Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Part 13

The _Mobile Daily Tribune_, in referring to the religious training of the slaves, says:[80]

"Few persons are aware of the efforts that are continually in progress, in a quiet way, in the various Southern States, for the moral and religious improvement of the negroes--of the number of clergymen of good families, accomplished education, and often of a high degree of talent, who devote their whole time and energies to this work; or of the many laymen--almost invariably slaveholders themselves--who sustain them by their purses and by their a.s.sistance as catechists, Sunday school teachers, and the like. These men do not make platform speeches, or talk in public on the subject of their 'mission,' or theorize about the 'planes' on which they stand: they are too busy for this, but they work on quietly in labor and self-denial, looking for a sort of reward very different from the applause bestowed upon stump agitators. Their work is a much less noisy one, but its results will be far more momentous.

"We have very limited information on this subject, for the very reasons just mentioned, but enough to give some idea of the zeal with which these labors are prosecuted by the various Christian denominations.

Thus, among the Old School Presbyterians it is stated that about one hundred ministers are engaged in the religious instruction of the negroes exclusively. In South Carolina alone there are forty-five churches or chapels of the Episcopal Church, appropriated exclusively to negroes; thirteen clergymen devote to them their whole time, and twenty-seven a portion of it; and one hundred and fifty persons of the same faith are engaged in imparting to them catechetical instruction.

There are other States which would furnish similar statistics if they could be obtained.

"It is in view of such facts as these, that one of our cotemporaries, (the _Philadelphia Inquirer_,) though not free from a certain degree of anti-slavery proclivity, makes the following candid admission:

"'The introduction of African slavery into the colonies of North America, though doubtless brought about by wicked means, may in the end accomplish great good to Africa; a good, perhaps, to be effected in no other way. Hundreds and thousands have already been saved, temporally and spiritually, who otherwise must have perished. Through these and their descendants it is that civilization and Christianity have been sent back to the perishing millions of Africa.'"

The Fourteenth Annual Report of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1859, says:

"In our colored missions great good has been accomplished by the labors of the self-sacrificing and zealous missionaries.

"This seems to be at home our most appropriate field of labor. By our position we have direct access to those for whom these missions are established. Our duty and obligation in regard to them are evident.

Increased facilities are afforded us, and open doors invite our entrance and full occupancy. The real value of these missions is often overlooked or forgotten by _Church census-takers_ and statistic-reporters of our benevolent a.s.sociations. We can but repeat that this field, which seems almost, by common consent, to be left for our occupancy, is one of the most important and promising in the history of missions. At home even its very humility obscures, and abroad a mistaken philanthropy repudiates its claims. But still the fact exists; and when we look at the large number of faithful, pious, and self-sacrificing missionaries engaged in the work, the wide field of their labors, and the happy thousands who have been savingly converted to G.o.d through their instrumentality, we can but perceive the propriety and justice of a.s.signing to these missions the prominence we have. Indeed, the subject a.s.sumes an importance beyond the conception even of those more directly engaged in this great work, when it is remembered that these missions absolutely number more converts to Christianity, according to statistics given, than all the members of all other missionary societies combined."

The Tennessee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, in their Report for 1859, says:

"It is gratifying that so much has been done for the evangelization of this people. In addition to the missions presented in our report, thousands of this people are served by preachers in charge of circuits and stations. But still a great work remains to be accomplished among the negroes within your limits. New missions are needed, and increased attention to the work in this department generally demanded. Heaven devolves an immense responsibility upon us with reference to these sable sons of Ham. Providence has thrown them in our midst, not merely to be our household and agricultural servants, but to be served by us with the blessed gospel of the Son of G.o.d. Let us then, in the name of Him who made it a special sign of his Messiahship that the poor had the gospel preached unto them--let us in his name go forth, bearing the bread of life to these poor among us, and opening to them all the sources of consolation and encouragement afforded by the religion of Jesus."

The Texas Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, in their Report for 1859, say:

"At the last Conference, Gideon W. Cottingham and David W. Fly were appointed Conference African missionaries, whose duties were to travel throughout the Conference, visit the planters in person, and organize missions in regions unsupplied. They report an extensive field open, and truly white unto the harvest, and have succeeded in organizing several important missions. All the planters, questioned upon the subject, were willing to give the missionary access to their servants, to preach and catechize, not only on the Sabbath, but during the week. And this willingness was not confined to the professors alone, but the deepest interest was displayed by many who make no pretensions to religion whatever. An interest shown not merely by giving the missionary access to their servants, but by their pledging their prompt support. The servants themselves receive the word with the utmost eagerness. They are hungering for the bread of life; our tables are loaded. Shall not these starving souls be fed? Cases of appalling dest.i.tution are found: numbers who heard for the first time the word of life listened eagerly to the wonders it unfolded. The Greeks are truly at our doors, heathens growing up in our midst, revival fire flames around them, a polar frost within their hearts. G.o.d help the Church to take care of these perishing souls!

