Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive/American Libraries.)







THE HISTORY OF THE NEGRO CHURCH

BY

CARTER G. WOODSON, Ph.D.

_Editor of the Journal of Negro History, author of A Century of Negro

Migration, and of the Education of the Negro Prior to 1861_

THE ASSOCIATED PUBLISHERS

WASHINGTON, D. C.

[Publisher's logo]

Copyright, 1921

By THE ASSOCIATED PUBLISHERS

[Illustration: A CHRISTIANIZED AFRICAN. _Frontispiece_]




To

THE CHERISHED MEMORY OF

MY MOTHER

ANNE ELIZA WOODSON




PREFACE


The importance of the church in the life of the Negro justifies the
publication of this brief account of the development of the institution.
For many years the various denominations have been writing treatises
bearing on their own particular work, but hitherto there has been no
effort to study the achievements of all of these groups as parts of the
same institution and to show the evolution of it from the earliest
period to the present time. This is the objective of this volume.

Whether or not the author has done this task well is a question which
the public must decide. This work does not represent what he desired to
make it. Many facts of the past could not be obtained for the reason
that several denominations have failed to keep records and facts known
to persons now active in the church could not be collected because of
indifference or the failure to understand the motives of the author. Not
a few church officers and ministers, however, gladly coöperated with the
author in giving and seeking information concerning their denominations.
Among these were Mr. Charles H. Wesley, Prof. J. A. Booker, and Dr.
Walter H. Brooks. For their valuable assistance the author feels deeply
grateful.

    CARTER G. WOODSON.

  Washington, D. C., September, 1921.




CONTENTS

      CHAPTER                                           PAGE


      I.--Early Missionaries and the Negro                 1
      II.--The Dawn of the New Day                        23
      III.--Pioneer Negro Preachers                       40
      IV.--The Independent Church Movement                71
      V.--Early Development                              100
      VI.--The Schism and the Subsequent Situation       123
      VII.--Religious Instruction Revived                148
      VIII.--Preachers of Versatile Genius               167
      IX.--The Civil War and the Church                  185
      X.--Religious Education as a Preparation           202
      XI.--The Call of Politics                          220
      XII.--The Conservative and Progressive             247
      XIII.--The Negro Church Socialized                 266
      XIV.--The Recent Growth of the Negro Church        286
      XV.--The Negro Church of To-day                    300
      FOOTNOTES
      INDEX




ILLUSTRATIONS


      A Christianized African _Frontispiece_
      Directing the Wanderer in the right Way
      The Oldest Negro Baptist Church in the United States
      Lemuel Haynes
      Andrew Bryan
      Richard Allen
      James Varick
      Peter Williams
      Christopher Rush
      Lott Cary
      M. C. Clayton
      Sampson White
      Josiah Henson
      Noah Davis
      Samuel R. Ward
      Alexander Crummell
      J. W. C. Pennington
      Henry Highland Garnett
      Daniel A. Payne
      Richard DeBaptiste
      W. H. Miles
      Wilberforce During the Civil War
      William J. Simmons
      James Poindexter
      J. C. Price
      H. M. Turner
      B. W. Arnett
      W. B. Derrick
      J. W. Hood
      L. H. Holsey
      Rufus L. Perry
      Charles T. Walker
      John Jasper
      E. K. Love
      W. R. Pettiford
      M. C. B. Mason
      George W. Lee
      Alexander Walters




CHAPTER I

THE EARLY MISSIONARIES AND THE NEGRO


One of the causes of the discovery of America was the translation into
action of the desire of European zealots to extend the Catholic religion
into other parts. Columbus, we are told, was decidedly missionary in his
efforts and felt that he could not make a more significant contribution
to the church than to open new fields for Christian endeavor. His final
success in securing the equipment adequate to the adventure upon the
high seas was to some extent determined by the Christian motives
impelling the sovereigns of Spain to finance the expedition for the
reason that it might afford an opportunity for promoting the cause of
Christ. Some of the French who came to the new world to establish their
claims by further discovery and exploration, moreover, were either
actuated by similar motives or welcomed the coöperation of earnest
workers thus interested.

The first persons proselyted by the Spanish and French missionaries were
Indians. There was not any particular thought of the Negro. It may seem
a little strange just now to think of persons having to be converted to
faith in the possibility of the salvation of the Negro, but there were
among the colonists thousands who had never considered the Negro as
belonging to the pale of Christianity. Negroes had been generally
designated as infidels; but, in the estimation of their self-styled
superiors, they were not considered the most desirable of this class
supposedly arrayed against Christianity. There were few Christians who
did not look forward to the ultimate conversion of those infidels
approaching the Caucasian type, but hardly any desired to make an effort
in the direction of proselyting Negroes.

When, however, that portion of this Latin element primarily interested
in the exploitation of the Western Hemisphere failed to find in the
Indians the substantial labor supply necessary to their enterprises and
at the suggestion of men like las Casas imported Negroes for this
purpose, the missionaries came face to face with the question as to
whether this new sort of heathen should receive the same consideration
as that given the Indians. Because of the unwritten law that a Christian
could not be held a slave, the exploiting class opposed any such
proselyting; for, should the slaves be liberated upon being converted,
their plans for development would fail for lack of a labor supply
subject to their orders as bondmen. The sovereigns of Europe, once
inclined to adopt a sort of humanitarian policy toward the Negroes, at
first objected to their importation into the new world; and when under
the pressure of the interests  of the various countries they yielded on
this point, it was stipulated that such slaves should have first
embraced Christianity. Later, when further concessions to the
capitalists were necessary, it was provided in the royal decrees of
Spain and of France that Africans enslaved in America should merely be
early indoctrinated in the principles of the Christian religion.

These decrees, although having the force of law, soon fell into
desuetude. There was not among these planters any sentiment in favor of
such humanitarian treatment of the slaves. Unlike the missionaries, the
planters were not interested in religion and they felt that too much
enlightenment of the slaves might inspire them with the hope of
attaining the status of freemen. The laws, therefore, were nominally
accepted as just and the functionaries in the colonies in reporting to
their home countries on the state of the plantations made it appear that
they were generally complied with. As there was no such thing as an
inspection of these commercial outposts, moreover, no one in Europe
could easily determine exactly what attitude these men had toward
carrying out the will of the home countries with respect to the
Christianization of the bondmen. From time to time, therefore, the
humanitarian world heard few protests like that of Alfonso Sandoval in
Cuba and the two Capucin monks who were imprisoned in Havana because of
their inveighing against the failure on the part of the planters to
provide for the religious instruction of the slaves. Being in the
minority, these upright pioneers too often had their voices hushed in
persecution, as it happened in the case of the two monks.

It appears, however, that efforts in behalf of Negroes elsewhere were
not in vain; for the Negroes in Latin America were not only proselyted
thereafter but were given recognition among the clergy. Such was the
experience of Francisco Xavier de Luna Victoria, son of a freedman, a
Panama charcoal burner, whose chief ambition was to educate this young
man for the priesthood. He easily became a priest and after having
served acceptably in this capacity a number of years was chosen Bishop
of Panama in 1751 and administered this office eight years. He was later
called to take charge of the See of Trujillo, Peru.

In what is now the United States the Spanish and French missionaries had
very little contact with the Negroes during the early period, as they
were found in large numbers along the Atlantic coast only. In the West
Indies, however, the Latin policy decidedly dominated during the early
colonial period, and when the unwritten law that a Christian could not
be held a slave was by special statutes and royal decrees annulled, the
planters eventually yielded in their objection to the religious
instruction of the slaves and generally complied with the orders of the
home country to this effect.

Maryland was the only Atlantic colony in which the Catholics had the
opportunity to make an appeal to a large group of Negroes. After some
opposition the people of that colony early met the test of preaching the
gospel to all regardless of color. The first priests and missionaries
operating in Maryland regarded it their duty to enlighten the slaves;
and, as the instruction of the communicants of the church became more
systematic to make their preparation adequate to the proper
understanding of the church doctrine, some sort of instruction of the
Negroes attached to these establishments was provided in keeping with
the sentiment expressed in the first ordinances of the Spanish and
French sovereigns and later in the Black Code governing the bondmen in
the colonies controlled by the Latins.

Although the attitude of the Catholic pioneers was not altogether
encouraging to the movement for the evangelization of the Negroes, still
less assistance came from the Protestants settling the English colonies.
Few, if any, of the pioneers from Great Britain had the missionary
spirit of some of the Latins. As the English were primarily interested
in founding new homes in America, they thought of the Negroes not as
objects of Christian philanthropy but rather as tools with which they
might reach that end. It is not surprising then that with the
introduction of slavery as an economic factor in the development of the
English colonies little care was taken of their spiritual needs, and
especially so when they were confronted with the unwritten law that a
Christian could not be held a slave.

Owing to the more noble example set by the Latins, however, and the
desirable results early obtained by their missionaries, the English
planters permitted some sort of religious instruction of the bondmen,
after providing by royal decrees and special statutes in the colonies
that conversion to Christianity would not work manumission. Feeling,
however, that the nearer the blacks were kept to the state of brutes
that the more useful they would be as laborers, the masters generally
neglected them.

The exceptions to this rule were the efforts of various clergymen in
coöperation with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts. This organization was established in London in 1701 to do
missionary work among the heathen, especially the Indians and the
Negroes. Its function was to prepare the objects of its philanthropy for
a proper understanding of the church doctrine and the relation of man to
God. This body operated through the branches of the established church,
the ministrations of which were first limited to a few places in
Virginia, New York, Maryland, and the cities of Boston and Philadelphia.
From the very beginning this society felt that the conversion of the
Negroes was as important as that of bringing the whites or the Indians
into the church and such distinguished churchmen as Bishops Lowth,
Fleetwood, Williams, Sanderson,  Butler, and Wilson, persistently urged
this duty upon their subordinates. In 1727 Bishop Gibson sent out two
forceful pastoral letters outlining this duty of the missionaries,
Bishop Secker preached a soul-stirring sermon thereupon in 1741, and in
1784 Bishop Porteus published an extensive plan for the more effectual
conversion of the slaves, contending that "despicable as they are in the
eyes of man they are, nevertheless, the creatures of God."

The first successful worker in this field was the Rev. Samuel Thomas of
Goose Creek Parish in the colony of South Carolina. The records show
that he was thus engaged as early as 1695 and that ten years later he
reported 20 black communicants who, with several others, well understood
the English language. By 1705 he had brought under his instruction as
many as 1,000 slaves, "many of whom," said he, "could read the Bible
distinctly and great numbers of them were engaged in learning the
scriptures." When these blacks approached the communion table, however,
some white persons seriously objected, inquiring whether it was possible
that slaves should go to heaven anyway. But having the coöperation of a
number of liberal slaveholders in that section and working in
collaboration with Mrs. Haig, Mrs. Edwards, and the Rev. E. Taylor, who
baptized a number of them, the missionaries in that colony prepared the
way for the Christianization of the Negro slaves.

Becoming interested in the thorough indoctrination of these slaves, Mr.
Taylor planned for their instruction, encouraging the slaveholders to
teach the blacks at least to the extent of learning the Lord's Prayer.
Manifesting such interest in these unfortunate blacks, their friends
easily induced them to attend church in such large numbers that they
could not be accommodated. "So far as the missionaries were permitted,"
says one, "they did all that was possible for their evangelization, and
while so many professed Christians among the whites were lukewarm, it
pleased God to raise to himself devout servants among the heathen, whose
faithfulness was commended by the Masters themselves." In some of the
congregations the Negroes constituted one-half of the communicants.

This interest in proselyting the Negroes was extended into other parts.
In 1723, Rev. Mr. Guy of St. Andrew's Parish reported that he had
baptized a Negro man and woman. About the same time Rev. Mr. Hunt, in
charge of St. John's Parish, had among his communicants a slave, "a
sensible Negro who can read and write and come to church, a catechumen
under probation for baptism, which he desires."

A new stage in the progress of this movement was reached in 1743 when
there was established at Charleston, South Carolina, a special school to
train Negroes for participation in this missionary work. This school was
opened by Commissary Garden and placed in charge of Harry and Andrew,
two young men of color, who had been thoroughly instructed in the
rudiments of education and in the doctrines of the church. It not only
served as the training school for missionary workers, but directed its
attention also to the special needs of adults who studied therein during
the evenings. From this school there were sent out from year to year
numbers of youths to undertake this work in various parts of the colony
of South Carolina. After having accomplished so much good for about a
generation, however, the school was, in 1763, closed for various
reasons, one of them being that one of the instructors died and the
other proved inefficient.

Farther upward in the colony of North Carolina, the same difficulties
were encountered. There the motive was the fear that, should the slaves
be converted, they would, according to the unwritten law of Christendom,
become free. Some planters, however, were very soon thereafter persuaded
to let these missionaries continue their work. "By much importunity,"
says an annalist, Mr. Ranford of Chowan, "in 1712 we prevailed upon Mr.
Martin to let him baptize three of his Negroes, two women and a boy. All
the arguments I could make use of," said he, "would scarce effect it
till Bishop Fleetwood's sermon in 1711 turned ye scale." These workers
then soon found it possible to instruct and baptize more than forty
Negroes in one year, and not long thereafter some workers reported as
many as 15 to 24 in one month, 40 to 50 in six months and 60 to 70 in a
year. Rev. Mr. Newman, proclaiming the new day of the Gospel in that
colony, reported in 1723 that he had baptized two Negroes who could say
the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments and gave good
sureties for their fuller information. According to the report of Rev.
C. Hall, the number of conversions there among the Negroes for eight
years was 355, including 112 adults; and "at Edenton the blacks
generally were induced to attend service at all these stations where
they behaved with great decorum."

In the middle colonies the work was given additional impetus by the
mission of Dr. Thomas Bray. The Bishop of London sent this gentleman to
the colony of Maryland for the purpose of devising plans to convert
adult Negroes and educate their children. Having also the influential
support of M. D'Alone, the private secretary of King William, who gave
for its maintenance a fund, the proceeds of which were to be used to
employ catechists, the Thomas Bray Mission decidedly encouraged these
missionaries. The catechists appointed, however, failed; but the work
was well extended throughout Maryland, into neighboring colonies, and
even into the settlements of Georgia, through certain persons assuming
the title of Dr. Bray's Associates. Traveling in North Carolina, Rev.
Mr. Stewart, a missionary, found there a school maintained by Dr. Bray's
Associates for the education of Indians and Negroes. They were
supporting such a school in Georgia in 1751; but in 1766 the Rev. S.
Frink, a missionary trying to secure a hearing in Augusta, found that he
could neither convert the Indians nor the whites, who seemed to be as
destitute of religion as the former; but he succeeded in converting some
Negroes.

[Illustration: DIRECTING THE WANDERER IN THE RIGHT WAY.]

In Pennsylvania the missionary movement among the Negroes found
apparently less obstacles. There are records showing the baptism of
Negroes as early as 1712. One Mr. Yates, a worker at Chester, was
commended by the Rev. G. Ross "for his endeavors to train up the Negroes
in the knowledge of religion." Mr. Ross himself had on one occasion at
Philadelphia baptized as many as twelve adult Negroes, who were examined
before the congregation and answered to the admiration of all who heard
them. "The like sight had never been seen before in that church." Giving
account of his efforts in Sussex County in 1723, Rev. Mr. Beckett said
that many Negroes constantly attended his services, while Rev. Mr.
Bartow about the same time baptized a Negro at West Chester. Rev.
Richard Locke christened eight Negroes in one family at Lancaster in
1747 and another Negro there the following year. In 1774 the Rev. Mr.
Jenney observed a great and daily increase of Negroes in this city, "who
with joy attend upon the catechist for instruction." He had baptized
several but was unable to add to his other duties.

The Society, ever ready to lend a helping hand to such an enterprise,
appointed the Rev. W. Sturgeon  as catechist for the Negroes in
Philadelphia. At the same time the Rev. Mr. Neal of Dover was meeting
with equally good results, having baptized as many as 162 Negroes within
eight months. Now and then, however, as in the case of Rev. Mr. Pugh, a
missionary at Appoquinimmick, Pennsylvania, the missionaries received
very few Negroes, because their masters here, as elsewhere, were
prejudiced against their being Christians.

The Society did not operate extensively in the State of New Jersey. The
Rev. Mr. Lindsay mentions his baptizing a Negro at Allerton in 1736. The
missions of New Brunswick reported a large number of Negroes as having
become attached to their churches, but this favorable situation was not
the rule throughout the State. The missionary spirit was not wanting,
however, and the accession of Negroes to the churches followed later in
spite of local opposition and the general apathy as to the
indoctrination of the blacks.

In those colonies further north where the Negroes were not found in
large numbers, little opposition to their indoctrination was
experienced; and their evangelization proceeded without interruption,
whereas in most southern colonies the proselyting of the Negroes was
largely restricted to what the ministers and missionaries could do
during their spare time. There was in New York a special provision for
the employment of 16 clergymen and 13 lay teachers for the conversion of
free Indians and Negro slaves. Elias Neau, a worker in these ranks,
established in New York City in 1704 a catechizing school for Negro
slaves. After several years of imprisonment in France because of his
Protestant faith he had come to New York as a trader. Upon witnessing,
however, the neglected condition of the blacks, who, according to his
words, "were without God in the world and of whose souls there was no
manner of care taken," he proposed the appointment of a catechist to
undertake their instruction. Finally being prevailed upon to accept the
position himself, he obtained a license from the Governor, resigned his
position as elder in the French church, and conformed to the established
church of England. At first he served from house to house but very soon
secured a regular place of instruction, after being commended by the
Society to Mr. Vesey, as a constant communicant of the church and a most
zealous and prudent servant of Christ in proselyting the Negroes and
Indians to the Christian religion whereby he did great service to God
and his church. There was a further expression of confidence in him in a
bill to be offered to Parliament "for the more effectual conversion of
the Negroes and other servants in the plantations, to compel owners of
slaves to cause their children to be baptized within three months after
their birth and to permit them, when come to years of discretion, to be
instructed in the Christian religion on our Lord's Day by the
missionaries under whose ministry they live."

Neau's school suffered considerably in the Negro riot in that city in
1712, when it was closed by local authority and an investigation of his
operations ordered. Upon learning, however, that the slaves primarily
concerned in this rising were not connected with his school but had
probably engaged in this enterprise because of their neglected
condition, the city permitted him to continue his operations as a
teacher, feeling that Christian knowledge would not necessarily be a
means of more cunning and aptitude to wickedness. The Governor and the
Council, the Mayor, the Recorder, and Chief Justice informed the Society
that Neau had "performed his work to the great advancement of religion
and particular benefit of the free Indians, Negro slaves and other
heathen in these parts, with indefatigable zeal and application."

Neau died in 1722; but his work was continued by Huddlestone, Whitmore,
Colgan, Auchmutty, and Charlton. The last mentioned had undertaken the
instruction of the blacks while at New Windsor and found it practical
and convenient to throw into one class his white and black catechumens.
Mr. Auchmutty served from 1747 to 1764 and finally reported that there
was among the Negroes an ever-increasing desire for instruction and not
one single black "that had been admitted by him to the holy communion
had turned out bad or been in any way a disgrace to our holy
profession."

This good work done in the city of New York extended into other parts
of the colony. We hear of Rev. Mr. Stoupe in 1737 baptizing four black
children at New Rochelle. At New Windsor, Rev. Charles Taylor, a
school-master, kept a night school for the instruction of the Negroes.
Rev. J. Sayre, of Newburgh, promoted the education of the two races in
four of the churches under his charge. In 1714 Rev. T. Barclay, an
earnest worker among the slaves in Albany, reported a great forwardness
among them to embrace Christianity and a readiness to receive
instruction, although there was much opposition among some of the
masters. Sixty years later Schenectady reported among its members eleven
Negroes who were sober and serious communicants.

These missionaries met with some opposition in New England among the
Puritans, who had no serious objection to seeing the Negroes saved but
did not care to see them incorporated into the church, which then being
connected with the state, would grant them political as well as
religious equality. There had been an academic interest in the
conversion of the Negroes. John Eliot had no particular objection to
slavery but regretted that it precluded the possibility of their
instruction in the Christian doctrine and worked a loss of their souls.
Cotton Mather, taking the task of evangelization seriously, drew up a
set of rules by which masters should be governed in the instruction of
their slaves. He had much fear of the prodigious wickedness of deriding,
neglecting and opposing all due means of bringing the poor Negroes unto
God. He did not believe that Almighty God made so many thousand
reasonable creatures for nothing but "only to serve the lusts of
epicures or the gains of mammonists." In the protest of Jonathan Sewell
set forth in his _Selling of Joseph_, there was an attack on slavery
because the servants differed from those of Abraham, who commanded his
children and his household that they should keep the way of the Lord. In
this they were standing upon the high ground taken by Richard Baxter, an
authority among the Puritans, who, denouncing the use of the slaves as
beasts for their mere commodity, said, that their masters who "betray or
destroy or neglect their souls are fitter to be called incarnate devils
than Christians though they be no Christian whom they so abuse."

The opposition there, however, was not apparent everywhere among the
ministers of other sects. From Bristol, Rev. J. Usher of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, wrote in 1730 that
several Negroes desired baptism and were able to "render a very good
account of the hope that was in them," but he was forbidden by their
masters to comply with the request. Yet he reported the same year that
among others he had in his congregation "about 30 Negroes and Indians,"
most of whom joined "in the public service very decently." At Newton,
where greater opposition was encountered, J. Beach seemed to have
baptized by 1733 many Indians and a few Negroes. Dr. Cutler, a
missionary at Boston, wrote to the Society in 1737 that among those he
had admitted to his church were four Negro slaves. Endeavoring to do
more than to effect nominal conversions, Dr. Johnson, while at
Stratford, gave catechetical lectures during the summer months of 1751,
attended by "many Negroes and some Indians, as well as whites, about 70
or 80 in all." And said he: "As far as I can find, where the Dissenters
have baptized two, if not three or four, Negroes or Indians, I have four
or five communicants." Dr. Macsparran conducted at Narragansett a class
of 70 Indians and Negroes whom he frequently catechized and instructed
before the regular service. J. Honyman, of Newport, had in his
congregation more than 100 Negroes who "constantly attended the Publick
Worship."

The real interest in the evangelization of the Negroes in the English
colonies, however, was manifested not by those in authority but by the
Quakers, who, being friends of all humanity, would not neglect the
Negroes. In accepting these persons of color on a basis of equality,
however, the Quakers, in denouncing the nakedness of the religion of the
other colonists at the same time, alienated their affections and easily
brought down upon them the wrath of the public functionaries in these
plantations. Believing that such influence would not be salutary in
slaveholding communities, many of them, as they did in Virginia,
prohibited the Quakers from taking the Negroes to their meetings. Such
opposition was but natural when we find that their leader, George Fox,
was advocating the instruction of Negroes in 1672 and boldly entreating
his coworkers to instruct and teach the Indians and Negroes in 1679 how
that "Christ by the grace of God tasted death for every man." When
George Keith in 1693 began to promote the religious training of the
slaves as preparation for emancipation and William Penn actually
advocated the abolition of the system to commit the whole sect to a
definite scheme to return the Negroes to Africa to Christianize that
continent, such opposition easily developed wherever the Friends
operated.

These people, however, would not be deterred from carrying out their
purpose. The results which followed show that they were not frustrated
in the execution of their plans. John Woolman, one of the fathers of the
Quakers in America, always bore testimony against slavery and repeatedly
urged that the blacks be given religious instruction. We hear later of
their efforts in towns and in the colonies of Virginia and North
Carolina to teach Negroes to read and write. Such Negroes as were
accessible in the settlements of the North came under the influence of
Quakers of the type of John Hepburn, William Burling, Elihu Coleman,
Ralph Sandiford, and Anthony Benezet, who established a number of
successful missions operating among the Negroes. As the Quakers were,
because of their anti-slavery tendencies, the owners of few slaves and
were denied access to those of others, what they did for the
evangelization of the whole group was little when one considers the
benighted darkness in which most Negro slaves in America lived. The
faith of the Quakers, their religious procedure, and peculiar customs,
moreover, could not be easily understood and appreciated by the Negroes
in their undeveloped state.

Generally speaking, then, one should say that the Negroes were
neglected. The few missionaries among them stood like shining lights
after a great darkness. They, moreover, faced numerous handicaps, among
which might be mentioned the conflicts of views, and especially that of
the established church with the Catholics and later with the evangelical
sects. There were also the difficulties resulting from dealing with a
backward pioneering people, the scarcity of workers, and the lack of
funds to sustain those who volunteered for this service.

Some difficulty resulted too from the differences of opinion as to what
tenets of religion should be taught the Negro and how they should be
presented. Should the Negroes be first instructed in the rudiments of
education and then taught the doctrines of the church or should the
missionaries start with the Negro intellect as he found it on his
arrival from Africa and undertake to inculcate doctrines which only the
European mind could comprehend? There was, of course, in the interest of
those devoted to exploitation, a tendency to make the religious
instruction of the Negroes as nearly nominal as possible only to remove
the stigma attached to those who neglected the religious life of their
servants. Such limited instruction, however, as the slaves received when
given only a few moments on Sunday proved to be tantamount to no
instruction at all; for missionaries easily observed in the end that
Christianity was a rather difficult religion for an undeveloped mind to
grasp.

As long as these efforts were restricted to the Anglican clergy,
moreover, there could be little question among the British as to the
advisability of the procedure. When, however, upon the expansion of the
territory of the Catholics and other sects the Negroes came under the
influence of different sorts of religion promoted by men of a new
thought and new method, some conflict necessarily arose. There was
another handicap in that the Anglican clergymen in America during the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not of the highest order.
Their establishments were maintained by a tax on the colonists in
keeping with the customs and laws of England, so that their income was
assured, whether or not they wielded an influence for good among the
people. The colonial clergy, therefore, too often became corrupt in this
independent economic position. They spent much of their time at games
and various sports, tarried at the cup and looked upon the wine when it
was red, in fact, became so interested in the enjoyment of the things
inviting in this world that they had in some cases little time to
devote to the elevation of the whites, to say nothing about the
elevation of the Negroes. They did not feel disposed to undertake this
work themselves and in adhering to their rights as representatives of
the established church precluded the possibility of a more general
evangelization of the Negroes by the other sects. One might expect from
a country, the religious affairs of which were thus administered, a
number of protests from those thus served. There was such a general lack
of culture among these backward colonists, however, that no such
complaint followed. Interest in religion must come from the promoters of
religion. If the clergymen themselves did not manifest interest in this
work, it was out of the question to expect others to do so.

Another difficulty was the lack of workers. The colonies were not
rapidly becoming densely populated and it was not then an easy matter to
induce young clergymen to try their fortunes in the wilderness of the
western world for such remuneration as the colonists in their scattered
and undeveloped economic state were able to give. As many of the white
settlements, therefore, were neglected, it would naturally follow that
the Negroes suffered likewise. Some of these workers volunteering to
toil in this field as missionaries were, of course, supported by funds
raised for that purpose; but the difficulty in raising money for
missions is still a problem of the church. At that time the people were
generally more disinclined to contribute to such causes than they are
to-day. That was the age of commercial expansion and available funds
were drawn into that field, much at the expense of the higher things of
life. The intelligent Christians, therefore, with a clear understanding
of the Bible and the doctrines derived therefrom were not legion even
among the whites prior to the American Revolution. The slaves with the
handicap of bondage, of course, could not constitute exceptions to this
rule.




CHAPTER II

THE DAWN OF THE NEW DAY


The new thought at work in the minds of the American people during the
second half of the eighteenth century, especially after the Seven Years'
War, aroused further interest in the uplift of the groups far down. By
this time the colonists had become more conscious of their unique
position in America, more appreciative of their worth in the development
of the new world, and more cognizant of the necessity to take care of
themselves by development from within rather than addition from without.
How to rehabilitate the weakened forces and how to minister to those who
had been neglected became a matter of concern to all forward-looking men
of that time.

[Illustration: THE FIRST COLORED BAPTIST CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA.]

The clergy thereafter considered the Negro more seriously even in those
parts where slaves were found in large numbers. Among those directing
attention to the spiritual needs of the race were Rev. Thomas Bacon and
Rev. Jonathan Boucher of the Anglican Church. The former undertook to
arouse his people through a series of sermons addressed to masters and
slaves about the year 1750. He said: "We should make this reading and
studying the Holy Scriptures and the reading and explaining of them to
our children and servants or the catechising and instructing them in the
principles of the Christian religion a stated duty. If the grown up
slaves from confirmed habits of vice are hard to be reclaimed, the
children surely are in our power and may be trained up in the way they
should go, with rational hopes that when they are old, they will not
depart from it." In 1763 Jonathan Boucher boldly said: "It certainly is
not a necessary circumstance essential to the condition of the slave
that he be not indoctrinated; yet this is the general and almost
universal lot of the slaves." He said, moreover: "You may unfetter them
from the chains of ignorance, you may emancipate them from the bondage
of sin, the worse slavery to which they could be subjected; and by thus
setting at liberty those that are bruised though they still continue to
be your slaves, they shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption
into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

The accomplishment of the task of more thoroughly proselyting the
Negroes, however, belongs to the record of other sects than the Anglican
Church. Even if the Negroes had been given the invitation to take a part
in the propagation of the gospel as promoted by the first sects in
control, the organization of these bodies, the philosophical foundation
of their doctrines, and the controversial atmosphere in which their
protagonists lived in this conflict of creeds, made it impossible for
persons of such limited mental development as the slaves were permitted
to experience, to participate. The Latin ceremonies of the Catholic
church and the ritualistic conformity required by the Anglicans too
often baffled the Negro's understanding, leaving him, even when he had
made a profession of faith, in a position of being compelled to accept
the spiritual blessings largely on the recommendation of the missionary
proffering them. The simplicity of the Quakers set forth as an attack on
the forms and ceremonies of the more aristocratic churches equally taxed
the undeveloped intellect of certain Negroes who often wondered how
matters so mysterious could be reduced to such an ordinary formula.

During the latter part of the seventeenth century and throughout the
eighteenth, there were rising to power in the United States two sects,
which, because of their evangelical appeal to the untutored mind, made
such inroads upon the Negro population as to take over in a few years
thereafter the direction of the spiritual development of most of the
Negroes throughout the United States. These were the Methodists and
Baptists. They, together with the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, imbibed
more freely than other denominations the social-compact philosophy of
John Locke and emphasized the doctrines of Coke, Milton, and Blackstone
as a means to justify the struggle for an enlargement of the domain of
political liberty, primarily for the purpose of securing religious
freedom denied them by the adherents of the Anglican Church.

Neither the Baptists nor the Methodists, however, were at first
especially interested in the Negro. Whitefield in Georgia advocated the
introduction of slaves and rum for the economic improvement of the
colony. He even owned slaves himself, although Wesley, Coke, and Asbury
opposed the institution and advocated emancipation as a means to
thorough evangelization. The work of the Methodists in behalf of the
Negroes, moreover, was still less directed toward their liberation in
the West Indies than on the continent, doubtless because of the fact
that in that section there did not develop the struggle for the rights
of man as an attack upon the British government as it happened in the
colonies along the Atlantic. But it is said that out of the 352,404
signatures to memorials sent by Dissenters to Parliament praying for the
abolition of slavery, 229,426 were the names of Methodists.

The missionaries, however, seemed to be trying to stir between Scylla
and Charybdis. They were forbidden to hold slaves but they were required
to promote the moral and religious improvement of the slaves without in
the least degree, in public or private, interfering with their civil
condition. One who served for twenty years in the West Indies said: "For
half a century from the commencement of Methodism the slaves never
expected  freedom, and the missionaries never taught them to expect it;
and when the agitation of later years unavoidably affected them more or
less, as they learned chiefly through the violent speeches of their own
masters or overseers what was going on in their favor in England; it was
missionary influence that moderated their passions, kept them in the
steady course of duty, and prevented them from sinning against God by
offending against the laws of man. Whatever outbreaks or insurrections
at any time occurred, no Methodist slave was ever proved guilty of
incendiarism or rebellion for more than seventy years, namely, from 1760
to 1833. An extensive examination of their correspondence throughout
that lengthened period, and an acquaintance with their general character
and history, enables me confidently to affirm that a more humble,
laborious, zealous, and unoffending class of Christian missionaries were
never employed by any section of the church than those sent out by the
British conference to the West India Isles. They were eminently men of
one business, unconnected with any political party, though often
strongly suspected by the jealousies so rife in slaveholding
communities. A curious instance of this jealousy occurred in regard to
one who was firmly believed to be a correspondent of the Anti-Slavery
Society in England. "I did not know," said Fowell Buxton, in the House
of Commons, "that such a man was in existence, till I heard that he was
to be hung for corresponding with me."

In what is now the United States, on the contrary, there developed among
the Baptists and Methodists a number of traveling missionaries,
seemingly like the apostles of old, who in preaching to blacks and
whites alike won most Negroes by attacking all evils, among which was
slavery. Freeborn Garretson, one of the earliest Methodist missionaries,
said to his countrymen that it was revealed to him that "it is not right
for you to keep your fellow creatures in bondage; you must let the
oppressed go free." He said in 1776: "It was God, not man, that taught
me the impropriety of holding slaves: and I shall never be able to
praise him enough for it. My very heart has bled, since that, for
slaveholders, especially those who make a profession of religion; for I
believe it to be a crying sin."

Bishop Asbury recorded in his _Journal_ in 1776: "I met the class and
then the black people, some of whose unhappy masters forbid their coming
for religious instruction. How will the sons of oppression answer for
their conduct when the great proprietor of all shall call them to
account?" In 1780 he records that he spoke to some select friends about
slave keeping but they could not bear it. He said: "This I know. God
will plead the cause of the oppressed though it gives offense to say so
here.... I am grieved for slavery and the manner of keeping these poor
people."

With these missionaries attacking slavery, the church as an organization
had to take some position. In 1780 the church required traveling
preachers to set their slaves free, declaring at the same time that
slavery is contrary to the laws of God, man and nature, and hurtful to
society; contrary to the dictates of conscience and pure religion, and
doing that which we would not that others should do to us and ours. In
1784 the conference took steps for the abolition of slavery, viewing it
as "contrary to the golden laws of God, on which hang all the law and
the prophets; and the inalienable rights of mankind, as well as every
principle of the Revolution, to hold in the deepest abasement in a more
abject slavery, than is, perhaps, to be found in any part of the world,
except America, so many souls that are all capable of the image of God."
Every slaveholding member of their society was required to liberate his
bondmen within twelve months. A record was to be kept of all slaves
belonging to masters within the respective circuits and further records
of their manumissions. Any person who would not comply with these
regulations would have liberty quietly to withdraw from the society
within twelve months, and, if he did not, he would be excluded at that
time.[1] Persons thus withdrawing should not partake of the Lord's
Supper and those holding slaves would be excluded from this same
privilege.

The Methodists who had taken this advanced position on slavery in 1784,
however, soon found that they were ahead of the majority of the local
members. Much agitation had been caused by this discussion in the State
of Virginia and in 1785 there came several petitions asking for a
suspension of the resolution passed in 1784 and it was so ordered in
1785 in the words: "It is recommended to all our brethren to suspend the
execution of the minute on slavery _till the deliberations of a future
conference_; and that an equal space of time be allowed to all our
members for consideration when the minute shall be put in force." The
conference declared, however, that it held in deepest abhorrence the
practice of slavery and would not cease to seek its destruction by all
wise and prudent means. These rules of 1784 were thereafter never put in
effect but in 1796 the conference took the position of requiring the
Methodists to be exceedingly cautious what persons they admitted to
official stations in the church; "and in case of future admission to
official stations, to require such security of those who hold slaves for
the emancipation of them immediately, or gradually, as the laws of the
States respectively and the circumstances of the case will admit." A
traveling preacher becoming the owner of a slave forfeited his
ministerial position. No slaveholder should be received in the society
until the preacher who has oversight of the circuit had spoken to him
freely and faithfully upon the subject of slavery. Every member who sold
a slave should immediately after full proof be excluded from the
society, and if any member purchased a slave, the quarterly meeting
should determine the number of years in which the slave so purchased
would work out the price of his purchase. The preachers and other
members of the society were requested to consider the subject of Negro
slavery with deep attention and to impart to the General Conference
through the medium of yearly conferences, or otherwise, any important
thought upon the subject. The annual conferences were directed to draw
up addresses for the gradual emancipation of the slaves to the
legislatures of those States in which no general laws had been passed
for that purpose.

Locally the Baptists were winning more Negroes than the Methodists by
their attack on slavery during these years, but because of the lack of
organized effort the Baptists did not exert as much antislavery
influence as the early Methodists. Through their conferences they often
influenced the local churches to do more against slavery than they would
have done for fear that they might lose their status among their
brethren. As the Baptist church emphasized above all things local
self-government, each church being a law unto itself, it did not as a
national body persistently attack slavery. The Baptists reached their
most advanced position as an anti-slavery body in 1789 when they took
action to the effect "that slavery is a violent depredation of the
rights of nature and inconsistent with a republican government, and
therefore, recommend it to our brethren, to make use of their local
missions to extirpate this horrid evil from the land; and pray Almighty
God that our honorable legislature may have it in their power to
proclaim the great jubilee consistent with the principles of good
policy."

From this position most Baptists gradually receded. Yet, although not
working as an organized body, the Baptists in certain parts of the
country were unusually outspoken and effective in waging war on slavery.
As there were a number of disputes, owing to the fact that the
denomination as a body was far from unanimity on this subject, some
dissension in the ranks followed. Those who believed in the abolition of
slavery by immediate means styled themselves the _Emancipating Baptists_
or the _Emancipating Society_ in contradistinction to the remaining
Calvinistic Baptists who desired to be silent on the question.

[Illustration: REV. LEMUEL HAYNES, A.M.

Sincerely yours Lemuel Haynes [Signature]]

The most outspoken of the former was David Barrow.[2] He was a native of
Virginia, where he commenced his ministry in 1771, passing through the
period of much insolence and persecution of the rude countrymen then
denying the liberal sects religious freedom. He early became attached to
the antislavery school and consequently emancipated his own slaves in
Virginia without at first having so very much to say against the
institution. After distinguishing himself in the State of Virginia for
his unusual piety and great ability, he moved to Kentucky in 1798 and
settled in Montgomery County. When the antislavery dispute became very
ardent soon thereafter, he carried his opposition to the extent of
alienating the support of his coworkers, who, sitting as an advisory
council, expelled him from the ministry for preaching emancipation, and
preferred similar charges against him that his local church at Mount
Sterling might act accordingly. After having taken this drastic step,
however, the Association at its next session voted to rescind this
action; but Barrow had then joined with the emancipators and did not
desire to return. Among those whom he found sufficiently companionable
in the new work which he had undertaken were Rev. Donald Holmes, Carter
Tarrant, Jacob Grigg, George Smith, and numerous other ministers, some
of whom were native Americans and others native Europeans.

These emancipators began by inquiring: "Can any person whose practice is
friendly to perpetual slavery be admitted a member of this meeting?"
They thought not. They inquired, moreover: "Is there any case in which
persons holding slaves may be admitted to membership into the church of
Christ?" They said: "No, except in the case of holding young slaves with
a view to their future emancipation when they reach the age of
responsibility, in the case of persons who have purchased slaves in
their ignorance and desire to leave it to the church to say when they
may be free, in the case of women whose husbands are opposed to
emancipation, in the case of a widow who has it not in her power to
liberate them, and in the case when the slaves are idiots or too old to
maintain themselves." Another query was: "Shall members in union with us
be at liberty in any case to purchase slaves?" The answer was negative,
except it was with a view to ransom them in such a way as the church
might approve. These emancipators in Kentucky constituted themselves
some years later an organized body and finally became known as the
"_Baptized Licking-Locust Association_." In the course of time, however,
feeling that that mode of association or the consolidation of churches
was unscriptural and ought to be laid aside, they changed their
organization to that of an abolition society.

It is interesting to note the attitude of the Presbyterians toward the
amelioration of the condition of the Negroes. In 1774 when abolition was
agitated in connection with the struggle for the rights of man, the
Presbyterians were early requested to take action. A representation from
Dr. Ezra Stiles and Rev. Samuel Hopkins respecting the sending of two
natives of Africa on a mission to propagate Christianity in that land,
brought before that body a discussion of all aspects of Negro slavery.
In this debate a committee was requested to bring in a report on Negro
slavery. The Assembly concurred in the proposal to send the missionaries
to Africa, but deferred further consideration of slavery.

The first action taken on the subject came, after delay from year to
year, in 1787. The committee on overtures brought in a report to the
effect that the "Creator of the world having made of one flesh all the
children of men, it becomes them as members of the same family, to
consult and promote each other's happiness. It is more especially the
duty of those who maintain the rights of humanity, and who acknowledge
and teach the obligations of Christianity, to use such means as are in
their power to extend the blessings of equal freedom to every part of
the human race." Convinced of these truths, and sensible that the rights
of human nature are too well understood to admit of debate, the Synod
recommended in the warmest terms to every member of their body, and to
all the churches and families under their care, to do everything in
their power consistent with the rights of civil society, to promote the
abolition of slavery, and the instruction of Negroes, whether bond or
free.

After some consideration, however, the Synod reached the conclusion of
expressing very much interest in the principles in favor of universal
liberty that prevailed in America and also in that of the abolition of
slavery. Yet inasmuch as it would be difficult to change slaves from a
servile state to a participation in all the privileges of society
without proper education and previous habits of industry, it recommended
to all persons holding slaves to give them such education as might
prepare them for the better enjoyment of freedom, and recommended
further that in those cases in which the masters found the slaves
disposed to make just improvement of the privilege they should give them
"a peculium or sufficient time and sufficient means for procuring their
liberty at a moderate rate."

There was some agitation of the question in 1793, when a memorial was
addressed to the General Assembly by Warner Mifflin, a member of the
Society of Friends; but no action of importance was taken again until
1795, when there arose the question as to whether the church should
uphold communion with slaveholders. After due deliberation the General
Assembly passed a resolution referring the memorialists to the action
that the Assembly had already taken with reference to slavery in 1787
and 1793. As it seemed that the Presbytery of Transylvania was primarily
concerned in this affair, Mr. Rice and Dr. Muir, ministers, and Mr.
Robert Patterson, an elder, all of that section, were appointed a
committee to draft the following pacifist letter to that Assembly, which
determined for generations thereafter the policy of the Presbyterians
with reference to slavery:

  "To our brethren, members of the Presbyterian Church, under the
  care of Transylvania Presbytery.

  "_Dear Friends and Brethren_--The General Assembly of the
  Presbyterian Church hear with concern from your Commissioners,
  that differences of opinion with respect to holding Christian
  communion with those possessed of slaves, agitate the minds of
  some among you, and threaten divisions which may have the most
  ruinous tendency. The subject of slavery has repeatedly claimed
  the attention of the General Assembly, and the Commissioners from
  the Presbytery of Transylvania are furnished with attested copies
  of these decisions, to be read by the Presbytery when it shall
  appear to them proper, together with a copy of this letter, to
  the several Churches under their care.

  "The General Assembly have taken every step which they deemed
  expedient or wise, to encourage emancipation, and to render the
  state of those who are in slavery as mild and tolerable as
  possible.

  "Forbearance and peace are frequently inculcated and enjoined in
  the New Testament. 'Blessed are the peace-makers.' 'Let no one do
  anything through strife and vainglory.' 'Let such esteem others
  better than himself.' The followers of Jesus ought conscientiously
  to walk worthy of their vocations, 'with all lowliness, and
  meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another, endeavoring
  to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.' If every
  difference of opinion were to keep men at a distance, they could
  subsist in no state of society, either civil or religious. The
  General Assembly would impress this upon the minds of their
  brethren, and urge them to follow peace, and the things which make
  for peace.

  "The General Assembly commend our dear friends and brethren to the
  grace of God, praying that the peace of God, which passeth all
  understanding may possess their hearts and minds."




CHAPTER III

PIONEER NEGRO PREACHERS


The new stage reached in the development of religious freedom in America
in securing toleration for the evangelical denominations, meant the
increasing importance of the Negro in the church. Given access to the
people in all parts of the country by virtue of this new boon resulting
from the struggle for the rights of man, the Methodists, Baptists and
Presbyterians soon became imbued with the idea of an equality of the
Negro in the church although they did not always militantly denounce
slavery. Negroes were accepted in these congregations on this basis and
when exhibiting the power of expounding the scriptures were sometimes
heard with unusual interest. Such elevation of the blacks by these more
liberal denominations, of course, incurred the displeasure and
opposition of the aristocratic churchmen to the extent that these
liberal denominations could not grant the Negroes as much freedom of
participation in the church work as they were disposed to do.

In those cases in which Negroes were permitted to preach, they found
themselves confronting not only the opposition of the more
aristocratic sects but violating laws of long standing, prohibiting
Negro ministers from exercising their gifts. When their ministrations
were of a local order, and they did not seemingly stir up their fellow
men to oppose the established order of things, not so much attention was
paid to their operations. When, however, these Negroes of unusual power
preached with such force as to excite not only the blacks but the
whites, steps were generally taken to silence these speakers heralding
the coming of a new day. This opposition on the part of the whites
apparently grew more strenuous upon the attainment of independence. As
British subjects, they had more feeling of toleration for the rise of
the Negro in the church than they had after the colonies became
independent. While struggling for liberty themselves, even for religious
freedom, these Americans were not willing to grant others what they
themselves desired. The attitude of most Americans then, unlike that of
some of the British, seemed to be that the good things of this life were
intended as special boons for a particular race.

The efforts to establish the early churches of South Carolina and
Georgia are cases in evidence. The first Negro Baptist Church in
America, according to Dr. W. H. Brooks, was founded by one Mr. Palmer at
Silver Bluff across the river from Augusta, Georgia, in the colony of
South Carolina, some time between the years 1773 and 1775. This group
was fortunate in having the kind master, George Galphin, who became a
patron of this congregation. He permitted David George to be ordained
for this special work after having formerly allowed George Liele to
preach there during these early years. Upon the evacuation of Savannah
by the Americans in 1778, the Silver Bluff Church was driven into exile.
Called upon to decide whether they would support the American or British
cause, friend separated from friend and sometimes master from slave.
When Galphin, a patriot, abandoned his slaves in his flight for refuge
from the British, David George and fifty of these slaves went over to
the British in Savannah where they were freed. David George returned to
South Carolina and resided for a time in Charleston, from which he went,
in 1782, to Nova Scotia, where he abode for ten years, preaching to
Baptist congregations at Shelburn, Birchtown, Ragged Island, and in St.
John, New Brunswick. Because of the inhospitable climate, the Negro
slaves who had escaped with their loyal masters crossing the Canadian
border to these points in Nova Scotia, went in 1792 to Sierra Leone
where they constituted themselves a colony, with David George the
founder of their first Baptist Church. After peace was made in 1783, the
Silver Bluff Church was revived under the direction of the Rev. Jesse
Peter who, unlike George Liele in having departed with his master when
the British evacuated Savannah in 1782, remained as a slave here in
South Carolina to carry forward the work across the river from Augusta
in South Carolina.

According to Dr. Walter H. Brooks, a portion of this Silver Bluff Church
brought into Savannah, Georgia, at the time of the departure of certain
Americans to join the British in 1778, took shape as an organized body
under George Liele, who had been the servant of a British officer. It is
highly probable that David George and Jesse Peter, who had served these
people at Silver Bluff, did not have sufficient influence to secure a
permit to preach to them in Savannah, although they did unite with the
church there. Out of this effort of George Liele developed what Dr.
Brooks considers the first Negro Baptist Church in the city of Savannah,
which flourished during the British occupancy from 1779 to the year
1782. The oldest Negro Baptist Church in this country, however, was that
of the Silver Bluff Church which, in another meeting place and under a
new name, became established at Augusta, having existed from the year
1773 to 1793 before the time of Andrew Bryan's organizing efforts in
Savannah.

[Illustration: ANDREW BRYAN]

The struggles of George Liele and Andrew Bryan throw additional light on
these early efforts. George Liele was born in Virginia about the year
1750, but soon moved with his master, Henry Sharpe, to Burke County,
Georgia, a few years before the Revolutionary War. As his master was a
deacon of the Baptist church of which Matthew Moore was pastor, George,
upon hearing this minister preach from time to time when accompanying
his owner, became converted and soon thereafter was baptized by this
clergyman. Not long thereafter upon discovering that he had unusual
ministerial gifts, this church permitted him to preach upon the
plantations along the Savannah river and sometimes to the congregation
of the white church to which he belonged. As his master was much more
liberal than most of his kind, Liele was permitted to extend his
operations down the Savannah river as far as Brampton, Savannah, and
Yamacraw, where he preached to the slaves.

