IN the group of midland counties that embraced Charlotte, Prince Edward
and Halifax—names that fell into line, as by natural gravitation, in
the thought and speech of the “Old Virginian”—the Presbyterian was the
leading denomination. Rice, Lacy, Hoge, Alexander, and Speece had left
their mark upon preceding generations, and a fragrant memory—as of
mountains of myrrh and hills of frankincense—through all the Southern
Church.
Five out of seven of the leading planters in the region were
Presbyterians. The others were, almost without exception,
Episcopalians, and the two denominations affiliated more cordially than
with Baptists, Methodists, and the sparse sprinkling of Campbellites,
or “Christians,” as they preferred to call their sect.
Slavery existed in Virginia in its mildest possible form, and
nowhere was the master’s rule more paternal than in the group of
counties I have named. The negroes were permitted to hold their
own prayer-meetings in their cabins whenever it pleased them; they
attended religious services as regularly as their owners, and, in a
majority of the old families, were called in to family worship with the
children of the household. No more convincing proof of their religious
freedom could be desired than the fact that the bulk of the colored
population belonged to the Baptist Church. Why, I could never make out.
The Methodists would seem likely to attract them with equal force,
their methods appealing to the emotional, excitable natures of the
semi-tropical race as strongly as those of the denomination that found
favor in their sight. Yet, when one of our servants “got through” the
spiritual conflicts that ushered in a state of grace, we expected him,
or her, to join the Baptist Church as confidently as we looked for the
child of the Covenant, “ordered in all things and sure,” to confirm,
when it arrived at “the age of discretion,” the vows taken by parents
and sponsors in baptism.
It was not singular, therefore, that the new pastor of the Village
Church at Charlotte Court-House should find, at his installation in
his cure of souls, the name of but one colored person upon the roll of
communicants. We never spoke of them as “negroes” in that benighted age.
“Uncle Cæsar,” the trusted “headman” upon the plantation of Colonel
Marshall—Mrs. Henry’s father—had once partaken of the Lord’s Supper in
the church in which his master was an elder. Which violation of the
laws of his denomination, being duly reported, was the occasion of a
case of discipline long talked of throughout the colored community.
The recusant was sharply reprimanded, and notified that a second
offence would be punished by ex-communication. The doughty old servitor
thereupon declared that, as he hoped to sit down to the supper of the
Lamb in heaven with his master, so he would continue to do on earth,
when the Lord’s table was spread in the Village Church. An example
was made of him for the edification of others, and Cæsar became a
Presbyterian, taking his seat among the communicants gathered in the
main body of the church, whenever a Communion season came around.
With a broad catholicity of spirit that appears, in perspective,
incompatible with the narrowness of creeds and ordinances prevalent,
even among the educated Christians of that time, the “plantation
preachings” held regularly during the summer at various homesteads
in those parts of the county near the churches, were attended by the
colored population in large numbers, irrespective of the sect to which
the officiating minister might belong. It was an established custom
in the Village Church that the second Sunday service should be, in
summer, at the house of some neighboring planter, and held for the
colored people, in particular. That the whites, within a radius of five
or six miles, drove over for the afternoon service, did not alter the
expressed purpose of the meeting, or the manner of conducting it.
Autumn was tardy in approach that year, and so it fell out that notice
was given on the second Sunday morning after my arrival at my new
abode, of “a plantation preaching to be held, at three o’clock, at the
residence of Mr. Richard I. Gaines, to which all are cordially invited.”
We had an early dinner in consequence of the service. Over the
dessert—the servants having been excused, that they might get ready
for the “preaching”—we talked more freely of their ideas and mode of
worship, than would have been kind in their presence. Among other
anecdotes I related one I had had from Ned Rhodes last summer, when he
had, as he reported, been “blackburying” on Sunday afternoon.
The cemetery of the colored people was then, as now, situated upon
high, rising ground, overlooking the ravine separating Shockoe Hill
from the adjacent country. Mr. Rhodes and a friend, in the course of a
Sunday afternoon walk, were drawn to the spot by the sight of a great
crowd of negroes and a string of mourning coaches.
When the two young men were near enough to the concourse to hear what
was going on, they were espied by the orator of the day, who instantly
soared into what his ilk admired as “dictionary English.” Upon the
heap of red clay beside the grave was a tiny coffin. The new-comers
agreed, in telling the story, that they had never beheld a smaller, and
that the size of the pitiful little casket, wrapped with flowers, by
contrast with the number of attendants upon the pompous service, set
the stamp of absurdity upon the whole performance before they caught
what the man was saying.
That this was in keeping with the rest, they speedily perceived. In
hortatory tones that thundered to the remotest auditor, he dilated upon
the uncertainty of life:
“... Even de distinguished lives of de two ‘lustr’ous strangers what
has honored us by comin’ among us dis blessed arternoon, to jine in our
mo’nin’. What is they? And what is we? And what is any man, bo’n o’
woman, my brethren? Up ter-day wid de hoppergrass, and down ter-morrow
wid de sparrergrass! Like de flower ob de corn-fiel’, so he spreads
hisself, like a tree planted by de horse-branch. Den de win’ rises and
de tempes’ blows, an’ beats upon dat man—and whar is he? An’ he shan’
know dat place o’ his’n, no mo’.”
Pausing in mid-career, he touched the pathetically ridiculous box with
a disdainful foot.
“As fur dis _t’ing_!” rising on his toes in the energy of his
contempt—“as fur dis ’ere _itum_—put de t’ing in de groun’! _It’s too
small fer to be argyin’ over!_”
Mr. Henry followed with a story of a darky, who prayed that “we might
grow up befo’ de Lord, like calves and beeves of de stall, and be made
_meat_ for de kingdom o’ heaven.”
