Every experience and every science is possible only by means of certain nonempirical premises, such as the principles of real identity, of the continuity of existence, of constant causality or legality, and of the temporal continuity of becoming, or, in general, by means of fundamental a priori forms or principles, which constitute the organization of human cognitive powers but from whose transcendental validity by no means necessarily follows its transcendental reality. Is human life every worthwhile? Does (or can) human life have any meaning? What did freedom mean to a people who had endured and survived 250 years of enslavement in America? What did the future hold for nearly four million African Americans in 1865? True human life is part of a divinely ordained cosmic scheme and after death some human beings will be rewarded with eternal bliss, no matter what culture, race, gender they are. If we are asked to believe that all our striving is without final consequence, then life is meaningless and it scarcely matters how we live if we all end in the dust of death. According to Christianity, on the other hand, each action has vital significance. God’s grand design is life eternal for those who walk in the steps of Christ. Here is the one grand incentive to good living. As life is seen to have purpose and meaning, people find release from despair and the fear of death. #RandolphHarris 1 of 9

Whatever meaning life acquires is derived from the encounter between God and human beings. Freedom meant many things to many people. However, to most people who had been enslaved, it meant that families would stay together. Freedom meant that women and men would no longer be sexually exploited. Freedom meant that moving around without having to obtain permission. Freedom meant that labor would produce income for the laborer and not the master. Freedom meant working without the sting of the whip, thrashing against your skin and drawing blood as an incentive to work harder, faster, better, stronger, longer. Freedom meant one could own land, cultivate it, and build their dream home. Freedom meant, if charged with a crime, a trial before jury. Freedom meant voting. Freedom meant citizenship and having the same rights as White people. Years after slavery ended, a Texas woman, who had once been enslaved, called Mrs. Margrett Nillin was asked if she preferred slavery or freedom. “Well, it is this way, in slavery I owned nothing and never owed anything. In freedom I own my home and raise my family. All that causes me worriment and in slavery I had no worriment, but I prefer freedom,” reports Mrs. Margrett Nillin. #RandolphHarris 2 of 9

The meaning thus conferred upon human life cannot be understood in terms of some finite human purpose, supposedly more ultimate than the meeting itself. For what could be more ultimate than the Presence of God? It is true that God is not always near, but in times of Divine farness are by no means devoid of meaning. Times of Divine nearness do not light up themselves alone. Their meaning extends over all of life. There is a dialectic between Divine nearness and Divine farness and it points to an eschatological future in which it is overcome. Some people believed in the perishableness of all good things and the ultimate extinction of all their hopes and achievements in death. As slavery ended, the most urgent need for many freed people was finding family members who had been sold away from them. Slavery had not destroyed the African American family. Husbands, wives, and children went to great lengths to reassemble their families after the Civil War. For years and even decades after the end of slavery, advertisements appeared in the African American newspapers appealing for information about missing kinfolk. #RandolphHarris 3 of 9

The following notice was published in the Colored Tennessean on 5 August 1865: Saml. Dove wished to know of the whereabouts of his mother, Areno, his sisters Maria, Neziah and Peggy, and his brother Edmond, who were owned by Geo. Dove of Rockingham County, Shenandoah Valley, Virginia. Sold in Richmond, after which Saml and Edmond were taken to Nashville, Tennessee, by Joe Mick; Areno was left at the Eagle Tavern, Richmond. Respectfully yours, Saml Dove, Utica, New York. To be a moral individual is to be part of the human community and to be actively concerned in the life of other human beings. It is indeed undeniable that people frequently fail to bring about the ends of morally inspired acts or wishes, but phenomenological analysis discloses that the real moral value and meaning of an act does not depend on the attainment of the external goal. The good will is the moral intent or attitude. It is here that we find the existential meaning of life: Since that which is morally good contains its meaning and value within itself, it follows that it is intrinsically worth while. The existence of what is morally good is therefore better than its nonexistence. However, the existence of what is morally good is essentially connected with the existence of free moral individuals, and hence it follows that the existence of human beings as moral agents is better than their nonexistence. #RandolphHarris 4 of 9

