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PLANTATION LIFE
BEFORE
EMANCIPATION.
BY
R. Q. MALLARD, D. D.,
NEW ORLEANS, LA.
RICHMOND, VA.:
WHITTET & SHEPPERSON,
1001 MAIN STREET.
1892.
COPYRIGHT
BY
R. Q. MALLARD,
1892.
PRINTED BY
WHITTET & SHEPPERSON,
RICHMOND, VA.
TO
THE MEMORY OF
Charles Colcock Jones, D. D.,
WHO, WHETHER
HIS WORK AS A MISSIONARY
TO THE BLACKS,
OR THE WIDER INFLUENCE OF
HIS EXAMPLE, AND WRITINGS IN
THEIR BEHALF, BE CONSIDERED, IS
JUSTLY ENTITLED TO THE NAME OF THE
APOSTLE OF THE NEGRO SLAVES; AND OF HIS
MANY FELLOW WORKERS IN THE GOSPEL MINISTRY
UPON THE SAME FIELD, ONLY LESS CONSPICUOUS, SELF-DENYING
AND USEFUL; AND OF THE HOST OF MASTERS AND
MISTRESSES, WHOSE KINDNESS TO THE BODIES, AND EFFORTS
FOR THE SALVATION OF THE SOULS OF THE SUBJECT RACE
PROVIDENTIALLY PL ACED UNDER THEIR RULE AND
CARE, WILL BE READ OUT, WITH THEIR NAMES,
IN THE DAY WHEN "THE BOOKS SHALL BE
OPENED," AND "GOD SHALL BRING
EVERY WORK INTO JUDGMENT,
WITH EVERY SECRET THING,
WHETHER IT BE GOOD OR
WHETHER IT BE EVIL,"
THIS BOOK IS REVERENTLY
AND LOVINGLY DEDICATED.
Page v
A Word to the Reader.
THE chapters to follow were originally given to the
public in the form of a series of letters, under the same
title, contributed to the columns of The
Southwestern
Presbyterian, the official organ for over twenty years of
the Synod of Mississippi, embracing the greater part
of the State of the same name, and the whole of
Louisiana. They were suggested by an article copied
into that journal from The New York
Evangelist, and
written by a lady, a native of South Carolina, married
and resident at the North, in defence of Southern
Christian slaveholders from the aspersions of a
secretary of the Northern Presbyterian Freedmen's
Board.
In this graceful and vigorous vindication of her
fellow-countrymen, quotation was made from an old
faded copy of a printed report, made by Rev. Charles
Colcock Jones, to the Liberty County Georgia
"Association for the Religious Instruction of the
Colored People." Having in the providence of God
been brought into intimate relations with this eminent
Page vi
servant of God, and personal acquaintance with his work, I
found that by marriage I had come into possession of a
bound volume of pamphlets, containing not only the report
cited, but the entire series, thirteen in number, as well as all
his many writings upon the same subject. This discovery of
accessible and ample material for a fuller vindication of the
memory of our ancestors, as well as my relations to the
writer, as they constituted peculiar qualifications for, so
they seemed to constitute a providential call to the work.
These letters, thus prepared, met with general favor
among the readers of our journal, and at the suggestion of
white and black, and by the advice of prominent ministers of
more than one denomination, they are now published in
book form and seek a larger audience.
The purpose of the author has been to portray a
civilization now obsolete, to picture the relations of mutual
attachment and kindness which in the main bound together
master and servant, and to give this and future generations
some correct idea of the noble work done by Southern
masters and mistresses of all denominations for the
salvation of the slave.
Page vii
If the reader shall have half the pleasure in perusing that
the author has had in writing these letters; if they shall in
any degree contribute to the restoration of the mutual
relations of kindness and confidence characterizing the old
regimé, and sorely strained, not so much by emancipation, as
by the unhappy happy events immediately succeeding it; if
through the blessing of him "who hath made of one blood
all nations of men," North and South, shall be induced to
join hands and hearts in generous, confiding and harmonious
co-operative work for the salvation and consequent elevation
of this race, dwelling with us in our common heritage, then
will the author's purpose have been fully realized, and the
country will have made sensible progress toward the
solution of the race question, and the church gratifying
advance in the settlement of a more interesting and
important problem: How shall Africa in America be won for
Christ?
R. Q. MALLARD.
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, December,
1891.
Page ix
CONTENTS.
- A WORD TO THE READER, . . . .
v
- CHAPTER I.
REASONS FOR WRITING AND TOPICS OF LETTERS, . . . .
3
- CHAPTER II.
THE WRITER'S CONNECTION WITH SLAVERY AND SLAVES, . . . .
8
- CHAPTER III.
THE OLD PLANTATION, . . . .
14
- CHAPTER IV.
OCCUPATIONS AND SPORTS, . . . .
20
- CHAPTER V.
THE NEGRO - HOW HE WAS HOUSED, FED, CLOTHED, PHYSICKED, AND WORKED, . . . .
29
- CHAPTER VI.
THE NEGRO - HOW HE WAS GOVERNED, . . . .
38
- CHAPTER VII.
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY RELATIONS, . . . .
47
- CHAPTER VIII.
"DADDY JACK" - A CURIOUS CHARACTER, . . . .
54
Page x
- CHAPTER IX.
FOLK LORE OF THE NEGRO, . . . .
62
- CHAPTER X.
OLD MIDWAY - A TYPICAL CHURCH, . . . .
74
- CHAPTER XI.
SACRAMENT SUNDAY AT OLD MIDWAY, . . . .
81
- CHAPTER XII.
A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE, . . . .
91
- CHAPTER XIII.
A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - HIS LABORS AMONG THEM, . . . .
101
- CHAPTER XIV.
A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - HIS LABORS FOR THEM, . . . .
111
- CHAPTER XV.
A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - HIS LABORS FOR THEM, . . . .
121
- CHAPTER XVI.
RELIGIOUS ANECDOTES OF THE NEGRO, . . . .
130
- CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT WAS DONE FOR THE NEGRO BY OTHER MEN
AND WOMEN, MINISTERS, CHURCHES, AND COMMUNITIES, . . . .
141
- CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SEA-BOARD OF SOUTH CAROLINA, . . . .
152
- CHAPTER XIX.
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF ANOTHER MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS, . . . .
162
Page xi
- CHAPTER XX.
THE FIRST SOUTHERN GENERAL ASSEMBLY, . . . .
172
- CHAPTER XXI.
THE FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND THE NEGRO - ITS
MANIFESTO ON THE SUBJECT TO THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL, . . . .
183
- CHAPTER XXII.
TEE FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND THE NEGRO - THE
ADDRESS OF DR. JONES ON THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF NEGROES, . . . .
194
- CHAPTER XXIII.
CONDUCT OF THE NEGRO DURING THE WAR, . . . .
208
- CHAPTER XXIV.
CONCLUSION, . . . .
233
Page 3
PLANTATION LIFE
BEFORE EMANCIPATION.
CHAPTER I.
REASONS FOR WRITING
AND TOPICS OF LETTERS.
IT was in May, 1864, that Johnson issued his celebrated
battle-order at Cass Station, on the line of the
Atlantic and Western railroad. Our forces were in fine
trim, anxious for the fray, and confident of victory.
The expressed inability of two corps commanders to
hold the positions assigned them occasioned its
recall, and another move in the masterly retreat, before
an army almost thrice the size of the Confederate
force, effected in such good order that, as one of the
General's staff remarked, "he had not left so much as
a half grindstone north of the Etowah," a retreat,
however, very discouraging, since it involved the
surrender of the mountain fastnesses, the fall and
destruction, by vandal torch, of Atlanta, and the
unobstructed march of Sherman to the sea.
Page 4
Our relief committee had gone to the front, in anticipation
of a great battle, when, on the evening of the
19th instant, we received orders to fall back across the
river. As the night drew on, and we sought to snatch a
little sleep upon boxes and barrels, there mingled with
the rumbling of the wheels the monotonous but
pleasant tones of a boy's voice, that of a little
drummer, perched upon the roof; and this was the
ditty sung by him over and over again, with the
ceaseless cadence of pounding feet:
"In
eighteen sixty-one.
This
war begun;
In
eighteen sixty-four
This
war will be o'er."
The song was history;
it had nearly proved prophecy.
In the winter of 1864 the Confederacy was
almost in its death throes, and in the following spring a
handful of war-worn veterans tearfully folded the Stars
and Bars, and our chief yielded up his knightly sword
with a dignity only equalled by the magnanimity of the
victor.
For twelve years in succession I have had the
pleasure of reading the annual addresses of Colonel
Page 5
Charles C. Jones, Jr., LL. D., President of the
"Confederate Survivors' Association," of Augusta,
Ga. I do not remember one which has not feeling
sketches of some dead comrades who wore the gray. It
reminds us of the rapidity with which the actors in
those scenes, already covered by the obliterating
waters of a quarter century, are "crossing the river,"
we trust, "to rest in the shade of the trees." Since this
continent shook with the tread of armed hosts, a new
generation has sprung into manhood and
womanhood, to whom war experiences and plantation
life are only traditions. It has occurred to one who had
attained his majority before the tocsin of war
summoned North and South to the field, and who,
from birth, was intimately associated with that which
was, at least, the occasion of the tremendous conflict,
that a short series of letters upon the topic at the head
of this article might not only prove pleasing to those
who have had similar experiences, and interesting to
those readers who were born since, or who were too
young to have any distinct recollection of either war
or plantation life in slavery times, but would, at the
same time, subserve some graver and more important
purposes, to be developed
Page 6
as we proceed. We shall have occasion to picture a
civilization peculiar, and which can never be repeated
in this country. Perhaps it will be seen that slavery,
with all its confessed evils, was not "the sum of
villainies," as some termed it, but had its redeeming
qualities; that the common relations between master
and slave were not of tyranny on the one side and of
reluctant submission on the other; that our fathers,
convinced that the institution was not in itself
immoral, but scriptural, angered justly, and
handicapped by the persistent efforts of Abolitionists
to stir the slave even to insurrection, did much for the
religious and mental elevation of their people.
The topics, subject to modification, and contraction
or expansion, as necessity may require or mood
suggest, that will be treated of, are: to state them as
they now lie in the writer's mind, such as these - the
writer's connection with slavery and slaves; the old
plantation described; plantation occupations and
sports; houses, food, physic, work, government, and
family relations; Sacrament Sunday on plantation;
"Daddy Jack," a curious character; a missionary to the
blacks; anecdotes, mainly religious, of the negro;
Page 7
what the South did for his salvation and elevation;
our First General Assembly and the negro; the slaves
during the civil war, etc. Our letters will be brief, but, it
is trusted, sufficiently full to accomplish the writer's
purpose. May they, under God, result in renewing the
kindly feelings which bound together the two races in
the olden time, somewhat alienated, not simply by the
results of the war, but by events since, which need
not be named now, as they are past, let us hope
forever. Possibly in the restoration of such feelings
may lie at least an approximate solution of the race
problem, now so deeply agitating the public mind.
Page 8
CHAPTER II.
THE WRITER'S CONNECTION WITH SLAVERY
AND SLAVES.
IT was my lot from infancy to mid-life to have been
intimately associated with that race whose premature
enfranchisement wrought such temporary
mischief in state, and whose present and future
political and ecclesiastical status fills the hearts of
statesmen and Christians alike with concern. I was
the son of a well-to-do slaveholder, and myself,
although never a planter, an owner at my marriage,
by the generous gift of my father, of some of his
trustiest and best servants, and also as trustee in
my wife's right, and having our own servants
always with us until emancipation.
The memories of that connection are of almost
unmixed pleasure. In the interests of truth and candor,
which I intend shall characterize these letters, I should
here remark that at I saw slavery under its most
favorable aspects. My home was in Liberty county,
Ga., where that curse of Ireland, landlord
Page 9
absenteeism, did not exist, the planters, almost without
exception, visiting their plantations during the
summer at least twice a week, and spending the six
months, including the winter, among them; in this
county, too, at the period when my recollections of
slavery began, our people had enjoyed for some time
the apostolical labors of Rev. C. C. Jones, D. D.,
nomen clarum et venerabile. It is believed, however, that my
experience will be found typical of the general
experience; for while the congestion of the negro
population in the rice and sugar districts, and
measurably in some parts of the cotton belt, was
accompanied by evils elsewhere unknown, it is
believed that the great majority of this race were
distributed into smaller bodies, in more direct contact
with their masters.
As a babe, I drew a part at least of my nourishment
from the generous breasts of a colored foster mother,
and she and her infant son always held a peculiar
place in my regards. A black nurse taught me, it is
probable, my first steps and first words, and was as
proud of both performances as the happy mother
herself. With little dusky playmates, much of my
holiday on the old plantation in the
Page 10
winter season was passed. Some parents were in this
matter more particular than mine. On one plantation, I
remember, the rule was that the white and black
children were both punished if found playing
together. My association with them was, I admit,
somewhat to the detriment of my grammar, a fault
which my schoolmaster speedily remedied, but never
to the damage of my morals; for be it recorded, to their
everlasting honor, while their words were sometimes
coarse, they were rarely vulgar, and never profane. My
experience may have been exceptional, but I do not
remember, even among the adults, a single profane
swearer!
With my little playmates I, as other children who
are constantly rehearsing the drama of life, some
times played at preaching; our pews, the leaf of a door
set against the palings; three shingles, conveniently
arranged, my pulpit; and a small book which I could
not read, my Bible and hymn book; if the preaching
was short and incoherent, the singing was neither. In
my case this peculiar turn was not strange, for I bore
the name of one of our pastors (the extent of the
area occupied by the congregation during summer
made the services of two necessary),
Page 11
and my father's plantation residence being
next but one the nearest to the church, and he a
prominent officer of it, was the preacher's home. In
those days the old Midway church was known far and
wide; and many is the Northern preacher visiting the
South (not to say Southern) who found a warm
welcome beneath the roof of our paternal mansion.
Among them a frequent guest was the venerable
octogenarian, Rev. Dr. McWhir, a polished Irish
gentleman, finished scholar and learned divine, who
had taught a school of which Washington was a
trustee, and was the minister to whom the President
apologized for returning thanks in his presence,
replying to Mrs. Washington's remark, "My dear, you
forget that there is a clergyman at the table;" "My
dear, I wished him to know that I am not a graceless
man." Here, too, winter after winter, was entertained
Rev. Dr. Ebenezer Porter, of Andover Seminary, then
admired all over the country, as much for the
soundness as the solid attainments of its learned
faculty. I remember to have heard my father say that
Dr. P. was accustomed to observe that he always felt
like taking off his hat in the presence
Page 12
of the grand old moss-covered live oaks, for
which that region was and is noted.
At college, to which I went with the lively sympathy
and good wishes of our people, I recall the faithful
service of Uncle Peter, and at the seminary of Uncle Jack,
not to speak of their wives. In the up-country,
the titles of respect which Southern children
were taught never to omit, were "Uncle"
and "Aunty;" in the low country it was "Daddy"
and "Maumma."
Coming events seem to have cast their shadows
before them; for the child-preacher, when he came
forth from the school of the prophets, began to
preach to negroes in earnest, in their own special
building (and a more appreciative and sympathizing
audience he never has had); and in the old ancestral
church, in which master and servant worshipped together,
the colored people packing the wide, deep gallery,
baptized from the same marble font, and taking
the elements of bread and wine at the same
time, from the silver baskets and gold-lined silver
goblets, the gift of deceased slave-holders to the
church. My first sole pastoral charge embraced a
colored as well as a white membership, and among
Page 13
the former were some of my most consistent and
valued members and attentive listeners. A regular
Sabbath-school for them, children and adults, was
taught by my young people, using Dr. C. C. Jones'
Catechism, a manual prepared especially for them.
And they also drilled them in hymns and tunes.
Catechumens were carefully instructed by the young
pastor in his own parlor, using the same manual as
his basis. Besides preaching to them, where comfortable
accommodations were provided in the common
church, a weekly lecture, for which he made the
same preparation which he did for the lecture to the whites,
was delivered to full and most appreciative
congregations, in a neat church building built for
them by the trustees (all slave owners) of a benevolent
fund, left to the county by a deceased slaveholder.
The unavoidable personal tinge given to this letter
claims, as its justification, the necessity of establishing
the competency and credibility of the witness.
Page 14
CHAPTER III.
THE OLD PLANTATION.
IT was situated in rich lands, abounding in malaria,
against which only the negro was proof. I
remember an instance of a planter who had spent only
one night on his plantation in this region, harvesting
his corn, rendered desperately sick by it; and another,
who lived in our village, dying from a high grade of
bilious fever thus contracted. Consequently, the
summer months were spent by the white families in
what was known as "summer retreats," or villages
located out in the pine forests; the return to the
plantation was not considered safe until a killing frost
had fallen.
How we children watched with our keen eyes and
ears for the first signs which nature gave of winter's
approach! What joy it was to see the yellowing leaves
of the old china trees, which grew near the academies
and old Union church, the poverty of the soil hastening
the process; to feel the evenings
Page 15
growing cooler and cooler; to catch the first notes of
"the six weeks' bird," which we implicitly believed
always sang just that length of time before frost; to
hear the woodman's axe, as he cut and split the great
pine logs for the ordinarily unused fire-places of the
summer home; and oh! the happiness to wake some
bright morning and find the grass in the lawn all
covered with mimic snow, and as we chased each
other around the yard to mark the vapor pouring from
our parted lips; we children called it "smoke!"
Word is sent down to the plantation - and not soon
enough for our impatience - there come to move such
furniture as we carried from one home to the other the
double-horse wagon, and the two slow-moving ox-carts.
Before we can get ready to start, Stingo, the old
yard dog, a beast of exceeding ill-temper, aggravated
by age, and, I am sorry to say, by the plaguing of his
young master, to which his churlish disposition
naturally exposed him, divining the cause of the
unusual stir, set out by himself, and all alone made the
journey of fifteen miles of good road, ready on our
arrival to take charge of the family in their winter
home.
Page 16
Then the carriage and buggy are made ready, father,
and mother, and children and nurse packed in, and we are,
to our infinite delight, actually off at last for our winter
holiday and the unspeakable joys of plantation life.
On the way we halt at a clear spring, bubbling up by
the roadside, and lunch, always, among other
tempting edibles, upon shortened Johnny-cake!
I wish it were in my power to give the housekeepers of
our day the recipe; I only remember it was baked on a
long clean board leaned before a wood fire, and was
ambrosia to our healthy young appetites.
Resuming our journey along the broad, splendid
roads, worked every fall by details of plantation
laborers, under white supervision, we pass the old
church where we shall worship anon, and of which
more hereafter; drive along the wide Sunbury highway
a half mile or more, and then turn at a right angle into
our avenue, lined with live oaks, leading up to the
plantation mansion. It is an unpretending structure, a
large and roomy cottage of one and a-half storey,
unpainted, a chimney of brick at one end, of clay at the
other, a piazza running around
two sides, and its gable end facing the avenue. It
Page 17
has only four glazed windows, two lighting the parlor,
and the other two our parents' room just opposite, the
panes small, and so imperfect that many is the time that
our youthful imagination occupied itself, while waiting
for the house-girl to kindle the fire in mother's chamber,
in shaping its bubbles and defects into the images of
different creatures. The parlor, the common living room,
is papered with a pattern I have never seen elsewhere -
a curious group of figures, which I see distinctly before
me as I write. There is on the wide fireplace, with its
fender and andirons, polished until you can see your
face in them, a generous supply of oak and rich pine,
but the big door leading out upon the piazza is
persistently left open, I presume for ventilation, but
bringing the sensations of freezing and burning into
startling conjunction!
The arrangement of the houses is somewhat
peculiar, but convenient, and apparently made upon
the principle of placing everything as far as possible
under the master's eye. Looking out from the front
door, you see on your right the smoke and meat
house, made of yellow clay, in which the bacon (for
our planter raises or purchases his hogs from his
Page 18
own people) is cured and stored; on the left-hand
corner, and in sight, is the kitchen, where French cooks
are completely distanced in the production of
wholesome, dainty and appetizing food; for if there is
any one thing for which the African female intellect has
natural genius, it is for cooking. Just over the palings of
the front yard, you see the cotton houses, and directly
in front the horse gin, with its wide branching arms
carrying round and round all day the noisy rattling
chain which turns the hickory rollers inside, with their
lips separating the little black seeds from the fleecy lint,
piling up in a growing bank of snow behind the screen.
On the left, just beyond the stile (we called it the
"blocks"), your eye takes in the stables and carriage-houses,
and still farther away, and stretching to the left
and in front, the single and double rows of cottages,
the "quarters," the homes of the laborers, with their
vegetable gardens, chicken coops, pig pens, rice ricks,
and little store-houses. The only thing in the rear, and
invisible from the front door, are the rice barns and
winnowing house (for rice and Sea Island cotton
constitute about in equal parts the market crop), and
the vegetable garden, stocked with broad-headed
Page 19
cabbages in winter, and with its beds of fragrant
chrysanthemums and the sweetest roses I have ever
smelt! On every hand, the corn fields, with their
brown stalks, and cotton fields with their leafless
black bushes, stretching away to the encircling forests,
and beyond them on the left the road leading
by two tall sweetgums to the rice fields, great lakes
now, and frequented by water fowl, and fringed with
the dense moss-draped cypress swamps.
Such is a picture of the plantation home in which a
large part of the sunny days of my childhood and
youth were spent, and in immediate contact with the
African race; and here for the present I close.
Page 20
CHAPTER IV.
OCCUPATIONS AND SPORTS.
IT is not my intention to describe in this letter the
ordinary work of a plantation, but only the
occupations and amusements of the younger members
of the planter's household.
Many of these were shared by the boys and girls of
the family in their earlier years. These were, first, the
almost daily visits to the cotton houses, where it was a
pleasure to help the little slaves in beating up with
switches the snowy cotton, as it lay upon the elevated
scaffolding, airing in the winter's sunshine; or to take
hold of the crank of the whipper, which, with its long
revolving shaft, with numerous radiating spokes,
separated the dust and trash from the cotton; and then
to stand by the ginner and watch him, or be permitted
for a few minutes ourselves to feed the grooved
hickory rollers, as they draw in the fleecy cotton and
divide the lint from the seed; or to supervise the packer,
as suspended in his
Page 21
distended bag from the upper floor, with many a
grunt, he, with his heavy pestle, forces the lint into
the bale. Then what joy it was, in the keen winter's air,
to perch upon the long beam outside, and travel miles
and miles in a circle, ever-repeating itself, permitted as
a special favor, for which a plate from the dinner table
was exacted and willingly promised, and paid
ourselves to drive the team.
At another time the barn-yard would be the special
attraction, with its long parallel stacks of sheaves of
golden rice. The dirt floor is beaten hard and swept
clean, and the sheaves arranged upon it side by side;
and now the stalwart laborers, with their hickory flails,
beat off the heads of grain from the yellow straw; the
obliging servants make for us children, or, if
sufficiently skillful, we make ourselves, lighter flails,
and, with our slighter blows, emulate in fun the heavier
strokes of the men. And now the grain and broken
straw are taken in baskets up the steps of the lofty
winnowing house, which stands, stilt-like, upon its
four upright posts; and as the grain and beaten straw
are forced through a grated hole in the floor, the wind
(faithfully whistled for) comes and carries off the chaff,
and the round mound
Page 22
of rice steadily grows beneath. The rhythmical beat
of the numerous flails is accompanied by a recitative
and improvised song of endless proportions, led by
one musical voice, all joining in the chorus, and can be
heard a mile away, "The joy of the harvest," of which
a Hebrew prophet speaks.
A spell of cold weather sets in, and now the well
fattened hogs must be killed, dressed, and cured. We
look on in the frosty air of the early morn, interested
spectators, as the porkers are each dispatched by one
dexterous blow of the axe, and then immersed in a
cask of hot water to take off the hair, and aid in the
trying up of the fat into lard and "cracklings," and,
nothing loth, assist in the discussion at the family
table of the spare-ribs and sausages; then there are
horses to be ridden, and the difficult art acquired of
keeping one's equilibrium upon the perilous edge of a
frisky steed; then there are evening walks with our
sisters up the long oak-lined avenue, and rambles
through the encircling woods in pursuit of the black
sloes and yellow haws and other winter berries. And
then in early spring the cattle, turned out to graze in
the fields and forests in the mild Southern winters, are
to be hunted up and
Page 23
penned, and the young calves marked and branded;
the latter operation performed by the cowherds, and
the former furnishing ample field for the exercise of
our newly-acquired horsemanship.
As we grow older, our sisters and us boys begin to
separate in our pursuits for the most part. Now comes
the savage age, the period of traps and bows and
arrows; and many is the sparrow and robin brought
home to our admiring sisters as trophies of our
woodcraft and skillful marksmanship. From the
Indian's implements, we are at last promoted to more
civilized weapons, and actually (oh! height of a
country boy's ambition!) own horse, saddle and
bridle, dog and gun. Many now is the gray squirrel,
and long-eared rabbit, and gentle-eyed dove, and
plump partridge that falls under our new weapon.
And, grown more ambitious, bird-shot is exchanged
for duck and turkey-shot; and with my "man Friday"
or boy "Dick" as inseparable companion, we are off
for the rice-fields. In those days the teal and English
ducks, as we called them, abounded in the two rice
swamps between which the plantation was situated;
and occasionally a flock of wild geese, to my intense
excitement, settled down among them.
Page 24
When frightened from their feeding-grounds by the
passing of a wagon over the causeway bridges, or the
sound of a gun, the water fowl took flight for a few
minutes, to circle around and then to return, the noise
of their wings was like that of a mighty rushing wind.
The settlement of the Northern lakes, their breeding
places even before I was grown, perceptibly
diminished their numbers. Well do I remember the day
when two fortunate successive shots brought me nine
fat ducks, five of which I shouldered, leaving four for my
faithful companion; and it was no light task to get them
home. But I felt proud as Julius Cæsar decreed by the
Roman Senate a triumph, and coming home from the
war of Gaul or of Britain, when I passed the groups of
servants about the cotton-houses and listened to their
admiring comments. To secure these trophies I did not
scruple, with my little comrade, to crush, barefooted and
barelegged, a whole day through the thin ice which
crusted the broad, overflowed rice fields, and suffered
no harm. I was never tyrannical, as Southern boys
generally were not, but sometimes a little positive and
threatening in making Dick divest himself of pants, that
he might cross
Page 25
some deep canal, which his young master did not
care, with his rolled-up trousers, to attempt, to get his
dead birds. Later on, duck and turkey-shot gave way
to buckshot; but of that I will not now write, because
it would take me into manhood.
Often I made adventurous voyages in the lake-like
rice fields in my bateau, with its extemporized sail, and
prudently provisioned with sweet potatoes roasted in
a fire built on shore. Coffin shaped, when it was
building in the street of "the quarters," the servants,
as they came in from their work, with concern
depicted in their faces, would ask, "Who is dead?"
leading some of the family to predict that it would
prove my coffin, which prediction, like many others as
human, has proven false.
Then, when the dog-wood flower whitened the
forests, came the spring fishing, Our rice fields were
drained by wide, deep canals, stocked with various
kinds of fresh water fish - trouts, mud-fish, cats, eels,
chubs, perch (I give our names without vouching for
their correctness). "Golden's drain" ("dreen" my
black companions termed it,) was the canal oftenest
visited, and with best results. I can remember to this
day the very appearance of the different
Page 26
places where we broke our way through the
sea myrtles to get the water's edge; and some positions
inconveniently near the holes in the bank of two
big alligators, male and female, which we had named.
