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CHAPTER III.
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE SLAVES
"Their depravity, their spiritual ignorance and destitution, are amazingly and awfully great." —Rev. C. C. Jones's Catechism; preface, p. 4.
"When the charge of the intellectual and moral degradation of the slaves is preferred against us," says Mr. Jones[B] ("Religious Instruction," p. 107), "we are inclined to put the best face on affairs, knowing that this is the darkest feature and the most vulnerable point."
"Their notions of the Supreme Being (ib. p. 125); of the character and offices of Christ and of the Holy Ghost; of a future state; and of what constitutes holiness of life, are indefinite and confused. Some brought up in a Christian land, and in the vicinity of the house of God, have heard of Jesus Christ; but who he is, and what he has done for a ruined world, they cannot tell. The Mohammedan Africans remaining of the old stock of importations, although accustomed to hear the gospel preached, have been known to accommodate Christianity to Mohammedanism. 'God,' say they, 'is Allah, and Jesus Christ is Mohammed: the religion is the same; but different countries have different names.'"
"True religion they are inclined to place in profession, in forms and ordinances, and in excited states of feeling; and true conversion, in dreams, visions, trances, voices, – all bearing a perfect or striking resemblance to some form or type which has been handed down for generations, or which has been originated in the wild fancy of some religious teacher among them." Page 126: "Sometimes principles of conduct are adopted by church members at so much variance with the gospel that the 'grace of God is turned into lasciviousness.' For example, that which would be an abominable sin, committed by a church member with a worldly person, becomes no sin at all if committed with another church member. The brethren must 'bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.'… To know the extent of their ignorance, even where they have been accustomed to the sound of the gospel in white churches, a man should make investigation for himself: the result will frequently surprise and fill him with grief. They scarcely feel shame for their ignorance on the subject of religion, although they may have had abundant opportunity of becoming wiser. Ignorance they seem to feel is their lot; and that feeling is intimately associated with another, every way congenial to the natural man, namely, a feeling of irresponsibility: ignorance is a cloak and excuse for crime." Page 127: "He who carries the gospel to them encounters depravity, intrenched in ignorance, both real and pretended. He beholds the Scripture fulfilled, 'Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their hearts,' Eph. iv. 17-19. He discovers deism (!), scepticism (!!), universalism (!!!)… 'They are wise to do evil; but to do good they have no knowledge.'"
"Intimately connected with their ignorance is their superstition. They believe in second sight, in apparitions, charms, witchcraft, and in a kind of irresistible Satanic influence. The superstitions brought from Africa have not been wholly laid aside (p. 128). Ignorance and superstition render them easy dupes to their teachers, doctors, prophets, conjurers; to artful, designing men. When fairly committed to such leaders, they may be brought to the commission of almost any crime. Facts in their history prove this. On certain occasions, they have been made to believe, that, while they carried about their persons some charm with which they had been furnished, they were invulnerable.[C] They have, on certain other occasions, been made to believe that they were under a protection that rendered them invincible… They have been known to be so perfectly and fearfully under the influence of some leader or conjurer or minister, that they have not dared to disobey him in the least particular; nor to disclose their own intended or perpetrated crimes, in view of inevitable death itself; notwithstanding all other influences brought to bear upon them."
"The discipline of colored members is involved, tedious, vexatious, and disgusting" (p. 131). "Excommunications and suspensions are of perpetual occurrence, for crimes shocking in character, and of themselves sufficient to show the general state of morals; such, for example, as adultery, fornication, theft, lying, drunkenness, quarrelling, and fighting. The first three are their most common vices." Page 135: "They are, proverbially, thieves. They bear this character in Africa; they have borne it in all countries whither they have been carried; it has been the character of slaves in all ages, whatever their nation or color. They steal from each other, from their masters, from anybody… Their veracity is nominal." Page 136: "The number, the variety, and ingenuity of falsehoods that can be told by them in a few brief moments, is most astonishing… Servants, however, who will neither steal nor lie, may be found, and in no inconsiderable numbers."