In North Carolina, a northern journalist met a middle-age African America man plodding along, staff in hand,  and apparently very footsore and tired. The nearly exhausted freedman explained that he had walked almost six hundred miles looking for his wife and children who had been sold four years earlier. There were emotional reunions as family members found each other after years of separation. Ben and Betty Dodson had been apart for twenty years when Ben found her in a refugee camp after the war “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah,” he shouted as he hugged his wife. “This is my Betty, sure yes. I found you at last. I was haunted and haunted until I tracked you up here. I was bound to hunt until I found you if you were still alive.” The hunger for the love of their family and the faith of God sure was apparent. There was nothing more valuable than family to Americans at one time. Other searches had more heart-wrenching results, however. Husbands and wives sometimes learned that their spouses had remarried during the separation. Believing that his wife had died, the husband of Laura Spicer remarried—only to learn after the war that Laura was still alive. Sadly, he wrote to her, but refused to meet with her. “I would come and see you, but I know I could not bear it. I want to see you, but I do not want to see you. I love you just as well as I did the last day I saw you, and it will not do for you and I to meet.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 9

Tormented, he wrote again pledging his love. “Laura I do not think that I have changed any at all since I saw you last—I think of you and my children every day of my life. Laura, I do love you the same. My love to you never has failed. Laura, truly, I have got another wife, and I am very sorry that I am. You feel and seem to me as much like my dear loving wife, as you ever did Laura.” The conclusion is inevitable: the best or least undesirable form of existence is reached when, finally, we descend benath the threshold of consciousness; for only there so we see individual pain entirely disappear. Sometimes people reach a negative answer on the ground that unhappiness usually or necessarily outweighs happiness. If the generative act were an affair of pure rational reflection, could the human race continue to exists? Perhaps few who have directly observed the worst agonies and tortures that may be the lot of human beings or animals would subscribe to this judgment, but we have to be careful not to play down the horrors of life because we have to correct the miseries of the human scene. #RandolphHarris 6 of 9

One freedman testified to the close relations that bound many enslaved families when he replied bitterly to the claim that he had a kind master who had fed him and never used the whip. “Kind! Yes, he gives men corn enough, and he gives me pork enough, and he never gives me one lick with the whip, but where is my wife?—Where are my Children? Take away the pork, I say; take away the corn, I can work and raise these for myself, but give me back my wife of my heart, and give me back my darling children, as they were sold away without my consent. Emancipation was also a traumatic experience for many former slave masters. A Virginia freedman remembered that Miss Polly died right after the surrender, she was so heart broken that her African America were going to leave her alone and lonely. Another former slave, Robert Falls, recalled that his master assembled the enslaved people to inform them they were free. “I hate to do it, but I must. You all are not my human capital anymore. You are free. Just as free as I am. Here I have raised you all to work for me, and now you are going to leave me. I am an old man, and I cannot get along without you. I do not know what I am going to do.” In less than a year, he was dead. Robert Falls attributed his master’s death to the end of slavery. “It killed him.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 9

Family bonds are formed in many ways. And, perhaps a lot goes unsaid, but the fact is that people need other people to survive. In preindustrial societies a kin group may live and work together, share economic resources, and conduct religious and social activities in common. However, declines in household size are becoming more common in both developed and developing countries, because of lower fertility, increased migration, and much greater numbers of persons living alone than at any time in the last. Today, with the exceptions of parents, siblings, and a handful of other close kin, many White, middle-class Americas see relatives rarely—typically at family reunions or holiday celebrations. Moreover, they do not expect much of their more distant relatives, nor do they feel particularly obligated to them. For those at the top of the stratification hierarchy also, such as the Cresleigh, Harris, Hearst, Hilton, and Winchester families, kinship networks are important and often provide their members with homes, jobs, and other support. The less affluent also maintain close bounds with relatives. There is a will to live, and that will is fueled by human concern and human companionship. It makes people feel good to know someone is concerned about them, one lady expressed that concern people have for her is the source of her will to live most eloquently. #RandolphHarris 8 of 9

Some people seem to have more social support than others. Some seniors lay in their beds for weeks in the hospital, and only medical personnel visit them. However, the fact that someone cares and their faith in God keeps them alive. “The things I shall tell you are made known unto me by an Angel from God. And he said unto me: Awake; and I awoke, and behold he stood before me. And he said unto me: Awake, and hear the words which I shall tell thee; for behold, I am come to declare unto you the glad tidings of great joy. For the Lord hath heard thy prayers, and hath judged of thy righteousness, and hath sent me to declare unto thy people, that they may also be filled with joy. For behold, the time cometh, and is not far distant, that with power, the Lord Omnipotent who reigneth, who was, and is from all eternity to all eternity, shall come down from Heaven among the children of men, and shall dwell in a tabernacle of clay, and shall go forth amongst people, working mighty miracles, such a healing the sick, raising the dead, and causing the lame to walk, the blind to receive their sight, and the deaf to hear, and curing all manner of aliments. And he shall cast out the adversary, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of people,” reports Mosiah 3.2-6. #RandolphHarris 9 of 9