The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 Part 16

[Footnote 3: Conway, _Testimonies Concerning Slavery_, p. 5.]

Thereafter the chief privilege allowed the slaves was to congregate for evening prayers conducted by themselves under the surveillance of a number of "discreet persons." The leader chosen to conduct the services, would in some cases read a pa.s.sage from the Scriptures and "line a hymn," which the slaves took up in their turn and sang in a tune of their own suitable to the meter. In case they had present no one who could read, or the law forbade such an exercise, some exhorter among the slaves would be given an opportunity to address the people, basing his remarks as far as his intelligence allowed him on some memorized portion of the Bible. The rest of the evening would be devoted to individual prayers and the singing of favorite hymns, developed largely from the experience of slaves, who while bearing their burdens in the heat of the day had learned to sing away their troubles.

For this untenable position the slave States were so severely criticized by southern and northern friends of the colored people that the ministers of that section had to construct a more progressive policy. Yet whatever might be the arguments of the critics of the South to prove that the enlightenment of Negroes was not a danger, it was clear after the Southampton insurrection in 1831 that two factors in Negro education would for some time continue generally eliminated.

These were reading matter and colored preachers.

Prominent among the southerners who endeavored to readjust their policy of enlightening the black population, were Bishop William Meade,[1] Bishop William Capers,[2] and Rev. C.C. Jones.[3] Bishop Meade was a native of Virginia, long noted for its large element of benevolent slaveholders who never lost interest in their Negroes. He was fortunate in finishing his education at Princeton, so productive then of leaders who fought the inst.i.tution of slavery.[4] Immediately after his ordination in the Protestant Episcopal Church, Bishop Meade a.s.sumed the role of a reformer. He took up the cause of the colored people, devoting no little of his time to them when he was in Alexandria and Frederick in 1813 and 1814.[5] He began by preaching to the Negroes on fifteen plantations, meeting them twice a day, and in one year reported the baptism of forty-eight colored children.[6]

Early a champion of the colonization of the Negroes, he was sent on a successful mission to Georgia in 1818 to secure the release of certain recaptured Africans who were about to be sold. Going and returning from the South he was active in establishing auxiliaries of the American Colonization Society. He helped to extend its sphere also into the Middle States and New-England.[7]

[Footnote 1: Goodloe, _Southern Platform_, pp. 64-65.]

[Footnote 2: Wightman, _Life of Bishop William Capers_, p. 294.]

[Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, Introductory Chapter.]

[Footnote 4: Goodloe, _Southern Platform_, p. 64.]

[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., p. 65.]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., p. 66.]

[Footnote 7: _Niles Register_, vol. xvi., pp. 165-166.]

Bishop Meade was a representative of certain of his fellow-churchmen who were pa.s.sing through the transitory stage from the position of advocating the thorough education of Negroes to that of recommending mere verbal instruction. Agreeing at first with Rev. Thomas Bacon, Bishop Meade favored the literary training of Negroes, and advocated the extermination of slavery.[1] Later in life he failed to urge his followers to emanc.i.p.ate their slaves, and did not entreat his congregation to teach them to read. He was then committed to the policy of only lessening their burden as much as possible without doing anything to destroy the inst.i.tution. Thereafter he advocated the education and emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves only in connection with the scheme of colonization, to which he looked for a solution of these problems.[2]

[Footnote 1: Meade,_Sermons of Rev. Thos. Bacon_, p. 2; and Goodell, _The Southern Platform_, pp. 64, 65.]

[Footnote 2:_Ibid_., p. 65.]

Wishing to give his views on the religious instruction of Negroes, the Bishop found in Rev. Thomas Bacon's sermons that "every argument which was likely to convince and persuade was so forcibly exerted, and that every objection that could possibly be made, so fully answered, and in fine everything that ought to be said so well said, and the same things so happily confirmed ..." that it was deemed "best to refer the reader for the true nature and object of the book to the book itself."[1] Bishop Meade had uppermost in his mind Bacon's logical arraignment of those who neglected to teach their Negroes the Christian religion. Looking beyond the narrow circle of his own sect, the bishop invited the attention of all denominations to this subject in which they were "equally concerned." He especially besought "the ministers of the gospel to take it into serious consideration as a matter for which they also will have to give an account. Did not Christ," said he, "die for these poor creatures as well as for any other, and is it not given in charge of the minister to gather his sheep into the fold?"[2]

[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Rev. Thos. Bacon_, pp. 31,32, 81, 90, 93, 95, 104, and 105.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 104.]

