istake in the political career of
the colonel. The appellation of "nigger lover" kept him ever after
firmly wedged in his political grave. Thus, by the same stroke, was
the career of an ex-slaveholder wrecked and that of an ex-slave made.
This political blunder of a local office-seeker gave to education one
of its great formative institutions, to the Negro race its greatest
leader, and to America one of its greatest citizens.

One is tempted to feel that Booker T. Washington was always popular
and successful. On the contrary, for many years he had to fight his
way inch by inch against the bitterest opposition, not only of the
whites, but of his own race. At that time there was scarcely a Negro
leader of any prominence who was not either a politician or a
preacher. In the introduction to "Up from Slavery," Mr. Walter H. Page
says of his first experience many years ago with Booker Washington: "I
had occasion to write to him, and I addressed him as 'The Rev. Booker
T. Washington.' In his reply there was no mention of my addressing him
as a clergyman. But when I had occasion to write to him again, and
persisted in making him a preacher, his second letter brought a
postscript: 'I have no claim to Rev.' I knew most of the colored men
who at that time had become prominent as leaders of their race, but I
had not then known one who was neither a politician nor a preacher;
and I had not heard of the head of an important colored school who
was not a preacher. 'A new kind of man in the colored world,' I said
to myself--'a new kind of man surely if he looks upon his task as an
economic one instead of a theological one."

And just because Booker Washington did look "upon his task as an
economic one instead of a theological one" he was at first regarded
with suspicion by most of the preachers of his race and by some openly
denounced as irreligious and the founder of an irreligious school.
Like so many men of greater opportunity in all ages and places, many
of these Negro ministers confounded theology and religion. Finding no
theology about Booker Washington or his school, they assumed there was
no religion. Some of them even went so far as to warn their
congregations from the pulpit to keep away from this Godless man and
his Godless school. To this formidable and at first almost universal
opposition from the leaders among his own people was added the more
natural opposition of the neighboring white men who assumed that he
was "spoil