RELIGION WITHOUT LETTERS
Stung by the effective charge of the abolitionists that the
reactionary legislation of the South consigned the Negroes to
heathenism, slaveholders considering themselves Christians, felt that
some semblance of the religious instruction of these degraded people
should be devised. It was difficult, however, to figure out exactly
how the teaching of religion to slaves could be made successful and at
the same time square with the prohibitory measures of the South. For
this reason many masters made no effort to find a way out of the
predicament. Others with a higher sense of duty brought forward a
scheme of oral instruction in Christian truth or of religion without
letters. The word instruction thereafter signified among the
southerners a procedure quite different from what the term meant in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Negroes were taught to
read and write that they might learn the truth for themselves.
Being aristocratic in its bearing, the Episcopal Church in the South
early receded from the position of cultivating the minds of the
colored people. As the richest slaveholders were Episcopalians, the
clergy of that denomination could hardly carry out a policy which
might prove prejudicial to the interests of their parishioners.
Moreover, in their propaganda there was then nothing which required
the training of Negroes to instruct themselves. As the qualifications
of Episcopal ministers were rather high even for the education of the
whites of that time, the blacks could not hope to be active churchmen.
This Church, therefore, soon limited its work among the Negroes of
the South to the mere verbal instruction of those who belonged to the
local parishes. Furthermore, because this Church was not exceedingly
militant, and certainly not missionary, it failed to grow rapidly. In
most parts it suffered from the rise of the more popular Methodists
and Baptists into the folds of which slaves followed their masters
during the eighteenth century.
The adjustment of the Methodist and Baptist churches in the South to
the new work among the darker people, however, was after the first
quarter of the nineteenth century practically easy. Each of these
denominations had once strenuously opposed slavery, the Methodists
holding out longer than the Baptists. But the particularizing force
of the institution soon became such that southern churches of these
connections withdrew most of their objections to the system and, of
course, did not find it difficult to abandon the idea of teaching
Negroes to read.[1] Moreover, only so far as it was necessary to
prepare men to preach and exhort was there an urgent need for literary
education among these plain and unassuming missionaries. They came,
not emphasizing the observance of forms which required so much
development of the intellect, but laying stress upon the quickening
of man's conscience and the regeneration of his soul. In the States,
however, where the prohibitory laws were not so rigidly enforced,
the instruction received in various ways from workers of these
denominations often turned out to be more than religion without
letters.[2]
[Footnote 1: Matlack, _History of Methodism_, etc., p. 132; Benedict,
_History of the Baptists_, p. 212.]
[Footnote 2: Adams, _South-side View_, p. 59.]
The Presbyterians found it more difficult to yield on this point. For
decades they had been interested in the Negro race and had in 1818
reached the acme of antislavery sentiment.[1] Synod after synod
denounced the attitude of cruel masters toward their slaves and took
steps to do legally all they could to provide religious instruction
for the colored people.[2] When public sentiment and reactionary
legislation made the instruction of the Negroes of the South
impracticable the Presbyterians of New York and New Jersey were active
in devising schemes for the education of the colored people at points
in the North.[3] Then came the crisis of the prolonged abolition
agitation which kept the Presbyterian Church in an excited state from
1818 to 1830 and resulted in the recession of that denomination from
the position it had formerly taken against slavery.[4] Yielding to the
reactionaries in 1835, this noble sect which had established schools
for Negroes, trained ambitious colored men for usefulness, and
endeavored to fit them for the best civil and religious emoluments,
thereafter became divided. The southern connection lost much of its
interest in the dark race, and fell back on the policy of the verbal
instruction and memory training of the blacks that they might never
become thoroughly enlightened as to their condition.
[Footnote 1: Baird, _Collections_, etc., pp. 814-817.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 815.]
[Footnote 3: _Enormity of the Slave Trade_, etc. p. 67.]
[Footnote 4: Baird, _Collections_, etc., pp. 816, 817.]