His ministerial work became so important that his master finally
liberated him that he might serve without interference; but his work was
interrupted by the Revolutionary War, during which his master was
killed. Upon the death of his master, moreover, some of the heirs to the
estate, not being satisfied with the manumission of George Liele, had
him thrown into prison, hoping to reënslave him; but Colonel Kirkland,
of the British Army, then in control of Savannah, came to his rescue by
securing his release from prison. When the British evacuated that city,
George Liele went with them to Jamaica, indenturing himself to Colonel
Kirkland as a servant for the amount of money necessary to pay his
transportation.[3] Before leaving Savannah, however, fortune brought it
to pass that the vessel in which he embarked was detained for some weeks
near Tybee Island, not far from the mouth of the Savannah river. While
waiting there he came to the city of Savannah and baptized Andrew Bryan
and his wife Hannah, Kate Hogg, and Hagar Simpson, who became the
founders of the first African Baptist Church in Savannah.

When George Liele landed at Kingston he was, upon the recommendation of
Colonel Kirkland to General Campbell, the Governor of Jamaica, employed
to work out the money for which he had been indentured. Upon discharging
the debt he obtained for himself and family a certificate of manumission
and was free in 1784 to begin his work as a preacher. He preached first
in a private home to a small congregation and then organized a church
with four men who had emigrated from the American colonies. Delivering
with power a message of such telling effect as the first dissenter to
undertake the establishment of a liberal sect in the midst of
communicants of the established church of England, he soon found his
meetings interrupted and himself cruelly persecuted. Frequently
memorialized for a grant of religious freedom, however, the Jamaica
Assembly finally permitted George Liele to proceed with his work.
Within a few years he had a following of about 500 communicants, and
with the help of a number of inspired deacons and elders extended the
work far into the rural districts. In addition to his ministerial work
he administered the affairs of these various groups, taught a free
school, and conducted a business at which he earned his living.

At first this work was largely inspirational, stirring up the people
here and there; and many thought that it would be a movement of short
duration: but becoming convinced that this was the real way of salvation
and life, persons adhering to this new creed contributed sufficiently to
its support to give it a standing in the community. Within a few years
we hear of the purchase for a sum of nearly 155 pounds of about three
acres of land at the east end of Kingston, on which they built a church.
When success had crowned his efforts in Jamaica, he took steps toward
the establishment of an edifice at Spanish Town, which was completed a
few years later. The records show too that he interested in his cause
some men of influence like Mr. Steven A. Cook, a member of the Jamaica
Assembly, who solicited funds for him in England. Of him Mr. Cook bears
this testimony: "He is a very industrious man, decent, humble in his
manners, and, I think, a good man." Contemporaries speak of his family
life as pleasant. He had a wife and four children, three boys and a
girl. He was not a well educated man, but he found time to read some
good literature.

The unusual tact of George Liele was the key to his success. He seemed
to know how to handle men diplomatically, but some of his policy may be
subject to criticism. Unlike so many Baptist and Methodist missionaries
who came forward preaching freedom of body and mind and soul to all men
and thereby stirring up the slaves in certain parts, George Liele would
not receive any slaves who did not have permission of their owners, and
instead of directing attention to their wrongs, conveyed to them the
mere message of Christ. His influence among the masters and overseers
became unusual, and the membership of his church rapidly increased. No
literature was used and no instruction given until it had at first been
shown to the members of the legislature, the magistrates, and the
justices to secure their permission beforehand. One of the masters,
speaking of the wholesome influence of Liele's preaching, said that he
did not need to employ an assistant nor to make use of the whip whether
he was at home or elsewhere, as his slaves were industrious and
obedient, and lived together in unity, brotherly love, and peace.

The next pioneer preacher of worth among the Negroes was Andrew Bryan,
George Liele's successor in Georgia. Andrew Bryan was born a slave in
1737 at Goose Creek, South Carolina, about sixteen miles from
Charleston. He was later brought to Savannah, Georgia, where, as stated
above, he came under the influence of the preaching of George Liele. He
at first commenced by public exhortations and prayer meetings at
Brampton. Nine months after the departure of George Liele, Bryan began
to preach to congregations of black and white people at Savannah. Moved
by his convincing message, his master and other whites encouraged him in
his chosen field, inasmuch as the influence he had upon slaves was
salutary. He was thereafter permitted to erect on the land of Mr. Edward
Davis at Yamacraw a rough wooden building of which his group was soon
artfully dispossessed. As his ministrations were opposed by others who
did not like this simple faith, unusual persecution soon followed.
Bryan's adherents were not permitted to hold frequent meetings, and in
trying to evade this regulation by assembling in the swamps, they ran
the risk of rigid discipline. With the aid of his brother Sampson,
Andrew Bryan, however, gradually held this group together. At first it
was small; but finally sufficiently large to receive the attention of
the Rev. Thomas Burt in 1785, and that of the Rev. Abraham Marshall of
Kioke in 1788. The latter then baptized forty-five additional members of
this congregation, and on January 20, 1788, organized them as a church
and ordained Andrew Bryan as a minister with full authority to preach
the gospel and to administer the ordinances of the Baptist church.

This recognition of Bryan as a minister, however, did not solve all of
his problems. The greater his influence among the slaves, the more the
masters were inclined to believe that his work could result only in that
of servile insurrection. It became more difficult, therefore, for slaves
to attend his meetings; the patrols whipped them sometimes even when
they had passes, and finally a large number of the members were arrested
and severely punished. The culmination was that Andrew Bryan, their
pastor himself, and his brother, Sampson Bryan, one of the first
deacons, were "inhumanly cut and their backs were so lacerated that
their blood ran down to the earth as they, with uplifted hands, cried
unto the Lord; but Bryan, in the midst of his torture, declared that he
rejoiced not only to be whipped but would freely suffer death for the
cause of Jesus Christ." Accused of sinister plans, Andrew Bryan and his
brother Sampson were, upon the complaint of their traducers, imprisoned
and dispossessed of their meeting house. Lorenzo Dow, an eccentric
itinerant preacher appearing in Savannah about this time, preached at
Bryan's church to show not only his compassion for Bryan's waiting
congregation, but his disapproval of the persecution to which this
apostle was subjected.

Jonathan Bryan, the master of Andrew and Sampson, insisting that they
were the victims of prejudice and wickedness, however, secured for them
a hearing. They came before the Justices of the Inferior Court of
Chatham County, Henry Osborne, James Haversham, and James Montague,
who, finding no criminal intent in their efforts, ordered that they be
released. They were then permitted by their master to resume worship in
the barn on his plantation, but persecution followed them even there,
where they were surrounded by spies and eavesdroppers. This continued
until one of the eavesdroppers, upon listening to what was going on
among these communicants at Andrew Bryan's private home, heard this man
of God earnestly praying for the men who had so mercilessly used him.
This enlisted so much sympathy among the people kindly disposed that the
chief justice of the court, before whom they had been brought, granted
them permission to continue their worship of God at any time between
sunrise and sunset. They held meetings at Brampton about two years,
during which they made a number of influential friends among the whites,
who, along with the communicants of this group, assisted Bryan in
raising funds to purchase a lot upon which to begin the erection of a
church in 1794. The first African church stood for years on this lot on
what is now known as Mill Street, running to Indian Street Lane in
Savannah.

Andrew Bryan faced another crisis upon the death of Jonathan Bryan, his
master. He succeeded, however, in emerging as a free man, the heirs of
the estate having given him an opportunity to purchase his freedom for
fifty pounds. Fortune prospered him thereafter to the extent that he
soon bought in Yamacraw a lot on which he built a residence not far from
the place of worship. Upon the final division of the Bryan estate it
developed that the church building was still controlled by that family,
but the worship of these communicants continued there under the
supervision of the whites without serious interruption. The membership
had then reached 700.

Bryan soon obtained a position of influence in spite of all of his
difficulties, as is evidenced by his own testimony in addressing his
coworker, Dr. Rippon, in 1800. He said: "With much pleasure I inform
you, dear sir, that I enjoy good health, and am strong in body, at the
age of sixty-three years, and am blessed with a pious wife, whose
freedom I have obtained, and an only daughter and child, who is married
to a free man, though she, and consequently under our laws, her seven
children, five sons and two daughters, are slaves. By a kind Providence
I am well provided for, as to worldly comforts (though I have had very
little given me as a minister), having a house and lot in this city,
besides the land on which several buildings stand, for which I receive a
small rent, and a fifty-acre tract of land, with all necessary
buildings, four miles in the country, and eight slaves; for whose
education and happiness I am enabled through mercy to provide."

As this congregation continued to increase, Andrew Bryan secured the
services of his brother as an assistant pastor. He planned, moreover, to
divide the church whenever the membership became too large for him to
serve it efficiently. This was what led to the organization of the
Second African Baptist Church of Savannah, with Henry Francis, a slave
of Colonel Leroy Hamilton, as pastor. As the head of this congregation,
Francis manifested power of remarkable leadership, and soon thereafter
purchased his freedom to devote all of his time to his congregation.
Bryan's church was further divided upon reaching the stage of having an
unwieldy number, when there emerged from it the Third African Baptist
Church. Bryan's church, moreover, became in the course of time the
beacon light in the Negro religious life of Georgia. From this center
went other workers into the inviting fields of that State, as to
Augusta, where a flourishing Baptist church was established. This
condition obtained until the Negro preacher became circumscribed during
the thirties and forties by laws intended to prevent such disturbances
as were caused by Nat Turner in Southampton County, Virginia. Andrew
Bryan, however, did not live to see this. He passed away in 1812,
respected by all who knew him and loved by his numerous followers. The
position which he finally attained in the esteem and the respect of the
community is well illustrated by the honor shown him by the following
resolutions of the Savannah Baptist Association (white) on the occasion
of his death:

  "The Association is sensibly affected by the death of the Rev.
  Andrew Bryan, a man of color, and pastor of the First Colored
  Church in Savannah. This son of Africa, after suffering
  inexpressible persecutions in the cause of his divine Master, was
  at length permitted to discharge the duties of the ministry among
  his colored friends in peace and quiet, hundreds of whom, through
  his instrumentality, were brought to a knowledge of the truth as
  'it is in Jesus.' He closed his extensively useful and amazingly
  luminous course in the lively exercise of faith and in the joyful
  hope of a happy immortality."

In those parts of the South where the pro-slavery sentiment was not
developed so early as in Georgia, the Baptists were able to give their
Negro communicants more consideration. After this denomination had won
toleration in Virginia, its leaders experienced much less difficulty in
proselyting Negroes than in the case of other communicants. From 1770 to
1790 Negro preachers, thanks to the pioneer work of a man of color, Rev.
Mr. Moses, were in charge of congregations in Charles City, Petersburg,
Williamsburg, and Allen's Creek, in Lunenburg County. In 1801 Gowan
Pamphlet of that State was the pastor of a progressive Baptist church in
Williamsburg, some members of which could read, write and keep accounts.
William Lemon was about this time chosen by a white congregation to
serve at the Pettsworth or Gloucester church in that State.

In Portsmouth, Virginia, a Negro Baptist preacher attained unusual
distinction. There the blacks and whites belonging to the same Baptist
church experienced very little difficulty in their acceptance of each
other on the basis of religious equality. They were constituted a church
by the Association held in Isle of Wight County in 1789, and after the
service of a number of pioneer ministers the church called one Thomas
Armistead. The church fell into bad hands a few years thereafter and
suffered a decline under one Frost, a Baptist preacher, who in the
propagation of the doctrines of free will caused unusual excitement.
This did not subside until he, according to the contemporaries, was
stricken by the hand of God. While looking out for another pastor there
came to this community, in 1795, from Northampton County, a black
preacher whose name was Josiah Bishop. He preached with such fervor and
with such success that the whites as well as the blacks hung, as it
were, upon his words. He easily rallied the scattered forces of the
church, revived their spirits, and lifted high the banner of the gospel.
So impressed was the congregation with his work that the church gave
Josiah Bishop the money with which to purchase his freedom and soon
thereafter bought his wife and his eldest son.

It is said that his preaching was much admired by both saints and
sinners wherever he went. "As a stranger," say Lemuel Burkett and Jesse
Reed in their _Concise History of the Kehukee Baptist Association_, "few
received equal degree of liberality  with him." They were, therefore,
advised, "that whereas the black brethren in the church seemed anxious
for a vote in the conference that it would be best to consider the black
people as a wing of the body, and Josiah Bishop to take over sight of
them, as this church, at that time, fellowshiped a number of Negroes.
The black people at first seemed pleased with the proposition, but soon
repented and came and told the deacons they were afraid that matters
might turn up disagreeable to them and dishonoring to God, and said that
they would be subordinate to the white brethren, if they would let them
continue as they were, which was consented to." Josiah Bishop, of
course, could not long remain as the pastor of a mixed church in the
slaveholding colony of Virginia. After toiling successfully for a short
period in that city, he moved to Baltimore, where he helped to promote
the cause of the rising Baptists in that city. When his work was well
done there, he moved to the city of New York, where during 1810 and 1811
he served as the pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Pioneering in this same field in 1792 was the famous "Uncle Jack," a
full-blooded African, recognized by the whites as a forceful preacher of
the gospel in the Baptist Church. For some years he preached from
plantation to plantation, moving so many to repentance that the white
citizens in appreciation of his worth had him licensed to preach and
raised a fund with which they purchased his freedom. They bought him a
small farm in Virginia, where for more than 40 years he continued his
ministry as an instrument in the conversion of a large number of white
people.

Contemporaneous with Uncle Jack was Henry Evans, a free Negro of
Virginia. On his way to Charleston, South Carolina, to work at the trade
of shoemaking, Evans happened to stop at Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Having been licensed as a local preacher in the Methodist Church, he
tarried there to work among the people, whose deplorable condition
excited his sympathy. At first he worked at his trade and preached on
Sunday. The town council, feeling that he was a public danger, ordered
him to refrain from preaching. Whereupon he began to hold secret
meetings. His preaching became so effective, however, and so many white
persons attended his meetings, that the official opposition yielded
sufficiently to have a regular Methodist Church organized there in 1790.
The edifice was so constructed as to provide quarters for Evans, who
remained there until his death in 1810, although a white minister was in
actual charge of the church.

From the Methodists there emerged another such preacher, Black Harry,
who, accompanying Mr. Asbury, learned from him to preach more forcefully
than Asbury himself. According to a contemporary, Harry was "small, very
black, keen-eyed, possessing great volubility of tongue; and, although
illiterate so that he could not read," was one of the most popular
preachers of that age. Upon hearing Harry preach, Dr. Benjamin Rush
pronounced him the greatest orator in America. Desiring Harry to
accompany him in 1782, Bishop Asbury made the request, saying that the
way to have a very large congregation was to give out that Harry was to
preach, as more would come to hear Harry than to hear Bishop Asbury. On
one occasion in Wilmington, Delaware, where the cause of the Methodist
was unpopular, a large number of persons came out of curiosity to hear
Bishop Asbury. But, as the auditorium was already taxed to its fullest
capacity, they could only hear from the outside. At the conclusion of
the exercises, they said, without having seen the speaker: "If all
Methodist preachers can preach like the Bishop, we should like to be
constant hearers." Some one present replied: "That was not the Bishop,
but the Bishop's servant that you heard." This, to be sure, had the
desired effect, for these inquirers concluded: "If such be the servant,
what must the master be?" "The truth was," says John Ledman in his
_History of the Rise of Methodism in America_, "that Harry was a more
popular speaker than Mr. Asbury or almost any one else in his day." In
this same capacity Harry accompanied and preached with not only Mr.
Asbury but with Garretson, Watcote, and Dr. Coke.

"After he had moved on the tide of popularity for a number of years,"
says John Ledman, "he fell by wine, one of the strong enemies of both
ministers and people. And now, alas! this popular preacher was a drunken
ragpicker in the streets of Philadelphia. But we will not leave him
here. One evening Harry started down the Neck, below Southwark,
determined to remain there until his backslidings were healed. Under a
tree he wrestled with God in prayer. Sometime that night God restored to
him the joys of his salvation. From this time Harry continued faithful;
though he could not stand before the people with that pleasing
confidence as a public speaker that he had before his fall. About the
year 1810 Harry finished his course; and, it is believed, made a good
end. An unusually large number of people, both white and colored,
followed his body to its last resting place, in a free burying ground in
Kensington."

Among the pioneer Negro preachers one of the most interesting was John
Stewart. He was born of free parents in Powhatan County, Virginia, where
he received some religious training and attended a school during the
winter, thus securing to him so much mental development by the time of
reaching maturity that he could make a living much more easily than some
of his fellows. This early training, however, did not seem to restrain
him from certain temptations of this life; for, in going away from home
to make his career, he fell a victim to bad habits, becoming a dissolute
drunkard, drifting here and there. Finally he came to Marietta, Ohio,
where under the influence of the gospel as it was preached among his
lowly people in that center, he was converted and united with the
Methodist Episcopal Church. He then became a man of very regular habits
and devoted much of his time to meditation and prayer. On a certain
occasion he said, "I heard a voice like a woman's singing and praising
the Lord, while straight from the northern sky, which was filled with a
great radiance, came a man's voice, saying, 'You must declare my counsel
faithfully,' and I found myself standing on my feet speaking as to a
congregation." He felt that this was a call to preach, but at first
resisted the influence, hoping to escape therefrom. Having fallen sick
not long thereafter, however, he looked upon this as a punishment and
responded to the voices that he heard, overcoming his fears. Having his
mind thoroughly made up, he set off then to preach the gospel, steering,
as he said, "my course sometimes by the road, sometimes through the
cities, until I came to Goshen, where I found the Delaware Indians."

He preached and sang among these people for a short period, and finally
returned to Marietta. He was again summoned by the voices in the night
impelling him to make another pilgrimage. This time he drifted into a
settlement of whites, to whom he preached with much success, moving many
of them to repentance and organizing them as a church. He then proceeded
to Upper Sandusky, the home of the Wyandot Indians, who, having never
received the gospel, although the Roman Catholics had unsuccessfully
tried to evangelize them, had fallen back into a worse state of
heathenism and especially drunkenness, resulting from the vices imported
by traders. Here he had the opposition of William Walker, the government
agent, who did not take well to his message, but on being converted very
soon thereafter, Walker gave Stewart less trouble in reaching the
Indians. Another great hindrance, however, was the coming of the other
white traders, who prospered by the liquor traffic that they carried on
with these Indians. At first they tried to show that Stewart was not
properly authorized as a minister and should be denied the right to
preach; but having then the support of William Walker, the zealous
missionary succeeded in delivering his message. Some of the Indians,
too, felt that the gospel which he preached was not intended for the
Indians but for the white man, although Stewart endeavored to show that
this boon was for all nations and for all people. He persisted in
holding his position, and in the end success crowned his efforts in
bringing about the conversion of all of the prominent chiefs of this
tribe.

It is said that because of this success his enemies contrived to
discourage him. They prepared for an unusually great celebration in
accordance with the festive ideas of the Indians, trying to bring them
back to their old habits. Becoming discouraged, John Stewart preached
his farewell sermon and returned to Marietta. But he came back to Upper
Sandusky after an absence of a few months and devoted the rest of his
life to work among the Wyandot Indians. Fortunately he was then filled
with enthusiasm and the word which he preached did not return void. As
his mission was then a success, he appealed for help to the higher
conference, then meeting at Urbana, in March, 1817. J. B. Finley was
chosen to work in this field. Stewart had planned for a thorough
elevation of these people, including industrial training, which centered
around the erection of a sawmill and the purchase of a farm upon which
he taught agriculture. A log structure was soon built for school
purposes, and there soon followed Miss Harriet Stubbs, who volunteered
to teach the Indians. Subsequent reports show that the work was in good
condition in 1822. The religion of Jesus Christ was flourishing and
everywhere the Indians were living upright lives. At this time, however,
Stewart's health had failed him, as he had well run his course, having
been exposed to all sorts of hardships. He passed away on the 17th of
December, his hand in that of his wife. His last words, addressed to the
sorrowing people about his bed, were: "Oh, be faithful."

Lemuel Haynes, another pioneer preacher, was born July 18, 1753, at West
Hartford, Connecticut. His father was a man of unmingled African
extraction and his mother a white woman of respectable New England
ancestry. As he was a natural son, the mother abandoned him in infancy,
but he fortunately found asylum at the home of one Haynes, whose name he
took and with whom he lived until at the age of five months, when he was
bound out to David Rose of Granville, Massachusetts, where Lemuel grew
to manhood.

Lemuel was given the rudimentary training in the backwoods schools of
the community, in which he learned to read and write. These meager
advantages led him to seek an extension of his knowledge through the
reading of good books. As these were scarce, he had to be content with
the Bible, the Psalter, the writings of Watts and Doddridge, and Young's
_Night Thoughts_. Before his education could be completed, however,
Lemuel, having been prostrated with grief because of the loss of the
wife of his kind master, entered the continental army, first as a minute
man in 1774 and then as a regular soldier after the battle of Lexington.

Returning from the war, Lemuel engaged in agriculture; but he had early
been given a pious trend and soon decided to study theology in
anticipation of the designs of Providence concerning him. For some time
he had been accustomed to read the Bible and sermons of others on the
occasions of conducting family prayers in the home of David Rose. From
this exercise he mustered sufficient courage to read one of his own
sermons, and finally to preach before the local congregations, which
marveled at the power of his words. To prepare himself thoroughly to
preach, Haynes once planned to attend Dartmouth College, but shrank from
it. After studying privately under Daniel Farrand of Canaan,
Connecticut, and William Bradford of Wintonbury, Haynes spent a short
period teaching a school for whites. He was licensed to preach in the
Congregational Church in 1780 and was ordained soon thereafter,
beginning his ministry at Middle Granville, where he labored five years.
Here Bessie Babbit, a white woman of considerable education and piety,
offered him her heart and they were married in 1783.

From this small charge Haynes was called to Torrington, Connecticut. A
leading citizen was much displeased that the church should have a
"nigger minister," and to show his lack of respect for the new incumbent
this man went into the church and sat with his hat on. "He had not
preached far," said the man, "when I thought I saw the whitest man I
ever knew in that pulpit, and I tossed my hat under the pew." Haynes was
then called to take charge of the Congregational Church in West Rutland.
Here his usefulness was appreciated and his efforts were extended to
other towns through his revivals, one of the most successful of which he
conducted in Pittsfield. Having developed such power, he was employed,
in 1804, by the Connecticut Missionary Society to labor in the
destitute sections of Vermont. In 1809 he was appointed to a similar
service by the Vermont Missionary Society. In 1814 he preached
extensively in Connecticut, appearing before crowded houses, having in
his audience on one occasion President Dwight of Yale.

With such standing in the church Haynes was expected to manifest
interest in the great questions at issue in New England. One of these
was the Stoddardian principle of admitting moral persons without
credible evidences of grace, to the Lord's Supper, and the half-way
covenant by which parents though not admitted to the Lord's Supper were
encouraged to offer their children in baptism. In this debate Haynes,
with his eloquence and logic, vanquished the famous Hosea Ballou by his
powerful sermon based on the text _Ye shall not surely die_. There was
also a difference of opinion with respect to the operations of the Holy
Spirit, but Haynes stood with Edwards and Whitefield. Being thus active
in dispelling clouds of doubt, he brought many back to a more righteous
conduct.

Becoming involved in the partisan strife which characterized the rise of
political parties after Washington's inauguration, Haynes alienated the
affections of some of his communicants by his bold advocacy of the
principle conducive to a strong national government as administered in
the beginning by George Washington, whose policies Haynes admired. He
then left West Rutland and preached a while in Manchester, Vermont,
until 1822, when he accepted a call to Granville, New York. There he
spent usefully the last eleven years of his life.

In spite of the fact that Lemuel Haynes was working altogether among
white people, however, he was successful wherever he was stationed. His
eloquence and Christian nobility won him much attention. "He always
showed himself a man of a feeling heart, sensibly affected by human
suffering," says Cooley, his biographer. "At home he was industrious,
his family government was parental. He was the embodiment of piety and
honesty." Churches and associations were strengthened by his labors.
Their membership increased and the influence of the gospel was extended.
So lived and died one of the noblest of the New England Congregational
ministers of a century ago. Of illegitimate birth, and of no
advantageous circumstances of family, rank or station, he became one of
the choicest instruments of Christ. His face betrayed his race and
blood, and his life revealed his Lord.

There served as a pioneer worker for the Presbyterians John Gloucester,
who founded the first African Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia in
1807. According to Gillett's _History of the Presbyterian Church in the
United States_, this church owed its existence, and for many years its
continued support, largely to the "Evangelical Society of Philadelphia,"
organized upon the recommendation  and influence of Dr. Alexander. "Its
first pastor, although never installed," says Gillett, "was John
Gloucester, a slave of Dr. Blackburn of Tennessee. He had attracted the
attention of the latter, under whose preaching he was converted, by his
piety and natural gifts, and by him was purchased, and encouraged to
study with a view to the ministry. After having been licensed and
ordained by the Union Presbytery, he was, in 1818, received from that
body by the Philadelphia Presbytery, and, under the patronage of the
'Evangelical Society,' continued in charge of the African Church until
his death in 1822. The house of worship, located on the corner of
Shippen and Seventh Streets, was completed in 1811."

"Mr. Gloucester first commenced his missionary efforts by preaching in
private houses," continues Gillett, "but these were soon found
insufficient to accommodate his congregations. A schoolhouse was
procured near the site of the future edifice; but in clear weather he
preached in the open air. Possessed of a strong and musical voice, he
would take his stand on the corner of Shippen and Seventh Streets, and
while singing a hymn would gather around him many besides his regular
hearers, and hold their attention till he was prepared to commence his
exercises. Possessed of a stout, athletic frame, and characterized by
prudence, forbearance, and a fervent piety, he labored with unremitting
zeal, securing the confidence and respect of his brethren of the
Presbytery, and building up the congregation which he had gathered. His
freedom was granted him by Dr. Blackburn, and by his own application he
secured the means in England and this country to purchase his family. He
is said to have been a man of strong mind, mighty of prayer, and of such
fervor and energy in wrestling supplication that persons sometimes fell
under his power, convicted of sin."

To this class of Negro preachers in the South belongs John Chavis,
mentioned in another connection below. Chavis was a full-blooded Negro
of dark brown color, born probably near Oxford, Granville County, North
Carolina, about 1763. From a youth he impressed the public as a man of
unusual power and was, therefore, sent by his friends to Princeton to
see if a Negro could take a collegiate education. Some have said that he
was never a regularly enrolled student at Princeton. The records,
however, show that he was under the direction of Dr. Witherspoon, who
was soon convinced that the experiment "would issue favorably." In
keeping with the course of study of that time, he was chiefly interested
in the classics. In these fields he easily took rank as a good Latin and
a fair Greek scholar. Exactly how much work he did in the field of
theology is not known, but as the line drawn between theology and
classical studies at that time was not very definite, he could easily
lay a foundation for work in the ministry, and especially so if his
instruction were under the direction of one man, who would shape his
course of study in keeping with his practical needs rather than in
conformity with the formal training of the school.

Whether Chavis was sent to Princeton to make a minister of him or not,
however, he very soon bestirred himself in that direction. From
Princeton he went to Lexington, Virginia, to preach. In the records of
the Presbyterians for 1801, Chavis is referred to as "a black man of
prudence and piety." "For his better direction in the discharge of
duties which are attended with many circumstances of delicacy and
difficulty" some prudential instructions were issued to him by the
General Assembly, "governing himself by which the knowledge of religion
among the Negroes might be made more and more to strengthen the order of
the society." The annals of the year 1801 report him in the service of
the Hanover Presbytery as a "riding missionary under the direction of
the General Assembly." He was very soon stationed in Lexington as a
recognized preacher of official status working among his own people. In
1805, however, he returned to his native State, where as a result of the
close relations existing between the whites and blacks and his power as
an expounder of the gospel, he preached to large congregations of both
races.

Referring to his career, Paul C. Cameron, a son of Judge Duncan of
North Carolina, said: "In my boyhood life at my father's home I often
saw John Chavis, a venerable old Negro man, recognized as a freeman and
as a preacher or clergyman of the Presbyterian Church. As such he was
received by my father and treated with kindness and consideration, and
respected as a man of education, good sense and most estimable
character." Mr. George Wortham, a lawyer of Granville County, said: "I
have heard him read and explain the Scriptures to my father's family
repeatedly. His English was remarkably pure, containing no 'Negroisms';
his manner was impressive, his explanations clear and concise, and his
views, as I then thought and still think, entirely orthodox. He was said
to have been an acceptable preacher, his sermons abounding in strong
common sense views and happy illustrations, without any effort at
oratory or sensational appeals to the passions of his hearers."

In North Carolina the disastrous result of the reaction against the
Negroes handicapped Chavis in his work. As a result of the fear of
servile insurrection among the slaves after Nat Turner's uprising, the
exercise of the gift of preaching was prohibited to Negroes in North
Carolina. Chavis thereafter devoted himself to teaching, maintaining
classical schools for white persons in Granville, Wake, and Chatham
counties. He was patronized by the most aristocratic white people of
that State. In the end he counted among his former students W. P.
Mangum, afterward United States Senator; P. H. Mangum, his brother;
Archibald and John Henderson, sons of Chief Justice Henderson; Charles
Manly, later Governor of that commonwealth, and Dr. James L. Wortham of
Oxford, North Carolina.




CHAPTER IV

THE INDEPENDENT CHURCH MOVEMENT


The facts set forth above easily lead to the conclusion that the rise of
the Negroes in the church was impeded by connection with their
self-styled superiors. At first the whites had seriously objected to the
evangelization of the Negroes, feeling that they could not be saved and,
when the latter had been convinced of this error, many of them were far
from the position of conceding to the blacks equality in their church
organizations. Negroes in certain parts, however, were at first accepted
in the congregations with the whites and accorded equal privileges.
During the American Revolution when there was a tendency to give more
consideration to all persons suffering from restriction, this freedom
was enlarged. After the reaction following the American Revolution when
men ceased to think so much of individual or natural rights and thought
more frequently of means and measures for centralized government, the
Negroes, like most elements far down, were forgotten or ignored even by
the church. In this atmosphere of superimposed religious instruction the
Negro was called upon merely to heed the Word and live. Experience soon
taught, however, that it is difficult for a people to maintain interest
in a cause with the management of which they have nothing to do.

Having enjoyed for some time the boon of freedom in the church,
moreover, the Negroes were loath to give up this liberty. The escape of
a young Negro, a slave of Thomas Jones, in Baltimore County in 1793 is a
case in evidence. Accounting for his flight his master said: "He was
raised in a family of religious persons commonly called Methodists and
has lived with some of them for years past on terms of perfect equality;
the refusal to continue him on these terms gave him offense and he,
therefore, absconded. He had been accustomed to instruct and exhort his
fellow creatures of all colors in matters of religious duty." Another
such Negro, named Jacob, ran away from Thomas Gibbs of that same State
in 1800, hoping to enlarge his liberty as a Methodist minister; for his
master said in advertising him as a runaway: "He professed to be a
Methodist and has been in the practice of preaching of nights." Still
another Negro preacher of this type, named Richard, ran away from Hugh
Drummond in Anne, Arundel County, that same year, while another called
Simboe escaped a little later from Henry Lockey of Newbern, North
Carolina.

[Illustration: BISHOP RICHARD ALLEN

Founder of the A. M. E. Church.]

This was the beginning of something more significant. The free Negroes
in the North began to assert themselves after the manumissions incident
to the American Revolution, as they were not necessarily obligated to
follow the fortunes of the white churches. Such self-assertion early
culminated in the protest of Richard Allen, the founder of the African
Methodist Episcopal Church. Richard Allen was the very sort of man to
perform this great task. He was born a slave of Benjamin Chew of
Philadelphia but very soon thereafter was sold with his whole family to
a planter living near Dover, Delaware, where he grew to manhood. Coming
under Christian influence, he was converted in 1777 and began his career
as a minister three years later. Struck with the genuineness of his
piety, his master permitted him to conduct prayers and to preach in his
house, he himself being one of the first converts of this zealous
messenger of God. Feeling after his conversion that slavery was wrong,
Allen's master permitted his bondmen to obtain their freedom. Allen and
his brother purchased themselves for $2,000 in the depreciated currency
of the Revolutionary War.

Richard Allen then engaged himself at such menial labor as a Negro could
then find, cutting wood and hauling, while preaching at his leisure.
Recognizing his unusual talent, Richard Watcoat on the Baltimore circuit
permitted Allen to travel with him, and Bishop Asbury frequently gave
him assignments to preach. Coming to Philadelphia in 1786, Allen was
invited to preach at the St. George Methodist Episcopal Church and at
various other places in the city. His difficulties, however, had just
begun. Yet he could not but succeed because he was a man of independent
character, strict integrity, business tact, and thrifty habits. When he
spoke a word, it was taken at its face value. His rule was never to
break a promise or violate a contract.[4]

The special needs of his own people aroused him to action in their
behalf. He said, "I soon saw a large field open in seeking and
instructing my African brethren who have been a long forgotten people,
and few of them attended public worship." Starting a prayer meeting in
Philadelphia, he soon had 42 members. Encouraged thus, he proposed to
establish a separate place of worship for the people of color, but was
dissuaded therefrom by the protest of the whites and certain Negroes
unto whom he ministered, only three of whom approved his plan. Preaching
at this church, however, with such power as to move his own people in a
way that they had never been affected before, he attracted them in such
large numbers that the management proposed to segregate the Negroes.
When, moreover, the management of the church undertook to carry out this
plan so drastically even to the extent of disturbing Richard Allen,
Absalom Jones, and William White by pulling them off their knees while
they were in the attitude of prayer, the Negroes arose and withdrew
from the church in a body.

This was the beginning of the independent Free African Society organized
by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones. It appeared that Jones and Allen
soon had differing plans; for the former finally organized the African
Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, while the majority of the
persons seceding from the St. George Methodist Episcopal Church followed
the standard of Allen in effecting the independent organization known as
Bethel Church. Allen purchased an old building for the Bethel church and
had it duly dedicated in 1794, when he organized a Sunday school and a
day and night school, to which were sent regular ministers by the
Methodist Conference. Richard Allen was ordained deacon by Bishop Asbury
in 1799, and later attained the status of elder. Negroes of other cities
followed this example, organizing what were known as African Methodist
Episcopal churches in Baltimore; Wilmington; Attleboro, Pennsylvania;
and Salem, New Jersey.

Having maintained themselves independently for some time, these African
societies developed sufficient leaders to effect the organization of a
national church. In Philadelphia there were in coöperation with Richard
Allen such workers as Jacob Tapsico, Clayton Durham, James Champion, and
Thomas Webster. In Baltimore there were Daniel Coker, Richard Williams,
Henry Harding, Stephen Hall, Edward Williamson and Nicholson Gilliard;
in Wilmington, Delaware, Peter Spencer, the popular leader of the Union
Church of Africans, established in 1813; in Attleboro, Pennsylvania,
Jacob Marsh, Edward Jackson and William Anderson; and in Salem, New
Jersey, Peter Cuff. These met in Philadelphia on the 9th day of April,
1816, to establish the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the moving
spirits being Richard Allen, Daniel Coker and Stephen Hall, an
intelligent layman of Baltimore, Maryland. Equally interested in the
same movement were Morris Brown, Henry Drayton, Charles Corr, Amos
Cruickshanks, Marcus Brown, Smart Simpson, Henry Bull, John Matthews,
James Eden, London Turpin and Alexander Harper of Charleston, who could
not attend because of the restrictions there upon the travel of Negroes
and the effort in the South to proscribe the independent church movement
among persons of color.

The most important transaction of the Philadelphia meeting was the
election of the bishop. Upon taking the vote the body declared Daniel
Coker bishop-elect; but for several reasons he resigned the next day in
favor of Richard Allen, who was elected on the 10th and consecrated the
following day by regularly ordained ministers. The conference resolved,
moreover, that the people of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and all other
places, who might unite with them should become one body under the name
of the African Methodist Episcopal  Church. Hoping that this national
church might have accessions from other ranks in which the Negroes were
not welcome or at best tolerated, this conference passed a resolution to
the effect that ministers coming from another evangelical church should
be received in the same standing which they held in the connection from
which they came. This body adopted a book of discipline with its
articles of religion and general rules just as it had been drafted by
the Wesleyans, following the general principles of government as had
been in vogue among the Methodists already. The church then began its
career with seven itinerants and Bishop Allen as the exponents of a new
thought.

Much progress thereafter was noted. The Baltimore district under the
direction of Daniel Coker reported 1,066 members in 1818, 1,388 in 1819,
1,760 in 1820, and 1,924 in 1822, while there were in Philadelphia about
4,000. With the establishment of the New York conference the limits of
the connection extended eastward as far as New Bedford, westward to
Pittsburgh and southward to Charleston, South Carolina. Thereafter,
however, there was little hope of success in the South. The African
Methodists had with some difficulty under the leadership of Rev. Morris
Brown established in Charleston a church reporting 1,000 members in
1817, and increasing by 1822 to 3,000 in spite of the intolerant laws
and the police regulations making it difficult for slaves and free
persons of color to attend. In 1822, however, because of the spirit of
insurrection among Negroes following the fortunes of Denmark Vesey, who
devised well laid plans for killing off the masters of the slaves, the
African Methodists were required to suspend operation. Their pastor,
Morris Brown, was threatened and would have been dealt with foully, had
it not been for the interference of General James Hamilton, who secreted
Brown in his home until he could give him safe passage to the North,
where he very soon reached a position of prominence, even that of bishop
in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Another secession of the Methodists from the white connection was in
progress in other parts. A number of Negroes, most of whom were members
of the John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, in New York City, took
the first step toward separation from that connection in 1796. They had
not been disturbed in their worship to the extent experienced by Richard
Allen and his coworkers in Philadelphia, but they had a "desire for the
privilege of holding meetings of their own, where they might have an
opportunity to exercise their spiritual gifts among themselves, and
thereby be more useful to one another." Such permission was obtained
from Bishop Francis Asbury by a group of intelligent Negro Methodists,
chief among whom were Francis Jacobs, William Brown, Peter Williams,
Abraham Thompson, June Scott, Samuel Pontier, Thomas Miller, William
Miller, James Varick and William Hamilton. Three of these persons,
Abraham Thompson, June Scott, and Thomas Miller, were at that time
recognized preachers, and William Miller was an exhorter, all of them
officiating in this capacity as opportunities presented themselves in
their connection and under the supervision of the white Methodists.

These workers continued in this situation until the year 1799, when,
with a further increase in the Negro membership of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in New York City, they proposed to build a separate
house of worship rather than merely hold separate meetings in the
edifice belonging to the white Methodists. A meeting was held soon
thereafter and arrangements were made for the purchase of a lot in
Orange Street, between Cross and Chatham, on which after having paid the
amount of $50, they found out that the title was involved and they
thereafter purchased a site situated at the corner of Church and Leonard
Streets and fronting on Church Street. Upon this site they erected a
building in the year 1800, naming the edifice the African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church. Their white friends, seeing that they were
determined to be a separate body, appointed as their adviser Rev. John
McClaskey, who instructed them how to proceed in drawing up the articles
of government. A charter was secured in 1801 and bears the signatures of
Peter Williams and Francis Jacobs.

This church had not proceeded very far before there arose some
dissension in the ranks. The first exhibition of this was the effort of
two of the founders, Abraham Thompson and June Scott, who, "induced by
the expectation of filthy lucre," tried to form a society separate from
the Zion church. In this they were aided by a white man who desired to
exercise his own spiritual gifts, the opportunity for which he could not
secure among his own people who belonged to the _Society of Friends_,
from which he had been expelled. This new organization was finally
effected as the _Union Society_. Very soon thereafter Abraham Thompson
repented of his action and abandoned the attempt, leaving June Scott to
continue the work of the Union Society by himself. As he was unable to
bear the expenses thereafter the society was consequently broken up and
June Scott attached himself to another church.

Another obstacle appeared in 1813 when Thomas Simpkins, upon being
expelled from the Zion Church, of which he had been a member and a
trustee, undertook to establish a new society. He drew to himself
William Miller, who had been ordained deacon in the Zion Church.
Obtaining thereafter a site in Elizabeth Street, they succeeded in
persuading a number of members of the Zion Church to unite with them to
establish the Asbury Church. Unlike the unsuccessful attempt of Abraham
Thompson and June Scott in forming the Union Society, the Asbury Church
became permanently established. Desiring, however, to be regular in
their operations, the members of the Asbury Church found themselves
compelled to appeal to the same ecclesiastical authorities and to accept
practically the same government as that already instituted for the Zion
Church. This church was thereafter received in the Methodist Church.
Although this was considered a very bad omen for the Zion Church,
however, it continued to make progress in spite of expectations to the
contrary. The members of the church decidedly increased and steps were
taken for the construction of a house with a school room underneath on
the site of the old meeting house. On the 25th of November there began
the construction of a more suitable building which was completed by
1820.

Another disturbing factor appeared in the scheme of William Lambert. He
had been a member of the Zion Church and seceded with those who formed
the Asbury connection. Because the Zion Church refused to appoint him as
a minister, and even Asbury refused to hear him preach, he returned from
Philadelphia where he had been under the influence of Bishop Richard
Allen, from whom he had obtained a license to preach, and endeavored to
establish a church for Bishop Allen's denomination. He obtained a school
house in Mott Street, and with the assistance of Rev. Mr. White, a
member and an ordained deacon, it was fitted for a church. In the
meantime Bishop Allen was in touch with some of the official brethren in
New York City with a view to extending the jurisdiction  of his own
church. The supporters of Bishop Allen, moreover, appeared at the
opportune moment, when the Zionites were without a building and were
also without the direction that it had formerly had from the white
Methodists, inasmuch as the latter were disturbed by a schism resulting
from differences as to church government.

Further disturbance was, therefore, caused when Henry Harden entered the
city of New York in 1820 and commenced to form a society of African
Methodists with the assistance of William Lambert and Rev. Mr. White.
The Zionists bearing it rather grievously that Bishop Allen had thus
tried to invade that field, decided that they would neither preach for
the Allenites nor permit the Allenites to preach for them. In this
resolution, William Miller, the minister of the Asbury Church,
acquiesced and seemingly agreed thereby to connect himself closely with
the Zionites. The church of Richard Allen's connection, however, did not
displease all the persons concerned. According to the account of
Christopher Rush, who himself became a bishop of the African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church, although Richard Allen arrived and sanctioned all
that had been done by those men who were working for the progress of his
denomination, "his presence seemed soon to alter the minds of the Zion
preachers, for notwithstanding their resolution to discountenance the
proceedings of the Bishop, yet some of them went to their meetings,
some of them sat in their altar, and one of them, James Varick, opened
meeting for the Bishop on the second or third Sunday night of the
existence of that society."

[Illustration: JAMES VARICK]

During the first years of their separation the African Methodists in New
York had the coöperation of the whites and the funds necessary for the
construction of their building and the maintenance of their ministers
came from that source. In the course of time, however, the funds
contributed by the people of color themselves increased with this
growing desire for independence. The schism in the white church,
moreover, stimulated this desire for thorough separation from the white
Methodists inasmuch as their so-called superiors were divided in their
views as to questions of polity. These Methodists of color believed that
they should avail themselves of the opportunity to control their own
affairs. They had at first had for pastors white Methodist preachers
with the local preachers of color serving under them. They thereupon
notified the white Methodists that they no longer felt themselves
obligated to look to them for supplying the pulpit and that they did not
desire to have their property involved in the difficulties contemplated
by the proposed act of incorporation which had led to the schism. The
Zionites were in a state of indecision, however, for the reason that not
having left the white Methodist Church in a snarl as did the followers
of Richard Allen, the Zionites had no particular grievance to serve as
a cohesive force. Many had thought either of returning to the white
Methodists or joining the Allenites.

There soon came a time then when it was necessary for the Zionites to
decide exactly what they would do. This being the case, an official
meeting was held on August 11, 1820, for the purpose of considering the
serious state of the church. Two important questions were propounded at
this meeting, one being: "Shall we return to the white people?" The
answer was negative. The next question was: "Shall we join Bishop
Allen?" The answer was also negative. They, therefore, decided to take
steps for establishing a firm church government of their own. Several
efforts have since been made to unite the African Methodists but to no
avail.

Being desirous, however, to proceed regularly rather than radically,
these African Methodists sought ordination and consecration through some
branch of the Christian Church. They sent a committee to make such a
request of Bishop Hobart of the Episcopal Church, but he was unable to
serve them. They then appealed to the bishop of the Methodist Church,
but they were put off in one way or another, with excuses of the bishop
having no power to act without the conference and with the request that
they should defer action until the conference should have time to
investigate. They thereafter appealed to the conference in session in
Philadelphia and were encouraged by a favorable resolution to expect
that such service would be rendered them. For some reason they appealed
to the conference in New York, which finally refused to grant their
request. The Zionites were then reduced to radical measures in that they
had finally to follow in the footsteps of the Asbury Church in ordaining
its own deacons and elder.

Becoming thus aggressive, the Zionites, like the Allenites, had taken
the offensive. They extended their operations through missionaries into
Flushing, New Haven, Long Island, and even into Philadelphia, where
certain persons separating from the connection of Richard Allen,
organized the Wesleyan Church and joined the Zionites. Under the
leadership of such men as James Varick, George Collins, Charles
Anderson, and Christopher Rush, they drew up the doctrines and
discipline of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in America, elected
a number of elders, and finally organized in 1821 a national body, of
which James Varick became the first bishop in 1822.

Before the Negro Methodists perfected their organizations by which the
influence of their churches might be permanently extended throughout the
country, the Baptists had been locally trying to do the same thing. The
Harrison Street Baptist Church was organized at Petersburg, Virginia, in
1776; another Negro Baptist Church at Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1785;
the First African Baptist Church at Savannah in 1785, with a second
Baptist Church in that city following fourteen years later; the African
Baptist Church of Lexington, Kentucky, in 1790; and a mixed Baptist
Church in the Mound Bayou, Mississippi district, in 1805, by Joseph
Willis, a free Negro born in South Carolina in 1762.[5] In the city of
Philadelphia on May 14, 1809, thirteen colored members who had for some
time felt that it would be more congenial for them to worship
separately, were dismissed to form the first African Baptist Church. On
June 19, 1809, the use of the First Baptist Church (white) was given
them for the meeting at which they were constituted an organized body.
The main trouble with the First Baptist Church (white) seemed to be that
it had suffered from having its anti-slavery ardor dampened during the
reaction following the Revolutionary War. Whereas many of the Baptists
in other parts had become radical emancipationists, the white Baptists
of Philadelphia after having attacked the slave trade, tried to dodge
the anti-slavery issue with the excuse that it was a political question
with which the church had nothing to do. The anti-slavery sentiment was
naturally suppressed during the pastorates of Holcombe, Brantly and
Cuthbert, all southern men, partly in defense of their well-known
sentiment and partly through the sentiment of the people themselves.

Complete separation of the Negro Baptists in this church was, therefore,
deemed a necessity during the first quarter of the nineteenth century
when there was an increasing prejudice against free persons of color
because of the rapid migration of freedmen from the South to
Pennsylvania.

When in 1809 the Negroes organized the African Baptist Church in
Philadelphia, it was placed under the oversight of Rev. Henry
Cunningham, and was directed for two years thereafter by John King.
According to another record there was at this time in the South a slave
named Burrows who felt that he was called to preach. Many encouraged him
to come North to beg money to buy his freedom. Two of his friends, free
persons of color, were so impressed with his worth and believed so
implicitly in his word as his bond that they bound themselves in bondage
for six months while he absented himself to solicit funds throughout the
North. In a short time this man of such indomitable will and belief in
himself and in the future, raised the required sum of money with which
he effected his manumission and invited these loyal friends who had been
instrumental in his liberation to come North to Philadelphia to assist
him in establishing a Baptist church. This was the First African Baptist
Church of Philadelphia, which, in 1809, became one of the substantial
religious organizations of the city, having enjoyed the services of
useful and influential preachers, four of whose long pastorates covered
the whole period of one hundred years.