Later in the season, as the waters became low, our
negro men and boys "churned" for fish - a sport in
which I sometimes shared. The operation was this: A flour
barrel was taken, both ends knocked out, and the hoops
secured; then a half-dozen boys and men, thus
provided, would range themselves across a canal, and
moving in concert, would each bring his barrel at
intervals down to the bottom. The moment a fish was
covered, its presence was betrayed by its beating
against the staves in its efforts to escape; when the
fisherman instantly covered his barrel with his breast, and with his hands
speedily capturing it, threw it to the little negroes on
the dam, who quickly strung it upon stripped
branches of the sea myrtle tree. How they managed
to handle the cat fish, with its sharp and poisonous
spines, I cannot imagine; perhaps their horny hands
were impervious to them, as they were to the live
coals of fire which I have often seen them
Page 27
transfer with naked fingers from hearth to pipe;
sometimes (an experience of which I have a lively
personal recollection) a moccasin was covered, and
then there was a rush to the shore, minus barrel.
As the rice fields later in the spring dried up in the
heat, they left exposed the holes of the alligators - an
animal which, more frequently than we liked, fed on
uncured bacon, and occasionally docked, without
improving her beauty, the tail of some thirsty cow.
And now a long, lithe, slender pole is cut, its larger
end furnished with a stout iron hook, and a negro
man wading up to his waist in the water, feels with it
until he touches the living occupant, when with a
dexterous turn he fastens the hook under the
alligator's foreleg, and now commences the tug of war!
He is by main force dragged (in which operation other
willing hands join) to the land, the pole allowed to
turn with his revolutions as he comes to the shore,
hissing like a goose. By a well-aimed blow of the axe,
his head, with its formidable armature of teeth, is
severed from its dangerous muscle, and his almost
equally formidable weapon, his sweeping tail, is
paralyzed. Sometimes, when unable to find the
saurian, the pole is withdrawn;
Page 28
there are marks of teeth in startling proximity to
the portion grasped by human hands! Well do I
remember that, when somewhat callow, I would
occasionally take to a tree until assured that the
decapitation was a success!
It is easy to see how such a life, in which white and
black, with the due subordination of master and
servant preserved, shared the same sports, contributed
to the familiar and affectionate relations which so
notoriously from childhood bound master and servant
together; and how it gave the Southern youth a skill
with fire-arms rarely attained in a shooting gallery, and
a free, firm, and graceful seat in the saddle, seldom if
ever acquired in the sawdust arena of a riding school;
and how it developed a splendid physical manhood,
unknown to the dwellers in the cities, with their billiard
table exercise and theatrical diversions, and what is at
best but a poor substitute for outdoor sports, the gymnasium.
Page 29
CHAPTER V.
THE NEGRO - HOW HE WAS HOUSED, FED,
CLOTHED, PHYSICKED, AND WORKED.
IN this letter I shall speak, not without passing
allusions to practices prevailing elsewhere, mainly of
the general custom, with regard to the above matters,
in my own native county; convinced that the
representation will be recognized by the well-informed
as a fair average picture of the conduct of
the entire South.
The houseson some plantations were constructed
of sawed lumber, furnished by the adjacent water-
mills, or cut out by the negro sawyers laboriously, and
not very accurately, with the whip-saw, worked in pen
or pit, and making a tolerably fair joint possible. On
our plantation they were, for the most part, covered
with a weather-boarding of clapboards, split along the
grain with what was called a frow, and from short cuts
of cypress logs, and not admitting of a very close
fitting. The houses were never lined within, so that
only the thickness of a single
Page 30
board kept out the winter's air and cold. Usually the house
had two or more unglazed windows, and a front and a back
door, and was warmed by a clay chimney, with a wide
hearth, abundantly supplied with oak and pine. You entered
first the common living room. Separated from it, and with
its door, was the family bedroom; and if the children were
half-grown, you would find frequently one or two "shed-rooms,"
or leantos, in the rear, furnishing all proper privacy.
The furnishing of the servants' home was primitive. There
were a few benches and a rude rocker, all of home
manufacture; shelves in the corner, containing neatly
scrubbed pails and "piggins," made by the
plantation coopers of alternate strips of redolent white
cypress and fragrant red cedar, bright tins and white and
colored plates, with the never absent long-necked gourd
dipper, and beneath them the ovens, pots and skillets,
the simple but most efficient paraphernalia of the mother cook.
The bedroom had a few boxes, containing
the simple finery and Sunday clothes of
the family; the week-day garments hung upon a string
stretched across the corner; the bedstead consisted of a few
boards nailed across a pair of trestles, and covered
Page 31
with the soft black moss so abundantly yielded by the
adjacent swamps, and quite a number of good warm
blankets, in which the sleepers, oblivious of change of
seasons, would wrap themselves up, until not a square inch
of sable skin was exposed.
Their foodwas mainly maize, which, where a public
mill was handy, was ground for them; on my father's
place they ground it themselves on the common hand
mill; also the sweet potato, abounding in starch, the main
nutritious ingredient in all food products; and easily and
quickly cooked in the ashes, or baked before a fire. The
weekly allowance for a "hand" or full worker was, I
believe, a peck of corn, and four quarts additional for every
child; and a half bushel of sweet potatoes to each adult,
and to each child in same proportion. This weekly fare the
year round was with us supplemented, in the season
when the work was unusually heavy, by rations of
molasses, or bacon, or salt fish; and an occasional beef. To
this, thrifty servants added rice, of which they were as fond
as the Chinese, and which they cultivated themselves in
patches allotted them, and with seed and time afforded by
their masters; and chickens and bacon of their own raising
and curing, and fish
Page 32
of their own catching. So abundant were the rations of corn,
that at the end of a week the careful house-holder sent quite
a bag of it to the store to be exchanged for calico or
tobacco!
As to their clothing, two good strong suits were given every
year - in the summer, white Osnaburgs; in the winter, a kind
of jeans, partly cotton and mostly wool, and stout brogans.
The clothes were often cut and made up "in the big house"
by negro seamstresses. The house-women were clad in a
very neat fabric called "linsey woolsey," and with the
house-boys fell heirs to the half-worn garments of the young
masters and mistresses. A good warm blanket was given each
worker every alternate year; so that a little care accumulated
an abundance of warm bed covering.
As for their physicing, this was largely, and not
unskillfully, done by the planter himself. In each plantation
library was a book of medicine - my father's, I remember,
was "Ewell's Practice" - books written without technical
phrases, clearly describing, in the language of the common
people, diseases and their remedies. As the maladies of the
African, with his simple civilization, were rarely obscure,
Page 33
many planters acquired a very considerable skill in
diagnosing and prescribing; and probably killed no more of
their patients than the young M. D. graduate is said to kill,
just in getting his hand in ! A big jug of
castor oil was always on hand, but it had to be
kept under lock and key, so fond was the darkey of dosing
himself for any and every ailment with that antiquated and
heroic remedy; another thing he had the utmost faith in was
the lancet; for, according to his simple therapeutics, it let the
bad blood out; just as rubbing a sprained ankle with cold
water toward the toes would send the inflammation from
their tips into nothingness! When a case, however, was too
serious or complicated, or obscure, for the planter's
knowledge or skill, or obstinately refused to yield to the
few remedies of his materia medica, Tom or Jerry was
mounted on a swift horse and sent post haste for the doctor,
five or ten miles away! Whenever we met a negro riding
furiously, we always divined, "Going for the doctor," and
were seldom wrong. He only checked up his foaming steed
long enough to confirm our surmise, for it was his peculiar
joy to tell the news, especially if bad. The doctor, it must be
admitted,
Page 34
had but a poor chance either to cure or at his leisure to
run up a bill, and this practice of only sending for his
services in desperate cases depressed patient and
doctor and nurses, and contributed sometimes to a
fatal result. "To send for the doctor" was, in plantation
belief, to give up the case; and the doctor's patients
recovered only by a special miracle; but when
they did not, they at least died secundem artem.
As for their work, they were never called out in the
rain, and open sheds were always provided in distant
fields against thunder showers. In some parts of the
South they were, with an interval of a noon day rest of
several hours, in the field from "sun up" to "sun
down," but in all such instances their food was cooked
for them, and they were generously fed upon full
rations of bacon. With us the work was, in the
main, extremely light. It was the duty of the men to
split the pine rails with which the plantation was
enclosed, to clear the forest from the "new ground"
prepared for tillage. The women and the "thrash
gang" - i. e., the half grown boys and girls - made up
the fences, the men commonly drove the plow, the
women never handled anything thing heavier than the
hoe; in the harvest both
Page 35
used the sickle, the men threshed the rice and trod the
cotton foot-gin, while to the women was assigned the
easier task of sorting the lint of its specks and leaves.
Our lands were light and friable and easily worked,
and for a large part of spring and summer the hands
were allotted task work; and many is the time I have
in the spring season seen the industrious laborer
shouldering his hoe, with the sun high in the sky,
ready to work his own allotted patch in the rice field,
or to go "churning" or lounging and gossiping in the
village street!
Compare the average house of the slave with the
one-roomed mud hovel of the Irish tiller in Roman
Catholic Ireland, with no privacy by day or night; the
suitable and substantial clothing and bed covering
supplied the slave with the scanty and sometimes
ragged raiment of the poor in our great cities, and
even laborers in our factories; their big fires, wood ad
libitum, with the miserable, smouldering embers over
which the poor sewing women crouch shivering in
Northern cities; the excellent nursing and good
medical attention given the slave, with the condition
of many of the poor work-people, who dare not, or will
not in their pride, call in a physician, for
Page 36
whose services they are unable to pay; compare hours
of labor in the open air, not pushed to exhaustion and
comparatively short, with the long and drastic work of
many artisans, against which there is a constant
demand for restrictive legislation; and add to this the
consideration, that if the white master lived in
comparative luxury upon the fruit of the labor of his
slaves, he had all the care and forethought and
responsibility of directing and organizing the labor for
united efficiency; in a word, that he supplemented the
African brawn with Anglo-Saxon brain; and it will be
perceived that no laboring population in the world were ever
better off than the Southern slaves; and that there never
was a falser accusation made against the Southern planter
than this, harped upon by abolitionists of old, and repeated
sometimes by Northern preachers now, that "he kept back the
hire of the laborer." The plain truth is just this, that no tillers of the soil, in ancient or modern times, received such
ample compensation for their labors. He was not paid down, it is true, in cash, but he was amply
compensated for his toil in free quarters, free medical attention,
free food, free firewood, free support of sick,
Page 37
infirm, aged and young, and the free supply of that
organizing faculty which utilized labor and made it
more productive and capable of supporting, without
the remotest fear of starvation, or even of scarcity,
and without appeal to public charity, of entire slave
communities, often as large as that of a good-sized
village of whites!
Page 38
CHAPTER VI.
THE NEGRO - NOW HE WAS GOVERNED.
IT was not unusual for defenders of slavery to
describe the institution as patriarchal; it was
undoubtedly such, but with some important modifications.
Abraham was a nomad; he had no permanent
connection with the soil, nor acquired more than a
transient ownership by the digging of wells for his
flocks; he had not a foot of it in actual possession,
although all Canaan was, by divine gift, his, for his
posterity. He did not sow and reap, as did his son
Isaac. He was in no sense amenable to the laws of the
land in which he temporarily sojourned with his family
and flocks. His household, composed of his wives and
servants "born in his house," or "bought with his
money," constituted an independent commonwealth,
of which he was the acknowledged sole and sovereign
head; his will was law. On the contrary, the planter and
his household were a part of the State. His slaves were
recognized as in measure
Page 39
the basis of the electoral apportionment. They were,
so far as capital offences were concerned, amenable to
the laws of the country. If a negro committed murder,
he was, by white and black testimony, and the verdict
of a white jury, condemned, and by a white judge
sentenced, and by a white sheriff hung. But all other
offences, such as are now carried by them into a
justice's court, were adjudicated by the master, from
whose decision there was no appeal.
First, the master was the supreme authority on the
plantation, in all matters but those in which human life
was involved. Was a servant suspected of or caught
thieving, or fighting, or beating his wife, he was
summoned before the master, the witnesses heard, and
justice, without appeal to innumerable authorities or
the "law's delay," swiftly overtook the offender; the
invariable penalty: so many lashes, according to the
gravity of the offence. Over the house servants, the
mistress had co-ordinate authority; indeed, the master
seldom interfered in the domestic rule, save when
called upon to assist. The sons and daughters of the
planter also exercised a measure of authority,
especially over the younger
Page 40
slaves, although they never, as a rule, were allowed
to punish offenders.
Next to the planter in authority was the overseer.
It was mainly upon large plantations, where the master
needed aid, or where the plantation was owned by
an unprotected female, or where the owner was
habitually non-resident, that this important official
was brought into requisition. He was usually a
small planter, of acknowledged skill and experience
and success, and ability to manage negroes. He
usually lived on the place, in a house provided for
him, getting a small salary in money, but allowed
the use of horses, servants, food, and firewood. He
was usually a man of family, and not infrequently
saved enough to become in turn an owner of slaves
and plantation. He exercised in the master's absence,
authority over the slaves, with plenary power
to punish offenders against plantation law and
neglect of work, and his instrument was the lash.
Next to him stood the negro driver. Dr. C. C.
Jones studiously avoided the use of this term, calling
that official on his plantations the "foreman;"
but in reality the term in Southern ears had no more
suggestiveness of cruelty to men than the phrase
Page 41
"carriage-driver" has of cruelty to animals; and there
was no more abuse of power ordinarily in the one case
than in the other. The driver commonly carried what
was known as a "cotton planter" - a short whip with
heavy handle and tapering thong, plaited in one piece.
It was usually worn around his shoulder, and was
more a symbol of authority than an instrument of
service; a reminder of the penalty of neglect than an
implement of suffering.
Now, in regard to the actual exercise of this power
and authority by planter, overseer and driver, we
hesitate not to affirm that it was, in the main, as
humanely administered as the imperfection of human
nature permitted. As for the lash, it was used rarely
upon the bare back, or excessively; and it
should be remembered that it is only recently that
flogging with the cat-o'-nine tails has been abolished
in the navy. Although all intelligent slave-holders
agreed with Dr. Thornwell, that all that the owner was
entitled to was the reasonable service of the slave,
and control of time and person only so far as was
necessary to secure that end, there were undoubtedly
masters who, at least in practice, seemed to assume
that they owned their bodies as well as
Page 42
their service; masters who abused their authority to
corrupt. I recall one instance now in the family of a
favorite body-servant of my father, whose wife belonged
to a wicked planter, although a professor of
religion, in which, while only persuasion was used, the
planter abused his position, with the consent of
parents, to the ruin of a daughter; their insensibility to
the sin and shame was to me the saddest part of the
business. Then there were planters who were cruel. I
recall in our county only two; the one a Southerner by
birth. He flogged a slave to death!
But the fellow-servants of his victim informed on him;
the body was exhumed and their statements found
correct, and upon their testimony and circumstantial
proof he was, by a jury of indignant planters, sent to
the Georgia penitentiary and ineffaceably branded as a
felon. The other was a Northerner, and I remember to
have heard the remark frequently made, that, while
there were many honorable exceptions,
as a general rule, the Northerners made the
severest masters; and the explanation given was that
they had not grown up with and formed attachments to
the negro, and judged his capacity and energy by a
white man's standard. This
Page 43
man was a member of our ancestral church; actually
had his cook up before the Session for not making the
full tale of waffles, as I have heard my father
laughingly tell. He was so miserly withal that on more
than one occasion he was known to direct a belated
traveller to the minister's house as the village hotel,
who, after "taking his ease at mine inn," and calling
for all he wanted for man and beast, was, upon asking
his bill next morning, astounded to find how he had
been duped! He was also credited with opening his
ditches on Sunday in a wet spell of weather - a thing
unheard of in that Sabbath-observing community -
and of rationing his servants in part on sour oranges!
It was his practice to canter on his horse from slave to
slave and whip them in the cotton rows! My father
related that he once came unexpectedly upon him just
emerging from the woods with an armful of young
hickories; unable to hide them, he mumbled out an
apology about "the aggravating character of negroes!"
Well, his people killed him finally, as he deserved to
be! Striking him in the head with the eye of a hoe, they
saddled his horse, and, whipping him, sent him flying
through the big gate and across the bridge to
Page 44
the town; and adroitly bloodying a knot which rose
from one of the planks, they said that he had been
thrown by his horse upon the bridge and instantly
killed. Only a quarrel among them brought the killing to
light a year after, when the body was taken up and
examined and the story found correct. Several were
convicted and hung. But I doubt not more sympathy
was felt for the slave than the master. These were clearly
exceptional cases, as rare, and no more indicative of
general treatment of slaves than the conduct of the
father who sat his child upon a red-hot stove to help
him to recite the Shorter Catechism, is of the Northern
Presbyterians' treatment of their children!
Humanity to slaves was secured by more than one
influence. First, the Southern planter was as
kindhearted and naturally philanthropic as any class of
men found anywhere; then with us he was usually a
college-bred man and of liberal culture. Not a few of
them were as noble Christian gentlemen as were ever
produced by any civilization; then there was a powerful
public sentiment, which ostracized a cruel master. In
addition to this, self-interest exercised a powerful
influence in restraining from cruel treatment.
Page 45
Injury to the slave was pecuniary loss. A
curious illustration of the potency of this principle
came under my observation in our civil war. Planters,
who cheerfully surrendered their sons to the army,
protested against the use of their slaves in the
trenches! Then, above all, there was a strong
attachment between the master and the servant, the
natural result of closest association from childhood,
which made cruelty foreign to the very nature of the
owner.
As for the overseer, instances occur to me where
the office was abused in both the directions just
indicated. But these, again, were exceptional. The
overseer usually enjoyed the protection of a family;
wife and children throwing around him all the
restraints of home life. He did not, perhaps, abuse his
authority as a means of corruption, any more than the
foreman of a factory; then, if cruel in his treatment,
there was always the right of appeal to the owner.
Convicted, the overseer received his "walking papers,"
his salary in full, with notice to leave as soon as he
could get ready, and with a damaged reputation.
As for the negro driver, much the same line of
Page 46
remark applies to him. He was not sustained in his
immorality, if he used his power to make life pleasant,
or the reverse, to the women slaves to accomplish his
purposes, and if cruel he was instantly deposed. The
driver, the carpenter, the carriage driver and the house
servant constituted the negro aristocracy. To be cast out of that
favored circle of "the upper ten," was a disgrace almost more to be
dreaded than death. There was all the dishonor in being
"broken" as a driver, as it was termed, that there is in the
army in being reduced to the ranks! It was by no means
an unusual transaction, and occurred frequently
enough to exercise a wholesome restraint upon the
strong passions of the negro official.
In our next we shall treat of the marriage and
family relations of the negro.
Page 47CHAPTER VII.
MARRIAGE AND FAMILY RELATIONS.
A HIGH officer of the Northern Presbyterian
Church, Rev. Dr. Allen, Secretary of the Freedmen's
Committee, in his Quarter Century's Work Among the
Freedmen, affirms that when his church undertook their
evangelization, "There was not a legal marriage among
them, nor had been for two hundred years. A breach
of the seventh commandment was no bar to church
communion. Their religion was an enthusiasm rather
than a principle, the enjoyment of religious worship
depending chiefly upon the degree of animal
excitement produced. To ignore the fifth, seventh,
eighth and ninth commandments was not at all
inconsistent with their idea of the religion of Jesus."
A slander, containing in it a measure of truth, is at
once of the most offensive and dangerous kind. By it
truth is dishonored, and error given what it does not in
itself possess - vitality. Undoubtedly, there were not in
slavery times marriages legalized
Page 48
by such formal documents as licenses, issued by
competent courts; and the master had, under the law,
the power of separating, by sale or removal, husband
and wife; as this was a right supposed, whether
correctly or incorrectly, to be incident to ownership. In
too many instances the marriage relation was thus
broken up, not often voluntarily but frequently
providentially, by the death or bankruptcy of the
master. But I have known instances in which the
greatest sacrifices were made by humane masters to
keep husband and wife together. Let me give an
example or two occurring under my own observation.
Harry Stevens was a very valuable slave, for he was a
carpenter, pursuing his trade in Liberty and the
adjoining counties, and paying his master a sure
monthly and handsome wage, while laying by
something for himself and family. His wife and family
were freed by their master and sent to Liberia. My
father, in order not to separate the family, sacrificed half
his value, or about $750 or $900, and the balance was made up by
contributions of neighboring slave-holders, and Harry
became a citizen of the free African Republic! I have
known planters also to hire hands they
Page 49
did not need, in order to keep husband and wife
together. A service of this kind, which I had the opportunity
of rendering to a favorite servant, was last
summer gratefully recalled to my mind by his now
aged widow.
The impression sought apparently to be made by the
statement upon which we are animadverting is, that the
marriage relation among the slaves was very loose
and far from sacred. On the contrary, in our county not
only was it gladly celebrated by the white pastor or
colored minister, but, where they were preferred, by
negro watchmen, who were appointed by the church
as a kind of under-shepherds, and duly authorized to
solemnize marriages. We hesitate not to say that the
marriages thus contracted were, by the slaves
themselves and their masters, generally regarded quite
as sacred as marriages solemnized with legal license of
the courts; and the obligations as commonly observed
as among the same class anywhere. There were as
many faithful husbands and wives, we believe, as
are to be found among the working white population in
any land.
The weddings of the house-girls were usually
celebrated in the master's mansion - the bride decked
Page 50
for the altar by the skillful needles and elegant taste
of the young mistresses of the household. On a large sugar
plantation in Louisiana, owned by a distinguished Bishop of
the Episcopal church, who fell near Marietta, Ga., fighting for
the South, all the marriages were celebrated in the great
house. The broad hall was decorated for the occasion with
evergreens and flowers, and illuminated with many lights.
The honor coveted by the white children, and given as the
reward of good behavior, was to hold aloft the silver
candlesticks as the good Bishop read the marriage service. If
the couple had seriously misbehaved, they were compelled
by the master to atone for it by marriage; and in that case
there was no display, but the guilty pair were summoned
from the field, and in their working clothes, in the study
without flowers or candles, were made husband and wife.
On large sugar and cotton plantations marriages were not
permitted with persons off the place. Even in such cases the
choice was as wide as often falls to the lot of young white
people living in a village community. In our county they
were permitted to marry wherever they chose; and their
almost universal
Page 51
choice was of husbands and wives at a distance from one to
fifteen miles.
Saturday nights the roads were, in consequence, filled with
men on their way to "wife house," each pedestrian, or
horseman, bearing in a bag his soiled clothes and all the good
things he could collect during the week, for the delectation of
his household. Our cook, Maum Willoughby, used laughingly
to say that before greeting Dublin, her husband, she always
looked to see what he had brought in his bag for the family.
This practice, of course, was not very good for family
discipline; as the father was away from his child all the week,
as indeed often occurs with white toilers everywhere, and
they were left entirely to the management of the mother.
Sometimes it made trouble on the plantation when the
laborer came late to his Monday's task. It was, perhaps, due
to this fact that news in our county spread like a prairie fire.
The negro on his way to his family was as good as what was
called in the war, "the grape vine telegraph."
The negro almost invariably married, and married young,
for there were no costly preparations to be
made, no ambition of bride for a palace to be consulted.
Page 52
A house was speedily erected by the plantation carpenter
for the newly-married pair; as for food, raiment
and medicine, that was the master's concern. I
remember now but two negro bachelors, and I believe
they only remained in single blessedness for a season.
Of course, we would not hold them up as model parents;
this they were not, and only too much disposed
to resort to blows and slaps in family matters. But
they were neither better nor worse, perhaps, than the
working class of any country.
As for the strange intimation, that violations of the
seventh commandment were no bars to church communion
in Southern churches, it is simply, so far as
my acquaintance with the subject warrants positiveness
of statement, notoriously and injuriously false.
Two facts will be enough to prove this averment. In
our county - and I suppose it was largely true elsewhere -
the most frequent cause of suspension from
church fellowship, and even excommunication, was
offences against identically this commandment;
and then, farther, while here and there, especially
in the cities, were churches composed entirely of negroes,
members and officers, such exclusive organizations
were, as a matter of policy and safety, discouraged
Page 53
generally at the South. As a rule, the
churches of the South had a mixed membership,
white and black; and if they had a negro preacher,
he was usually under the control of the white pastor.
To insinuate, then, that violations of the seventh
commandment were, in the South, in slavery times,
no bars to church communion, is to charge the white
Christians of that section with a criminal complicity,
which only a complete array of well-attested facts
can redeem the author of the libel from the accusation
of a wilful bearing of false witness against his
neighbor. (Ex. xx.16.)
Page 54CHAPTER VIII.
"DADDY JACK." - A CURIOUS CHARACTER.
I WISH I had the genius of a Dickens, so skillful in
portraying life among the lowly, that I might do justice to the
odd creature whose name heads this letter. I suppose that he
must have been born (most people are), although I do not
remember having ever heard of his parents. Kindred he
seemed to have none - neither brother nor sister, uncle, aunt,
nor cousin; but he was one all to himself. A glance at his face
would have convinced you that if ever the slightest strain of
white blood mingled with the African current, it must have
effected a junction with it before the confusion of tongues at
Babel, when, as some ethnologists suppose, a diversity of
races was miraculously produced. When I first recollect him,
he had attained to middle life.
"Daddy" - the title of respect low-country children of
Georgia were taught to give every elderly
Page 55
man servant - "Daddy Jack" was a queer negro. For
example, he was mostly a bachelor. Single blessedness was
so uncommon among the slaves, and for a reason already
mentioned - the absolute easiness and certainty of the
support of a family - that I now recall but two bachelors in
my large acquaintance among them; and one of these, I
learned last summer in a visit to my native county, had
finally surrendered to the charms of the other sex, and, I
believe, died in the yoke. Daddy Jack was a Benedict once,
and for a short time. How it happened I am not able to say;
whether it was leap-year or not I am not advised; but
"Maum Nanny," a widow, ensnared him. My impression is
she did most, if not all, of the courting, and the all-prevailing
argument was her ability to cook a nice pot of
hominy, or, better still, a savory mess of rice, and skillfully
to bake a hoe cake!
Their honeymoon must have been a tempestuous one,
for, as the negroes were accustomed to express it, "they
divided blankets,"perhaps, before the next "full of the
moon." Nor was this to be wondered at, for he was, like
Rip Van Winkle, a shiftless, good-natured fellow; but,
unlike him, full of
Page 56
oddities that did not minister to a wife's comfort He
was at once the idlest and the most industrious slave
on the plantation; indolent where his own interests
were concerned, active where his master's were
affected.
I recall now the report of one of my dusky
playmates, of what he had just seen and heard, and in
his lingo: "As I bin gwine long de street, and pass
Buh Jack house, I yeddy somebody duh whistle, and I
look in de door and I see Buh Jack a sitten on de jice
and pullin' down de shingles to make fire wid!"
Most of our readers have heard of the Arkansas
traveller, who, accosting a man playing on his fiddle
beside the door of his ruined cabin, with the question,
"Friend, why don't you mend your roof," receives (the
bow suspended only for a minute for the purpose) this
answer: "When the sun shines, I don't
need to, and when it rains I can't." Daddy Jack made
the leaks with his own hand, and ran the risk of a
wetting to insure a warming! From the same authority,
I also learned that a straw hat which my father had
given him had been used by the improvident fellow in
kindling the fire.