Despite the fact that southern Methodists and Presbyterians generally
ceased to have much anti-slavery ardor, there continued still in
the western slave States and in the mountains of Virginia and North
Carolina, a goodly number of these churchmen, who suffered no
diminution of interest in the enlightenment of Negroes. In the States
of Kentucky and Tennessee friends of the race were often left free to
instruct them as they wished. Many of the people who settled those
States came from the Scotch-Irish stock of the Appalachian Mountains,
where early in the nineteenth century the blacks were in some cases
treated as equals of the whites.[1]
[Footnote 2: _Fourth Annual Report of the American Antislavery
Society_, New York, 1837, P. 31; _The New England Antislavery
Almanac_, 1841, p. 31; and _The African Repository_, vol. xxxii., p.
16.]
The Quakers, and many Catholics, however, were as effective as the
mountaineers in elevating Negroes. They had for centuries labored
to promote religion and education among their colored brethren. So
earnest were these sects in working for the uplift of the Negro race
that the reactionary movement failed to swerve them from their course.
When the other churches adopted the policy of mere verbal training,
the Quakers and Catholics adhered to their idea that the Negroes
should be educated to grasp the meaning of the Christian religion just
as they had been during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[1]
This favorable situation did not mean so much, however, since with the
exception of the Catholics in Maryland and Louisiana and the Quakers
in Pennsylvania, not many members of these sects lived in communities
of a large colored population. Furthermore, they were denied access to
the Negroes in most southern communities, even when they volunteered
to work as missionaries among the colored people.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed_., 1871, pp.
217-221.]
[Footnote 2: In several Southern States special laws were enacted to
prevent the influx of such Christian workers.]
How difficult it was for these churchmen to carry out their policy
of religion without letters may be best observed by viewing the
conditions then obtaining. In most Southern States in which Negro
preachers could not be deterred from their mission by public
sentiment, they were prohibited by law from exhorting their fellows.
The ground for such action was usually said to be incompetency and
liability to abuse their office and influence to the injury of the
laws and peace of the country. The elimination of the Christian
teachers of the Negro race, and the prevention of the immigration of
workers from the Northern States rendered the blacks helpless
and dependent upon a few benevolent white ministers of the slave
communities. During this period of unusual proselyting among the
whites, these preachers could not minister to the needs of their own
race.[1] Besides, even when there was found a white clergyman who was
willing to labor among these lowly people, he often knew little about
the inner workings of their minds, and failing to enlighten their
understanding, left them the victims of sinful habits, incident to the
institution of slavery.
[Footnote 1: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p. 175.]
To a civilized man the result was alarming. The Church as an
institution had ceased to be the means by which the Negroes of the
South could be enlightened. The Sabbath-schools in which so many
colored people there had learned to read and write had by 1834
restricted their work to oral instruction.[1] In places where the
blacks once had the privilege of getting an elementary education, only
an inconceivable fraction of them could rise above illiteracy. Most of
these were freedmen found in towns and cities. With the exception of
a few slaves who were allowed the benefits of religious instruction,
these despised beings were generally neglected and left to die
like heathen. In 1840 there were in the South only fifteen colored
Sabbath-schools, with an attendance of about 1459.
[Footnote 1: Goodell, _Slave Code_, p. 324.]
There had never been any regular daily instruction in Christian
truths, but after this period only a few masters allowed field hands
to attend family prayers. Some sections went beyond this point,
prohibiting by public sentiment any and all kinds of religious
instruction.[1] In South Carolina a formal remonstrance signed by over
300 planters and citizens was presented to a Methodist preacher chosen
by a conference of that State as a "cautious and discreet person"[2]
especially qualified to preach to slaves, and pledged to confine
himself to verbal instruction. In Falmouth, Virginia, several white
ladies began to meet on Sunday afternoons to teach Negro children the
principles of the Christian religion. They were unable to continue
their work a month before the local officials stopped them, although
these women openly avowed that they did not intend to teach reading
and writing.[3] Thus the development of the religious education of
the Negroes in certain parts of the South had been from literary
instruction as a means of imparting Christian truth to the policy
of oral indoctrination, and from this purely memory teaching to no
education at all.