When the African Baptist Church of Philadelphia was being organized, the
same movement was culminating in New York City. Prior to 1809 the
Baptists of color had worshiped along with their white brethren. The
church record of November 1, 1770, says: "After divine service, Hannah
Dunmore and Chloe, a Negro woman belonging to Mr. George Green, were
received into the church." Speaking about this relation, this document
says: "Our records have many notices of baptisms and marriages among the
Negro people and until early in the present century there was a large
group of them in this church." But the desire for independence and a
more congenial atmosphere so obsessed them that they sought to form an
organization of their own. This was finally effected in 1809 under the
leadership of the Rev. Thomas Paul, a native of Exeter, New Hampshire,
"where," according to the _Baptist Memorial_, "he was born of
respectable parents on the third of September, 1773." He experienced
faith in Jesus at an early age and was baptized in the year 1789 by the
Rev. Mr. Locke; but, although impressed with the thought that his
calling was the ministry, he was not ordained until 1805. Soon
thereafter he well organized the African Baptist Church in Joy Street,
in Boston, where he served this congregation for about twenty-five
years. His labors, however, were not restricted to that city. He
frequently  made preaching excursions into different parts of the
country where his "color excited considerable curiosity, and being a
person of very pleasing and fervid address, he attracted crowds to hear
him; at this period of his ministry his labors were greatly blessed with
numerous conversions in several revivals of religion commenced in
different towns under his ministration." It was while he was pastor of
the Church in Boston, that in 1808 he organized in New York City the
congregation now known as the Abyssinian Baptist Church and served it
from June to September of that year, after which Josiah Bishop and
others had charge of this very promising work.

The beginnings of this church are interesting. According to a
contemporary, "About the year 1807, the colored brethren and sisters of
the First Baptist Church, worshipping in Gold Street, for reasons
unnecessary now to mention, respectfully proposed to the said church the
expediency of a separation: seeing that the colored Methodists and
Episcopalians had made similar propositions to their respective churches
with success, they humbly desired the same. But they were unsuccessful
until the year 1809. In the interim the Rev. Thomas Paul, of Boston, at
their request, visited the city, and he was well received in the white
churches, preaching to large congregations. Encouraged by such a state
of things, they resolved on procuring a place of worship. The
meeting-house in Anthony Street, the property of the Ebenezer Baptist
Church, being for sale, was purchased by them, with the coöperation of
their white brethren. The First Church, satisfied with the competency of
brother Paul for the care and management of the petitioners, unanimously
granted honorable letters of dismission to four brethren and twelve
sisters, who, with three others, were constituted a gospel church on
Wednesday, the 5th of July, 1809, under the name of the 'Abyssinian
Baptist Church.' It is to be regretted that the order of exercises at
the public recognition of this new interest cannot be found. Blest with
the faithful labors of such a gifted man, crowded assemblies heard the
word of the Lord, and many were added to the church on a profession of
their faith in Christ."

Paul's interest in the Negro was not limited to those in this country.
In 1823 he presented to the Baptist Missionary Society of Massachusetts
a plan for improving the moral and religious condition of the Haitians,
requesting that he be sent to these people as a missionary. His plan was
received with considerable enthusiasm and he was appointed as a
missionary and sent to that country for six months. President Boyer of
the Republic of Haiti and other public functionaries kindly received
this missionary, giving him permission to preach. There he soon met with
some success in edifying a few pious people who seemed gratified beyond
measure by his ministrations. Writing home, he frequently mentioned "the
powerful precious soul reviving seasons" which he and the few disciples
on the island enjoyed. Because of his lack of knowledge of the French
language, however, he could not reach a large number of the inhabitants
of that island. He was, therefore, compelled to leave Haiti with the
regret that he could not do more for its general welfare and especially
its deplorable moral condition.[6]

That the independent church movement among Negroes should be directed
toward Methodism and Baptism requires some consideration. In those parts
of the country in which most Negroes were found, the dominant
communicants among the whites were at first Episcopalians, the
successors to the rites and ceremonies of the Anglican Church. Among
some of the best friends of the Negroes, moreover, were the
Presbyterians, who often extended the blacks the same hand of welcome as
did the Quakers. Whether this was due altogether to the emotional nature
of the Negroes to which the Baptists and Methodists appealed, to chance,
or to the wisdom of the leaders of the independent church movement among
the Negroes, is a much mooted question. Discussing this matter, Bishop
B. T. Tanner in his _Apology for African Methodism_ (page 63),
attributed the success of Methodism to the foresight of Richard Allen.
The author of this work shows how Richard Allen at first coöperated with
the Free African Society in Philadelphia until upon holding a meeting,
November 15,  1788, they adopted a report of the committee providing
for an organization of that society as a religious body, on a basis
which, according to Allen's opinion, would have been a usage which
prevented that freedom which the gospel permits. Feeling that the
current of religious sentiment was not flowing in the desired direction,
Allen refused further to coöperate with this group, which by a vote
formally declared Allen's connection severed with that society, although
Richard Allen retained the friendship of Rev. Absalom Jones, the first
rector of the St. Thomas Church, which later developed from this
organization.

Bishop Tanner contends that Allen appreciated the fact that, his people
being undisciplined, a sound judgment educated with their emotional
natures should not be forgotten and swallowed up in the cold
intellectual ritual. As he believed that by blending together the
emotional and intellectual, the minds of the Negroes could be better
developed along religious lines, he refused the proffered rectorship of
St. Thomas, saying that he could not be anything but a Methodist. He
said, moreover: "I was confident that there was no religious sect or
denomination which would suit the capacity of the colored people so well
as the Methodist, for the plain, simple Gospel suits best for any
people, for the unlearned can understand, and the learned are sure to
understand; and the reason that the Methodists are so successful in the
awakening and the conversion of the colored people, is the plain
doctrine which they preach and having a good discipline."

The Episcopal Church, moreover, could hardly attract Negro churchmen of
very much ambition, when it did not require very much reasoning to reach
the conclusion that inasmuch as that church had too often neglected the
poor whites, it would hardly be inclined to proselyte Negroes. Prior to
the time that Absalom Jones was made priest, the St. Thomas Church,
according to the Protestant Episcopal convention, was not entitled to
send clergymen or deputies thereto nor to participate in the general
government of the Episcopal Church. In the year 1795 they declared it
was only for the present. The same position, however, was taken in 1843
and it was adhered to throughout the period of slavery; for the
Episcopal Church persistently refused to make slavery a matter of
discipline.

It is little wonder then that Episcopal churches among Negroes have much
difficulty in their development, and only in a few large cities did we
have churches even so successful as that of St. Thomas in Philadelphia.
Among these may be mentioned the St. Phillips Church in New York. This
prosperous church was organized in 1818 and incorporated in 1820. Peter
Williams, the first Negro to be ordained as a priest in the Episcopal
Church, served as its rector until 1849. He was a man of unusual
beginnings. His father, Peter Williams, Sr., was for a number of
years the sexton of the John Street Methodist Church, in which position
he became distinguished among the white communicants for his fidelity
and piety. He joined with other Negroes desirous of independent church
action and established the Zion Church, out of which emerged the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Peter Williams, the son, however,
became an Episcopalian, was educated for the ministry and served for
years as the rector of St. Phillips Church. In this position he
maintained himself as a man of usefulness and influence, touching the
life of his people whenever the opportunity presented itself. Bishop
Daniel A. Payne, who first came into contact with him in New York in
1835, considered him well educated, for his day, hospitable and
generous. Bishop Payne said: "He loved to see talented young men
educating themselves and substantially aided more than one in his
efforts. Above all he valued an educated minister."

[Illustration: REV. PETER WILLIAMS

First colored Protestant Episcopal priest in the United States.]

In this position of subjection to a church control in which he himself
as a man of color did not largely figure, Peter Williams was handicapped
and could not serve his race as he desired. At the time of the intense
agitation during the great crisis when the Negroes were called upon to
decide where they would stand on the questions of colonization and
abolition, Peter Williams at first took an active part in pleading the
cause of his people. Seeing, however, that this might bring the church
to the position of having to declare itself on this important question,
the bishops of the Episcopal Church, in keeping with the custom of that
denomination, silenced Peter Williams with a decree that he should
preach merely the gospel without interfering with the political affairs
of the times. It does not appear that he had that moral stamina to impel
him to renounce his connection with a church seeking to muzzle a man
praying for the deliverance of his people. It may be, however, that, as
he was too far advanced in years to make any radical change in his
course, he followed the orders of his superiors.

In Baltimore the Episcopalians practically provided a separate church
for Negroes known as the St. James. This was the first Negro church of
this denomination established in slave territory. The Negroes were given
a building of their own and one Levington was from time to time
designated as rector for this special service. Although it appears,
however, that for a time a Negro served in this capacity, this task was
generally assigned to a rector of Caucasion blood, who fed the people
from afar with a long-handled spoon, believing that haply they might be
thereby fed. This church in Baltimore, therefore, did not figure so
largely in the life of the Negroes as did the Negro Episcopal churches
of Philadelphia and New York. In other places where Negroes of this
faith were found they were dependent altogether on the ministers of
whites. The records of the Protestant Church show here and there Negro
rectors in remote parts as in the case of one in a small town in New
York and another in Connecticut; but it is evident that they had no
employment.

The Presbyterians, who welcomed the Negroes, moreover, were not much
more successful in proselyting them. When one considers the liberality
of this sect in that its theological seminaries, including even
Princeton, opened its doors to Negroes and that the denomination too
permitted persons of color to participate in the government of the
church to the extent that they not only spoke and exercised the right to
vote in their meetings but also served as moderators, this
disinclination on the part of Negroes to attach themselves to the
Presbyterian Church may require much explanation. Wherever the
Presbyterians had the opportunity for proselyting the Negroes they
usually embraced it. Yet there were hardly 20,000 Negroes in the
Presbyterian church prior to the Civil War. One of the important reasons
is that the Methodists and Baptists were the first to reach the Negro.
The Methodists, moreover, had an itinerant system serving like scouts to
go out into the wilderness to find the people and bring them in. Then
this disinclination was due also to the fact that the Presbyterian
church, somewhat like the more aristocratic churches, disregarded the
"emotional character of experimental religion." Its appeal was too
intellectual. As Bishop Tanner said: "It strove to lift up without
coming down and while the good Presbyterian parson was writing his
discourses, rounding off the sentences, the Methodist itinerant had
traveled forty miles with his horse and saddle bags; while the parson
was adjusting his spectacles to read his manuscript, the itinerant had
given hell and damnation to his unrepentant hearers; while the disciple
of Calvin was waiting to have his church completed, the disciple of
Wesley took to the woods and made them reëcho with the voice of free
grace, believing with Bryant, 'The groves were God's first temples.'"

This same appeal of the evangelical rather than the ritualistic explains
also the slow progress of the Catholic work among Negroes. The Catholics
were early concerned with the amelioration of the condition of the
Negroes and were found among the first to bear testimony against
slavery. This denomination opened schools to enlighten the children of
the slaves, established missions to reclaim the wayward, and all but
granted the despised bondmen in their circles the privileges of liberty
and equality. The success of their workers among Negroes, however, was
not phenomenal. The Catholics did not make much impression on the
Negroes in the large cities of the North, where they were more
accessible than in the South; but considerable good was accomplished by
the promising beginnings in and around Baltimore, Washington, Mobile,
and New Orleans. So well was the foundation laid that the reaction in
favor of slavery  did not altogether counteract this healthy influence
in behalf of the enlightenment of the Negroes. Only a small percentage
of the race thereby profited, however. The proportionately small number
of Negroes now belonging to the Catholic Church have been proselyted
largely since the Civil War.

The Congregationalists became interested in the uplift of the Negroes
with whom they came into contact, although the number reached did not
multiply. The leaders of this denomination sympathized with the slave,
aided the fugitive, and preached to the unfortunate the principles of
religion so dear to the hearts of their communicants. But so great was
the hold of the more evangelical sects on the Negroes that the earliest
successful effort to constitute a group of them as a working body in the
Congregational Church was the establishment of the Dixwell Avenue
Congregational Church in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1829. The records do
not show any considerable accession of Negroes to these ranks until
after the Civil War when the work of this denomination was popularized
in various parts by that efficient worker and organizer, the late G. W.
Moore.




CHAPTER V

EARLY DEVELOPMENT


The Negro church continued to go forward. Eight years after the
organization of the African Methodist Episcopal Church the membership
easily reached 9,888, including 14 elders, 26 deacons, and 101
licentiates, itinerant and local. Its expansion had been so rapid that
it was soon necessary to establish a western conference to administer
the affairs of the many churches then rising in Ohio. Wishing further to
extend its operations, the church ordained the Rev. Scipio Bean in 1827
to do mission work in the Island of Haiti. The church established there
had as many as 72 members in 1828, and in 1830 it had extended its
operations into the Spanish port of the Island and gained a foothold in
the peninsula of Samana. That same year the Rev. R. Roberts was ordained
a deacon and afterward an elder for missionary work in the same island,
then under the successful administration of President Boyer. Although he
met with some success in the beginning in answering this cry for help in
a distant land, the work undertaken there was not finally successful.

There was an apparent falling off in the membership of certain
conferences after 1830, but this did not indicate any step backward.
Practically the whole membership in South Carolina was by the public
opinion, custom, and laws of that commonwealth, cut off from the church.
There was during this same period extensive progress in the west,
especially in Cincinnati. Great efforts were made to put the church on a
firm foundation. During the conferences of the thirties much attention
was given to the preparation of the ministry through education,
cleanliness in dress, high character, and loyalty to the church. The
work suffered a loss, however, in that Bishop Allen, who had for years
led this flock, passed away in 1831. Bishop Morris Brown, who had been
ordained to the episcopacy in 1828, became then the sole bishop and
continued so until 1836 when Edward Waters was ordained as his
assistant.

Proceeding on a sound basis, the church could not but succeed. The
membership rapidly grew, as is evidenced by the necessity for the
organization of two other conferences in the year 1840. This was the
conference of Canada, which was organized by Bishop Brown at Toronto,
and then came the conference of Indianapolis as a culmination of the
successful missionary labors of William Paul Quinn who was later honored
as the fourth bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. There
was an improvement in church literature such as the _Book of Discipline_
and the conference of the year 1836 decreed the publication of a
quarterly magazine for the use and benefit of the connection, appointing
George Hogarth of the city of Brooklyn as General Book Steward.

The denomination had much difficulty in maintaining the Book Concern.
The problem of publication has always been a perplexing one and the
experience of this church was no exception to that rule. The business
seemed to follow the Book Steward from one city to another. In 1847 it
was moved from Pittsburgh to New York. That same year it was decided to
publish a weekly to be called _The Christian Herald_. The first copy of
this publication was issued by the Rev. A. R. Green, in 1848, then in
charge of the Book Concern. In 1852, however, the name of this
publication was changed to _The Christian Recorder_. Its editor declared
that it would be devoted to religion, morality, science, and literature.
Some of the papers published therein show an intelligent insight into
conditions, a deep interest in intellectual forces effective in the
uplift of the people, and a general knowledge of the great factors which
have made the history of the world.

[Illustration: BISHOP CHRISTOPHER RUSH.]

The development of African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was equally
encouraging. After serving his people successfully for some time Bishop
James Varick passed away in 1827. The following year the office was
filled by the election of Christopher Rush, a man who had figured in the
organization of the Zion Church in New York in 1796. Because of his
good foundation in education, his equipoise, reliable judgment, and
Christian piety, Christopher Rush made such a favorable impression upon
those with whom he came in contact that he is often spoken of by the
Zionites as the ablest preacher of his time. He lived throughout the
crisis through which this church had to go, enabling it to extend its
territory so as to compete favorably with the more extensive work then
being accomplished by the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Rush
served the connection from 1828 to 1840, a period during which the
membership of the sect increased, new churches easily developed, and the
denomination realized strength and influence. Associated with Bishop
Rush in this effort were Elders Edward Johnson, Durham Stevens, George
Stevenson, David Crosby, Jonathan Gibbs, Arthur Langford, Tower Hill,
John Marshall, Richard Phillips, David Smith, Jacob Richardson, Samuel
Johnson, Abraham Green, and David Stevens. In the New York conference at
this time there were such men as Timothy Eato, Abraham Thompson, Charles
Anderson, William Carmen, George Tredwell, William Miller, Levin Smith,
Jacob Matthews, Peter Van Hass, and Jehiel Beaman.[7]

While the outstanding members of this group were those who became
bishops of the Zionites, several others who did not attain the
episcopacy, frequently showed exceptional power which materially aided
the development of the church. Among these may be mentioned the Rev. S.
T. Fray, a remarkable natural orator noted for his ability to rouse
enthusiasm. He was a man of unusual acumen, easily triumphed in debate,
and as a logician and parliamentarian could vanquish his opponent. There
was also Rev. Henry Johnson who passed among his fellows as "Old
Hickory" because of his strong force of character. Unusually great work
for the church was accomplished by Rev. John A. Williams as a
revivalist. Rev. Leonard Collins was one of the reliable pillars in the
church for a number of years but lost his standing by yielding to the
temptation of strong drink. Honorable mention may be given Basil McKall,
Abraham Cole, and especially David Stevens for their forceful preaching
which moved multitudes to come into the church.

It does not appear that some of the bishops left very much of an
impression, although they were men of extraordinary following. Bishop
Spywood, for example, was retired from his office because there were
more bishops than were needed for that service in the church. Bishop
Moore, who was an inspiring preacher, drawing large crowds and moving
all classes to repentance, was not at ease as a bishop and he too was
retired in 1860.

It was unfortunate, however, that in 1840 a very disturbing factor
appeared so as to arrest the progress of this church. There arose in
this connection an element desiring an assistant superintendent. It
seemed that this desire came from the friends of Rev. William Miller, a
man of changing tendencies. Although a preacher of unusual intellect and
a man of general ability, he did not show much stability of character.
When he was a deacon in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1813,
it appeared that he used his position to do the Zion Church an injury.
At a later period he, with the Asbury Church, joined the Zionites. Yet
with this same church about 1820 he united with Bishop Allen so as to
form the nucleus of the Bethel Church in New York City in 1830; but
returned later to the Zion Church with a fragment of the Asbury
congregation. In spite of this changing record, however, his friends
felt that he should be made superintendent and it was finally done; but
although an assistant superintendent, he never held a conference nor
performed an ordination. It seemed that it was a position of honor
rather than one of usefulness, but he was known as bishop until he died
in 1846.

Two years later when Rev. George Galbreth was elected to this office,
some dispute arose as to whether he should be a full bishop or a mere
assistant, but it was finally decided that he should be an assistant
only. As this did not satisfy all concerned, the friends of Mr. Galbreth
continued the fight and in the conference of 1852 they carried the point
of placing all bishops on equality. Part of their program too was the
retirement of Bishop Rush, who, being feeble and blind, could no longer
serve efficiently. The conference thereupon proceeded to elect Galbreth,
Bishop, and Spywood. Bishop Spywood was retired from this office in 1856
because there were too many bishops for the work to be accomplished in
the field, and during the remainder of his life he was employed as an
agent of the New England Mission Board in which he served successfully.

It happened that soon after the election of the three superintendents,
that is, in 1853, Bishop Galbreth died, leaving two bishops in the
field. How were these bishops then to stand? Was there such a thing as a
senior bishop or were they on equality? Bishop Bishop insisted that he
was the General Superintendent and above and beyond his coworker. As
this did not satisfy both parties he was called to trial; but, insisting
that he was right, he evaded the inquiry and caused a schism in the Zion
Church. Those adhering to the suspended bishop held the territory north
to Philadelphia, south to Charleston and west to Pittsburgh, and called
themselves the Wesleyan Methodist Episcopal Church. The others held
most of New York, New England, and Nova Scotia, and retained the
original name of the body, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church.
These two factions tended to drift in different directions. In the west
there was a tendency toward Episcopalianism, whereas the east drifted
toward Congregationalism. The question of the church property was
finally taken into the courts, which decided in favor of those who
remained with the denomination. Steps were thereafter taken to heal the
breach which had been produced by the stubbornness of one man and the
haste of a few others in dealing with him. In 1860 the schism was
finally ended by an agreement of the two factions to bury their
differences and unite for the good of the common church.

During these years some smaller movements were in progress. A division
of the Union Church of Africans incorporated at Wilmington, Delaware, in
1807, resulted in the organization of the African Union Church and the
Union American Methodist Episcopal Church in 1850. From the Methodist
Protestant Church a sufficient number of Negroes finally withdrew to
form, in 1860, the First Colored Methodist Protestant Church. These
denominations, however, have not been able to compete in numbers and
influence with the Allenites and Zionites.

These activities of the African Methodist denominations mentioned above
would seem to indicate that the large majority of the Negroes became
members of these new sects, leaving merely a few for the Baptists. As a
matter of fact, however, the contrary was true. The Negro Methodists had
national organization and in most cases intelligent men making a
systematic effort to extend their work. The Baptists, on the other hand,
had both the disadvantages and the advantages of local self-government.
In their undeveloped state this unusual liberty sometimes proved to be a
handicap to the Baptists in that the standard of the ministry and the
moral tone of the churches were not so high as in the case of the
Methodist bodies, whose conferences had power to make local churches do
the right when they were not so inclined. This local self-government of
the Baptists, on the other hand, made possible a more rapid increase in
the number of churches established and the large influx of members in
quest of the liberty wherewith they believed Christ had made them free.

What then was this peculiar feature of Baptist policy which explains the
unusual growth? In the first place, the local Baptist Church is
thoroughly independent of any other organization or church. It may
become associated with other churches in bodies meeting periodically to
devise plans for the common good of the denomination; but it is in no
sense bound by the rules and regulations of such bodies. And should an
association, moreover, exclude a church from its group, that church is
still legally constituted a Baptist church and may join another
association or form one of its own in coöperation with other churches
similarly disposed. Any group of baptized believers of not less than
four, moreover, may exercise the liberty of organizing a church under
the direction of a regularly ordained minister of the denomination and
ordination in the Baptist Church is not a difficulty. With the tendency
of so many members to find fault, to disagree, to follow the advice of
ill-designing persons seeking personal ends, it was a decidedly easy
matter for Negro Baptist churches under these circumstances to split and
thus multiply. While the Methodists might hesitate to establish an
additional church so close to another as to hinder its growth, the
Baptists in the heat of controversial excitement often established two
or three churches where there were not at first enough people to sustain
one; but in the course of time these churches, because of their unusual
liberty in the evangelical effort, would attract so many more than the
other liberal churches that they would all be filled. The Baptists
finally aggregated about as many as all other Negro members of the
various independent Negro churches. It soon happened in the South,
moreover, that where the blacks were freely permitted to embrace
religion the Negro Baptists outnumbered the whites in mixed churches two
to one and sometimes three to one or four to one.

Detailed records of these achievements from a national point of view are
lacking for the reason that the Negro Baptists prior to the
organization of the National Baptist Convention had no national body of
their own. During the antebellum period they belonged largely to the
white churches in the South, occupying certain seats, the Negro pew, or
meeting in the basement of the same edifice for worship at a special
hour on the Sabbath day. In most cities in the North the independent
movement among Negroes brought about the establishment of their own
local churches; but, when associated, they generally belonged to the
white bodies, used their literature, and followed their doctrines. As
many of the white churches and organizations took little account of what
these Negro communicants were doing but rather considered them as an
undesirable but inevitable adjunct, no complete records of their
achievements are extant. Here and there a writer of the history of the
Baptists gave them honorable mention and now and then a Negro Baptist
preacher in a locality had sufficient appreciation of the value of
records to leave an account.

The location and the status of some of these Baptist churches will be
interesting, especially in the South where their development was
retarded by the restrictions of a slaveholding section living in dread
of servile insurrection. During the thirties and forties a number of
Negro Baptist churches were established in the District of Columbia, the
first one being organized by Sampson White in 1839 and reaching its
position of permanence  some years later under William Williams, whose
flock was the largest of this sect in the city. As it could not be
associated with Negro churches in the South, then dominated by white men
in the interest of slaveholders, it connected itself with the
Philadelphia Baptist Association. The first Negro Baptist Church in
Baltimore was organized in 1836 and was making unusual progress under
the direction of M. C. Clayton, with a membership of 150 in 1846. A
number of other Baptist churches in the city were soon organized
thereafter, furnishing opportunity for development to its several useful
Negro ministers, among whom was Rev. Noah Davis of the Saratoga Street
Baptist Church.

[Illustration: NOAH DAVIS

A Baptist preacher in Baltimore almost a century ago.]

These places in Maryland, however, were not strictly of the slaveholding
attitude and so were parts of Virginia. An extensive account of the
African Baptist Church of Richmond, established from the white church of
that faith and placed in charge of Rev. Robert Ryland, a white man,
serving at the same time as President of Richmond College, appears
elsewhere. There had been for some years a Negro Baptist congregation in
Portsmouth, mentioned above. There were elsewhere in the State other
Baptist and Methodist churches and some of them almost entirely under
the direction of Negroes. The first African Baptist Church in Petersburg
had 664 communicants, the largest membership in the Middle District
Baptist Association. The largest Baptist Church in Manchester (now
South Richmond) in 1846 was the African Baptist Church with a membership
of 487.

In South Carolina the Negroes were not permitted to separate from the
whites, but they so decidedly outnumbered the latter that the churches
had the aspect of Negro congregations. Of the 1,643 members belonging to
the First Baptist Church in Charleston in 1846 all but 261 were persons
of color. In the Second Baptist Church there were 200 white people and
312 Negroes; in the Georgetown Baptist Church 33 white persons and 298
Negroes. The Welsh Neck Church had 477 Negroes and only 83 whites. In
the Association to which these churches belonged the blacks outnumbered
the whites two to one. No distinction was made between the members of
the two races in the minutes of the Association. The Bethel Association
of this State, however, had for a number of years prior to 1838 reported
the Negro members. It then had 1,502 whites and 637 blacks; but in 1843
the whites were 1,804 and the blacks 1,000.

The main interest in the Negro Baptists of Georgia during this period
centered around the church established in Savannah by Andrew Bryan. For
about two years after the death of the founder in 1812 the church
remained without a pastor, having its pulpit supplied during this period
by Rev. Evans Great. At the end of this interregnum the church set apart
a Sabbath day to pray that the great head of the church would direct
their choice to a worthy successor. Although Andrew Marshall  had
served as an assistant pastor under his uncle he had upon his death
become largely engaged in business. The church, however, by a majority
vote chose Andrew Marshall in preference to Evans Great, and the former
entered upon the service with exercises auguring well for success. Being
prosperous in his ministry as well as in his business, Andrew Marshall
was respected not only by his own people but also by the most desirable
whites.

His prosperity and his influence, however, led to a supposed violation
of the laws. After having accumulated a goodly portion of money, he
purchased from certain Negroes who had no permit to trade or sell, some
bricks with which he constructed his two-story brick house. As this was
a violation of the law, his traducers seized upon this opportunity to
humiliate him, and, although his former master interceded in his behalf
and enlisted the sympathy of the best white citizens, he was
administered a whipping as a punishment for this so-called high crime.
This crippled him in his ministry for a while, but he soon recovered
therefrom, having the assistance of Henry Cunningham and Evans Great,
who, in spite of the fact that the latter was defeated by Andrew
Marshall for the pastorate of the church, served under him thereafter as
an assistant pastor and coöperated with him loyally.

Andrew Marshall emerged from these trials but another of more
consequence awaited him. He alienated the affection of the white people
of this denomination by preaching what they considered false doctrines.
Further trouble was caused when he permitted Alexander Campbell, then
called the new light preacher, to speak in the African Baptist Church.
The orthodox Baptist of the city disapproved of Marshall's admitting Dr.
Campbell to his pulpit and disputes in the church immediately followed.
The church became hopelessly divided and its strife was the topic of the
town. Marshall withdrew from the building with one portion of the
church, the other remaining under the leadership of Adam Johnson. As
Andrew Marshall was much more powerful than any other man of his
connection, he carried with him then out of this church a large
majority.

The association to which this church belonged, however, took action in
his case, recommending that Marshall be silenced indefinitely, that the
African Church be dissolved, and that measures be taken to constitute a
new body as a branch of the white Baptist church. The Negro members in
the country, then members of the African Baptist Church in Savannah,
were to take letters of dismission and either unite themselves with the
neighboring churches of the Baptist faith or be constituted as separate
churches. The association also gave its approval of the Christian
deportment of the Second African Church. This, of course, made all of
the Negro churches wards of the white and according to the law no Negro
could exercise the gift of preaching in those churches unless he was
endorsed by two or more white Baptist ministers. As the property of the
First African Church was under the trusteeship of the association, its
will had to be respected. There is no evidence, however, that these
orders of the association were ever carried out. As most of the members
of the churches lived in the country rather than in the city of
Savannah, moreover, the dispute was one in which the minority rather
than the majority of the members were concerned.

Marshall, however, solved his own problems with the assistance of
certain influential white men who enabled him to purchase the old
building of the white Baptists, out of which they moved into a new
church edifice on Chippewa Square. As this was a much larger building
than the old meeting house constructed by Andrew Bryan and Marshall
could preach with more power than any other minister in that vicinity,
he had little difficulty in attracting a larger following, although most
of the official class of the First African Baptist Church deserted him.

Upon the withdrawal of Andrew Marshall and his supporters from the
edifice of the First African Baptist Church and their taking over of a
new edifice, there arose a serious question which even to-day has not
been really settled. This question was whether or not Marshall and his
followers continued the church established by Andrew Bryan or abandoned
it to the control of those who remained and were later accepted in the
Sunbury Association of Georgia as the Third African Baptist Church,
still later known as the First Bryan Baptist Church. The officers in the
control of this church contended that they rather than the followers of
Marshall represented the church as it was established by Bryan. They
insist that, although in being received in the Sunbury Association they
were designated as the Third African Baptist Church, they, nevertheless,
represented the church as it was originally established by Andrew Bryan.
All of the actual officers of the original church and all of the persons
who had represented the church as it originally was in the Sunbury
Association remained to carry on the work as it had been theretofore
without any special organization of a new church and succeeded at the
same time to the possession of this property. They emphasized also the
fact that Andrew Marshall had never represented the church in this
association and that he himself was a member of the Second African
Church rather than of the church of which he was pastor.

This Third African Church, later the First Bryan Baptist Church, then
extended a call to Thomas Anderson, who served them until 1835, when the
congregation secured the services of Steven McQueen. In 1841 the church
was again without a regular pastor but accepted the services of John
Devous, a former deacon of the Second African Church. Soon thereafter
we hear of the resignation of Mr. Devous and the installation of Isaac
Roberts, also a member of the Second African Church. Mr. Roberts proved
to be the most energetic of all pastors in the city after the rise of
Andrew Marshall. He improved the building, inspired the members, and
edified their souls. But upon the death of Thomas Anderson, the pastor
of the Second African Church, Mr. Roberts resigned to accept that
pastorate, in 1849. The church then extended a call to Bristol Lawton of
Beaufort, South Carolina, who preached for just one year and was
succeeded by Garrison Frazer, a Baptist from the State of Virginia. Mr.
Frazer was a man of high church principles and was a good worker in the
ranks. About the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, he resigned and
the church then had ordained for its leadership Rev. Ulysses L. Houston,
who developed much power as a preacher. In this position he extended the
influence of the church and made himself a great factor even among the
white Baptists of the community. He served in this capacity for some
years, laboring through the war into freedom. Andrew Marshall continued
in charge of his church, maintaining himself with the same prestige and
retaining a large following until he passed away in 1856, when he was
succeeded by Rev. William J. Campbell. Andrew Marshall was mourned by
thousands unto whom he had ministered  and by tens of thousands who had
observed his good work in delivering the poor that cry and in directing
the wanderer in the right way.

Alabama also had a large number of Negro Baptists although there did not
develop as many independent churches as there were in Georgia. The Negro
membership in the mixed churches was a little more than one-half of the
number. In the city of Montgomery the Negroes were almost three to one.
Probably the most flourishing center was the African Baptist Church at
Mobile. This congregation had once been a part of the First Baptist
Church (white), but in 1839 the congregation was dissolved to form two.
That year the Negro church was admitted to the Bethel Association. The
Negroes had a fine house of worship built by themselves and had
developed among them some intelligent local preachers, among whom were
certain gentlemen known as Heard, Hunton, Hale, Stowe, Collins,
Schroebel, and Grant.

The center of interest among the Negro Baptists in Florida was
Jacksonville. There the First Bethel Baptist Church was organized in
1838 with four whites and two Negroes as charter members. These were
Rev. J. Jaudan and wife, Deacon James McDonald and wife and two slaves
belonging to Jaudan. They held their first meetings in the Government
Block House near the County Court House but later purchased on Church
Street, between Hogan and Julia Streets, a lot on which was built the
first edifice. When later the whites decided to separate from the
Negroes and undertook to dispossess them altogether the court decided
that the property belonged to the Negroes in as much as they were in the
majority. Later, however, the Bethel Baptist Church sold out this
property to the whites and purchased property on the corner of Main and
Union Streets. In our day we have seen the Bethel Baptist Church
incorporated by the State as an institutional church which figures as an
important factor in the life of the Negroes of Jacksonville.

In the western slave States, where the Negroes were few, they were,
nevertheless, found in considerable numbers in the Baptist Church.
One-fourth of the Baptists in Tennessee were Negroes. The membership in
Kentucky was of a much larger proportion. The African Baptist Church of
Lexington was founded by a thrifty Negro who, in spite of the law, was
permitted to remain in the State as a worthy free Negro and as such not
only preached but as early as the thirties had accumulated a fortune
valued at $20,000. In 1846 this church under the leadership of L.
Terrell was the largest in the Elkhorn Association and was considered
"orderly and flourishing." During these years the First African Baptist
Church of Louisville had been developing along the same line and was the
largest in its association, having 644 members. Under the pastorate of
Rev. Henry Adams, a man of considerable education and ability to lead,
it attained a position of much usefulness.  The Negro Baptist Church of
St. Louis, founded in 1827, was, in 1848, the largest in its connection
and with the impetus given the work by its pastor, J. B. Meacham, it
became still more influential.

In the North the development of the Negro Baptists did not proceed so
smoothly. In the first place, neither the majority of the Negroes nor a
large percentage of the whites in that section belonged to the Baptist
Church. The northern Negroes, moreover, had something to conjure with.
Methodism among them was a radical independent movement offering liberty
in a sphere in which the Negro had never freely moved. Many Negroes,
therefore, heeded the call of the African Methodists to "come ye out
from among them and work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling." Independent Methodists in the South, however, were more of
an exception to the rule than was the case of the Baptists in the North,
for the Negro Baptists had every opportunity so to worship God in the
North, if they desired, whereas the independent Negro Methodists were
actually prohibited from invading most of the South.

As a matter of fact the Baptist churches were among the first separate
organizations established in the North for Negroes, and as the free
Negroes and fugitives were in the course of time driven out of the South
by the intolerable conditions obtaining there during the reactionary
period, the northern Negro Baptist churches multiplied and their
membership increased. Practically all large urban communities of the
North had some Negro Baptists. Philadelphia was especially well
supplied. There was the First African Church founded by Negroes in 1809,
with a membership of 257, under Richard Vaughn in 1846. The Union
Colored Church, with a membership of 200, was in charge of Daniel Scott.
J. Henderson was the pastor of the Third African Baptist Church, with a
membership of only 61, and William Jackson ministered to a similar
number in the so-called African Church.

Farther north the Baptists were also making progress. The Abyssinian
Baptist Church of New York City was, in 1846, doing well under the
direction of Rev. Sampson White, with a membership of 424. In Boston the
African Baptist Church had held its own, but in New England, where the
abolition sentiment was developing and there resulted a more healthy
sentiment in behalf of fairness for the Negro, the independent movement
among Negro Methodists and Baptists was not generally considered
necessary. Negroes were accepted in white churches and heard preached
and saw practiced the principles of the brotherhood of man and the
fatherhood of God. Only in centers of large Negro population then, as in
Boston, Providence, Newport, New Haven and Hartford, did the Negroes
tend largely to separate from the whites.

To the west, however, where came Negroes fleeing from the persecution of
the southern whites, independent churches flourished much better.
Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, and
Chicago soon found Baptist as well as Methodist churches common. Some of
the pioneers in the group of Baptists were Richard DeBaptiste of Detroit
and later of Chicago, and James Poindexter of Columbus. These in the
course of time so rapidly increased that the Negro Baptists finally
established an independent connection, the Providence Baptist
Association, the first Negro body of the kind in the United States,
organized in Ohio in 1836. Such was the case in Illinois where the
Baptist churches of St. Clair and Madison counties, of Shawneetown,
Vandalia, Jacksonville, Springfield, Galena, and Chicago, representing
about twelve churches, organized in 1838 the Wood River Baptist
Association. Feeling that there was a need for a still larger body, the
churches of these parts organized in 1853 the Western Colored Baptist
Convention.

The progress of these independent churches in the west suffered no
interruption until the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, when
many Negroes who had escaped from the South and settled in these cities
had to flee to Canada for safety. In Canada West, the various
settlements saw the influence of the Baptists and Methodists extended,
but for a long time there had been a Baptist church in Toronto which
under Rev. W. Christian was flourishing in 1846, and the Methodists soon
made there a more systematic effort.




CHAPTER VI

THE SCHISM AND THE SUBSEQUENT SITUATION


An important factor in the growth of the Negro Church was that the
Negroes found the white churches of their choice less friendly and
finally saw them withdrawn from the churches in the North to perpetuate
slavery. In the South, the slaves and free Negroes had to accept
whatever religious privileges were allowed them; but when the national
bodies grew lukewarm on abolition, receded from the advanced position
which they had taken in the defense of the Negro, and persistently
compromised on the question to placate their southern adherents to
maintain intact their national organizations, Negroes forgot the stigma
attached to their radical religious bodies and united freely with their
brethren who during the first years of their independence found it
difficult to secure a following.

In 1808 the general conference of the Methodists provided that the
annual conferences should form their own regulations relative to buying
and selling slaves, thus making it possible for the body of preachers to
act efficiently in one direction against slavery, even should the
general conference  choose wholly to refrain. This rule was abrogated
in 1820, however, and the only important changes made thereafter with
reference to the Negroes were some rules adopted in 1824, one of which
provided that all preachers should prudently "enforce upon their
members," the necessity of teaching their slaves to read the word of
God, and to allow them time to attend upon the public worship of God on
our regular days of divine service. Another rule provided that Negro
preachers and official members should have all the privileges which are
usual to others in the district and quarterly conferences, where the
usages of the country did not forbid it, and that the presiding elder
might hold for them a separate district conference, when the number of
Negro local preachers would justify it. The annual conferences might
employ Negro preachers to travel and preach, where their services were
judged necessary, provided that no one should be so employed without
having been recommended according to the form of discipline.

The Presbyterians had tried to evade the Negro question but it was again
brought up in view of the cruelty practiced in the traffic of slaves
during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The General Assembly
was forced to take some action again in 1815. It then referred to its
previous resolutions on the subject and expressed regret that slavery of
Africans existed, hoping too that such measures might be taken as would
secure religious  education at least to the rising generation of slaves
as a preparation for their emancipation at some time in the future. As
to the transfer of slaves necessary in the economy of the slave States
the General Assembly regarded this as unavoidable; but it denounced the
buying and selling of slaves by way of traffic and all undue cruelty
among them as inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel, recommending
it to the presbyteries and sessions in their care to make use of all
measures to prevent such shameful conduct. In 1818 there came before
this General Assembly a resolution to the effect that a person who
should sell as a slave a member of the church, who should be at the time
in good standing in the church and unwilling to be sold, acted
inconsistently with the spirit of Christianity and ought to be debarred
from the communion of the church.

After considerable discussion, the subject was submitted to a committee
to prepare a report for the adoption of the General Assembly, embracing
the object of the above resolution and also expressing the opinion of
the Assembly as to slavery. This report, unanimously adopted, carried,
among other things, a declaration that the voluntary enslaving of one
portion of the human race by another is a gross violation of the most
precious rights of human nature, utterly inconsistent with the law of
God which requires us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and totally
irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the gospel of Christ,
which enjoins that all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do ye even unto them.[8]

In another part of this report, however, the Assembly seemed to undo
what it had done; for it exhorted others to forbear harsh censures, and
uncharitable reflections on their brethren, who unhappily live among
slaves whom they cannot immediately set free, but who, at the same time,
are really using all their influence, and all their endeavors, to bring
them into a state of freedom, as soon as a door for it can be safely
opened. It also encouraged the members of the Society to patronize the
American Colonization Society with a view to sending the Negroes to
Africa and thus deliver themselves and their country from the calamity
of slavery. The General Assembly recommended the encouragement of
religious instruction of the slaves in the principles of the Christian
religion, granting them liberty to attend on the preaching of the
gospel, when they have opportunity, by favoring the instruction of them
in the Sabbath schools wherever those schools should be formed and by
giving them all other proper advantages for acquiring the knowledge of
their duty both to God and man. The General Assembly further recommended
that it was incumbent on all Christians to communicate religious
instruction to those who are under their authority, so that the doing of
this "in the case before us so far from operating as some have
apprehended that it might, as an incitement to insurrection, would, on
the contrary, operate as a most powerful means for the prevention of
those evils."

In this straddling position these churches tried to discountenance as
far as possible all cruelty of whatever kind in the treatment of slaves,
especially the cruelty of separating husband and wife, parents and
children, and that which consisted in selling slaves to those who would
either themselves deprive these unhappy people of the blessings of the
gospel or who would transfer them to places where the gospel was not
proclaimed, or where it was forbidden to slaves to attend upon its
instruction. During the thirties most of these churches were taking the
position of evading the question, but the abolition members therein kept
the problem before them. Postponement of the discussion thereafter
became the order of the day. One decade later many took the position
assumed by the Presbyterian Church in 1845 when, as a result of various
memorials on slavery, the Assembly, deploring the division of the church
on slavery, passed a resolution that the church could not legislate
where Christ has not legislated, that as Christ and the Apostles
admitted slaveholders as members of the church, they could not be
expected to do otherwise. Some disclaimed, however, any desire to deny
that slavery is an evil, or to countenance the idea that masters may
regard their slaves as real property and not as human beings. They
merely intended to say that since Christ and his Apostles did not make
the holding of slaves a bar to communion, the church organizations as
the court of Christ had no authority to do so. The apostles of Christ
sought to ameliorate the condition of the slaves, not by denouncing and
excommunicating their masters but by teaching both masters and slaves
the glorious doctrines of the gospel and enjoining upon each a discharge
of their relative duties. These sects rejoiced rather that the ministers
and churches of the slaveholding States were awakening to a deeper sense
of their obligations to extend to the slave population generally the
means of grace, for many slaveholders not professedly religious favored
this object. They deplored the agitation which tended to separate the
northern from the southern portion of the church, "a result which every
good citizen must deplore as tending to the disunion of our beloved
country and which every enlightened Christian will oppose as bringing
about a ruinous and unnecessary schism between brethren who maintain a
common faith."

The schism, however, was impending; for the southern members of the
churches boldly defended slavery as justified by the scriptures, while
many northerners differed from them. Ministers and laymen wrote works
setting forth these doctrines while pseudo-scientists and philosophers
undertook to justify the enslavement of the Negroes on the ground of
racial inferiority. Southerners who would not go to the extent of
justifying the institution on these untenable grounds merely deprecated
it as an evil for which they were not responsible and of which they
could not rid themselves. Richard Fuller, a southern Baptist of unusual
influence in shaping the policy of that sect in his section, expressed
this thought in the words: "I am willing to appear in any controversy
which can even by implication place me in a false light and odious
attitude representing me as a eulogist and abettor of slavery, and not
as simply the apologist of an institution transmitted to us by former
generations--the existence of which I lament--for the commencement of
which I am not at all responsible--for the extinction of which I am
willing to make greater sacrifices than any abolitionist has made or
would make, if the cause of true humanity would be thus advanced."

The outbreaks soon followed, however, in spite of efforts to heal the
breach. There came from the Alabama State Baptist Convention a memorial
with respect to the discrimination of the Foreign Mission Board against
slaveholders in making its appointments. The reply of the Board was
conciliatory but was to the effect that a slaveholder could not be
consistently appointed as a missionary for the reason that such action
would involve an approval of slavery. This and other Baptist conventions
thereafter severed their connection with the national body, and in 1845
organized the Southern Baptist Convention. That same year occurred the
secession of the Southern Methodists. That denomination had for years
struggled with this question and had undertaken to maintain the position
that slavery is an evil to be deplored and that ministers and bishops at
least should abstain therefrom. When, in 1845, the Methodists undertook
to discipline one of its bishops, James O. Andrew, charging him with
holding slaves, the southern delegates stood by him and withdrew to
organize the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In 1857, the
Presbyterians who had all but compromised sufficiently to hold their
national body intact gave an expression of opinion on the Fugitive
Slave Law which so offended its southern members that they withdrew and
formed the nucleus around which the Southern Presbyterian Church was
established in 1861.

In spite of the reactionary tendencies of the white churches, however,
no such thing as the independence of the Negro had ever been possible in
the South and could not be so after the radical aspect which this
movement assumed in the North. In slave States, the majority of Negroes
became a decidedly neglected mass during the reaction, although many of
them were nominally members of churches. When because of the
insurrectionary movement led by certain blacks like Gabriel Prosser,
Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, it became unpopular to teach Negroes to
read and the educated white persons were not willing to supply this lack
of religious workers among the blacks, there was no longer hope for
ordinary religious instruction. This reaction was unusually disastrous
to the Negro preacher when it was noised abroad that Nat Turner was a
minister. The rumor attached to Negro ministers throughout the South the
stigma of using preaching as a means to incite their race to servile
insurrection.

Some of the legislation enacted by the States after this great upheaval
will indicate the extent to which this fear controlled the minds of the
southern people. In 1832 Virginia passed a law to silence Negro
preachers, making it impossible for them thus to function except in
compliance with very rigid regulations and in the presence of certain
discreet white men. In 1833, Alabama made it unlawful for slaves or free
Negroes to preach unless before five respectable slaveholders and when
authorized by some neighboring religious society. Georgia enacted a law
in 1834 providing that neither free Negroes nor slaves might preach or
exhort an assembly of more than seven unless licensed by justices on the
certificate of three ordained ministers. Other Southern States soon
followed the example of these, passing more drastic laws prohibiting the
assembly of Negroes after the early hours of the night, and providing
for the expulsion of all free Negroes from such commonwealths, so as to
reduce the danger of mischief from the spread of information by this
more enlightened class.

Thus circumscribed, the Negroes in the South had to follow their masters
in religious matters. They continued to join the Methodist and Baptist
churches, but constituted a part of a mixed membership worshiping under
the same roof. The masters had long since learned that coincidence of
religious belief on the part of the slave and the owner was a necessity
in the economy of the slaveholding States. No master would look with
favor upon seeing his slave proselyted or influenced by a minister whom
he would not tolerate as his own spiritual adviser. Later there was not
much commingling of the two races in the same meetings. White ministers
preached to the Negroes in their special meetings or provided some Negro
exhorter of power to supply that need, but only when such Negro
minister's character had been thoroughly investigated and approved in
accordance with the law and public opinion. Where there were not so very
many Negroes in the churches, they were segregated in the gallery or
certain pews, which they entered by a side door, as provided in the
Court of the Gentiles in the Temple of Jehovah; but if there were many
Negroes and very few whites in these congregations, they usually
provided separate buildings or used the same edifices at different
hours. The argument in favor of this segregation was that God in making
the races different intended that they should be kept separate and
distinct.

Where there was allowed much liberty in seating, very often grave
problems arose. Such was the case in Charleston, South Carolina, in the
Bethel Church in 1833 on an occasion when Dr. Capers was to preach. As
more whites came than could be seated and the Negroes refused to vacate
their customary seats, a number of uncouth young white men forcibly
ejected them therefrom. Because one of the preachers a few days
thereafter sharply criticized this action of the uncouth element they
became unusually indignant, registering a protest against such censure.
An effort was made to settle the matter by reconciliation, but when that
failed, nine of the young men were expelled only to be followed by 150
others to form a new organization, which established connection with the
Methodist Protestant Church.

This sort of segregation was common to all of the denominations alike.
The Presbytery of Charleston, finding the church in that city unusually
crowded in 1850, built a structure for the worship of the Negro
membership, costing $7,700. The edifice was of the shape of a T to
provide seats for the whites in the transepts. It had connected with it
all of the facilities for religious instruction in the other churches
with the exception that teaching was oral. The Episcopalians in that
city, however, found it more difficult to carry out such a policy in
relieving the congestion of the Negro pews in St. Michael's and St.
Phillip's. These communicants decided to build what was to be called the
Calvary Church for the accommodation of the blacks who were then
occupying temporary quarters in Temperance Hall. Because of certain
radical action of the burial societies among the Negro communicants,
however, the owner of Temperance Hall refused further to accommodate the
Negroes and the Calvary Church was demolished while it was in the
process of construction.