My father had a great fondness for him, and gave
Page 57
him two suits of clothing where the rest received one;
and a blanket every year, instead, as was common,
every alternate year; but as he was unaccustomed to
the use of thimble and needle, and generally had no
wife or sister to mend for him, his clothing was not
always presentable; his newest blanket was speedily
in holes from a habit he had. In his room (parlor,
chamber, and kitchen, all in one), I do not remember to
have seen any sleeping accommodations. I doubt if he
ever undressed and went regularly to bed; his habit
was to rake aside the fire coals and then spread his
blanket upon the ashes of the hearth, where he could
feel its grateful warmth. Whether he temporarily
altered his sleeping habits upon the advent of his
bride, we cannot say, but think it doubtful.
I have read of some race that, by a singular
inconsistency, are nice about their persons, but not
cleanly about their clothing. Our friend, perhaps,
never washed his garments, and he had no female
friend to do it for him, but he was a diligent bather. At
midnight, in mid winter, he would divest himself of all
his clothing, and plunge into the "calf-hole," an
excavation made to contain water for the younger
cattle.
Page 58
Almost too idle to cook his own food, he would, as
my playmates laughingly said, "work all day for one
spoonful of hominy!" I have often heard him at the
hand-mill long before I, an early riser, was up, grinding
corn for some trifling reward.
My father gave him, as he did the rest of the people,
a piece of good land to cultivate in rice, of which he
was as fond as any Chinaman, and provided the seed;
well, he had to order the driver to flog him to make him
turn up the soil; and then he defeated the master's
kind design by beating out the rice and planting his
plot with the chaff.
I never knew him to be sick for a day, and he was
never behind-hand in his tasks, and never punished
for idleness where his master's work was concerned.
With all, Daddy Jack was a professing Christian, and
called himself a Presbyterian; but, as like as not, he
had not the first conception what the word meant,
except that it signalized the fact that he once "jined"
Midway Church, and not Newport, the Baptist, and
had been sprinkled and not dipped. He was, no doubt,
regular in attendance upon plantation prayers, and
sung loudly, when not asleep, and sometimes when he
was; and was always in his place
Page 59
at church, especially "Sacrament Sunday." Daddy
Jack had a profound conviction of the reality of both
heaven and hell. He was very sure two people of his
acquaintance were bound for the better of the two -
"Old Miss and Mass William." "He knew their calling
and election" by this token, the generous plates of
victuals they were accustomed to send the faithful
servant from their tables. Perhaps he had scriptural
ground for this persuasion; for was he not one of the
"little ones" to whom "the cup of cold water," or its
more valued cup of hot coffee, "was given in the name
of a disciple," and one of the hungry brethren whom
they had fed and concerning whom the Master would
say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the
least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
The death of my honored parents - the one scarcely
disturbed in her last hours by the guns of Fort
Sumter; the other, after a few weeks, on the next
national anniversary, following the companion of fifty
years' happy wedded life into the Beyond - caused a
division of property, and Daddy Jack passed to one
of my married sisters in the same county.
Page 60
The war went on, and I removed to a distant part of
the State, and after it to Louisiana, and so I lost sight
of Daddy Jack for a time, but I hope some day to meet
the dear old shiftless, good-natured, harmless fellow
in the better land, where all that was defective in his
organization and character will have been removed.
Recently I heard a colored bishop of the Methodist
Church exclaim, in an earnest address: "Some ask, 'will
we have the same color in heaven we have had on
earth?' This I do not care to know;
all I wish is to make sure of getting there, and not
being barely saved, but going 'sweeping through the
gates.' "
We cannot tell what changes will be effected at the
resurrection in the bodies of the saved; but some of
the whitest souls I have ever known dwelt in the
blackest of skins! Perhaps, and if some commentators
are correct, certainly, if color, as well as servitude, was
a part of the curse denounced upon Canaan for the sin
of Ham, it will be changed. But this we do know, that
nothing will sever the chain of holy love which in
heaven will forever bind heart to heart, and all to the
God of love; for hear the
Page 61
beloved John: "After this I beheld, and lo! a great
multitude, whom no man could number, of all
nations and kindreds and tongues, stood before the
throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white
robes, and palms in their hands." And to him the
angel makes answer concerning them: "These are
they which came out of great tribulation, and have
washed their robes and made them white in the blood of
the Lamb."
Page 62
CHAPTER IX.
FOLK LORE OF THE NEGRO.
FOLK lore, transmitted orally from sire to son -.
constituted the only literature of the negro slave, who,
as a rule, was unacquainted with the alphabet of his
master.
Here I hope I may be permitted, in accordance with
the general spirit and tenor of these letters which are
designedly and largely the testimony of one who
narrates what he has seen and heard, to recall some
childhood experiences. Before we were considered old
enough to attend evening religious services, we
children were left at home in charge of the house
servants, who were accustomed to entertain us by the
relation of negro fables.
Not a few Southern writers, notably our own Ruth
McEnery Stuart, have, in the field of fiction, correctly
portrayed both negro character and dialect; the author
named, with a pathos and sympathy with her lowly
subjects, which often exacts from
Page 63
those who knew the negro before emancipation the
involuntary tribute of tears: but only two of them
have wrought in the rich field of the negro folk lore -
Joel Chandler Harris and Charles C. Jones, Jr. The
fables related by these last mentioned writers were, in
the main, those recounted at the planter's
fireside to the never weary youthful auditors.
With Joel Chandler Harris's recitals, the thousands of
the readers of the Century have been made familiar in
the narratives of "Uncle Remus;" not so many have
perused the account of them in a little book from the
press of Houghton, Mifflin & Co., entitled, "Negro Myths from the Georgia Coast, told in the
vernacular," by Charles C. Jones,
Jr., LL. D. Reared in the same community with the latter
author, I desire to testify to its literal accuracy in story
and dialect. There is not a particle of fiction in either. I
learned from him that they were taken down from the
lips of old negroes in Liberty county, Ga. The
dedication of this little volume is characteristic, but
will be no surprise to those who had any knowledge
of domestic service in the South before emancipation:
"In memory of Monte Video Plantation, and of the
family servants,
Page 64
whose fidelity and affection contributed so
materially to its comfort and happiness."
Let me again bear my testimony as one who was by
marriage, a frequent visitor, and for weeks at a time, a
fortunate resident beneath the roof which sheltered the
""Apostle to the blacks," and the author who, as his
eldest born, bears his father's honored name, in one of
those typical Southern homes, in which polish and
culture were combined with piety, to the fact that these
family servants were all that the dedication of their
once young master portrays them to have been.
Between these stories of two authors, there is, as
might have been expected, some sameness, as they
were conscientious workers in the same general field;
but a perceptible variation in their versions and dialect,
due to the fact that they wrought in different parts of it -
Mr. Harris giving the dialect and folk lore of the
negroes of middle Georgia, and Mr. Jones those of the
negroes of the coasts of Georgia and of South
Carolina.
As the seaboard was first settled and supplied with
African labor, it is evident that the fables preserved
and recorded by the latter author have the
Page 65
preference as the originals. I have, in my partial
investigations, been astonished to find how far
these fables have spread into the interior, and how,
with natural and, in some instances, most amusing
variations, they have been transmitted by tradition
with substantial correctness. President George J.
Ramsey, of Silliman Collegiate Institute, Clinton, La.,
tells me that in the last years of the war, he, as a child,
heard "Uncle Remus" fables in East Virginia; and our
servant man, who was a Federal soldier in the war,
gives me substantially the story of the Tar Baby at the
Well, as told in Negro Myths, but with a laughable
variation in its ending - perhaps a Louisiana addition.
I will now, from the fifty-seven originals collected
by Charles C. Jones, Jr., give two specimens:
BUH SQUIRLE AND BUH FOX.
Buh Squirle bin berry busy duh gedder hickry
nut on de groun fuh pit away fuh feed heself and eh
fambly der winter time. Buh Fox bin er watch um,
and befo Buh Squirle shum, eh slip up an graff um.
Buh Squirle eh dat skaid eh trimble all ober, an eh
Page 66
bague Buh Fox let um go. Buh Fox tell um, say eh bin er try
fuh ketch em long time, but he hab sich sharpe yeye,
an keen yez, an spry leg, eh manage fuh dodge um; an
now wen he got um at las, eh mean to fuh kill um an eat
um. Wen Buh Squirle find out dat Buh Fox yent bin
gwine pity um an tun um loose, but dat eh fix fuh kill
um and eat um, Buh Squirle say to Buh Fox: "Enty you
know say, nobody ought to eat eh bittle befo eh say
grace ober um?" Buh Fox him mek answer: "Dat so;"
and wid dat, eh pit Buh Squirle een front er um, an he
fall on he knee, an kibber eh yeye wid eh han, an eh
tun een fuh say grace.
While Buh Fox bin do dis, Buh Squirle manage for
slip way; an wen Buh Fox open eh yeye, eh see Buh
Squirle duh run up de tree way him couldn't tetch him.
Buh Fox fine eh couldn't help ehself, an eh call arter
Buh Squirle, an he say: "Nummine boy, you done git
way now, but de nex time me clap dis han topper you,
me giune eat you fus and say grace arterward."
Best plan fuh er man fuh mek sho er eh bittle befo
eh say tenkey fur um!
Page 67
BUH WOLF, BUH RABBIT, AN DE TAR BABY.
Buh Wolf and Buh Rabbit bin nabur. De dry
drout come. Ebry ting stew up. Water scace. Buh
Wolf dig one spring fuh git water. Buh Rabbit him
too lazy an too schemy fuh wuk fuh isself. Eh pen pon
lib off tarruh people. Ebry day when Buh Wolf yent
duh watch um, eh slip to Buh Wolf spring, an
eh fill him calabash long water, an cah um to eh house
fuh cook long and fuh drink. Buh Wolf see Buh
Rabbit track, but eh couldn't ketch um duh tief de
water.
One day eh meet Buh Rabbit in de big road, an ax
um, how eh mek out fuh water. Buh Rabbit say: "Him
no casion fuh hunt water; him lib off de jew on de
grass." Buh Wolf quire: " Enty yuh blan tek water
outer my spring?" Buh Rabbit say: "Me yent." Buh
Wolf say: "You yis, enty me see you track?" Buh
Rabbit mek answer: "Yent me gwine to your spring,
mus be some udder rabbit; me nebber been nigh you
spring; me dunno way you spring day."
Buh Wolf no question um no more; but eh know
say eh bin Buh Rabbit fuh true, an eh fix plan fuh
ketch um.
Page 68
De same ebenin, eh mek tar baby, an eh guine, an
set um right in de middle er de trail wuh lead ter de
spring an dust in front er de spring.
Soon a mornin, Buh Rabbit rise and tun in fuh cook
he bittle. Eh pot biggin fuh bun. Buh Rabbit say:
"Hey! my pot duh bun. Lemme slip to Buh Wolf spring
an git some water fuh cool um." So he tek eh calabash
and hop off fuh de spring. When eh ketch de spring,
eh see de tar baby duh stan dust een front er de
spring. Eh stonish. Eh stop. Eh come close. Eh look at
um. Eh wait fur um fuh move. De tar baby yent notice
um. Eh yent wink eh yeye. Eh yent say nuttin. Eh yent
mobe. Buh Rabbit, him say: "Hey, Titer, enty you
gwine tan one side and lemme get some water? " De tar
baby no answer. Den Buh Rabbit say: "Leely gal,
mobe, me tell you, so me kin dip some water outer de
spring long my calabash." De tar baby wunt move.
Buh Rabbit say: "Enty to know my pot duh bun? Enty
you yeddy, me tell you fuh mobe? You see dis han? Ef
you don't go long an lemme git some water, me guine
slap you ober!" De tar baby stan day. Buh Rabbit haul
off an slap um side de head. Eh fastne. Buh Rabbit
Page 69
try fuh pull eh hen back, an eh say: ""Wuh you hole
me han fuh? Lemme go. Ef you don't loose me, me
guine box de life outer you wid dis tarrah han." De tar
baby yent crack eh teet. Buh Rabbit hit him bim wid
dis tarrah han. Dat han fastne too, same luk tudder.
Buh Rabbit say: "Wuh you up teh? Tun me loose. Ef
you don't leggo me right off, me guine knee you." De
tar baby hole um fast. Buh Rabbit skade an bex too. Eh
faid Buh Wolf come ketch um. Wen eh fine eh can't
loosne eh hen, eh kick de tar baby wid eh knee. Eh
knee fastne. Yuh de big trouble now. Buh Rabbit
skade den wus dan nebber. Eh try to fuh skade de tar
baby. Eh say: "Leely gal, you better mine who you
fool long. Me tell you fuh de las time, turn me loose!
Ef you don't loosne me han and me knee right off, we
guine bust you wide open wid dis head." De tar baby
hole um fast. Eh yent say one wud. Den Buh Rabbit
butt de tar baby een eh face. Eh head fastne same
fashion luk eh han an eh knee. Yuh de ting now! Po
Buh Rabbit dune for! Eh fastne all side. Eh can't pull
loose. Eh gib up. Eh bague. Eh cry. Eh holler. Buh
Wolf yeddy um. Eh run day. Eh hail Buh Rabbit:
Page 70
"Hey, Budder, wuh de trouble? Enty you tell me
you no blan wisit my spring fuh git water? Who
calabash dis? Wuh you duh do you any how?" But
Buh Rabbit, so condemn, he yent hab one wud fuh talk.
Buh Wolf him say: "" Nummine, I dune ketch you dis
day. I guine lick you now!" Buh Rabbit bague. Eh
prommus nebber fuh trouble Buh Wolf spring no more.
Buh Wolf laugh at um. Den he tek an lose Buh Rabbit
from de tar baby, en eh tie um teh one sparkleberry
bush, an git switch an eh lick um til eh tired. All de time
Buh Rabbit bin a bague an holler. Buh Wolf yent duh
listne ter him, but eh keep on duh pit de lick ter um. At
last Buh Rabbitt tell Buh Wolf: "Don't lick me no mo.
Kill me one time. Make fire and burn me up. Knock my
brains out gin de tree!" Buh Wolf mek answer: "Ef I
bun you up, ef I knock you brains out, you guine dead
too quick. Me guine trow you in de brier patch, so de
briers can cratch you life out." Buh Rabbit say: "Do,
Buh Wolf, bun me, brake me neck, but don't trow me in
de brier patch. Lemme dead one time. Don't terrify me
no mo."
Buh Wolf yent know wuh Buh Rabbit up teh
Page 71
Eh tink eh bin tare Buh Rabbit hide off. So wuh eh do?
Eh loose Buh Rabbit from the spakleberry bush. and
eh tek um by de hine leg an eh swing um roun, an trow
um way in de tick brier patch fuh tare eh hide, and
scratch eh yeye out. De minnie Buh Rabbit drap in de
brier patch, eh cock up eh tail, eh jump, an holler back
to Buh Wolf: "Good bye, budder! Dis de place me
mammy fotch me up!" and eh gone befo Buh Wolf kin
ketch um. Buh Rabbit too schemy.
The first of these fables, in the raciness of its wit,
equals anything in Æsop.
To the other, our Louisiana negro man contributes
this amusing variation as its close, which also
illustrates the "scheminess" of Buh Rabbit:
"Buh Bear comes along and finds Buh Rabbit in the
involuntary embrace of 'the leely gal,' the tar baby,
and inquires as follows: 'Hey! Buh Rabbit, wat you
duh da?' Says Buh Rabbit, moving to and fro as far
as his imprisoned members will admit: 'Oh, I duh
see-saw; wouldn't you like to see-saw, Buh Bear ?' 'Yes,'
says Buh Bear, in his innocence. 'Well, pull me off and
you git on.' Buh Rabbit released, Bruin takes his place;
and while
Page 72
stuck fast is taken for the thief. Buh Rabbit takes
himself off; and Buh Wolf beats Buh Bear almost to
death!"
These stories are almost entirely and purely fables -
that is, narratives in which animals are endowed with
speech; only to a very limited degree do human beings
figure in them. They are never, except in the remotest
sense, religious, and seldom, if ever, rise above the
level of the ethics of Benjamin Franklin's proverbs. If
any criticism is proper from a moral standpoint, I
should say that they, or some of them, glorify cunning
and falsehood at the expense of honesty and truth, but
in such a way that we cannot but laugh at the story,
while we withhold our admiration from its teachings. It
is also a curious fact that (for what reason we are at a
loss to say) the Rabbit is the embodiment of
smartness, and not the Fox, the Anglo-Saxon's model
of cunning, and who, by the way, in the story quoted,
is outwitted by the Squirrel.
The literary world is greatly indebted to the two
Georgia authors named, for rescuing from the
incoming tide of oblivion, which is fast obliterating all
that was peculiar in the past civilization of a people
Page 73
who were the innocent cause of the bloodiest and
most transforming war of modern times. For, strange to
say, and I now speak from the testimony of the author
of "The Negro Myths," who found much reluctance in
communicating them, and from my own observation in
the case of a negro woman whom I had raised, that not
only are the new ideas engendered by freedom
supplanting this folk lore, but the religion as now
taught among them by their colored preachers is
setting itself against their narration as sinful. They did
not perceptibly harm the morals of Southern children,
black or white, and were infinitely preferable to the
blood-curdling ghost stories with which some nurses
terrify the young in our day. They are certainly, in the
matter of injurious influence, not to be compared to the
dime novels, to which the almost universal acquisition
of the art of reading gives our young Africans
unrestricted access.
Page 74
CHAPTER X.
OLD MIDWAY - A TYPICAL CHURCH.
IT was remarked in a previous letter that the Southern
churches, with a few exceptions, had a mixed
membership; that is, were composed of whites and
blacks, the whole being under the government of
the former. In this respect, the Midway church was
a typical church. It had a membership of perhaps
five hundred, about three-fourths of whom were
negroes.
The church edifice, which was situated in Liberty,
one of the seaboard counties of Georgia, thirty miles
southwest of Savannah, was called "Midway,"
because equi-distant between the two great rivers - the
Savannah and the Alatamaha. It was central to a very
rich but malarial region, whose original growth was
cane, oak, hickory and cypress.
Bearing in colonial times the name of "St. John's
Parish," the county received by legislative enactment
shortly after the Revolution, the honorable title of
Page 75
"Liberty," in commemoration of its plucky conduct in
taking decided measures to join the other colonies in
their revolt, when the Provincial Council of Georgia
had refused to unite with them! It is a remarkable and
noteworthy fact, that a county which perhaps never
had more than between two or three thousand whites,
had thus the honor of contributing two signatures to
that immortal document, the Declaration of
Independence - Lyman Hall and Button Gwinnett.
Made rudely acquainted in earlier times with the
torch and tomahawk of the savage, it was her destiny
in the Revolution, as more recently in our civil war, to
know the baptism of fire and blood. Col. Prevost, of
the British Army, burned the rice in stacks, and some
of the houses of the planters, and reduced to ashes
the sacred edifice in which they had worshiped the
God of their fathers. General Screven was killed not far
from the church site. Col. McIntosh, one of her gallant
sons, who commanded the small earthen redoubt
protecting her flourishing little seaport of Sunbury, at
the mouth of the Midway, to the demand of Col. Fuser,
of unconditional surrender, returned the laconic reply:
Page 76
"Come and take it!" - an invitation finally and
prudently declined by the commander of his Majesty's
forces? When Washington visited Georgia in
1791 the "Congregational Church and Society at
Midway" presented to him a patriotic address, to which
the Father of his Country made a fitting and handsome
reply.
This early and ardent espousal of the cause of the
revolting colonies by the church and society of
Midway is, perhaps, to be accounted for by the
naturally stron gties which still bound them to New
England. Their ancestors came from Britain to secure
liberty of worship, and first settled not far from what is
now the city of Boston, at an Indian town, which, in
honor of the native place of some of the settlers, and of
a cherished minister, they called Dorchester. Sixty
years afterwards their descendants, largely influenced
by religious motives, moved as a church, with their
pastor, Rev. Joseph Lord, a Congregational minister, to
South Carolina, and settled on the Ashley river, about
eighteen miles above Charleston. This settlement
they also called Dorchester. After a residence of more
than fifty years, finding their lands impoverished and
insufficient for
Page 77
themselves and descendants, and somewhat
discouraged by their continued unhealthiness, they
again emigrated in a body, under their pastor and officers, to
Georgia, and effected a settlement in a district at the
headwaters of the Midway and Newport rivers, two
short tide-water streams, draining what is now known
as Liberty county. Coming to this wild country as a
church, they secured from the colonial government a
large tract of land, compactly situated; and by articles
of agreement the colonists pledged themselves not to
alienate any of their land to outsiders, save with the
unanimous consent of the society. They speedily built
a neat church, or "meeting-house," as it is called in the
records, "at the cross-paths," at a point central to the
settlement. Their first pastor at least was a
Congregational minister, and the government of the
church somewhat peculiar. It was not purely
Congregational; for the control of church matters was
not in the hands of the whole society, but of a
session, composed of all the male members, without
respect to age. Their officers were deacons and a
body of "select men" as they were called. Every year
the church went through the routine of electing
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a pastor. Retaining this nondescript form of church
government down to our late war, the church has from
early times been served by Presbyterian ministers only,
and its members have always regarded themselves as
Presbyterians.
Puritan by ancestry, they were a pre-eminently godly
people; first in their estimation was the church, and next
the school-house. The Sabbath was strictly observed.
One of the church officers was also justice of the peace.
Should some traveler attempt to pass on the Lord's day
with his wagons and teams on the public highway,
running by the church, he was by this zealous
administrator of law, human and divine, peremptorily
halted; but then taken home with him and freely and
most hospitably entertained, he and his beasts, and on
Monday sent on his way rejoicing, with a hearty
Godspeed!
The Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism
was diligently taught in all its families. Celebrating
some time before the late war its centennial, this
remarkable church (not to exhaust the roll-call of its
worthies) has furnished more than one theological
professor, such as Rev. Drs. Thomas Golding and
C. C. Jones; forty ministers of the gospel,
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not a few of whom have been eminent for their talents
and piety, for example, Rev. Dr. Daniel Baker; a number
of distinguished physicians and college professors,
not a few of them known in the scientific world, as for
instance, Dr. Joseph Jones, of New Orleans, and the
brothers Le Conte, of California. It has given eminent
men to the bar, such as Judge Law, late of Savannah,
Col. C. C. Jones, Jr., LL. D., of Augusta, Ga., and
others; it has supplied teachers by the hundred, and
has trained (only the judgment can reveal how many) a
multitude of saved sinners for heaven, and by her
liberal gifts of means and of men, like Way and
Quarterman, to foreign missions, has helped to extend
the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour in the world.
The war wrote "Finis" on the last page of this
remarkable and honorable history. The changed
relations of master and servant have consolidated the
blacks in this region, and scattered the whites into the
remoter and healthier parts of the county. A colored
Presbyterian church, under a white pastor, and in
connection with the Northern Assembly, are now the
only worshipers in the sacred edifice - built in 1790. It
is now, by permission of the descendants
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of the white members, used by the negroes,
upon the easy terms of keeping in good order
the adjacent graveyard," in which repose the ashes of
four or five godly generations. It is a church
with a finished history! But as her sons and
daughters, inheriting the sterling piety of their fathers,
gather annually upon this hallowed ground to lovingly
commemorate the historic past, they illustrate in their
own persons, characters, and celebration, the
blessed fact that the gracious influences set in motion
by an earnest Christian church, continue even when, in
the providence of God, it, as an organization, has
become extinct.
And the history of this venerable church, so briefly
sketched by one of her loyal and loving sons, it seems
to him, is but a providential comment upon those sweet
words of Moses: "Know, therefore, that the Lord thy
God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth
covenant and mercy with them that love him and
keep his commandments, to a thousand generations."(Deut. vii. 9.)
In our next letter we shall attempt to draw from memory
a picture of "Sacrament Sunday in old Midway church."
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CHAPTER XI.
SACRAMENT SUNDAY AT OLD MIDWAY
"THE sacraments of the New Testament are Baptism
and the Lord's Supper," says the Shorter
Catechism, which contains in brief the creed of this
ancient church, and which was diligently taught their
children. Both were commonly administered on
communion Sabbath, for seldom did the day
pass without numerous additions of white and black,
the latter almost invariably receiving adult baptism.
But it is probable that it was the Supper that was
mostly in the mind of our forefathers,
when they called communion Sabbath, occurring
four times every year, "Sacrament Sunday."
It was a great day with both white and black,
and anticipated with joy by the pious, and interest
by all. There was a peculiar quiet about the morning
of the sacred day on the plantation. All the
sounds of the busy week have ceased; the noisy
rattle of the chain of the horse gin is silent., the
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flails in the barnyard are still; few loud calls are heard
about the quarters; the negroes are seen sitting on the
sunny sides of their houses, mothers with their
children's heads in their laps, carrying
on in public an operation better suited for in-door
privacy; no sounds are heard but the lowing of the
cattle, the whinnying of the horses, the crowing of
the cocks and cackling of the hens; the gobbling of
the turkeys; the shrill cries of the geese; the winds
appear to be asleep, and the very sunshine seems to
fall more gently than during the week upon the widely
extended fields and surrounding woods!
Our honored father, a deacon of the church, sits by
the window, and with a knife carefully sharpened the
day before divides upon a clean white board the
wheaten loaves into little cubes of bread, and the
"elements," as they are called, together with the genuine
silver goblets and silver tankards and silver baskets,
previously polished by the deft hands of the house
girl, with the little contribution boxes for the offering in
aid of the poor, are all safely packed away in a wide
basket.
Prayers and breakfast over, the family dress for
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church; and now the order is sent out to the stable
boys and the carriage driver to "harness up;" and
directly the high-pitched carriage, with its lofty driver's
seat and swinging between its "C"springs, and the
two-wheeled "top-gig" and the saddle horses are
brought around to the front gate; and although it is
scarcely more than nine o'clock, and the distance "a
short mile," the entire family, as was the custom, ride to
church. As we roll along the broad highway, we find
the servants clean and neatly dressed and in their best,
some on foot and others in Jersey wagons, crowded to
their utmost capacity with little and big, and drawn by
"Marsh Tackey's," equal in bottom and strength to,
and no larger than, Texas ponies - all moving in the
same direction; those on foot carrying their shoes and
stockings in their hands, to be resumed after they shall
have washed in the waters at the causeway near the
church; for they believe in treading the Lord's courts
with clean feet! Many are the kind greetings and
mutual inquiries after the health of each other and of
their families, exchanged by whites and blacks.
We are among the first to arrive, but every
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moment we hear the thunder of vehicles rolling across
the half dozen bridges of the swamp causeway near at
hand, and the neighing of horses; and here come the
multitude, from distances of from one to ten miles and
more. Horses are unharnessed and secured, and the
worshipers fill the small houses surrounding the church,
or stand in the sunshine, or saunter about the grounds,
or visit the "graveyard."
Under my father's superintendence, the long narrow
red-painted tables and benches are brought out
from the vestry and carried into the church, and
arranged in the aisle before the pulpit. The church
building, 40x60 feet in size, is very ancient; it was built
in 1790; it is the successor of one destroyed by the
British, and of a plainer and coarser put up after the
Revolution. It is of wood, originally painted red, the
old color showing beneath the later white, and is
sumounted by a spire, with open belfry and a weather
vane, which used to puzzle our child brains to
ascertain what it was intended to represent. It has five
entrances, two of which admit to the gallery. Passing
in by the door, opening upon the graveyard, and near
which was our
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family pew, we look up a broad aisle to the pulpit,
which, small and closely walled in, soars aloft toward
the ceiling, and is surmounted by a sounding board,
like a gigantic candle extinguisher, supported by an
iron rod, the possible breaking of which often
aroused our infantile speculations as to what, in that
event, would become of the preacher! It was
reached by a lofty stairway running up in front.