[Footnote 1: The cause of this drastic policy was not so much race
hatred as the fear that any kind of instruction might cause the
Negroes to assert themselves.]
[Footnote 2: Olmsted, _Back Country_, pp. 105, 108.]
[Footnote 3: Conway, _Testimonies Concerning Slavery_, p. 5.]
Thereafter the chief privilege allowed the slaves was to congregate
for evening prayers conducted by themselves under the surveillance
of a number of "discreet persons." The leader chosen to conduct the
services, would in some cases read a passage from the Scriptures and
"line a hymn," which the slaves took up in their turn and sang in a
tune of their own suitable to the meter. In case they had present no
one who could read, or the law forbade such an exercise, some exhorter
among the slaves would be given an opportunity to address the people,
basing his remarks as far as his intelligence allowed him on some
memorized portion of the Bible. The rest of the evening would be
devoted to individual prayers and the singing of favorite hymns,
developed largely from the experience of slaves, who while bearing
their burdens in the heat of the day had learned to sing away their
troubles.
For this untenable position the slave States were so severely
criticized by southern and northern friends of the colored people that
the ministers of that section had to construct a more progressive
policy. Yet whatever might be the arguments of the critics of the
South to prove that the enlightenment of Negroes was not a danger, it
was clear after the Southampton insurrection in 1831 that two factors
in Negro education would for some time continue generally eliminated.
These were reading matter and colored preachers.
Prominent among the southerners who endeavored to readjust their
policy of enlightening the black population, were Bishop William
Meade,[1] Bishop William Capers,[2] and Rev. C.C. Jones.[3] Bishop
Meade was a native of Virginia, long noted for its large element of
benevolent slaveholders who never lost interest in their Negroes. He
was fortunate in finishing his education at Princeton, so productive
then of leaders who fought the institution of slavery.[4] Immediately
after his ordination in the Protestant Episcopal Church, Bishop Meade
assumed the role of a reformer. He took up the cause of the colored
people, devoting no little of his time to them when he was in
Alexandria and Frederick in 1813 and 1814.[5] He began by preaching to
the Negroes on fifteen plantations, meeting them twice a day, and in
one year reported the baptism of forty-eight colored children.[6]
Early a champion of the colonization of the Negroes, he was sent on a
successful mission to Georgia in 1818 to secure the release of certain
recaptured Africans who were about to be sold. Going and returning
from the South he was active in establishing auxiliaries of the
American Colonization Society. He helped to extend its sphere also
into the Middle States and New-England.[7]
[Footnote 1: Goodloe, _Southern Platform_, pp. 64-65.]
[Footnote 2: Wightman, _Life of Bishop William Capers_, p. 294.]
[Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, Introductory Chapter.]
[Footnote 4: Goodloe, _Southern Platform_, p. 64.]
[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., p. 65.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., p. 66.]
[Footnote 7: _Niles Register_, vol. xvi., pp. 165-166.]
Bishop Meade was a representative of certain of his fellow-churchmen
who were passing through the transitory stage from the position of
advocating the thorough education of Negroes to that of recommending
mere verbal instruction. Agreeing at first with Rev. Thomas Bacon,
Bishop Meade favored the literary training of Negroes, and advocated
the extermination of slavery.[1] Later in life he failed to urge
his followers to emancipate their slaves, and did not entreat his
congregation to teach them to read. He was then committed to the
policy of only lessening their burden as much as possible without
doing anything to destroy the institution. Thereafter he advocated the
education and emancipation of the slaves only in connection with the
scheme of colonization, to which he looked for a solution of these
problems.[2]
[Footnote 1: Meade,_Sermons of Rev. Thos. Bacon_, p. 2; and Goodell,
_The Southern Platform_, pp. 64, 65.]