The Negroes seemed to have retained several separate places of worship
in the State of Virginia, as in the case of Georgia. Among the churches
established for Negroes at a very early period was that of Williamsburg,
Virginia, organized  exclusively for Negroes in 1776 and admitted as
such to the Dover Baptist Association in 1791. Upon petitioning the
state legislature in 1823, however, the Negroes were refused the permit
to build a Baptist church in Richmond, although the one used by the
whites was not sufficiently spacious to permit their attendance. In
1841, however, when the Baptist church was finally compelled to build a
new structure to accommodate its increasing membership, they turned over
to the Negroes for their special place of worship the old building in
which they organized what is known as the first African Baptist Church
under the pastorate of the Rev. Robert Ryland, a white man, who served
during the same period as president of Richmond College. When this
became unusually crowded the Ebenezer Baptist Church was organized by
the overflow membership in 1855 and was controlled very much in the same
way. There were flourishing Negro Methodist and Baptist churches in
other parts during the forties, fifties, and sixties, conducted very
much on the order of the First African Baptist Church in Richmond, or
like the Anthony Street Church in Mobile, Alabama, in charge of the Rev.
Keidor Hawthorne. In other centers in Virginia, however, the Negroes
were proceeding almost independently. There was then a representative
Baptist congregation in Portsmouth under the direction of the noted
builder and organizer, E. G. Corpew. Rev. Mr. Morris, another pioneer in
the work, was at this time leading forward the Court Street Baptist
Church in Lynchburg. In 1837 and 1838 Sampson White was reported as a
successful minister in charge of the Gillfield Baptist Church of
Petersburg, which as early as 1803 undertook to erect its first
structure. Sampson White then went to Norfolk for a short stay in this
inviting field, and in 1839 came to Washington and organized the
Nineteenth Street Baptist Church.

[Illustration: SAMPSON WHITE

A Baptist preacher in Virginia, the District of Columbia, and New York
almost a century ago.]

In the District of Columbia, where, as in Maryland, the restrictions on
Negroes were not so rigid as in some other parts of the South, the
Negroes had numerous churches of the Baptist and Methodist faith, and
under the leadership of John F. Cooke established, in 1843, the
Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church.

Baltimore was no exception to this rule. As the slave and free
membership freely mingled in that city they had, as early as 1835, ten
congregations, and by 1847 thirteen, ten of which were Methodist. The
work of the Baptists had been largely promoted by M. C. Clayton, the
preacher of versatile genius, who founded the First African Church in
that city in 1836, and by Noah Davis, a leader and organizer of much
ability.

[Illustration: REV. M. C. CLAYTON

A Baptist preacher of power in Baltimore before the Civil War.]

This favorable condition, however, obtained in the South only in those
communities where the authorities winked at the violation of the law by
free Negroes and where slaves enjoyed unusual privileges because their
masters were a law unto themselves. In 1828 the Alabama Baptist
Association  conditionally purchased a slave named Caesar at the cost
of $625 and sent him to preach the gospel and live among his people. He
was then made the companion of the famous white evangelist, James
McLemore, of much note in Alabama. Caesar was respected alike for piety
and his ability as a preacher. Not infrequently he addressed audiences
composed entirely of whites. Another slave of Alabama, Doc Phillips, was
a Baptist preacher of a commanding influence among his people. The
Tuskegee Association of that State undertook to purchase him that he
might be appointed a missionary, but he declined to be severed from his
master, who allowed him whatever time he might desire for preaching. So
was this true of George Bentley of Giles County, Tennessee, a slave of
unusual note, having attained distinction as a preacher of power, well
versed in polemic theology. Out of a debate on baptism lasting more than
four days he emerged victor over a white minister in that county
challenging him to a discussion of the principles of baptism. He
numbered among his communicants the best white people of the community,
who paid him a salary of more than $600. He, like Doc Phillips, refused
to have his congregation purchase his freedom, as he did not care to be
separated from his kind master.

Here and there in the South, however, there developed certain Negro
preachers better known to fame. A striking example of this class was
Lott Cary, who was born a slave in Virginia. When quite young he was
hired out and thereby came under the influences which caused him to be a
man given to profane and intemperate habits, although his parents were
of the higher class of slaves. In 1807, however, he was awakened by
hearing a sermon from the third chapter of John on the interview of
Nicodemus with our Saviour, from the words: "Notwithstanding what I say
unto you, you must be born again." So powerful was the preaching and so
telling was the effect on the mind of this slave that he immediately
secured a copy of the New Testament and almost miraculously learned to
read by studying that chapter. Upon developing into a strong spiritual
man, he was made superintendent of all the laborers in the tobacco
warehouse in which he was working in Richmond. Not long thereafter he
received permission to serve as an exhorter in the First African Baptist
Church of that city, the membership of which, then being about 2,000,
required the services of a number of assistant pastors.

[Illustration: REV. LOTT CARY

A missionary to Africa.]

Lott Cary reached a new stage in his development in the fall of 1813,
when Luther Rice, who had just returned from the East, appeared in that
city preaching rousing sermons urging the Baptists to enter upon and to
support the work of missions in foreign fields. In November of that year
the Richmond Foreign Missionary Society was organized and delegates were
sent to Philadelphia  the following spring to participate in the
organization of the Baptist Triennial Convention. As this new body had
for one of its objects mission work in foreign fields, the national
interest aroused therein excited also a deep interest among the Negro
members of the churches in Richmond. Two years later, therefore, the
Richmond African Baptist Missionary Society, with Lott Carey as the
moving spirit, was formed with the sole object of sending the gospel
into Africa. This society was composed of the Negro members of the First
African Baptist Church and of other churches throughout the city. It
held annual meetings and with their small donations accumulated as much
as $700 during the first four years.

As no one volunteered to go abroad to extend this mission work, Lott
Cary himself determined to go to Africa, accompanied by Collin Teague.
They were, therefore, duly appointed by the Board of the Baptist
Triennial Convention as missionaries to Liberia. In 1821 Cary and Teague
with many others sailed from Norfolk for the land of their fathers
beyond the Atlantic. Before leaving Richmond, Cary and wife, Teague and
wife with their son Hillary, who later became editor of the _Liberian
Herald_, and Joseph Sanford and his wife, formed what is called the
First Baptist Church of Monrovia. This congregation was later designated
as the mother of the Providence Baptist Association in Liberia.

Upon arriving in Liberia, Lott Cary addressed himself with much energy
to the task of reconstruction and organization in this foreign field. He
easily became a leader among the communicants of that denomination and
preached for years among them as a man representative of the power of
the gospel unto the salvation of the heathen. Wielding such influence in
the religious field, he easily convinced others of the necessity for
availing themselves of his services in another line. He was, therefore,
made governor of one of the provinces of Liberia. After administering
the affairs of this province a short period he fell a victim to the
diseases which swept away so many others who gave their lives as a
sacrifice in this foreign land.

His fate, too, was not unlike that of Harrison Ellis of Alabama. In that
rapidly developing slaveholding commonwealth where men gave little
attention to things spiritual, even for the whites themselves, Harrison
Ellis rose to great eminence as a power in the church. Born a slave, he
was, of course, denied the opportunities for mental development. He was,
however, a man of such strong character and so efficient in his work as
a blacksmith, a trade in which he excelled, that it was possible for him
to secure privileges denied so many others of his race. He soon mastered
the rudiments of education, and building upon this foundation, began to
acquire knowledge of Latin. Having a deep impression as to the worth
of Christianity and the influence of the gospel as a factor in the
uplift of his people, he thought of preparing himself for the ministry.
The study of Latin then was to some extent neglected for a more thorough
study of Greek with a view to reading the New Testament. Some attention
was thereafter given to Hebrew to get a better grasp of the linguistic
setting of the Old Testament. He thereafter took up the principles of
theology.

A man of such unusual attainments in spite of the various difficulties
with which he had to struggle in earning a livelihood and securing
instruction, Ellis naturally impressed the people of his community.
Coming under the influence of the Presbyterians, he was encouraged by
them to make an effort for the exercise of his gifts as a minister. As a
man of such a well developed mind could not find in this country
adequate opportunity for service in this field, he was urged to go to
Liberia. The Presbyterian synod of Alabama, therefore, examined him with
a view to testing his efficiency. In this examination he proved himself
a good Latin and Hebrew scholar and showed still greater proficiency in
Greek. His attainments in theology were highly satisfactory. Giving an
account of the rise of this prodigy the _Eufala Shield_, an organ of
that State, referred to him as a man "courteous in manners, polite in
conversation and missionary in demeanor." Impressed with his usefulness,
the Presbyterians of Alabama finally purchased him and his family, in
1847, at a cost of $2,500, that they might go to Liberia and work among
their own people.

In Liberia, Harrison Ellis took up his post under very favorable
auspices. He quickly impressed those with whom he came in contact,
attracted to him a sufficient number of persons to constitute a
respectable following, easily held his own among other intelligent
Negroes, and finally became one of the most influential men in the
colony. Soon thereafter, however, like so many others, who in that land
of their fathers gave their lives as a sacrifice for their many
persecuted brethren in the western world, he finally proved inadequate
to the demands of that climate and passed away, admired by those who
knew him and mourned by his coworkers and friends.

These few Negro ministers, however, could not reach the masses of their
race. In their undeveloped state the rural Negroes depended upon the
crumbs that fell from the white ministers' tables. The religious
experience of such Negroes, therefore, was more nominal than rational.
Many of them obtained their first religious impressions in some camp
meeting during a special effort in behalf of the lost. These meetings
were looked forward to with a great deal of anticipation and persons,
knowing of the good supposedly derived therefrom, came from afar and
remained about the place, thus giving to such convocations the
well-known name of camp meetings. As these assemblages were social as
well as religious and sometimes partook of a festive nature, the
Negroes easily became attracted to this more liberal method of promoting
the cause of Christ.

The Negroes in these meetings appealed especially to the white ministers
because of their quick response to the appeal to come out of darkness
into light. While an Episcopal clergyman with his ritual and prayer book
had difficulty in interesting the Negroes, they flocked in large numbers
to the spontaneous exercises of the Methodists and Baptists, who, being
decidedly evangelical in their preaching, had a sort of hypnotizing
effect upon the Negroes, causing them to be seized with certain
emotional jerks and outward expressions of an inward movement of the
spirit which made them lose control of themselves. The program of the
day was a delivery of sermons at intervals, interspersed here and there
by appeals to sinners to come forward to be prayed for at the anxious
seat, while various members, having unusual influence over the
unconverted and in touch with God, whispered in their ears the way to
find salvation and life.

Among the Baptists, the soul-stirring reunion was known as a protracted
meeting, which differed very little from that of the Methodist camp
meeting. The preacher came forward, declaring the dawn of a new day and
the shower of blessings that every one could receive. The burden of his
message was that he had come to set forth those things which had been
hitherto kept from the wise and prudent but lately revealed unto fools.
Seeing that they were made a special object of the philanthropy of these
new workers, the Negroes became seized with hysteria because of this new
boon; and the interest in the work passing from one to another, spread
almost like a contagion, moving communities to seek salvation. Persons
passing as sinners were made to feel that they were wretches in the
sight of God and that direful punishments awaited them as the lot of the
wicked. Their state was awful to behold, and their opportunities were
swiftly passing away. That moment was the accepted time; for their delay
would mean damnation. Persons fell helpless before the altar of the
church and had to be carried out to be ministered unto, and when they
emerged from their semi-conscious state they came forward singing the
song of the redeemed who had been washed white in the blood of the Lamb.

Statistics show, however, that such a conversion of people who were
given no opportunity for mental development amounted to very little in
the edification of their souls. Not long after these exciting camp
meetings and protracted efforts had passed over many of these persons,
who had been most vociferous in their praise of God for cleansing them
of their many sins, readily fell thereafter by the wayside in engaging
in what is known as pleasurable evils. Baptists and Methodists during
this period insisted that dancing was an evil, but how could the
plantation Negro resist the temptation when he heard the clapping of
the hands and the tune of the banjo? It became fashionable, therefore,
for a person to be converted several seasons, sometimes once every four
or five consecutive summers before his feet could be completely taken
out of the mire and the clay and placed upon the solid rock where the
wind might blow and the storm might rise, but none should frighten them
from the shore.

Because this wild religious excitement meant very little in the uplift
of the slaves, there were throughout the South members of other than
Methodist and Baptist churches who still adhered to the idea of the
literary instruction of the blacks. Although there were soon laws on the
statute books to the contrary in practically all of the Southern States,
the wives and children of ministers taught their few slaves to read the
Bible, and when this was unpopular or prohibited, they made use of the
catechism in requiring the Negroes to memorize the principles of
religion and to learn formal prayers. There were some masters who went
to the extent of opening private schools for their slaves.

The more the Negroes were instructed by these rather intellectual
denominations, however, the less they, as a group, seemed inclined to
join their fortunes with those persons who were disposed to lay a
foundation for an intensive spiritual development. When the Methodists
and Baptists had had a chance to proselyte the Negroes, the
Episcopalians and the like were almost relieved of the necessity for
any effort among them. From the report of Alston's Parish in South
Carolina, in which there were 13,000 slaves, for example, 3,200 were
Methodists and 1,500 Baptists, while only 300 belonged to the Episcopal
Church. In St. Peter's Parish of that State the Methodists had 1,335 of
6,600 in 1845. In the Parish of St. Helena the Baptists reported 2,132
communicants, the Methodists 314, and the Episcopalians only 52. The
Episcopalians discounted the religious benefit derived by attendance
upon the Methodist and Baptist evangelical meetings, feeling that
because of their social and festive nature the Negroes lost more in
worldly pleasures thereby than they gained in spiritual uplift. Many of
them believed that it would have been much better for the slaves, had
their masters kept them at home. They did not think very well of the
influence of the Negro preachers, contending that they often did harm.
Where there was an improvement in Negro character many insisted that it
was due to the religious and moral training given by their masters, and
still more largely by their mistresses. For this reason it was strongly
urged upon masters to manifest more interest in the morals of their
bondmen, as it would not only make them better men spiritually but would
increase their economic efficiency.

From the Negroes' point of view, however, religious experience did not
result from instruction in books. Persons known to be illiterate had
strange visions and prophesied with such success as to move multitudes.
Slaves prohibited from attending meetings violated the law and braved
the dangerous network of the patrols enforcing the police regulations.
When converted they made no secret of their new experience and boldly
shouted before their masters, praising the Lord. That they should,
contrary to instructions, frequent the places of these emotional
upheavals was considered crime enough, but to appear before their owners
themselves, telling them about what the Lord had done for their souls
and at the same time warning these aristocratic "Christians" to repent
of their sins and flee from the wrath to come, was more than the ruling
class could endure. These Negro converts were cruelly told to hush up
because they "were getting above themselves," and if they refused to
obey, many of them were whipped until they stood in puddles of blood
drawn by the lashes inflicted upon their bodies, while others, stricken
down with heavy blows or subjected to mortal torture, went to their
death rather than cease to bear witness for Jesus.




CHAPTER VII

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION REVIVED


Because such religious instruction as the Negroes received after the
enactment and the enforcement of the reactionary legislation of the
South failed to secure to them that mental development necessary to
understand the Christian doctrine and to connect it with the practical
problems of life, northern friends of the Negroes forced a change in
their religious instruction by exposing the unchristian policy of
preventing a people from learning of God through the only source of
revelation, the Bible. Abolitionists like William Jay and many northern
ministers who did not consider themselves anti-slavery, fearlessly
branded as sinners the so-called southern Christians who were thus
preventing the coming of the kingdom of God. Southerners eloquently
retorted on the defensive, of course, but believed in their hearts that
the deplorable situation should be remedied. Much effort was made
thereafter to render more thorough the oral instruction of slaves, but
without very much success. Nearer the middle of the nineteenth century,
however, there appeared among the clergy and sympathetic whites in
the South some inclination to disregard the custom and laws of that
section that the necessary foundation for the instruction of the Negroes
in the Christian doctrine might be given.

In this work the evangelical denominations participated more freely than
others. From the Episcopal Church to which most of the richest
slaveholders belonged, not very much help came because that church never
considered slavery a sin and never made it a matter of discipline. That
the bodies of the Negroes were made miserable in this world and that
their souls might be damned were of little concern to some persons, who
were not especially interested in monopolizing heaven even for poor
whites. The gospel, moreover, as some saw it, had little to do with the
settlement of differences between the races in this world, since it was
rather concerned with the adjustment of affairs in the kingdom to come.

There were among the Episcopalians, however, some striking exceptions to
this rule. Among these should be mentioned Bishop Polk of Louisiana. In
1854, he informed Frederick L. Olmsted, who was then traveling through
that country, that he had confirmed thirty black persons near the
station assigned to the Legree estate, where the conditions set forth in
_Uncle Tom's Cabin_, he contended, did not obtain. Bishop Polk owned 400
slaves himself but endeavored to bring them up in a religious manner,
baptizing all of their children and teaching them the catechism. "All
without exception," says Olmsted, "attend the church service, and the
chanting is creditably performed by them in the opinion of their owner.
Ninety of them are communicants, marriages are celebrated according to
the church ritual, and the state of morals is satisfactory. Twenty
infants had been baptized by the Bishop just before his departure from
home, and he had left his whole estate, his keys and the like, in the
sole charge of one of his slaves, without the slightest apprehension of
loss or damage." Referring further to the slaveholding of this minister
of the gospel, Olmsted remarked that "in considering the position of
this Christian prelate as a slaveholder, the English reader must bear in
mind that by the laws of Louisiana emancipation had been rendered all
but impracticable, and that if practicable it would not necessarily be
in all cases an act of mercy or of justice."

Taking up again the religious instruction of the slaves, Olmsted found
"that there were widely different practices in that State." He observed
that there were some other slaveholders who, like Bishop Polk,
encouraged and even obliged their slaves to engage in religious
exercises. Yet among the wealthier slave owners, and especially in that
section of the country where the blacks outnumbered the whites, there
was generally a visible and often an avowed distrust of the effect of
religious exercises upon slaves and even the preaching of white
clergymen to them was permitted by many only with reluctance. The
prevailing impression among northern people with regard to the important
influence of slavery in promoting the spread of religion among the
blacks, he contended, was erroneous. Northern clergymen supposed as a
general thing that there was a regular daily instruction of the slaves
in the truths of Christianity. "So far as this is from being the case,"
said Olmsted, "although family prayers were held in several of the fifty
planters' houses in Mississippi and Alabama in which I passed a night, I
never in a single instance saw a field hand attend or join in the
devotions of the family."

There should be mentioned also in this connection the services of Bishop
Meade of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia. Early in his
career he addressed himself to the neglected condition of the Negroes,
preaching rousing sermons, telling them their duty toward their own
group. He was interested in the colonization movement and hoped to
secure the release of certain recaptured Africans to encourage the
manumission of others who might be given a chance to establish a nation
for their race in Africa. Although thereafter he did not emphasize the
emancipation of the slaves very much because of the reactionary
influences at work in the country, he did advocate the thorough
education of those slaves who were to be colonized abroad. As an impetus
in this direction he republished the sermons of the Rev. Thomas Bacon,
who answered every argument presented against the religious instruction
of Negroes. He especially besought the ministers of the gospel to take
into serious consideration a matter of which "they also will have to
give an account." "Did not Christ," said he, "die for these poor
creatures as well as for any others, and has he not given charge to the
minister to gather his sheep into the fold?"

The Presbyterians, much more liberal in their attitude toward the blacks
than the Episcopalians, manifested an unfailing interest in the
condition of these people far down. Although the church as a national
body receded from its early position of attacking slavery and thereafter
compromised with the institution, there was among these people in the
various parts of the country a continuous effort to promote the
religious instruction of the Negroes. Early manifesting interest in the
preparation of Negroes for colonization in Africa, the Presbyterians
planned to bring out of the South Negroes liberated for expatriation
that they might be first trained in a school for this purpose
established at Parsippanny, New Jersey. As this failed, this church
finally established for this purpose, in 1854, Ashmun Institute, now
Lincoln University.

In the very heart of the South, however, the Presbyterians did not fail
to aid the instruction of Negroes wherever public opinion permitted it,
although they had to confine themselves largely to verbal instruction.
In the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, where the
Scotch-Irish element dominated, there was no diminution of ardor in the
religious instruction of the Negroes. Expressions of interest came also
from the Presbyterian synods of Georgia and Alabama, while those in the
mountains openly advocated literary instruction as a preparation for
thorough indoctrination. In the States of Maryland, Tennessee, and
Kentucky, they were not handicapped by laws prohibiting the education of
the Negroes. They, therefore, spoke out more boldly for the
establishment of schools, and especially Sabbath schools, which paid as
much attention to the teaching of reading as it did to the actual
instruction in the Bible.

Among the Presbyterians in the South the most efficient worker was the
Rev. C. C. Jones, who toiled among the Negroes in Georgia. Taking the
situation as it was rather than complaining because it was not
different, Jones addressed himself to the task of trying to convince the
slave owners as to the advisability of religious instruction. He
believed that if the circumstances of the Negroes were changed, they
would equal if not excel the rest of the human family in religion,
intellect, purity of morals and ardor of piety. He feared that white men
would cherish a contempt for the Negroes which would cause them to sink
lower in the scale of morality and religion. He, therefore, advocated
the attendance of both races upon the same services that they might
learn by contact from their masters. The independent church organization
for which the Negroes contended, he believed, would rather give them an
opportunity to deteriorate.

By a logical array of facts, moreover, he tried to prove that Negroes
who had been instructed in the doctrines of Christianity had less
tendency toward servile insurrection than those who had been left in
heathenism. Even the Southampton insurrection started by Nat Turner, he
believed, was due to the fact that, being unable to understand the real
scheme of things, he had misguided the slaves by his false prophecy.
Those Negroes who had been well instructed in the principles of
Christianity had never been found guilty of any such crimes.

In this effort Jones had a very difficult task; for the tendency during
that day was rather toward segregation in the church. Most southern men
had no idea of elevating the Negroes to the status of white men, not
even in matters of religion. The whites believed that the domestic
element of the system of slavery itself afforded adequate means for
their improvement and the natural safe and effective means of their
elevation. In other words, their instruction must be decidedly different
from that of white men, in regard to whom the term education had widely
different significations. The best the Negro could hope for would be an
imitation of the white man to call into action that peculiar capacity
for copying the mental and moral habits of the superior race.

Jones's work did not differ materially from that of the Rev. Josiah Law
of Georgia, who was almost as successful in grappling with the same
problem. These workers, however, soon found that there was a strenuous
objection even to the verbal instruction of Negroes for fear that the
oral exercise would inspire a desire for literary training, which was
out of harmony with the status of the Negro in a slaveholding
commonwealth. Thinking that it might lead to such a state of affairs,
most masters in some parts of the South opposed all instruction of
Negroes during the thirties and forties.

Thereafter appeared occasional evidences of further interest in the
religious instruction and the evangelization of the slaves and free
people of color, however, in spite of this opposition. Much interest was
manifested in this work by the Presbyterians of Charleston; Union,
Georgia; Concord, South Alabama; and Mississippi. In 1825 the General
Assembly went on record to the effect that "no more honored name could
be conferred on a minister of Jesus than that of Apostle to the American
slaves, and no service can be more pleasing to the God of Heaven, or
more useful to our beloved country, than that which this title
designates."

The minutes quoted from the report of the Presbytery of Georgia in 1839
said: "We are happy to say, in regard to the religious instruction of
the Negroes, that this important part of our service has received a new
impulse during the last year. This business receives considerable
attention in many parts of our bounds. Plantations are open to all our
ministers and fields presented among this people which it is impossible
for them to occupy. Sabbath schools, for their exclusive benefit, exist
in some of our churches, and we are happy to believe that there is an
increasing interest felt on this subject. Within our bounds there is one
minister whose whole ministry is devoted exclusively to this people, and
most, if not all, the several pastors and stated supplies preach as
often as once a week to this class of our population. In Liberty County
there is at this time very considerable attention to religion among the
blacks, not less than fifty being under serious impressions. A beloved
brother in Augusta and another in the vicinity of Natchez are following
the noble example by devoting their whole time to this interesting
work."

The Presbytery of Georgia remarked in referring to one of their number
who devoted his whole time to this work: "During the year he has been
blessed with a revival in one part of his field of labor. Fourteen
professed conversion, and were added to the church. Another brother, in
another part of our bounds, reports the conversion and reception into
the church to which he ministers, of eight colored persons." And the
Presbytery of Hopewell spoke of their churches generally as cheerfully
yielding the half of their pastor's services to this department of
labor. It also expressed a belief that several churches "will soon be
erected for the exclusive accommodation of the Negroes, and that the
field will be occupied as missionary ground by at least one who is
deeply interested in the work."

The Presbytery of South Alabama said in 1847: "Perhaps without a
solitary exception our ministers are devoting a considerable part of
their labors to the benefit of the colored population. It is a field
which we all hope to cultivate; and to some the great Head of the Church
is intimating an abundant harvest." "Most of our pastors," said the
Presbytery of Charleston, "devote a part of the time to the exclusive
service of the blacks and in some instances with the most pleasing
success. A scheme is now in agitation for the full consent of the
Presbytery for establishing an African Church in the city of
Charleston."

In 1854 the report of the General Assembly on the instruction of the
Negroes in the slave States said that instead of abating, the interest
in the religious welfare of the Negroes was increasing. In their houses
of worship provision at once special and liberal was made for the
accommodation of the people of color so that they might enjoy the
privileges of the sanctuary in common with the whites. "Besides this,
nearly all of our ministers hold a service in the afternoon of the
Sabbath, in which all exercises are particularly adapted to their
capacities and wants. In some instances ministers are engaged in their
exclusive service ... not ministers of inferior ability, but such as
would be an ornament and a blessing to the intelligent, cultivated
congregations of the land. In a still larger number of instances the
pastor of a church composed of the two classes, inasmuch as the blacks
formed the more numerous portion, devotes to them the greater share of
his labors, and finds among them the most pleasing tokens of God's
smiles upon his work. Besides the preaching of the word to which they
have free access, in many cases a regular system of catechetical
instruction for their benefit is pursued, either on the Sabbath at the
house of worship or during the week on the plantations where they
reside.... The position taken by our Church with reference to the much
agitated subject of slavery secures to us the unlimited opportunities of
access to master and slave, and lays us under heavy responsibilities
before God and the world not to neglect our duty to either."

Among the Methodists who directed their attentions to mission work among
Negroes no one was more prominent than Bishop William Capers of South
Carolina. He had no idea of preparing Negroes for manumission, but
looked to the edification of their souls as a preparation for the life
to come, justifying the relation of slave and the master by the Bible in
keeping with most ministers of his time. He emphasized, on the other
hand, the necessity of the masters' being kind to their bondmen and
especially in providing for their spiritual needs. After preaching a
number of sermons to this effect, he devised a scheme for adapting the
teaching of the Christian truth to the mental condition of the slaves.
He planned to have the old Negroes instructed by preachers and the
children through catechists by the memory method, while their minds were
in a plastic state, always remembering, however, that any minister who
did not believe in the southern religion of the relation of master and
slave as sanctioned by his sort of Christianity should not enter upon
this work. With the support of a number of leading men in that
commonwealth Bishop Capers established two missions in 1829 and two
additional ones in 1833. Thereafter one or two others were added every
year until 1847, when there were seventeen engaging the attention of
twenty-five preachers. When Bishop Capers died in 1855 he saw his work,
according to his plan, very well done. The Methodists then had 26
missions manned by 32 preachers, having in their churches 11,546
communicants. The cost of this religious instruction had, during the
Bishop's time, increased from $300 to $25,000 a year.

The work of the Baptists here and there was almost as effective, but
because of their lack of a national body to concentrate the effort of
the various local churches, such good results did not always follow. In
certain communities, however, especially in the State of Virginia, there
were obtained unusually desirable results. This was the case in the
cities of Portsmouth, Norfolk, and Petersburg; and still better success
was achieved in Richmond through the well organized work of the First
African Baptist Church, which, under the direction of the Rev. Robert
Ryland, President of Richmond College, served not only to benefit the
Negroes of that community, but also to inspire other white churches to
make similar provisions for the instruction of the blacks.

Lott Cary himself speaks of religious instruction in this church at an
early period. He said: "I was, during the years 1815, 1816, 1817 and
1818, engaged for the benefit of the leading colored members of the
church" (referring to the First Baptist Church) "in a gratuitous school
at the old Baptist meeting house ... at first in connection with Rev.
David Roper ... and subsequently with Rev. John Bryce, co-pastor of the
church."

The work of this church, however, was largely in the hands of the
whites. The local government was changed from the democratic to
something more Presbyterial than Congregational, because of the belief
that the Negroes were not prepared for democracy. The government was
vested in the pastor and thirty deacons exercising general supervision
over the church and constituting the source of authority in the church.
The instruction, of course, was at first confined to the catechism and
to the memorizing of hymns and special passages of the Bible. Ryland
himself compiled a catechism for the colored people and hoped to add to
it such books as _Pilgrim's Progress_, _The African Preacher_, _The Life
of Samuel Pierce_ and _The Church Member's Guide_.

Ryland did not share the distrust of the Negroes who might learn to
read. Unlike most of the ministers after this reactionary period, he
advocated the thorough instruction of the slaves. He said: "They will
make more useful servants, if in a state of bondage, and more safe and
reliable residents, if free, by having their minds imbued with rational
views of Christianity. How can we expect them to develop the great
principles of the gospel in a well ordered life while they are dependent
on desultory oral instruction for their entire knowledge? I am fully
aware that some will think that I am approaching delicate ground, and
yet with the most considerate feelings and with the admission that grave
abuses might follow, I am constrained to believe, nevertheless, that
greater benefit will accrue both to themselves and to society by
increasing their facilities to understand the gospel whose maxim is 'On
earth peace, good will toward man.' I am a Southern man by birth,
education and habits. I deplore the ultraism and recklessness of the
North on this subject and in the least on account of _increased
restrictions_ which have been thus occasioned to the colored people. But
I would respectfully ask Southern Christians if they are not in danger
of neglecting _known, imperative duty_, because others are not disposed
to mind their own business. Let us not be led from the path of _real
benevolence_ either by the abolitionists of the North or by the morbid
sensitiveness of the South."

Exactly how much Ryland accomplished at the First African Baptist Church
is not known. Referring to his communicants, Ryland recorded that their
general appearance was that of serious, intelligent worship. It is
certain that many Negroes, who became impressed with Christianity and
endeavored to embrace it, looked upon it as an opportunity and a
privilege to belong to this church, and inasmuch as he emphasized
consistent Christian conduct, it certainly forced a number of them to
live more righteously than they would have, if these rules had not been
rigidly enforced. The attitude here might be criticised in that the
church was accepting merely those who were known to be persons of good
conduct and did not seemingly go out to stir up and reform those who
made no pretense to be Christians. When a person made a profession of
faith and wanted to join this church he was required to present a
certificate of good conduct.[9]

In this work Ryland had the coöperation of Joseph Abrams, a Negro who
had been licensed to preach and ordained but had been prohibited from
the exercise of his gifts by the hostile legislation proscribing Negro
preachers after Nat Turner's insurrection. During the days prior to this
reaction Abrams had been a preacher of much success among the Negroes of
the First Baptist Church. Afterward he could take no more conspicuous
part in the Sunday exercises than to pray a long prayer, into which he
sometimes worked a short sermon. "As he enjoyed, however, the confidence
of the citizens," says a writer in the _American Baptist Memorial_ of
1853, "he was tolerated in preaching funerals at private houses, and was
sparingly invited to close the worship in the church by words of
exhortation." "He was heard with far more interest than I was," said
Ryland, "and on this account I should have often requested him to speak
but for the fear of involving him and the church in legal trouble."
Abrams died in 1854. From the same pulpit which he had once occupied,
his former pastor, John Bryce, delivered to a large crowd of grieving
persons within and as many more without one of the most eloquent
eulogies in keeping with the life of the man. A long procession of
hundreds of persons followed him to his grave, over which the people
erected a beautiful monument in the form of an imposing obelisk.

So emphatically was duty of religious instruction urged in certain parts
of the South, that not only sympathetic clergymen and their children but
men high in official positions championed the cause of literary
instruction for the Negroes that they might learn the principles of
religion. One important case in evidence is that of J. B. O'Neal of
South Carolina. Discussing this matter in detail, O'Neal observed that
the extension of the instruction of the Negroes to the extent of
learning to read the Bible would hardly do any harm. He did not believe
that the Christianization of the Negroes in a slave commonwealth would
tend to lift them above their masters and destroy the "legitimate
distinction" in the community. General Coxe of Fluvanna County,
Virginia, had all of his slaves taught to read the Bible in spite of the
law and public opinion to the contrary, and so did a farmer whom
Frederick Law Olmsted visited in Mississippi. Other instances here and
there may be mentioned. Exactly how many other persons of the
aristocratic folk of the South had the same attitude is difficult to
determine; for the white people of that day, like those of the present
time, often conceded privately that the Negroes should enjoy their
rights, but were unwilling to suffer the stigma of being called the
champions of their cause.

With this new impetus given religious instruction in many parts,
however, it was very difficult to overcome the desire for the more
thorough evangelization of the Negroes. There was not only a
manifestation of interest here and there in the South; but during the
forties and fifties there followed considerable improvement, especially
through such local organizations as those in Liberty and MacIntosh
counties in Georgia and in the Presbyterian synods of Kentucky, Alabama,
North Carolina, and Tennessee. A few Negroes, who prior to the reaction
had learned to read and write and had a rudimentary knowledge of the
Bible, were sometimes employed in the more liberal portions of the South
to teach the aged and the young to say prayers, repeat a little of the
catechism, and to memorize hymns. Here their instruction depended
entirely upon the memory. What could not be thus done for them was
neglected. Literature especially adapted to this end prepared by
churchmen safeguarding the interests of the slaveholding South was
preferably used. Some of these works were Dr. Capers' _Short Catechism
for the Use of Colored Members on Trial in the Methodist Episcopal
Church in South Carolina_, _A Catechism to be Used by Teachers in the
Religious Instruction of Persons of Color in the Episcopal Church of
South Carolina_, John Mines' _Catechism_, Dr. C. C. Jones' _Catechism of
Scripture, Doctrine and Practice Designed for the Original Instruction
of Colored People_, Dr. Robert Ryland's _The Scripture Catechism for
Colored People_, and E. T. Winkler's _Notes and Questions for the Oral
Instruction of Colored People with Appropriate Texts and Hymns_.




CHAPTER VIII

PREACHERS OF VERSATILE GENIUS


The situation in the North was then more encouraging, though far from
being ideal. During the critical period through which the Negroes were
passing between 1830 and the Civil War the Negro minister had to divide
his attention so as to take care of all of the varying interests of an
oppressed race. Among the poor it has never been considered exceptional
for a minister to work at some occupation to increase the meager income
which he receives from his parishioners. We have already observed above
that Andrew Bryan made himself independent as a planter, that Richard
Allen at first earned his living as a teamster, and that Andrew Marshall
with much business acumen maintained himself in a local express
business. During the critical period from 1830 to 1860, however, the
Negro minister was not only compelled sometimes thus to support himself,
but often had to devote part of his time to the problems of education,
abolition, colonization and the Underground Railroad.

Education for the Negro was both a test and a challenge. Few persons
believed that the Negro was capable of the mental development known to
the white man. The challenge to them, then, was: Show that your race has
possibilities in the intellectual world, bring forth proof to uproot the
argument that your race is the inferior of the other peoples. To make
the challenge more concrete, can a Negro master the grammar, language,
and literature of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew? Can he learn to think? Can
he understand the significant things of life as expounded by
mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers? A few Negroes had
demonstrated here and there unusual ability in these fields; but they
were not generally known or their achievements were accounted for by
their racial connection with the white race in this country or with some
Arabic stock of Africa, known to be Caucasian rather than Negroid.

The greater impetus to education among Negro ministers, however, came
not so much from the desire to meet this requirement as from the need of
it in promoting the work of the church. It is true that the whites were
subjecting the blacks to a mental test, but it required very little
logic to show that the contention as to Negro inferiority was a case of
making desire father to the thought. The independent church movement had
to depend on education; and the Negroes themselves, as they made
progress, required of their ministry the service of instructors to bring
the people to a higher standard of thought. Acquiring an education then
was not always an easy task. Negroes had no advanced schools of their
own and they were generally refused in most of those of the North. Until
the rise of the Union Literary Institute in Indiana, Oberlin and
Wilberforce in Ohio, Ashmun Institute in Pennsylvania, and Oneida
Institute in New York, the Negro had to break his way into whatever
institution of learning he entered. Negroes who were ignorant themselves
could not always appreciate what the struggle for educational
opportunities actually meant.

The Negro ministers, moreover, were at the same time in the midst of a
life and death struggle. During the thirties and forties the questions
involving the Negroes engaged the attention of almost everybody. The
Negro ministers, the then best developed leaders among their people,
could not be silent. Inasmuch as men had to be won to the support of the
cause, these apostles to the lowly had to appear before the other race
in the North as spokesmen of an oppressed people. Preaching was
important enough, but there could be no preaching without the liberty to
preach. Except in a few such cases as that of William Douglass, the
rector of St. Thomas Church, Philadelphia, and that of Peter Williams,
the rector of St. Phillips', in New York City, where the pro-slavery
church hierarchy hushed the Negro ministers loyally speaking for their
people, the Negro clergyman spoke out fearlessly for the emancipation
of his race and its elevation to citizenship.

As the American Colonization Society went only half way in carrying out
this program in that it advocated the emancipation of the Negroes for
deportation to Africa, merely to rid the country of freemen belonging to
another than the Caucasian race, the Negro ministers were generally
opposed to that organization. They fearlessly attacked the promoters of
the cause, saying, "Here we were born, here we fought for the
independence of this country, and here we intend to die and be buried in
the soil hallowed by the blood of our fathers shed in defense of this
country." When, however, the increasing intelligence of the Negroes made
their humiliation in this country less and less durable, the Negro
ministers became divided among themselves on this important question;
for a few of the leaders of that day began to advocate colonization in
some other country than Africa.

In the meantime, moreover, almost every Negro minister was otherwise
engaged in spiriting away fugitives from the slaveholding States through
the North into Canada. They were in touch with men in other centers,
found out what was going on, learned what was the trend of things, and
planned to act accordingly. And well might they be so engaged; for not a
few of these ministers were fugitives themselves, and whether or not
their freedom had such origin, all Negroes in the North were, after the
passage of that unconstitutional drastic Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, in
danger of being apprehended and enslaved without what civilized
countries regard as due process of law. Some of the ministers themselves
had to move for safety into Canada during this crisis, carrying in some
cases practically all of their congregations with them.

[Illustration: JOSIAH HENSON

A pioneer Methodist preacher in Canada. The Prototype of Uncle Tom's
Cabin.]

The Negro minister easily learned also the power of the press. Much time
which they would have under other circumstances devoted to the
edification of their flocks they had to spend in raising funds to
purchase printing plants and in editing the publications issuing
therefrom. They could deliver their message to their congregations, they
could occasionally address thus groups of the other race; but their
message needed a wider circulation in a more enduring form. There were,
therefore, during this crisis few Negro ministers of literary
attainments who did not either undertake to edit a newspaper or to
contribute thereto. If they had a message worth while, the abolition
papers would generally delight in publishing it. If they refused and the
message was a burning one, the Negroes would establish an organ of their
own.

To bring out this idea of the minister of divided interests serving his
people in many ways, no career is more illuminating than that of Bishop
Daniel A. Payne. Having been much better trained than most of his
coworkers, he emphasized education as a necessary foundation for
thorough work in the ministry. Taking this position, he made himself at
first more of a teacher than a preacher, devoting most of his time to
actual classroom instruction, hoping to raise the standard of the
ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, with which he
finally cast his lot after being graduated at the Lutheran Seminary at
Gettysburg. Taking this position, he had arrayed against him all the
enemies of culture. One writer charged him with branding the ministry
with infamy and with reckless slander on the general character of his
own denomination. There was great fear that there might follow discord
and dissolution between the ignorant and the intelligent portion of the
church. Preaching to his congregation, the ignorant minister would often
boast of having not rubbed his head against the college walls, whereupon
the congregation would respond: "Amen." Sometimes one would say: "I did
not write out my sermon." With equal fervor the audience would cry out:
"Praise ye the Lord." Working zealously, however, Bishop Payne committed
the denomination to the policy of thorough education for the ministry, a
position from which the African Methodist Episcopal Church has never
departed, and to which it owes not a few of the advantages that it now
enjoys in having so many intelligent men in its ministry.

[Illustration: BISHOP DANIEL A. PAYNE]

While Bishop Payne as a churchman did not become altogether involved in
the anti-slavery movement, so many distinguished men in the church did.
John N. Marrs of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was more of
an anti-slavery lecturer than a preacher. Thomas James of the same
denomination was equally as effective as an anti-slavery lecturer. He
was much readier to fight than to preach when he thought of the
enormities of slavery. Another Zionite, Dempsey Kennedy, a pioneer
preacher of remarkable skill in stirring up audiences, rendered as much
service as an abolitionist as he did as a minister.

One of the best examples of this type is Charles Bennett Ray, born in
Falmouth, Massachusetts, December 28, 1807. He was educated at the
Wesleyan Academy of Wilbraham, Massachusetts, and later at Wesleyan
University, Middletown, Connecticut. After studying theology he became a
Congregational minister. For twenty years he was the pastor of the
Bethesda Church in New York City, where many learned to wait upon his
ministry. He is better known to fame, however, by the work which he did
outside of his chosen field in connection with the anti-slavery
movement, the Underground Railroad, and _The Colored American_, which he
creditably edited from 1839 to 1843.

Ray aided the cause of liberty by lending practical aid which men in
high places often had neither the time nor the patience to give, using
his home as a mecca for the meetings of such men as Lewis Tappan,
Simeon S. Josselyn, Gerrit Smith, the land philanthropist, and James
Sturge, the celebrated English philanthropist, interested in the
abolition of slavery. In coöperation with wealthy abolitionists he
assisted many a slave to the light of freedom, especially through the
aid of Henry Ward Beecher of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Ray found
himself coöperating also with the group of radical free people of color
meeting in Philadelphia and in other cities of the North from 1830 until
the Civil War. When one reads of his participation in this work with
James Forten, a business man, and Charles B. Purvis, another layman, he
is inclined to forget that Charles B. Ray was a minister, as his name
appears in the records of practically all of these conventions of the
free people of color and his work stands out as an important factor
contributing to the success with which these aggressive Negroes kept
their case before the world and gradually hastened the dawn of their
freedom. In all of his various employments, however, Ray did not lose
interest in and did not necessarily neglect his mission to promote the
moral uplift of his fellows. A contemporary, William Wells Brown, paying
him a tribute as a terse, vigorous writer and an able and eloquent
speaker, well informed upon all subjects of the day, says also that he
was "blameless in his family relations, guided by the highest moral
rectitude, a true friend of everything that tends to better the
moral, social, religious and political condition of man."

In the class with Ray should be mentioned Henry Highland Garnett,
another minister of the Presbyterian Church, devoting most of his time
to the many movements which attracted the attention of his colaborers.
Having escaped from Maryland to the North in 1822, Garnett experienced
sufficient mental development to ask for admission to the Canaan
Academy, where he, along with Alexander Crummell and others, caused the
school to be broken up by a mob arraying itself against the idea of
permitting persons of color to enjoy such privileges in that community.
Proceeding, however, to the Oneida Institute in New York, he succeeded
in laying a foundation for his work under the noble-hearted friend of
man, Beriah Green. Here Garnett attained the reputation of an
accomplished man, an able and eloquent debater and a good writer. He
soon developed into a preacher of power of the evangelical type, whose
discourses showed much thought and careful study. He had complete
command of his voice and used it with skill, never failing to fill the
largest hall. Soon there was a demand for him as a preacher. He was sent
as a missionary to the Island of Jamaica. He later spent some time in
Washington as the pastor of the Presbyterian Church and served at
another time at the Shiloh Church in New York City.

[Illustration: HENRY HIGHLAND GARNETT]

Garnett, however, was soon more than a preacher. From the time he made
his first public appearance in New York City in 1837 he secured for
himself a standing among first-class orators. In 1843 he delivered
before the National Convention of Colored Americans at Buffalo, New
York, one of the most remarkable addresses ever uttered by man. His
contemporary says: "None but those who heard that speech have the
slightest idea of the tremendous influence which he exercised over the
assembly." For forty years thereafter he was an advocate of the rights
of his race, a forcible and daring speaker wherever he had an
opportunity to present his cause. Visiting England in 1850, he was well
received as an orator. Garnett, moreover, served much of his time as an
educator, having been President of Avery College, where he passed as a
man of learning.

In this group of enterprising clergymen of this period should be
mentioned Alexander Crummell, although his more important service to the
race belongs to the two generations following the Civil War. Crummell
was a native of New York, but a descendant of a Timanee chief in West
Africa. Early in his career he attended a Quaker school with Thomas S.
Sidney and Henry Highland Garnett in New York, and later experienced
with the latter, as mentioned above, the humiliation of seeing the
Academy of Canaan, New Hampshire, broken up because of the admission of
Negroes. Crummell then studied three years under Beriah Green at the
Oneida Institute. Having then the aspiration to enter the ministry of
the Episcopal Church, he applied for admission to the General
Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church of New York,
which, in keeping with its hostile attitude toward the Negro, refused to
accept him.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER CRUMMELL]

Thus barred from entering upon his life's work, Crummell could not then
influence the public to the same extent as Negro leaders laboring in the
more inviting fields. Presenting his case to the clergy in Boston in
1842, he was ordained deacon by Bishop Griswold. After studying two
years under Dr. A. H. Vinton of Providence, Rhode Island, Crummell was
ordained priest by Bishop Lee of Delaware at St. Paul's Church in
Philadelphia, and engaged to work in a barren field. Here poverty and
ill health overtook him and rendered his circumstances all but
intolerable. To earn a livelihood he conducted for four men a private
school, which, after having a promising beginning, proved inadequate to
his support.

He then went to England, where he was well received as a preacher and
given the opportunity to prosecute further his studies at Queen's
College, Cambridge University, from which he obtained the degree of
Bachelor of Arts in 1853. Crummell then began his career as a missionary
and educator, working in Liberia and Sierra Leone for about twenty
years. He returned to the United States in 1873 and entered upon his
work as an Episcopal priest in Washington, where, as the rector of St.
Mary's, and as the founder of the American Negro Academy, he experienced
the culmination of his usefulness as a scholar, a clergyman, and a
champion of the rights of his people.

Among these workers should be mentioned also James W. C. Pennington,
another minister of the Presbyterian Church. Pennington was born a slave
on a farm in Maryland and there became a blacksmith by trade. Upon
reaching maturity he escaped to the North, where he early embraced the
opportunities for learning. He developed into an unusually bright
scholar in Greek, Latin, and German; and soon manifested an inclination
for the study of theology, in which he showed much proficiency.
Impressed with his worth as an educated man well trained for the
ministry, the Presbyterians ordained him to preach and stationed him at
Hartford, Connecticut, where he served some years. He later became the
pastor of the Shiloh Church in New York City.

[Illustration: J. W. C. PENNINGTON]

While Dr. Pennington did not drift so far from the ministry as many of
his colaborers, he was at once in demand for work in various other
fields. He went to Europe three times in the capacity of a lecturer. His
second visit was the occasion on which he remained for four years,
preaching, lecturing and attending the Peace Congresses held at Paris,
Brussels, and London. While at Paris in 1849 he was invited to conduct
divine services at the Protestant Church, which on that occasion was
visited by the American and English delegates. His sermon was an elegant
production, left a marked impression upon his hearers, and above all
made a more logical case for the Negro. While in Germany the degree of
Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by the University of
Heidelberg. Returning to this country, he labored zealously and
successfully for the education and the moral, social, and religious
elevation of the race, until he went to Jamaica, where he died.

Rev. E. Payson Rogers, another Presbyterian preacher stationed as pastor
of a church at Newark, New Jersey, divided his time between writing and
preaching. He was a man of education, research, and literary ability.
Although not a fluent and easy speaker, he was logical and spoke with a
degree of refinement seldom observed. Possessing the inclination to
write verse to express the thought and feeling of a struggling people,
he wrote a poem on the Missouri Compromise which he read in many of the
New England cities and towns in 1856. This poem contained brilliant
thought and amusing suggestions. Anxious to benefit his race, he visited
Africa in 1861, where he was attacked by a fever and died in a few days.