Our anniversaries are usually scenes of unmingled joy. With our sheaves in our hands, we come from the harvest field, and though sad that so little has been done, yet rejoicing that we have the privilege of laying any pledge of devotion upon the altar."

The Mississippi Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in their Report for 1859, say:

"We are cheered to see a growing interest among our planters and slave-owners in our _domestic missions_. Still that interest is not what the importance of the subject demands. While few are willing to bar their servants all gospel privileges, there is a great want in many places of suitable houses for public worship. Too many masters think that to permit the missionary to come on the plantation, and preach in the gin, or mill, or elsewhere, as circ.u.mstances may dictate, is their only duty, especially if the missionary gets his bread. None of the attendant circ.u.mstances of a neat church, and suitable Sunday apparel, etc., to cheer and gladden the heart on the holy Sabbath, and cause its grateful thanksgiving to go up as clouds of incense before Him, are thought necessary by many masters.

"Notwithstanding, we are cheered by a brightening prospect. Christian masters are building churches for their servants. Owners in many places are adopting the wise policy of erecting their churches so as to bring two, three, or more plantations together for preaching. This plan is so consonant with the gospel economy, and so advantageous every way, that it must become the uniform practice of all our missionary operations among the slaves. Our late Conference wisely adopted a resolution, encouraging the building of churches for the accommodation of several plantations together, wherever it can be done."

The South Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in their Report for 1859, say:

"Meanwhile the increasing claims of the dest.i.tute colored population must not be ignored. New fields are opening before us, the claims of which are pressed with an earnestness which nothing but deeply-felt necessity could dictate. And the question is pressed upon us, What shall we do? Must not the contributions of the Church be more liberal and more systematic? Must not the friends of the enterprise become more zealous?

Will not the wealthy patrons of our society, whose people are served, contribute a sum equal in the aggregate to the salary of the missionaries who serve their people? This done, and every claim urged upon your Board shall be honored.

"This is wondrous work! G.o.d loves it, honors it, blesses it! He has crowned it with success. The old negro has abandoned his legendary rites, and has sought and found favor with G.o.d through Jesus Christ. The catechumens have received into their hearts the gracious instructions given by the missionary, and scores of them are converted annually, and become worthy members of the Church. Here lies the most inviting field of labor. To instruct these children of Ham in the plan of salvation, to preoccupy their minds with "the truth as it is in Jesus," to see them renounce the superst.i.tions of their forefathers, and embrace salvation's plan, would make an angel's heart rejoice."

Failing in securing the Reports of the Baptists at the South, we are unable to exhibit in detail, their operations among the slave population. The same failure has also occurred in reference to the c.u.mberland Presbyterians, and some of the other denominations at the South. The statistics, taken from the _Southern Baptist Register_, will indicate the extent of their success. The following statement made up from the Annual Reports of the Churches named, or from the _Register_, shows the extent to which the slave population, in the entire South, have been brought under the influence of the gospel, and led to profess their faith in the Saviour:

Methodist Episcopal Church South, 188,000 Methodist Episcopal Church North,[81] in Va. and Md., 15,000 Missionary and Anti-Missionary Baptist, 175,000 General a.s.sembly Presbyterian, (O. S.,) 12,000 General a.s.sembly Presbyterian, (N. S.,) estimated 6,000 c.u.mberland Presbyterians, 20,000 Protestant Episcopal Church, estimated 7,000 Christian Church, 10,000 All other denominations, 20,000 ------- Total 453,000

The remark has been made, in two of the reports quoted, that the number of slaves brought into the Christian Church, as a consequence of the introduction of the African race into the United States, exceeds all the converts made, throughout the heathen world, by the whole missionary force employed by Protestant Christendom. Newcomb's Encyclopedia of Missions, 1856, gives the whole number of converts in the Protestant Christian missions in Asia, Africa, Pacific islands, West Indies, and North American Indians at 211,389; but more recent estimates make the number approximate 250,000: thus showing that the number of African converts in the Southern States, is almost double the whole number of heathen converts. It is well enough to observe here, that these facts are not given to prove that slavery should be adopted as a means of converting the heathen, but to call attention to the mode in which Divine Providence is working for the salvation of the African race.