At right angles to our aisle runs another as broad,
connecting the two other doors. Aisles run around
the sides of the audience room, and the pews are so
arranged that everybody seems to be facing every
body else! A wide gallery extends around three
sides, resounding often with the creaking of new
brogans, which the black wearers were not at all
disposed to suppress. The communion table and
benches reach the entire length of the broad aisle to
the pulpit; the whole covered with the whitest and
finest of linen (our mother's special care). A cloth
of the same kind conceals from view at its head the
sacred symbols of our Lord's atoning death. There
is above a single row of sashed windows,
out of reach, and transoms over the solid shutters of the
windows below; but not a sign of a stove in the
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church, although the air sometimes is frosty, and the
shut up atmosphere occasionally of the temperature of
the vaults in the cemetery hard by. And brides in the
olden time, in mid-winter, came to these services clad
in muslin, with only the protection of a shawl, and in
paper-soled slippers, laced up the ankles. Why there
never was any way of warming the church I never
knew, nor heard explained. Doubtless some caught
their death of the cold, which often made us children
shiver and long for the benediction which would
dismiss us to the sunny sides of the houses without or
to their fires within. It was not, however, ordinarily
bitterly cold for the winters were for the most part mild.
All things having been prepared, there is a
half-hour's prayer-meeting, attended by such
worshipers as have arrived early.
At eleven o'clock the regular communion service
begins, with an invocation from one of the pastors; for
we always had two. An earnest, well-written, often
eloquent, always solemn, sermon is preached from a
manuscript, either by the venerable Rev. Robert
Quarterman, long since gone to his reward or his
young and handsome coadjutor, Rev. I. S. K.
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Axson, now living in Georgia, a feeble old man;
* the
long list of names of members received at a meeting of
Session two weeks before, and "propounded" the
Sunday preceding, is read again, and white and black
candidates advance together, the last marshalled by the
colored preacher, Toney Stevens, a slave. The
candidates for baptism kneel and receive from the
marble font, at which all, white and black, infant and
adult, are baptized, the sacred sign of God's covenant
love. The new members dismissed to their seats, one of
the pastors gives out the hymn of institution (none
other was ever sung), "'Twas on that dark, that doleful
night;" during the singing of it the communicants fill
the seats at the long tables and adjacent pews; the
non-professors among the blacks have not been admitted to
the galleries above, as there is not room. After the
consecrating prayer, a tender address is made, and first
the bread is distributed in the same silver baskets and at
the same time, to all the communicants, white and black,
below and above; another address, and the wine is
passed around by the deacons, my venerated sire one
of them. The
* Since deceased.
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number of black communicants is so large, that Toney
Stevens comes down from the gallery to replenish the
gold-lined silver goblets from the basket of wine in
bottles near the pulpit; and as the wine is poured out,
its gurgling in the solemn silence smites distinctly
upon our young ears, and the whole house is filled
with the aroma of the pure imported Madeira.
Communicants overlooked in the distribution of the
"elements" are asked to signify the fact by raising the
right hand; and if any have been passed by (which
never occurred), they will be waited upon. We
children, awed and almost frightened spectators, look
on from our pews upon the solemnities, which suggest
sad thoughts of a possible separation which the
judgment may, like the communion table, make
between us and our beloved parents!
A prayer, doxology and benediction close the
solemn and impressive service - solemn and
impressive it seems to me upon the review, as
nowhere else.
We refresh ourselves in the hour's intermission
from the abundant "cold snacks," we called them, or
lunches; sun ourselves, and walk down the road or in
the graveyard. Immediately at the close of
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the communion service a great volume of musical
sound, mellowed by the distance, comes up from the
African church, in the edge of the forest, where godly
Toney Stevens, the carpenter, is about to hold forth
to his dusky charge. I have heard more artistic
singing, but never heartier or more worshipful
elsewhere.
But the bell, whose iron tongue, to our young
imaginations, was endowed literally with speech, is
saying, "Come along! come along!" Another sermon
is preached, and horses are found harnessed and
vehicles ready, and the mighty congregation disperse
to their several homes. The sun is low in the western
horizon when we arrive at our plantation home and sit
down to a late dinner. Sunday clothes are folded up
and put away, and the easier fitting every-day
garments and old shoes are, to our immense relief,
once more put on. A Sunday-school for the young
people of the plantation, conducted in a spare room of
our house by one of my sisters, in which hymns are
memorized and sung, and Dr. C. C. Jones' Catechism
taught, closes the public religious services of the day.
After supper and prayers, tired, we all retire to our
early couches; but refreshed
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by the rest, duties and worship of God's hallowed day,
and ready on the morrow to take up with new courage
and energy the tasks and burdens of secular life.
Such is a picture of a "Sacrament Sunday in old
Midway," as it comes back to me, like "memories of
joys that are departed, pleasant but mournful to the
soul."
By such days of resting and of holy convocation
were masters and servants, realizing even on earth the
communion of saints, fitted for the same blessed
home, in which multitudes of them have long since
met, to keep an eternal celebration of their common
deliverance from the bonds of sin and death and hell,
and investment with the spiritual liberty wherewith
Christ maketh his people free!
Blessed be the God of my fathers, that my early life
was shaped by such influences! May they abide with
all the sons and daughters of old Midway for ever!
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CHAPTER XII.
MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS -
A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE
I RECALL now a quarrel with a sister a little older
than myself, my constant playmate. It was about a
fancied resemblance to a preacher. She had roached
up her short-cut hair before the glass up stairs, and
asserted that she looked like Dr. Jones. I, on the
contrary, disputing the statement and claiming the
exclusive honor of resemblance, a controversy arose,
whose settlement, owing to the outcry raised, was
adjourned to our mother's room. How it was finally
adjusted in that child's court of final appeal is not
remembered now; but the incident is quoted to show in
what high esteem the children of the planter's
household held one who gave his life to the
evangelization of the negro.
The first distinct remembrance of him and his of me,
as he told me in after years, was as follows: With that
mania for destroying animal life which,
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at some period, seems to take possession of boys, I
was engaged in the evening twilight in slaying, with a
long fishing pole, the bats which, in incredible number,
come out upon their nightly foraging expeditions from
the crevices in the frame work of the horse gin. I heard
a horse's footfalls and looked up, and the missionary to
the blacks, meeting an appointment sent on to my
father, rode by on his way to the quarters with a
pleasant greeting and inquiry as to the nature of my
employment; and without perhaps what might have
been an apposite lecture upon "cruelty to animals." It
was Rev. Charles Colcock Jones.
Allow a loving hand to sketch briefly the life of one
of the noblest men God ever made by his creative skill
and regenerating grace; and with whom, to the
unspeakable profit of his piety and ministry, he was
permitted, as a member of his family, to be associated
in the forming period of both. I condense from a full
biographical sketch prepared by myself, and
published in The Dead of the Synod of Georgia,
by Rev. Dr. J. S. Wilson, then of Atlanta, Ga.
Charles Colcock Jones, the son of Captain John
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Jones and Susannah Hyrn Jones, was born at Liberty
Hall, his father's plantation residence, in Liberty
county, Ga., December 20th, 1804, and was baptized in
Midway Church by Rev. Cyrus Gildersleeve. Upon the
death of his father, while he was still an infant, the
sole care of him was devolved upon his mother, who,
of Huguenot descent, was a woman of great
excellence of character and sterling piety, and, like
Hannah of old, consecrated her son to the ministry.
Again bereaved in his fifth year, he was reared by
his uncle, Captain Joseph Jones, who, although not
at the time a professing Christian, did by the orphan a
father's part so nobly as to win his everlasting
gratitude, filial affection, and obedience.
Receiving an excellent common school education at
Sunbury, under a noted teacher of the day, Rev. Dr.
William McWir, he, at the early age of fourteen,
entered and continued in a counting-room in the city
of Savannah six years - a business experience of
signal service to him in after years. While thus
employed, the young clerk spent his evening hours in
historical studies and in the mastery of Edwards'
abstruse treatise on "The Will." And
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such was his industry, system and integrity, that at
the close of his novitiate he could have commanded, it
was said, any position in mercantile life in that city.
But it was not the Lord's will that the clerk should
become the merchant. A dangerous sickness, bringing
him to the verge of the grave, was the instrument in
God's hands of his awakening and conversion; and at
the age of seventeen he connected himself with his
ancestral church at Midway, by whose pastor, Rev.
Mr. Murphy, his mind was first turned toward the
gospel ministry.
Owing, perhaps, to the frequent visits of the
venerable Dr. Ebenezer Porter, of Andover, to his
native county, he went North and entered himself as a
student in the noted Phillips Academy, and
subsequently in the Seminary in that place. Here, for the
first time, although now twenty years old, he took in
hand his Latin grammar. Three years and a half were
spent in his literary and theological studies in these
famous institutions. With the president, Dr. Porter, he
was upon the most intimate terms; and he has been
heard to say that, visiting him at all hours, there was
not one in which, at some time, he had not found this
godly man upon his knees.
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From Andover he went to Princeton, then under
Drs. Archibald Alexander and Samuel Miller, and
after eighteen months' study in that noble school of
the prophets, he was licensed to preach by the
Presbytery of New Brunswick. In November, 1830, he
was united in marriage to his cousin, Miss Mary Jones,
a woman of decided piety and uncommon strength of
intellect and character, who was always in fullest
sympathy with him in his intellectual pursuits and his
missionary labors. Preaching for a period of four or five
months in his native county as opportunity offered, in
1831 he became stated supply of the First Presbyterian
Church of Savannah Ga.,and was, after a short term of
ministerial labor, installed pastor, the services, by request,
being held in the Independent Presbyterian church, of which
the noted evangelist, Dr. Daniel Baker, was then pastor.
After eighteen months of conscientious and faithful service
and laborious work in this, his first and only pastoral
charge, he was constrained, by a sense of duty, to
devote himself entirely to the great work of his life, to
which his attention had been turned while a student in
Princeton, and fuller preparation for which led him to
accept his only pastoral charge, viz., the
Evangelization of the Negro.
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The same motive, as I know, led him twice to accept
a call to the chair of Church History in Columbia
Seminary, and the important position of Secretary of
the Board of Domestic Missions of the ante bellum
Presbyterian Church.
With the interruptions above mentioned, in which he
kept the ruling passion of his life steadily in view, he
devoted his entire energies of body and mind, for a term
of five years, to uninterrupted, direct, personal labor,
such as few men could or would have stood, among
the blacks of his native county, at his own charges,
and with wonderful success. The seeds of the disease
which finally terminated his earthly career were
probably laid in his system while laboring night and
day in the malarial regions of Liberty county, the
destructive effect of which it needed only the
confinement of office work in Philadelphia, and pressure
of responsibility and of wearing toil (for he was a man
who put his whole soul into whatever he undertook) to
complete. Reluctantly resigning his position, he came
home to rest and recuperate. The hope of ultimate
recovery was not, however, destined to be realized.
And here begins the invalid life of this
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man of God, protracted through ten years, in which
gradually declining from what is known as wasting
palsy - a rare disease - but with intellect undimmed, he
did more work with pen and tongue than many a
minister in full possession of health and vigor. He
preached constantly, sitting, when unable to stand,
upon a chair and a platform which he had had
constructed and placed in the African church at
Midway. Often did I hear my parents remark of him and
his preaching at this time: "Dr. Jones is not far from
heaven." It is a singular fact that this incessant worker,
from an injury received in childhood, lived and labored
with only one lung in active play, occasioning often a
sense of weariness in the vocal organs unknown to
one in perfect health.
The death of this good and great man, of whose
labors we shall speak more particularly at another
time, and which occurred when he was only fifty nine,
formed a fitting close to his life.
No one watched the symptoms of approaching
dissolution with greater care and composure than
himself. His son, Dr. Joseph Jones, now of New
Orleans, had, and still probably has, a minute history
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of the entire progress of his disease, written out
by himself, and continued up to the last month of his
life. A period of unusual mortality among his
servants, and solicitude on their account, and his
anxiety about the war, it is believed, hastened his end.
Not many months before his death he remarked to
his eldest son, Charles C. Jones, LL. D. now of
Augusta, Ga.: "My son, I am living in momentary
expectation of death, but the thought of its approach
causes me no alarm. The frail tabernacle must soon be
taken down. I only wait God's time." Four days before
his departure he makes this record in his journal:
"March 12, 1863. - Have been very weak and
declining since renewal of the cold on the 1st instant
in the church (Midway). My disease appears to be
drawing to a conclusion. May the Lord make me to
say in that hour, in saving faith and love, 'Into thy
hands I commit my spirit; Thou hast redeemed me, O
Lord God of truth.' (Ps. xxxi. 5.) So has our blessed
Saviour taught us by His own example to do, and
blessed are they who die in the Lord."
On the morning of the 16th, on which he died,
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having bathed and dressed himself, as was his wont,
with scrupulous care, he breakfasted down stairs
with the family, and then spent the forenoon in his
steady up stairs, sometimes sitting up and some
times reclining, conversing with his wife and sister,
but with difficulty, and suffering from restlessness
and debility. Some of the sweet promises of Christ's
presence with His people in their passage through
the dark valley being repeated to him by
his companion, he sweetly replied: "In health we repeat
these promises, but now they are realities." She
again remarking, "I feel assured that the Saviour is
with you," he answered: "I am nothing but a poor
sinner; I renounce myself and all self-justification,
trusting only in the free, unmerited righteousness of
the Lord Jesus Christ." To his sons, absent in the
army, he sent this message: "Tell them both to
lead lives of godly men in Christ Jesus, in uprightness
and integrity." Upon the suggestion of his
wife that he should retire to his room and rest
awhile, he arose, and, supported on either hand by
her and a loved sister, he walked into the adjoining
chamber, playfully remarking, "How honored I am
in being waited upon by two ladies!" Reclining
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upon his bed, in a few moments, without a struggle, a
sigh, a gasp, he gently fell asleep in Jesus. A glory
almost unearthly, and which awed the very servants,
rested after death upon his noble countenance.
Shortly afterwards, just as he was, in the same
garments he had put on in the morning, with his white
cravat unsoiled, and with every fold as his own hands
had arranged it, he was borne back to his study, where,
surrounded by the authors he had so loved in life, he
seemed to rest in a peaceful sleep, until the third day
following, when, after appropriate services,
conducted by the Rev. Dr. D. L. Buttolph, in Midway
meeting-house, his mortal remains were committed to
the grave, in the venerable cemetery where his own
parents and many generations of God's saints are
awaiting the resurrection morn.
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CHAPTER XIII.
A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - HIS LABORS
AMONG THEM,
DR. JONES' work among the slaves may be divided
into his labors among them, and his labors for
them; it is proposed in this letter to sketch the first.
The main field of his missionary work was what was
known as "the Fifteenth Company District of Liberty
county, Ga." According to the census of 1830, just
three years before his first report of his labors to "The
Association for the Religious Instruction of the
Negroes," the whole population of the county was as
follows: Whites, 1,544; blacks, 5,729; of these, owing
to the lands being suitable to the production of rice
and Sea Island cotton, 4,540 were concentrated in the
district just named.
Here for five consecutive years of literally
uninterrupted activity, this devoted servant of God,
by day and by night, in summer's heat and winter's
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cold, in sunshine and storm, and at his own charges
labored for the salvation and consequent elevation of
the race to whose good he had consecrated his
splendid talents - gifts which, as they at intervals
called him to the highest positions in the church,
would have fitted him for the most important pastoral
charge in the land.
He had six preaching stations, in which there was
either a house of worship, gladly tendered by the
whites, or a building put up, at his suggestion, by the
masters for the exclusive use of their people. These
were located in the most thickly settled
neighborhoods, and accessible not only to
pedestrians, but to the children whom, with the adults,
he gathered into his Sunday schools. Besides these
regular Sabbath appointments, he held meetings
during the week upon the plantations, where the feeble
could be supplied with the word of life, and he could
perform pastoral work to those who were too aged
even to attend the neighborhood church.
I give from memory a sketch of a Sabbath's
labors. The missionary has come from his distant
plantation home, necessitating an early start. As soon
as possible, a prayer-meeting is held, at which
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competent "watchmen" lead in prayer. Next follows
the sermon and its accompanying services of
song and prayer. In the afternoon there is the Sunday-
school for both adults and children, in which all are
orally taught Scripture truth and doctrine, drilled
thoroughly in the use of Jones' Catechism, and all
interspersed with hymns and tunes learned, the one
leader doing all that is done in an ordinary school by
superintendent and teachers together. Then follows
an inquiry-meeting for the serious and candidates for
membership. Then a meeting of the "watchmen" of
the district is held, in which the pastor receives
detailed reports of the state of religion and conduct of
the members on the various plantations, and
disciplines delinquents when necessary. And all this
is interspersed with wise counsels given to these
humble under-shepherds appointed by church and
pastor as his helpers. The sun is low in the sky when
the servant of God, weary yet rejoicing, turns his
steps homeward.
The week, spent largely in his study (for he
prepared thoroughly for his services), and in the
oversight of his plantations, does not witness rest
from his preaching labors; for he has appointments
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during the week upon all the plantations open to him,
as all were in course of time, and as his strength
permits.
His custom was to send on, some time in advance to
a planter favoring his work, an appointment for an
evening in the week; leaving to him all the details of
arrangement. Sometimes the service was held in the
planter's mansion, the people bringing with them their
own benches or chairs, and sometimes in one of the
negro houses, or the "praise house," built for the
purpose. On his own plantation it was a neat plastered
building, with belfry and bell. If in the planter's house,
the parlor was illuminated by candles and a cheerful fire
on the hearth. If in the quarters, often the main
illumination would come from the great wide chimney
with its roaring fire, no matter how warm the night
chanced to be, with a single candle for the preacher.
Here this devoted servant of God faithfully preached,
and used "great plainness of speech." I have myself
been amazed, as I listened, to see how, without the loss
of a particle of that dignity which was at once
characteristic of the man, and of his conceptions of the
sacred ministry, he came down completely
Page 105
to the level of the intellectual calibre of his
humble hearers. The night service was followed or
preceded by visits to the aged and sick. Not a few of
these services were held, with the temperature
without almost that of summer, in small rooms,
crammed with workers in their work-a-day clothes,
with no window to open because of draft, and a hot
fire on the hearth. This experience, as I have heard
him say, was trying in no ordinary degree to him; for
he was a polished gentleman, and neat in person and
habits beyond most even of his own race.
We need not wonder at the gradual subsidence of
the suspicion, distrust and opposition encountered at
the outset, on the part of some ungodly planters,
when we peruse the wise rules adopted by him, mark
his fidelity in preaching the whole counsel of God,
and read the account of some of the precious fruits of
his apostolical labors. With these we close.
In his tenth report, in which he "reviews the work
from the commencement," he writes:
"I laid down the following rules of action, which I
have ever endeavored to observe faithfully:
"1. To visit no plantation without permission, and,
when permitted, never without previous notice.
Page 106
"2. To have nothing to do with the civil condition
of the negroes, or with their plantation affairs
"3. To hear no tales respecting their owners, or
drivers, or work, and to keep within my own breast
whatever of a private nature might incidentally come
to my knowledge.
"4. To be no party to their quarrels, and have no
quarrels with them, but cultivate justice, impartiality,
and universal kindness.
"5. To condemn, without reservation, every vice
and evil among them, in the terms of God's holy word,
and to inculcate the fulfilment of every duty, whatever
might be the real or apparent hazard of popularity or
success.
"6. To preserve the most perfect order at all our
public and private meetings.
"7. To impress the people with the great value of
the privilege enjoyed of religious instruction; to invite
their co-operation and throw myself upon their
confidence and support.
"8. To make no attempt to create temporary
excitements, or to introduce any new plans or
measures; but make diligent and prayerful use of the
ordinary and established means of God's appointment.
Page 107
"9. To support, in the fullest manner, the peace
and order of society, and to hold up to their respect
and obedience all those whom God, in his providence,
has placed in authority over them.
"10. To notice no slights or unkindnesses shown
to me personally; to dispute with no man about the
work, but depend upon the power of the truth and
upon the Spirit and blessing of God, with long
suffering, patience, and perseverance, to overcome
opposition and remove prejudices, and ultimately
bring all things right."
There is an amusing instance related by himself in
his third report, and the particulars of which I heard
from his own lips, illustrative of the temporary
unpopularity which he drew upon himself by simply
preaching the truth. "Of your missionary some have
said, 'We will not hear him; he preaches to please the
masters.' And once upon a time, while enforcing a
certain duty" (it was the duty of not running away,
and from Paul's treatment of Onesimus, whom he sent
back to his master), "when enforcing a certain duty
from the Scriptures which servants owe to their
masters, more than one-half of my large congregation
rose up and went away, every
Page 108
man to his house, and the part that remained seemed
to remain more from personal respect to the preacher
than from any liking to the doctrine."
But if he fearlessly "declared the whole counsel of
God" to the slave, he no less fearlessly declared it to
the master, urging, and not without success, reforms
in their treatment of their servants, both as bearing
upon their physical comfort and the salvation of
their souls.
The natural result of his prudence and fidelity to his
mission, as an expounder of God's word, was the
ultimate and complete removal of the suspicion and
prejudice which he at first encountered, and a
boundless popularity among the colored people, such
as no man ever before or since has enjoyed.
As the result of these faithful labors, the physical
and moral conditions of the slaves were manifestly
improved, a sense of responsibility in regard to their
immortal interests awakened in the county, souls in
large numbers were converted under his ministry, and
saints built up and fitted for heaven. The particular
record of his pastoral experience was unfortunately
consumed in the fire which destroyed
Page 109
his residence when a Professor in the Seminary in
Columbia.
One precious revival occurred during his ministry,
of which there is an interesting account in his fifth
report. As a result, more than a hundred members
from this race were added to old Midway church in a
little over a year.
The eighth annual report closes with an account of
a "protracted meeting for the negroes," which
furnishes suggestive reading to those who believe
slavery was "he sum of villainies!" We quote:
"In the month of November a protracted meeting
was held at Midway church in connection with the
meeting of the Presbytery of Georgia, which
continued a week. By universal consent of the church
and congregation, Friday and Saturday were given
to the negroes for religious worship, and some who
were not members, either of the church or
congregation gave their people the two days.
Planters who were not members of the church united
cordially in it." (Italics mine) Services were held on
Friday and Saturday twice a day for the negroes in
their own church. The house could not contain the
people; more without than within. On Sabbath they attended
Page 110
from all parts of the county. The gallery of the
white church was filled, and perhaps as many
remained around the doors and windows of the churches
as had been accommodated with seats within. The
greatest order and propriety prevailed. The members of
the church were particularly grateful for the privileges
allowed them, and all seemed anxious to hear the gospel.
This protracted meeting for the negroes deserves to be
mentioned, as an index of the interest of owners in their
eternal welfare, of their willingness to grant them every
opportunity of salvation, and to share the gospel with
them, and of their general order, sobriety and propriety
of conduct. The moral effect upon the negroes has been
of the most satisfactory kind. It has given them increased
respect for and attachment to their owners, and
impressed them with the sincerity of their desires for
their best good, and it has led them to believe more in
the value and necessity of religion."
Page 111
CHAPTER XIV.
A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - HIS LABORS
FOR THEM.
DR. C. C. JONES was, in the fullest sense of the
term, a philanthropist. While his direct object
was the salvation of the soul, the body was not
neglected. Not content with conversion, he aimed to
build up Christian character, and in every possible
way he sought to awaken, and not without
marvellous success, the entire South to a deeper
sense of responsibility for the temporal and spiritual
welfare of the slave.
I. His labors for their physical improvement.In his reports to "The Association for the Religious
Instruction of the Negroes," and in his paper read
before Synod, he fearlessly pressed upon his fellow
slave-holders their duties to the bodies of their
slaves. In his second report, in 1834, he uses this
language, which may sound strangely to some ears:
"While we think that we see an improvement in
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their physical condition upon past years, we would
say that there is still vast room for improvement. They are entitled to a far larger portion of the avails of
their labor than they have hitherto been accustomed
to receive." (Italics mine.) In his third report, in 1835,
he uses this strong language, addressed to his fellow-
citizens and fellow-Christians: "If you do not labor
and be at some sacrifice to improve their
physical condition, providing more liberally,
and to the extent of your means, for their
comfort, in good houses, good clothing, and good
food; if you do not regulate their discipline so as to maintain authority without injustice, they cannot
and will not, value your instruction." In an elaborate
report of a committee appointed by the Synod
of South Carolina and Georgia in 1833, endorsed,
"Prepared by C. C. J.," and having for its chairman
Moses Waddel, D. D., and such additional names as
B. M. Palmer, D. D., S. S. Davis, S. J. Cassels,
James English, etc., which was adopted and published
to the world, the following bold language is
found: "The principle which regulates duty in
slavery on the part of the master has been thus defined:
'Get all you can, and give back as little as
Page 113
you can'; and on the part of the servants the reverse,
'Give as little as you can, and get back all you can.'
When we remember what human nature is, and when
we observe the conduct of masters and servants, we
fear that there is too much truth as to the existence of
this principle." "Religion will tell the master that his
servants are his fellow-creatures, and that he has a
Master in heaven to whom he shall account for his
treatment of them. The master will be led to inquiries of
this sort: In what kind of houses do I permit them to
live? What clothes do I give them to wear? What
food to eat, what privileges to enjoy? In what temper
and manner and proportion to their crimes are they
punished?" Extracts might also be given in which he
urges the provision of sufficient house-room for
growing families, to secure privacy, and exhorts
masters to prevent, by authority, open immorality in
the slaves, and to abstain from all violation of the
marriage bond by separating husband and wife.
Now, it required uncommon boldness to speak and
write thus, when the insidious efforts of abolitionists
to stir up the slaves to the use of torch and knife had
rendered the Southern mind exceedingly sensitive
Page 114
and suspicious; traces of which sentiments are to be
found in references in some of his earlier reports.
In his tenth report (1845), in which he reviews ten
years of work among masters and servants, he gratefully
notes improvement in these words: "The religious
instruction of the negroes has had a good effect
upon masters. We observe a milder discipline and
kinder feelings and greater attention to the morals and
comforts of the people, and, as a consequence, their physical condition is improved." In his twelfth report,
presented in 1847, he remarks: "Greater attention is
paid to their clothing, their food, their houses, their
comforts, their family relations and morality at home.
And the appearance of the people, both at home and
abroad, indicates this increased care and attention on
the part of their owners."
II. Their spiritual improvement. His work was not done when the slave became,
through grace, Christ's freeman; he proceeded to
build him up into a citizen of Zion. And recognizing
the agency of divine truth in this process, he not
only earnestly preached but, diligently taught young
and old, in the only way then possible, that is, orally.