J. Theodore Holly was another minister of versatile genius. He acquired
a good education through studious habits and contact with men of
culture. Although he became a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal
Church and was for several years pastor at New Haven, where he
sustained the reputation of being an interesting and eloquent preacher,
he set about to establish what he called Negro nationality. He was not
primarily interested in African colonization, but believed that the
redemption of Africa could be effected through Haitian emigration. In
the _Anglo-African_, a magazine published in 1859, he contributed a
dissertation setting forth these facts. Impressed with the idea that
Haiti might be used as an asylum for free persons of color, he raised a
colony in keeping with the resolution passed by the Convention of Free
Persons of Color in Rochester in 1853 and sailed for Haiti in 1861. As
the location which he selected was infelicitous, most of those who went
with him, including his own family, died, and he returned to the United
States, where he finally rendered greater service and from which he was
later commissioned as Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
Haiti.

One of the most interesting men of this type was Leonard A. Grimes, a
Baptist minister, born in Leesburg, Loudoun County, Virginia, in 1815.
Although he was a man of free parentage he was subjected to all of the
disabilities that his race had to endure in the South except that of an
actual slave. He spent his youth working at the butcher's trade and at
an apothecary's establishment in Washington but subsequently hired
himself out to a slaveholder whose confidence he gained. In
accompanying his employer in his travels in the remote parts of the
South he had an opportunity to see slavery in its worst form and to
reach a decision that he would make every effort possible to destroy the
evil. Returning to Washington very soon thereafter, he began to express
an interest in the operations of the Underground Railroad, in connection
with which he rendered valuable service. Upon being appealed to by a
free man of color with a slave wife and seven children, he aided them to
escape to Canada. Suspicion, however, fell upon Grimes and he was soon
thereafter apprehended, tried, found guilty, and sent to the State
penitentiary at Richmond for two years.

Upon the expiration of his imprisonment Grimes returned to Washington
and soon then went to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he resided two
years. He next went to Boston. Having early in his career been impressed
with the thought that he was called to the ministry, he had spent much
of his time in this work while engaged as an agent of the Underground
Railroad. Finding a group of persons in Boston at that time in need of a
pastor, he entered upon the task of serving them in that capacity. This
congregation was known as the Twelfth Baptist Church, of which he was
the pastor for more than twenty-five years, ministering to some of the
best persons of color in that city in such a way as to make his work a
monument to which Bostonians still point with pride. As a preacher he
was a man of power, though not an easy speaker. He manifested great
amiability of character and always had a pleasant word for those with
whom he came into contact. Although primarily engaged in the work of the
ministry during the great crisis in this country, he never abandoned
entirely the anti-slavery cause, in spite of the fact that many of his
denomination were trying to defend that institution. He passed away in
1873, after having experienced some of the freedom for which he
struggled.

Among the prominent Negro ministers who lived through this critical
period no one exhibited more versatility than Samuel R. Ward. Impressed
with the superior gifts with which he was endowed, Gerrit Smith enabled
him to secure a liberal education. Ward then entered upon the ministry
in the Presbyterian Church. For several years he was settled over a
white church at South Butler, New York, where, according to William
Wells Brown, Ward "preached with great acceptance and was highly
respected." Coming to the aid of his race during the trying days of the
abolition agitation, Ward took the platform and from 1840 to the passage
of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 preached or lectured in every church,
hall, or schoolhouse in Western and Central New York. "Standing about
six feet in height, possessing a strong voice, and energetic in his
gestures, Ward," says his biographer, "always impressed his highly
finished and logical speeches upon his hearers."

[Illustration: SAMUEL R. WARD]

Ward became more of a platform orator than a preacher. His aim seemed to
be not so much to preach the gospel of heaven as to preach the gospel of
this world that men calling themselves Christians might learn to respect
the natural and political rights of their fellows. In the interest of
this cause he traveled through much of this country, visited England in
1852, and then went to Jamaica, where he finally resided until he died
at an early age. Referring to the death of R. B. Elliot, Frederick
Douglass, Ward's most famous contemporary, remarked: "I have known but
one other black man to be compared with Elliot, and that was Samuel R.
Ward, who, like Elliot, died in the midst of his years. The thought of
both men makes me sad. We are not over rich with such men, and we may
well mourn when one such has fallen."

No better example of the varying interests of the Negro can be mentioned
than that of Hiram R. Revells, who after the Civil War became one of the
two Negroes who have served in the United States Senate. Revells was
born a free man at Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1822. There he
passed his boyhood and then went to Indiana, because the laws of North
Carolina in 1835 forbade the establishment of schools for persons of
color. He had experienced some educational development by private
instruction and was prepared to profit by the advanced training
received in a Quaker school in Indiana. He then moved to Darke County,
Ohio, where he remained for some time. He was subsequently graduated at
Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. Revells then entered the ministry as
a preacher of the African Methodist Church at the age of twenty-five,
holding his first charge in Indiana. He filled important posts in
Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, and Kansas, but did not succeed so well in
St. Louis, where the church developed into a turmoil, resulting in the
resignation of the pastor.

Upon the outbreak of the war, Revells directed his attention to other
matters. He assisted in raising the first Negro regiment in Maryland and
the first one in Missouri. He then returned to Mississippi in 1864,
settling at Vicksburg and later at Jackson, where he had charge of
congregations. He also assisted in the extension of the work of the
African Methodist Episcopal Church in other parts and in establishing a
school system. His health having failed, however, he returned to the
North after the close of hostilities and remained there eighteen months,
at the expiration of which he again came to Natchez, Mississippi, where
he preached regularly to large audiences. Entering politics, he was
appointed alderman by General Ames, who was then military governor
there. In 1869 he was elected to the State Senate and the following year
to the United States Senate.




CHAPTER IX

THE CIVIL WAR AND THE CHURCH


The outbreak of the Civil War was also an outbreak in the church. The
versatile minister then proclaimed war and sometimes donned the uniform.
One half of the nation had preached that God hath made of one blood all
nations that dwell upon the face of the earth; the other half insisted
that the plan of the Creator was a caste system by which one element of
the population should be made hewers of wood and drawers of water for
the other. The ordeal of battle was then on, and it was believed that
the exhibition of the greater force on one of the two sides would
determine the will of God. Men of both sections fought for what they
believed to be right. Sermons resounded with the ring of freedom, the
Bible was quoted to strengthen the belief in a just war, and songs of a
militant tone made the welkin ring with that enthusiasm with which the
Christian boy was inspired to give his life as a sacrifice, fighting for
freedom or defending his section from the invasion of the ruthless foe.
God was here; God was there; in fact, he was, as the participants would
have it, fighting the battles of all.

Negroes realized that the Christianity of America was being subjected to
a test. They had entered the church themselves but only with the belief
that this liberal doctrine of the power of God to free a man's soul from
sin meant also that such power would eventually be adequate to free the
body. They had borne the burden in the heat of the day, even walked
through the flames of that fiery ordeal of death; but they had never
lost faith in God. Here and there an old hero in the midst of his
martyrdom had prophesied upon his dying bed that God would deliver his
people from the hands of the oppressors; a heroine of vision had dreamed
that her Maker had poured healing oils upon her lacerated back, assuaged
her excruciating pain, and made her free. Patience had been the
watchword of the Negro. God was moving in a mysterious way to perform
wonders which in the near future would make all things plain. Stand
still, therefore, and see the salvation of the Lord.

Would these dreams come true? Evidently they would, the Negroes thought,
when they heard of churchmen denouncing slavery in no uncertain terms,
memorializing the State legislatures and Congress for its abolition, and
assuring the nation of their heartiest support in the suppression of the
rebellion occasioned by the effort to save the tottering institution.
The Negroes could not fail to see the hand of God in the declaration of
these churchmen that our national sorrows and calamities had resulted
from our forgetfulness of God and the oppression of our fellowmen.
Chastened by the affliction of the Civil War, many like the Methodists
hoped that the nation might humbly repent of its sins, lay aside its
haughty pride, honor God in all her future legislation, and render
justice to all who had been wronged. They honored Lincoln for his
proclamation of freedom and rejoiced in the enactment of the measures
designed to reach this end. And so impressed with this militant service
of the church, Lincoln had to say in reply to this denomination: "The
Methodist Episcopal Church, not less devoted than the best, is, by its
greater numbers the most important of all. It is no fault in others that
the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to
the hospitals, more prayers to Heaven, than any. God bless the Methodist
Church! Bless all the Churches! And blessed be God, who, in this our
great trial, giveth us the churches!"

Because of this militant attitude of the church, the Negroes thought
more of fighting for freedom than they did of saving souls. The slaves
breathed the spirit of the song:

      "Oh, freedom! Freedom over me!
      Before I'd be a slave,
      I'd be buried in my grave
      And go home to my Lord and be free!"

Negroes known to be pious gladly donned the uniform and some ministers
of the gospel abandoned their charges to recruit men to fight for the
cause. The friends of the Negroes, moreover, were militantly arrayed
against their former brethren in the South. The abolition churches of
the North received the anathemas of the churches of the South and vice
versa. The war was religious as well as political, causing wounds which
having not yet been healed even unto this day seriously affect church
work among Negroes in the South.

The Civil War as a social and political upheaval made necessary some
readjustments in the church. The Negroes in the South were no longer
bondmen to be circumscribed in keeping with the regulations of a slave
commonwealth and the Negroes in the North might then exercise more
liberty without the fear of incurring the displeasure of those having
the impression that the Negroes should in religious as well as in other
matters be subject to men who enjoy a superior social position. It was
then, moreover, a different question from what it was before. Prior to
the Civil War one had inquired as to what should be done for the Negro.
It was then a question as to what the Negro would do for himself. Things
for which he had long asked theretofore were thereafter readily given or
taken.

For example, during the period intervening between the separation of the
northern and southern wings of the church in 1844 and the Civil War, the
Negro members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the North asked for
separate conferences, a more general recognition of their local
preachers, and a larger participation in the affairs of the church. The
reason given was that the African Methodists, holding up to these Negro
communicants the contempt with which they had been treated by their
white superiors, caused large numbers of Negro Methodists to join the
independent African churches. The policy of the Methodist Church was not
to grant such recognition, deciding, as it did in 1848, that such
separate conferences were inexpedient. Some encouragement was given the
employment of Negro local preachers. In 1852, in reply to an urgent
request of this sort from the Negro Methodists of the Philadelphia and
New Jersey conferences, where they were losing many to the African
Methodists, a sort of annual meeting of the Negro Methodist pastors was
allowed, if the bishop of the diocese concerned found it practicable.
The Methodist Church held this position, however, despite the fact that
on this account it lost not less than one-fourth of the membership of
its churches from the year 1844 to the time when the annual conference
of the Negro pastors was provided for in 1866. These white Methodists,
however, consecrated Francis Burns for the service as Bishop of Africa
in 1858 and in 1866 thus elevated to the episcopacy John W. Roberts,
another man of color. As the appeal for the Negro conference was still
more urgent this time not only from the Negroes of the Philadelphia and
New Jersey conferences but from that of Baltimore, the General
Conference had to take more definite action than merely to say that such
a step was inexpedient.

The reasons for this action were many and complicated. In the first
place, even after the secession of those in the South, there were in the
Methodist Episcopal Church a number of members who, wishing to get rid
of the Negroes, thought that a refusal to grant this request would
alienate their affections to the extent that they would secede as the
other African Methodists had done. Some of these communicants actually
encouraged the Negroes in saying that, should the blacks go out and
establish themselves independently of the whites, the latter would have
more respect for them because of this exhibition of their self-reliance.
To impress this on the Negro, some white Methodists went so far as to
invite to their pulpits the ministers of the African Methodist Churches,
whereas the Negro ministers in the Methodist Church itself were ignored.
When this method of trying to convince the Negro that he was an intruder
failed, the busy-bodies would often say that the white management of the
Methodist Church was merely using the Negro members as tools.

Some then thought that, because of love for the Negroes, the Methodist
Church did not want to see them go. Others believed that a majority felt
that the Negroes should have their own choice whether for separate
organization or to unite with one of the African Methodist Churches
but that, should such action be taken, the public would get the
impression that the Methodists had organized another Negro church to
break the other two down. It was thought wise, moreover, to defer action
of such far-reaching effects until the Negro question then so intensely
agitated should approach nearer a definite settlement. A Negro national
church, furthermore, could not minister to the wants of all Negroes
inasmuch as the one proposed, like the other two already in the field,
could not have prior to emancipation operated among the Negro Methodists
in the South. The Methodist Church was neutral, if anything, during the
Civil War period. It did not try to get rid of its Negro membership and
it made no particular effort to increase it. Wherever one of the two
African Methodist Churches was in a position to minister to the
spiritual needs of the Negroes, the Methodists made no effort to
proselyte such Negroes, although Negroes desiring admission to the
Methodist churches were not refused.

This question was further agitated and had to be given serious
consideration in 1864. The conference after discussing the memorials
from the Negro membership took the position that it must retain
oversight of the Negroes to give them efficient supervision. The
conference, however, encouraged _colored pastorates_ for _colored
people_ wherever practicable. It authorized the organization of mission
conferences. These separate conferences, however, were not to impair
the existing rights of the colored members nor yet to forbid the
transfer of white ministers to such conferences where it might be deemed
practicable and necessary. The Negroes in the Methodist Church had at
last received some right to share in the management of their own
pastorates, which, however, were still subject to the supervision of the
white bishops. The African Methodists still made inroads on the Negro
membership, therefore, because they could point with pride to men in
authority in their church and the Negro members of the white connection
usually conceded their point as well taken in that they received the
bishops of the African Methodists in their homes and churches and gave
them every possible consideration.

Some less numerous Negro communicants of white denominations were at
this time severing their connection with their former coworkers. In 1865
the Negro members of the white Primitive Baptist Churches of the South
organized at Columbia, Tennessee, the Colored Primitive Baptists in
America. In 1866 the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant
Church of America and elsewhere was established by merging the African
Union Church with the First Colored Methodist Protestant Church. In 1869
the General Assembly of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church organized its
Negro membership as the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with a much larger number of
Negro members than all of these denominations easily solved the problem
of Negro membership, as the Cumberland Presbyterians had done. While the
Methodists in the North reluctantly loosed their hold on the Negro
membership by granting the people of color active participation in their
affairs through an annual conference, the Methodist Church, South,
almost voluntarily agreed to organize its Negro constituency as a
separate organization known as the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.
Whether the southern Methodists did this to eliminate the Negroes or
because they thought that the Negroes in their new status as freemen
could do their own work better than white men, is a much mooted
question. It is clear that many of the slaveholding type of Christians
would want to get rid of the Negro members since they could no longer
determine their faith and how it should be exercised. The only reason
there was for the Negro to belong to the same church as that of his
master was to control the exercise of his religious belief. As this was
no longer necessary, the Negroes, so far as one element was concerned,
could then easily go.

Desiring to attach to this branch of the Methodist Church the stigma of
their having been once connected with their oppressors, some Negroes
themselves have referred to these Colored Methodists as "seceders" and
"a Democratic Rebel concern" intended to lead the Negroes back into
slavery. Such statements are most uncharitable and they not only do the
Negroes concerned an injustice but question the good motives of a number
of benevolent southern men who took this step, feeling that it was the
best way for the Negroes to develop their religious life after
emancipation. There were many masters who believed that, since the
Negroes had finally become free, they should have every encouragement to
learn how to take care of themselves.

It would be most uncharitable, moreover, to suffer any stigma to attach
to the Colored Methodists on this account. The Negroes who constituted
this church went with the southern wing of that denomination at the time
of its secession because they were compelled so to do. The independent
African Methodists were by law and public opinion prohibited from
extensive proselyting in the South and prior to the Civil War they had
with the exception of their establishments in the liberal border States
hardly touched the large body of the black population south of the Mason
and Dixon line. The free Negroes in the South were, as in the case of
Morris Brown and his followers in 1822, cut off from their brethren in
the North and the slaves were compelled to worship according to the
rigid regulations set forth above and in the same churches to which
their masters belonged.

The separation of the Negro membership from the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, came after the Civil War. In 1866 the conference meeting
that year in New Orleans made provision for the organization of the
Negro members in separate congregations and for district and annual
conferences, if the Negroes so desired. It was further provided on this
occasion that if it were acceptable to the Negroes and it met the
approval of the bishops of the church, the freedmen might have a general
conference like that of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, according
to the regulations of which the Negro deacons, elders, and bishops, if
necessary, should be ordained to conduct this work among their own
people. It was further determined that should the time arrive when the
Negro members should be so set apart, all the property intended for the
use of such members, held by the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South, should be transferred to duly qualified trustees of the
new organization.

At the next conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, meeting
in Memphis in 1870, it was reported that the Negro membership had
organized five annual conferences and unanimously desired to be
organized as a distinct body. The Memphis Conference thereupon agreed to
comply with this request. Delegates were then elected to the first
general conference which assembled in Jackson, Tennessee, October 15,
1870. From the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, there were sent as
representatives Bishops Robert Paine and H. N. McTyeire; and as
ministers, A. L. P. Green, Samuel Watson, Thomas Taylor, Edmund W.
Sehon, Thomas Whitehead, and B. J. Morgan. The prominent delegates from
the five annual conferences of the Negro members were Richard Samuels,
Solon Graham, Anderson Jackson, R. T. Thiergood, L. H. Holsey, I. H.
Anderson, R. H. Vanderhorst, W. H. Miles, W. P. Churchill, Isaac Lane,
John W. Lane, Job Grouch, F. Ambrose, and William Jones.

After having had read to this body the action of the conference it was
suggested that a committee be appointed to find a new name for this
proposed body. The name proposed was the Colored Methodist Episcopal
Church in America, which was unanimously accepted. The body then
proceeded to elect bishops. W. H. Miles was elected on the first ballot.
Afterward R. H. Vanderhorst was also chosen. Bishops Paine and McTyiere
then consecrated them the first two bishops of the Colored Methodist
Episcopal Church in America. Three additional bishops, L. H. Holsey, J.
A. Beebe, and Isaac Lane, were elected and ordained in March, 1873.

[Illustration: BISHOP W. H. MILES,

of the C. M. E. Church.]

The large body of Negroes, however, were attracted after the war not by
the Methodist Church but by the Baptist. The freedom, which even prior
to emancipation meant so much in the growth of the Baptists, was
thereafter a still greater cause for their expansion. It was easier than
ever for a man to become a prominent figure in the Baptist Church. While
the Methodists were hesitating as to what recognition should be
allowed the Negroes or whether they should be set apart as a separate
body, the Negro Baptists were realizing upon their new freedom which
made possible the enjoyment of greater democracy in the church. Every
man was to be equal to every other man and no power without had
authority to interfere.

This situation in the Baptist Church appealed very strongly to the then
recently enfranchised Negro in the reconstructed States. As the white
man of the South had over emphasized politics and the professions to the
extent that these avenues in that section were overmanned, the Negro in
his undeveloped state accordingly made the same mistake in trying to
escape drudgery. A rather hard row to hoe, or an unusually heavy burden
was too often abandoned on hearing a call to the ministry, and the
devotee thus impressed had practically no difficulty in securing a
hearing in this locally democratic Baptist Church. The grade of
intellect possessed by the novice in this ministerial service had little
to do with his acceptability; for there were all sorts of degrees of
mental development among the freedmen and every man preferred to follow
the one who saw the spiritual world from his own particular angle and
explained its mysteries in the dialect and in the manner in which he
could understand it. If in delivering the gospel message the verb might
not every time agree with the subject, that had little to do with the
power to start a soul on the way to glory.

Operating on this basis, local churches sprang up here and there as
Baptist preachers, a law unto themselves, went abroad seeking a
following. Out of some of these efforts came several good results. Many
of the churches thus established have in our day developed into beacon
lights. And so was it true of some of those churches which branched off
from or drew out of the old Baptist Churches of long standing
established years before the Civil War. There were not so many such
African Baptist churches in the South during that period. Because of
fear of servile insurrection the whites would not permit many Negro
churches to have an independent existence. The pressure once removed,
however, groups of Negroes long waiting for religious freedom found
adequate opportunity for exercising it in the organization of numerous
Baptist churches. This was not in all cases abruptly effected, for the
Negroes had no church buildings of their own and could not easily
purchase them; but in their poverty they made unusual sacrifices to meet
this emergency and whites liberally inclined assisted them in the rapid
promotion of this work. Yet this movement did not reach its climax until
some years later; for the lure of politics presented another field of so
much interest to the Negroes that even the preachers of long standing
too often abandoned their posts altogether. After the Reconstruction,
moreover, when the Negro in the South had been removed from politics, a
much larger number of bankrupt leaders entered the ministry or devised
schemes to make use of the various churches.

An impetus toward improvement came from mutual associations. The Baptist
churches were not obligated to unite to form associations and when
formed did not necessarily have to be bound by the action of these
annual meetings; but immediately after the war Negro Baptist churches,
which in the South had formerly been coolly received by white bodies and
were not permitted to form associations of their own, readily united for
mutual benefit in the exercise of their new freedom. In those meetings
the uninformed heard of the urgent need to educate the masses, the duty
of the ministry to elevate the laity, and the call upon all to
Christianize the heathen. The periodical visits of white churchmen,
interested either in the Negro or in exploiting them, brought new light
as to what was going on in the other bodies conducted by men of higher
attainments.

As the Negro Baptists, however, did not soon effect more potential
organizations than the district Baptist Associations then composed of a
few churches, they never had a national policy; and their local
democracy would have furnished no machinery to carry out such a policy,
if they had adopted one. To the State groups, then, must the reader look
for the signs of progress and thanks to the genius of the Negro, such
evidence was not long wanting.

The Negro Baptists of North Carolina organized the first State
Convention in 1866. Alabama and Virginia followed in 1867, and very soon
thereafter came Arkansas, Kentucky, and finally all of the States in the
South. Immediately thereafter they began to affiliate with larger
national bodies. The first of these larger groups was the Northwestern
and Southern Baptist Convention, organized in 1864. In 1866 there was
held an important convention in Richmond, when it was determined to
consolidate all of the general interests of the Negro Baptists, the
Missionary, the Northwestern and Southern conventions as one large body,
to be called the Consolidated American Baptist Missionary
Convention.[10]

This convention operated largely in the South and tended to decline. In
1873 the West revived its organization under the name of the Baptist
Association of the Western States and Territories, while the northern
churches adhered to another organization called the New England
Missionary Convention, organized in 1875. In the course of time these
two bodies so expanded as to embrace the whole country, yet in 1880
certain Baptists here and there formed a national body to do work in
foreign lands, designating it the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention of
the United States. The feeling, however, that there should be a
concentration of the efforts of all Baptists directed through one
national body to a particular point of attack led to a more significant
national meeting of the Negro Baptists held in St. Louis in 1886. The
work of the Baptist Foreign Mission Convention was later so modified
that all of the national and international church work of the
denomination was unified through the organization of the National
Baptist Convention.

That these Baptists despite their excess of liberty succeeded as well as
they did, was due in a measure to the fact that they exercised the good
judgment in not immediately getting too far from their friends. The
Negroes used the same polity, the same literature, and sometimes the
same national agencies as the white Baptists. The southern Baptists were
then less interested in these communicants whom, some say, they gladly
got rid of when they could no longer dictate their spiritual development
as the master did that of the slave; but the northern Baptists felt
obligated to send their missionaries among the freedmen. These apostles
to the lowly brought words of good cheer, expounded the gospel,
established new churches, and distributed books for the enlightenment of
the masses. Among some of these lowly people these men were received as
apostles of old, welcomed to a new harvest which had long been waiting,
for the laborers among the lowly were few.




CHAPTER X

RELIGIOUS EDUCATION AS A PREPARATION


The separation of the Negro churchmen from the white organizations,
however, was not necessarily a declaration of war. Most Negroes regarded
this as the right step toward doing for themselves what others had
hitherto done for them and some whites so considered it. As a matter of
fact, the ties which have bound the Negro church organization to the
whites were not such as could be severed by a mere change in the
management of church affairs. The Negroes had already been divided from
the whites by an unwritten law. The upheaval of the Civil War merely
furnished the occasion for the separation. There still remained among
the northern whites numerous philanthropists who desired to help them in
the promotion of religion and morality. From this group, therefore, came
numerous Christian workers supported by funds freely contributed to
deliver the captive and proclaim the year of jubilee.

[Illustration: WILBERFORCE UNIVERSITY DURING THE CIVIL WAR.]

These Christian workers, however, cared not so much about proselyting as
they did about education, the greatest need of the freedmen. The
Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, who had considerable
communicants among the Negroes prior to the Civil War, took the lead in
this movement, establishing at strategic points schools which they
believed would become centers of culture for the whole race. The
Baptists established Shaw University at Raleigh in 1865; Roger Williams
at Nashville and Morehouse at Atlanta in 1867; Leland at New Orleans and
Benedict at Columbia in 1871. The Free-will Baptists founded Storer
College at Harpers Ferry in 1867. The Methodists, who were no less
active, established Walden at Nashville in 1865, Rust at Holly Springs
in 1866, Morgan at Baltimore in 1867, Haven Academy at Waynesboro in
1868, Claflin at Orangeburg in 1869, and Clark at Atlanta in 1870. The
Presbyterians, who could not compete with the Baptists and Methodists in
proselyting Negroes, largely restricted their efforts to the
establishment of Biddle at Charlotte in 1867 and to the promotion of the
work begun at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, established as Ashmun
Institute in 1854. The Episcopal Church showing the tender mercy of the
wicked, established St. Augustine at Raleigh in 1867. The American
Missionary Association, an agency of the Congregational Church,
established Avery Institute at Charleston, Ballard Normal School at
Macon, and Washburn at Beaufort, North Carolina, in 1865; Trinity at
Athens, Alabama, Gregory at Wilmington, North Carolina, and Fisk at
Nashville in 1866; Talladega in Alabama, Emerson at Mobile, Storrs at
Atlanta, and Beach at Savannah in 1867; Hampton Institute in Virginia,
Knox at Athens, Burwell at Selma, now at Florence; Ely Normal in
Louisville in 1868; Straight University at New Orleans, Tougaloo in
Mississippi, Le Moyne at Memphis, and Lincoln at Marion, Alabama, in
1869; Dorchester Academy at McIntosh, and the Albany Normal in Georgia
in 1870. The Congregationalists, moreover, figured in the establishment
of Howard University, which was chartered by the United States
Government in 1867 with provision for the education of all persons
regardless of race.

Some other less effective forces were at work during this period
accomplishing here and there results seemingly unimportant but in the
end productive of much good. In 1862 Miss Towne and Miss Murray, members
of the Society of Friends, established the Penn School on St. Helena
Island. Cornelia Hancock, a Philadelphia woman of the same sect, founded
the Laing School at Mount Pleasant, near Charleston, South Carolina.
Martha Schofield, another Friend of Pennsylvania, opened at Aiken in
1865 the Schofield Industrial School. In 1864 Alida Clark, supported by
Friends in Indiana, engaged in relief work among Negro orphans in
Helena, Arkansas, and in 1869 established near that city what is now
known as Southland College. The Reformed Presbyterians maintained a
school at Natchez between 1864 and 1866, and in 1874 established Knox
Academy at Selma, Alabama. The United Presbyterians opened a sort of
clandestine school in Nashville in 1863, and in 1875 established
Knoxville College as a center for a group of schools for Negroes in
Eastern Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Northern Alabama.
Franklinton Christian College, maintained by the American Christian
Convention, was opened in 1878 and chartered in 1890. Stillman Institute
was established by the southern Presbyterians at Tuscaloosa in 1876.
Paine College was founded at Augusta in 1884.

With these striking examples of sacrifice in behalf of the education of
their race, the Negro churches themselves began to participate in the
extension of education as a means to spread the gospel through an
intelligent ministry and to enable the laity to appreciate it as the
great leverage in the uplift of the man far down. The African Methodists
had through the efforts of Bishop Payne already undertaken the
establishment of Union Seminary near Columbus, which was finally merged
with Wilberforce, established by the Methodists in 1858 near Xenia,
Ohio. The African Methodists also established Western University in
Kansas. To extend their educational work in the South, however, this
same denomination established Allen University at Columbia in 1881;
Morris Brown at Atlanta in 1885; and later other schools at Waco, Texas;
Jackson, Mississippi; and Selma, Alabama. The Zion Methodist Church too
was planning the establishment of Livingstone College in 1879 and
removed to the present site of Salisbury in 1882, was popularized
extensively by the eloquent J. C. Price. Early emphasizing education,
the Colored Methodist Church opened Lane College at Jackson, Tennessee,
in 1882 and later established other schools at Birmingham, Alabama,
Holly Springs, Mississippi, and Tyler, Texas. With the support of the
American Baptist Home Mission Society the Negro Baptists have done
likewise and, moreover, have established independently of the whites
other such schools as the Virginia Theological Seminary and College at
Lynchburg, largely developed by the talented Gregory W. Hayes; the
William J. Simmons University of Louisville; the Arkansas Baptist
College, now under the direction of the efficient J. A. Booker; and the
National Training School for Girls in Washington, D. C., an institution
so well managed by the noted orator and indefatigable worker, Nannie H.
Burroughs.

[Illustration: J. C. PRICE

An orator and educator in the church.]

To make proper use of the schools various organizations coöperating
under the name of Freedmen's Aid Societies sent workers into the South
to meet every need of the Negro. These efforts were not altogether those
of the church, but so many churchmen were connected therewith that the
story of the Negro church would be incomplete without it. Coöperating
with these agencies, the American Missionary Association had in 1868 as
many as 532 missionaries and teachers working among the Negroes,
spending as much as $400,000 a year. Then there came the National
Freedmen's Relief Association of New York with 14 teachers and funds
amounting to $400,000 and $250,000 in supplies; the Pennsylvania
Freedmen's Relief Association or Philadelphia Society with a force of 60
teachers and a fund of $250,000 in 1865; the Western Freedmen's Aid
Commission with receipts aggregating $227,000 to support teachers in the
South in 1865; the Northwestern Freedmen's Aid Commission sending to the
South in 1865 as many as 50 teachers. In the District of Columbia, among
the Negroes themselves, there were organized and operated the National
Freedmen's Relief Association and the National Association for the
Relief of Destitute Colored women and children, the latter being
supported by funds appropriated by Congress.

The Friends, a distinctly religious body, early participated in the same
work through various local agencies. Among the first was the Friends
Association of Philadelphia and its vicinity for the Relief of Colored
Freedmen, which between 1863 and 1867 expended $210,500 among the
freedmen in Virginia and North Carolina. More interested in education
and religion, the Friends' Association for the Aid and Elevation of the
Freedmen worked among the Negroes of Virginia and South Carolina, where
between 1862 and 1869 they maintained 14 schools with 732 students and
expended for schools, seeds, supplies, donations to asylums, and 50,000
copies of the New Testament, $57,500. The New England Friends began
work among the freedmen in 1864 in Washington, D. C., operating there a
store at cost prices and conducting day, evening, and Sunday schools.
Finally there coöperated with the New England Friends those of Maryland
organized in 1864 as the Baltimore Association for the Moral and
Educational Improvement of the Colored People. This society was
fortunate in receiving annually for some time a subsidy from the city of
Baltimore to the amount of $20,000.

Foreign friends of the race were equally active in promoting education
and religion among the freedmen. In 1863, members of the Society of
Friends in England contributed to this relief work £3,000. The following
year £5,000 came from this source in England and £1,500 from Ireland.
That same year there came through the New England Society $2,100 from
the London Freedmen's Aid Society, smaller sums from France and Ireland,
and $1,313 from five Parsee firms in London. Similar contributions were
secured from abroad by other relief societies organized in the United
States. According to facts obtained by the Freedman's Bureau the English
aid societies contributed to the relief of the Negroes between 1865 and
1869 at least $500,000. Dr. J. L. M. Curry believed that the total
receipts in money and supplies reached $1,000,000.

The facts set forth above well represent the activities of the Friends
and of the Congregationalists, Free Will Baptists, Wesleyans,
Methodists, and Reformed Dutch, for whom the American Missionary
Association served as an agent; but there were in the field several
churches working independently. Among these were the Methodists,
Baptists and Presbyterians. To systematize its efforts the Methodists
organized in 1866 "The Freedmen Aid Society of the Methodist Church."
The first efforts of this society were directed toward primary, normal,
and higher education. In 1868 the Methodists had then established
through this agency 29 schools with 51 teachers and 5,000 students in
Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and
Georgia. By the end of the sixth year of its existence the receipts of
the society amounted to $315,100.

During these years the American Baptist Home Missionary Association
supported by Presbyterians and United Brethren in Christ, was sending
workers right in the wake of the Union armies invading the Mississippi
Valley. The Baptists had opened a school for Negroes in Alexandria in
1862, and by 1864 had sent missionaries into the District of Columbia,
Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Louisiana. Because of the
freedom exercised by the Baptists locally, there was among them much
duplication of effort which resulted in confusion; but the American
Baptist Home Missionary Association finally emerged as a unifying factor
among these workers. This society had made such rapid strides by 1867
that it had in the field 50 ordained ministers and a large number of
Negro students in training for the work. The Free-Will Baptists while
coöperating with the American Home Missionary Association made some
efforts by themselves. They carried on some work in the Shenandoah
Valley and in the West with 40 missionaries and teachers and 3,467
students.

The Presbyterians also took this work seriously. The General Assembly in
session at Pittsburg in 1865 appointed a special committee on freedmen,
with 18 members, two of whom were designated as secretary and treasurer.
As there were already in the field 36 teachers as missionaries supported
by local societies, this general bureau took over their work. The
following year there were in the field 55 missionaries, reporting 3,256
day pupils, 2,043 Sunday School scholars, and six churches with 526
members, in Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Kansas. The income
for this work was $25,350 in 1865, together with 30 or 40 boxes of
clothing; but between 1865 and 1870 this denomination expended $244,700
to maintain their workers, who in 1820 had increased to 157, of whom 105
were Negroes. The Old School and United Presbyterians did not accomplish
so much but they had a few missions here and there. In 1864, there were
in Washington five schools with 174 students supported by the Reformed
Presbyterian Board of Missions with an expenditure of $3,000 a year.

Some other sporadic efforts in behalf of the freedmen deserve at
least casual mention. The Protestant Episcopal Freedmen's Commission was
organized in 1865 to engage in this work, but with the exception of some
physical relief extended the unfortunate it accomplished very little.
From The Massachusetts Episcopal Association for the Promotion of
Christian Knowledge among the Freedmen and other Colored Persons of the
South and Southwest, organized that same year, still less assistance
came. The American Bible Society up to 1868, however, distributed a
million copies of scriptural and religious works among the freedmen. The
American Tract Society also sent out such works, opened some schools,
and conducted church services in Washington.

The Negroes, although poor in the goods of this world, soon made
sufficient sacrifice materially to give impetus to the relief work among
themselves. The Negroes in Maryland gave $23,371 to aid the relief work
promoted by the Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational
Improvement of the Colored People. They organized bodies of their own,
moreover, to participate directly in this uplift work. In 1864 there was
established in Brooklyn "The African Civilization Society," which
gradually extended its work through churches and schools into the
District of Columbia, the Carolinas, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia,
Mississippi, and Louisiana. The reports of this organization show that
in 1868 it employed 129 teachers instructing 8,000 students at an
expense of $53,700. For some years the society operated in Brooklyn an
orphan asylum with the aid of the Freedmen's Bureau, but in 1869 the
management found itself embarrassed for lack of funds. From 1864 to 1868
the African Methodists so extended its mission and school work as to
have 40,000 Sunday school pupils and 39,000 volumes in school libraries.

It will be interesting to mention some of the men in the North, who
constituted the management of the home offices of these aid societies
and who used their time and influence in raising the necessary funds.
Among the officers of the American Freedmen's Aid Commission, a sort of
general agency in New York for several relief societies, were William
Lloyd Garrison, the famous abolitionist, as vice-president; Frederick
Law Olmsted, the noted traveler through the South prior to the war,
serving as general secretary; and, as directors, John G. Whittier, the
anti-slavery poet, Francis G. Shaw, another abolitionist, and Henry Ward
Beecher, the true and tried friend of the Negro. Lyman Abbott became
general secretary of the combined organizations. The American Freedmen's
Aid Commission and The American Union Commission added to their staff
William Cullen Bryant, Phillip Brooks, Bellamy Storer, and Edward L.
Pierce, who had done so much for the contrabands in South Carolina prior
to the close of the war. When most of these societies in a convention in
Cleveland united under the name of the American Freedmen's Union
Commission, they had for president Chief Justice Chase, who not only by
word but by actual sacrifice of his means did much to promote the
Christian education of the freedmen.

Among the supporters of the New England Society there appeared many
workers known before as friends of the Negro. The Rev. Edward Everett
Hale and J. M. Manning were most active in Boston in raising funds and
finding teachers and missionaries to work in Negro schools. Gov. John A.
Andrew served as the first president of the New England Freedmen's Aid
Society, Edward Atkinson as secretary, and James Freeman Clarke as
vice-president. And from New England came scores of workers, following
up the work commenced by those gallant soldiers, Thomas Wentworth
Higginson, and Robert Gould Shaw.

Southern people were not exactly neutral on the enlightenment of the
Negro. They did not, as a whole, seriously object to it and in the
course of time there appeared among them men of their own group
fearlessly advocating Negro education. Dr. A. G. Haygood, a
distinguished churchman among the Methodists, deserves here some
mention. He represented in a large measure the best thought in the South
concerning the Negro. He came forward to impress upon the South the
claims of the Negro on the "sympathy and helpfulness of all who were
more fortunate, especially those who called themselves the followers of
Jesus Christ." This sentiment he set forth in a book, entitled _Our
Brother in Black_, which struck the North with agreeable surprise and
led the South to think more seriously of another solution of the
so-called Negro problem. Invited to be the Director of the John F.
Slater Fund established soon thereafter, Dr. Haygood had an opportunity
to spend nine years translating into action the theory set forth in his
book.

Less interested in Christian education but nevertheless effective in
promoting generally the cause which made the situation of the Negro
church so much better in the South was Dr. J. L. M. Curry, a lawyer and
congressman, representative of the Southern Confederacy. His work as
Director of the Peabody Fund, easily connected with the systematic
efforts of Dr. Amory Dwight Mayo, a northern man, who investigated the
Negro schools in the South, set forth methods for their improvement and
kept the North and the South well informed as to the forces at work
among Negroes for the good of all. The southern churches as a whole
during this period, however, did not so quickly forget their prejudices
as to do anything of consequence for the good of the Negroes. The Negro
had been begrudgingly granted his freedom and the northern teacher and
missionary seemed like interlopers to be tolerated but not worthy of
coöperation. The South, moreover, could not have done very much for
Negro missions for the reason that immediately after the war it was
decidedly impoverished; for many of the aid societies which assisted the
Negroes ministered also to the whites in the desolated areas.

These missionary teachers came with a determination to do something like
that of Francis Xavier, Henry Martyn, and Adoniram Judson, who bore the
religious message to the Orient. They came to change the character of
the freedmen through an intelligent religion based upon actual knowledge
of God as revealed in the Bible. Among these workers one should mention
Rev. D. L. Johnson, a teacher of refugees in Washington; Solomon Peck, a
volunteer teacher of the contrabands at Beaufort, South Carolina, in
1862; Horace Bumstead, afterward President of Atlanta University; and
Gen. O. O. Howard, President of Howard University.

The sort of education promoted by these workers will further explain the
significance of the movement. All of the church aid societies and many
of those beyond the control of churchmen had for their purpose the
industrial, social, intellectual, and religious improvement of the
freedmen. The capstone of the structure they would build then had its
foundation in moral and religious instruction. Most workers, therefore,
were chosen with regard to their fitness to function in these positions
as missionaries in the school room. Few persons volunteering to do such
work at that time could be devoid of a sympathetic nature, but more than
this was required to build in these new citizens  that Christian
character which would make them helpful to their fellows and useful in
the work of the Master. While education was necessary for the Negroes as
for all other persons, the chief need of the Negro, as most of these
workers observed it, was religion.

Acting upon this idea, therefore, almost every Negro school provided in
some way for religious instruction. If the course of study were not
sufficiently broad to base thereupon a more advanced course, there was
usually provided some instruction in the English Bible. In case the
course of study became so pretentious as to style itself a college
curriculum, there was usually added the regular course in theology,
which, in spite of the fact that it was the only professional work in
which such institutions engaged, was sufficient for them to take over
the title of university. Although lacking adequate understanding
sometimes, however, these institutions had so much of the right spirit
that they accomplished all but wonders. While they did not always hold
the students long enough to impart all that a college graduate or a
professional man should know, they so inspired the youth with the love
of study that the habit once formed led them into fields of research and
endeavor which men much better trained often failed to reach.

The emphasis of the northern churches upon instruction rather than upon
mere proselyting immediately after the war, therefore, was not
misplaced.  They no doubt wrought more wisely than they thought. The
Negro already had his predilections toward the Methodists and the
Baptists and the mere contest for the increase of church membership to
be recruited among a people, the masses of whom could not then serve God
intelligently would have been love's labor lost. Northern denominations
wisely coöperated with one another regardless of sectarian lines to do
whatever was needful whether or not the largest contributor to the
success of the enterprise received credit for it. Negroes who went from
these schools had, of course, the impress of the respective
denominations to which they owed their education, but very often, as it
was in the case of the Presbyterians, the denomination lost to the
others of a more popular appeal most of the men which it trained.
Lincoln and Biddle Universities have by their training of men who, on
leaving school joined the Methodists or Baptists, contributed to the
success of these denominations. When one thinks of Walter H. Brooks, the
popular Baptist minister in Washington, and of Joseph C. Price, the idol
of the Zion Church, as graduates of Lincoln University, this contention
becomes convincing.

With all of these workers in the field promoting religious education
without regard to creed, the Negro churches soon had a much larger
number of men equipped to extend their work. The minister who could
neither read nor write became an exception to the rule and when still
ambitious in spite of such shortcomings he sometimes ceased to have a
following. Preaching became more of an appeal to the intellect than an
effort to stir one's emotions. Sermons were made as an effort to
minister to a need observed by careful consideration of the
circumstances of the persons served, hymns in keeping with the thought
of the discourse harmonized therewith, and prayers became the occasion
of thanksgiving for blessings which the intelligent pastor could lead
his congregation to appreciate and of a petition for God's help to live
more righteously. In fact, the tone of worship in the Negro church had
been as a result of the post bellum efforts in education very much
changed as early as 1875 and decidedly so by 1885.

Given such an impetus the work of the Christian church among Negroes was
rapidly carried forward. Within a few years the neglected masses of the
freedmen unto whom the gospel had never been successfully preached were
generally evangelized and provided with some sort of facilities for
religious instruction. Publication societies sold through colporters and
missionaries religious literature adapted to the special needs of the
freedmen and religious workers organized in churches circles devoted to
the study of Christian doctrine and the Bible. As the church thus
liberalized offered the Negroes a much better opportunity for
development than the other institutions, many of which for years after
emancipation were regarded as spheres which the Negro should not enter,
the freedmen specialized in the study of this one concern thrown open to
them, mastering in a few years the principles of the Christian religion
and the story of the Bible to the extent that their friends and enemies
were all but startled. As a result, therefore, Negroes of to-day have a
much more thorough knowledge of these fundamentals than most white men.




CHAPTER XI

THE CALL OF POLITICS


This favorable beginning, however, was not indicative of a
straightforward attack on the tents of wickedness. Many Negroes who were
trained for the ministry never entered thereupon because of the lure of
politics during the days of Reconstruction. Some who had engaged in this
Christian work found out that in spite of the most thorough training by
pious men, they were not fitted for such a calling and abandoned it for
the political arena. Others who were seemingly successful in the
ministry divided their time between their profession and politics,
either because of the exigencies of the situation or the desire to
attain positions of prominence in keeping with the traditions of the
white people of the South, who have emphasized unduly the status of the
professional class.

There were during the Reconstruction period, moreover, so many other
necessities with which the Negroes had to be supplied that the Negro
preacher, often the only one in a community usually sufficiently well
developed to lead the people, had to devote his time not only to church
work but to every matter of concern to the race. In some respects,
the Negroes after the war were not far removed from the conditions
obtaining in the North before the war. Many of their former problems
still confronted them. The chief difference was that after the war the
Negroes had fighting ground on which to stand to wage a battle for those
things which, having been begrudgingly granted, were being gradually
taken away.

That the Negro preacher should continue a man of so many interests was
but a natural consequence of the trend in the development of the race in
this country. Up to this time the Negroes had established and maintained
only one institution of their own. That was their church. When the time
came for them to exercise other functions in society this one
institution had to be overworked to supply the needs of others. Inasmuch
as the church then became the center of so many activities the minister
in charge often had to take the lead in shaping the policy of his people
that they might advance in the right way. Ministers who abandoned their
pulpits for the political world may be condemned as deserting their post
of duty; but when one considers the call of their race in the situation
in which it was and the valuable services some of them rendered, he
cannot hastily conclude that the race thereby lost more than it gained.
History should be studied sympathetically. The devotee to the faith
should not denounce these men as recreant to Christianity and the
student of politics must not dub them as interlopers in a forbidden
field. Never before had a race been liberated under such circumstances.
Never before had a group in such an undeveloped state been called upon
to do so many things in such a short time. That the procedure of the
race in this infinitely complex situation differed somewhat from that of
others who had centuries to do what the Negroes were required to
accomplish in a day, should be no cause of surprise.

In this respect, moreover, the Negroes did not differ widely from the
whites. It is true that there has not been any period in the history of
the whites when such a large percentage of the ministry freely
participated in matters of the world, but the Negro minister found in
the record of the whites precedents for all of his deviation from the
customary course of the preacher of the Word. In their frontier
condition the pioneering whites had often been reduced to the necessity
of following the leadership of the versatile minister just as the
Negroes were during the Reconstruction period. Among them the minister
was sometimes the man of all work. He had a farm or business from which
he obtained most of his means of subsistence; he of necessity often
studied law and practiced in the local courts; he not infrequently
aspired to office and, if successful, sometimes forgot his beginnings.
And even within the memory of the living, examples are not wanting.
Ex-Governor Atkinson of West Virginia was a minister  in the Methodist
Church and, like the Negro during these trying days, answered the call
of his constituents. James A. Garfield, who attained the presidency of
the United States, abandoned this exalted profession for the more
interesting rôle of politics.

The salient facts of the careers of some of these ministers thus allured
are more than interesting. Dr. William J. Simmons after being educated
and engaged in the Baptist ministry for some time entered politics in
Florida about 1874. Well received by his neighbors, he soon became
county clerk and then county commissioner. He served as chairman of the
county campaign committee and a member of the district congressional
committee. In the campaign of Hayes and Tilden, Simmons was a
conspicuous figure. He stumped the State for the Republican candidates
with such success as materially to aid the cause in that he helped to
raise the Republican majority of his county from 525 to 986 when the
whole State gave Hayes a majority of only 147. Dr. Simmons later settled
in Louisville, where he distinguished himself as a minister and as the
founder of what is now known as the William J. Simmons University.

[Illustration: DR. WILLIAM J. SIMMONS]

Dr. James Poindexter's career shows how difficult it was for the Negro
ministers to avoid politics. Coming from Virginia, as a pioneer among
those who sought better opportunities in the Northwest, he was at once a
serious leader. He became a minister in the Baptist Church even before
the Civil War and never actually sought an official position, hoping
rather to maintain himself as a fearless speaker and writer in behalf of
his oppressed people. Yet he too was to some extent attracted to
politics in self-defense. He was the first man of color in Ohio
nominated for the House of Delegates, but was defeated. We find him some
years later serving as the foreman of a grand jury. He was appointed a
trustee of the Ohio University at Athens but the Democratic Senate of
the State would not confirm him. He was for four years a member of the
City Council of Columbus, serving that body as vice-president. Later he
was appointed to fill a vacancy on the School Board of Columbus, was
elected to the position at the expiration of the term, and reëlected
against great odds over a Democratic opponent in 1887.

[Illustration: DR. JAMES POINDEXTER

Pioneer Baptist preacher in Ohio.]

Poindexter's position in this case, like that of so many others, may be
stated in his own words. Addressing an audience on the "Pulpit and
Politics," he said: "Nor can a preacher more than any other citizen
plead his religious work or the sacredness of that work as an exemption
from duty. Going to the Bible to learn the relation of the pulpit to
politics, and accepting the prophets, Christ, and apostles, and the
pulpit of their times, and their precepts and examples as the guide of
the pulpit to-day, I think that their conclusion will be that wherever
there is a sin to be rebuked, no matter by whom committed, and ill to be
averted or good to be achieved by our country or mankind, there is a
place for the pulpit to make itself felt and heard. The truth is, all
the help the preachers and all other good and worthy citizens can give
by taking hold of politics is needed in order to keep the government out
of bad hands and secure the ends for which governments are formed."