Mrs. Henry had a tale of a man who prayed at a plantation-meeting
at Woodfork—Dr. Joel Watkins’s homestead—that Rev. John Rice, Mr.
Terhune’s immediate predecessor and a nephew of “Aunt Rice’s”
husband—“might soon cease from his labors, and his works, may dey
foller him!”
“After which performance,” she continued, “my uncle—his master—had a
private interview with him, and forbade him ever to pray in public
again.”
Then I heard that, within the two years’ incumbency of the present
pastor, ten colored members had been added to the Village Church, much
to the satisfaction of their owners. Among them, one Dabney and his
brother Chesley, or Chelsea (I am not sure which), were prominent in
all good words and works. Both could read and write, and both were
skilled carpenters, who had hired their time from their master, and
were working at their trade for themselves—respectable citizens in all
but the right of franchise. The pastor spoke seriously and gratefully
of their influence for good among their fellows, and of his hopes for
the class they represented.
“Dabney is especially gifted in prayer,” commented Mr. Henry, gravely.
I did not then comprehend why his eyes twinkled, and why the others
laughed. I was to know before the day was done.
The Gaines homestead was a fine old brick building, fronted by a broad
veranda (we said “porch” then, in true English fashion). A spacious
lawn stretched between the house and the gate. Under the trees shading
the turf were ranged long rows of benches, occupied, that Sunday
afternoon, by men and women from the Gaines plantation and from other
freeholdings for miles around. There may have been four hundred, all
told. A healthier, happier peasant class could not be found on either
side of the ocean. All were clean; all were well-dressed. The younger
women were gay with the discarded finery which was the perquisite of
house-servants, ladies’ maids in particular.
The porch and the windows of the drawing-room were filled with guests
of fairer complexion, but in demeanor and general behavior not a whit
more quietly reverent. The brief invocation, the reading of the
Scriptures, and the sermon were the duty of the presiding clergyman.
He stood at the head of the short flight of steps, facing the dusky
throng, and paying no more heed to the small audience behind him than
if it had not been. It was the “colored people’s” service. In the
selection of hymns the leader was guided by his knowledge of what would
be familiar to them. The first went with a swing and a rush, that shook
the branches above the singers’ heads, and brought down slow showers of
tinted leaves upon the grass.
It was a perfect afternoon. The fields were golden brown; no frost
had fallen to blacken or bleach them. Hickories were canopies of warm
amber; oaks were reddening, and the maples were aglow with autumnal
fires. The still air was nutty sweet.
The prayer, immediately preceding the sermon, was offered by an aged
farm-hand, upon whom the leader called to conduct our devotions.
His hair was pale chinchilla; his back was bent, and his thin voice
quavered sadly. All the same, he voiced the petitions of every heart
for strength, wisdom, and righteousness, briefly and pertinently. The
sermon over, Dabney was bidden to “lead us in prayer.”
I was more than curious to hear the “gifted” brother. I had, on
the drive out from the village, illustrations of his practice
of introducing pointed personalities into extempore blending of
supplication, confession, and adoration. How, the year before, when the
smallpox appeared in the lower end of the village, Doctor Flournoy, a
leading physician in the county, undertook the charge of the few cases
of the dreaded disease, quarantining himself from the homes of other
patients and acquaintances. In the cold weather, the second service of
the Sabbath was still for the negroes. But they occupied the lower part
of the church, and the whites sat in the gallery, reversing the order
of the morning services. There were few in the gallery when Doctor
Flournoy, peeping in at the door, thought it safe to slip into a seat
in the choir-loft, which was quite empty.
Dabney’s falcon eye had descried him, and when he arose to pray he
“improved” the incident:
“O Lord! we beseech Thee to bless and take care of the good doctor who
has _crope_ into the gallery up yonder, ’cause why, he’s afeerd he may
carry smallpox in his clo’es to some of us. Be a shield about that good
man whose heart so faints for the courts of the Lord that he jes’ can’t
keep away. See to it, O Shepherd of Thine Isrul! that he don’t ketch
the smallpox himself!”
With all this, I was so far unprepared for what was to follow the
uprising of the tall figure from the ranks of the believers, collected
in the heart of the congregation, that I shrank back, out of sight of
those who might have their eyes open and focussed upon me, in my seat
just within a front window.
For thus held forth the man mighty in prayer, when he had disposed
comfortably of the world at large and the brotherhood of saints in
especial:
“O Lord! have mercy upon the hardened and hell-defying, hell-desarvin’
sinners, in these ’ere low-groun’s of sin an’ sorrow, ’roun’ about
Charlotte Coate-House, from the rivers to the ends of the yearth.
“Bring ’em to mou’n as one mou’ns fer his first-born, and come a
flockin’ into the kingdom, as doves to their windows, from the rivers
to the ends of the yearth.
“Bless the master an’ mistis of this home, an’ pour out on ’em the
riches of the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and the waters
under the earth, from the rivers to the ends of the yearth.
“O Lord! in the plentifulness of Thy mercy, bless with all manner of
mercies the great and notable man of God, whom Thou hast placed over
us in speritual things. Bless him in his rising up, and goin’ about,
and among the sheep of his parstur’, from the rivers to the ends of the
yearth.
“Bless her who Thou hast given to him to be a pardner in the lan’ what
flows wid milk an’ honey, an’ in de was’ and desolate po’tions, whar no
water is, from the rivers to the ends of the yearth.
“May they two live together for many a long year, like two turtle-doves
in one nes’, with nary a jar between, from the rivers to the ends of
the yearth!”
“A powerful figure—that of the family jars!” said my companion, when
we had had our confidential laugh out, driving homeward between the
hedgerows of the plantation-road and the cool depths of forest-lands.
“And the only one he did not borrow from the Bible. He knows but one
book.”