Page 115
Reminding the uninformed reader that abolitionists
of that day did not scruple to publish and mail the
most incendiary documents, and even to place them in
the very packages used in the Southern kitchens, he
will understand the motive of some laws passed in
the South, forbidding the instruction of the negro in
the art of reading. It was our mistake; but there was in
the fact just stated at least a palliation, and in most
States the law was a dead letter. The white children
were always ready to, and did, teach any who wished
it, to read. We quote from the Synodical report this
faithful statement of this difficulty in evangelizing the
negro: "It is universally the fact throughout the slave-
holding States, that either custom or law prohibits to
them the acquisition of letters, and consequently
they can have no access to the Scriptures. The
proportion that read is infinitely small; the Bible, so far
as they can read it themselves, is to all intents and
purposes a sealed book, so that they are dependent
for their knowledge of Christianity upon oral
instruction, as much so as the unlettered heathen,
when first visited by our missionaries. If our laws in
their operation seal up the Scriptures to the negroes,
we should not
Page 116
allow them to suffer in the least degree, so far as any
effort on our part may be necessary, for want of
knowledge of their contents."
Compelled thus to rely upon oral instruction for the
communication, not only of saving truth to children,
but more advanced religious knowledge to adults, he
was very early in his work among the slaves
constrained to prepare a manual of his own. We find an
allusion to it in his first report to "the Association."
"The children and youth have been to all appearance
much interested. I instruct them from a catechism which
I am attempting to prepare for them." In the tenth report
he gives this interesting account of the causes which
led to the composition of this interesting manual: "A
difficulty presented itself at the very beginning of my
Sabbath-school instruction. There were no books! I tried all the catechisms. Necessity forced me to attempt
something myself. I prepared the lessons weekly, and
tried them and corrected them from the schools, and
the result was; "The Catechism of Scripture Doctrine
and Practice;" or, to give the title more fully, "A
Catechism of Scripture Doctrine and Practice, for
Families and Sabbath-schools.
Page 117
Designed also for the oral instruction of
colored persons. By Charles C. Jones."
He steadily refused the request of the Presbyterian
Board of Publication to publish an edition with the
reference to the negro left off, for use in white schools.
His method of composing it, as I learned from his own
lips, was to ask the question and then note the answer,
and frequently the extemporaneous reply of the negro
pupil would be so superior in plainness to his written
answer, that he would substitute it for his own. This
catechism was translated into Armenian by Rev. Dr. J.
B. Adger when a missionary in Syria, and by Rev. John
Quarterman into one of the dialects of China, and used
in both countries. It was universally adopted in Liberty
county and in many parts of the South, and found
invaluable in the family as well as in the instruction of
the slaves. The writer used it to great advantage in his
own household in the religious training of his children,
and in preparing colored catechumens for church
membership. Here is what its author has to say of the
possibility of communicating truth orally to the slave:
"That they are apt in receiving instruction, none have
ever
Page 118
doubted who have favored us with their presence for
a single Sabbath. No difference will be perceived
generally between them and other children in like
circumstances. There are scholars who can repeat
thirty pages of the catechism with accuracy, and by
varying the form of the questions, and so putting
their knowledge to proof, it will be seen that they
recite with intelligence also. To those who are ignorant
of letters, their memory is their book. That faculty is
capable of astonishing improvement. Knowledge may
be communicated and retained to almost any extent
through oral instruction alone. In a recent
examination of one of the schools, I was forcibly
struck with their remembrance of passages of
Scripture. Those questions which turned upon and
called for passages of Scripture, the scholars
answered more readily than any other. It was with
them as with all youth, a Scripture fact, a Scripture
story, once told and impressed, is stamped on the
tablet of memory forever."
We venture the assertion that the slave population
of Liberty county, enjoying these advantages, had a
clearer and more systematic and thorough knowledge
of Scripture history, doctrine and practice than many
Page 119
a white community this day who can read and have
only such preaching as can be supplied by some
Evangelical denominations. I know from experience
that the faithful instruction enjoyed in that favored
county through the apostolical labors of this godly
minister woke up the mind of the African to the
agitation of questions which astonished me. For
example, an intelligent carpenter, upon whom it was
my custom to call to lead in prayer, once took me
aside before service and asked me how he should
represent to himself the three persons of the God-head
in prayer so as to avoid idolatry!
Under this combined instruction of the pulpit and
Sabbath-school, multitudes of precious souls
were not only converted, but trained for earth and
heaven.
It were to be wished that some liberal-hearted
Christian could be induced to furnish the means to
publish an edition of this most valuable Catechism,
with only such few changes as would be necessary in
their altered circumstances, for the use of our colored
population. Prepared by one who loved, gave his life
to, and studied and knew the race more perfectly than
any man living or dead, the Catechism
Page 120
would, I doubt not, be as useful now as it was in the
past.
NOTE. - A copy of the Catechism in my library fell,
with the rest of my books, into the hands of Sherman's
soldiers. Strange to say, the chapter on the
duties of masters and servants is undisturbed, but the
chapter on "What the Church of God is," has suffered,
both from the knife and the pencil of a zealous Baptist,
presumably a chaplain, an enemy to infant baptism.
Page 121
CHAPTER XV.
A MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS - HIS LABORS
FOR THEM.
IT was impossible in the last chapter to present,
without engrossing too much space, even a sketch of
Dr. Jones' labors for the slave. Three things remain to
be signalized under this head.
III. His agency in the formation of an Association
in his native county for the furtherance of this cause.
I have in my library a bound volume of pamphlets,
once the property of Dr. Jones, and now mine by
inheritance through his daughter. It is to me a
precious and invaluable treasure. It contains the
report of the Committee on the Religious Instruction
of the Colored Population, adopted by the then
undivided Synod of South Carolina and Georgia,
December, 1833, of which, as shown by his penciled
endorsement, he, although not the chairman, was the
author; thirteen Annual Reports of C. C. Jones
Page 122
to "The Association for the Religious Instruction of
the Negroes," extending from 1833 to 1848;
proceedings of a meeting held in Charleston by the
friends of the cause in 1845, with a report of a
committee and an address to the holders of slaves in
South Carolina, the result of that assembly of
Christians and patriots of different denominations,
and in which figure such noted South Carolina names
as Huger, Capers, Cotesworth Pinckney, Barnwell,
Rhett, Alston, Grimes, Memminger, Ravennel, and
other names as prominent in the church as Dr.
McWhir, Rev. Mr. Barnwell, Dr. C. C. Jones, Dr.
Thomas Smyth, Dr. Benjamin Gildersleeve, Thomas S.
Clay, etc.; and also Dr. Jones' suggestions on the
religious instruction of the negroes in the Southern
States. A penciled note in Dr. Jones' hand-writing, at
the bottom of the first page of the second report,
states, "the first report was not to be had, as copies
were burnt up," (in the burning of his residence in
Columbia). Either he or his companion afterwards
recovered it from some owner, and pinned it, with its
leaves uncut, in its proper place. It seems providential
that these reports should have been all preserved; for
as will be seen farther on, they
Page 123
contain an account, not simply of what one man and
one county did, but what Southern Christians of
every denomination had been doing for years for the
salvation of their slaves.
In the tenth report we have this account of the
origin of an association of which Dr. Jones was the
founder, and whose influence extended far beyond
the bounds of the favored county which was for
many years its home:
"The spiritual wants and condition of the negroes
in the county, their ignorance of the gospel, and the
duty and the best means of affording them suitable
and systematic instruction, were subjects of
conversation with the ministers and certain members
of the churches for some time in the winter of 1831;
and on the 10th of March a meeting of persons
favorable to the adoption of some efficient plan for
their religious instruction was called in Riceboro'.
Upon consultation, it was determined to form an
Association for the purpose, and a committee was
appointed to prepare a report and a constitution, and
Rev. C. C. Jones to deliver an address at another
meeting, to be held in the same place on the 28th of
March. At that meeting the address
Page 124
was delivered, the constitution reported and adopted, and
the present Association formed. Twenty-nine individuals, in the course of some weeks, signed the constitution."
From the constitution, published in the seventh report,
we emphasize only the following particulars as bearing upon
our object in these letters. Officered as usual, any one might
become a member by signing the constitution and paying an
annual subscription of two dollars. To an executive
committee was entrusted the entire supervision of the work
of colored evangelization, in the selection of stations and
appointment of "teacher or teachers" - that is, laborers.
Meeting annually, a report or address was to be made by
some person appointed by the Association.
Article VI. reads: "The instructions of this Association
shall be altogether oral, embracing the general principles of
the Christian religion, as understood by orthodox Christians,
avoiding, in the public instruction of the negroes, doctrines
which particularly distinguish the different denominations
of the country from each other."
Designedly undenominational, its first officers
Page 125
were: President, Rev. Robert Quarterman (Presbyterian);
Vice-President, Rev. Samuel S. Law (Baptist). Executive
Committee: Thomas Bacon (Baptist), Thomas Mallard
(Presbyterian), etc.; and Missionary, Rev. Charles C.
Jones (Presbyterian).
From the first, composed of the best and most prominent
citizens of the county, this noble Association, by its annual
meetings, to which the public was invited; by the
information collected and published, by its indefatigable
missionary, concerning the needs of the negro, and what was
being done, not only in the county, but throughout the
South; and by the stirring addresses delivered from time to
time by himself and other ministers, communicated a
constant impulse to the work at home. As will be seen, it
was no small instrument of stimulating Christians
throughout the South to similar activity.
IV. His personal efforts outside the county and State to
interest the church and country in the cause.
n the interval between his two periods of work among
the slaves of Liberty county, he made an extensive tour
through the States, and wherever he journeyed he embraced
every opportunity in interesting
Page 126
his fellow-citizens in the evangelization of the negro.
I extract from the fifth report. Referring to "an extended
and protracted journey through the Northern and Middle
States," he remarks:
"There was no subject more solicitously inquired into by
judicious and pious men with whom we met; and frequent
opportunities were afforded me by special invitation, of the
most respectable kind, for laying before the people
assembled for the purpose, a sketch of what was doing in
the Southern States for the instruction of the negroes in the
principles of Christianity, and of expressing the views and
feelings of the Southern churches on the subject. These
addresses were received with unanimous satisfaction, saving
one unimportant exception."
As a Professor of Church History in Columbia, he
not only, if I remember, organized a flourishing colored
Sunday.school, but embraced the many opportunities,
public and private, which constantly occurred in his intimate
associations with the students to turn their minds toward
the neglected colored population of the South. And the
engrossing cares of his official life as Secretary of Home
Missions
Page 127
did not induce forgetfulness of the negro; for he sought
to shape the work of that important arm of the church with
decided and special reference to that portion of the home
field found on the plantations of the South.
V. His labor for them in his correspondence and
publications.
The annual reports give evidence of a vast personal
correspondence with men all over the South upon the
subject of the negro a correspondence, with perhaps some
assistance from members of his family, conducted mainly
by his own pen.
His reports and addresses, prepared for and delivered
before ecclesiastical bodies, master-pieces in their way,
were published under their official sanction, and widely
circulated throughout the South, stirring the churches of
every name as with the blast of a trumpet.
His annual reports to the local Association, as they were
intended for a larger audience, so through the press were
they distributed throughout the South, and had a wonderful
effect in arousing the Southern conscience in regard to their
duty to the slave. In the second report I find this allusion to
this method
Page 128
of promoting the cause: "It may be gratifying to the
Association to know that two editions of their report for
the past year have been printed, and there is now a
demand for a third." An extract from one of the many
letters received pays this tribute to his work: "Your
noiseless labors in Liberty county are not unobserved by
the Christian world, and are watched with intense interest
by many."
While we would not discount the labors of
countless conscientious masters and mistresses in
instructing and catechising their slaves, and of
faithful ministers who labored among them, and
prominent Christians who with tongue and pen
wrought for the salvation of the slave, with a fidelity
which doubtless will receive recognition "at that
day," we do not hesitate to say that Charles Colcock
Jones, whether his labors among or his labors for
them with tongue and pen be considered, deserves
more than any man who has ever lived the title of
"The Apostle to the Negro Slave!"
This résumé of his labors for the redemption of the
negro cannot be more appropriately closed than in
these words, which disclose the great loving heart of
this eminent servant of Christ:
Page 129
"I cannot describe the peculiar and joyful feelings
that have possessed my mind when I have seen
penitents from this long neglected and degraded
people inquiring what they must do to be saved. It is not
building upon another man's foundation. You are
in the highways and hedges. You gather the first
fruits yourself, and the undivided joy takes full
possession of the soul."
Page 130
CHAPTER XVI.
RELIGIOUS ANECDOTES OF THE NEGRO.
I AM quite sure that our readers will be glad to
have the following anecdotes, illustrative of negro
character, and of the results of the faithful
instructions of Rev. Charles Colcock Jones and his fellow
laborers, the planters of Liberty county, Ga. I will not
occupy space with comments.
Under the head of "Degree of Religious Intelligence
Among the People," he gives the following
incidents:
Said one, speaking of the religious advantages
enjoyed: "Sir, the people never had the gospel so
opened to their understandings before, many walked
in darkness for the want of the true Light; but all the
power of God is needed to make them profit by it; God
only can open men's hearts." Another: "If any are
lost in this Liberty county, it will be their fault. They
have light enough, and close at hand, and privileges
enough to go to. Yea,
Page 131
more, the light is brought on the plantations and set
down at their very doors."
An observing man gave it as his opinion "that the
people were better able now to understand the
gospel from ministers preaching to the whites than formerly. For example, they were able to follow the
ministers with their copy; whereas, beforetime, they
could not do so at all. The reason he believed to be
an increase of knowledge through the Sabbath-schools
and direct preaching to the negroes. He
thought ministers did much better in preaching when
they put down their copy."
The following is a dialogue between a man and a
woman: "I saw you talking to the minister before
meeting, and you told him everything that was doing
on the plantation." "Good woman, I did not" "Sir, you
did. How came the minister to know what was done
on the place only Saturday night? Everybody in the
church knew who he was talking about. Do you think
people like to be carried into the pulpit and turned every
which way for people to look at?" "Woman, you
wrong me; you have not the right understanding of
the matter. Does not God know all things?" "Well, sir, I
Page 132
know that as well as you do!""But, woman, put
your knowledge to use. Does not the minister preach
the Word of God?Does not the word of God know all
things? Was it not made to suit everybody ? Well,
then, the minister did not know in himself anything
about you, but the word of God did; and by the way
you speak now, it fit you exactly; and so it proves
itself to you to be the Word of God that knoweth all
things, and, instead of being vexed with the word of
God, you had better straighten your ways and be at
peace with it."
A member of the church gave the preacher the
following encouragement; "You preach Sunday; you
preach in the week; many hear. The seed falls on
much ground; now some will turn and come; the good
seed will sometimes fall on good ground; so keep on
preaching; keep throwing your net, you will catch
some."
During a revival a "watchman" insisted: "Sir, do
not take the people in too soon; instruct them well;
make them wait; such and such men were taken into
the church during the revival in Mr. - 's time; they
partook of the sacrament once or twice, and there ended
their religion. It is easy taking in, but it is hard putting
out."
Page 133
Mounting his horse at a close of a plantation
meeting, the preacher was thus addressed: "Sir,
please to come as often as you can. Plantation
meetings do as much good as Sunday meetings;
because on Sunday many garnish themselves and go
to church for show; they hear, but do not attend. On
the plantation they do not garnish themselves, nor look around, but give attention to the Word."
One member asked counsel of another: "Is twice a
week often enough to hold plantation prayers?" It
was answered: "No! my brother. Do we eat and drink
every day? Does God keep the people on the
plantation from evil every day? Does he keep them
from evil every night? Must we not thank God for
these mercies? We cannot give God thanks enough
for it if we try. Do we not sin every day, and every
day need God's pardon and God's help to do our duty?
My brother, we must pray every day for ourselves,
and hold plantation prayers every night."
A"watchman" who was giving instruction to a
house servant, for some reason not very creditable to
himself, did not wish the fact known to the mistress,
and told the woman not to tell to whom she
Page 134
had been. Another watchman reproved him thus:
"You do wrong. You are leading the woman to God
by the way of the devil . While you tell her to be honest and sincere before God, you teach her tolie to men.."
At an inquiry meeting one answered: "I came to
church here; I went home and thought of the sermon;
my sins troubled me; I went to my mistress; she told
me to go, pray and confess my sins to God, and beg
him to forgive me and give me a new heart for Christ's
sake." Another said: "My master spoke to me about
my soul, and I considered what he said, and my sins
troubled me." Another: "I was in the prayer-house on
the plantation; I was careless. At the close I was weak
as water. I was afraid I should die and be lost; I felt
very wicked; I felt I needed assistance. I could not
save myself." Another: "I felt very mean on account
of my sin; I felt I needed a Saviour. That feeling made
me go to Christ." Said another: "Ah! sir; my heart and
the Bible are not one."
The experience of a young man believed to be
converted was thus related by himself: "Religion
began in me by little and little, and deepened as I
Page 135
went forward. A full year or more before I hoped I was
converted, I ofttimes would go out of the house from
among my wicked companions, leave music and
dancing, and go aside and pray, and come back; but
was ashamed to tell that I had gone out to pray." His
attention was particularly called to religion by what he
had read in Webster's Spelling Book! Wishing to learn to read, he got a book and spelled out: "Sin will lead us to pain and woe;" and again: "A bad man can take no rest day or night ;" and he felt that it was
so - he could rest neither day or night. He went on
until it was impossible to contain his feelings, and
then made them known.
This young man also related a conversation with
one of his old dissipated companions: "You and I can
never be as great (intimate) as we have been, because
I do not love your ways now as I used to do, neither do
you love my ways. To be as great as we have been,
you must come to me, or I must go back to you. Go
back to you I cannot; you must come to me. Nor can I
be with you as before. A doctor visits a sick man and
gives him medicine, and goes away. Now suppose
that doctor lives, eats and
Page 136
sleeps in the bed continually with the sick man, will
he not be sure to catch his sickness or something from
him? So if I come and eat and sleep with you, I shall
be presently as bad as you are. All I can do is, come
and tell you the Word, and give you instruction,
according to my weak understanding, and go away;
and yet I am your friend, and a better and safer friend
than ever." His friend answered: "I cannot go your
way." "Stop!" said he. "If I tell you
where you may go
and do a piece of work and get money, will you not go?
Now religion is better than silver or gold; if I tell you the
way you can go and seek religion, will you not go for
it? You are seeking to get up a great character with
master, driver, people, everybody. What will hurt your
character you care for; what will not hurt your
character you do not care for. After you get this
character you are satisfied. You are wrong. Let me tell
you, the sinner has the meanest character
on the face of the earth. The sinner does not know it, and cannot
see it, until he is brought out of it. Then he can see
and know it. I know it because I see it, but you do not.
I call the sinner devil; now this
hurts your feelings.
Now listen to me. Angels in heaven
are righteous;
Jesus is
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holy; God is holy;
sin is filthy. You are a sinner; you
are filthy; you are the devil! What meaner character
can a man be, than be as the devil?"
The interest often felt in the conversion of their
masters is strong and lively. "You know my master. It
is in his power to forbid all prayer and praise on the
place; to stop the voice. But
it is not in the power of
man to destroy love in the heart;
to make us hate the
God we love. We can love in silence.
But my master stops no man in religion.
He says he will stand in no
man's way. We ring our bell and hold our prayers
continually. I only wish he were a Christian. But I live
in hope. I think I see an alteration. When he speaks
now of the business or the plantation he says,
'If we live,'
'If Providence permits,'
we will do this and that;
in times past, he did not use to speak so."
But we must close, and we do it with two
anecdotes, which bring before us our "missionary to
the blacks" in the sweetness of his humility, and
tenderness of his loving appreciation of the piety and
fidelity of his humble co-workers in the building up of
Christ's kingdom among the lowly. "There never has
been an instance of an individual's declining to
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pray when called upon to do so. (My own experience.)
Many of their prayers, though uttered in
broken language, have been of great fervency, compass
and expression. I can never forget the prayers of
Dembo, a native African, for many years a member
of Midway church. There was a depth of humility,
a conviction of sinfulness and inability to all good, an
assurance of faith, a sense of the divine presence, a
nearness of access to God, a spiritual perception of,
and a union with Christ as the life and righteousness
of the soul, a flowing out of love, a being swallowed
up in God, which I never heard before or since; and
often when he closed his prayers, I felt I was as weak
as water, and that I ought not to open my mouth in
public, and indeed knew not what it was to pray. This
modest, exemplary and holy man died full of years, in
firm hope of a blessed immortality, leaving behind him
the fragrance of his virtues and a bright example in all
the relations of life." And this from one, who most of
all men I have ever heard pray, lifted the suppliant
into the very presence chamber of the great King, and
prostrated the soul before the majesty of heaven in
reverential and adoring love!
Page 139
He writes: "On the death of Jack Salters, which
occurred when Mr. Gildersleeve was pastor of Midway
church, he was succeeded by Sharper, belonging to Mrs. Quarterman, a man of most remarkable
integrity, piety, zeal and energy of character; who
enjoyed the confidence of the entire community until
his death, which occurred in the spring of 1833. He
not only preached at 'the Stand,' at Midway, on the
Sabbath, as his predecessors had done, but he
labored with apostolical zeal more abundantly than
they all. He attended regularly meetings not only at
the estate of Lamberts (the plantation left by Mr.
Lambert for charitable and religious purposes), and at
Mr. James' plantation, but many others. His evening
meetings with the people were very numerous, his
influence great and solely for God. He was a special
instrument in the hands of God for the moral
improvement and salvation of the negroes of the
county. The effects of his labors are seen on every
hand at this day. He died full of years, universally
lamented. I attended his funeral. It was on the green in
front of Midway church, by the light of the moon.
Between two and three hundred negroes were
present. At the close of the services we opened the
coffin. The
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moon shone upon his face. The people gazed upon it
and lifted up their voices and wept. His sons bore him
to his grave. In silence we returned to our homes,
oppressed with grief at this heavy affliction of God!"
Page 141
CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT WAS DONE FOR THE NEGRO BY OTHER MEN
AND WOMEN, MINISTERS CHURCHES,
ANDCOMMUNITIES.
ONE can but be amused with the simplicity with
which George Muller avows that his great orphanage,
with its two thousand inmates, was conducted
entirely upon the principle of making its wants known
exclusively to God. The condensed history of the
straits to which it was from time to time reduced, and
wonderfully relieved in answer to prayer, with the
story of the governing principle and the wants of the
orphans, annually published and paraded throughout
the United Kingdom, was the strongest and most
effective appeal for human help; his practice was more
scriptural than his theory.
There was no such incompatibility between the
theory and the practice of our philanthropist
missionary; he combined work with prayer, and gave
due credit to each.
Page 142
Referring to his early commercial life, I remember to
have heard him say that there was room even in a
merchant's avocation for the largest exercise of
intellect. Had he been permitted to serve God and his
generation in that calling, he would have been among
the foremost, not only in success, but intelligence; he
would have familiarized himself with the history of
ancient and modern commerce, with countries and their
productions, with the highways of the seas and lands
and modes of transportation, and the laws of finance.
Now, all this thoroughness of information, breadth of
view, firmness of grasp, clearness of vision, and
painstaking industry, he carried into his lifework. He
informed himself concerning the history of African
slavery, and the numbers and condition, physical and
spiritual, of the negro race in America. And bearing upon
his great heart the immortal interests, not only of the
four thousand slaves, constituting, we may say, his
immediate pastoral charge, but of the two millions of
them scattered throughout the South, he, while
diligently cultivating his own particular field, took
within his sympathetic vision the entire area of slavery,
and labored as earnestly to have accomplished
Page 143
by other hands the same work he, with his co-laborers,
was doing in his native county. It is this last
peculiarity which makes the work I have undertaken in
this letter easy. Only four out of the thirteen reports
rendered to "The Association for the Religious
Instruction of the Negro" are confined to county
work; the balance give each, in turn, a more or less
complete review of the work being done by other
hands throughout the Southern church.
To relate all that was accomplished by Southern
Christians and philanthropists for the salvation and
elevation of the negro slave would necessitate a
protracted and difficult investigation, in which the
labor involved would probably outweigh the result.
With the aid of Dr. Jones' reports, we hope to be able
to give such specimens as will inspire us with an
exalted opinion of the Southern slave-holder.
We begin with the following candid and fearless
presentation of the lamentable condition of the
negro when the great movement began throughout
the South, in which Dr. Jones was not the only, but
the most potent factor. It is from his pen, and bears
date of 1834:
Page 144
"The negroes have no regular and efficient ministry;
as a matter of course, no churches; neither is
there sufficient room in white churches for their
accommodation. We know of but fivechurches in the slave-holding States built expressly for their use. The
galleries or back seats on the lower floor of white
churches are generally appropriated to the negroes,
when it can be done with convenience to the whites.
Where it cannot be done conveniently the negroes
who attend must catch the gospel as it
escapes by the doors and windows. . . . From an
extensive observation we venture to say, that not a
twentieth part of the Negroes throughout the
Southern States attend divine worship on the
Sabbath. . . . They have no Bibles to read at
their firesides, they have no family altars, and when
in affliction, sickness or death, they have no ministers
to address to them the consolations of the
gospel, nor to bury them with solemn and appropriate
services. . . . For the most part, they depend
upon those of their own color, who perform
them as well as they know how, if they happen to
be at hand."
It must not be inferred from these statements
Page 145
that the neglect was by any means universal; even the
sombreness of this picture is relieved by such sunny
touches as these: "Sometimes a kind master will
perform these offices;" "Here and there a master feels
interested for the salvation of his servants, and is
attempting something towards it, in assembling them
at evening for Scripture reading and prayer, in
admitting and inviting qualified persons to preach to
them, in establishing a daily or weekly school for the
children, and in conducting the labor and discipline of
the plantation upon gospel principles. We rejoice that
there are such, and that the number is increasing."
There were, no doubt, a faithful "seven thousand," if
not more, in his, as in Elijah's day.
The reports show a steady improvement in all
particulars. We read of churches being built for them,
in Liberty county and elsewhere, by slave owners; of
men and women stirred up to personal work for the
salvation of their people; and of ecclesiastical bodies
taking up the matter in good earnest, and resolving
and going to work in the neglected field, with the most
gratifying results all over the South. Page 146
We wish it were in our power to publish the
statements in extenso proving this, but we can only
give specimens culled here and there from the broad
and inviting field of these interesting annual reports.
Under the head of individual efforts, take these
illustrations: "Detail of a plan for the moral
improvement of negroes on plantations, by Thomas S.
Clay, of Bryan county, Ga." Mr. Clay was a large rice
planter on the Ogeechee river, a bosom friend of Dr.
Jones, and living in the adjoining county. In the
matter of control upon gospel principles and religious
instruction, his large plantation was a model, and his
tractate was simply a publication to the Christian
world of his mode of thus managing it.
This is said as far back as 1833 of a Virginia planter
of Albemarle county, the owner of two hundred and
fifty slaves: "He made special efforts to have the
gospel preached to them. The consequence was that
their whole condition and appearance were improved
surprisingly. About thirty became professing
Christians, and upwards of ninety joined the
temperance society. This gentleman
Page 147
made liberal offers to any minister who would
undertake the instruction of his people." This is only
one of many examples of planters mentioned as thus
faithful and liberal in offering to pay sufficient
salaries to any who would preach to their servants.
A gentleman in New Orleans, to whom a report of
the Association, and also the report of the Synod of
South Carolina and Georgia, had been forwarded,
writes as follows: "As the black population of this
State are immersed in religious ignorance, the
circulation of these reports among the owners of
slaves here might, I would hope, awaken them to a
sense of their duty." Ordering one hundred and fifty
copies of each, he continues: "The system of
instruction recommended in the reports had been
pursued by me for a long series of years, with
signal success to my own private interests, the
individual interests and happiness of my servants,
and with the result of an entire change in their moral
and religious character, and their habits of industry
and submission to superiors."