Dr. J. T. White, another preacher of the Reconstruction period, attained
much distinction in this field. Fortunate in having acquired a
fundamental education in Indianapolis prior to the war, he easily made
an impression at the Consolidated Baptist Convention in St. Louis in
1865 when he received a call to a small Baptist Church of Helena,
Arkansas. Among these communicants he toiled successfully without
concern as to other affairs until 1868, when the reconstruction of the
State was begun. He was induced to present himself as a candidate for
delegate to the constitutional convention and was elected. He figured
conspicuously in framing the constitution and canvassed the State to
secure its ratification. He then became a part of the restored State
government, serving his fellow citizens as a member of the House of
Delegates, to which he was twice re-elected. He was chosen to serve one
term in the State Senate, after which he was appointed by the Governor,
Commissioner of Public Works and Internal Improvements. During this same
period, however, he was doing his best work in building and edifying
churches at Helena and Little Rock, and extending Baptist influence
throughout the State and nation.

G. W. Gayles, a Mississippian of this type, acquired before his
emancipation enough education to read intelligently. Having an
inclination to study the Bible, he aspired to the ministry, for which he
was set apart by a council of reputable Baptist ministers of Greenville
in 1867. Going to Bolivar county to find a more inviting field, he
became the pastor of the Kindling Altar Church in which he made an
honorable record. He soon became involved in public affairs, however, as
is evidenced by his appointment as member of the Board of Police for a
district in Bolivar County by Governor A. Ames. The following year he
was appointed Justice of the Peace in that county by Governor J. L.
Alcorn, but later in that same month he was made a supervisor of another
district in that county. He was then elected a member of the Mississippi
Legislature, serving a term of two years in the lower house and then as
State Senator from the 28th district, beginning 1877 and continuing into
the eighties, when there had been no other Negro in that body since
1875.

In spite of his political activities, however, Gayles did not abandon
religious work. Beginning in 1872, he served for many years as
missionary for the counties of Bolivar and Sunflower and then in that
capacity for Coahoma. Appreciating his worth, the Baptist State
Missionary Convention made him its corresponding secretary in 1874
and president in 1876, with the power to edit a denominational organ
known as _The Baptist Signal_, by which he showed himself a national as
well as a State character.

Jesse Freeman Boulden was forced into politics against his will. In
Philadelphia he acquired an elementary education. He later embraced
religion in Maryland, and in 1853 connected himself with the Union
Baptist Church in Philadelphia. He then became pastor of the Zion
Baptist Church in Chicago, where he was succeeded by Richard DeBaptiste
as pastor of the combined Olivet Baptist Church in 1863. As the war was
then turning out favorable to the Union forces, Boulden called together
at Brooklyn, Illinois, in 1864, a group of Illinois Baptist churches
known as the Wood River Association to consider the importance of
following the army and looking after the interests of the denomination
in the South. This work then engaged the attention of Mr. Boulden to the
extent that he gave up his church in 1865 and settled at Natchez,
Mississippi. This was in many respects the turning point of his career.
He immediately plunged into political matters as a leader to the manner
born. He presented to Congress the first petition of that State praying
that Negroes be granted the right of franchise. Boulden held the first
emancipation celebration in 1866, and began to lecture to Negroes on the
duty of the hour. Thus interested, he was made a factor in the
organization  of the Republican party in the north-eastern part of the
State. He made the first Republican speech in the court house at
Columbus and was a member of the first Mississippi Republican State
Convention in 1867.

In all of this, however, he was not seeking personal gain; for brought
out against his will as a candidate for the lower house of the
legislature, he once thought of declining, but finally yielded, thinking
that he might be able to do some good. In this position he took the lead
in piloting through the legislature the election of Hiram Revells as
United States Senator, and, after helping B. K. Bruce to become
Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate, used his influence to make him also a
member of the upper national body. He, like many others of his time,
however, never deserted the ministry altogether for politics. After
serving various churches and editing _The Baptist Reflector_ of
Columbus, Mississippi, he rendered his most valuable service as general
agent of the American Baptist Home Mission Society for the State of New
York.

P. H. A. Braxton, pastor of the Calvary Baptist Church in Baltimore, and
the Rev. D. F. Rivers, once a member of the Tennessee Legislature,
seemed to have had their day in politics and then entered upon the
ministry in contradistinction to most men of their time. Leaving the
farm on which he was born a slave in Virginia, Braxton went into the
stave business. Entering politics in King William county soon
thereafter, however, he became constable in 1872, acquitting himself
with honor. In the meantime he studied law with some degree of success.
He then went to Washington, D.C., where he received an appointment in
the custom house service in which he was converted in 1875. It seems
that he lost the desire for politics thereafter. He was commissioned to
preach in 1875, and appointed general agent of the consolidated American
Baptist Missionary Convention in 1878. He took charge of the Calvary
Baptist Church in Baltimore in 1879 and there made a record for himself
and his denomination as a forceful preacher, successful organizer, and
radical reformer. Rev. Mr. Rivers, after toiling in the West, came to
Washington where he is still an active pastor.

Allen Allensworth prepared for the ministry at the Ely Normal School and
at Roger Williams University. He rose rapidly in the denomination,
serving the Kentucky Baptists as their financial agent, the pastor of
churches at Elizabethtown, Franklin, Louisville, Bowling Green, and
Cincinnati, and as a missionary in the employ of the American Baptist
Publication Society. During these years, however, he was equally active
as a leader in politics. The Republicans of Kentucky made much use of
him as a campaigner, as he was a speaker of well-known power. By this
party he was chosen to serve as an elector for the State-at-large on the
Garfield-Arthur ticket in 1880 and was sent as delegate from that State
to the National Republican Convention which met in Chicago in 1884. No
one knows how far his political activity would have gone, had he not
entered the army as chaplain before the Negro political organization in
the South had collapsed.

Christopher H. Payne, who with the possible exception of Mordecai W.
Johnson, has been the most intelligent preacher of color to toil in West
Virginia, shows in his career how the political world finally absorbed
some Negro ministers altogether. He began as a teacher in West Virginia,
where by dint of energy he mastered the fundamentals of education. He
then became converted and on realizing a call to the ministry, entered
the Richmond Institute where he distinguished himself as a promising
scholar. After serving the American Baptist Publication Society as a
Sunday school missionary and as pastor of churches in Virginia and West
Virginia, he became interested in politics in which he participated not
only as a speaker but as an editor. He spent some time reading law,
secured admission to the bar, and practiced in the local courts. In the
course of time, he became more widely known as a figure in politics than
as a churchman, although he was at the same time serving as pastor of
some church and presiding over Baptist Associations and for years the
Baptist State Convention of West Virginia. In 1896, he was elected a
member of the West Virginia Legislature, the first Negro to be so
honored in that State. He was later appointed a deputy Collector of
Internal Revenue under Nathan B. Scott, and in 1903 was appointed Consul
to the Virgin Islands, where he served fourteen years. Since the recent
purchase of these possessions by the United States he has remained there
to practice law.

Bishop W. B. Derrick of the African Methodist Episcopal Church also had
a political career. From a brief career on the high seas he enlisted in
the United States Navy during the Civil War and upon being converted
entered the ministry of the African Methodist Church, serving with
distinction in the Virginia Conference. Having by the end of the
seventies attained this position of influence, he was induced to take an
active part in the politics of that State at the time when one of the
local parties desired to readjust the State debt. He allied himself with
the "Funders," the party in favor of paying the debt as it was
contracted, since he believed that his attitude was in harmony with the
principles of the National Republican Party. Thinking that his people
were about to be made tools in the hands of ambitious and unscrupulous
men, Dr. Derrick fearlessly denounced the "Readjusters" as a clique
seeking to repudiate the payment of an honest debt. As this contest
developed into a vindictive political battle engendering much local
strife out of which the "Readjusters" emerged victors, Dr. Derrick,
deeming it best to leave Virginia, resigned his charge and spent some
time visiting his relatives in the West Indies. He returned to this
country to resume his ministry in which he so rapidly developed that he
became a popular bishop of his church.

[Illustration: BISHOP W. B. DERRICK]

Bishop H. M. Turner, one of the outstanding men of the Negro race, had
his day also in politics. He equipped himself for the ministry by
private instruction obtained under adverse circumstances, joined the
Methodist Church in 1848, and transferred to the African Methodists in
1867, rising rapidly in this last-mentioned connection from the position
of an itinerant preacher in St. Louis to an eldership in Washington, and
a chaplaincy in the United States Army. During these years, however, he
was most active in politics. In 1867 he was appointed by the National
Republican Committee to superintend the organization of the Negroes in
Georgia. In this capacity he stumped the State and wrote many articles
which he spread broadcast to direct his people in his way. That year he
was elected a member of the State Constitutional Convention. He was next
chosen a member of the legislature the following year and re-elected in
1870, when he was expelled on account of his color. President Grant
appointed him post-master of Macon in 1869; but he had to resign on
account of persecution. He was afterward appointed Coast Inspector of
Customs and United States Government Detective, but after holding the
position a few years he resigned it to meet the demands of the church
whose cause, in spite of his political activities, he had never
abandoned, and whose good judgment made him the influential bishop of
the denomination.

[Illustration: BISHOP H. M. TURNER]

Speaking of his career himself, he said on an occasion: "And my labors
have not stopped in the religious sphere, but it is well known to every
one that I have done more work in the political field than any five men
in the State, if you will take out Colonel Bryant. I first organized the
Republican party in this State, and have worked for its maintenance and
perpetuity as no other man in the State has. I have put more men in the
field, made more speeches, organized more union leagues, political
associations, clubs, and have written more campaign documents, that
received larger circulation, than any other man in the State. Why, one
campaign document I wrote alone was so acceptable that it took four
million copies to satisfy the public. And as you are well aware, these
labors have not been performed amid sunshine and prosperity. I have been
the constant target of Democratic abuse and venom, and white Republican
jealousy. The newspapers have teemed with all kind of slander, accusing
me of every crime in the catalogue of villainy; I have been arrested and
tried on some of the wildest charges and most groundless accusations
ever distilled from the laboratory of hell. Witnesses have been paid as
high as four thousand dollars to swear me into the penitentiary; white
preachers have sworn that I tried to get up insurrections, etc., a
crime punishable with death; and all such deviltry has been resorted to
for the purpose of breaking me down, and with all they have not hurt a
hair of my head, nor even bothered my brain longer than they were going
through the farce of adjudication.... I invariably let them say their
say and do their do; while they were studying against me, I was studying
for the interest of the church, and working for the success of my
party."

Richard Harvey Cain, converted in 1841 and installed as a preacher in
the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1844, saw himself rising to a
position of usefulness after his training at Wilberforce, followed by
his pastoral work in the New York and South Carolina Conferences.
Although he had unusually extended his field of labor by successful
efforts at Summerville, Lincolnville, Georgetown, Marion, and Sumter, he
had too much energy to be confined altogether to the church. Interesting
himself in whatever touched the life of his people, he edited a
Republican newspaper in 1868. He secured his election as a member of the
Reconstruction constitutional convention in South Carolina and played an
important rôle in rebuilding the government of that State along liberal
lines. He served two years as State Senator from the Charleston
District. In 1879 he was given a much more honorable recognition in
being elected a member of the Forty-third Congress. He was again thus
honored in being elected to the Forty-fifth Congress in 1881 and "served
with distinction and marked ability," making most eloquent speeches in
the advocacy of civil rights for the Negro.

His close connection with the church, however, was still maintained, for
he was elected bishop in 1880 and assigned to the Louisiana and Texas
district. Speaking of him as a man remarkable for uniting these two
fields, Bishop Derrick said: "He surely could be considered a captain of
the hosts, one of the kindliest and pleasantest of Christian statesmen
and a man of clear good judgment blended with a strong resolution and
firmness, which made him the master of many difficult situations in the
active and political career which marked his statesmanship with
brilliant success."

Bishop B. W. Arnett, one of the most popular men who have hitherto risen
in the African Methodist Church, served his people also in these two
ways. When political opportunities were first offered the Negroes in the
South he had already served as a teacher and had passed through the
gradations of the ministry to a position of influence in his
denomination in Ohio. The need was too urgent and the call too
imperative for him not to participate in the affairs of his State and
nation. Once in politics, he easily became a commanding figure even in
Ohio, where because of the small black population a Negro could not
secure the following easily obtained at that time in the Southern
States. In 1885 he was elected to the Ohio Legislature from Greene
County, thus securing the opportunity to fight for the repeal of the
nefarious "Black Laws" which disgraced the statute books of Ohio prior
to the Civil War. Arnett piloted through the lower house the bill to
this effect and with Senator Ely supporting it in the Senate, the feat
was triumphantly accomplished. Never did a Negro serve his people to
better advantage. At the same time he was using his influence to correct
national abuses and was earnestly laboring for the extension of his
church, which he honorably served as financial secretary, statistician,
and finally as bishop.

[Illustration: BISHOP B. W. ARNETT]

Bishop James W. Hood, of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, in
his day one of the most influential men of color in the United States,
found himself also in the political world. He began as a preacher in
Nova Scotia in 1860, served later at Bridgeport, Connecticut, and then
went to North Carolina, where his successful work exalted him to the
bishopric in 1872. His very going to North Carolina, however, had a
political setting. He went to Newbern as a missionary under General
Butler's invitation to the churches to send missionaries, even while the
place was under the fire of the Confederate forces. When the war in that
area was cleared up and Reconstruction was undertaken Bishop Hood was
among the first to participate therein. He was elected president of the
convention of Negroes assembled at Raleigh in October, 1865, one of
the first, if not the first, political convocation of this sort ever
assembled in the South. On this occasion he so fearlessly advocated
equal rights for the Negro that he was warned by the people around that
his life would be in danger, if he did not desist therefrom. In 1867 he
was elected as delegate to the constitutional convention of North
Carolina, in which he took such an active part in framing the
fundamental law, incorporating into it such liberal provisions for
homesteads and public schools that it was spoken of by the reactionaries
as Hood's constitution until it was amended in 1875. He served as a
magistrate under the provisional government in North Carolina and later
became a deputy Collector of Internal Revenue for the United States.

[Illustration: BISHOP J. W. HOOD]

In 1868 he was appointed an agent of the State Board of Education and
Assistant Superintendent of Public Instruction, receiving a salary of
$1,500 a year; but he did not abandon his church work, having built up a
large congregation at Charlotte during the three years he served in
these positions. He traveled also in the interest of the Freedmen's
Bureau in the capacity of an Assistant Superintendent. Thus in a
position to help his people, Bishop Hood had in 1870 as many as 49,000
Negro children in school. He had established for Negroes a department
for the deaf, dumb, and blind and had about sixty inmates under care and
instruction at the expense of the State. He hoped to establish a State
university, but the undoing of Reconstruction prevented him from
reaching that end. He was named in 1872 by the Republican caucus as
their candidate for Secretary of State, but he declined the honor. He
served that year as delegate at large to the National Republican
Convention, which nominated Grant the second time. In 1876 he was chosen
temporary chairman of the Republican State Convention, which he served
with much satisfaction.

This account of the Negro in politics, however, does not establish the
fact that either the majority or even the best prepared of the Negro
ministry devoted all of their time to politics. There were many striking
examples to the contrary. Bishop Daniel Payne lived long after the Civil
War to promote education and religion, and when he died was regarded by
many as the most useful man of the race. Bishop Lee, as President of
Wilberforce University and a functionary of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, rendered his race constructive service. Dr. Alexander
Crummell took no active part in politics, although he fearlessly spoke
out for the political and civil rights of his race. Dr. J. Sella Martin,
prominent in the ministry before and after the Civil War, attained the
distinction of one of the most eloquent men of his race without
permitting politics to consume much of his time. Bishop Grant, one of
the most useful men of his denomination, did not find it necessary to
seek honors beyond the limits of the church. John Jasper, known to fame
as the Baptist preacher of the Sun-Moving theory, established for
himself throughout Virginia and adjacent States a reputation for piety
and sincerity, which, without political influence, made him a power in
the country.

[Illustration: JOHN JASPER

A conservative Virginia preacher.]

Among these consecrated churchmen, moreover, none can be considered a
better example than Bishop B. T. Tanner, a well-educated man, who became
distinguished in the services of his church years before the
emancipation. His addresses exhibited learning and mature thought and
the several works which he published entitled him to the distinction of
being one of the most scholarly Negroes of his time. Among these works
may be mentioned his _Apology for African Methodism_, _The Negro's
Origin_, _An Outline of Our History and Government_; _The Negro, African
and American_. In 1884 he was made editor of the _African Biblical
Review_, which he so popularized that he was soon chosen bishop by his
denomination.

Bishop L. H. Holsey of the C. M. E. Church distinguished himself by a
career equally as honorable. After rendering faithful service as a
minister in the church he was elevated to the episcopacy at a time when
the church needed the guidance of a master hand. The manner in which he
addressed himself to his task and the good results which he obtained
soon convinced his communicants that the selection was not a mistake.
That during his day the Colored Methodists did their task so well was
due in a measure, of course, to the numerous sacrifices made by other
faithful churchmen of his denomination. Among these should be mentioned
Bishops Elias Cottrell, Isaac Lane, R. S. Williams, N. C. Cleaves, R. A.
Carter and C. H. Phillips, who still stand as the respectable and
trustworthy leaders of their denomination.

[Illustration: BISHOP HOLSEY, of the C. M. E. Church.]

Deserving of honorable mention in this connection are many distinguished
Negroes who impressed the world as preachers of power. They not only
built imposing edifices and pastored large congregations, but went from
place to place in the State and country impressing the world with the
power of God unto salvation. So generally did they ingratiate themselves
into the favor of the public that they passed among the people as seers
and prophets of a former period. Among these should be mentioned Dr. W.
Bishop Johnson and Dr. C. M. Tanner of the District of Columbia; Dr.
Harvey Johnson of Baltimore; E. K. Love and W. J. White of Georgia;
Daniel Stratton, Nelson Barnett, and R. J. Perkins of West Virginia; and
J. J. Worlds and L. W. Boone of North Carolina. There were also James
Holmes, for years the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Richmond,
Virginia; Dr. Richard Wells, the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church
in the same city; Anthony Binga, a churchman of scholarly bearing, who
wrote important dissertations of a theological nature while pasturing
the leading Baptist Church in Manchester, Virginia; and Dr. William
H. Stokes, a worker of much influence in Richmond, still speaking
fearlessly in behalf of his people.

[Illustration: DR. E. K. LOVE

A popular minister in Savannah, Georgia.]

Identified with this serious group was Richard DeBaptiste, who migrated
with his free parents of color from Fredericksburg, Virginia, to the
Northwest after the restrictions placed upon the Negroes of this class
in Virginia became intolerable. His first important work was that of
teaching a public school for colored youth in the Springfield township
at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, where he later organized and pastored a Baptist
Church from 1860 to 1863. He then became pastor of the Olivet Baptist
Church in Chicago, a charge which he held until 1882. Serving in this
capacity, he purchased two building sites at a cost of $16,000 and built
two brick church edifices costing respectively $15,000 and $18,000.

[Illustration: REV. RICHARD DEBAPTISTE

A preacher of the Word in Chicago.]

His work as a minister, however, was in no sense local. He was elected
corresponding secretary of the Wood River Association in 1864, was a
prominent figure and officer in the Northwestern and Southern Baptist
Convention organized in 1865, and was chosen president of the American
Baptist Missionary Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, serving it
consecutively for four years. He was thereafter elected president at
intervals and remained a commanding figure in the convention because of
his power and influence in the church. Manifesting further interest in
the work of the denomination, he contributed to the church literature
through the _Chicago Conservator_, the _Western Herald_, and the
_National Monitor_. In fact, in his day he was not only the outstanding
minister of his denomination in the West, but one of the most
influential men of his race.

One of the most prominent ministers of the Reconstruction period who
were not deterred from their course by politics was Rufus L. Perry. Born
a slave in Nashville, Tennessee, where because of the liberal attitude
of the whites toward the Negroes, he, in spite of his condition, was
permitted to attend a free school for Negroes, Perry had, even before
the Civil War, laid a foundation upon which he well built thereafter. He
escaped from slavery in 1852 and entered upon the study of theology at
the Kalamazoo (Michigan) Seminary, graduating with the class of 1861,
when he was ordained as pastor of the Baptist Church at Ann Arbor,
Michigan. He later served as a pastor at St. Catherine's, Ontario, and
at Buffalo and Brooklyn, New York. He had then convinced the world that
he was "very logical, a clear reasoner, close and active debater, deep
thinker, and excellent writer," "a man of splendid natural abilities,"
who "goes at once to the bottom of any subject that he undertakes."

[Illustration: DR. RUFUS L. PERRY]

Upon the dawn of freedom he entered upon the larger duties in the
service of the Negroes, doing at first missionary and educational work
among the freedmen, endeavoring to evangelize and elevate the race
through the system of religious education. Seeing the need for an organ
through which his people and his denomination could speak to the world,
he edited _The Sunbeam_, served as co-editor of the _American Baptist_,
and later edited _The People's Journal_ and _The National Monitor_. His
articles always showed his interest in his denomination, his knowledge
of general literature, and his grasp of men and things. For ten years he
served as corresponding secretary of the Consolidated American Baptist
Missionary Convention and was later made corresponding secretary of the
American Educational Association and of the American Baptist Free
Mission Society.

Having given much attention to the study of ethnology and the classics,
he doubtless impressed the world most by writing a book entitled _The
Cushites; or the Children of Ham as seen by the Ancient Historians and
Poets_. In this work he showed remarkable ability for research and
extensive knowledge of the social sciences. He undertook to refute the
statement that the Ethiopians and the Egyptians were not black persons,
endeavored to disabuse the public mind of the impropriety of a
contemptuous attitude to the Negroes because of their bondage, inasmuch
as all races have at times been enslaved, and eloquently produced
historical facts to convince thinking men as to the important
achievements of the Negroes in their more fortunate ages in the past. He
certainly made the impression of being one of the ablest men in the
United States, and will long be remembered as a scholar making for the
race a defense which many of his contemporaries were not prepared to
appreciate.

The ministry was sufficiently attractive also to Dr. George W. Lee, who
began his career in North Carolina. After having distinguished himself
by efficient service in that State, he was, in 1885, called to the
pastorate of the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church to succeed the Rev. J. H.
Brooks, its founder, who passed away the previous year. Dr. Lee was
noted especially for three significant elements of character. He was a
promoter of African missions, was always disposed to help the under-man
in a struggle, and made himself a patron of the youth aspiring to
leadership. His pastorate was characterized by important achievements
bearing on the progress of not only his congregation but that of his
denomination. Noted for his originality and ability to master a
situation, he soon attracted a large following and increased the
membership of his church almost to 4,000. He easily became a man of
national reputation, and in his travels abroad so impressed the people
wherever he went that he passed as an international character.

[Illustration: DR. GEORGE W. LEE]

With the possible exception of Dr. C. A. Tindley, the talented Methodist
minister of Philadelphia, probably the greatest preacher of power
developed during the last generation has been Dr. C. T. Walker. Coming
under the influence of Christian missionaries and of the Atlanta
Baptist College, he had his beginnings determined in an atmosphere of
religious education. For forty years, excepting five years when he had
charge of the Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, New York City, he was pastor of
the Tabernacle Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia. His church in Augusta
was attended not only by thousands of his own race, but by hundreds of
winter tourists, who heard him with unusual satisfaction. Among these
were former President Taft, John D. Rockefeller, Gen. Rush C. Hawkins,
Dr. David Gregg and Lyman B. Goff. With the support of such a large
number this church undertook to supply the needs of the community,
developing into an institutional enterprise with all of the activities
of a social welfare agency. This expansion necessitated a new building,
which he erected at a cost of $185,000.

[Illustration: DR. C. T. WALKER]

Dr. Walker was interested in all things promoting the uplift of the
race. He was the founder of the now spacious 135th Street Branch, Young
Men's Christian Association, New York City, and figured largely in the
establishment of a similar branch for his people in Augusta, Georgia. He
was one of the prominent figures of the National Baptist Convention of
the United States, being vice-president of the organization when he
died, as well as vice-president of the Georgia Baptist State Convention
and moderator of the Walker Association. He traveled extensively in
Europe and the Holy Land and was the author of a number of books of
travel and also of sermons. His main work at home and abroad, however,
was that of an evangelist whose fame as such so rapidly extended that he
was one of the most popular speakers in the country, attracting larger
crowds than any other Negro of his time.




CHAPTER XII

THE CONSERVATIVE AND PROGRESSIVE


It is clear from the account set forth above that the Negro church as
such had some difficulty in finding itself. There was still a question
as to what its functions and ideals should be, and this very question
all but divided the church into conservative and progressive groups. The
conservative element in control became so dogmatic in its treatment of
the rising progressive minority that the institution for a number of
years lost ground among the talented tenth. For this reason the ministry
once became decidedly uninviting to young men. Young people so rapidly
lost interest in the church that the Sunday sermon denouncing the
waywardness of the wicked generation was generally expected; and, if a
special discourse of this vitriolic nature did not periodically follow,
pastors availed themselves of the opportunity to digress from the
discussion of the hardships of slavery, hell, and the grave to express
their deep regret that the intellectual youth were disinclined to walk
in the footsteps of their fathers. Such sermons frightened some into
repentance, but drove as many away from contact with the Christian
element of the community.

The waywardness of the youth, however, was not so much a wickedness as
it was a divergence in the Negro social mind. The ex-slaves had remained
conservative. The old-time religion was good enough for them. They
rejoiced to be able to sing in freedom the songs of their fathers, and
deemed it a privilege to testify in "their experience or class meetings"
and to offer at their Sunday services long drawn out invocations which
afforded them the once forbidden exercise of the outpouring of a pent-up
soul. Preachers who came down from that well-fought age appreciated, of
course, the unique position which they then occupied. For all a new
world had been created, so to speak, and what they needed then was only
to enjoy the new boon vouchsafed to the lowly. The Negroes should thank
God for their freedom, and the only way to express that gratitude was
through vociferous praise and stentorian thanksgiving within the courts
of the Lord. God had brought the Negro up out of Egypt through Sodom and
Gomorrah, and to show his gratitude the chief concern of the Negro
should then be "to be ready to walk into Jerusalem just like John."

The Negroes then under the instruction of well-enlightened missionaries
from the North could not long remain in this backward state. Although
not taught radical doctrines but, on the contrary, influenced by
conservative religious teachers, the educational process itself had to
work some changes in the young Negro's point of view, inasmuch as he was
taught not what to think but how to think. The young Negroes, therefore,
had not attended school very long or moved very much among persons
mentally developed before they found themselves far removed from the
members of their race less favorably circumstanced. They developed an
inquiring disposition which leveled shafts at the strongholds of
churchmen whose chief protection lay in their unfortunate plight of
being embalmed in their ignorance along with a majority constituency
hopelessly lost to the "eternal truths" coming into the mind of the
Negro youth by "natural light."

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, therefore, the
conservative and progressive elements in the church unconsciously
drifted far apart. In the course of time it was no longer a struggle
between the old and young. The difference in age ceased to be the line
of cleavage. It was rather a difference of ideas. These groups were
widely differing in their interpretation of religion, in their ideas as
to the importance of the church in the life of the community, in their
attitudes as to the relation of the church to the individual, and in
their standards of public conduct. On the whole, there was an effort to
stand together; but in spite of themselves the line of cleavage had to
be recognized and dealt with as a fact. As poverty is jealous of
opulence, so is ignorance jealous of intelligence; and in this case the
jealousy all but developed into caste hate.

The progressive element commonly dubbed by the conservatives as the
educated Negroes could not accept the crude notions of Biblical
interpretation nor the grotesque vision of the hereafter as portrayed by
the illiterate ministers of the church. This developed mind found itself
unwillingly at war with such extravagant claims and seeking a hearing
for a new idea. Religion to the progressives became a Christian
experience rather than the wild notions of revelation, which among some
of the uninformed too often bordered on superstition and voodooism of
the middle age, after the restraint of slavery had been removed and the
Negroes as groups exercising religious freedom could indulge their fancy
at will.

The educated Negro, moreover, no longer thought of religion as the
panacea for all the ills of the race. Along with religion he would
insist that education should go as its handmaiden, inasmuch as there can
be little revelation of God where there is arrested mental development.
The very example of Christ himself, as understood by the progressive
Negro, furnished no evidence as to the virtue of unrestrained emotion
resulting from a lack of understanding and from an unwillingness to
search the Scriptures for the real revelation of God.

Being weak on the intellectual side, the conservative Negro churchman
could not fail to decry the educated communicants as a growing menace to
the church. The church militant was ordered forward to attack the
strongholds of this unbelief lest the institution might be shaken from
its very foundation. The toleration of such views might bring upon this
generation the wrath of God, who would visit the race with condign
affliction. The educated class had information, not judgment; and the
principles of religion, moreover, must be accepted as they are without
question. The effort here was to crush the scion because it was
producing a more vigorous species than the root from which it sprang, to
destroy life because in the new generation it meant living too
abundantly.

The churchmen of the conservative order observed with regret, moreover,
that the talented Negro had a differing conception as to the relation of
the church to the individual. Among the conservatives, the church, the
only institution in which they could participate in the days of slavery,
engaged their undivided attention with the exception of politics in
self-defense during the Reconstruction period. The conservatives
believed that the individual should sacrifice all for the church. On
Sunday, they would come from afar to swell the chorus of the faithful,
and there they would remain during the day, leaving their net earnings
in the hands of the management, given at the cost of a sacrifice placed
on a common altar. The educated Negro, on the other hand, thought of
the church as existing for the good of the individual. It was to him a
means for making the bad good, and if the institution were defective it
might be so reshaped and reorganized as to serve the useful purposes of
man.

The church, moreover, as the progressive Negro saw it, was not
necessarily Christlike unless the persons composing it were of such
character themselves. As there were too often found here and there
impostors serving as important functionaries in churches in which they
masqueraded as Christians, the educated Negro insisted upon a new
interpretation of Christian doctrine, boldly asserting new principles as
to the relation of man to his fellowman and man to God. Religion, the
progressive element insisted, is a social virtue not an individual boon.
Man cannot by his professed periodical baring of his soul to God set
himself aright when his conduct has not been in conformity with the
teachings of Jesus. Since an individual is what he does, an institution
composed of individuals, too often shamed with ignorance and vice, could
not be the ideal Christian organization to which Christ looked as his
representative following here on earth.

The Negro in freedom, moreover, when given an opportunity for mental
development, gradually became assimilated to the white man's standard of
conduct. The educated Negro began to see little harm in dancing and card
playing when representative white churches abrogated such prohibitions
or suffered them to fall into desuetude. Taunted as to the evil desire
for the ways of the world, the talented man usually retorted that while
his conduct was questioned by his own people it was in keeping with the
ethics of the most enlightened of the land, whereas the conservatives
tended to follow the policy of practicing almost any sort of vice
clandestinely and to masquerade as Christians until exposed.

This argument was of little worth; for many of the so-called vices of
the Negro members of the church could be reduced largely to unconfirmed
reports and indulgences of the imagination of persons having foul minds.
While the writer offers no brief for the religious workers of long ago,
he must insist that we have no evidence to justify the sweeping
generalization that the Negro Christians of the conservative order were,
as a rule, morally corrupt or that they generally harbored unclean
persons in their group. Their record rather shows a most healthy
attitude toward maintaining a high standard of morality. The adulterer,
the gambler, the thief, and the like, were usually summarily expelled
from the church as undesirables, who should not sit in the congregation
of the righteous. In fact, had it not been for the hold of Christianity
on these freedmen, their standards of morality would have been so much
lower; for they saw for emulation little of the righteous in the white
people with whom they came into contact when these generally imposed
upon the blacks by lying and stealing and openly sought Negro women
with whom the flower of southern families lived in open adultery. The
conservatives stood for the right, although they were often too narrow
to overlook the so-called vices which supplied to those of talent the
harmless pleasures of this world.

The progressive element seriously objected to church management. Negro
ministers and the governing bodies of the churches often manifested more
zeal than tact in the conduct of church affairs. They too frequently
built rather costly edifices, paid their pastors disproportionately
large salaries, and lavished unduly upon them and their families gifts
which the poor of their congregations could ill afford. The Negroes
wanted a well-groomed leader in a heaven on earth to lead them to the
heaven beyond. The management then incurred debts of such magnitude that
the church too often developed into a money raising machine dominated
from without by white speculators who profited by this folly. The
progressive element militantly arrayed itself against this outlay made
at the expense of the moral and religious life of the community. In
their zeal they too often denounced the conservatives in control as
tricksters and grafters, when, as a matter of fact, the management lost
more by inefficient administration than it acquired by so-called
corruption.

The progressive Negroes boldly advocated a change in the worship.
From the more advanced white churches they had learned to appreciate the
value of serious and classical music, of intelligent sermonizing, and of
collecting offerings in the pews. The old-time plaintive plantation
hymns, they insisted, should give place to music of a refined order,
supported by the piano, organ, or other instruments; the tiresome
minister, covering all things in creation in his discourse, should yield
to a man prepared to preach to the point at issue; and instead of the
dress-parade lifting of collections the raising of funds to support the
church should be reduced to a business transaction conducted without
ostentation. The conservatives, however, would not have in their
churches the musical instruments used in theaters and dance halls, would
not even listen to an attack on their backward ministry, and scoffed at
the proposal to supplant time-honored customs by innovations taken from
the practices of their former cruel oppressors.

The general result was that in many communities a much larger number of
intelligent people were driven from the church or rendered inefficient
therein than were saved to it. There was little chance for coöperation
so long as the conservatives were unyielding; and the progressives,
unable to treat the conservatives diplomatically, failed to put aside
complaint to begin with the masses where they were that they might carry
them where they should be. Some of the progressive  element left their
names on the church books only to forfeit membership by non-attendance
or the failure to pay required dues. Others saw themselves excluded for
violation of the sacred rules of the congregation proscribing
participation in the worldly joys. A few who felt compunction of
conscience on realizing how disgraceful in the eyes of the community it
seemed to put one's hand to the plow and then turn back, had their
backsliding healed and returned to the fold.

Those who left the conservative churches were often received by the
Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, and the
Catholics, who, having a more flexible attitude toward the pleasures of
the world, offered asylum to the outcasts driven from the former
sanctuaries. This separation included not only laymen but in some cases
ministers, who, on connecting themselves with some other denominations,
served their people in churches differing widely from those which were
so handicapped by unprogressive elements that they had no hope to toil
upward therein. The large majority of the members of these smaller
denominations were once members of Baptist or Methodist churches or were
the children of persons who were once thus connected.

It was not necessary, however, for a large number of Baptists thus to be
lost to that denomination. Unlike the Methodists, who are restrained by
episcopal government, the Baptists needed only to exercise the
privileges of democracy guaranteed  in that church. A dissatisfied
group of the "upper crust" in a Baptist Church could at any time
organize another Baptist Church without any restraint except that of the
fear of the failure of the enterprise from the economic point of view.
Schismatic churches or exclusively aristocratic congregations,
therefore, followed in large cities where a sufficient number of the
malcontents in the various denominations could unite for this common
purpose.

This schismatic movement was followed by both good and bad results. The
separation of the progressive and the conservative elements in the
church made it impossible for the unprogressive to learn by example from
those with whom they came into contact. Each remained happier in the new
state so long as the results of this divergence were not strikingly
apparent. The conservatives could better remain what they were and the
progressives could more easily become what they wanted to be. The
cessation of hostilities, however, did not always follow; for both
churches representing different points of view made their appeals to the
same community, endeavoring to secure financial and moral support. In
small communities what was done for the one could not be done for the
other for the reason that the community had so much and no more to
spare. The success or failure of the one or the other, therefore, too
often meant grudge or ill will.

This contest between the progressive and conservative,  however, has
been more than local. There have arisen serious situations, some of
which have been handled so diplomatically as to avoid outbreaks in the
ranks, and others which have led to radical changes. For example, the
progressive Negro in the Methodist Episcopal Church for a number of
years bore it grievously that, although the members of the race
constituted an important element in this denomination, they were not
allowed freely to participate in its management. The objective was to
make a Negro one of the regular bishops, but conservative whites
insisted that the time had not come for such a radical step.

During this long struggle in the Methodist Church the progressive group
became very impatient. It was in favor of separation from the white
connection either to establish an independent church or to join one of
the African Methodist churches already in the making. The conservative
element frowned down upon any such proposal as a suicidal scheme,
believing that in coöperating with the whites the Negroes had much more
to gain than to lose. The advocacy of continued union with the whites
under the prevailing circumstances, however, was dubbed by the
progressive Negroes a manifestation of the spirit of servility resulting
from a slavish attachment to their former masters. The counsel of the
conservative prevailed, however, and although the Negro membership
does not enjoy exactly the same privileges as the white, it has steadily
gained ground.

The best example of a situation which could not be thus handled is that
of the repudiation of the white Baptists by the progressive Negro
element of this church. The white Baptists, of course, had no actual
control of the Negro communicants, but had some very strong moral claims
on them. White missionaries of this denomination had distributed
literature, organized churches, constructed edifices, and established
schools among Negroes; and the boards supporting the missionaries had
supplied some of the funds by which most of these institutions were
maintained. To say anything derogatory to the policies of the management
directing this beneficent work, therefore, seemed to the conservative
Negroes all but blasphemous.

The progressive Baptist element, however, had a different attitude.
Thousands of Negro teachers and preachers whom these Baptist schools had
trained had entered upon their life's work with the hope that they would
figure conspicuously in the life of their people. When they faced the
stern realities of the situation they too often found their way was
blocked. White men, to be sure, did not aspire to the pastorate of Negro
churches; but they undertook to dictate the policy of associations and
conventions to retain their hold on the Negro Baptists. The conflict
came when Negroes after being refused the privilege of participating in
the management of the American Baptist Home Mission Society began to
question the motives of its official staff. More fuel was furnished for
the flames when, after having all but agreed to accept contributions of
Negroes to its Sunday school literature, the American Baptist
Publication Society, upon protest from Southern churchmen, receded from
that position. The issue was then joined. The National Baptist
Convention, a union of the Negro Baptists, was effected in 1886, and as
the struggle grew more intense every effort was made so to extend it as
to destroy the influence of white national bodies among Negroes.

The Negroes had a just cause for complaint. If under the leadership of
the white Baptists their way to promotion would be blocked and their
literary aspirations crushed, what hope was there for the race to rise
and of what benefit would education be to the Negro, if it did not equip
him to do for himself what the white man at first had to do for him? How
could the motives of the white Baptists be lofty, moreover, if they did
not believe that Negroes should rise in the church and school? To this
the whites replied that they looked forward with the most pleasant
anticipation to the day when the Negroes would be prepared to enjoy the
good things for which they clamored, but that the time for the Negroes
to dispense with the leadership of the whites had not then come. Many
years of education and social uplift were still necessary before the
Negroes could successfully set out to do for themselves.

This argument had little weight with the progressive Negroes and they
were not wanting in logical speakers to place their case before the
world. There was that courageous leader, Dr. Harvey Johnson, of
Baltimore, who belabored his former friends as enemies of the race.
Equally effective, too, was the eloquent Dr. Walter H. Brooks of
Washington, who fearlessly took up the cudgel and dealt the white
Baptists many a blow from which they never recovered. With the National
Baptist Convention emerging as a common concern of Negroes under the
organizing hand of Dr. E. C. Morris, and the National Baptist Publishing
House extending the circulation of elementary literature throughout the
country under the direction of the efficient Dr. R. H. Boyd, this
self-assertion of the Negro Baptists became a factor to be reckoned
with.

All problems, however, were not immediately solved. The progressive
Negroes had the right spirit, but did not every time have adequate
understanding. They had had no experience in editing literature and
practically none in raising sums of money necessary for the maintenance
of educational establishments and missionary enterprise. The majority of
the Negro Baptist ministry trained in the schools of the American
Baptist Home Mission Society at first adhered to this organization and
persisted in using the Sunday school literature of the American Baptist
Publication Society, deriding the publication efforts of the Negro
Baptists as the greatest travesty on Biblical literature. This criticism
was most uncharitable, but nevertheless effective, for the reason that
some who at first wished the movement well made the mistake of despising
the day of small things.

The struggle was most intense in the Southeast. The influence of Shaw
University in North Carolina and Virginia Union University in Richmond
had given the white Baptists an all but firm hold on the Negroes in
these and adjacent States. The presidents of these institutions and the
white agents of the denomination attended the Negro associations and
conventions, hoping to dictate their policies; but this interference
only widened the breach. Under the leadership of that forceful orator
and successful leader, Gregory W. Hayes, a large number at first and
finally a majority of the Baptists of Virginia disclaimed connection
with these white friends and concentrated their efforts on supporting
the Virginia Theological Seminary and College through the Baptist State
Convention of that commonwealth. The leading Baptists of North Carolina,
however, still adhered in large numbers to the American Baptist Home
Mission Society, coöperating therewith through the local associations,
their State conventions, and the conservative national body known as the
Lott Cary Convention, which had also many adherents in Virginia and
scattered followers throughout adjacent States. In other parts, the
factions about equally divided, except in the southwestern section of
the country, where the Negroes have tended to break away from the white
Baptists.

As to which faction was right, history alone will tell. Even at the
present, however, one can see a decided advantage in the independent
Negro movement. Every one will admit that the Negro must eventually rely
solely upon himself, and that not until he emerges from a state of
dependency can he hope to secure the recognition of the other groups.
The white man is rapidly tiring of carrying the so-called burdens of the
Negro. The Negro home, church, and school must, as fast as possible,
become sufficient unto themselves. The sooner they attain this stage in
their development, the better will it be for the race. The Negro
institutions which during the turbulent period have, in separating from
the whites, learned to supply their own needs, have made a step far in
advance of those dependent on the whites. In this day, when the northern
philanthropists are either withholding their donations to Negro schools
or restricting them to Hampton and Tuskegee, it is difficult for some of
these establishments to eke out a subsistence, while the independent
Negro schools, having had years of experience in developing a following,
find their prospects growing brighter from year to year. The National
Training School for Girls, founded and successfully directed by the
noted Nannie H. Burroughs, obtains practically all of its funds from
Negroes. The Virginia Theological Seminary and College, under the
direction of the efficient Dr. R. C. Woods, depends for its support
altogether upon Negroes, who contribute to it annually about $60,000.00.
There is not in this country a Negro institution dominated by whites
that can raise half of this sum in this way. A few years ago when
Wilberforce University was heavily indebted and it seemed that it needed
some one to rescue it, the State of Ohio proposed to buy the church
portion of the institution; but the trustees, with the spirit of the
progressive Negro, emphatically replied that the whole State of Ohio did
not have enough money to buy Wilberforce. Rallying under the leadership
of Bishop Joshua H. Jones, the African Methodists raised $50,000 in one
year and cleared the institution of debt.

In this changing order, moreover, when the white administrators of Negro
schools find themselves deprived of the former financial support
received from the North, they veer around to the position of southern
white people, accepting and sometimes enforcing in Negro institutions
themselves the unwritten laws of caste that the white management may
curry favor with the prejudiced community. As these administrators must
under such circumstances lose the support of the Negroes and experience
has not yet shown that many southern white men will make sacrifices for
Negro education, the institutions in the hands of such misguided white
friends of the Negro will probably suffer.




CHAPTER XIII

THE NEGRO CHURCH SOCIALIZED


The Negro church as a social force in the life of the race is nothing
new. Prior to emancipation the church was the only institution which the
Negro, in a few places in the South and throughout the North, was
permitted to maintain for his own peculiar needs. Offering the only
avenue for the expressional activities of the race, the church answered
many a social purpose for which this institution among other groups
differently circumstanced had never before been required to serve. It
was, in the first place, a center at which friend looked forward to
meeting friend, contact with whom was denied by the rigorous demands of
slavery. It was then a place of enlightenment through the information
disseminating from the better informed or by actual teaching in the
Sunday school. It served often as an outlet for expression of the Negro
social mind, now for a renewed determination to break their chains
through prayer, then to resort to concerted action on the basis that he
who would be free must himself first strike the blow.

After the emancipation, moreover, the Negro church developed a social
atmosphere which somewhat strengthened its hold on the youth about to go
astray. Not only education found its basis in the church, but fraternal
associations developed therefrom. Business enterprises accepted the
church as an ally, and professional men to some extent often became
dependent thereupon. Most movements among the Negroes, moreover, have
owed their success to the leadership of Negroes prominent in the church.
No better examples can be mentioned than W. W. Browne, a minister who
organized the True Reformers fraternity; W. R. Pettiford, another
preacher, who became one of the pioneer Negro bankers; John R. Hawkins,
the Financial Secretary of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who
in applying efficiency to the business of his office secured for his
denomination an unusually large income, and Dr. W. F. Graham, who in
addition to his significant achievements in the church, has well invaded
various businesses, in which he has exhibited evidence of unusual
ability.

[Illustration: DR. W. R. PETTIFORD

A business-like minister in Alabama.]

Since the Civil War, the Negro church as a factor in general uplift has
become what the oppressed Negro longed to make it prior to that
conflict. In the first place, Negroes regularly attend church whether
Christians or sinners. They have not yet accumulated wealth adequate to
the construction of clubhouses, amusement parks, and theaters, although
dance halls have attracted many. Whether they derive any particular joy
therefrom or not, the Negroes must go to church, to see their friends,
as they are barred from social centers open to whites. They must attend
church, moreover, to find out what is going on; for the race has not
sufficient interests to maintain in every locality a newspaper of its
own, and the white dailies generally mention Negroes only when they
happen to commit crimes against white persons. The young Negro must go
to church to meet his sweetheart, to impress her with his worth and woo
her in marriage, the Negro farmer to find out the developments in the
business world, the Negro mechanic to learn the needs of his community
and how he may supply them.

Attached to the church is the Sunday school. Many a Negro had in
attending it learned clandestinely to read and write before the war. Now
they without fear of punishment eagerly studied in the churches on
Sunday, learned the alphabet, the spelling of words with one, two and
three syllables, and finally to read the Bible, that they might know for
themselves the truths hitherto kept from their fathers but now revealed
to their children in freedom. Education here was decidedly easy, the
motive actuating the student being the immediate results in the form of
a better knowledge of one's Christian duty and the reward awaiting the
faithful. Many of these Negroes often learned more on a single Sunday
than the average student acquired in a day school during a week. In
these Sunday schools, not a few Negroes laid the foundation for the
more liberal education which they thereafter obtained in the schools
established by the religious and philanthropic friends of the Negroes
working in the South immediately after the Civil War.

The church not only promoted education through the pulpit and Sunday
school, but through its emphasis on the Bible unconsciously stimulated
the efforts toward self-education. Whether a Negro attended Sunday
school or not, he heard read to him from the Bible two or three times a
week dramatic history, philosophical essays, charming poetry, and
beautiful oratory. Hearing these repeated again and again and under
circumstances securing undivided attention, he had many of these
precious passages sink into his heart like seed planted in fertile
ground to bring forth fruit fourfold. Under the continuous instruction
of the Negro preacher, who in expounding the Bible drew such striking
figures and portrayed life, death, and the beyond in a dramatic fashion,
the youth not only experienced the emotion so characteristic of the
Negro communicant but had his intellectual appetite whetted with the
desire to seek after the mysteries.

The majority of Negroes, therefore, became Bible readers. Reading the
Bible, they not only found what a minister of limited education could
point out, but facts drawn from the best thought of the ancient world.
And it was not mere reading; for many of them committed to memory
choice passages of the Scriptures. Hundreds of them could recite
accurately chapter after chapter of the treasures of Holy Writ; almost
as many could give a crude but logical exposition of these literary
treasures. From the study of the Bible the Negro developed, moreover, a
desire for Biblical literature. He heard the moral appeal and gladly
accepted the message to those in quest of the higher life in Christ.

This influence of the Bible, moreover, did more than lead to the reading
of literature of a kindred nature. Some read books on ancient and
medieval history, and finally works on the history of modern Europe.
Others more seriously concerned were by this mere exposition of the
Scriptures led to study collaterally commentaries on the Bible and to
take up theology. In this they exhibited the power of self-education
which with a strong spirituality combined with unusual imagination made
so many Negroes preach with success. They had no more formal education
than to read, and that was often picked up in the Sunday school; but
they had the experience of a seeker, the light of the Bible, and the
guidance of men who eloquently expounded it to the waiting multitude.
These they freely drew on and from them they obtained help abundantly.
Crude sometimes as the language might be, the thought of this self-made
philosopher was original and few heard one preach without wondering how
men of limited opportunities could speak so fluently and wisely.