Another worker in this field was Bishop William Capers of the Methodist Episcopal Church of South Carolina. A southerner to the manner born, he did not share the zeal of the antislavery men who would educate Negroes as a preparation for manumission.[1] Regarding the subject of abolition as one belonging to the State and entirely inappropriate to the Church, he denounced the principles of the religious abolitionists as originating in false philosophy. Capers endeavored to prove that the relation of slave and master is authorized by the Holy Scriptures. He was of the opinion, however, that certain abuses which might ensue, were immoralities to be prevented or punished by all proper means, both by the Church discipline and the civil law.[2] Believing that the neglect of the spiritual needs of the slaves was a reflection on the slaveholders, he set out early in the thirties to stir up South Carolina to the duty of removing this stigma.

[Footnote 1: Wightman, _Life of William Capers_, p. 295.]

[Footnote 2: Wightman, _Life of William Capers_, p. 296.]

His plan of enlightening the blacks did not include literary instruction. His aim was to adapt the teaching of Christian truth to the condition of persons having a "humble intellect and a limited range of knowledge by means of constant and patient reiteration."[1]

The old Negroes were to look to preachers for the exposition of these principles while the children were to be turned over to catechists who would avail themselves of the opportunity of imparting these fundamentals to the young at the time their minds were in the plastic state. Yet all instructors and preachers to Negroes had to be careful to inculcate the performance of the duty of obedience to their masters as southerners found them stated in the Holy Scriptures. Any one who would hesitate to teach these principles of southern religion should not be employed to instruct slaves. The bishop was certain that such a one could not then be found among the preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church of South Carolina.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 298.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, p. 296.]

Bishop Capers was the leading spirit in the movement inst.i.tuted in that commonwealth about 1829 to establish missions to the slaves. So generally did he arouse the people to the performance of this duty that they not only allowed preachers access to their Negroes but requested that missionaries be sent to their plantations. Such pet.i.tions came from C.C. Pinckney, Charles Boring, and Lewis Morris.[1] Two stations were established in 1829 and two additional ones in 1833. Thereafter the Church founded one or two others every year until 1847 when there were seventeen missions conducted by twenty-five preachers. At the death of Bishop Capers in 1855 the Methodists of South Carolina had twenty-six such establishments, which employed thirty-two preachers, ministering to 11,546 communicants of color. The missionary revenue raised by the local conference had increased from $300 to $25,000 a year.[2]

[Footnote 1: Wightman, _Life of William Capers_, p. 296.]

[Footnote 2; _African Repository_, vol. xxiv., p. 157.]

The most striking example of this cla.s.s of workers was the Rev. C.C.

Jones, a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Educated at Princeton with men actually interested in the cause of the Negroes, and located in Georgia where he could study the situation as it was, Jones became not a theorist but a worker. He did not share the discussion of the question as to how to get rid of slavery. Accepting the inst.i.tution as a fact, he endeavored to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunates by the spiritual cultivation of their minds. He aimed, too, not to take into his scheme the solution of the whole problem but to appeal to a special cla.s.s of slaves, those of the plantations who were left in the depths of ignorance as to the benefits of right living. In this respect he was like two of his contemporaries, Rev. Josiah Law[1] of Georgia and Bishop Polk of Louisiana.[2] Denouncing the policy of getting all one could out of the slaves and of giving back as little as possible, Jones undertook to show how their spiritual improvement would exterminate their ignorance, vulgarity, idleness, improvidence, and irreligion; Jones thought that if the circ.u.mstances of the Negroes were changed, they would equal, if not excel, the rest of the human family "in majesty of intellect, elegance of manners, purity of morals, and ardor of piety."[3] He feared that white men might cherish a contempt for Negroes that would cause them to sink lower in the scale of intelligence, morality, and religion. Emphasizing the fact that as one cla.s.s of society rises so will the other, Jones advocated the mingling of the cla.s.ses together in churches, to create kindlier feelings among them, increase the tendency of the blacks to subordination, and promote in a higher degree their mental and religious improvement. He was sure that these benefits could never result from independent church organization.[4]

[Footnote 1: Rev. Josiah Law was almost as successful as Jones in carrying the gospel to the neglected Negroes. His life is a large chapter in the history of Christianity among the slaves of that commonwealth. See Wright, _Negro Education in Georgia_, p. 19.]

[Footnote 2: Rhodes, _History of the U.S_., vol. i., p. 331.]

[Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p. 103.]

[Footnote 4: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, pp. 106, 217.]

Meeting the argument of those who feared the insubordination of Negroes, Jones thought that the gospel would do more for the obedience of slaves and the peace of the community than weapons of war. He a.s.serted that the very effort of the masters to instruct their slaves created a strong bond of union between them and their masters.[1]

History, he believed, showed that the direct way of exposing the slaves to acts of insubordination was to leave them in ignorance and superst.i.tion to the care of their own religion.[2] To disprove the falsity of the charge that literary instruction given in Neau's school in New York was the cause of a rising of slaves in 1709, he produced evidence that it was due to their opposition to becoming Christians.

