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The BOOKER T. WASHINGTON Papers cient to overturn the heathen Roman Empire into a Christian one. The A.M.E. leaders called for numbers and not for qualifications. Scores of cases like that you illustrated by the story of the cotton field hand who thought the sun too hot for him to remain at such work, have come to my notice, and I have had occasion to tell such unqualified men that I believe they left the cotton patch and corn field and entered the ministry because they thought it would be an easier way to get a living. In regard to the more] qualifications of the Methodist and Baptist ministers, so far as I have seen and known them by personal contact, I believe that you have not overstated, but rather understated the facts. I say emphatically, in the presence of the great Head of the Church, that not more than one-third of the ministers, Baptist and Methodist, in the South are morally and intellectually qualified. I will stand by this statement, and can demonstrate the truthfulness and shameful and painful facts, with regard to name, times and places. Doubtless I shall be assailed like yourself for speaking truth and recording facts. Denominational bias and influence will not cause me to suppress the truth nor to hide facts when it is necessary to speak out with the spirit of Christian reform. I am a Methodist of the Methodists, head, heart and soul; and while I love Methodism sincerely, I love Christianity better. Therefore, in behalf of Christianity, I speak what I believe and know to be true with reference to our people South. I commenced fortyseven years ago to labor for a well educated and thoroughly Christian ministry. The Apostles and Prophets were all condemned for speaking out against the corruption of the chief priests and the Churches. But a power from above compelled them to cry out. Your relation to the South as an educator entitles you to a respectful hearing. Fraternally yours, Daniel A. Payne Indianapolis Freeman, Nov. 29, :890, 4. Published with BTW's letter to the editor of the Indianapolis Freeman, Nov. of, 1890. ~ James A. Handy (b. 1826), who began his career as a preacher in Baltimore, spent many years in missionary work in the South, establishing A.M.E. churches in North and South Carolina and Alabama. He was a powerful speaker and a skillful diplomat with southern whites. 2 dames Henry Andrew Johnson, born in Baltimore, entered the Baltimore Conference of the A.M.E. Church in 1865, but was almost immediately sent to the South at the end of the Civil War as a missionary. He helped to organize the South Carolina Conference and some churches on the eastern shore of Virginia. 98