Equally helpful was the socialized church as a forum for the Negro. The
older members developed an unusually valuable and sometimes a
troublesome knowledge of parliamentary practice by participating in the
debates on the business centering around communications received,
resolutions voicing the sentiment of the body, and policies shaping the
destinies of the local church. Here, then, was a constructive field
which to the Negro seemed like an invitation to enter the creative
world. He entered it and freely participated. True enough the formal
procedure too often overshadowed the actual program to the extent that
no plan at all could sometimes be carried out, because of unnecessary
debate and contention; but the training thereafter served many a Negro
in good stead in preventing his race from being imposed upon or in doing
something constructive in politics, in the school, and in the church.

The church through the literary societies attached thereto supplied a
similar need of the younger Negro. Having more formal education than the
older Negroes, the youth were more easily interested in the live
questions of the day, the desire to discuss which usually resulted in
the organization of a literary society. The declamations and recitations
were not always highly literary and sometimes the questions discussed
could not be thus dignified when we observe such debates as whether the
dog is more useful than the gun, or whether water is more destructive
than fire; but the scale ascends a little in the discussion as to
whether the pen is mightier than the sword. It matters little, however,
whether or not the procedure was in keeping with that of the best
literary circles, these Negroes were thereby undergoing training which
resulted in valuable discipline. Not any of them knew very much, but one
learned from the other. They developed the power to think and to think
on their feet, to express that thought and to express it so eloquently
as to make a lasting impression. The church, then, has been a training
school for the Negro orators who have impressed the world as the
inspired spokesmen of a persecuted people.

The Negro church, in short, has served as a clearing house for the
community. It has not only afforded opportunities for the evangelical
minister coming with an inspiring message to revive the lukewarm, but
every public man has had to reach the Negro through his church. The
lecturer on "men, women, children and things in general" asks for a
hearing there; the phrenologist holds his seances in this sanctuary; the
spurious "foreigner" in quest of a collection seeks there the
opportunity to tell a credulous people about wonders of other lands; and
the race leader demands this rostrum from which he, like a watchman on
the wall, sounds the alarm for an advance against the bold enemy who, if
not checked, will fix upon the race disabilities and burdens until all
the hopes of liberty will be lost.

The latest development in the socialized church is its service as a
welfare agency. The Negro in his religious development has not yet gone
so far as the white man in divesting Christian duty of spiritual
ministration and reducing it to a mere service for social uplift; but he
has gradually realized the necessity for connecting the church more
closely with the things of this world to make it a decent place to live
in. In other words, if man is his brother's keeper, the church, the
important institution in the community, must be the keeper of other
institutions. If it would build in men Christian character, it must
influence the more or less direct control of the forces in the community
which prevent the attainment of such an end. If men are to be saved,
they must be saved for service, not merely for their refuge at the last
hour. The church, then, must not let a man destroy himself and accept
him when he is no longer useful because of the loss of physical and
mental power through depravity, but it must by preaching the gospel or
prevention save a man from himself.

The coming of the church to this position, however, has not been
effected without much difficulty. The conservative element for many
years looked upon the participation of churches in certain sorts of
social welfare work as compromising with the devil. The more
conservative idea was that man should be meditative and seclusive, that
he should withdraw himself altogether from the pleasures of this world
and work out his salvation with his eye "single to the honor and glory
of God." The Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's
Christian Association with a different point of view were, therefore,
for a number of years unwelcome among some Negro churches.

During the last generation, however, the Negro church has decidedly
changed in its attitude toward this work, as is evidenced by the fact
that wherever these social welfare agencies have succeeded in carrying
out their program they have done so largely with the aid of Negro
churchmen. In the midst of the health crusades and the community service
organizations favorably impressing the public, the Negro church in many
urban centers where it might have continued conservative, found itself
facing the alternative of either responding to these social needs of the
membership or seeing its constituency gradually drawn away by agencies
which would. In case some social uplift agency failed to attract the
youth, they too often drifted to the dance halls or places where their
needs were supplied in the midst of vices. Many churches have,
therefore, modified their program. Seeing that the young Negro is
decidedly social and hoping to save him, they have done what many
formerly questioned. The Negro church, moreover, has become in many
respects a social welfare agency itself, doing in several communities so
much of this work that it has been unnecessary for the national agencies
to invade some of their parishes with an intensive program.

[Illustration: DR. M. C. B. MASON

A pulpit orator in the Methodist Church.]

The form this social work of the church takes in our day varies from
that of a mere church club or so with a precarious existence to that of
an organization almost like that of the Young Men's Christian
Association. The beginnings of this work appear first in such as the
men's forum, the women's league, the girls' club, or the boys' athletic
association. When these clubs tend to endure they finally work toward
the natural end of constituting themselves branches of an organization
directed by one trusted worker assisted by those in charge of the
various activities.

A church on this order takes the name of the institutional church. At
the head of this body, of course, is the pastor of the church; but in
charge of this work sometimes is a director well trained in the social
sciences and with the modern method of attacking the problems of to-day.
The work scheduled is more than the mere supervision of clubs
voluntarily organized. The director has a program which that particular
community needs, and he is there to show the people how to work out
their social salvation. If he is wise in presenting the case, he usually
secures the coöperation necessary to organize the community for the
purpose of self-education. The community is given an introduction to
itself. Every talent lying dormant is here given an opportunity to be
helpful in some way. What the individual from afar may bring for the
good of a few through this well-organized community service becomes the
heritage of all. No club can be large enough to accommodate the large
membership in a city, but what the clubs of one church acquire is
communicated to similar groups in another through such friendly rivalry
as athletic contests, debates, periodical reports, and conferences. Many
of the persons participating in this work are not in the beginning
spiritually inclined, but the experience of the church in working with
such groups has shown that the church has a better chance for success in
making its evangelical appeal to persons under its control than in the
case of delivering its message to those who have not been to any great
extent influenced by Christian contact.

Churches which have undertaken this work have had varied experiences.
The Institutional Church in Chicago under Dr. R. C. Ransom helped to
blaze the way in this new field of endeavor. Under Dr. J. Milton Waldron
and later under Dr. J. E. Ford, the Baptist Church of Jacksonville,
Florida, made itself, through its clubs and Bible Institute, an
effective community center. Dr. H. H. Proctor, a Congregational minister
of Atlanta, practically converted his church into an organization of
such groups as the day nursery, kindergarten, gymnasium,  school of
music, employment bureau, and Bible school.

Dr. W. N. DeBerry, the pastor of a Congregational church in Springfield,
Massachusetts, has probably solved the problem about as well as any of
these workers. In the first place, the church has a well-equipped modern
plant so beautifully located and managed as to attract large numbers. It
has, moreover, a parish home for working girls and a branch church at
Amherst, Massachusetts. In the main plant are maintained a free
employment bureau, a women's welfare league, a night school of domestic
training, a girls' and a boys' club emphasizing the handicrafts, music,
and athletics. This church has solved the problem of supplying the needs
of the people during the week as well as their spiritual needs on
Sunday, by emphasizing some life activity for every day in the week.

Other ministers of the gospel, who have not seen fit to carry out in
their parishes in such detail the establishment of social welfare work,
have nevertheless done much along special lines to socialize their
churches. One hears of that indefatigable worker, the Rev. Mr. Bradby,
of Detroit; R. W. Bagnall, the rector of the Episcopal Church of the
same city; the fearless George Frazier Miller, an Episcopal rector of
Brooklyn; the talented leader, Dr. W. H. Brooks of New York City; the
popular western worker, Dr. S. W. Bacote of Kansas  City; Dr. J. M.
Riddle of Pasadena, California; and Dr. W. H. Jernagin, of Washington,
D. C. Others of this group are Dr. Richard Carroll of Greenville, South
Carolina; Bishop Sampson Brooks, as pastor of the Bethel Methodist
Episcopal Church in Baltimore; Dr. W. D. Johnson of Plains, Georgia, now
a bishop of his denomination; the picturesque pulpit orator and
beautiful word painter, Dr. Peter James Bryant, of Atlanta, Georgia; and
that popular preacher of the social gospel, Dr. W. W. Browne, of the
Metropolitan Baptist Church in New York City.

Dr. L. K. Williams, pastor of the Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago, has
doubtless surpassed all in this group. Under his direction the church
conducts forty-two departments and auxiliaries with 512 officers, among
whom are twenty-four paid workers. The membership of both church and
Sunday School enormously increased through these agencies, that of the
former being 8,743 and of the latter 3,100. This church has two edifices
and five assistant pastors. During 1919 it collected $56,209 and
disbursed $54,959. In an eighty-day rally it raised $29,235 in cash. In
fact, so effective has been the socializing influence of this church
that the community, in consideration of its inestimable value, gladly
responds to any call it makes.

The Negro ambitious to rule, moreover, finds in the church about the
only institution in which he may freely exercise authority. Fortunately
here the Church and State are no longer connected. In the extension of
the boon of toleration, the Negroes in countries in which they have been
found in large numbers, have been permitted to conduct their spiritual
affairs as they like. There are in the South to-day, however, white men
who regret that immediately after the Civil War they permitted the
Negroes to establish their separate churches. As these bodies are to-day
being used to promote truths and foster movements which are prejudicial
to the interest of the Southern restriction program for the Negro, the
heirs of the former master class now rue the day when their fathers
permitted these Negro churchmen to get from under their control. They
complain that, whereas formerly they could learn from their Negro
servants exactly what was going on in their group, the development the
Negro church has in our day produced a reticent Negro loathe to disclose
the forces operating in their churches.

No one understands this better than the Negro himself. The law of the
South otherwise interpreted to the detriment of the Negro vouchsafes to
him a little protection in the exercise of religion and in most parts
public opinion has not become so unhealthy as to warrant action to the
contrary. The Negro preacher, therefore, is granted more freedom of
speech and permitted to exercise more influence than any other Negro in
his community. Some fearless Negro ministers, like Bishop Lampton, have
been driven out of the South because of utterances which enraged the
whites, who have considered the exercise of free speech among Negroes an
attack on their social laws; but, as a rule, the Negro minister may in
criticism of the white race and in the defense of his people say things
which other Negroes of good standing in the South would not dare to
utter. Although the State may chide an outspoken minister here and
there, it will hardly be so unwise so to restrict the Negro church as to
interfere materially with its development as the South has done in the
case of the Negro school in making Negro education altogether
industrial. The church serves as a moral force, a power acting as a
restraint upon the bad and stimulating the good to further moral
achievement. Among the Negroes its valuable service is readily apparent
when one considers the fact that this race, oppressed as it has been by
the government of the State and nation, is at heart rebellious, while
the church, as outspoken as it may seem, is not radical. Coming under
the influence of the church, the safety valve in the South, the race has
been dissuaded from any rash action by the patient and long suffering
ministry reiterating the admonition that "vengeance is mine, I will
repay."

Yet some men, like the sanguine and prophetic Kelly Miller, see in the
Negro church of to-day the opportunity to become the unbridled servant
of the people. The support of the Negro preacher comes from the people
and he can fearlessly speak for them within the limits of public
opinion. The Negro teacher or politician must be careful as to what he
says; for, inasmuch as his support comes through the white race, he must
proceed cautiously lest he be deprived of his position. As a rule, their
lips are forever sealed on the rights of the Negro. As social
proscription has retarded the development of the Negro lawyer, the
impetus toward the uplift of the race must come from its ministry, and
with the entrance of a larger number of intelligent men upon this work
the masses of the Negro race will be willing to have them lead the way.

The ministry too is more attractive among Negroes than among whites. The
white minister has only one important function to perform in his group,
that of spiritual leadership. To the Negro community the preacher is
this and besides the walking encyclopedia, the counselor of the unwise,
the friend of the unfortunate, the social welfare organizer, and the
interpreter of the signs of the times. No man is properly introduced to
the Negro community unless he comes through the minister, and no
movement can expect success there unless it has his coöperation or
endorsement. The rise of the Negro physician has during recent years
comparatively diminished the influence of the Negro preacher, but the
latter is still the greater force in the community and will remain so
unless the Negro learns to imitate the white people in substituting in
their faith the doing of the will of their race for that of doing the
revealed will of God.

The importance of the position of the Negro minister is apparent when
one considers the large following which some of these churches have.
Here the minister controls not only hundreds but thousands, as in the
cases of Rev. J. E. Willis of the Vermont Avenue Baptist Church in
Washington, of the Rev. Mr. Adams of the Concord Baptist Church in
Brooklyn, Dr. M. W. Reddick in the leadership of thousands of Baptists
in Georgia, and the eloquent Dr. M. W. D. Norman, who after years of
service as a minister in North Carolina and Virginia and as Dean of the
Theological Department of Shaw University, succeeded the lamented Rev.
Robert Johnson at the Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, where
thousands wait upon Dr. Norman's words. Some of these ministers are
drawing very large numbers, because, instead of merely building large
edifices and buying fine clothes and gifts for themselves, they are
putting efficiency in the management of the churches, as in the cases of
R. H. Bowling in Norfolk, Mordecai W. Johnson in Charleston, and Dr. A.
Clayton Powell in New York City. In the Negro churches, moreover, as
with Dr. J. C. Austin in Pittsburgh, there are being organized banks,
housing corporations, insurance companies, and even steamship projects
in keeping with the ideas of Dr. L. G. Jordan. Yet despite this change
in point of view, the Negro church has not become a corrupt machine.
Its affairs are still in the hands of men who, as a majority, are
interested in their race rather than in themselves. The opportunity here
sought is not that of leadership but that of service.

One service of which the race is in need, as the Negro minister is
beginning to understand it, is the prevention of poverty. The poor you
have with you always, and the poor will sometimes steal before they will
starve. The masses must be elevated above dependence on another race for
what they shall eat or drink or the wherewithal they shall be clothed.
The saving of young men and women of the race from those pursuits in
which they are unduly exposed to the temptations of the low and the
contemptible of both races, is becoming a most important concern of many
Negro churches. The Negro minister is now beginning to realize that
every time he saves a youth from such undesirable conditions he himself
becomes like unto Christ, a savior of man. If to do this it will be
necessary to establish a business enterprise or make the church a
fraternal insurance company, the new Negro minister will act
accordingly. This is the way the race should go. The minister is the
shepherd of the flock. The sheep know the voice of the shepherd and a
stranger they will not follow.

Out of the exercise of these many privileges in the Negro church,
moreover, has come unusually important results. Although the Negro
learned in this way much that he had to forget, received many
impressions which led to improper expression, the experiences in the end
redounded to the good of the race. Misinformation when detected served
but to emphasize the need of information; imposition accentuated the
necessity for honest leadership; and the results of too much credulity
led to conservatism in the masses. It was the school of experience for
the Negro community. The church furnished the opportunity for this
experience and the people learned their lesson well. They learned how to
discriminate, how to think for themselves, how to take care of
themselves in a critical situation, in short, how to be self-sufficient.

The most important of all lessons the Negro has learned through his
church has been that of perseverance in coöperative effort. This is the
most striking result of this social work. Negroes have not readily
responded to the call of men in other fields, but the fact that these
church groups, large and small, have held together for decades, and even
generations, in the sacrificing effort to purchase houses of worship for
which some of them have well paid two or three times because of thieves
within and thieves without--that fact alone is evidence of the
development of the power of consolidation among Negroes, an asset which
in our day is being drawn upon for organization in education and in
business and bids fair to have tremendous results when properly
exploited by honest leaders enjoying the confidence of the masses.




CHAPTER XIV

THE RECENT GROWTH OF THE NEGRO CHURCH


The student of this phase of history will naturally inquire as to the
actual results from all of these efforts to promote the progress of
Christianity among these people. Here we are at a loss for facts as to
the early period; but after 1890, when the first census of Negro
churches was taken, we have some very informing statistics: and although
the general census of 1900 took no account of such statistics, the
United States Bureau of the Census took a special census of religious
institutions in 1906, basing its report upon returns received from the
local organizations themselves. The items of this report covered the
membership, places of worship, seating capacity of the edifices, the
value of church property, and the number of ministers. There were
reported also the number and value of parsonages, the debt on church
property, and later the statistics of Sunday schools.

Summarizing the details, the census showed that in 1906 there were
36,770 Negro church organizations with a membership of 3,685,097. They
had 35,160 church edifices and 1,261 halls used as places of worship,
affording a seating capacity of 10,481,738. There were 4,779 parsonages
worth $3,727,884, whereas the church edifices were worth $56,636,159.
The debt on such church property, however, was $5,005,905. These
churches had 34,681 Sunday schools administered by 210,148 officers and
teachers in charge of 1,740,009 scholars.

Comparing these statistics of 1906 with those of 1890, one sees the
rapid growth of the Negro church. Although the Negro population
increased only 26.1 per cent during these sixteen years, the number of
church organizations increased 56.7 per cent; the number of
communicants, 37.8 per cent; the number of edifices, 47.9; the seating
capacity, 54.1 per cent; and the value of church property, 112.7 per
cent. The proportionately smaller increase in the membership is
accounted for by the discovery of an overstatement of this item through
error by the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1890, which in
1906 was corrected. It is worthy of note here that the number of halls
decreased, showing that they gave place to permanent buildings for those
who had been housed in temporary quarters.

The distribution of these churches is of value to determine the extent
of this progress. Over 90 per cent of the organizations were in the
South, where the large majority of the Negroes are. Because of the
social and economic conditions in that section, however, the proportion
of the total value of church property was smaller, being only 73.5 per
cent, and the proportionate amount of debt on church property
accordingly smaller, being 53.1 per cent. Considering State by State,
one finds that the southern group, of course, took the lead, whereas
Idaho, Nevada, New Hampshire, North and South Dakota, and Vermont
reported no Negro churches at all in 1890; but South Dakota and New
Hampshire carried such an item in their returns in 1906. Georgia held
first rank in the number of Negro communicants in 1890 and 1906, while
Alabama advanced from third to second place in 1906, and Mississippi
from the sixth in 1890 to fourth in 1906. Oklahoma did the unusual thing
of advancing from the thirty-third place in 1890 to the twentieth in
1906. Most of these changes, however, followed corresponding changes in
the Negro population of these States, resulting not every time as a
natural increase but from migration.

A smaller number of Negro communicants were distributed among 18 white
organizations in 1906. Between 1890 and 1906, however, the Southern
Baptist Conventions and the Evangelical Lutheran churches lost their
Negro members; but for the first time the following reported Negro
churches in 1906: The Advent Christian Church, the Seventh Day
Adventists, the General Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in
North America, the General Eldership of the Churches of God in North
America, the Wesleyan Methodist Connection,  the Moravian Church, the
Reformed Church in America, and the Church of the United Brethren in
Christ. Other difficulties arise in making the comparison here; for the
Colored Primitive Baptists were not reported as a separate denomination
in 1890, but in 1906 they, with the exception of four churches of this
faith, constituted a body of their own. The white denomination reporting
the largest number of Negro members was the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The sectarian would be interested in learning, moreover, the progress
reported for the various denominations. The greater achievements were
accredited to the 11 exclusively Negro organizations reporting in 1890
and the 17 of this same composition making returns in 1906. These were
Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, with a sprinkling of such
smaller groups as the Church of God and Saints of Christ, organized in
1896; Churches of the Living God, organized in 1899; the Voluntary
Missionary Society in America, organized in 1900; the Free Christian
Zion Church of Christ, organized by Schismatic Methodists of all sects
in 1905; the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church, the African
Union Methodist Protestant Church, organized in 1866; the Reformed Union
Apostolic Church, organized in 1882; and the Reformed Methodist Union
Episcopal Church, organized in 1896. While these smaller bodies were
developing between 1890 and 1906 there disappeared other small Negro
national church organizations known as the Congregational Methodist
Church and the Evangelical Missionary Church. Of the distinctly Negro
denominations, the one reporting the largest number of communicants was
the National Baptist Convention. Following thus in the order of their
numerical rank came next the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the Colored Methodist
Episcopal Church.

Further statistics show more definitely the progress along sectarian
lines. In 1906 the six Baptist bodies reported 19,891 organizations with
2,354,789 communicants and church property valued at $26,562,845. The
ten Methodist bodies combined came second with 15,317 organizations,
1,182,131 communicants and church property valued at $25,771,262. Taken
together, the Methodists and Baptists had 35,208 or 95.8 per cent of the
total number of Negro organizations; 3,536,920 or 96 per cent of the
total number of Negro communicants and $52,334,107 or 92.4 per cent of
the total value of church property.

Other statistics show further tendencies of little importance. The
marked increase in the number of Free Baptists between 1890 and 1906 is
accounted for by better returns the latter year. The falling off of the
Disciples of Christ was said to be due to the change resulting from
separation of the Disciples and the churches of Christ. There were,
moreover, during the same period significant changes in the membership
of the Negroes in such white organizations as the Roman Catholic, the
Congregational, the Presbyterian, and the Episcopal churches.

The progress of the Negro church, however, has been made, as shown
above, in the denominations organized and controlled exclusively by
Negroes. In 1906 they had 85.4 per cent of the organizations, 87 per
cent of the membership, 83.2 per cent of the scholars in the Sunday
School; 78.9 per cent of the value of the church property, 74.5 per cent
of the total amount of the debt on church property, and 67 per cent of
the value of parsonages. The statistician accounts for the relatively
larger proportion of the value of property and debt among the partly
Negro denominations by the fact that these organizations are largely in
Northern States where church buildings are of better type and parsonages
more common. These figures show that the Negro denominations are growing
more rapidly than the others. The statistician says: "While in 1890 they
had 81.7 per cent of the organizations against 18.3 per cent for the
other class, in 1906, they reported 85.4 per cent, while in the past
Negro bodies had dropped 14.6 per cent." The variations, instead of
refuting this statement, tend to confirm it. The National Baptist
Convention, for example, dropped from 53.4 per cent to 50.4 per cent in
organizations but advanced from 50.4 per cent to 61.4 per cent in
membership and from 33.9 per cent to 43.1 per cent in value of church
property. The Northern Convention showed a decrease in every item as to
its report on the Negro membership. The African Methodists apparently
fell behind but the difference was due not to any actual decrease in
membership but to more accurate returns as is confirmed by more recent
reports in their histories and their year books. The Presbyterians and
Congregational churches show a slightly increased percentage in
membership but a decreased percentage in value of property. The
Protestant Episcopal Church reported a general increase, especially in
the value of church property. The percentages of increase in the case of
Catholic Churches are not striking except in the case of membership.
These last mentioned denominations, moreover, still have a comparatively
small following among the Negroes.

The Bureau of the United States Census has fortunately compiled
statistics to show even the sex of these communicants. These tend to
confirm the oft repeated declaration that the women largely support
Negro churches. "Of the total number of organizations reported," says
the statistician, "34,648, or 94.2 per cent, made returns showing the
sex of communicants or members, and the number thus reported, 3,527,660
was 95.7 per cent of the total membership. Of this number 1,324,123, or
37.5 per cent, were males, and 2,203,537, or 62.5 per cent, were
females. As compared with the figures for all religious bodies, white
and Negro, which show 43.1 per cent males and 56.9 per cent females,
they indicate a greater preponderance of females in Negro bodies." The
census reports account for this difference in contending that the Roman
Catholic bodies, among which the proportion of males is relatively large
(49.3 per cent), constituted over 36 per cent of the total church
membership reported by the census of 1906, but only one per cent of the
Negro church membership. In the total Protestant church membership the
percentage of females is 60.3, or only slightly lower than that of the
membership of the Negro churches alone.

The few denominations which show the larger proportion of males are the
Catholics with 47.5 per cent, the colored Cumberland Presbyterian, 46.5
per cent, and the United American Free-will Baptist Church, 43.9 per
cent. Those showing the smallest proportion of males are the Protestant
Episcopal Church, with 35.2 per cent; the Colored Primitive Baptists in
America, 35.7 per cent, and the Northern Baptist Convention, 35.9 per
cent.

Statistics of the Sunday schools exhibit direct evidence as to how
largely this institution functions in the religious life of the Negroes.
The Bureau of the Census believes that the most significant fact
regarding the Sunday schools reported by Negro churches is the
exceptionally large proportion of organizations reporting them. "Whereas
the percentage of all church organizations in the United States
reporting Sunday schools," says the census, "was only 79 per cent, 91.2
per cent of the entire number of Negro organizations made such a
report." The two classes of denominations are nearly even, the rate for
the exclusively Negro bodies being a little lower than that for Negro
organizations in other bodies. Among the single denominations, those
showing the highest percentage of Sunday schools, as compared with the
total number of organizations, are the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian
Church, with 98 per cent, and the Presbyterian Church in the United
States of America, with 97.1 per cent. The denominations showing the
lowest percentage, as compared with the total number of organizations,
are the Colored Primitive Baptists in America, with 20.8 per cent, and
the United American Free-will Baptists, with 39.9 per cent. Of all the
Sunday schools given, the National Baptist Convention reported 17,910,
or 51.6 per cent, a little more than one-half; the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, 18.1 per cent; the Methodist Episcopal Church, 10.8
per cent; the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, 6.7 per cent, and the
African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 6 per cent. These five bodies
reported 32,360 Sunday schools, or 93.3 per cent of the total number
reported by Negro organizations. The statistics as to officers,
teachers, and scholars show about the same proportions.

The report on Negro ministers shows a very rapid increase, in fact, a
much larger number than in the case of other professional men among
Negroes. The results show that although when brought into comparison
with the white race the professions among Negroes are generally
undermanned, the Negro ministry, so far as numbers are concerned, is
well supplied. In 1906 there were 31,624 Negro ministers. The Baptists
then had 17,117, the African Methodist Church 6,200, the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church 3,082, the Colored Methodist Episcopal
Church 2,671, the Colored Primitive Baptists in America 1,480, the
Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church 375, and the United Free-will
Baptists 136. The remaining number of ministers were distributed among
the smaller denominations.

Another essential in the estimate of the religious progress of the Negro
is the work done by the churches for their expansion into neglected
parts. It has been said that the Negroes of the United States annually
contribute more than $125,000 to home missions, supporting about 250
home missionaries and aiding more than 400 churches in backward
districts. Owing to the recent migration resulting in all but the
depletion of many churches in the South, and the necessity for others in
the North, there has been much stimulus from without in some centers
where churches have had little support from those migrants primarily
interested in economic gain. Ever alive to the situation, however, the
various Negro denominations have raised large sums to organize and
maintain new churches wherever these migrants of color have settled in
large numbers.

In foreign missions the Negro denominations have done almost as well.
They annually contribute to this work more than $150,000. While some of
this sum has been expended in promoting this cause in various foreign
fields, the larger portion of it, by special designation, has been used
in countries having a preponderance of Negro population, especially in
Africa. The Negro Baptists, through the Foreign Mission Board of the
National Baptist Convention, the work of which is directed by that
untiring apostle to the lowly, Dr. L. G. Jordan, carries on missionary
work in five foreign countries. This body has established 61 stations,
83 out-stations, and 43 churches, having altogether 14,700 communicants,
among whom are 43 native workers and 451 assistants. The African
Methodist Episcopal Church, having organized their mission work earlier
than the Baptists--that is, in 1844, whereas the Baptists did not
organize theirs until 1880--have been more successful abroad. This
denomination has invaded as many as eight foreign countries. Most of its
efforts, however, have been restricted to Africa, where this
denomination has two bishops reaching 17,178 members through 118
ordained ministers and 479 local preachers and teachers. This work in
Africa was promoted largely through Bishops Levi J. Coppin and J. Albert
Johnson, who, transferred to districts in this country, are still
rendering their denomination valuable service. The African Methodist
Episcopal Zion Church, which did not organize its foreign mission work
until 1892, has established three foreign mission stations, five
out-stations, and eleven churches. Other denominations have also done
much to support missionary effort in foreign parts.

To promote Christian education both at home and in foreign fields these
denominations have well supported publishing houses. The Colored
Methodists have for a number of years had a successful plant for this
work, which reached a stage of progress under its efficient agent, Dr.
J. C. Martin. The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was earlier in
the field and saw the work recently expanded under the well-known Dr. J.
W. Crockett. The African Methodist Episcopal Church, a pioneer in this
enterprise, has easily taken the lead in this work among the Negro
churches, especially under such efficient managers as Dr. R. R. Wright,
in charge of the Publishing House and editor of _The Christian Recorder_
in Philadelphia, under Dr. R. C. Ransom, the brilliant editor of the
_African Methodist Episcopal Church Review_, and under the progressive
Ira T. Bryant, the director of the publications of the Sunday School
Union in Nashville, founded by Bishop C. S. Smith. The Negro Baptists,
having become enraged at the refusal of the white Baptists to recognize
them as constituents of an all comprehending denomination, organized
the National Baptist Convention, which accepted as one of its most
important concerns the establishment of The National Baptist Publishing
House. After attaining a high degree of success under the efficient Dr.
R. H. Boyd, however, this establishment became the business of only that
portion of the Baptists who supported Dr. Boyd in his efforts to direct
the work on what his opponents called a private basis. The other Baptist
faction has established another publishing house in Nashville.

Still another idea of the growth of the Negro church may be obtained
from the statistics as to their administrative officers. The work of the
Negro denominations has grown to the extent that the African Methodist
Episcopal Church has fifteen bishops and nine other administrative
officers, the Colored Methodists seven bishops and eleven other
administrative officers, and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
ten bishops and fifteen other administrative officers. The affairs of
the National Baptist Convention, incorporated, are administered by
thirteen officers, and the National Baptist Convention, unincorporated,
by an equal number of functionaries. These, however, are not all
regularly engaged in administrative work as in most of the Methodist
denominations. The smaller groups of Baptists and Methodists show here
and there top-heavy administrative staffs, whereas very large groups of
Negro members in white churches have fewer supervisors. The Methodist
Episcopal Church, however, has for some years maintained for the Negroes
abroad a missionary bishop, in the capacity of whom Bishops Alexander P.
Camphor and Isaiah B. Scott have served. The noble fight as indicated by
favorable ballots taken in various conferences, moreover, all but
resulted in the election of the eloquent Dr. J. W. E. Bowen as a regular
bishop. Becoming sufficiently liberal, however, to override race
prejudice, the Conference of 1920 not only chose as bishop for Africa
that pleasing preacher and successful pastor, Dr. M. W. Clair, but at
the same time set apart for the New Orleans diocese the scholarly and
brilliant editor of the _Southwestern Christian Advocate_, Dr. R. E.
Jones.




CHAPTER XV

THE NEGRO CHURCH OF TO-DAY


These new developments have kept the Negro ministry still attractive,
but because of many undesirable situations here and there in the church
comparatively few young men have, during the last decade or so, aspired
to this work. Some young Negroes have learned to look upon the calling
as a necessary nuisance. Except in church schools where the preparation
for the ministry is an objective, it has often been unusual to find one
Negro student out of a hundred aspiring to the ministry, and too often
those who have such aspirations represent the inferior intellect of the
group, as it happened in the church during the middle ages. So rapidly
did the ministry fall into discredit in many quarters a few years ago
that most women of promise would not dare to engage themselves to men
who thought of becoming clergymen; and, if the marital connection
happened to be effected before the lot of the bride was known, it was in
many cases considered a calamity. Because Negroes now realize how
limited the opportunity for the race is in politics and some of the
professions, however, the ministry will doubtless continue, as it has
since the Reconstruction, a sort of avenue through which the ambitious
youth must pass to secure a hearing and become a man of influence among
his people. This does not mean that irreligious men will masquerade as
spiritual advisers but that, inasmuch as the church as an institution is
considered a welfare agency as well as a spiritual body to edify souls,
some Negroes, interested in the social uplift of the race, are learning
to accomplish this task by accepting leadership in the church.

Negroes see in the ministry, moreover, a new mission. The world, having
now gone mad after the trifles of this life, is sadly in need of a
redeemer to save men from themselves. In the contest between selfishness
and godliness the former has been victor in the soul of the American and
European. There are those like Bishop John Hurst believing that the
Negro church must play the rôle of keeping the fire burning on the altar
until the day when men again become reverent, and that the Negro's
liberal interpretation of the Christian religion, based upon the
brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, must gain ascendancy and
be accepted by a regenerated world of to-morrow.

As a preparation to this end the afflictions of the Negro have
adequately developed self-control in the race. The watchword of the
Negro church has been patience while waiting on the Lord. The Negro has
learned not to avenge his own wrongs, believing that God will adjust
matters in the end. The Negro agrees with Professor Joseph A. Booker,
that he that taketh up the sword shall perish by the sword. Even during
these days, when we learn much about the lawless, the behavior of the
Negroes is no exception to the rule. An investigation shows that the
Negroes never do any more than to defend themselves in keeping with the
first law of nature. White persons who once found it possible to
intimidate the whole group by shooting or lynching one or two now face
persons of color bent upon defending their homes. At heart, however, the
Negro is conservatively Christian and looks forward to that favorable
turn in the affairs of man when the wrongs of the oppressed shall be
righted without the shedding of blood.

The Negro church is criticized by a few radical members of the race as a
hindrance to the immediate achievement of the aims of the race, in that
the white race in the exercise of foresight encourages and even
subsidizes the Negro ministry in carrying out this conservative program.
This will tend, it is said, to keep the Negro down, whereas the white
people themselves do not actually believe in such doctrine; for their
own actions show that they use it as a means to an end. This, however,
is hardly a fair criticism of the Negro church of to-day. No force from
without can claim control of this institution, and certainly no one can
bridle its fearless speakers who stand for the Negro of to-day. The
Negro churchmen, moreover, are not any more conservative than other
leaders of the people. They may be more generally effective because of
their greater influence. That the Negro church is conservative is due to
teaching and to tradition, and it is fortunate that Providence has had
it so. Acting as a conservative force among the Negroes, the church has
been a sort of balance wheel. It has not been unprogressive but rather
wise in its generation in not rushing forward to a radical position in
advance of public opinion. In other words, the Negro church has known
how far it can safely instruct its people to go in righting their own
wrongs, and this conservatism has no doubt saved the Negro from the fate
of other oppressed groups who have suffered extermination because of the
failure to handle their case more diplomatically.

This does not mean, however, that the Negro church of to-day is not
alive to the sufferings of the race and is not critical of the attitude
of the so-called Christian elements in this country. Some Negro
ministers like Dr. F. J. Grimké are decidedly outspoken, even to the
extent of being classed with the militant Reds now being deported. Dr.
Pezavia O'Connell, a gentleman of scholarship and character, has all but
suffered professional martyrdom because he has always fearlessly
championed the cause of the Negro. Inasmuch as such an advanced position
does not always harmonize with the faith of his communicants, he has
been proscribed in certain circles. R. W. Bagnall, George Frazier
Miller, and Byron Gunner have actually preached the use of force and
encouraged resistance to the mobs to the extent that some Negroes have
probably addressed themselves vindictively to the task of retribution.
Through the Negro churches, and these alone, have the Negroes been able
to effect anything like a coöperative movement to counteract the evil
influences of such combinations against the race as the revived Ku Klux
Klan.

The church then is no longer the voice of one man crying in the
wilderness, but a spiritual organization at last becoming alive to the
needs of a people handicapped by social distinctions of which the race
must gradually free itself to do here in this life that which will
assure the larger life to come. To attain this the earth must be made
habitable for civilized people. Funds are daily raised in Negro churches
to fight segregation, and an innocent Negro in danger of suffering
injustice at the hands of the local oppressor may appeal with success to
the communicants with whom he has frequented a common altar. The
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People would be
unable to carry out its program without the aid of the Negro church.

Although Negroes are not now attracted to the church as much as
formerly, the census reports still show that there are more Negroes in
the ministry than in any other profession. The only really close
competitor of the Negro in this profession is the southern white man.
While the educated white men of the North are taking up scientific
pursuits and business, the southern whites are carrying out their
designs on the ministry, in keeping with the well-laid plans by which
they have succeeded in getting partial control of the northern press.
During recent years so many southern white students have crowded
northern schools of theology that, in keeping with the spirit of
Beelzebub, some of these institutions now deny Negroes admission. The
pulpits of the North are being gradually taken over by the apostles
indoctrinated by the medieval agents of race hate.

Since the Negro ministry is still the largest factor in the life of this
race, it naturally conflicts with the propaganda of the ministry
preaching caste. These representatives of the master and slave classes
must, in the capacity of spokesmen of widely differing groups, work out
the solution of the problems of the church in the United States; for
either the one or the other must dictate the religious program of the
economically mad North. The North cares little about priest-craft. The
struggle there for dollars and cents and for opportunities to spend them
in riotous living is too keen to spare time for such matters as
Christian living and the remote hereafter. The South, on the other hand,
has never lost its bearing. In spite of riots here and there and
lynchings almost anywhere, that section still considers  itself a
Christian land and, in its way, has lifted high the name of Christ
without being influenced by his life. The North, then, if it ever awakes
from its lethargy, will probably accept either the principles of Jesus
of Nazareth as they have been preached and practiced by the Negroes, or
the Anglo-Saxon-chosen-people-of-God faith for which many misguided
white communicants have jeopardized their own lives and have taken those
of Negroes unwilling to worship at the shrine of race prejudice.

The white people of this country are not interested in the real mission
of Christ. In the North the church has surrendered to the capitalistic
system and developed into an agency seeking to assuage the pains of
those suffering from the very economic evils which the institution has
not the courage to attack. In the southern portion of the United States,
the white churches have degenerated into perfunctory machines engaged in
the service of deceiving the multitude with the doctrine that the
Anglo-Saxon, being superior to other races by divine ordination, may
justly oppress them to maintain its supremacy and that the principles of
Jesus are exemplified in the lives of these newly chosen people of God
when they permit their so-called inferiors to eat the crumbs let fall by
those whom their idol god has carefully selected as the honor guests at
the feast. If the humble Nazarene appeared there disturbing the present
caste system, he would be speedily lynched as he was in Palestine.

In spite of the Negroes' logical preaching of the fatherhood of God and
the brotherhood of man, however, the North now seems inclined to accept
the faith of the South. Science has long since uprooted the theory that
one race can be superior to another, but the northern churches are loath
to act accordingly. The same churches, which prior to emancipation,
championed the cause of the Negro, are to-day working indirectly to
promote racial distinctions. The southern white man, wiser in his
generation than most of his competitors, easily realized that he could
not legally reënslave the Negro, but early devised a scheme to convert
the North to the doctrine of segregation, educational distinctions, and
the elimination of the Negroes from the body politic, to make it
improbable, if not impossible, for the Negroes to attain the status of
white men. The Christian spirit of the North at first rebelled against
the very idea; but, already pledged to the policy of the economic
proscription of Negroes through trades unions, that section, once
bristling with churches dominated by abolitionists, soon yielded to the
temptation of sacrificing the principles of Jesus for dollars and cents.
The Negro of to-day, therefore, is hated as much by the northern
religious devotee as by the southern enthusiast at the shrine of race
prejudice.

Evidence as to such conditions obtaining is not wanting. In the midst of
the changing order involving all but the annihilation of the Negro, the
race has repeatedly appealed to the "Christian" element of the North
only to have a deaf ear turned to its petition. Inasmuch as the northern
ministers are influenced by rich laymen whose businesses have so many
ramifications in the South, they refrain from such criticism or
interference in behalf of the Negro, since it might mean economic loss.
Negroes at first secured from northern churches large sums of money to
establish adequate private schools and colleges throughout the South,
but before these institutions could be developed these funds were
diverted to the support of industrial education which the South openly
interpreted to signify that no Negro must be encouraged to become the
equal of any white man, and that education for him must mean something
entirely different from that training provided for the Caucasian. The
northern white man, more interested in developing men to produce cotton
and tobacco than in the training of a race to think for itself, again
bowed to mammon. Churches which once annually raised sums for the
maintenance of various Negro schools have now, as a majority, restricted
their contributions to Hampton and Tuskegee, where, it is believed, the
ultimate distinctions of the whites and blacks can, by the process of
safeguarded education, be best effected. Practically all of the
so-called Christian philanthropists have followed their example.

The Negro church, however, finds itself facing still another problem.
During recent years Negroes have manifested more interest in the
redemption of Africa. Negro churches have long since contributed to
missions and the periodical return of the apostle to the lowly far away
has been awaited with the anticipation of unwonted joy; but it is only
recently that the church has begun to make sacrifices for the cause.
Whereas a few years ago a congregation felt that it had done its duty in
raising a missionary collection of ten or fifteen dollars, that same
group is to-day supporting one or two missionaries in Africa. The
raising of funds for this purpose and the administration of it have been
of late so well extended, as noted above, that the national church
organizations have had to assign this work to boards, whose business is
to supply the missionaries at the various posts and extend their
operations by establishing schools where they have sufficiently well
established the work to require systematic training.

In spite of their well-laid plans, however, the Negro church finds
itself handicapped in reaching the Africans. Controlled as that
continent is by the capitalistic powers of Europe, they have much
apprehension as to the sort of gospel the Negro missionary may preach in
Africa, lest the natives be stirred up to the point of self-assertion.
They desire that missionaries to Africa, like race leaders in the
United States, be "hand-picked." In other words, the missionary movement
must bow to mammon. To the heathen, then, must go those who have served
only as forerunners of foreign conquests involving the discomfiture, the
oppression, and in many cases the annihilation of the very people whom
they professed to be saving.

Following in their wake, a certain American "Christian" organization
financed by "philanthropists" recently sent to Africa Thomas J. Jones
who, in behalf of his race, sought to carry out this policy. The effect
of this mission was soon apparent. After having nobly served in Africa
and India, Max Yergan, an International Young Men's Christian
Association Secretary, appointed to serve permanently in Africa,
recently toured the United States for a mission fund which the Negroes
freely contributed that through him some portion of Africa might be
redeemed. This man in Africa having ingratiated himself into the favor
of the capitalistic government there, however, according to Yergan's
statement, influenced the administration to refuse him the permit to
work among his own people. The same meddler, according to a complaint
made by the colored branch of the Young Men's Christian Association, all
but made himself the dictator of the appointments of that department and
other Negro welfare agencies sent abroad during the World War. His
business now seems to be that of furnishing the world with
"hand-picked" Negro leaders to damn even the natives in Africa. The
white church then, has not only failed to preach the social gospel of
Jesus, but is preventing the Negroes from carrying that message to their
own people. In other words, the principles of the humble Nazarene must
be crushed out to make money and perpetuate caste.

This and other handicaps, however, have not prevented the progress of
the church. Probably the most promising aspect is that Negro ministers
of to-day measure up to a higher standard than formerly. They are not
diverted from their course by politics and the like. Here and there, of
course, are some of little promise, who in a poverty-stricken condition
accept almost any bribe offered them by political bosses, but
fortunately this number is known to be rapidly decreasing. During the
last generation there has developed among Negroes the feeling that the
political embroglio is an unclean sphere which the minister should not
enter. The increasing duties of the Negro preachers, moreover, have
recently so multiplied that they have no time for such service.
Experience has shown that even in the case of those who have gone into
politics in self-defense that they have accomplished little good or that
some layman could have handled the matter more successfully.

We have recently had two striking cases in evidence. Bishop Alexander
Walters, after having rendered valuable service to the cause as an
educator  and minister in Kentucky, California, and Tennessee, became
the ranking bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. He
then decided that his people had been so long duped by the grafters and
tricksters masquerading as the successors of Lincoln and Grant, that he
would use his influence to have the Negroes divide their vote by
supporting Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Dr. J. Milton Waldron, an influential
Baptist minister of Washington, feeling that it would mean a new day for
the Negro to have this democratic college president of many promises
elevated to the headship of the nation by the aid of the Negro vote, did
likewise. Disappointed in the end, however, by the hypocrisy of Wilson,
who, in his heart hated Negroes, these churchmen saw themselves
painfully humiliated among their people, who, in return for the large
number of votes which they gave Wilson, received nothing but segregation
in the civil service, elimination from public office, and conscription
to do forced labor in the World War, while he was promising that the
Negroes should have justice and have it abundantly.

[Illustration: BISHOP ALEXANDER WALTERS]

The Negro churchmen of to-day realize, as most leaders of the race do,
that the hope of the blacks lies not in politics from without but in
race uplift from within in the form of social amelioration and economic
development. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are interested in the
Negro except so far as the race may be used to enable them to get into
office. Their platform promises have been not something to stand on but
to get into office on. This does not in any sense, however, mean that
the Negro minister has lost interest in public matters of concern to
every citizen, but rather that he has learned the possibilities in the
political world. He will in no sense withdraw from the contest in behalf
of the rights of his people. His method of attack will be different.
Carrying out this reconstructed policy for the rehabilitation of the
race, the Negro minister, like a majority of the thinking members of
this group to-day, will welcome the assistance and coöperation of the
white man, but will not suffer himself to be used as a tool in
connection with forces from without the circles of the race, pretending
to be interested in the solution of its problems.




FOOTNOTES


[Footnote 1: At a love feast conducted by Bishop Asbury at the Virginia
Conference in 1783, strong testimonials were borne in favor of African
liberty. He said in 1785, speaking of the Virginia Conference: "I found
the minds of the people greatly agitated with our rules against slavery
and a proposed petition to the General Assembly for the emancipation of
the blacks. A colonel and Dr. Coke disputed on the subject and the
colonel used some threats; next day brother O'Kelly let fly at them, and
they were made angry enough; we, however, came off with whole bones."
Working in this field against slavery, these Methodists waited upon
George Washington, who politely received them and gave his opinion
against slavery. This conference, however, did not bring striking
results. Saying that he was much pained in mind, Bishop Asbury asserted:
"I am brought to conclude that slavery will exist in Virginia perhaps
for ages. There is not a _sufficient sense of religion nor liberty to
destroy it_." In Georgia in 1741 he said, "Away with the false cant that
the better you use the Negroes, the worse they will use you! Make them
good; then, teach them the fear of God, and learn to fear him
yourselves, ye masters. I understand not the doctrine of cruelty."]


[Footnote 2: He published a pamphlet entitled _Involuntary, Unmerited,
Perpetual, Absolute, Hereditary Slavery, examined on the principles of
Nature, Reason, Justice, Policy, and Scripture_. The work is written in
grave and manly style and with nice discriminations and candid reasons
set forth the claims of the emancipating Baptists in a creditable
manner.

In 1778, Mr. Barrow received an invitation to preach at the house of a
gentleman who lived on Nansemond River, near the mouth of James River. A
ministering brother accompanied him. They were informed on their
arrival, that they might expect rough usage, and so it happened. A gang
of well-dressed men came up to the stage, which had been erected under
some trees, as soon as the hymn was given out, and sang one of their
obscene songs. They then undertook to plunge both of the preachers. Mr.
Barrow was plunged twice. They pressed him into the mud, held him long
under the water, and came near drowning him. In the midst of their
mocking, they asked him if he believed? and throughout treated him with
the most barbarous insolence and outrage. His companion they plunged but
once. The whole assembly was shocked, the women shrieked, but no one
durst interfere; for about twenty stout fellows were engaged in this
horrid measure. They insulted and abused the gentleman who invited them
to preach, and every one who spoke a word in their favor. Before these
persecuted men could change their clothes, they were dragged from the
house, and driven off by these outrageous churchmen. But three or four
of them died in a few weeks, in a distracted manner, and one of them
wished himself in hell before he had joined the company, &c.

In Mr. Barrow's piece against slavery, we find the following note: "To
see a man (a Christian) in the most serious period of all his
life--making his last will and testament--and in the most solemn manner
addressing the Judge of all the earth--_In the name of God,
Amen._--Hearken to him--he will very shortly appear before the Judge,
where kings and slaves have equal thrones!--He proceeds:

  "Item. I give and bequeath to my son ----, a negro man named ----,
  a negro woman named ---- with five of her youngest children.

  "Item. I give and bequeath to my daughter ----, a negro man named
  ----, also a negro woman named ----, with her three children.

  "Item. All my other slaves, whether men, women or children, with
  all my stock of horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs, I direct to be
  sold to the highest bidder, and the monies arising therefrom
  (after paying my just debts) to be equally divided between my two
  above-named children!!!

  "The above specimen is not exaggerated; the like of it often turns
  up. And what can a real lover of the rights of man say in
  vindication thereof?

  "Suppose for a moment, that the testator, or if the owner, dies
  intestate (which is often the case), was ever so humane a person,
  who can vouch for their heirs and successors? This consideration,
  if nothing else, ought to make all slaveholders take heed what
  they do, 'for they must give an account of themselves to God.'"]


[Footnote 3: Departing under similar circumstances at the same time,
went Rev. Mr. Amos, a product of the same Christian environment,
directing his course to New Providence, Bahama Islands, British West
Indies, where he established a flourishing Baptist Church.]


[Footnote 4: When he purchased the property for the Bethel Church on
Lombard Street near Sixth and the majority of the committee refused to
accept, Allen having given his word so to do, kept it at a great
personal loss.]


