PREFACE. All circumstances considered, the Negro race has made, and through its leaders is now making, history most creditably. A defect, from which the race suffers much, arises out of the fact that so little effort has been made to record and preserve the creditable history which the race has already made. These things ought not so to be. For the day will come when the future historian, observing our advancement, will desire to know the sources, the quality and quantity of the causes, that have combined to determine the trend of our civilization, and have conspired to develop and bring to pass the flattering attainments which are yet to be racially ours. And when that time comes and come it will the ante bellum Negro of force and character will then receive a consideration much greater than is now considered is due him. When this type of Negro shall more nearly come into his own, nowhere in this Southland will a character be found more worthy and deserving of consid eration than the man who is the subject of this sketch. As truly as God called Moses to lead the 3 children of Israel at that most critical period of their history as truly as Paul was divinely chosen to stand on Mars Hill and confound, by unanswerable arguments, the skepticism and atheism of that day, so truly have events shown that our subject was guided by a High er Power in his leadership among the negroes of Edgefleld and Aiken counties, South Caro lina. Upon what other hypothesis can the quantity and quality of the work he accom plished be explained Himself denied the advantages of educa tion, why should he, in the face of strenuous opposition, have so labored for educational advantages among his people, that a Christian institution of learning came into existence, and yet exists, to lift up a standard of religious excellence and civic righteousness Denied the training by which logicians are trained, how else can we explain how he became possessed of such persuasive arguments, that thousands of people abandoned their ways of sin, and became active, sacrificing workers in the effort to have others know Him whom to know is life eternal With no insight into human nature, and no knowledge of the laws of cause and effect greater than that which 4 slavery taught, how and by what means did he become such a sane and safe leader and ad viser of his people, contributing so largely to the amelioration of race friction, and the es tablishing of peace and harmony, at a time when race prejudice gave promise of doing its worst To answer these questions no effort is here and now made. Our aim will be rather to show how great a debt of gratitude, both the white and colored people owe this most unique character, and how they can best liquidate that debt by helping to foster the Bettis Academy, which is so pregnant with opportunities of furthering the same altruistic lines, the work for the uplift and betterment of all the people which was so well begun by Mr. Bettis. For that purpose and to that end this brief sketch of the life and career of the Rev.Alexan der Bettis, and an account of the founding and development of Bettis Academy is here given. A. W. Nicholson. REV. ALEXANDER BETTIS. In ante bellum flays, during slavery, there lived not far from Trenton, in Edgefield coun ty, South Carolina, an aristocratic, cultured and very wealthy family of white people whose name was Bettis. They owned a negro man of unadulterated African extraction, who by permission of his owners, became the father of a child by a negro woman who belonged to and lived on the plantation of Colonel John Fair...