The History of the Negro Church Part 6

Taking up again the religious instruction of the slaves, Olmsted found "that there were widely different practices in that State." He observed that there were some other slaveholders who, like Bishop Polk, encouraged and even obliged their slaves to engage in religious exercises. Yet among the wealthier slave owners, and especially in that section of the country where the blacks outnumbered the whites, there was generally a visible and often an avowed distrust of the effect of religious exercises upon slaves and even the preaching of white clergymen to them was permitted by many only with reluctance. The prevailing impression among northern people with regard to the important influence of slavery in promoting the spread of religion among the blacks, he contended, was erroneous. Northern clergymen supposed as a general thing that there was a regular daily instruction of the slaves in the truths of Christianity. "So far as this is from being the case,"

said Olmsted, "although family prayers were held in several of the fifty planters' houses in Mississippi and Alabama in which I pa.s.sed a night, I never in a single instance saw a field hand attend or join in the devotions of the family."

There should be mentioned also in this connection the services of Bishop Meade of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia. Early in his career he addressed himself to the neglected condition of the Negroes, preaching rousing sermons, telling them their duty toward their own group. He was interested in the colonization movement and hoped to secure the release of certain recaptured Africans to encourage the manumission of others who might be given a chance to establish a nation for their race in Africa. Although thereafter he did not emphasize the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves very much because of the reactionary influences at work in the country, he did advocate the thorough education of those slaves who were to be colonized abroad. As an impetus in this direction he republished the sermons of the Rev. Thomas Bacon, who answered every argument presented against the religious instruction of Negroes. He especially besought the ministers of the gospel to take into serious consideration a matter of which "they also will have to give an account." "Did not Christ," said he, "die for these poor creatures as well as for any others, and has he not given charge to the minister to gather his sheep into the fold?"

The Presbyterians, much more liberal in their att.i.tude toward the blacks than the Episcopalians, manifested an unfailing interest in the condition of these people far down. Although the church as a national body receded from its early position of attacking slavery and thereafter compromised with the inst.i.tution, there was among these people in the various parts of the country a continuous effort to promote the religious instruction of the Negroes. Early manifesting interest in the preparation of Negroes for colonization in Africa, the Presbyterians planned to bring out of the South Negroes liberated for expatriation that they might be first trained in a school for this purpose established at Parsippanny, New Jersey. As this failed, this church finally established for this purpose, in 1854, Ashmun Inst.i.tute, now Lincoln University.

In the very heart of the South, however, the Presbyterians did not fail to aid the instruction of Negroes wherever public opinion permitted it, although they had to confine themselves largely to verbal instruction.

In the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, where the Scotch-Irish element dominated, there was no diminution of ardor in the religious instruction of the Negroes. Expressions of interest came also from the Presbyterian synods of Georgia and Alabama, while those in the mountains openly advocated literary instruction as a preparation for thorough indoctrination. In the States of Maryland, Tennessee, and Kentucky, they were not handicapped by laws prohibiting the education of the Negroes. They, therefore, spoke out more boldly for the establishment of schools, and especially Sabbath schools, which paid as much attention to the teaching of reading as it did to the actual instruction in the Bible.

Among the Presbyterians in the South the most efficient worker was the Rev. C. C. Jones, who toiled among the Negroes in Georgia. Taking the situation as it was rather than complaining because it was not different, Jones addressed himself to the task of trying to convince the slave owners as to the advisability of religious instruction. He believed that if the circ.u.mstances of the Negroes were changed, they would equal if not excel the rest of the human family in religion, intellect, purity of morals and ardor of piety. He feared that white men would cherish a contempt for the Negroes which would cause them to sink lower in the scale of morality and religion. He, therefore, advocated the attendance of both races upon the same services that they might learn by contact from their masters. The independent church organization for which the Negroes contended, he believed, would rather give them an opportunity to deteriorate.

By a logical array of facts, moreover, he tried to prove that Negroes who had been instructed in the doctrines of Christianity had less tendency toward servile insurrection than those who had been left in heathenism. Even the Southampton insurrection started by Nat Turner, he believed, was due to the fact that, being unable to understand the real scheme of things, he had misguided the slaves by his false prophecy.