In the report for the year 1843 a lady writes to him:
"I have from childhood felt a deep interest,
Page 148
and have been much engaged in the religious instruction
of the colored people. I have used Brown's
Catechism always. Your book meets fully my views
and wishes," etc.
His extensive correspondence all over the South
brings to light many a faithful minister with a kindred
zeal, giving the half or all his time to the religious
instruction of the negro.
In the second annual report he quotes as follows
from letters: "A clergymen in Natchez writes: 'I have
committed to me the instruction of the negroes on
five plantations, in all about three hundred, the
owners of whom are professors of religion. I usually
preach three times on the Sabbath, and after each
sermon I spend a short time catechising. I have
occasionally meetings for inquiry.'
"From Oakland College, Mississippi, one writes: 'I
have three or four meetings on the Sabbath. I preach
once in a fortnight in the church, where about three
hundred blacks assemble. Five of the plantations
which I attend are within two miles of the church; four
others between four and six miles. . . . I endeavor to
visit all the plantations once in
Page 149
two weeks. I go among the people, talk with them
face to face, visit the sick, and pray with them.'
"From the Savannah river: "I visit eighteen
plantations every two weeks; catechise the children,
and pray with the sick in the week. Preach twice or
thrice on the Sabbath. The owners have built three
good churches at their own expense, all framed, 290
members have been added, and about 400 children
are instructed each week.' "
We go outside of our record to add an additional
illustrative item, for which we are indebted to the
Southwestern Presbyterian. Speaking of Rev. James
Smylie, Rev. Henry McDonald writes in its columns:
"In his old age, Mr. Smylie devoted his time
exclusively to the religion of the negroes. He had a
large congregation of them. In addition to preaching
the gospel to them, and reading to them the
Scriptures, he taught them the Catechism. He used
not only the Primary Catechism, but the Shorter
Catechism of the Westminster Assembly. Large
classes of them could recite the whole of that
catechism. He prepared a catechism for the colored
people, which was adopted and recommended by
Page 150
the Synod of Mississippi. This was before Dr Jones
published his catechism for them.'
I cannot take up the space necessary to give
specimens of the reports, resolutions and narratives
passed or adopted by ecclesiastical bodies as they
are given at length in these reports. The information
which they incidentally communicated shows, that
there was a most wonderful awakening upon this
subject throughout the Southern Zion. Equal space is
impartially given in these reports (which you will
search in vain to ascertain the missionary's
denominational predilections) to the proceedings of
Conferences, Associations, Councils, and Synods;
and it is indeed hard to ascertain to which
denomination of the one Holy Catholic Church -
Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, or Presbyterian -
belongs the honor of marching in the van of this host
of southern slave-holding Christians, intent upon
conquering by truth and love Africa-in-America for
Christ.
The full particulars of this evangelistic work among
the negroes by southern Christians may never be
written upon earth, but they are certainly inscribed by
the recording angel in "The Book of Record of the
Chronicles" of Heaven; and to their
Page 151
everlasting honor they will be read out by the King
himself in the presence of an assembled universe,
what day the "books shall be opened," and "God
shall bring every work into judgment, with every
secret thing, whether it be good or evil."
Page 152
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE SEA-BOARD OF SOUTH CAROLINA
"Lands intersected by a narrow frith,
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed,
Make enemies of nations, who had else
Like kindred drops been mingled into one. "
- Cowper.
WHILE not foes, only
the beautiful and narrow
Savannah divides the Georgia sea-board from
the South Carolina coast. The same features
mark the landscape, the fringe of long, narrow,
low islands crowned with live oak, cedar,
palmetto and myrtle, and beating back the
thundering surf; the wide waving salt marshes,
broken here and there by broad, deep estuaries,
and everywhere intersected by winding streams,
as the tide rises or falls, now filling, now
receding from the mud banks, and periodically
overflowing, in wide inundation, the meadows;
and gleaming like ribbons of silver upon a robe
of green, and stocked with fish; high, yellow,
sandy, pine-covered bluffs, ornamented with
planters' summer
Page 153
residences; broad stretches of rich alluvial lands,
waving with golden rice or snowy with Sea Island
cotton; boundless forests of long-leaf pine,
intersected by swamps; woods fragrant with magnolia
and yellow jessamine, and fields and forests abounding
with small and large game. Was it a wonder
that one of the old navigators (Sir Walter Raleigh, I
believe) thus wrote of it: "The great spreading
oaks, the infinite store of cedars, the palms and bay
trees of so sovereign odor that balm smelleth nothing
in comparison; the meadows divided asunder
into isles and islets, interlacing one another - these
made the place so pleasant that those who are
melancholic would be forced to change their humor."
Whether it was due to the sameness of origin, or
shaping influence of similar environment, the
inhabitants of these two sections of the South, in one
of which the writer had his experience of slavery, as
before described, were, in many respects, strikingly
alike. There was the same refinement and openhanded
hospitality, the same fondness in the men for
out-door sports, and skillful use of gun and rod, and
splendid horsemanship. Their speech, too, was alike.
Competent critics have affirmed that nowhere
Page 154
in the world was the English language spoken in
greater purity than among the low country people of
these two sister States. The relations between slave
and master were such as have already been described
as prevailing on the Georgia sea-coast The negro
population was vastly in excess of the white, but
perfectly orderly.
To a friend, a minister of the same church with
myself, who, consecrated to the work from student
days to the war, labored in this earthly paradise, I am
indebted for the following information concerning the
efforts of the church to give the gospel to the negro in
their region. I give it in his language:
"Let me jot down some statements which may be of
use to you:
"1. Previously to the war, the coast of South
Carolina was covered by a network of missions among
the slaves, conducted by the Methodist Episcopal
Church, South. These missions were not the same as
the circuits, nor were they embraced in them, but were
served by separate ministers devoted to them. They
were mainly supported by the planters. Besides preaching, the functions of the missionaries included
catechising of the children, and visiting
Page 155
the sick on the plantations. It was a great
work.
"2. The pastors of the Presbyterian church
regularly preached to the colored people, large
numbers of whom were members of their churches. In
addition to this, some of them preached regularly on
plantations, catechising the negro children and youth,
and visiting the sick. This was also a great work.
"3. The ministers of other Evangelical denominations
partook in similar labors. In the country along
the Santee River, Rev. Alexander Glennie, an
Episcopal clergyman, devoted special attention to the
religious instruction of the negroes."
*
"Bishop Gadsden, of South Carolina, has this to say of Rev.
Stephen Elliott, for so many years the eloquent
preacher and revered Bishop of the Episcopal church
in Georgia. He built a chapel, at his own expense, for
the colored people in Prince William's parish, and
resigned his white charge that
* The Rev. Benjamin Webb, a minister of the same church,
converted under Dr. Daniel Baker's preaching, did excellent
service as a missionary to the blacks in Beaufort District. -
Rev. Dr. B. M. Palmer.
Page 156
he might devote his entire care to the population of
that parish; doing it 'zealously, faithfully and
gratuitously.'
"4. In cases in which families, or members of
families, were pious, great attention was bestowed upon
the instruction of the slaves, especially the children.
Sabbath schools on plantations were maintained.
"5. A special enterprise in 1848 was begun for the
more thorough-going evangelization of the colored
people in Charleston, under the auspices of the Rev.
John B. Adger, D. D., and the session of the Second
Presbyterian Church. A brick house was built at a cost
of seven thousand five hundred dollars. In 1859, in
consequence of the enormous growth of the
congregation, another church building, which cost
twenty-five thousand dollars, contributed by the citizens of Charleston, was dedicated. This house was
one hundred feet long by eighty broad, and was on a
basement, divided into two rooms, which afforded
ample conveniences for prayer-meetings, catechising
of classes, and personal instruction of candidates
for membership. From the first, the great
building was filled, the blacks occupying the main
Page 157
floor, and the whites the galleries, which seated two
hundred and fifty persons!
"The enterprise began as a branch congregation of
the Second Presbyterian church; then became a
missionary church, under Rev. J. L. Girardeau,
evangelist of Charleston Presbytery; and, finally, in
consequence of the admission of white members, a
white church with a white session!
"The close of the war found it with exactly five
hundred colored members, and nearly one hundred
white. Such was its growth from organization as a
mission church, in 1857, with only forty-eight
members."
Presbyterian readers need not be informed that the
faithful minister thus mentioned as connected with
this remarkable enterprise is none other than the
learned and able Professor of Theology in our
beloved school of the prophets, in Columbia, S. C.,
Rev. John L. Girardeau, D. D.
We doubt if the honored position to which he had
been called by the unanimous voice of his church,
and for so long a time has ably filled, gives a
satisfaction greater than that which fills his soul,
when he recalls the work done for his Master among the
Page 158
lowly, gathered within the sacred walls of Zion
church, erected by Southern slave-holders for the
slave.
We take the liberty of supplementing the brief
account already quoted of this remarkable work, by the
following fuller statement, which we find in the
Southern Presbyterian Review, of July, 1854. It is no
violence of confidence to say that the article, although
anonymous, is from the pen of the honored missionary
himself. It is headed, "Report of a Conference by Presbytery
(Charleston Presbytery) on the Subject of the
Organization, Instruction and Discipline of the Colored
People." The debate, covering all the ground as it did,
and participated in by men having a practical
acquaintance with the subject, must have been deeply
interesting, as the report shows it was thorough and
able. We extract the paragraph containing evident
reference to Zion church, in Charleston:
"The question of the segregation of the blacks from
the whites in public worship was not at that time
considered, simply because the policy of Presbytery
in that matter had already been settled and openly
adopted. It has been the almost universal
Page 159
practice of our ministers for many years to convene
the people into separate congregations, and dispense
to them instruction suited to their exigencies; and at
the meeting of this Presbytery at Barnwell, in April,
1847, a formal sanction was afforded to this practice
by the extension of its approval and patronage to a
scheme, contemplating the establishment of a
separate congregation of blacks of the Second
Presbyterian church in Charleston.
"The reasons for the collection of the colored
people into distinct congregations have been ably
stated by Rev. J. B. Adger in a sermon preached in
Charleston, May 9th, 1847, and by Rev. Dr. Thornwell,
in a critical notice of this discourse, published shortly
after its delivery, in the Southern Presbyterian Review.
The want of room in all our church edifices, the
necessity of a style of instruction adapted to the
capacities and attainments of the colored population,
and their destitute and neglected condition, under the
pressure of powerful temptations, constitute cogent
arguments in favor of the erection of separate
congregations for their benefit. It cannot be denied
that there are great advantages resulting from the
union of masters and servants in the solemn offices
Page 160
of religion - advantages secured by the conviction
produced by this association of a common origin, a
common relation to God, and a common interest in the
great scheme of redemption through the blood of
Christ. But the question, as has been observed, was
soon found to be 'partial separation or a partial
diffusion of the gospel among the slaves, and an enlarged
philanthropy prevailed over sentiment.' It ought
to be kept in mind that this separation into distinct
congregations does not amount to a compulsory or
total exclusion of the servants from access to the
churches in which their masters worship. They are at
liberty to associate with them in worship whenever
they will, while these edifices and religious services,
intended especially for their benefit, are standing
invitations to those among them for whose welfare no
man cares, to participate in the blessings provided by
the gospel. It is also to be remembered that a complete
separation cannot, and in fact does not, take place
under this plan, inasmuch as it contemplates the
presence of some white persons - a
measure, indeed, made necessary by civil statutes.
As, therefore, servants are not debarred from
worshiping at pleasure with their masters, as it is
Page 161
expected that in all their assemblages white persons
should be present, and as these congregations are
served by white ministers, themselves responsible to
ecclesiastical courts representing large sections of
the community, it is next to impossible that a class
worship - as it is frequently objected - should be the
result of the enforcement of this scheme, or that it
should tend to foster feelings of insubordination and
aggravate the prejudices of caste, by connecting
them with the institutions of religion."
How far this remarkable and successful experiment
of a separate organization in part of colored people,
officered entirely by white persons, would, had our
civil war not intervened, have won its way into the
dense mass of the slave population, and to what
extent it would have shaped southern evangelization
of the negro, it were idle now to speculate. Besides,
its great success in winning from among them scores
of precious souls for Christ, the history is important
and valuable as furnishing another striking proof of
the southern slaveholders' fidelity to the highest
interests of the slave.
Page 162
CHAPTER XIX.
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF ANOTHER
MISSIONARY TO THE BLACKS.
Rev. Dr. Mallard:
MY DEAR BROTHER, - I
hardly know how to
communicate personal reminiscences. They would
be numerous and detailed. Perhaps I had better not
enter the edge of the forest. But I adventure a
few which may be of some use to you; if not, throw
them out. Of course you do not expect to mention my
name.
I remember that before I became a preacher, I used
to hold meetings on my father's plantation, the
cotton house affording a convenient place of assemblage.
Previously, the plantation resounded with the sounds
of jollity - the merry strains of the fiddle, the measured
beat of the "quaw sticks," and the rhythmical
shuffling and patting of the feet in the Ethiopian
jig. Now, the fiddle and the quaw sticks were
abandoned, and the light, carnal song gave way to
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psalms and hymns. The congregations were
numerous and attentive, and a genuine revival of
religion seemed to obtain. I can never forget with
what enthusiasm they used to sing their own
improvised "spiritual:"
"My
brother, you promised Jesus,
My
brother, you promised Jesus,
My
brother, you promised Jesus,
To
either fight or die.
Oh,
I wish I was there,
To
hear my Jesus' orders,
Oh,
I wish I was there, Lord,
To
wear my starry crown."
On another plantation
which I was in the habit of
visiting, a prayer-meeting was commenced by one or
two young men, which became more and more
solemn, until the religions interest grew intense, and a
powerful revival took place, which involved the white
family and their neighbors. The results of that
meeting were marked, and some of its fruits remain to
this day. If ever I witnessed an out-pouring of the
Spirit, I did then.
While teaching school in another place, it was my
custom to visit plantations in rotation, on certain afternoons
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of the week, and catechise and exhort the
slaves. I knew of but one planter in that community
who objected to this practice, and he was an irrelgious
man. On Sabbath, after the regular services of the
sanctuary had been held, and the white congregation
had dispersed, the negroes would crowd the church
building, and, standing on the pulpit steps, I would
address them. Their feelings, sometimes, were
irrepressible. This was with the sanction of the
minister and elders.
While at the Theological Seminary, I only refrained
from going on a foreign mission because I felt it to be
my duty to preach to the mass of slaves on the
sea-board of South Carolina. Having rejected, after
licensure, a call to a large and important church which
had very few negroes connected with it, I accepted
an invitation to preach temporarily to a small church
which was surrounded by a dense body of slaves. The
scenes on Sabbath were affecting. The negroes came
in crowds from two parishes. Often have I seen (a
scene, I reckon, not often witnessed) groups of them
"double quicking" in the roads, in order to reach the
church in time. Trotting to church! The white service
(as many negroes as
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could attending) being over, the slaves would pour in
and throng the seats vacated by their masters - yes,
crowd the building up to the pulpit. I have seen them
rock to and fro under the influence of their feelings, like
a wood in a storm. What singing! What hearty hand-shakings
after the service! I have had my finger joints
stripped of the scarf skin in consequence of them.
Upon leaving the church, after the last mournful service
with them, and going to my vehicle, which was some
hundred yards distant, a poor little native African
woman followed me, weeping and crying out: "O,
massa, you goin' to leave us? O, massa, for Jesus' sake,
don't leave us!" I had made an engagement with
another church, or the poor little African's plea might
have prevailed. When next I visited that people, I asked
after my little African friend. "She crossed over, sir,"
was the answer. May we meet "when parting will be no
more, the song to Jesus never cease!"
The church to which I next went was in a different
part of the sea-board of South Carolina. In connection
with it, I was ordained, and here my work began in
earnest. The congregation included
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some of the most cultivated gentlemen of the state.
They were cordially in favor of the religious instruction
of the slaves. The work among them consisted of
preaching to them on Sabbath noons, in the church
building in which their masters had just worshiped,
preaching to them again in the afternoons on the
plantations, and preaching at night, to mixed
congregations of whites and blacks. This in summer.
In winter, I preached at night on the plantations,
often reaching home after midnight. Many a time I
have seen the slaves gathered on their masters'
piazzas for worship, and when it was very cold, in their
dining-rooms and their sitting-rooms. The family and
the servants would worship together. This was
common, and the fact deserves to be signalized. In
order better to compass the work, I selected four
points in the congregational territory the diameter of
which was about twenty miles in one direction, and
purposed to secure the erection of meeting-houses
which would each be central to several plantations, in
order to economize labor and bring the gospel more
frequently in contact with the people, by preaching
once a month, on Sabbaths, at those points. This plan
was prevented of
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accomplishment by my removal to the missionary
work in Charleston. It is curious that after the war the
colored people erected houses of worship at those
very points.
My last service with the negroes at this church I will
never forget. The final words had been spoken to the
white congregation, and they had retired. When a
tempest of emotion was shaking me behind the desk,
the tramp of a great multitude was heard as the negroes
poured into the building, and occupied all available
space up to the little old wine-glass shaped pulpit.
When approaching the conclusion of the sermon, I
turned to the unconverted, asked what I should say to
them, and called on them to come to Jesus. At this
moment the great mass of the congregation
simultaneously broke down, dropped their heads to
their knees, and uttered a wail which seemed to prelude
the judgment. Poor people! they had deeply
appreciated the preaching of the gospel to them.
Into the details of the work in Charleston I cannot
enter. They would occupy too much space. It lasted
(with me) from 1854 to 1862. I have sometimes
thought I devoted too much time to it. I was
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absorbed in it. But the labor was not in vain, I trust.
Besides Sabbath preaching, most of the nights in the
week were spent at the church in the discharge of
various duties - holding prayer-meetings, catechising
classes, administering discipline, settling difficulties and
performing marriage ceremonies. Often have I sat for over
an hour in a cold room, instructing individual inquirers
and candidates for membership; often have I risen in the
night to visit the sick and dying and administer baptism
to ill children. I made it a duty to attend all their funerals
and conduct them.
Just two extreme instances of dying experience I will
give you. One was that of a servant of a distinguished
judge. He was dying. As I entered his room, he rubbed
his hands together and chuckled with a hilarious
delight, like that of a boy going home on Christmas Eve,
and exclaimed: "I'm going home! Oh, how glad I am!"
So he passed away. Another was that of my own
servant. He was reared by me; was a bad boy; when he
grew up, attended my church, professed conversion,
and was seized not very long after with galloping
consumption. He was in terror. His sins filled him with
dismay. I
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labored with him, but he refused to be comforted. At
last, not long before his departure, the light of God's
reconciled countenance broke upon the midnight of
his soul. From that time he had perfect peace, and
breathed his last, I firmly believe, on the bosom of his
Saviour. Freely did my tears flow while I was uttering
the last words of prayer and exhortation over his
encoffined body. His mother, also my servant, died
after him, during the war, when I was absent in
Virginia. She kept calling for me till she expired. Tell me
that there was no true, deep affection of masters to
slaves, and slaves to masters! It was often like that
between near relatives.
The most glorious work of grace I ever felt or
witnessed was one which occurred in 1858, in connection
with this missionary work in Charleston. It
began with a remarkable exhibition of the Spirit's
supernatural power. For eight weeks, night after night,
save Saturday nights, I preached to dense and
deeply-moved congregations. The result I have given in the
general statement prefixed.
The work steadily and rapidly grew, until it was
arrested by the war. I could give you some incidents
that would be interesting, but time will not
Page 170
permit. One I mention, in which the ludicrous and
pathetic were blended, and the saying was fulfilled,
that the fountains of laughter and tears are near to
each other. After a session had been formed, there
came before it for admission into the church a small
native African, whose name was Cudjo. The following
colloquy occurred between the minister and the
candidate: "Cudjo, you want to join the church?"
"Yessy, masse." "Cudjo, you love Jesus?"
"Yessy,
masse; me lub Jesus."
'Cudjo, you expect to see Jesus?"
"Oh, yessy, masse; me spec I's see Jesus."
"When he sees you coming, what do you think Jesus
will say?" "He say, "Cudjo, you come?'
I say, 'Yessy, ma'am, I come.'
" Here he struck his hands together,
and the session laughed and cried at the same time.
The conduct of this church after the war justified
the wisdom of those who projected it. They clung to
the white people. One of the first invitations in writing
which I received upon my return from imprisonment at
Johnson's Island, and while yet in the interior of the
State, where my family were refugees, in July, 1865, to
resume labor, was from this colored membership,
entreating me to come
Page 171
Page
back and preach to them as of old. For years they
declined to separate themselves from the Southern
Presbyterian Church, and even after its Assembly
had, in 1874, recommended an organic separation of
the whites and blacks, they continued to maintain an
independent position. Only at a late date did they
resolve to connect themselves with the Northern
Presbyterian Church. But I must close, lest I tire you.
I am, dear brother, yours in the Lord,
* * *
I make no apology for giving the above letter just as
it was written, in response to my request for personal
reminiscences of work among the blacks. It was as not
in my heart to alter a word or suppress a line of that
which I have not been able to read a single time
without tears.
Page 172
CHAPTER XX.
THE FIRST SOUTHERN GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
'FIRST DAY.
"AUGUSTA,
GA., Dec. 4, 1861.
"The First General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the
Confederate States met on this day, at 11 o'clock, in
the First Presbyterian Church."
SUCH is the opening sentence of the minutes of that
memorable body, in which our distinctive existence as
a church began, as reported in the Augusta Chronicle and Sentinel; for the use of which I am indebted to
the courtesy of Rev. Dr. J. H. Bryson, of Huntsville,
Ala.
It was an epoch pregnant with important events in
church and state. We pause to rapidly sketch them.
South Carolina, seceding from the Union, had been
swiftly followed, and in the order here named, by
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana.
These seven States, meeting by chosen representatives
in Montgomery, Ala., had
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formed a provisional government for one year, to
become thereafter permanent and upon the model of
that from which they had withdrawn. In April the guns
of Fort Sumter opened the fight. Lincoln had then
thrown down the gauge of battle in his call for 75,000
men; the Confederate Government had accepted it, in
its summons for volunteers. Four more States, halting
before, now wheeled into line - Virginia, Arkansas,
North Carolina, and Tennessee - eleven in all.
With a daring hopefulness, the capital was now
transferred to Richmond, Va. - In the first serious trial
of strength at Manassas, the Confederate arms had
triumphed; other and less important engagements had
marked the first year of the war, the most notable
being Price's success at Oak Hill. In his summing up of
the year, Alexander Stephens, in his School History,
says: "The contest upon the whole, thus far, was
greatly to the advantage of the Confederates, in view
of the number of victories achieved and prisoners
captured." The enemy had, however, effected a
lodgment upon the Atlantic coast of the young
Confederacy, by the reduction of the forts at Hatteras
Inlet, N. C., and Port Royal,
Page 174
S. C. Fired by accident, the heart of Charleston was
then being burnt out by a great conflagration.
In the midst of these exciting events, with the capital
threatened by a powerful Northern army, a beautiful
Southern city on fire, the white tents of the foe dotting
the shores of an adjoining State, and war ships, like
watch dogs, guarding all the coast, the delegates
appointed by the Southern Presbyteries met to form a
Southern General Assembly. In the judgment of most
of the commissioners, the separation of the States into
two republics, rendered desirable, if not compulsory,
two separate churches. But there were other and more
imperious causes. The celebrated "Spring resolutions"
had made it impossible for a Southerner to be at once
loyal to his government and his church. Rev. William
Baker, a Southerner, present at the Northern General
Assembly the previous spring, in Philadelphia, had
accounted for the scantiness of the delegation from the
South by the poverty of its ministers. It is certain that
some refused to attend because of the danger, and
others because they saw that separation of state
involved separation of church.
A convention of delegates had previously met in
Page 175
Atlanta, Ga, and invited the Presbyteries at their then
approaching fall meetings to appoint commissioners to
meet in Augusta, Ga, to form a General Assembly.
Meeting at the time appointed, Rev. Dr. John N.
Waddel, who, in conjunction with Rev. Dr. John H.
Gray and Professor Joseph Jones, of Augusta, Ga.,
had been selected by a majority of the Presbyteries "to
act as a committee of commissioners," nominated Rev.
Dr. Francis McFarland as temporary presiding officer.
Elected by acclamation, by his nomination Rev. Dr. B.
M. Palmer was unanimously selected to preach the
opening sermon, and at the next session was elected
Moderator by acclamation.
Present as a visitor in attendance upon Rev. Dr.
Charles Colcock Jones, then an invalid, but a
commissioner from the Presbytery of Georgia, I was
an eye-witness of what I now proceed with pleasure
to describe and relate.
The place of the first General Assembly was well
chosen. Augusta, sitting a queen upon the winding
Savannah, on the line between two great commonwealths,
and central to the entire Confederacy, was, by
its location, its proverbial culture and hospitality,
Page 176
and its handsome First church embowered in its
shady grove - a fitting birthplace for the new
Presbyterian church.
The personnel of the Assembly was remarkable. The
Presbyteries, realizing the gravity of the situation, had
sent their oldest, wisest, most experienced, and, in a
word, most suitable men. Without attempting to
exhaust the list, let me call over some of the names
upon its roll, of its men illustrious in divinity and law.
The Synod of Alabama sent such men as Rev.
Alexander McCorkle, R. B. White, D. D.; Elder Hon. W.
B. Webb. Arkansas - Rev. Thos. R. Welsh and the
venerable missionary, C. Kingsbury, D. D. From the
Synod of Baltimore came John H. Bocock, D. D., Wm.
E. Foote, D. D., and Hon. J. D. Armstrong. Georgia sent
N. A. Pratt, D. D., John S. Wilson, D. D., C. C. Jones,
D. D., Joseph R. Wilson, D. D., and Elders David Ardis,
Hon. Wm. A. Forward and Wm. L. Mitchell. Memphis -
John N. Waddel, D. D., and Hon. J. T. Swayne.
Mississippi - John Hunter, D. D., B. M. Palmer, D. D.,
James A. Lyon, D. D., Rev. R. McInnis, and Elders
Wm. C. Black and David Hadden. Nashville - R. B.
McMullen, D. D. North Carolina - R.
Page 177
H. Morrison, D. D., R. Hett Chapman, D. D., Drury
Lacy, D. D., and Elders Prof. Charles Phillips and Hon.
J. G. Sheperd. South Carolina - James H.
Thornwell, D. D., Aaron W. Leland, D. D., J. Leighton
Wilson, D. D., John B. Adger, D. D., D. McNeill
Turner, and Elders Hon. W. Perronneau Finley, J. S.
Thompson, Hon. Thomas C. Perrin and Chancellor
Job Johnstone. Synod of Texas - R. W. Bailey, D. D.,
and Rev. R. F. Bunting. Synod of Virginia -
Theodorick Pryor, D. D., Francis McFarland, D. D,
James B. Ramsay, D. D., Samuel R. Houston, Peyton
Harrison, Professor John L. Campbell, Hon. W. F. C.
Gregory, etc.
