Part 15 (2/2)

The adjustment of the Methodist and Baptist churches in the South to the neork a 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 ent need for literary education athe observance of forms which required sostress upon the quickening of eneration of his soul In the States, however, where the prohibitory laere not so rigidly enforced, the instruction received in various ways from workers of these denoion 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 ally all they could to provide religious instruction for the colored people[2] When public sentiislation roes 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 caitation which kept the Presbyterian Church in an excited state from 1818 to 1830 and resulted in the recession of that denoainst 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 theious 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 ht never becohtened 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 oodly number of these churchhtenroes 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 roes They had for centuries labored to pro 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 , the Quakers and Catholics adhered to their idea that the Negroes should be educated to grasp thethe 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 e colored population Furtherroes in most southern communities, even when they volunteered to work asthe colored people[2]

[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the US Com of Ed_, 1871, pp

217-221]

[Footnote 2: In several Southern States special laere enacted to prevent the influx of such Christian workers]

How difficult it was for these churchion without lettersIn ro preachers could not be deterred from their mission by public senti 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 eliro race, and the prevention of the iration of workers from the Northern States rendered the blacks helpless and dependent upon a few benevolent whitethis period of unusual proselyting a the whites, these preachers could not minister to the needs of their own race[1] Besides, even when there was found a white clergy these lowly people, he often knew little about the inner workings of their , left them the victims of sinful habits, incident to the institution of slavery

[Footnote 1: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p 175]

To a civilizedThe Church as an institution had ceased to be the htened 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 ere 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 So by public sentiious instruction[1] In South Carolina a forned 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 hiinia, several white ladies began to ro children the principles of the Christian religion They were unable to continue their work a h these wo and writing[3] Thus the developroes in certain parts of the South had been fro Christian truth to the policy of oral indoctrination, and fro to no education at all

[Footnote 1: The cause of this drastic policy was not so ht cause the Negroes to assert themselves]

[Footnote 2: Olmsted, _Back Country_, pp 105, 108]