. Blue, Charles Sumner and the Conscience of the North (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1994); David Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 1960); DAB, 18:208-14. and many others. What did they do for the colored people?
They talked and talked the chains off the limbs of millions. He is low down
in the scale of intelligence who measures the service and greatness of men
only by physical force and physical achievements. The sword is great, but
the pen is greater.⁸The best-known version of this popular maxim appears in Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's 1839 play Richelieu; or, the Conspiracy, act 2, sc. 2. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, The Poetical and Dramatic Works of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Bart., 5 vols. (London. 1852-54), 4: 308. The one deals with the body but the other with the soul.

Great is the miracle of human speech—by it nations are enlightened

and reformed; by it the cause of justice and liberty is defended, by it evils
are exposed, ignorance dispelled, the path of duty made plain, and by it
those that live to-day are put into the possession of the wisdom of ages gone
by. The words of Paul still rock the world, though spoken two thousand
years ago, for his words were mighty and powerful. The Savior of the
Christian world spake as never man spake and his words are repeated by
millions to millions, generation after generation undimmed by time, untar
nished by repetition, and will continue till rolling years shall cease to
move.

Sir:—Your vocation is to speak the word; there is none higher. We welcome you to this vast vantage ground, your chosen post. You touch the main spring of the moral universe. Truth is the saving power of the world, preach it and you bless yourself, your race and the world.

In the name of this vast audience I bid you welcome, thrice welcome home! with the best wishes for your health, happiness and continued usefulness.