Our opinion as to the advancement of the free colored people of the United States, in general intelligence, does not stand alone. It is sustained by high authority, not of the abolition school. The _Democratic Review_, of 1852,[82] when discussing the question of their ability to conquer and civilize Africa, says:

"The negro race has, among its freemen in this country, a ma.s.s of men who are eminently fitted for deeds of daring. They have generally been engaged in employments which give a good deal of leisure, and stimulus toward improvement of the mind. They have a.s.sociated much more freely with the cultivated and intelligent white than even with their own color of the same humble station; and on such terms as to enable them to acquire much of his spirit, and knowledge, and valor. The free blacks among us are not only confident and well informed, but they have almost all seen something of the world. They are pre-eminently locomotive and perambulating. In rail roads, and hotels, and stages, and steamers, they have been placed incessantly in contact with the news, the views, the motives, and the ideas of the day. Compare the free black with ordinary white men without advantages, and he stands well. Add to this cultivation, that the negro body is strong and healthy, and the negro mind keen and bright, though not profound nor philosophical, and you have at once a formidable warrior, with a little discipline and knowledge of weapons. There is no doubt that the picked American free blacks, would be five times, ten times as efficient in the field of battle as the same number of native Africans."

Why is it then, that the efforts for the moral elevation of the free colored people, have been so unsuccessful? Before answering this question, it is necessary to call attention to the fact, that abolitionists seem to be sadly disappointed in their expectations, as to the progress of the free colored people. Their vexation at the stubborness of the negroes, and the consequent failure of their measures, is very clearly manifested in the complaining language, used by Gerrit Smith, toward the colored people of the eastern cities, as well as by the contempt expressed by the American Missionary a.s.sociation, for the colored preachers of Canada. They had found an apology, for their want of success in the United States, in the presence and influence of colonizationists; but no such excuse can be made for their want of success in Canada and the West Indies. Having failed in their antic.i.p.ations, now they would fain shelter themselves under the pretense, that a people once subjected to slavery, even when liberated, can not be elevated in a single generation; that the case of adults, raised in bondage, like heathen of similar age, is hopeless, and their children, only, can make such progress as will repay the missionary for his toil. But they will not be allowed to escape the censure due to their want of discrimination and foresight, by any such plea; as the success of the Republic of Liberia, conducted from infancy to independence, almost wholly by liberated slaves, and those who were born and raised in the midst of slavery, attests the falsity of their a.s.sumption.

But to return. Why have the efforts for the elevation of the free colored people, not been more successful? On this point our remarks may be limited to our own free colored people. The barrier to their progress here, exists not so much in their want of capacity, as in the absence of the incitements to virtuous action, which are constantly stimulating the white man to press onward and upward in the formation of character and the acquisition of knowledge. There is no position in church or state, to which the poorest white boy, in the common school, may not aspire.

There is no post of honor, in the gift of his country, that is legally beyond his reach. But such encouragements to n.o.ble effort, do not and cannot reach the colored man, and he remains with us a depressed and disheartened being. Persuading him to remain in this hopeless condition, has been the great error of the abolitionists. They accepted Jefferson's views in relation to emanc.i.p.ation, but rejected his opinions as to the necessity of separating the races; and thus overlooked the teachings of history, that two races, differing so widely as to prevent their amalgamation by marriage, can never live together, in the same community, but as superiors and inferiors--the inferior remaining subordinate to the superior. The encouraging hopes held out to the colored people, that this law would be inoperative upon them, has led only to disappointment. Happily, this delusion is nearly at an end; and some of them are beginning to act on their own judgments. They find themselves so scattered and peeled, that there is not another half a million of men in the world, so enlightened, who are accomplishing so little for their social and moral advancement. They perceive that they are nothing but branches, wrenched from the great African _banyan_, not yet planted in genial soil, and affording neither shelter nor food to the beasts of the forest or the fowls of the air--their roots unfixed in the earth, and their tender shoots withering as they hang pendent from their boughs.

That this is no exaggerated picture of the discouragements surrounding our free colored people, is fully confirmed by the testimony of impartial witnesses. Chambers, of Edinburgh, who recently made the tour of the United States, investigated this point very carefully. His opinions on the subject have been published, and are so discriminating and truthful, that we must quote the main portion of them. In speaking of the agitation of the question of slavery, he says:

"For a number of years, as is well known, there has been much angry discussion on the subject between the Northern and Southern States; and at times the contention has been so great, as to lead to mutual threats of a dismemberment of the Union. A stranger has no little difficulty in understanding how much of this war of words is real, and how much is merely an explosion of _bunk.u.m_. . . . . I repeat, it is difficult to understand what is the genuine public feeling on this entangled question; for with all the demonstrations in favor of freedom in the North, there does not appear in that quarter to be any practical relaxation of the usages which condemn persons of African descent to an inferior social status. There seems, in short, to be a fixed notion throughout the whole of the States, whether slave or free, that the colored is by nature a subordinate race; and that, in no circ.u.mstances, can it be considered equal to the white. Apart from commercial views, this opinion lies at the root of American slavery; and the question would need to be argued less on political and philanthropic than on physiological grounds. . . . . I was not a little surprised to find, when speaking a kind word for at least a very unfortunate, if not brilliant race, that the people of the Northern States, though repudiating slavery, did not think more favorably of the negro character than those further South. Throughout Ma.s.sachusetts, and other New England States, likewise in the States of New York, Pennsylvania, etc., there is a rigorous separation of the white and black races. . . . . The people of England, who see a negro only as a wandering curiosity, are not at all aware of the repugnance generally entertained toward persons of color in the United States: it appeared to amount to an absolute monomania. As for an alliance with one of the race, no matter how faint the shade of color, it would inevitably lead to a loss of caste, as fatal to social position and family ties as any that occurs in the Brahminical system. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"Glad to have had an opportunity of calling attention to many cheering and commendable features in the social system of the Americans, I consider it not less my duty to say, that in their general conduct toward the colored race, a wrong is done which can not be alluded to except in terms of the deepest sorrow and reproach. I can not think without shame of the pious and polished New Englanders adding to their offenses on this score the guilt of hypocrisy. Affecting to weep over the sufferings of imaginary dark-skinned heroes and heroines; denouncing, in well-studied platform oratory, the horrid sin of reducing human beings to the abject condition of chattels; bitterly scornful of Southern planters for hard-hearted selfishness and depravity; fanatical on the subject of abolition; wholly frantic at the spectacle of fugitive slaves seized and carried back to their owners--these very persons are daily surrounded by manumitted slaves, or their educated descendants, yet shrink from them as if the touch were pollution, and look as if they would expire at the bare idea of inviting one of them to their house or table. Until all this is changed, the Northern abolitionists place themselves in a false position, and do damage to the cause they espouse.

If they think that negroes are MEN, let them give the world an evidence of their sincerity, by moving the reversal of all those social and political arrangements which now, in the free States, exclude persons of color, not only from the common courtesies of life, but from the privileges and honors of citizens. I say, until this is done, the uproar about abolition is a delusion and a snare. . . . .

"While lamenting the unsatisfactory condition, present and prospective, of the colored population, it is gratifying to consider the energetic measures that have been adopted by the African Colonization Society, to transplant, with their own consent, free negroes from America to Liberia. Viewing these endeavors as, at all events, a means of encouraging emanc.i.p.ation, checking the slave trade, and, at the same time, of introducing Christianity and civilized usages into Africa, they appear to have been deserving of more encouragement than they have had the good fortune to receive. Successful only in a moderate degree, the operations of this society are not likely to make a deep impression on the numbers of the colored population; and the question of their disposal still remains unsettled."

That the Christian churches of the South are pursuing the true policy for the moral welfare of the slave population, will be admitted by every right minded man. The present chapter cannot be more appropriately closed, than by quoting the language of Rev. J. Waddington, of England, at a meeting in behalf of the American Missionary a.s.sociation, held in Boston, July, 1859. The speakers had been very violent in their denunciations of slavery, and when Mr. Waddington came to speak, he thus rebuked their unchristian spirit:

"I have," said Mr. Waddington, "a strong conviction, that freedom can never come but of vital Christianity. It is not born of the intellect, it is not the product of the conscience; it can never be the result of the sword. It was with extreme horror that I heard the a.s.sertion made last night, that it must be through a baptism of blood that freedom must come. Never! never! The sword can destroy, it can never create. What do we want for freedom? Expansion of the heart. That we should honor other men; that we should be concerned for other men. What is it that causes slavery and oppression? Selfishness, intense, self-destroying selfishness if you will. Nothing can exorcise that selfishness but the constraining love of Christ. The gospel alone, by the Spirit of G.o.d, can waken freedom in men, in families, in nations."

Mr. Waddington, also remarked, that "every thing in America was extremely wonderful and surprising to him; and nothing more surprised him than the burning words with which his ministerial friends pelted each other; yet he had no doubt they were the kindest men in the world.

He thought it was not intended that any harm should be done, but only that the cause of truth should be advanced."[83]

FOOTNOTES:

[73] Rev. Mr. Phillippo, for twenty years a missionary in Jamaica, in his "Jamaica, its Past and Present Condition."

[74] _New York Evangelist_, 1858.

[75] _New York Observer_, March, 1856.

[76] _Lynchburgh_ (Va.) _Courier_, quoted by _African Repository_, January, 1858.

[77] _Southern Monitor_, quoted by _African Repository_, January, 1858.

[78] _Express_--Ibid.

[79] Synod of Virginia, quoted by _African Repository_, 1858.

[80] Quoted in _African Repository_, April, 1858.

[81] The Methodist Episcopal Church North, in 1858, had a total of 22,326 of colored members, in all the States.

[82] Page 102.

[83] _American Missionary_, July, 1859.