Other similar extracts, and touching other vices, might be given; but these seem amply sufficient to justify the general conclusion to which Mr. Jones arrives, p. 153, that "they are, intellectually and morally, a degraded people, the most so of any in the United States; and while, from their universal (?) profession of the Christian system, and their attendance upon its ordinances of worship, and the absence of all fixed forms of idolatry, they cannot strictly be termed heathen, yet may they with propriety be termed the heathen of our land." In a sermon preached by him in Georgia, and published at Savannah in 1831, he calls them "a nation of heathen in our very midst" ("Jay's Letter," p. 11). Abundant confirmation of this conclusion exists. The Hon. Chas. C. Pinckney, in his "Address before the Agricultural Society of South Carolina" (Charleston, 1829, second edit. pp. 10-12; Jones's "Relig. Inst." p. 141), says, "There needs no stronger illustration of the doctrine of human depravity than the state of morals on plantations in general." "Who would credit it," asks the Committee of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia in 1833, "that, in these years of revival and benevolent effort, in this Christian republic, there are over two millions of human beings in the condition of heathen, and in some respects in a worse condition? From long-continued and close observation, we believe that their moral and religious condition is such that they may justly be considered the heathen of this Christian country." The Executive Committee of the Kentucky Union for the Moral and Religious Improvement of the Colored Race, in their "Circular to the Ministers of the Gospel in Kentucky," 1834 (Jones's "Relig. Inst." p. 143), say, "We desire not to represent that condition worse than it is. Doubtless, the light that shines around them, more or less illuminates their minds, and moralizes their characters. We hope and believe, that some of them, though poor in this world's goods, will be found rich in spiritual possessions in the day when the King of Zion shall make up his jewels. We know that many of them are included in the visible church, and frequently exhibit great zeal; but it is to be feared, that it is often a zeal without knowledge; and of the majority it must be confessed, that the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. After making all reasonable allowances, our colored population can be considered, at the most, but semi-heathen."
In view of these statements, we cannot but be forced to the conclusion, that the slaves, as a body, are in an extremely degraded moral and religious condition. That they are naturally thus, even Mr. Jones denies ("Relig. Instruction," p. 124). He says, "As to moral and religious character, the negroes are naturally what other men are." That they are so much more degraded than others must, then, be owing to their education or their social condition. The inference, therefore, is unavoidable that they have been thus degraded by others. The wrong rests upon those who have denied them the means of education, and who have kept them in slavery, – upon those who have thus degraded their minds and souls, in order that their bodies might remain in slavery! In violation of the slave's dearest rights, all the highest, noblest, and purest instincts of his nature have been destroyed, in order to advance the pecuniary interests of the man "who gains his fortune from the blood of souls"! Are those slaves who enjoy moral and religious instruction any better off?
CHAPTER IV.
MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHERS OF THE SLAVES
"Q. When you hear the minister preach, are you not to listen to him as the minister of God; God's messenger to your soul? A. Yes." —Jones's Catechism, p. 140.
"By the providence and word of God," says Mr. Jones ("Religious Instruction," pp. 165, 166), "are we under obligations to impart the gospel to our servants… We cannot disregard this obligation … without forfeiting our humanity, our gratitude, our consistency, and our claim to the spirit of Christianity itself. Our humanity… The Lord Jesus has furnished us with the most beautiful and striking illustrations of this virtue: – 'What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep; and, if it fall into a pit, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?' 'Doth not each one of you loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond?'… Apply the reasoning: 'How much, then, is a man better than a sheep or an ox?' When our servants are sick and diseased, we do not suffer them to want: we physic and nurse them (?). But are not their souls more precious than their bodies? Much more, then, should we lift our servants from the pit of ignorance, moral pollution and death, into which they have fallen. Much more should we strive to loose them (bound for so many years!) from the bonds of sin and Satan, and lead away their famishing souls to the water of life."
"Our gratitude. They nurse us in infancy, contribute to our pleasures and pastimes in youth, and furnish us with the means of education. They constitute our wealth, and yield us all the comforts and conveniences of life. They may, in a degree, adopt towards us the language of Jacob to Laban, 'Thus I was: in the day the drought consumed me, and the frost by night, and my sleep departed from mine eyes.' They watch around our languishing beds in sickness, share in our misfortunes, weep over us when we die, prepare us for the burial, and carry us to the house appointed for all the living. The obligations, the sacrifice, and service are not to be all on one side, in the relation of master and servant. If we have been made partakers of their carnal things, our duty is also to minister unto them in spiritual things,[D] Rom. xv. 27. 1 Cor. ix. 11. And shall we consider it a great thing to fulfil this duty? The kindest and the most grateful return which we can make them is to put them in possession of the richest gift of God to men, the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."
How far has the existence or utterance of such sentiments as these resulted in securing to the slaves a sound moral and religious instruction? What kind of teachers and what kind of instruction are thought to be consistent with proper feelings of gratitude and humanity on the part of masters? We have just seen the deep moral degradation of the very great majority of the slaves. Still "there are at the present time," says Mr. Jones (p. 100), "tens of thousands connected by a credible profession to the church of Christ, and the gospel is reaching them to a greater extent and in greater purity and power than ever before."
By whom is the gospel thus preached to them in purity and power? Who is it that "ministers unto them in spiritual things," and "leads away their famishing souls to the water of life"?