[Footnote 5: A man of fair education, Willis was a power in that State
as early as 1798. We hear of him in Louisiana in 1804. Mississippi sent
two ministers to ordain him in Louisiana in 1812. He organized later the
Louisiana Baptist Association and was chosen as its moderator in 1837.]


[Footnote 6: "In all of his journeyings," says a contributor to the
_Baptist Magazine_, "he seemed to go among the people in the fullness of
the blessings of the Gospel of Christ. He was not indeed an ordinary
man, for without those advantages of good education in early life, he
became distinguished as a preacher. His understanding was vigorous, his
imagination was vivid, his personal appearance was interesting and his
elocution was grateful. We have heard him preach to an audience of more
than 1000 persons when he seemed to have the complete command of their
feelings for an hour together. On baptismal occasions he was truly
eloquent. His arguments were unanswerable, and his appeals to the heart
were powerful. The slow and gentle manner in which he placed candidates
under the water, and raised them up again, produced an indelible
impression on the spectators, that they had indeed seen the burial with
Christ in baptism. Near the close of his career in 1831 when he finally
died of a painful illness, he bore striking testimony to his faith in
Jesus. His mind being 'wonderfully sustained by the consolations of the
Gospel,' he said on one occasion to a friend, 'Since I saw you last I
have been happy in God--my sky has been without a cloud. I know that
when the earthly house of my tabernacle is dissolved, I have a house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens.' When asked at another time if
he had a good hope through grace, O, said he, I am altogether unworthy,
but trust in him 'who of God is made unto me wisdom, righteousness,
sanctification and redemption.' After a short pause, he observed, 'I
know in whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that which I
have committed unto him until that day.' When his sufferings were great,
and he felt as if he were dying, he would say in broken accents,
'Come--Lord--Jesus--come quickly.' But he would add, 'I pray for
patience.' He frequently repeated, 'I know that my Redeemer liveth. Whom
I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.' On
his daughter's observing what a fine day it was, and how calm the water
was, he said smiling, 'Just like my mind, my dear--not a
wave--unruffled.' One morning being asked how he had rested the
preceding night, he replied, 'The Lord has spared my life one night
longer; but I never longed for any thing so really, as to die and to be
with my Saviour.' Towards the close of his last sickness, he exclaimed
with emphasis and a voice stronger than usual--'I am now ready to be
offered up and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good
fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth
there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord the
righteous Judge, shall give me at that day.'"]


[Footnote 7: There appeared later between 1830 and 1840 others of much
worth. These were Charles A. Boyd, Henry Johnson, William H. Bishop,
Hosea Easton, James Simmons, Henry Drayton, David Blake, Adam Ford,
Daniel Vandevier, Francis P. Graham, John W. Lewis, George Garnett,
William Fuller, J. H. Williams, William Serrington, John A. King, John
Tappen, John Dungy, Richard Noyee, Peter Ross, John Lyle, John P.
Thompson, John Chester, Nathan Blunt, John N. Mars, J. B. Johnson,
Thomas James, Edward Bishop, Thomas Jackson, Dempsey Kennedy, William
Tilmon, George Washington, Benjamin Simms, W. L. Brown, John Wells,
Samuel Serrington, George A. Spywood, Jesse Kemble, Leonard Collins,
Basil McKall, William Jones, John Jackson, Abraham Cole, Samuel T. Gray,
William McFarlan, Philip Lum, Shadrach Golden, and Abraham Miller.]


[Footnote 8: The Assembly bore it grievously that slavery exhibits the
persons of color as dependent on the will of others, "whether they shall
know and worship the true God, whether they shall enjoy the ordinances
of the gospel; whether they shall perform the duties and cherish the
endearments of husbands and wives, parents and children, neighbors and
friends; whether they shall preserve their chastity and purity, or
regard the dictates of justice and humanity." ... "The evils to which
the slave is always exposed often take place in fact, and in their very
worst degree and form; and where all of them do not take place, as we
rejoice to say in many instances, through the influence of the
principles of humanity and religion on the mind of masters, they do
not--still the slave is deprived of his natural right, degraded as a
human being, and exposed to the danger of passing into the hands of a
master who may inflict upon him all the hardships and injuries which
humanity and avarice may suggest.

"From this view of the consequences resulting from the practice into
which Christian people have most inconsistently fallen, of enslaving a
portion of their brethren of mankind--for 'God hath made of one blood
all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth'--it is manifestly
the duty of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when
the inconsistency of slavery, both with the dictates of humanity and
religion, has been demonstrated, and is generally seen and acknowledged,
to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors, to correct the
errors of former times, and as speedily as possible to efface this blot
on our holy religion, and to obtain the complete abolition of slavery
through Christendom, and if possible throughout the world."]


[Footnote 9: The following is a specimen:

  DEAR SIR:--My woman, Clarissa Hill, has expressed a wish to unite
  herself in Christian communion with the church of which you are
  the acting minister. She is a most faithful servant, and one, of
  whom it affords me pleasure to say, that I believe she endeavors
  to conform to the great principles of her faith, and I believe she
  will be an exemplary and honorable member of your church, should
  you think proper to receive her as such. She has belonged to me
  for sixteen years, during which time her conduct has been most
  unexceptionably moral, and therefore, I cheerfully consent to her
  being baptized and admitted to your communion.

  Very respectfully, etc.,

  C. S. M.]


[Footnote 10: Three years later this convention sent six missionaries to
Africa. These were J. H. Pressly, W. W. Cooley together with their
wives, J. J. Coles and H. McKinney. The National Convention was
organized in 1880, out of a protest against the attitude of certain
whites toward the Negroes and they have since continued as a separate
body having a publishing house of their own rather than patronize the
American Baptist Publication Society.]




INDEX


      Abbott, Lyman, interest of, in the freedmen, 212

      Abrams, Joseph, a Negro preacher in Richmond, 163

      Adams, Henry, pioneer Negro preacher in Louisville, 119

      Adams, J. B., pastor of the Concord Baptist Church, 282

      Afflictions, the effect of, 301-302

      Africa, missionary work in, impeded, 309-311

      African Civilization Society, the, achievements of, 211-212

      A. M. E. Church, the establishment of, 72-78;
        troubles of, with the Zionites, 81-85;
        schools of, 205;
        educational program, 212

      A. M. E. Zion Church, the beginnings of, 78-85;
        indecision of, 81-85;
        struggles of, 82-84;
        schism in, 106-107;
        schools of, 206

      African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church of
          America, established, 192

      African Union Church organized, 107

      Alabama, Negro churches in, 118;
        reactionary laws of, 132;
        Presbyterians in, 155, 156-157

      Alexander, Dr. A., a friend of John Gloucester, 66

      Allen, Richard, the work of, 73-78;
        recognition of, 73;
        early efforts, 74-75;
        elected bishop, 76;
        death of, 101

      Allen University, the establishment of, 205

      Allensworth, Allen, religious work of, 229;
        in politics, 229-230

      Ambrose, F., a pioneer C. M. E. worker, 196

      American Baptist Home Mission Association, efforts of, 209

      American Baptist Home Mission Society, the, achievements of,
          203, 209-210;
        the attack on, 261-264

      American Freedmen's Aid Commission, the work of, 212

      American Freedmen's Union Commission, the establishment of,
          213

      American Missionary Association, schools of, 203-204

      American Union Commission, the, achievements of, 212-213

      Americans, unfavorable attitude of, 41

      Anderson, I. H., a pioneer C. M. E. preacher, 196

      Anderson, Thomas, a preacher in Savannah, 116

      Anderson, William, a supporter of Richard Allen, 76

      Andrew, Governor John A., a friend of the freedmen, 213

      Andrew, a pioneer Negro teacher in Charleston, 8-9

      Anglican clergy, the attitude of, 20-24; corruption, 20, 21,
          22

      Anthony Street Church, establishment of, in Mobile, 135

      Arnett, Bishop B. W., religious work of, 236;
        in politics, 235-236;
        effort of, to repeal "Black Laws," 236

      Asbury, Bishop, the position of, 26, 28;
        work of, 28-30;
        recognition of Richard Allen by, 73

      Ashmun Institute, the establishment of, 152

      Atkinson, Edward, a friend of the freedmen, 213

      Auchmutty, the work of, among Negroes in New York, 14

      Austin, J. C., a popular preacher in Pittsburg, 282


      Babbit, Bessie, white wife of Lemuel Haynes, 63

      Bacon, Thomas, sermons of, on the instruction of Negroes, 23,
          151-152

      Bacote, S. W., a preacher in Missouri, 277-278

      Bagnall, R. W., a social welfare minister, 277;
        advanced position of, 304

      Ballou, Hosea, contest of, with Lemuel Haynes, 64

      Baltimore, Baptist churches in, 111;
        Association for the moral and Educational Improvement of the
            Colored People of, the efforts of, 208, 211

      Baptists, early progress of, 85-91, 107-122, 298;
        reason for growth of, 108-109, 110;
        in the North, 120-122;
        statistics of schools of, 206;
        statistics of, 286, 296;
        division and increase of Negro Baptists, 256-257

      Baptist Association of Western States and Territories, 200

      Baptist conventions, the rise of, 199-201

      Baptist Foreign Mission Convention, 201

      Baptist Home Missionary Society, the American, the work of,
          203, 209-210

      Baptists (white) the Emancipating, 32-36

      Baptists (white) the work of, among Negroes, 31-36;
        position in 1789, 32;
        anti-slavery work of, 32-36;
        the schism of, 130;
        interest of, in the Negro, 160

      Baptized Licking-Locust Association, 36

      Barclay, T., the work of, in New York, 15

      Barnett, Nelson, a pioneer Baptist preacher of West Virginia,
          240

      Barrow, David, the position of, 33-34

      Bartow, the work of, among Negroes, 11

      Baxter, Richard, ideas of, carried out, 16

      Beach, J., the work of, among Negroes, 16-17

      Beckett, the work of, in Pennsylvania, 11

      Beebe, J. A., a bishop of the C. M. E. Church, 196

      Beecher, H. W., interest of, in the freedmen, 212

      Benezet, Anthony, a worker among Negroes in Philadelphia, 18

      Bentley, George, a pioneer Negro preacher in Tennessee, 137

      Bethel Church, organization of, 75

      Bible, influence of, among Negroes, 266-272

      Biddle University, the establishment of, 203

      Binga, Anthony, a useful minister in Richmond, 240

      Bishop, Bishop, election of, 106;
        schismatic connection of, 106-107

      Bishop, Josiah, a Negro Baptist preacher among whites, 54-55

      Bishops of England, interested in proselyting the Negroes, 6-7

      Black Code, 5

      Black Harry, a pioneer Methodist Negro preacher, 56-58

      "Black Laws" of Ohio, efforts to have them repealed, 236

      Blackburn, Gideon, master of John Gloucester, 66-67

      Book Concern of the A. M. E. Church, established, 102

      Booker, J. A., an educator, 206;
        opinion of, 302

      Boone, L. W., a preacher of power in North Carolina, 240

      Boston, the Negro Baptists in, 121

      Boucher, Jonathan, the words of, 23-24

      Boulden, J. F., in politics, 227-228;
        religious efforts of, 227

      Bowen, J. W. E., a prominent candidate for bishop, 299

      Bowling, R. H., a preacher of renown in Norfolk, 282

      Boyd, R. H., head of the National Baptist Publishing House,
          261, 297

      Bradby, a social welfare minister, 277

      Braxton, P. H. A., religious effort of, 228-229;
        in politics, 229

      Bray, Dr. Thomas, the mission of, 10

      British, favorable attitude of, 41

      Brooks, Bishop Sampson, a popular social preacher, 278

      Brooks, Philip, interest of, in the freedmen, 212

      Brooks, Walter H., quotation from, 41-42;
        the education of, 217;
        attack of, on white Baptists, 261

      Brooks, W. H., a Methodist minister in New York, 277

      Brown, Marcus, a co-worker of Morris Brown, 76

      Brown, Morris, a pioneer African Methodist preacher in South
          Carolina, 76;
        elected bishop of A. M. E. Church, 101

      Brown, William, a pioneer in the A. M. E. Zion Church, 78

      Brown, W. W., popular pastor in New York, 278

      Browne, W. W., a minister in business, 267

      Bryan, Andrew, efforts of, in Savannah, 43, 47-53;
        persecution of, 49-52

      Bryan, Jonathan, master of Andrew Bryan, 49;
        his friend, 50

      Bryan, Sampson, brother and co-worker of Andrew Bryan, 49-50

      Bryant, Ira T., a publisher, 297

      Bryant, William C., interest of, in the freedmen, 212

      Bryce, John, a preacher to Negroes, 160, 164

      Bull, Henry, a co-worker of Morris Brown, 76

      Bumstead, Horace, an educator, 215

      Burling, William, interest of, in Negroes, 18

      Burns, Francis, a Negro made bishop to Africa by the
          Methodists, 189

      Burroughs, N. H., the achievements of, 206

      Burrows, pastor of the African Baptist Church in Philadelphia,
          87

      Burt, Thomas, a supporter of the work in Savannah, 48

      Buxton, Fowell, a comment of, 27


      Caesar, a pioneer Negro Baptist preacher, 137

      Cain, Bishop R. H., religious work of, 234-235;
        in politics, 234-235;
        a member of Congress, 234

      Call of politics, 220-246

      Cameron, Paul C., quotation from, on John Chavis, 68-69

      Camp meetings among Negro Methodists, 144-145

      Campbell, Alexander, sermon of, in Andrew Marshall's church,
           114;
        trouble resulting from, 114, 115

      Campbell, General, a friend of George Liele, 45

      Campbell, William J., successor to Andrew Marshall, 117

      Camphor, A. P., a Methodist missionary bishop, 299

      Capucin monks, protest of, 3

      Carroll, Richard, a preacher of social welfare tendency, 278

      Carter, R. A., a bishop of the C. M. E. Church, 240

      Cary, Lott, sketch of, 137-140;
        ordained to preach, 139;
        work of, in Liberia, 139-140;
        death of, 140;
        interest of, in religious instruction, 160

      Casas, las, a missionary, 2;
        attitude of, on slavery, 2

      Caste in the white church, 306-309

      Catholics working among Negroes, 1-6;
        appeal to Negroes a failure, 98;
        attraction of Negroes by, 256

      Challenge to the Negro in freedom, 168

      Change in worship advocated, 254-255

      Chapman, James, a co-worker of Richard Allen, 75

      Charleston, a Negro school in, 8-9;
        Morris Brown's work in, 77;
        fracas in church, in, 133-134;
        Negro churches of, demolished, 134;
        Presbyterians of, interested in the instruction of Negroes,
            155

      Charlton, the work of, among Negroes in New York, 14

      Chase, Salmon P., interest of, in freedmen, 213

      Chavis, John, an educated Negro teacher and preacher, 67-69

      Christian, W., pastor of a Negro Baptist Church in Toronto,
          122

      Christian character emphasized, 252

      "Christianity" of the whites, a farce in modern times, 306-309

      Church management, questioned, 254

      Churchill, W. P., one of the pioneer C. M. E. workers, 196

      Civil War, the, and the church, 185-201;
        an upheaval, 188

      Clair, M. W., a bishop of the M. E. Church, 299

      Clarke, James Freeman, a friend of the freedmen, 213

      Clayton, Moses C., a pioneer Baptist preacher in Baltimore,
          111, 136

      Cleaves, N. C., a bishop of the C. M. E. Church, 240

      Coke, Bishop, the position of, 26

      Coker, Daniel, a pioneer preacher in the A. M. E. Church,
          75-76;
        elected bishop, 76;
        resigned, 76;
        work of, in Baltimore, 76

      Cole, Abraham, a preacher of power, 104

      Coleman, Elihu, interest of, in Negroes, 18

      Colgan, the work of, in New York, 14

      Collins, Leonard, a pioneer preacher in the A. M. E. Zion
          Church, 104

      Colonization Society, the American, opposed, 170

      Colored Cumberland Presbyterian Church organized, 192

      Colored Methodist Episcopal Church organized, 193-197;
        unfair criticism of, 193-194

      Columbus, missionary spirit of, 1

      Conflict of sects, 19-20

      Congregationalists, interest of, in Negroes, 99;
        small following, 99;
        promotion of education by, 203-204;
        attract Negroes later, 256

      Conservative and progressive in the Negro church, 247-265

      Consolidated American Baptist Missionary Convention, 200

      Control of Negro church, desired by whites, 278-280

      Cook, Steven A., a friend of George Liele, 46

      Cooke, John F., founder of the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian
          Church, 136

      Coöperation taught through the church, 284, 285

      Coppin, Bishop L. J., foreign mission work of, 296-297

      Corpew, E. G., a preacher in Portsmouth, 135

      Cottrell, Elias, a bishop of the C. M. E. Church, 240

      Coxe, General, attitude of, toward the teaching of slaves, 164

      Crockett, J. W., denominational work of, 297

      Cruikshanks, Amos, a co-worker of Morris Brown, 76

      Crummell, Alexander, the struggles of, 176-177;
        interest of, in civil rights, 238

      Cuff, Peter, a supporter of Richard Allen, 76

      Cunningham, Henry, a co-worker with Andrew Marshall, 113

      Curry, J. L. M., work of, 214

      Cutler, Dr., a missionary in Boston, 17


      D'Alone, M., supporter of Negro and Indian Missions, 10

      Davis, Edward, a friend of Andrew Bryan, 48

      Davis, Noah, a pioneer Baptist preacher in Baltimore, 111, 136

      Dawn, the, of a new day, 23-39

      DeBaptiste, Richard, a pioneer Baptist preacher in the
          Northwest Territory, 122;
        religious work of, 241-242

      DeBerry, W. N., church of, socialized, 277

      Derrick, Bishop W. B., religious work of, 231;
        in politics, 231-232

      Development, the early, of the Negro church, 100-122

      Devous, John, a preacher in Savannah, 116

      Differing ideas in the Negro church, 247-265

      Difficulties, the, of missions, 19-22

      District of Columbia, Negro churches in, 110-111, 136

      Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church, establishment of, 99

      Dover Baptist Association, received Negro church, 135

      Dow, Lorenzo, sermon of, in Andrew Bryan's church, 49

      Drayton, Henry, a co-worker of Morris Brown, 76

      Drummond, Hugh, the escape of a slave preacher from, 72

      Durham, Clayton, a co-worker of Richard Allen, 75


      Early development of the Negro Church, 100-122

      Eden, James, a co-worker of Morris Brown, 76

      Education, a concern of the Negro preacher, 168

      Edwards, Mrs., interest of, in proselyting Negroes, 7

      Eliot, John, interest of, in slaves, 15

      Ellis, Harrison, a Negro preacher in Alabama, 140-142

      Episcopalians, interest of, in Negroes, 94-97;
        attitude of, toward Negroes, 150-152;
        assistance of, given freedmen, 210-211;
        attract Negroes, 256

      Evangelical sects, work of, 23-29;
        appeal of, successful, 143-144

      Evans, Henry, a pioneer Negro preacher in North Carolina, 56


      Farrand, Daniel, teacher of Lemuel Haynes, 63

      Finley, J. B., the successor of John Stewart, 60-61

      First Colored Methodist Protestant Church organized, 107

      Fisk University, the establishment of, 203

      Fleetwood, Bishop, sermon of, on the conversion of Negroes, 9

      Foreign mission and the Negro church, 296, 297

      Foreign relief to freedmen, 208

      Ford, J. E., church institutional work of, 276

      Fox, George, attitude of, toward freedom and enlightenment, 18

      France, decrees of, as to indoctrinating slaves, 3

      Francis, Henry, a Negro preacher in Savannah, 52

      Fray, S. T., a pioneer preacher in the A. M. E. Zion Church,
          104

      Frazer, Garrison, a pastor in Savannah, 117

      Free African Society, organization of, 75;
        comment of, 92

      Free-Will Baptists, the achievements of, 203, 209

      Freedmen Aid Societies, the work of, 208-209

      Freedmen Aid Society, the, of the Methodist Church, the
          establishment of, 209

      Freedmen's Bureau, facts from, 208

      French, missionary spirit of, 1

      Friends, the relief work of, 207-208;
        the Society of, in England, the efforts of, 208

      Friends' Association of Philadelphia, for the relief of
          colored Freedmen, the work of, 207

      Friends' Association for the Aid and Elevation of the
          Freedmen, 208

      Frink, S., a missionary in Georgia, 11

      Fugitive Slave Law, effect of, on the migration of Negroes,
          122


      Galbreth, George, election of, as bishop, 105-106;
        dispute concerning, 106

      Gales, G. W., in politics, 226;
        religious efforts of, 226

      Galphin, George, patron of the Silver Bluff Church, 42

      Garnett, Henry Highland, the career of, 175-176

      Garretson, Freeborn, attitude of, on Negro conversion, 28

      Garrison, William L., interest of, in relief of freedmen, 212

      George, David, pastor of the Silver Bluff Church, 42;
        work of, in Nova Scotia, 42;
        in Sierre Leone, 42

      Georgia, the instruction of Negroes in, 10-11;
        Negro Baptists in, 112-118;
        reactionary laws of, 132;
        Presbyterians of, interested in the Negro, 155, 157

      Gibbs, Thomas, the escape of a slave preacher from, 72

      Gibson, Bishop, interested in proselyting Negroes, 7;
        letters of, 7

      Gillfield Baptist Church, Petersburg, establishment of, 136

      Gilliard, Nicholson, a supporter of Richard Allen, 76

      Gloucester, John, a pioneer Presbyterian preacher, 65-67

      Goff, Lyman B., interested in the preaching of Charles T.
          Walker, 245

      Goose Creek Parish, Negroes of, instructed, 7

      Graham, Solon, an early C. M. E. minister, 196

      Graham, W. F., a minister in business, 267

      Grant, Bishop, a useful churchman, 238

      Great, Evans, a preacher in Savannah, 112, 113

      Green, A. R., an editor and Book Steward, 102

      Green, Beriah, a friendly teacher of Negroes, 175, 176

      Gregg, David, interested in the preaching of Charles T.
          Walker, 245

      Gregg, Jacob, an Emancipating Baptist, 35

      Grimes, Leonard, sketch of, 180-182

      Grimké, F. J., position of, 303

      Grouch, Job, a C. M. E. worker, 196

      Growth of the Negro church, 286-299

      Guy, Rev. Mr., a preacher to Negroes, 8

      Gunner, Byron, the advanced position of, 304


      Haig, Mrs., interest of, in proselyting Negroes, 7

      Hale, Edward Everett, a friend of the freedmen, 213

      Hall, C., preaching of, to Negroes, in North Carolina, 10

      Hall, Stephen, a supporter of Richard Allen, 76

      Hamilton, Leroy, the master of Henry Francis, 52

      Hamilton, William, a pioneer in the A. M. E. Zion Church,
          78-79

      Hampton Institute, the establishment of, 204

      Hanover Presbytery, John Chavis a missionary for, 68

      Harden, Henry, troubles of, with the A. M. E. Zion Church,
          82-83

      Harding, Henry, a supporter of Richard Allen, 75-76

      Harper, Alexander, a co-worker of Morris Brown, 76

      Harry, a Negro teacher in Charleston, 8-9

      Haversham, Justice James, favorable to Andrew Bryan, 49-50

      Hawkins, Gen. Rush C., interested in the preaching of Charles
          T. Walker, 245

      Hawkins, John R., a business man in the church, 267

      Hawthorne Keidor, a preacher to Negroes in Mobile, 135

      Hayes, Gregory W., the work of, 206;
        conflict of, with the American Baptist Home Mission Society,
            262

      Haygood, A. G., a friend of the freedmen, 213

      Haynes, Lemuel, a scholarly Negro preacher to whites, 62-65

      Henderson, Archibald, a student under John Chavis, 70

      Henderson, John, a student under John Chavis, 70

      Henderson, J., a preacher in Philadelphia, 121

      Hepburn, John, a worker among Negroes, 18

      Hogarth, George, election of as A. M. E. Book Steward, 102

      Hogg, Kate, a member of the Savannah African Church, 45

      Holly, J. T., the record of, 179-180

      Holmes, Donald, an emancipating Baptist, 35

      Holsey, L. H., an early C. M. E. preacher, 196;
        elected bishop, 196;
        work of, 239-240

      Home missions of the Negro church, 295-296

      Honyman, J., the efforts of, among Negroes, 17

      Hood, Bishop James W., the religious work of, 236;
        in politics, 236-238

      Hopkins, Samuel, the interest of, in Negroes, 36

      Houston, U. L., a pastor in Savannah, 117

      Howard, O. O., an educator, of freedmen, 215

      Howard University, the establishment of, 204

      Huddlestone, work of, in New York, 14

      Hunt, Rev. Mr., a teacher of Negroes, 8

      Hurst, Bishop John, the faith of, 301


      Illinois, Negro Baptists in, 122

      Independent church movement, 71-99

      Intelligent people lost to the church, 255-256;
        welcomed by others, 256


      Jack, Uncle, a pioneer Negro preacher in Virginia, 55-56

      Jackson, Anderson, an early C. M. E. minister, 196

      Jackson, Edward, a supporter of Richard Allen, 76

      Jackson, William, a preacher in Philadelphia, 121

      Jackson, Tennessee, C. M. E. Church organized at, 195-196

      Jacksonville, Florida, Negro Baptist church in, 118-119

      Jacob, a slave preacher, the escape of, 72

      Jacobs, Francis, a pioneer in the A. M. E. Zion Church, 78-79

      Jamaica, the work of George Liele in, 43-46

      James, Thomas, an anti-slavery preacher, 173

      Jasper, John, a popular Baptist preacher, 238-239

      Jaudan, Rev. J., a preacher to Negroes in Florida, 118

      Jenny, Rev. Mr., the work of, among Negroes, 11

      Jernagin, W. H., a social welfare minister in Washington, 278

      John Street Methodist Episcopal Church, troubles of, 78, 83-84

      Johnson, Adam, pastor of a schismatic church in Savannah, 114

      Johnson, Dr., a worker at Stratford, 17

      Johnson, D. L., a teacher of contrabands, 215

      Johnson, Harvey, attack of, on white Baptists, 261

      Johnson, Henry, a pioneer preacher in the A. M. E. Zion
          Church, 104

      Johnson, Bishop J. Albert, foreign mission work of, 296-297

      Johnson, M. W., a rising preacher in the Baptist Church, 282

      Johnson, Robert, a pastor of Baptists in Washington, D. C.,
          282

      Johnson, W. B., a Baptist preacher in the District of
          Columbia, 240

      Johnson, Bishop W. D., an A. M. E. minister of educational
          tendencies, 278

      Jones, Absalom, a co-worker of Richard Allen, 74;
        differing ideas of, 75;
        rector of St. Thomas, 75, 94

      Jones, C. C., interest of, in the enlightenment of Negroes,
          153-155

      Jones, Joshua H., a substantial supporter of Wilberforce, 264

      Jones, R. E., a bishop of the M. E. Church, 299

      Jones, Thomas, escape of a slave preacher from, 72

      Jones, William, a pioneer C. M. E. worker, 196

      Jordan, L. G., interest of, in business, 282;
        foreign mission work of, 296


      Keith, George, promoter of religious training, 18

      Kennedy, Dempsey, an anti-slavery preacher, 173

      Kentucky, the Emancipating Baptists in, 34-36;
        Negro Baptists in, 119-120

      Kirkland, Colonel, a friend of George Liele, 44, 45


      Lambert, William, a pioneer Methodist preacher, 81;
        troubles with the A. M. E. Zion Church, 81;
        relations with Richard Allen, 80-82

      Lane, Isaac, a bishop of the C. M. E. Church, 240

      Lane, John W., a C. M. E. worker, 196

      Lane College, the establishment of, 203

      Latin element, missionary spirit of, 2

      Law, Josiah, a preacher to Negroes, 155

      Lawton, Bristol, a minister in Savannah, 117

      Leadership in the Negro church, 280-281

      Lee, George W., achievements of, 244

      Lee, Bishop, President of Wilberforce, 238

      Legislation, reactionary, 131-132

      Lemon, William, a Negro Baptist preacher in Virginia, 53

      Lexington, Kentucky, the Baptist Church in, 86;
        Negro Baptist Church in, 119

      Liberty County, Georgia, instruction of Negroes in, 165

      Liele, George, preacher at the Silver Bluff Church, 42;
        efforts of, in Savannah, 43-45;
        in Jamaica, 44-45

      Lincoln University, development of, 203

      Lindsay, the work of, in New Jersey, 12

      Literature for religious instruction, 166

      Livingston College, the establishment of, 205-206

      Locke, a white minister interested in Thomas Paul, 88

      Locke, John, the philosophy of, influential, 25

      Locke, Richard, the work of, among Negroes, 11

      London Freedmen's Aid Society, the work of, 208

      Lott Cary Convention, organization, 262-263

      Love, E. K., a popular preacher in Georgia, 240

      Louisville, Negro Baptists in, 119


      MacIntosh County, Georgia, instruction of Negroes in, 165

      Macsparran, Dr., a worker among Negroes at Narragansett, 17

      McClaskey, John, an adviser of the A. M. E. Zion Church, 79

      McDonald, James, a co-worker with Negroes in Florida, 118

      McKall, Basil, a preacher of power, 104

      McLemore, James, an evangelist among Negroes, 137

      McQueen, Steven, a preacher in Savannah, 116

      McTyeire, interest of, in the Colored Methodist, 195

      Management of the Church, the, questioned, 254

      Manchester, Virginia, large Negro Baptist church in, 111-112

      Manly, Governor Charles, a student under John Chavis, 70

      Mangum, P. H., a student under John Chavis, 69

      Mangum, W. P., a student under John Chavis, 69

      Manning, J. M., a friend of the freedmen, 213

      Mars, John N., an anti-slavery Methodist preacher, 173

      Marsh, Jacob, a supporter of Richard Allen, 76

      Marshall, Abraham, organizer of the Savannah Baptist Church,
          48

      Marshall, Andrew, a noted Baptist preacher in Savannah, 112;
        troubles of, 113-115;
        work of, 112-118

      Martin, J. C., denominational work of, 297

      Martin J. Sella, an eloquent preacher, 238

      Maryland, Catholic workers among Negroes in, 4-5

      Massachusetts Episcopal Association, the efforts of, 211

      Mather, Cotton, interest of, in slaves, 15-16

      Matthews, John, a co-worker of Morris Brown, 76

      Mayo, A. D., the efforts of, 214

      Meacham, J. B., a pioneer Negro preacher in St. Louis, 120

      Meade, Bishop, interest of, in the instruction of Negroes,
          151-152

      Methodist and Baptist attract Negroes, 196-197, 217

      Methodists, African, in the North, 120-122;
        school statistics of, 203

      Methodist Episcopal Church, position on slavery in 1784, 29;
        pioneer work among Negroes, 26-31;
        division of, on slavery, 123-124;
        interest of, in Negro uplift, 158-159;
        in the Civil War, 186-187, 189-192;
        attitude of, toward the Negroes, 188-192, 258-259;
        qualified recognition of Negroes, by, 191-192, 193-197

      Mifflin, Warner, the memorial of, 38

      Migration of Negro Methodists and Baptists, 122

      Miles, W. H., one of the first bishops of the C. M. E. Church,
          196

      Miller, George Frazier, an Episcopal rector of Brooklyn, 277,
          304

      Miller, Kelly, opinion of, referred to, 280-281

      Miller, Thomas, pioneer in the A. M. E. Zion Church, 78

      Miller, William, a pioneer preacher among the Methodists, 78;
        elected bishop of the A. M. E. Zion Church, 105;
        death of, 105

      Missionaries, the attitude of the early, among Negroes, 1-2;
        in the West Indies, 26-27

      Missionary work, the lack of, in America, 21;
        impeded in Africa, 309-311

      Mississippi, the Presbyterians of, interested in the Negro,
          155

      Mixed churches, procedure in, 132-133

      Mobile, a Negro church in, 118;
        establishment of the Anthony Street Church in, 135

      Monks, Capucin, protest of, 3

      Montague, Justice James, favorable to Andrew Bryan, 49-50

      Montgomery, Alabama, Negro Baptists in, 118

      Moore, Matthew, the pastor of whites and Negroes, 44

      Moore, Bishop, election of, 105;
        retirement of, 105

      Morehouse College, the establishment of, 203

      Morris Brown University, the establishment of, 205

      Morris, E. C., head of the National Baptist Convention, 261

      Morris, Rev. Mr., a preacher in Virginia, 135

      Moses, Rev. Mr., a worker among Negroes in Virginia, 53

      Mound Bayou, mixed Baptist Church in, 86

      Muir, a worker in Kentucky, 38


      National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women
          and Children, the efforts of, 307

      National Baptist Convention, 201;
        the fight of, against white Baptists, 257-264

      National Freedmen's Relief Association, the work of, 207

      Neal, Rev. Mr., the labors of, in Dover, 12

      Neau, Elias, the work of, among Negroes in New York, 12-14

      Negro Baptists, connection of, with white Baptists, 201

      Negro Church, the, socialized, 266-285;
        a place for recreation, 267-268;
        educational institution, 268-273;
        a welfare agency, 273-277;
        leadership in, 280-281;
        the criticism of, 302-303;
        its present situation, 300-313

      Negro ministers, restrictions upon, 131;
        the authority of, 278-279;
        unique position of, 281-282;
        still numerous, 304-305;
        in conflict with southern white ministers, 305-306;
        a redeeming force, 301

      Negro schools established after the Civil War, 203-219

      Negroes, the religious point of view of, 146-147

      New England Missionary Convention, the, 200

      New England, missionary work of, among Negroes, 15-17;
        Negro churches in, 121

      New Haven, Connecticut, Negro Congregational Church in, 99

      New Jersey, the conversion of Negroes in, 12

      New York, the instruction of Negroes in, 12-15

      New York City, the Abyssinian Baptist Church in, organized,
          88-89

      Newman, Rev. Mr., preaching of, to Negroes in North Carolina,
          9-10

      Norman, M. W. D., a preacher of power, 282

      North, Negro Baptists in, 120, 122

      North Carolina, the instruction of Negroes in, 9-10;
        the work of the Quakers in, 18;
        Negro Baptists of, organized the first State Convention,
            199-200

      Northern philanthropy, change in, 263-264

      Northwestern Baptist Convention, 200

      Northwestern Freedmen's Aid Commission, the work of, 207


      Ohio, Negro Baptists in, 122

      Olivet Baptist Church, the success of, 278-279

      Olmsted, F. L., comment of, on religious instruction, 149-151;
        interest of, in the freedmen, 212

      O'Neal, J. B., ideas of, as to Negro uplift, 164

      Opinions, differences of, a difficulty, 19-20

      Osborne, Justice Henry, favorable to Andrew Bryan, 49


      Paine, Bishop Robert, interest of, in Colored Methodists,
          195-196

      Paine College, the establishment of, 205

      Palmer, founder of the Church at Silver Bluff, 41-42

      Pamphlet, Gowan, a preacher of the Negro race in Virginia, 53

      Panama, de Luna Victoria, a bishop in, 4

      Parsippany, Presbyterian School at, 152

      Patterson, Robert, an elder in Kentucky, 38

      Paul, Thomas, a pioneer Negro Baptist preacher in New England,
          88-91;
        work of, in Boston, 88;
        efforts of, in New York, 89-90;
        missionary efforts of, 90-91

      Payne, Bishop Daniel A., early work of, 171-172

      Payne, C. H., religious work of, 230;
        in politics, 230-231

      Penn, William, interest of, in Negroes, 18

      Pennington, J. W. C., the achievements of, 178-179

      Pennsylvania Freedmen's Relief Association, the efforts of,
          207

      Pennsylvania, the missionary movement in, 11-12

      Perkins, R. J., a pioneer preacher of West Virginia, 240

      Perry, Rufus L., religious and educational work of, 242-244

      Peru, a Negro bishop in, 4

      Peter, Jesse, the work of, in reviving the Silver Bluff
          Church, 42

      Petersburgh, Virginia, Baptist Church in, 53, 85

      Philadelphia, the Negro Baptist Church of, established, 86;
        proslavery element in, 86-87

      Philanthropy, northern, change in, 263-264

      Phillips, C. H., a bishop of the C. M. E. Church, 240

      Phillips, Doc., a pioneer Negro preacher, 137

      Pierce, Edward L., interest of, in the freedmen, 212

      Pioneer Negro preachers, 40-70

      Poindexter, James, a pioneer Negro Baptist preacher in Ohio,
          122;
        religious efforts of, 223;
        in politics, 223-224

      Politics, the call of, 220-246

      Polk, Bishop, attitude of, toward the instruction of his
          slaves, 149-151

      Pontier, Samuel, a pioneer in the A. M. E. Zion Church, 78

      Porteus, Bishop, interest of, in the salvation of Negroes, 7

      Portsmouth, Virginia, Negro Baptist church in, 54-55, 111

      Powell, A. C, a preacher with a following, 282

      Preachers, Negro, pioneer work of, 40-70;
        educational work of, 168-169;
        as spokesmen of the Negroes, 169;
        interested in colonization, 170;
        in the underground railroad, 170, 171;
        in the press, 171

      Preachers, Negro Pioneer, 40-70

      Preachers of versatile genius, 167-184

      Presbyterians, interest of, in Negroes, 97-98;
        failure to win Negroes, 98;
        position on slavery and the Negro, 36-39;
        position of in 1782, 36-37;
        pacifist letter of, 38-39;
        the attitude of, on slavery, 124-127, 128, 130;
        interest of, in the instruction of Negroes, 152-158;
        schools of, 203, 204, 205;
        educational work of, 210;
        attract Negroes, 256

      Price, J. C., the record of, 206;
        the education of, 217

      Primitive Baptist Church, Negroes separate therefrom, 192

      Princeton, John Chavis at, 68

      Proctor, H. H., church institutional work of, 276

      Progressive Baptists, the separation of, from whites, 259-264

      Progressive ideas in the Negro church, 247-265

      Protestant Episcopal Freedmen's Commission, aid of, to
          Negroes, 211

      Protracted meetings among Baptists, 143-144

      Providence Baptist Association, organization of, 122

      Pugh, the work of, among Negroes, 12


      Quakers, the efforts of, among Negroes, 17-19

      Quinn, W. P., a successful missionary, 101;
        elected bishop, 101


      Race prejudice in the church, 305-309

      Ranford, of Chowan, a preacher to Negroes, 9

      Ransom, R. C., head of the Institutional Church, Chicago, 276;
        an editor, 297

      Ray, Charles B., the work of, 173-174

      Recent growth of the Negro church, 286-299

      Recent statistics of the Negro church, 286-299

      Reddick, M. W., a preacher of influence, 282

      Relation of the individual to the church, differing ideas as
          to, 251-252

      Relations of whites and blacks in churches, 132-134

      Religion, differing ideas of, 250-251

      Religious education as a preparation, 202-219

      Religious instruction revived, 148-166

      Revells, Hiram R., sketch of, 183-184

      Rice, an elder in Kentucky, interested in the Negro, 38

      Richard, a slave preacher, the escape of, 72

      Riddle, J. M., a minister in California, 278

      Riot of Negroes in New York in 1812, 14

      Rippon, Dr., testimony of, as to Andrew Bryan, 51

      Roberts, Isaac, a preacher in Savannah, 117

      Roberts, John W., a Negro made bishop to Africa by the
          Methodists, 189

      Roberts, R., the missionary work of, 100

      Rockefeller, John D., interested in the preaching of Charles
          T. Walker, 245

      Roger Williams University, the establishment of, 203

      Rogers, E. P., a preacher before the Civil War, 179;
        poem of, on the Missouri Compromise, 179

      Rose, David, friend of Lemuel Haynes, 62

      Ross, the work of, in Pennsylvania, 11

      Rush, Christopher, a pioneer in A. M. E. Zion Church, 85;
        election of, as bishop, 102;
        the success of, 102-103

      Ryland, Robert, pastor of Negro church in Richmond, 111-112;
        work of, among Negroes, in Richmond, 135;
        promoter of religious instruction
        among Negroes, 161-163;
        comment on, 162-163


      Samuels, an early C. M. E. worker, 196

      Sandiford, Ralph, interest of, in Negroes, 18

      Sandoval, Alfonso, protest of, in behalf of Negroes, 3

      Savannah, resolutions of the Baptist Association of, on Andrew
          Bryan, 53;
        the Baptist Church in, 85;
        the churches of, 115-117

      Sayre, J., the work of, among Negroes in New York, 15

      Schism among white Methodists, effect of, on Negro Methodists,
          83-84-85;
        in the Methodist Church, 123-124, 127-128, 130;
        in all churches, 123-147;
        in the Negro Baptist Church, 297-298

      Schismatic movement in Negro church, 247-265;
        results from, 257-258

      Scott, Daniel, a preacher in Philadelphia, 121

      Scott, June, a pioneer Methodist preacher, 78;
        schismatic efforts of, 79-80

      Secker, Bishop, sermon on conversion of Negroes, 7

      Sewell, Jonathan, interest of, in slaves, 16

      Shaw, Francis F., interest of, in the freedmen, 212

      Shaw University, the establishment of, 203

      Simmons, William J., religious efforts of, 223;
        in politics, 223

      Simpson, Hagar, a member of the Baptist Church in Savannah, 45

      Simpson, Smart, a co-worker of Morris Brown, 76

      Slaves indoctrinated, 3

      Smith, Bishop C. S., educational efforts of, 297

      Smith, George, an Emancipating Baptist, 35

      Socializing the Negro church, 266-285

      Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,
          organized, 6;
        the work of, 6-22

      South Carolina, Negroes in, instructed, 7;
        a Negro school in, 8;
        Negro Baptists in, 112;
        Methodists in, interested in Negro uplift, 158-159

      Southern Baptist Convention, 200

      Sovereigns of Europe, change of attitude of, toward Negro, 2

      Spain, decrees of, as to indoctrinating slaves, 3

      Spanish sovereigns, missionary spirit of, 1

      Spencer, Peter, a pioneer Negro preacher, 76

      Spywood, election of, as bishop, 104-105

      St. George Methodist Episcopal Church, in Philadelphia,
          trouble in, 73

      St. James, an Episcopal Church established in Baltimore, 96

      St. Louis, Negro Baptists in, 120

      St. Phillips Church, episcopal, established in New York, 94-95

      St. Thomas, an episcopal church established in Philadelphia,
          94

      Statistics on Negro membership in mixed churches, 146;
        of Freedmen Aid Societies, 206-208;
        of the Negro church, 286-299

      Stevens, David, a preacher of power, 104

      Stewart, John, a pioneer Negro preacher in Ohio, 58-61

      Stewart, Rev. Mr., a missionary in North Carolina, 10

      Stiles, Ezra, interest in the Negro, 36

      Storer, Bellamy, interest of, in the freedmen, 212

      Stokes, W. H., a forceful preacher in Richmond, 241

      Stoupe, the work of, in New York, 15

      Straight College, the establishment of, 204

      Stratton, Daniel, a pioneer preacher of West Virginia, 240

      Struggle between the conservative and the progressive in the
          Negro church, 247-265

      Sturgeon, W., the work of, among Negroes, 11-12


      Taft, William H., interested in the preaching of Charles T.
          Walker, 245

      Talented Negroes in conflict with the conservatives, 247-265

      Talladega College, the establishment of, 203-204

      Tanner, Bishop B. T., comment of, 92-93;
        a power in the A. M. E. Church, 239

      Tanner, C. M., an African Methodist preacher in Washington,
          240

      Tapsico, Jacob, a co-worker of Richard Allen, 75

      Tarrant, Carter, an Emancipating Baptist, 35

      Taylor, Charles, the work of, in New York, 15

      Taylor, Rev. E., interest of, in the enlightenment of Negroes,
          7-8

      Teague, Collin, a co-worker of Lott Cary, 139-140

      Tennessee, Baptists in, 119;
        George Bentley's work in, 137

      Terrell, L., pastor of Negro Baptist Church in Lexington, 119

      Thiergood, R. T., an early C. M. E. worker, 196

      Thomas, Samuel, a teacher of Negroes, 7

      Thompson, Abraham, a pioneer in the A. M. E. Zion Church,
          78-79;
        schismatic efforts of, 79-80, 81

      Tindley, C. A., a preacher of power, 244

      Toronto, Negro Baptists in, 122;
        Methodists in, 122

      Tougaloo University, the establishment of, 204

      Transylvania, the Presbytery of, concerned with the Negroes,
          38

      Trujillo, a Negro bishop in, 4

      Turner, Bishop H. M., religious work of, 232;
        in politics, 232-234

      Turner, Nat, the effect of the insurrection of, 52, 69

      Turpin, London, a co-worker of Morris Brown, 76


      Uncle Jack, a Negro pioneer preacher, 55-56

      Union American Methodist Episcopal Church organized, 107

      Union Church of Africans, organized, 107

      Union Seminary, the forerunner of Wilberforce, 205

      Unwritten law as to holding Christians slaves, 4

      Usher, J., the work of, among Negroes, 16


      Vanderhorst, R. H., a pioneer preacher in the C. M. E. Church,
          196;
        elected bishop, 196

      Varick, James, a pioneer in the A. M. E. Zion Church, 78;
        elected bishop, 85;
        death of, 102

      Vaughn, Richard, a preacher in Philadelphia, 121

      Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, 282

      Vesey, a supporter of Negro missions, 13

      Vesey, Denmark, the effect of the insurrection of, 78

      Vices, so-called, 253

      Victoria, Francisco Xavier de Luna, a churchman of Negro
          blood, 4

      Virginia, Quakers in, 17-18;
        Emancipating Baptists in, 32-34;
        Negro Baptists in, 53-54:
        reactionary laws of, 131

      Virginia Theological Seminary and College, the establishment
          of, 206


      Waldron, J. M., church institutional work of, 276;
        in politics, 312

      Walker, C. T., a preacher of power, 245-246

      Walker, William, opposition of, to work of John Stewart, 60

      Walters, Bishop A., church work of, 311-312;
        in politics, 312

      Ward, Samuel R., record of, 182-183;
        Frederick Douglass' opinion of, 183

      Watcoat, Richard, recognition of Richard Allen by, 73

      Waters, Edward, ordained assistant bishop, 101

      Webster, Thomas, a co-worker of Richard Allen, 75

      Wells, Richard, a useful minister in Richmond, 240

      West Indies, missionaries to Negroes in, 4

      Western Colored Baptist Convention, organization of, 122

      Western Freedmen's Aid Commission, the work of, 207

      Western University, the establishment of, 205

      Wesley, John, the position of, 26

      White, J. T., in politics, 225;
        religious efforts of, 225

      White, Sampson, a pioneer preacher in the Baptist Church,
          110-111;
        preaching of, in New York, 121;
        pastor of the Gillfield Baptist Church, 136

      White, W. J., a successful minister, 240

      White, William, a co-worker of Richard Allen, 74-75

      White man's standard, an influence, 252-253

      Whitefield, George, the position of, on the Negro, 26

      Whitmore, the work of, in New York, 14

      Whittier, John G., interest of, in the freedmen, 212

      Wilberforce University, the establishment of, 205

      Williams, John A., a pioneer preacher in the A. M. E. Zion
          Church, 104;
        a noted revivalist, 104

      Williams, L. K., popular pastor in Chicago, 278;
        social work of, 278-279

      Williams, Peter, a pioneer in the A. M. E. Zion Church, 78;
        rector of St. Phillips in New York, 94-95;
        his lack of force, 95

      Williams, Richard, a supporter of Richard Allen, 75

      Williams, R. S., a bishop of the C. M. E. Church, 240

      Williamsburg, Virginia, the Baptist Church in, 1785, 53

      Williamson, Edward, a supporter of Richard Allen, 76

      Willis, J. E., a preacher of power, 282

      Willis, Joseph, a pioneer preacher in the South, 86

      Wood River Baptist Association, organization of, 122

      Woods, R. C., progress of the Virginia Theological Seminary
          under, 264

      Woolman, John, efforts of, for enlightenment of Negroes, 18

      Worlds, J. J., a pioneer preacher of North Carolina, 240

      Worship, mode of, questioned, 254-255

      Wortham, Dr. James F., a student under John Chavis, 70

      Wright, R. R., editor and publisher, 297


      Yates, a worker in Pennsylvania, 11

      Young Negroes in conflict with the old in the church, 247-249




[Transcriber's note: Original spelling variations have not been
standardized. Underscores have been used to indicate _italic_ fonts.
Footnotes have been collected at the end of the text, followed by the
Index. "THE FIRST COLORED BAPTIST CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA" [in the
caption of the image] is listed as "The Oldest Negro Baptist Church in
the United States" in the list of illustrations.]