[Footnote 2:_Ibid_., p. 65.]
Wishing to give his views on the religious instruction of Negroes, the
Bishop found in Rev. Thomas Bacon's sermons that "every argument which
was likely to convince and persuade was so forcibly exerted, and that
every objection that could possibly be made, so fully answered, and
in fine everything that ought to be said so well said, and the same
things so happily confirmed ..." that it was deemed "best to refer
the reader for the true nature and object of the book to the book
itself."[1] Bishop Meade had uppermost in his mind Bacon's logical
arraignment of those who neglected to teach their Negroes the
Christian religion. Looking beyond the narrow circle of his own sect,
the bishop invited the attention of all denominations to this subject
in which they were "equally concerned." He especially besought "the
ministers of the gospel to take it into serious consideration as a
matter for which they also will have to give an account. Did not
Christ," said he, "die for these poor creatures as well as for any
other, and is it not given in charge of the minister to gather his
sheep into the fold?"[2]
[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Rev. Thos. Bacon_, pp. 31,32, 81, 90,
93, 95, 104, and 105.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 104.]
Another worker in this field was Bishop William Capers of the
Methodist Episcopal Church of South Carolina. A southerner to the
manner born, he did not share the zeal of the antislavery men who
would educate Negroes as a preparation for manumission.[1] Regarding
the subject of abolition as one belonging to the State and entirely
inappropriate to the Church, he denounced the principles of the
religious abolitionists as originating in false philosophy. Capers
endeavored to prove that the relation of slave and master is
authorized by the Holy Scriptures. He was of the opinion, however,
that certain abuses which might ensue, were immoralities to be
prevented or punished by all proper means, both by the Church
discipline and the civil law.[2] Believing that the neglect of the
spiritual needs of the slaves was a reflection on the slaveholders, he
set out early in the thirties to stir up South Carolina to the duty of
removing this stigma.
[Footnote 1: Wightman, _Life of William Capers_, p. 295.]
[Footnote 2: Wightman, _Life of William Capers_, p. 296.]
His plan of enlightening the blacks did not include literary
instruction. His aim was to adapt the teaching of Christian truth to
the condition of persons having a "humble intellect and a limited
range of knowledge by means of constant and patient reiteration."[1]
The old Negroes were to look to preachers for the exposition of these
principles while the children were to be turned over to catechists
who would avail themselves of the opportunity of imparting these
fundamentals to the young at the time their minds were in the plastic
state. Yet all instructors and preachers to Negroes had to be careful
to inculcate the performance of the duty of obedience to their masters
as southerners found them stated in the Holy Scriptures. Any one who
would hesitate to teach these principles of southern religion should
not be employed to instruct slaves. The bishop was certain that such
a one could not then be found among the preachers of the Methodist
Episcopal Church of South Carolina.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 298.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, p. 296.]
Bishop Capers was the leading spirit in the movement instituted in
that commonwealth about 1829 to establish missions to the slaves. So
generally did he arouse the people to the performance of this duty
that they not only allowed preachers access to their Negroes but
requested that missionaries be sent to their plantations. Such
petitions came from C.C. Pinckney, Charles Boring, and Lewis
Morris.[1] Two stations were established in 1829 and two additional
ones in 1833. Thereafter the Church founded one or two others every
year until 1847 when there were seventeen missions conducted by
twenty-five preachers. At the death of Bishop Capers in 1855 the
Methodists of South Carolina had twenty-six such establishments, which
employed thirty-two preachers, ministering to 11,546 communicants
of color. The missionary revenue raised by the local conference had
increased from $300 to $25,000 a year.[2]
[Footnote 1: Wightman, _Life of William Capers_, p. 296.]
[Footnote 2; _African Repository_, vol. xxiv., p. 157.]