The rebellions in South Carolina from 1730 to 1739, he maintained, were fomented by the Spaniards in St. Augustine. The upheaval in New York in 1741 was not due to any plot resulting from the instruction of Negroes in religion, but rather to a delusion on the part of the whites. The rebellions in Camden in 1816 and in Charleston in 1822 were not exceptions to the rule. He conceded that the Southampton Insurrection in Virginia in 1831 originated under the color of religion. It was pointed out, however, that this very act itself was a proof that Negroes left to work out their own salvation, had fallen victims to "ignorant and misguided teachers" like Nat Turner. Such undesirable leaders, thought he, would never have had the opportunity to do mischief, if the masters had taken it upon themselves to instruct their slaves.[3] He a.s.serted that no large number of slaves well instructed in the Christian religion and taken into the churches directed by white men had ever been found guilty of taking part in servile insurrections.[4]

[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., pp. 212, 274.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 215.]

[Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, etc., p. 212.]

[Footnote 4: Plumer, _Thoughts_, etc., p. 4.]

To meet the arguments of these reformers the slaveholders found among laymen and preachers able champions to defend the reactionary policy.

Southerners who had not gone to the extreme in the prohibition of the instruction of Negroes felt more inclined to answer the critics of their radical neighbors. One of these defenders thought that the slaves should have some enlightenment but believed that the domestic element of the system of slavery in the Southern States afforded "adequate means" for the improvement, adapted to their condition and the circ.u.mstances of the country; and furnished "the natural, safe, and effectual means"[1] of the intellectual and moral elevation of the Negro race. Another speaking more explicitly, said that the fact that the Negro is such per se carried with it the "inference or the necessity that his education--the cultivation of his faculties, or the development of his intelligence, must be in harmony with itself." In other words, "his instruction must be an entirely different thing from the training of the Caucasian," in regard to whom "the term education had widely different significations." For this reason these defenders believed that instead of giving the Negro systematic instruction he should be placed in the best position possible for the development of his imitative powers--"to call into action that peculiar capacity for copying the habits, mental and moral, of the superior race."[2] They referred to the facts that slaves still had plantation prayers and preaching by numerous members of their own race, some of whom could read and write, that they were frequently favored by their masters with services expressly for their instruction, that Sabbath-schools had been established for the benefit of the young, and finally that slaves were received into the churches which permitted them to hear the same gospel and praise the same G.o.d.[3]

[Footnote 1: Smith, _Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery_, pp. 228 _et seq_.]

[Footnote 2: Van Evrie, _Negroes and Negro Slavery_, p. 215.]

[Footnote 3: Smith, _Lectures on the Philosophy of Slavery_, p. 228.]

Seeing even in the policy of religious instruction nothing but danger to the position of the slave States, certain southerners opposed it under all circ.u.mstances. Some masters feared that verbal instruction would increase the desire of slaves to learn. Such teaching might develop into a progressive system of improvement, which, without any special effort in that direction, would follow in the natural order of things.[1] Timorous persons believed that slaves thus favored would neglect their duties and embrace seasons of religious worship for originating and executing plans for insubordination and villainy. They thought, too, that missionaries from the free States would thereby be afforded an opportunity to come South and inculcate doctrines subversive of the interests and safety of that section.[2] It would then be only a matter of time before the movement would receive such an impetus that it would dissolve the relations of society as then const.i.tuted and revolutionize the civil inst.i.tutions of the South.

[Footnote 1: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p. 192; Olmsted, _Back Country_, pp. 106-108.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 106.]

The black population of certain sections, however, was not reduced to heathenism. Although often threatening to execute the reactionary laws, many of which were never intended to be rigidly enforced, the southerners did not at once eliminate the Negro as a religious instructor.[1] It was fortunate that a few Negroes who had learned the importance of early Christian training, organized among themselves local a.s.sociations. These often appointed an old woman of the plantation to teach children too young to work in the fields, to say prayers, repeat a little catechism, and memorize a few hymns.[2] But this looked too much like systematic instruction. In some States it was regarded as productive of evils destructive to southern society and was, therefore, discouraged or prohibited.[3] To local a.s.sociations organized by kindly slaveholders there was less opposition because the chief aim always was to restrain strangers and undesirable persons from coming South to incite the Negroes to servile insurrection. Two good examples of these local organizations were the ones found in Liberty and McIntosh counties, Georgia. The const.i.tutions of these bodies provided that the instruction should be altogether oral, embracing the general principles of the Christian religion as understood by orthodox Christians.[4]

[Footnote 1: This statement is based on the testimonies of ex-slaves.]

[Footnote 2: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, pp. 114, 117.]

[Footnote 3: While the laws in certain places were not so drastic as to prohibit religious a.s.semblies, the same was effected by patrols and mobs.]