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 cooperation 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 cooperating 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.