The most striking example of this class of workers was the Rev. C.C.
Jones, a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Educated at Princeton
with men actually interested in the cause of the Negroes, and located
in Georgia where he could study the situation as it was, Jones became
not a theorist but a worker. He did not share the discussion of the
question as to how to get rid of slavery. Accepting the institution as
a fact, he endeavored to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunates
by the spiritual cultivation of their minds. He aimed, too, not to
take into his scheme the solution of the whole problem but to appeal
to a special class of slaves, those of the plantations who were left
in the depths of ignorance as to the benefits of right living. In this
respect he was like two of his contemporaries, Rev. Josiah Law[1] of
Georgia and Bishop Polk of Louisiana.[2] Denouncing the policy of
getting all one could out of the slaves and of giving back as little
as possible, Jones undertook to show how their spiritual improvement
would exterminate their ignorance, vulgarity, idleness, improvidence,
and irreligion; Jones thought that if the circumstances of the Negroes
were changed, they would equal, if not excel, the rest of the human
family "in majesty of intellect, elegance of manners, purity of
morals, and ardor of piety."[3] He feared that white men might cherish
a contempt for Negroes that would cause them to sink lower in the
scale of intelligence, morality, and religion. Emphasizing the fact
that as one class of society rises so will the other, Jones advocated
the mingling of the classes together in churches, to create kindlier
feelings among them, increase the tendency of the blacks to
subordination, and promote in a higher degree their mental and
religious improvement. He was sure that these benefits could never
result from independent church organization.[4]
[Footnote 1: Rev. Josiah Law was almost as successful as Jones in
carrying the gospel to the neglected Negroes. His life is a large
chapter in the history of Christianity among the slaves of that
commonwealth. See Wright, _Negro Education in Georgia_, p. 19.]
[Footnote 2: Rhodes, _History of the U.S_., vol. i., p. 331.]
[Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p. 103.]
[Footnote 4: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, pp. 106, 217.]
Meeting the argument of those who feared the insubordination of
Negroes, Jones thought that the gospel would do more for the obedience
of slaves and the peace of the community than weapons of war. He
asserted that the very effort of the masters to instruct their slaves
created a strong bond of union between them and their masters.[1]
History, he believed, showed that the direct way of exposing the
slaves to acts of insubordination was to leave them in ignorance and
superstition to the care of their own religion.[2] To disprove the
falsity of the charge that literary instruction given in Neau's school
in New York was the cause of a rising of slaves in 1709, he produced
evidence that it was due to their opposition to becoming Christians.
The rebellions in South Carolina from 1730 to 1739, he maintained,
were fomented by the Spaniards in St. Augustine. The upheaval in New
York in 1741 was not due to any plot resulting from the instruction
of Negroes in religion, but rather to a delusion on the part of the
whites. The rebellions in Camden in 1816 and in Charleston in 1822
were not exceptions to the rule. He conceded that the Southampton
Insurrection in Virginia in 1831 originated under the color of
religion. It was pointed out, however, that this very act itself was
a proof that Negroes left to work out their own salvation, had fallen
victims to "ignorant and misguided teachers" like Nat Turner. Such
undesirable leaders, thought he, would never have had the opportunity
to do mischief, if the masters had taken it upon themselves to
instruct their slaves.[3] He asserted that no large number of slaves
well instructed in the Christian religion and taken into the churches
directed by white men had ever been found guilty of taking part in
servile insurrections.[4]
[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., pp. 212, 274.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 215.]
[Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, etc., p. 212.]
[Footnote 4: Plumer, _Thoughts_, etc., p. 4.]
To meet the arguments of these reformers the slaveholders found among
laymen and preachers able champions to defend the reactionary policy.
