Of course I accepted General
Armstrong's invitation, and went to Hampton immediately. On arriving
there I found that the General had decided to take a quartette [sic]
of singers through the North, and hold meetings for a month in
important cities, at which meetings he and I were to speak. Imagine
my surprise when the General told me, further, that these meetings
were to be held, not in the interests of Hampton, but in the interests
of Tuskegee, and that the Hampton Institute was to be responsible for
all the expenses.
Although he never told me so in so many words, I found that
General Armstrong took this method of introducing me to the people of
the North, as well as for the sake of securing some immediate funds to
be used in the erection of Alabama Hall. A weak and narrow man would
have reasoned that all the money which came to Tuskegee in this way
would be just so much taken from the Hampton Institute; but none of
these selfish or short-sighted feelings ever entered the breast of
General Armstrong. He was too big to be little, too good to be mean.
He knew that the people in the North who gave money gave it for the
purpose of helping the whole cause of Negro civilization, and not
merely for the advancement of any one school. The General knew, too,
that the way to strengthen Hampton was to make it a centre of
unselfish power in the working out of the whole Southern problem.
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