Although to an uncommon extent composed of men
entitled by their ability, years, experience and
prominence in church and state to lead, there was an
entire absence of a domineering spirit, and the utmost
freedom of debate, in which there was a general
participation. Even that prince of men, of scholars and
theologians, Rev. Dr. Thornwell, with all his
acknowledged leadership, did not always carry his
point, and shaped the actions of the Assembly by
the masterly ability with which he advocated his
views of the topics discussed, rather than by his
Page 178
powerful personal influence. Never were ecclesiastical
debates abler, as might have been anticipated from the
material composing this General Assembly. Sitting in
the midst of a war of tremendous proportions, with
their homes threatened by invasion, and sons,
relatives and friends exposed to the deadly hazard of
battle, these servants of God spent eleven days in
deliberately discussing the problems presented by the
times for adjustment, and in perfecting the
organization of the infant church. By their wise
counsels, that church was provided with all the
requisite machinery of executive committees;
committees, in accordance with the views of Dr.
Thornwell, so long and ably advocated by him, in
direct relationship to the General Assembly, taking the
place of cumbrous, irresponsible boards. To an
executive committee, located in New Orleans, the
Indian mission, the only part of the foreign field to
which the blockade permitted access, was transferred
without a jar; and provision made for the transmission
of funds to such southern missionaries outside the
United States as wished to retain their connection with
our church.
What was determined with regard to the
negro
Page 179
race,which occupied a large part of the time and
attention of this General Assembly, is reserved for
the next letter.
Thus our beloved church sprang into existence, like
Minerva from Jupiter's brain, full statured and in
complete panoply; or, rather, came into being, and by
the same creative word as the first Adam did, not a
feeble infant, but a strong and grown-up man
Characterized throughout by a prayerful spirit,
which seemed, together with the felt gravity of the
times, to have repressed every exciting allusion to
political and national affairs, this remarkable
Assembly, having finished its appointed task, the
Moderator announced that there was no further
business before it; whereupon, a member, Dr.
McMullen, arose and said: "Brethren, the Lord has
blessed us in an extraordinary degree. The unanimity
and cordiality with which everything has been
transacted seems to me to be very remarkable, and it
would be to me very gratifying if we could spend an
hour this evening in devotional exercises; it would be
a delightful closing of this Assembly."
The venerable Dr. Leland, thereupon, slowly rising
Page 180
to his feet, observed: "It becomes us to adopt that
proposition and to meet at seven o'clock. Let us this
night acknowledge the good hand of God upon us. I
do not feel as if we could separate by any sudden
adjournment. The best feeling of every heart of this
Assembly will be greatly cheered by such a mode of
terminating our deliberations. Let us close these
meetings with feelings of love and kindness."
Dr. McFarland immediately responded: "That
would, indeed, be very pleasant to me. I do trust that
we may part with feelings of love and gratitude to
Almighty God, such as we never felt before, and that
the Moderator (Dr. Palmer), may carry our hearts as
one heart up to the heavenly throne.
Said Dr. Pryor: "I think the suggestion of Dr.
McMullen eminently proper, and I rise for the purpose
of seconding his motion."
The motion adopted, the Assembly coming
together in the evening, after the transaction of some
matters of business occupying only a few minutes,
closed its deliberations by one entire session devoted
to worship with the congregation. The 508th hymn
was sung, prayer offered by Dr. McFarland, Romans
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viii. was read, the 580th hymn sung, when the
Moderator, Rev. Dr. Palmer, rose and said:
"My brethren, the fulness of this Assembly, drawn
from all parts of our extended Confederacy, during a
season of extraordinary peril and darkness, is sufficient
proof that all our hearts were impressed with the
importance of this convention. The discussions
through which we have passed, during the session of
this Assembly, have opened the fundamental
principles of our government, and, to some extent, of
our faith. And that we have been able to set this
church forward fully equipped, and in doing so to
uncover all these principles, and to do it without a jar,
is a sufficient proof that we have enjoyed the guidance
of God's Spirit. The fact, too, that we have been led to
open our hearts towards our brethren of the great
Presbyterian family who are not gathered under the
same roof with ourselves, opening in the near future
the prospect of reunion with those of like faith with
ourselves, is an additional proof that our hearts have
been moved by the Spirit of grace. And now we are to
part; and as we extend the hand of parting there will
scarcely be an eye that will not moisten, scarcely a
heart that will not throb; we are made to
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feel, as we return to our several homes, that it has
been indeed a privilege to come up here as to a mount
of ordinances. Our language will be the language of
Peter to his Master on the mount: 'Lord, it is good for
us to be here.' "
To this Dr. Pryor responded: "I rise, Moderator, to
move that this Assembly be now dissolved. We part
to meet no more in this world, but it is pleasant to feel
that there is a land where we shall meet again -
'There,
on a green and flowery mount,
Our
happy souls shall meet,
And
with transporting joy recount
The
labors of our feet.' "
The 342d hymn was then
sung, and with prayer and
benediction by the Moderator, the memorable first
Southern General Assembly was dissolved, and
another like it appointed to meet in Memphis the first
Thursday in May, 1862.
Page 183
CHAPTER XXI.
THE FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND THE
NEGRO; ITS MANIFESTO ON THE SUBJECT
TO THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL.
WHATEVER may have been the causes of secession
and our civil war, it must be admitted that
African slavery was the occasion of both.
Although it would not be correct to say that the
one side fought for the destruction and the other
for the preservation of this peculiar institution,
its abolition or continuance was, as the event
showed, wrapped up in the issues of the war.
The first General Assembly was composed of
men who, whether of Northern or Southern birth,
were almost, without exception, slaveholders,
sincerely convinced of the scripturalness of
slavery.
It was with no uncertainty as to their position that
this grave and learned and pious assembly of
ministers and elders approached the question of the
more thorough evangelization of their negro slaves.
Page 184
Lighted up by the lurid flames of a civil war, the
question seemed to have taken on a new interest and
assumed larger proportions. With one accord the
Assembly seemed to have felt that, in the perilous
circumstances surrounding the institution as well as
themselves, and the conspicuousness thus given to
the Southern Church before the world, there was a
special providential call for renewed and intelligent
efforts for the salvation of that people, who had now
grown in thirty years from two to four millions!
Passing by the incidental references, I shall confine
myself to its deliberate utterances upon the whole
subject, as they were given in the address to all the
churches of Jesus Christ throughout the world,
prepared by Dr. Thornwell, and in Dr. C. C. Jones'
discourse to the Assembly itself upon the
evangelization of the negro.
On the morning of the second day of the session,
the following resolution was introduced by Dr.
Thornwell, and adopted:
"Resolved,That a committee,
consisting of one
minister and one ruling elder from each of the Synods
belonging to this Assembly, be appointed
Page 185
to prepare an address to all the churches of Jesus
Christ throughout the earth, setting forth the cause of
our separation from the Church in the United States,
our attitude in relation to slavery,
and a general view
of the policy which, as a church, we propose to
follow." (Italics mine.)
That committee, appointed by Dr. Palmer, the
Moderator, in the same session, contained the
following distinguished names: James H. Thornwell,
D. D., Theodoric Pryor, D. D., F. K. Nash, C. C.
Jones, D. D., R. B. White, D. D., W. D. Moore, J. H.
Gillespie, J. L. Boozer, R. W. Bailey, D. D., J. D.
Armstrong, C. Phillips, Joseph A. Brooks, W. P.
Finley, Samuel McCorkle, W. P. Webb, William C.
Black, T. L. Dunlap, and E. W. Wright.
On the eighth day their report, taken up from the
docket, was, without debate or a dissenting voice,
adopted as the utterance of the Southern Church, and
under the following resolutions
"Resolved, That the
Address to the Churches of
Jesus Christ throughout the world, reported and read
by Rev. Dr. Thornwell, chairman of the special
committee appointed for that purpose, be received,
and is hereby adopted by this Assembly.
Page 186
"Resolved, That three thousand copies of this
address be printed, under the direction of the Stated
Clerk, for the use of the Assembly.
"Resolved, That
the original address be filed in the
archives of the Assembly, and that a paper be
attached thereto, to be signed by the Moderator and
members of this Assembly."
It was a deeply interesting spectacle when, at the
calling of the Assembly's roll, each member
approached the Clerk's desk and signed his name to
this magnificent state paper, which bears the stamp of
the acute intellect and broad genius of the chairman,
Dr. Thornwell. We can afford space for only a few
extracts from this historical document, and only upon
the attitude of the Southern Church toward slavery:
"And here we may venture to lay before the
Christian world our views as a church upon the
subject of slavery.
"In the first place, we would have it distinctly
understood that, in our ecclesiastical capacity, we are
neither the friends nor the foes of slavery; that is to
say, we have no commission either to propagate or
abolish it. The policy of its existence or
Page 187
non-existence is a question which belongs exclusively
to the state. We have no right to enjoin it as a duty, or
to condemn it as a sin. Our business is with the duties
which spring from the relation; the duties of the
master on the one hand, and of their slaves on the
other. These duties we are to proclaim and to enforce
with spiritual sanctions. The social, civil, political
problems connected with this great subject transcend
our sphere, as God has not entrusted to his church
the organization of society, the construction of
governments, nor the allotment of individuals to their
various stations. The church has as much right to
preach to the monarchies of Europe and the
despotisms of Asia the doctrines of republican
equality, as to preach to the government of the South
the extirpation of slavery. The position is impregnable,
unless it can be proved that slavery is a sin. Upon
every other hypothesis it is so clearly a question of
state, that the proposition would never for a moment
have been doubted had there not been a foregone
conclusion in relation to its moral character.
"Is slavery a sin ?
"In answering this question as a church, let it
Page 188
be distinctly borne in mind that the only rule of
judgment is the written Word of God. The church
knows nothing of the intuitions of reason, or the
deductions of philosophy, except those reproduced in
the sacred canon. She has a positive constitution in
the Holy Scriptures, and has no right to utter a syllable
upon any subject, except as the Lord puts words in her
mouth. She is founded, in other words, upon express
revelation. Her creed is an
authoritative testimony of
God, and not a speculation, and what she proclaims
she must proclaim with the infallible certainty of faith,
and not with the hesitating assent of an opinion. The
question, then, is brought within a narrow compass.
Do the Scriptures, directly or indirectly, condemn
slavery as a sin? If they do not, the dispute is ended,
for the church, without forfeiting her character, dares
not go beyond them. If men had drawn their
conclusions on this subject only from the Bible, it
would no more have entered into any human head to
denounce slavery as a sin, than to denounce
monarchy, or aristocracy, or poverty. The truth is, men
have listened to what they falsely consider as primitive
intuitions, or as necessary deductions
Page 189
from primitive cognitions, and then have gone to
the Bible to confirm the crotchets of their vain
philosophy. They have gone there determined to find a
particular result, and the consequence is that they
leave with having made, instead of having interpreted,
Scripture. Slavery is no new thing. It has not only
existed for ages in the world, but it has existed under
every dispensation of the covenant of grace in the
church of God. Indeed, the first organization of the
church as a visible society separate and distinct from
the unbelieving world, was inaugurated in the family of
a slaveholder. Among the very first persons to whom
the seal of circumcision was affixed, were the slaves of
the father of the faithful, some born in his house and
some bought with his money. Slavery again appears
under the law. God sanctions it in the first table of the
Decalogue, and Moses treats it as an institution to be
regulated, not abolished; legitimated, not condemned.
We come down to the age of the New Testament, and
we find it again in the churches founded by the
apostles, under the plenary inspiration of the Holy
Ghost. These facts are utterly amazing, if slavery is the
enormous sin which
Page 190
its enemies represent it to be. It will not do to say that
the Scriptures have treated it only in a general and
incidental way, without any clear implication as to its
moral character. Moses surely made it the subject of
express and positive legislation, and the apostles are
equally explicit in inculcating the duties which spring
from both sides of the relation. They treat slaves as
bound to obey, and inculcate obedience as an office of
religion - a thing wholly self contradictory, if the
authority over them were unlawful and iniquitous.
"But what puts the subject in a still clearer light, is
the manner in which it is sought to extort from the
Scriptures a contrary testimony. The notion of an
explicit and direct condemnation is given up. The
attempt is to show that the genius and spirit of
Christianity are opposed to it; that its great cardinal
principles of virtue are against it. Much stress is laid
upon the Golden Rule, and upon the general
denunciations of tyranny and oppression. To all this
we reply, that no principle is clearer than that a case
positively excepted cannot be included under a general
rule. Let us concede for a moment that the laws of love
and the condemnation of tyranny
Page 191
and oppression seem logically to involve, as a result,
the condemnation of slavery; yet if slavery is
afterwards expressly mentioned and treated as a lawful
relation, it obviously follows, unless Scripture is to be
interpreted as inconsistent with itself, that slavery is
by necessary implication excepted. To say that the
prohibition of tyranny and oppression include
slavery, is to beg the whole question. Tyranny and
oppression involve either the unjust usurpation of, or
the unlawful exercise of, power. It is the unlawfulness
in its principle or measure, which constitutes the core
of the sin. Slavery, therefore, must be proved to be
unlawful, before it can be referred to any such
category. The master, indeed, may abuse his power,
but he oppresses not simply as a master, but as a
wicked master.
"But apart from all this, the law of love is simply the
inculcation of universal equity. It implies nothing as
to the existence of various ranks and gradations in
society. The interpretation which makes it repudiate
slavery would make it equally repudiate all social, civil
and political inequalities. Its meaning is, not that we
should conform ourselves to the arbitrary
expectations of others, but that we should
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render unto them precisely the same measure which, if
we were in their circumstance, it would be reasonable
and just in us to demand at their hands. It condemns
slavery, therefore, only upon the supposition that
slavery is a sinful relation; that is, he who extracts the
prohibition of slavery from the Golden Rule begs the
very point in dispute.
"We cannot pursue the argument in detail, but we
have said enough, we think, to vindicate the position
of the Southern Church."
I add to the argument one single sentence more
from this splendid vindication of the position of our
Southern Presbyterian Church: "We feel that the
souls of our slaves are a solemn trust, and we shall
strive to present them faultless and complete before
the presence of God."
Here I must, per
force,stop in my quotations from
this able paper, in which one knows not which most to
admire, the logic or the rhetoric, the reasoning or the
piety. Let it now be recalled that the entire Assembly
affixed their signatures publicly to this document; as
well, the venerable Dr. A. W. Leland, of northern
birth; "a southerner," as he well expressed it once in a
time of great excitement
Page 193
in South Carolina, "a southerner not of necessity as
one born in that section, but by choice," and Rev. Dr.
James H. Thornwell, a southron by descent, birth, and
in every fibre of his being. Some would say, Why write
of a dead issue? To this we make answer: Truth never
dies, for it has the years of God, the immortality of its
Author. What was scriptural and therefore right before
the war, is both still. God has in his providence
abolished African slavery, because he saw fit, and
because his Word always taught, as the southerner
believed, that, other things being equal, "to be free is
better." But Divine Providence is not in conflict with
the Divine Word. Tried by the Bible, slavery was not
sin, nor southern slaveholders sinners because of it.
And there is something inspiring in that conviction of
right which enabled these hundred or more ministers
and elders to stand immovable in the tossing billows of
that dreadful conflict which was occasioned by, and
resulted (with the regrets of none) in the abolition of
American slavery in America.
Page 194
CHAPTER XXII.
THE FIRST GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND THE
NEGRO - THE ADDRESS OF DR. JONES ON
THE RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF NEGROES.
THE last appearance, I believe, of the "Apostle to the
Blacks,"as, in a former letter, Rev. Dr. Charles
Colcock Jones was styled, in any ecclesiastical
body, was before that convened in Augusta, Ga., in
1861. "Perhaps I shall not be with you, brethren, next
year," he had said, in excusing himself from the
chairmanship of an important committee, appointed
to report to the next Assembly. He never went to
another, until he was summoned by the angel of
death to "the general assembly of the firstborn,
which are written in Heaven."
Appointed chairman of the Committee of Domestic
Missions, he used this language on the subject ever
near to his heart: "That the great field of missionary
operations among the colored population falls
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more particularly under the care of the Committee of
Domestic Missions; and that committee be urged to
give it serious and earnest attention, and the
Presbyteries to co-operate with it in securing pastors
and missionaries for the field."
This last suggestion was made the special order for
discussion on the evening of December 10th; and Dr.
Jones invited to address the Assembly upon the
subject. We state, in passing, that in the debate which
followed, it was resolved that a pastoral letter be
prepared upon the subject, to be reported for action to
the next General Assembly, the chairmanship of which
Dr. Jones, on the plea of ill-health, as before stated,
declined. His Address the Assembly directed to be
published. I have in my bound volume of pamphlets a
copy of it. It has not lost its power to stir my soul,
although committed for a quarter century to the cold
custody of the printed page; its effect at the time of its
delivery was marvelous. Let an eye-witness describe
the occasion and the address.
The large audience-room of the beautiful church
was filled from pulpit to door by commissioners
and people. The speaker, as he walked up the aisle,
Page 196
by the feebleness of his gait, and somewhat bowed
form, created the impression of age which was not
confirmed by his short-cropped light hair, with scarcely
a silver thread, and his noble, intellectual, spiritual and
benevolent face, without a seam or wrinkle. Unable,
from weakness, produced by a wasting palsy, to stand,
he took the position in our Lord's day assigned the
teacher. Sitting, but with free use of arms and hands, in
impressive gesture, he held the immense audience
spell-bound, in almost absolute stillness, for an hour and a
half, while he plead for the souls of the poor slaves, to
whose salvation his noble life, now rapidly, as he and
we well knew, drawing to its close, had been
consecrated. Back of the speaker there was what the old
rhetoricians laid down as an essential of true oratory -
character. The audience saw before them one, of whom
a fellow-commissioner, Rev. Dr. B. M. Palmer, has
recently used this language, in the obituary of his only
daughter: "Her distinguished father, it need not be
told, by his intellectual strength and culture, and still
more by the majesty of his character, acquired the
highest distinction which could be conferred in the
church which he served.
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He was twice called to the chair of history and polity
in the Theological Seminary at Columbia, S. C., and
then to discharge the important function of Secretary of
Home Missions in the Presbyterian Church, long before
the separation caused by the late civil war. Yet all these
public honors were voluntarily surrendered by this man
of God, that, without fee or reward, he might become a
missionary to the slaves in his native county. By this
act of self-abnegation, he endeared himself to the
people of God throughout the land, and won a
distinction to himself beyond that of princes or titles to
confer."
Beginning with the thought that the meeting in the
interests of Domestic Missions was but a continuation
of that held the previous evening in behalf of Foreign
Missions, since the field was one and the work the
same, he rapidly sketches the territory occupied by the
Confederate States, its physical features, productions
and population. He then skilfully introduces the
subject of the negro; his peculiar relation to the whites,
relative numbers of the two races, and sketches the
history of his introduction into the United States.
Noting the fact with approval that the Confederate
Congress had passed
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an act prohibiting the slave-trade, and that for a long
period the increase of the negro had not been by
importation, but by birth, he remarks that "the natural
increase of the negroes under a genial climate and mild
treatment has kept pace with that of the whites, but not
exceeded it, and that increase will continue, although
for good reasons (white emigration?) the white
population will make the disparity of numbers between
the two classes greater and greater at every census."
He then, in feeling and eloquent language, emphasizes
the value of the slave as a fellow immortal, dwells upon
his close relation to the master, his importance to
society as a producer of values, and draws from all
these considerations powerful arguments for his
evangelization. He then, with all his moving oratory,
urges to their help a church which had, as he affirmed,
only "partially fulfilled" her duty to this people, in the
providence of God, now thrown exclusively upon the
southern people for the gospel, and closes with
practical suggestions as to the best methods of
performing this her acknowledged duty.
No analysis can do justice to the address, and we
shall append to our imperfect summary, as samples of
its moving oratory, a few extracts.
Page 199
Paying the race a deserved compliment for its good
behavior throughout its history in this country, he
asks:
"Whence came this people? Originally from the
kraals and jungles, the cities and villages, of the torrid
regions of Africa, wonderfully adapted by constitution
and complexion to live and thrive in similar latitudes in
all the world. They are inhabiters of one common earth
with us; they are one of the varieties of our race - a
variety produced by the power and in the inscrutable
wisdom of God; but when, and how, and where, lies
back of all the traditions and records of men. These
sons of Ham are black in the first hieroglyphics; they
are black in the first pages of history, and continue
black. They share our physical nature, and are bone of
our bone and flesh of our flesh; they share our
intellectual and spiritual nature; each body of them
covers an immortal soul God our Father loves, for
whom Christ our Saviour died, and unto whom
everlasting happiness or misery shall be meted in the
final day. They are not the cattle upon a thousand hills,
nor the fowls upon the mountains, brute beasts, goods
and chattels, to be taken, worn out and destroyed in our
Page 200
use; but they are men, created in the image of God, to
be acknowledged and cared for spiritually by us, as
we acknowledge and care for the other varieties of the
race, our own Caucasian or the Indian, or the Mongol.
Shall we reach the Bread of Life over their heads to
far-distant nations, and leave them to die eternal deaths
before our eyes?
"What is their social connection with us?They are not
foreigners, but our nearest neighbors; they are not
hired servants, but servants belonging to us in law
and gospel; born in our house and bought with our
money; not people whom we seldom see and whom we
seldom hear, but people who are never out of the sight
of our eyes and hearing of our ears. They are our
constant and inseparable associates; whither we go
they go; where we dwell they dwell; where we die and
are buried, there they die and are buried; and, more
than all, our God is their God. What parts men most
closely connected in this life from each other, that can
only part us from them, namely, crime, debt, or death.
Indeed, they are with us from the cradle to the grave.
Many of us are nursed at their generous breasts, and
all carried in their arms. They help to make us walk,
they help
Page 201
to make us talk, they help to teach us to distinguish
the first things we see and the first things we hear.
They mingle in all our infantile and boyish sports.
They are in our chambers and in our parlors, and serve
us at every call. We say to this man 'Go,' and he
goeth; and to another 'Come,' and he cometh; and to
another 'Do this,' and he doeth it; they are with us in
the house and in the field; they are with us when we
travel on the land and on the sea; and when we are
called to face dangers, or pestilence, or war, still are
they with us; they patiently nurse us and ours in long
nights and days of illness; our fortunes are their
fortunes; and our joys their joys; and our sorrows are
their sorrows; and among the last forms that our failing
eyes do see, and among the last sounds our ears do
hear, are their forms and their weepings, mingled with
those of our dearest ones, as they bend over us in our
last struggles, dying, passing away into the valley of
the shadows of death! My brethren, are these people
nothing to us? Have we no gratitude, no friendship, no
kind feelings for all that they have done for us and for
ours? Have we no heart to feel, no hand to help, no
smiles to give, no tears to shed on their behalf?
Page 202
No wish in our inmost soul that they may know what
we prize above all price, our precious Saviour, and go
with us to glory, too?
"What is their value as an integral part of our
population, to ourselves, to our country, and to the
world itself?To ourselves, they are the source, in large
measure, of our living, and comprise our wealth, in
Scripture, our 'money.' Our boatmen are they on the
waters; our mechanics and artisans to build our
houses, to work in many trades; our agriculturists to
subdue our forests, to sow and cultivate and reap our
lands; without whom no team is started, no plow is run,
no spade, nor hoe, nor axe, is driven; they prepare our
food, and wait upon our tables and our persons, and
keep the house, and watch for the master's coming.
They labor for us in summer's sun and in winter's cold;
to the fruit of their labor we owe our education, our
food and clothing, and our dwellings, and a thousand
comforts of life that crowd our happy homes; and
through the fruit of their labors we are enabled to
support the gospel and enjoy the priceless means of
grace. Brethren, what could we do without this people?
How live and support our families? And have they
Page 203
no claims upon us? Are they nothing more than
creatures of profit and pleasure? Are the advantages
and blessings of that close connection between us in
the household to be all on one side? Has our Master
in heaven so ordained it? I will reverse the
question of the apostle to the Corinthians and put it in
the mouth of your servants, and make them ask it of
you, their masters: 'If we have sown unto you carnal
things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your spiritual
things?' "
This is what he beautifully says to pastors, in
urging them not to forget this part of their charge:
"Give notice to the master on what evening you
will be with him, and that you will preach or lecture for
his family and household. Right gladly will he
welcome you; the family and plantation will be all astir -
''our minister is coming to preach to us this evening.'
Tea is over, the time for the meeting is at hand. The
little children beg to sit up to meeting; one servant
takes the books and lights, another the chairs and
stand. Everything is nicely arranged, and you are
directly in presence of bright faces, and your psalm is
sung with spirit and power, your prayer and your
sermon fall on many attentive ears, and the
Page 204
hearty thanks of your humble parishioners fill you
with gladness. At the close, you will speak an
encouraging word to the members of the church, and
shake hands with the aged, and perhaps step in to see
some sick and afflicted one. You will also enquire how
well the children and youth attend the plantation
Sunday-school; and if you do not impart joy to the
household, and go away a happier Christian and a
more blest minister, we shall bid farewell to years of
experience and observation in this field of labor."
Insisting on a high order of qualification in the
missionary to the blacks, and thorough preparation for
his pulpit labors, he says this of his pastoral duties:
"And as a good shepherd he will follow them into
the highways and hedges, into their own plantations
and into their own sick chambers, and speak unto and
pray with them. He will perform their marriage
ceremonies and attend their funerals, and follow them
to their graves, and go in and out before them, with
the Bible in his hands, in the fear of the Lord. He will
become a star in the right hand of the Saviour before
them, and they will rejoice in his light, and learn to sing
his hymns. and
Page 205
quote his precepts, and authority, and argue by his
knowledge, and take him to be their friend, and seek
his instruction in times of difficulty, and his comfort in
their times of sorrow, and bring their families to him for
instruction and for his blessing; and when they die,
they will wish him to preach their funeral sermon. He
will be happy with the people, and they will be happy
with him; as much so as weak and sinful and partially
sanctified ministers and people can be in this world.
Whenever he meets them he speaks kind words, and
receives kind words in return. He is not ashamed of
them, and they are glad in him; and when he rides
along the road, and they are at work in the field, he
flings over the fence amongst them, a cheerful 'Good
morning! good morning to you all!' In a moment,
every eye is up, and they catch his voice and person,
and return his salutation with a hearty good will, with
rapid inquiries after his welfare, and their loud and
happy conversation dies on his ear as he leaves them
behind!"
A more tender and poetic and yet eloquent paragraph
it would be hard to find in any address, than
that which I now close an account of an address,
which stirred my soul to its depths, as it did others,
Page 206
and sent me (a lover of the race from childhood, and
since manhood a worker among them) to my home and
charge, determined (the best proof of the speaker's
power) to work for their salvation as I had never done
before.
Imagine the effect of hearing this man of God,
manifestly drawing near to the grave, unable even to
stand, give this as his experience and parting word to
his ministerial brethren, whose face they were to see in
our highest court no more!
"Yes, my brethren, there is a blessing in the work!
How often, returning home after preaching on the
Sabbath day, through crowds of worshippers,
sometimes singing as they went down to their homes
again, or, returning from plantation meetings, held in
humble abodes, late in the starlight night, or in the soft
moonlight silvering over the forest on the roadside,
wet with heavy dews, with scarcely a sound to break
the silence, alone, but not lonely; how often has there
flowed up in the soul a deep, peaceful joy, that God
enabled me to preach the gospel to the poor?
"And now that this earthly tabernacle trembles to
its fall, and these failing limbs can no more bear me
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about, nor this tongue, as it was wont, preach the glad
tidings of salvation, I look back, and varied
recollections crowd my mind, and my eyes grow dim
with tears, I pray for gratitude for innumerable mercies
past, for forgiveness for the chief of sinners, and for
the most unfaithful of ministers, for meek submission
for the present, and for an assured hope in a precious
Saviour for the future. Oh, my brethren! work while the
day lasts, 'for the night cometh when no man can
work;' for the shadows of that night, even while the
day lasts, may fall upon you and stop you in your
way, ere its deep darkness shut you around in the cold
grave, no more to be removed until the Son of Man
shall come in his glory, to the judgment of the great
day."