Southerners who had not gone to the extreme in the prohibition of the
instruction of Negroes felt more inclined to answer the critics of
their radical neighbors. One of these defenders thought that the
slaves should have some enlightenment but believed that the domestic
element of the system of slavery in the Southern States afforded
"adequate means" for the improvement, adapted to their condition and
the circumstances of the country; and furnished "the natural, safe,
and effectual means"[1] of the intellectual and moral elevation of the
Negro race. Another speaking more explicitly, said that the fact
that the Negro is such per se carried with it the "inference or the
necessity that his education--the cultivation of his faculties, or the
development of his intelligence, must be in harmony with itself." In
other words, "his instruction must be an entirely different thing from
the training of the Caucasian," in regard to whom "the term education
had widely different significations." For this reason these defenders
believed that instead of giving the Negro systematic instruction he
should be placed in the best position possible for the development of
his imitative powers--"to call into action that peculiar capacity for
copying the habits, mental and moral, of the superior race."[2] They
referred to the facts that slaves still had plantation prayers and
preaching by numerous members of their own race, some of whom could
read and write, that they were frequently favored by their masters
with services expressly for their instruction, that Sabbath-schools
had been established for the benefit of the young, and finally that
slaves were received into the churches which permitted them to hear
the same gospel and praise the same God.[3]
[Footnote 1: Smith, _Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of
Slavery_, pp. 228 _et seq_.]
[Footnote 2: Van Evrie, _Negroes and Negro Slavery_, p. 215.]
[Footnote 3: Smith, _Lectures on the Philosophy of Slavery_, p. 228.]
Seeing even in the policy of religious instruction nothing but danger
to the position of the slave States, certain southerners opposed it
under all circumstances. Some masters feared that verbal instruction
would increase the desire of slaves to learn. Such teaching might
develop into a progressive system of improvement, which, without any
special effort in that direction, would follow in the natural order of
things.[1] Timorous persons believed that slaves thus favored would
neglect their duties and embrace seasons of religious worship for
originating and executing plans for insubordination and villainy. They
thought, too, that missionaries from the free States would thereby
be afforded an opportunity to come South and inculcate doctrines
subversive of the interests and safety of that section.[2] It would
then be only a matter of time before the movement would receive such
an impetus that it would dissolve the relations of society as then
constituted and revolutionize the civil institutions of the South.
[Footnote 1: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p. 192; Olmsted, _Back
Country_, pp. 106-108.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 106.]
The black population of certain sections, however, was not reduced
to heathenism. Although often threatening to execute the reactionary
laws, many of which were never intended to be rigidly enforced,
the southerners did not at once eliminate the Negro as a religious
instructor.[1] It was fortunate that a few Negroes who had learned the
importance of early Christian training, organized among themselves
local associations. These often appointed an old woman of the
plantation to teach children too young to work in the fields, to say
prayers, repeat a little catechism, and memorize a few hymns.[2] But
this looked too much like systematic instruction. In some States it
was regarded as productive of evils destructive to southern
society and was, therefore, discouraged or prohibited.[3] To local
associations organized by kindly slaveholders there was less
opposition because the chief aim always was to restrain strangers and
undesirable persons from coming South to incite the Negroes to servile
insurrection. Two good examples of these local organizations were
the ones found in Liberty and McIntosh counties, Georgia. The
constitutions of these bodies provided that the instruction should be
altogether oral, embracing the general principles of the Christian
religion as understood by orthodox Christians.[4]
[Footnote 1: This statement is based on the testimonies of ex-slaves.]
[Footnote 2: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, pp. 114, 117.]
[Footnote 3: While the laws in certain places were not so drastic as
to prohibit religious assemblies, the same was effected by patrols and
mobs.]
[Footnote 4: The Constitution of the Liberty County Association for
the Religious Instruction of Negroes, Article IV.]