"Those who would keep the Bible from their fellow-creatures are the enemies of God and man. The Bible belongs of right to every man. It is the property of the world." Thus speaks the Protestant defender of slavery, Charles C. Jones ("Catechism," p. 80). But to prevent a slave from reading the Bible is not by any means to keep the Bible from him! In what a Catholic spirit he thus exhorts the slaves! ("Catechism," p. 79) "What benefit will this precious book be to us, unless we diligently study it, and embrace opportunities of receiving instruction from it, such as are afforded us in the house of God, in the sabbath-school, and in the Bible-class? 'Search the Scriptures' is the Redeemer's command."[E] "We cannot," he says ("Religions Instruction," p. 167), "cry out against the Papists for withholding the Scriptures from the common people, and keeping them in ignorance of the way of life; for our inconsistency is as great as theirs, if we withhold the Bible from our servants, and keep them in ignorance of its saving truths, which we certainly do while we will not provide ways and means of having it read and explained to them"! So readily, at the bidding of slavery, will Protestants surrender the most distinctive feature of Protestantism!
It is obvious, that, if any religious instruction is to be imparted to slaves, it must be given them by others. But it is in the power of the owner to forbid all such instruction. "The whole arrangement of the religious instruction of the negroes, as to teachers, times, places, matter and manner, is in our own power," says Mr. Jones (ib. p. 98).
The Presbytery of Georgia, in the memorial before alluded to, says —
"The law of the land makes and can make no provision for their religious instruction. That instruction is committed to owners, as the instruction of children is to parents; and they can give or withhold it at pleasure. We owners and ministers are 'the almoners of divine mercy to them,' and, if we do not open the door of salvation, they may grope their way into a miserable eternity; for they have no power of any kind to originate and establish and carry forward church organizations and associations for their own benefit. They are entirely dependent upon us for the gospel of salvation."
"We may," says Mr. Jones ("Religious Instruction," p. 158), "according to the power lodged in our hands, forbid religious meetings and religious instruction on our own plantations; we may forbid our servants going to church at all, or only to such churches as we may select for them; we may literally shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, and suffer not them that are entering to go in!"
Wherever an owner is willing to permit such instruction, it must still be carried on wholly by oral communications. "This immense mass of immortal beings," says Mr. Jones, "is thrown for religious instruction upon oral communications entirely" (ib. p. 157). That any oral instruction of the adult or aged slaves is worth but little he evidently admits, because he says (ib. p. 229), "If a people are to be instructed orally, let the instruction be communicated to them in early life;" and "the great hope of permanently benefiting the negroes is laid in sabbath-schools, in which children and youth may be trained up in the knowledge of the Lord." Our minds are so constituted, that, unless our powers of memory have been strengthened by constant or frequent use in youth, we cannot in after-life either receive or retain much benefit from oral instruction. And if this is true of the freeman, how much more is it true of the slave! Consequently, the only method of instructing the slaves, which law or custom or both do not forbid, is the very last, – the poorest method for their real good which can be devised!
There are colored preachers at the South, "and some of them," says Mr. Jones, "are able to read" (ib. p. 175). The following anecdote, illustrative of their capacity to impart knowledge, is told by Charles Lyell. When in Louisville, Ky. he attended a Methodist Church. "The preacher was a full black, spoke good English, and quoted Scripture well." "It appeared," says Prof. Lyell, "from his explanation of 'Whose superscription is this?' that he supposed the piece of money to be a dollar note, to which Cæsar had put his signature."
Some, probably most of them, are slaves. We have now before us the advertisement of a runaway slave who claimed to be a Methodist preacher! The Alabama Baptist Association bought one of its missionaries, named Cæsar, in 1828, and owned him till the time of his death! He lived to be 76 years old. A writer in the "Georgia Christian Index" begins an obituary notice of him thus, "A good colored man has fallen in Israel;" and ends by saying, "The writer can truly say that his labors have been much blest." Mr. Jones gives the names of several other slave preachers. Still, however, they are discountenanced.
The "Revised Statutes" of North Carolina (chap. 111, sec. 34; "Revision of Statute," 1831, chap. 4, sec. 1) provide that —
"It shall not be lawful, under any pretence, for any slave or free person of color to preach or exhort in public, or in any manner to officiate as a preacher or teacher in any prayer-meeting or other association for worship where slaves of different families are collected together; and if any free person of color shall be thereof duly convicted, on indictment, before any court having jurisdiction thereof, he shall for each offence receive not exceeding thirty-nine lashes on his bare back; and when any slave shall be guilty of a violation of this section, he shall, on conviction before a single magistrate, receive not exceeding thirty-nine lashes on his bare back."