Page 208
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONDUCT OF THE NEGRO DURING THE WAR.
THE celebrated Emancipation Proclamation was
clearly a war measure, whose sole purpose was the
crippling of the enemy. It went into operation
imperfectly during the war within the Federal lines, and
became effectual only at its close. Indeed, it is said
that some Indian slaveholders in the Everglades of
Florida have only recently found out that their negroes
are free. The conduct, therefore, of the negro before
emancipation includes his conduct during the war.
The facts which I am about to relate are notorious,
and have passed into history, but it will be useful to
recall them. What I shall relate is the result largely of
my own observation, and of what I have learned from
the lips of actors in the scenes described.
It will be convenient to divide the subject; and I
Page 209
will first speak of the conduct of the negro in vast
regions of the South never invaded by a Federal army
Here let me promise that there was no discernible
difference in the conduct of the negroes as the war
progressed and the area of the doomed Confederacy
constantly narrowed, and the news percolated the
country that the object of the approaching armies was
their liberation. Whether it was due to the habits of
industry and subordination engendered by two
centuries of American slavery, or to the intrinsic
inoffensiveness of the race, it is certain that their
conduct under most trying circumstances was above
all praise, and constitutes a debt which Southerners
should be neither reluctant to acknowledge nor slow
to pay.
As a rule, there was no insubordination among
them, although the master's eye and hand were
absent, much less threat of, or execution of
violence. With the entire arms-bearing male
population - "conscription robbing (as it was said)
the cradle and the grave" - withdrawn, they, under
their negro drivers and occasional overseers, and
mainly under the direction of mistresses, advised
Page 210
by letter from time to time by masters at the front, tilled
the fields, harvested and sold the crops, and
protected the defenseless families of men fighting
against their freedom! Absolutely, women and
children felt and were safer then than they are now in
some parts of the South.
Let me now refer to their conduct within the Federal
lines. Some bad slaves, and a few, mostly young and
foolish negroes, fascinated by the large promises of
freedom which, in their ignorance, they mistook for
exemption from work and governmental support,
followed in the wake of the liberating armies, until their
privations forced them home again. The sufferings of
these poor creatures made the name given to them by
the Federals, "contrabands," a synonymn of wretchedness.
The great mass of them within the changing army
lines remained quietly in their homes, and took care,
with a beautiful fidelity, of the families of their owners.
In not a few instances, their treatment by the Federals
was not calculated to awaken any ardent admiration of
their deliverers. In Liberty county, for example, they
robbed servant and master with perfect impartiality,
not only carrying
Page 211
off the clothing of the absent master and present
servant, but exchanging their infested underclothing
for that of the negro women!
The conduct of the negro in Liberty county, Ga.,
during what is still called "Sherman's Raid," is
doubtless a fair specimen of their conduct elsewhere
under similar circumstances. As such I give now the
testimony of two eye witnesses; and first quote from a
brief journal of the experience of the only daughter,
now deceased, of Rev. Charles Colcock Jones, D. D.,
on her father's plantation home, "Montevideo,"
Liberty county, Ga.
When Sherman, in his unopposed march from
Atlanta to the sea, struck the fortifications around
Savannah, which occasioned only a short halt, his
great army flattened out all over the adjoining country
and lived upon its rich resources. Our guard said they
had a perfect picnic in our county. For a month or
more, three lone females and five little children were
exposed to the constant visits of foraging parties of
his troops. I quote from the journal written upon one
of my old blank books, in part occupied with
memoranda of texts to be fashioned into sermons:
Page 212
Tuesday, Dec. 1, 1861, - Mother rode to Arcadia this
morning, thinking the Yankees were no nearer than
Way's Station (in an adjoining county), and lingered
about the place until late in the afternoon, when she
started to return to "Montevideo," and was quietly
knitting in the carriage fearing no evil: Jack was driving.
Just opposite the Girardeau place, a Yankee sprang from
the woods and brought his carbine to bear upon Jack,
ordering him to halt, then lowered it so that he could
bring it to bear either upon the carriage or Jack, and
demanded of mother what she had in the carriage. She
replied: "Nothing but my family effects."
"What have
you in that box behind your carriage?"
"My servant's
clothing" "Where are you going?"
"To my home."
"Where is your home?"
"Nearer the coast."
"How far is the coast?"
"About ten miles. I am a defenceless
woman, a widow; have you done with me, sir. Drive on,
Jack." Bringing his gun to bear on Jack, he called out:
"Halt!" He then asked, "Have you seen any rebels?"
"We have a Post at No. 3." He then said: "I would not
like to disturb a lady, and if you take my advice you will
turn immediately back, for the men are
Page 213
just ahead, and they will take your horses and search
your carriage." Mother replied: "I thank you for that,"
and ordered Jack to turn. Jack saw a number of men
ahead, and mother would doubtless have been in their
midst had she proceeded. (Pursuing, under great
difficulties, a circuitous route, for the Confederates
had taken up the bridges, and with a faithful negro
acting as her voluntary scout, she reached her home
and anxious daughter at nine o'clock at night. The
journal continues:)
I was truly rejoiced to hear the sound of the carriage
wheels, for I had been several hours in the greatest
suspense, not knowing how mother would hear of the
presence of the enemy. (Learning, meanwhile, of the
presence of Federal soldiers in the neighborhood, she
continues:) Fearing a raiding party might come up
immediately, I had some trunks of clothing and other
things carried into the woods, and the carts and horses
taken away, and prepared to spend the night alone, as
I had no idea mother could reach home. After ten
o'clock Mr. M - came in to see us, having come from
No. 3, where a portion of Hood's command was
stationed. Mr. M - staid with us until two o'clock, and
fearing to remain
Page 214
longer left, to join the soldiers at 4 1/2, Johnson's
Station. He had exchanged his horse for C - 's mule, as
he was going on picket duty and would need a swifter
animal. This distressed us very much, and I told him I
feared he would be captured. It was hard to part under
this apprehension, and he lingered with us as long as
possible, and prayed with us just before leaving.
Wednesday, Dec. 14. - Mother and I rose early,
thankful no enemy had come near us during the night.
We passed the day in great anxiety. Late in the
afternoon, Charles (the servant man) came into the
parlor, just from Walthourville, and burst into tears. I
asked what was the matter. "Oh!" he said, "very bad
news. Massa is captured by the Yankees, and says I
must tell you to keep a good heart." This was a
dreadful blow to us and to the poor little children; M -
especially realized it and cried all evening! . . .
Thursday, Dec. 15. - About ten o'clock mother
walked out upon the lawn, leaving me in the
dining-room. In a few moments Elsey came running in
to say the Yankees are coming, I went to the front door
and saw three dismounting at the stable, where
Page 215
they found mother. I debated whether to go to her or
remain in the house; the question was soon settled,
for in a moment a stalwart Kentucky Irishman stood
before me, having come through the pantry door. I
scarcely knew what to do. His salutation was: "Have
you any whiskey in the house?" I replied: "None that I
know of" "You ought to know," he said in a very
rough voice. I replied: "This is not my house, so I
don't know what is in it." Said he: "I mean to search
this house for arms; but I will not hurt you." He then
commenced shaking and pushing the sliding doors
and calling for the key. Said I: "If you will turn the
handle and slide the door you will find it open." The
following interrogation took place: "What's in that
box?" "Books." "What's in that room?"
"You can search for yourself." "What's in that press?"
"I do not
know, because this is mother's house, and I have
recently come here." "What's in that box?" "Books and pictures.""What's that, and where is the key? "
"My sewing-machine; I'll get the key." He then opened the side door, and
discovered the door leading into the old parlor."
"I want to get into that room" "If
Page 216
you will come around I will get the key for you." We
passed through the parlor; he ran up the stairs and
commenced searching my bed-room. "Where have
you hid your arms?" "There are none in the house,
you can search for yourself." He ordered me to get the
keys to all my trunks and drawers. I did so, and he put
his hand into everything, even a little trunk containing
needle-work, boxes of hair, and other small things of
this description. All this was under color of searching
for arms and ammunition! He called loudly for all the
keys; I told him my mother would soon be in the house
and she would get the keys for him. While searching
my drawers he turned to me and asked. "Where is your
watch?" I told him: "My husband has worn it, and he
was captured the day before at Walthourville." Shaking
his fist at me he said: "Don't you lie to me; you have got a
watch." I felt he could have struck me to the floor, but
looking steadily at him, I replied: "I have a watch and
chain, and my husband has them with him." "Well,
were they taken when he was captured?" "I do not
know, for I was not present." Just at that time I heard
another coming up the stairsteps, and saw a young
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Tennessean going into mother's room, where he
commenced a search. Mother came in soon after and
got her keys, and there we were following two men
around the house, handing them the keys and seeing
almost everything opened. The Tennessean found a
box, and hearing something rattling in it, he thought
there must be coin within it, and would have broken it
open, but Dick prevented him. Mother got the key,
and his longing eyes beheld a bunch of keys. In
looking through the drawers to mother's surprise, Dick
pulled out a sword which belonged to her brother, and
had been in her possession for thirty years, and she
had forgotten it was there. Finding it to be so rusty
that they could scarcely draw it from the scabbard,
they concluded it would not kill many men in the war,
and did not take it away.
He turned to mother and said: "Old lady, haven't
you got some whiskey?" Mother said: "I don't know
that I have." "Well," said he, "I don't know who
ought to know if you don't." (The ladies were afraid of
the results of their getting liquor.) Mother asked him
"if he would like to see his mother and wife treated in
this way, her house searched and
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invaded?" "Oh!" said he, "none of us have wives."
Whilst mother walked from the stable with one from
Kentucky, he had a great deal to say about the South
bringing on the war. Mother asked him, "if he would
like to see his mother and sisters treated as they were
treating us." "No!" said he, "I would not, and I
never do enter houses, and shall not enter yours;" and
he remained without, while the other two men
searched. They took none of the horses or mules; all
being too old.
A little before dinner we were again alarmed by the
presence of five Yankees, four of them dressed as
marines. One came into the house; a very mild sort of a
man. We told him the house had already been
searched. He asked "if the soldiers had torn up
anything!" One of the marines came into the pantry
and asked if they could get something to eat. Mother
told them they were welcome to what she had prepared
for her own dinner, and if they chose they could eat it
where it was. So they went into the kitchen, and
cursing the servants, ordered milk, potatoes, and other
things. They called for knives, etc. Having no forks
out but plated ones, mother sent them, but they
ordered Milton to take
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them back, and tell his mistress to put them away in a
safe place, as a parcel of d-d Yankees would soon be
along, and they would take every one from her. We
hoped they would not intrude upon the dwelling, but
as soon as they finished, the four marines came in, and
one commenced a thorough search, calling for all the
keys. He found difficulty in fitting the keys, and I told
him that I would show them to him, if he would give me
the bunch. He said he would give them to me when he
was ready to leave the house. He went into the attic
and instituted a thorough search. Taking a canister,
containing some private papers belonging to my dear
father, he tried to open it. Mother could not find the
key immediately, and told him he had better break it;
but she could assure him it contained nothing but
papers. "D-n it," he said, "if you don't get the key, I
will break it; I don't care." In looking through the
trunks, he found a silver goblet, but did not take it. One
of the marines came in with a Secession rosette, which
mother had given Jack to burn. We were quite amused
to see him come in with it pinned upon his coat. He had
taken it from Jack. This one was
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quite inclined to argue about the origin of the struggle.
After spending a long time in the search, they went off,
taking one mule; they left the carriage horses, as
mother told them they were seventeen years old. In a
short time we saw the mule at the gate; they had turned
it back. After they left, I found that my writing-desk
had been most thoroughly searched, and everything
scattered, and all little articles, as jewelry, pencils, etc.,
abstracted. A gold pen was taken from my work-box.
Mother felt so anxious about Kate King (a neighbor
and friend) that she sent Charles and Niger to urge her
to come to us; but they did not reach South Hampton,
as they met a Yankee picket which turned them back,
and took Charles with them to assist in carrying horses
to Midway, promising to let him return.
Friday, Dec. 16. - Much to our relief, Prophet came
over this morning with a note from Kate, to know if we
thought she could come to us. Mother wrote her to
come immediately, which she did in great fear and
trembling, not knowing but that she would meet the
enemy on the road. We all felt truly grateful she had
been preserved by the way.
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About four in the afternoon we heard the clash of
arms and noise of horsemen, and by the time mother
and I could get down stairs we saw forty or fifty men in
the pantry, flying hither and thither, ripping open the
safe and crockery cupboards. Mother had some
roasted ducks and chickens in the safe. These the men
seized, tearing them to pieces like ravenous beasts.
They were clamoring for whiskey and for the keys.
One came to mother to know where her meal and four
were. She got the pantry key, and they took out all that
was there, and then threw the sacks across their
horses. Mother remonstrated, but their only reply was,
"We'll take it." They flew around the house, tearing
open boxes. One of them broke open mother's work-box
with an andiron. A party of them rifled the pantry,
taking away knives, spoons, forks, tin plates, cups,
coffee-pot, and everything they wished. They broke
open the old liquor case and carried off two of the
gallon bottles, and they drank up all the blackberry
wine and vinegar which mother had in the case. It was
impossible to utter a word, for we were completely
paralyzed by the fury of the mob. A number of them
went into the attic, into
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a little store-room mother had there, and carried off
twelve bushels of meal which mother had put there.
Mother told them they were taking all that she had for
herself, daughter, friend, and five little ones, but
scarcely any regarded her voice, and those that did
laughed and said they would leave a sack, but they
only left some rice, which they did not want, and
poured a little meal upon the floor. They called for
men's shirts and men's clothes. We asked for their
officer, hoping to make some appeal to him, but they
said "they were all officers." We finally found one man
who seemed to have a little show of authority, which
was indicated by a whip which he carried. Mother
made an appeal to him, and he came up and ordered the
men out. They brought a wagon and took another from
the place to carry off their plunder. It is impossible to
imagine the perfect stampede through the house, all
yelling, cursing, quarreling, and going from one room
to another in wild confusion. They were of Kilpatrick's
Cavalry; and we look back upon their appearance in
the house as some horrible nightmare! (In narrating
this scene afterwards, the writer of the diary said to me,
"The atmosphere seemed blue with
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oaths.") Before leaving, they ordered all the oxen to
be gotten up early next morning.
Saturday, Dec. 17. - About four o'clock we were
roused by the sound of horses, and from that until
sunrise squads of six and ten were constantly arriving.
We felt a dark time of trial was upon us, and we knew
not what might befall us. Feeling our weakness and
peril, we all went to prayer, and continued in prayer for
a long time, imploring personal protection and that the
enemy might not be permitted to come nigh our
dwelling. We sat in darkness, waiting for the light of
morning to reveal their purposes. In the gray twilight
we saw one man pacing before the kitchen, and
afterwards found that he had voluntarily undertaken to
guard the house, as far as he could. In this we felt that
our prayer had been answered. As soon as it was light,
Kate looked out and discovered an officer near the
house, which was a great relief of our feelings. Mother
went down and begged him that he would not allow the
soldiers to enter the house, as it had already been three
times searched. He said "it was contrary to orders for
men to be found in houses, and the penalty was death;
and, so far as
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his authority extended, no man should enter the house."
He said they had come on a foraging expedition and
intended to take provisions, etc. Upon mother inviting
him in to see some of the work of the previous evening,
he came in and sat awhile in the parlor. The Yankees
made the negroes bring up the oxen and carts, and took
all the chickens, turkeys, etc., that they could find; they
also took off all the syrup from the smoke-house and
some fresh pork. Mother saw everything stripped from
the premises, without the power of uttering one word.
Finally they rolled out the carriage, and took that to carry
in it a load of chickens(!). Everything was taken that
they possibly could. The soldier who was our voluntary
guard was from Ohio, and when mother thanked him and
told she wished she could make him some return for his
kindness, he said: "I could not receive any, and only
wish I were here to guard you always." They took off
Jack, Pulaski, June, Martin, little Pulaski, and Ebenezer,
also George, but said they might all return if they
wished, as they only wanted them to drive their carts as
far as their wagon train. One said the carriage should
return, and afterwards said mother
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must send for it if she wanted it. He knew very well that
this was impossible, as all the harness had been taken
from the place. A little later mother walked to the
smoke-house, and found an officer taking her sugar, which
had been put to dry; he seemed a little ashamed at
having been caught, but did not return the sugar. He
was mounted upon Audley King's pet horse, and said
as he rode off: "How the man who owns this horse will
curse the Yankee who took him when he goes home
and finds him gone!" He had Mr. King's servant
mounted upon another of his horses, and no doubt
knew he was near (in hiding) when he made the remark.
Immediately we went to work, removing the salt and the
remainder of the sugar into the house, and while we
were doing so a Missourian came up and advised us to
get everything into the house as quickly as possible,
and he would protect us while doing so. He said he had
enlisted to fight for the Constitution, but since then the
war had been turned into another thing, and he did not
approve this Abolitionism, for his wife's people all
owned slaves. He told us, what afterward proved false,
that ten thou- infantry would soon pass through
Riceboro, on their
Page 226
way to Thomasville. Soon after this some twenty rode
up, and caught me having a barrel rolled toward the
house, but they were very gentlemanly and only a few
of them dismounted. They said "the war would soon
be over, as they would have Savannah in a few days."
I told them "Savannah was not the Confederacy."
They replied: "We admire your spunk." They inquired
for all the large plantations. All the poultry that could
be found was taken off. Squads came all day until dark.
The ox-wagons were taken to Carlarotta to be filled
with corn.
Sabbath, Dec. 18. - We passed this day with many
fears, but no Yankees came to the lot, although many
went to Carlarotta (another settlement on the same
plantation), and were engaged in carrying off the corn,
the key of the corn-house having been taken from Cato
(the driver) the day before. A day comparatively free
from interruption was very grateful to us, although the
constant state of apprehension in which we were, was
very distressing. In the afternoon, while engaged in
reading and seeking protection from our Heavenly
Father, Capt. Winn's Isaiah came, bringing a
note from Mr. M - to
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me, and from Mr. John Stevens to mother, sending my
watch. This was the first intelligence from Mr. M - .
How welcome to us all, although the note brought no
hope of his release, as the charge against him was
taking up arms against the United States. Capt. Winn
had been captured, but released. We were all in such
distress that mother wrote Mr. Stevens, begging him
to come to us. We felt so utterly alone, that it would
be a comfort to have him with us.
Monday, Dec. 19. - Squads of Yankees came all
day, so that the servants scarcely had a moment to do
anything for us out of the house; the women finding
it entirely unsafe for them to be out at all. The few
stray chickens and some sheep were killed. These men
were so outrageous at the negro houses, that the
negro men were obliged to stay at their houses for the
protection of their wives, and in some instance
rescued them from the hands of these infamous
creatures.
Tuesday, Dec. 20. - A squad of Yankees came after
breakfast, rode into the pasture, drove up some oxen,
and went into the woods and brought out mother's
horse wagon, to which they attached
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the oxen. Needing a chain for the purpose, they went
to the well and took the chain from the buckets.
Mother sent out to - .
Here the journal ends. I add, that when the first troops searched the house, the ladies, offering to help
them in their examination for cannon and muskets in
their trunks(!), adroitly flung the linen taken from
those first examined over trunks containing all their
silver; and leaving everything just as the first invaders
of the home had deranged it, subsequent marauders
were misled; and so woman's wit got the better of
Yankee shrewdness. Throughout all this long and
trying experience, in which three unprotected females
and five young children were exposed to the rudeness
of Sherman's soldiers, the servants, one and all, old
and young, were perfectly respectful and faithful;
indeed, our families, ruthlessly robbed of all provisions
by United States soldiers, would, for all they cared,
have suffered from hunger, had it not been that their
slaves provided them with food.
The last entry in the journal was December 20th.
January 4th, the writer of the journal (her husband a
prisoner in Savannah, with good prospect of being
Page 229
sent for the war to a Northern prison), and with fifty
Yankee soldiers clamoring to enter the house, who
only were kept out by the pluck of a lone woman, a
friend, gave birth to a daughter. The invaders would
not be said nay, until this lady said: "You compel me
to be plain, and to say that a child is being this
moment born in the house;" when they raised a
general yell, stuck spurs to their horses, and
disappeared down the avenue!
In response to my request to know how the
negroes behaved in Liberty county during the raid,
the wife of one of our best known Georgia pastors
then in charge of the old Midway church, Liberty
county, gives this as her experience:
"Tell Cousin R - that the negro population in Liberty
county during the war were restrained by their
religious training and teaching; and we owe dear
Uncle Charlie (Rev. Dr. C. C. Jones) a debt of
gratitude. Defenceless women and children, and not
the first act of violence or depredation! On the
contrary, constant acts of kindness! Our people fed us
during the raid, and served us faithfully, until we left
the county months afterwards to come up here, and
they were all polite and
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respectful. I told our people, while they were now free
to the end of the chapter, I was free, and no longer
obliged to take care of them, and they must now take
care of me and of themselves, and not to follow the
army, but to stay on their own plantations and
provide for themselves; that they could see the army
could not take care of their own soldiers without
tearing down our corn-houses; and as Sherman's army
encamped on our place (Lambert plantation), and killed
the cattle, sheep, geese, levelled the fences and burnt
the cotton-house, and tore down the corn-houses to
get at the corn before their eyes, they saw the
necessity of caring for themselves. Syphax came and
told us of the destruction of the things at Arcadia
(furniture and a fine piano); and then these reports
from Lambert plantation reminded me of the adverse
messengers Job received in ancient times. There were
so many false reports of citizens being killed and
wounded, and some true, that the bewilderment of a
war is a terrible thing. The searching of the houses for
fire-arms by the soldiers was terrible. But a better
appointed army than the Yankee army the sun never
saw, or one more obedient to orders. At a signal the house
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would be swarming with them, and at a signal they
would be out of it as quickly. Mr. B - says Gen. Sherman
never was in Liberty county himself. The man who
came with twelve others was so convinced by my
words of Mr. B - 's innocence, that he released him
immediately, charging him to remain in the house, but
Mr. B - , saying he was safe in the discharge of his duty,
visited his people as usual, going to Montevideo to
see dear aunt Mary Jones and all the family. The
behavior of the whole colored population was
wonderful in the extreme. I doubt if we white people
had been placed in the same trying position, we would
have behaved as well. The soldiers would tell them:
'Now if you want anything out of that house, go in and
take it,' but they did not take the first thing, as far as I
know; indeed, they had all they needed, and they had
to watch their own clothes and things. Augustus, our
carriage driver, told me they had taken his best coat
and his watch; and all of Mr. B - 's they could get hold
of, they carried off. And they seemed to need fresh
garments sadly. Matilda, servant, swept a pair of
discarded pants from the piazza, which she said she
was afraid to touch!
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. . . . I saw a Yankee soldier take Mr. B - 's watch, after
he returned to us from the other side of the
Alatamaha. The Yankees never came into our houses
at night (they were mortally afraid of bushwhackers),
which was a blessing."
I believe I could not have presented more vivid or
correct illustrations of the noble conduct of the negro
during the war, than that furnished in the above
journal and letter of two eye-witnesses, the wives of
well-known living Presbyterian ministers.
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CHAPTER XXIV.
CONCLUSION.
I HAVE now, through the blessing of God, finished
the self-appointed and not unpleasing task
assumed many months since. The reader and the
writer have traveled, let us hope not without mutual
pleasure and profit, over a wide territory. Beginning
with the author's reasons for writing, and with a
sketch of the topics as they lay in his mind, to which
he has in the main adhered, he has given some
account of his connection with slavery and slaves,
painted from memory the old plantation, recalled the
occupation and sports which made it a paradise to
children, described the houses, food, clothing,
physicking and work of the negro, and his marriage
and family relations.
He has next presented the photograph of a curious
character; and, with the aid of his own memory and
the contributions of two Southern authors, given
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specimens of the only literature peculiar to the negro
slave.
With a loving and loyal hand he has sketched the
history of a remarkable church, that of his fathers, and
drawn from memory "Sacrament Sunday" in the
same, in which master and slave commemorated
together the Saviour's dying love. Then he has
attempted to sketch in outline the life of one who
more than any man deserves to be known as "the
Apostle to the negro slave." Then followed a rapid
outline of his labors among and for them, a recital of
anecdotes preserved by him, illustrative of negro
character and religious experience. Then was given
rapid sketches of work done in the same field by other
ministers, individuals, churches and communities,
including the history of a remarkable enterprise in a
Southern city, and the personal and tender
reminiscences of another beloved missionary to the
blacks. The series has been fittingly closed with a
sketch from memory of the first General Assembly,
and a report of its work for the salvation of the slave,
and the testimony of eye-witnesses to the noble
conduct of the negro during the war.
Those who, without prepossession or prejudice,
Page 235
have read these letters, must be convinced, if they
needed any proof, that African slavery in America was
not what some in their ignorance, envy or malice have
portrayed it. That, with its confessed evils and
occasional abuses, it had many redeeming qualities.
No one who credits the statements of the competent
and truthful eye-witnesses given, will for a moment
doubt that in innumerable instances the bond which
bound master and slave had almost the kindness,
tenderness and strength of the ties which connect
dear kindred. It must also be perfectly clear that, to a
large extent, Southern Christians appreciated their
responsibility, and endeavored to discharge it toward
the souls of a people, in the providence of God, with
no agency of theirs, committed to their care; that the
slaves were not, as a general rule, regarded as mere
chattels, but as immortal beings, for whose religious
instruction they (the masters) would be held
accountable by their common Master in heaven.
No one that I have met since the war regrets their
emancipation; no Christian would again freely assume
the responsibility, felt to be so heavy by not
few in the olden time. We have no harsh or
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angry feelings against those who, without
compensation, annihilated the larger part of the former
wealth of the South, and reduced our people
temporarily almost to beggary. Surely we entertain no
feelings of resentment toward those who, without
being consulted, were suddenly and without any
preparation invested with the responsibility and (in
their intellectual condition) dangerous privilege of
citizenship. Our own beloved church, the Southern
Presbyterian, has shown every disposition to help
them religiously since the war, as far as they would
accept our aid. We feel that their great need as citizens
and as immortal beings, is a pious and educated
ministry. In accordance with this view, there has been
established our seminary, the Tuskaloosa Colored
Institute in Alabama. Open to students of all
denominations, it is our institute by which we hope to
raise up, for their future separate church, an efficient
Presbyterian ministry. The work already done by this
seminary tells for itself, and it is highly creditable to the
ability of its professors. Its graduates are, in their
humility, modesty, elocution and ability, an honor to
their Alma Mater. One of the graduates, with a white
associate,
Page 237
is now in Africa, a missionary of the Southern
Presbyterian Church.
One important end of these letters will have been
accomplished if they shall have fostered the kindly
feeling already binding the two races together, if they
have awakened on our part a deeper and more helpful
sympathy with them in their infant enterprise, the
establishment of an African Presbyterian church in the
South, and if they shall have drawn to the aid of our
Tuskaloosa Institute the generous pecuniary support
of Christians North and South.
And now I close my letters as the Psalmist did his
psalms, and with his doxology: "Blessed be the Lord
God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wonderful
things, and blessed be his glorious name forever, and
let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen and
Amen."
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