Directing their efforts thereafter toward mere verbal teaching,
religious workers depended upon the memory of the slave to retain
sufficient of the truths and principles expounded to effect his
conversion. Pamphlets, hymn books, and catechisms especially adapted
to the work were written by churchmen, and placed in the hands of
discreet missionaries acceptable to the slaveholders. Among other
publications of this kind were Dr. Capers's 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_; Dr. Palmer's _Cathechism_; Rev. John Mine's _Catechism_;
and C.C. Jones's _Catechism of Scripture, Doctrine and Practice
Designed for the Original Instruction of Colored People._ Bishop Meade
was once engaged in collecting such literature addressed particularly
to slaves in their stations. These extracts were to be read to them
on proper occasions by any member of the family.[1]
[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Rev. Thomas Bacon_, p. 2.]
Yet on the whole it can be safely stated that there were few
societies formed in the South to give the Negroes religious and moral
instruction. Only a few missionaries were exclusively devoted to work
among them. In fact, after the reactionary period no propaganda of
any southern church included anything which could be designated as
systematic instruction of the Negroes.[1] Even owners, who took
care to feed, clothe, and lodge their slaves well and treated
them humanely, often neglected to do anything to enlighten their
understanding as to their responsibility to God. [Footnote 1:
Madison's Works, vol. in., p. 314; Olmsted, _Back Country_, p. 107;
Birney, _The American Churches_, etc., p. 6; and Jones, _Religious
Instruction_, etc., p. 100.]
Observing closely these conditions one would wonder little that many
Negroes became low and degraded. The very institution of slavery
itself produced shiftless, undependable beings, seeking relief
whenever possible by giving the least and getting the most from their
masters. When the slaves were cut off from the light of the gospel by
the large plantation system, they began to exhibit such undesirable
traits as insensibility of heart, lasciviousness, stealing, and lying.
The cruelty of the "Christian" master to the slaves made the latter
feel that such a practice was not altogether inhuman. Just as the
white slave drivers developed into hopeless brutes by having human
beings to abuse, so it turned out with certain Negroes in their
treatment of animals and their fellow-creatures in bondage. If some
Negroes were commanded not to commit adultery, such a prohibition did
not extend to the slave women forced to have illicit relations with
masters who sold their mulatto offspring as goods and chattels. If the
bondmen were taught not to steal the aim was to protect the supplies
of the local plantation. Few masters raised any serious objection to
the act of their half-starved slaves who at night crossed over to some
neighboring plantation to secure food. Many white men made it their
business to dispose of property stolen by Negroes.
In the strait in which most slaves were, they had to lie for
protection. Living in an environment where the actions of almost any
colored man were suspected as insurrectionary, Negroes were frequently
called upon to tell what they knew and were sometimes forced to say
what they did not know. Furthermore, to prevent the slaves from
coöperating to rise against their masters, they were often taught to
mistreat and malign each other to keep alive a feeling of hatred. The
bad traits of the American Negroes resulted then not from an instinct
common to the natives of Africa, but from the institutions of the
South and from the actual teaching of the slaves to be low and
depraved that they might never develop sufficient strength to become a
powerful element in society.
As this system operated to make the Negroes either nominal Christians
or heathen, the anti-slavery men could not be silent.[1] James G.
Birney said that the slaveholding churches like indifferent observers,
had watched the abasement of the Negroes to a plane of beasts without
remonstrating with legislatures against the iniquitous measures.[2]
Moreover, because there was neither literary nor systematic oral
instruction of the colored members of southern congregations, uniting
with the Church made no change in the condition of the slaves. They
were thrown back just as before among their old associates, subjected
to corrupting influences, allowed to forego attendance at public
worship on Sundays, and rarely encouraged to attend family prayers.[3]
In view of this state of affairs Birney was not surprised that it
was only here and there that one could find a few slaves who had an
intelligent view of Christianity or of a future life.
[Footnote 1: Tower, _Slavery Unmasked_, p. 394.]
[Footnote 2: Birney, _American Churches_, p. 6.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., p. 7.]