In Alabama (Stat. 1832, chap. 8, sec. 24; "Clay's Digest," 545, sec. 35), —
"If any slave or free person of color shall preach to, exhort, or harangue any slave or slaves or free persons of color, unless in the presence of five respectable (!) slaveholders, any such slave or free person of color so offending shall, on conviction before any justice of the peace, receive, by order of said justice of the peace, thirty-nine lashes for the first offence, and fifty lashes for every offence thereafter; and any person may arrest any such slave or free person of color, and take him before a justice of the peace for trial, – Provided that the negroes so haranguing or preaching shall be licensed thereto by some regular body of professing Christians immediately in the neighborhood, and to whose society or church such negro shall properly belong."
In Georgia, the Act approved Dec. 23, 1833, sec. 5 ("Prince's Digest," 808; "Hotchkiss's Codification," 840, 841), provides that —
"No person of color, whether free or slave, shall be allowed to preach to, exhort, or join in any religious exercise with, any persons of color, either free or slave, there being more than seven persons of color present," &c.
In Mississippi, the law declares (How. and Hutch. 178) that —
"It shall not be lawful for any slave, free negro or mulatto to exercise the functions of a minister of the gospel under the penalty of thirty-nine lashes, – Provided that it shall be lawful for any master or owner to permit his slave to preach upon his own premises, but not to permit any other slaves but his own to assemble there on such occasion."
In Missouri, the Act approved Feb. 16, 1847, sec. 2, provides that —
"No meeting or assemblage of negroes or mulattoes for the purpose of religious worship or preaching shall be held or permitted, where the services are performed or conducted by negroes or mulattoes, unless some sheriff, constable, marshal, police officer, or justice of the peace shall be present during all the time of such meeting or assemblage, in order to prevent all seditious speeches and disorderly and unlawful conduct of every kind."
"Negro preachers are discouraged," says Mr. Jones ("Religious Instruction," p. 157), "if not suppressed, on the ground of incompetency, and liability to abuse their office and influence to the injury of the morals of the people, and the infringement of the laws and peace of the country. I would not go all the lengths of many on this point; for, from my own observation, negro preachers may be employed and confided in, and so regulated as to do their own color great good, and community no harm." Ib. p. 274: "The appointment of colored preachers and watchmen by the white churches, and under their particular supervision, in many districts of country, has been attended with happy effects; and such auxiliaries, properly managed, may be of great advantage." Doubtless, when thus "properly managed," they are of great advantage! "I shall never forget," says Mr. Jones (ib. p. 215), "the remark of a venerable colored preacher, made with reference to the Southampton tragedy" (i. e. Nat. Turner's insurrection in Southampton, Va. in 1832). "With his eyes filled with tears, and his whole manner indicating the deepest emotion, said he, 'Sir, it is the gospel that we, ignorant and wicked people, need.(!) If you will give us the gospel, it will do more for the obedience of servants and the peace of community than all your guards and guns and bayonets.' This same Christian minister, on receiving a packet of inflammatory pamphlets through the post-office, and discovering their character and intention, immediately called upon the mayor of the city, and delivered them into his hands. Who can estimate the value in community of one such man acting under the influence of the gospel of peace?"
Not only are negro preachers thus discountenanced, unless they are the abject tools of the slaveholders, but only a certain class of white teachers are allowed. The following extract is taken from the "Georgia Christian Index: " —
"Preachers for the Slaves. – We think the instruction of the blacks in the South should be committed wholly to white men; and they should be Southern men, in whom the masters have confidence. If the preacher is himself a slaveholder, as are Mr. Jones and Mr. Law, they will command the greater confidence, and have access to the larger number of plantations."
"The field of labor among the negroes in the South," says Mr. Jones ("Religious Instruction," p. 196), "is one, in many respects, of no ordinary difficulty; and it is the dictate as well of benevolence as of prudence to inquire into the character and qualifications of those who enter it. They should be Southern men; men entitled to that appellation; either those who have been born and reared in the South, or those who have identified themselves with the South, and are familiarly acquainted with the structure of society; in a word, men having their interests in the South. Such men would possess the confidence of the community; for they would not act, in their official connection with the negroes, in such a manner as to breed disturbances, which would inevitably jeopard their own lives, and tend to the utter prostration of their families and interests." Ib. p. 235: "The missionaries should be Southern men, or men … identified in views, feelings, and interests with the South, and who possess the confidence of society." We should (ib. p. 197) "know who their teachers are, and what and when and where they are taught."
The object of these laws and precautions evidently is wholly to exclude, as religious teachers of the slaves, all persons except slaveholders, or those who are fully identified with or subject to them. Only slaveholders and their tools can be "God's messengers" to the souls of the slaves! The moral and religious teaching of the slaves is exclusively vested in that class of men whose interest it is to uphold and strengthen slavery! A slaveholder must have the strongest inducement to make his teaching of such a quality as directly to increase the market value of his hearers; and yet the slaves are receiving from the hallowed lips of their owners the gospel of love and human brotherhood in greater purity and power than ever before!