William E. Charming expressed his deep regret that the whole lot of
the slave was fitted to keep his mind in childhood and bondage. To
Channing it seemed shameful that, although the slave lived in a land
of light, few beams found their way to his benighted understanding. He
was given no books to excite his curiosity. His master provided for
him no teacher but the driver who broke him almost in childhood to the
servile tasks which were to fill up his life. Channing complained that
when benevolence would approach the slave with instruction it was
repelled. Not being allowed to be taught, the "voice which would speak
to him as a man was put to silence." For the lack of the privilege
to learn the truth "his immortal spirit was systematically crushed
despite the mandate of God to bring all men unto Him."[1]
[Footnote 1: Channing, _Slavery_, p. 77.]
Discussing the report that slaves were taught religion, Channing
rejoiced that any portion of them heard of that truth "which gives
inward freedom."[1] He thought, however, that this number was very
small. Channing was certain that most slaves were still buried in
heathen ignorance. But extensive as was this so-called religious
instruction, he did not see how the teaching of the slave to be
obedient to his master could exert much power in raising one to the
divinity of man. How slavery which tends to debase the mind of
the bondman could prepare it for spiritual truth, or how he could
comprehend the essential principles of love on hearing it from the
lips of his selfish and unjust owner, were questions which no defender
of the system ever answered satisfactorily for Channing. Seeing then
no hope for the elevation of the Negro as a slave, he became a more
determined abolitionist.
[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 78.]
William Jay, a son of the first Chief Justice of the United States,
and an abolition preacher of the ardent type, later directed his
attention to these conditions. The keeping of human beings in heathen
ignorance by a people professing to reverence the obligation of
Christianity seemed to him an unpardonable sin. He believed that the
natural result of this "compromise of principle, this suppression
of truth, this sacrifice to unanimity," had been the adoption of
expediency as a standard of right and wrong in the place of the
revealed will of God.[1] "Thus," continued he, "good men and
good Christians have been tempted by their zeal for the American
Colonization Society to countenance opinions and practices
inconsistent with justice and humanity."[2] Jay charged to this
disastrous policy of neglect the result that in 1835 only 245,000 of
the 2,245,144 slaves had a saving knowledge of the religion of
Christ. He deplored the fact that unhappily the evil influence of the
reactionaries had not been confined to their own circles but had to a
lamentable extent "vitiated the moral sense" of other communities.
The proslavery leaders, he said, had reconciled public opinion to the
continuance of slavery, and had aggravated those sinful prejudices
which subjected the free blacks to insult and persecution and denied
them the blessings of education and religious instruction.[3]
[Footnote 1: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc., p. 24.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 25.]
[Footnote 3: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc., p. 26.]
Among the most daring of those who censured the South for its
reactionary policy was Rev. John G. Fee, an abolition minister of
the gospel of Kentucky. Seeing the inevitable result in States where
public opinion and positive laws had made the education of Negroes
impossible, Fee asserted that in preventing them from reading God's
Word and at the same time incorporating them into the Church as
nominal Christians, the South had weakened the institution. Without
the means to learn the principles of religion it was impossible for
such an ignorant class to become efficient and useful members.[1]
Excoriating those who had kept their servants in ignorance to secure
the perpetuity of the institution of slavery, Fee maintained that
sealing up the mind of the slave, lest he should see his wrongs, was
tantamount to cutting off the hand or foot in order to prevent his
escape from forced and unwilling servitude.[2] "If by our practice,
our silence, or our sloth," said he, "we perpetuate a system which
paralyzes our hands when we attempt to convey to them the bread of
life, and which inevitably consigns the great mass of them to unending
perdition, can we be guiltless in the sight of Him who hath made us
stewards of His grace? This is sinful. Said the Saviour: 'Woe unto you
lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not
in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."'[3]
[Footnote 1: Fee, _Antislavery Manual_, p. 147.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 148.]
[Footnote 3: Fee, _Antislavery Manual_, p. 149.]