Those Negroes who had been well instructed in the principles of Christianity had never been found guilty of any such crimes.

In this effort Jones had a very difficult task; for the tendency during that day was rather toward segregation in the church. Most southern men had no idea of elevating the Negroes to the status of white men, not even in matters of religion. The whites believed that the domestic element of the system of slavery itself afforded adequate means for their improvement and the natural safe and effective means of their elevation. In other words, their instruction must be decidedly different from that of white men, in regard to whom the term education had widely different significations. The best the Negro could hope for would be an imitation of the white man to call into action that peculiar capacity for copying the mental and moral habits of the superior race.

Jones's work did not differ materially from that of the Rev. Josiah Law of Georgia, who was almost as successful in grappling with the same problem. These workers, however, soon found that there was a strenuous objection even to the verbal instruction of Negroes for fear that the oral exercise would inspire a desire for literary training, which was out of harmony with the status of the Negro in a slaveholding commonwealth. Thinking that it might lead to such a state of affairs, most masters in some parts of the South opposed all instruction of Negroes during the thirties and forties.

Thereafter appeared occasional evidences of further interest in the religious instruction and the evangelization of the slaves and free people of color, however, in spite of this opposition. Much interest was manifested in this work by the Presbyterians of Charleston; Union, Georgia; Concord, South Alabama; and Mississippi. In 1825 the General a.s.sembly went on record to the effect that "no more honored name could be conferred on a minister of Jesus than that of Apostle to the American slaves, and no service can be more pleasing to the G.o.d of Heaven, or more useful to our beloved country, than that which this t.i.tle designates."

The minutes quoted from the report of the Presbytery of Georgia in 1839 said: "We are happy to say, in regard to the religious instruction of the Negroes, that this important part of our service has received a new impulse during the last year. This business receives considerable attention in many parts of our bounds. Plantations are open to all our ministers and fields presented among this people which it is impossible for them to occupy. Sabbath schools, for their exclusive benefit, exist in some of our churches, and we are happy to believe that there is an increasing interest felt on this subject. Within our bounds there is one minister whose whole ministry is devoted exclusively to this people, and most, if not all, the several pastors and stated supplies preach as often as once a week to this cla.s.s of our population. In Liberty County there is at this time very considerable attention to religion among the blacks, not less than fifty being under serious impressions. A beloved brother in Augusta and another in the vicinity of Natchez are following the n.o.ble example by devoting their whole time to this interesting work."

The Presbytery of Georgia remarked in referring to one of their number who devoted his whole time to this work: "During the year he has been blessed with a revival in one part of his field of labor. Fourteen professed conversion, and were added to the church. Another brother, in another part of our bounds, reports the conversion and reception into the church to which he ministers, of eight colored persons." And the Presbytery of Hopewell spoke of their churches generally as cheerfully yielding the half of their pastor's services to this department of labor. It also expressed a belief that several churches "will soon be erected for the exclusive accommodation of the Negroes, and that the field will be occupied as missionary ground by at least one who is deeply interested in the work."

The Presbytery of South Alabama said in 1847: "Perhaps without a solitary exception our ministers are devoting a considerable part of their labors to the benefit of the colored population. It is a field which we all hope to cultivate; and to some the great Head of the Church is intimating an abundant harvest." "Most of our pastors," said the Presbytery of Charleston, "devote a part of the time to the exclusive service of the blacks and in some instances with the most pleasing success. A scheme is now in agitation for the full consent of the Presbytery for establis.h.i.+ng an African Church in the city of Charleston."

In 1854 the report of the General a.s.sembly on the instruction of the Negroes in the slave States said that instead of abating, the interest in the religious welfare of the Negroes was increasing. In their houses of wors.h.i.+p provision at once special and liberal was made for the accommodation of the people of color so that they might enjoy the privileges of the sanctuary in common with the whites. "Besides this, nearly all of our ministers hold a service in the afternoon of the Sabbath, in which all exercises are particularly adapted to their capacities and wants. In some instances ministers are engaged in their exclusive service ... not ministers of inferior ability, but such as would be an ornament and a blessing to the intelligent, cultivated congregations of the land. In a still larger number of instances the pastor of a church composed of the two cla.s.ses, inasmuch as the blacks formed the more numerous portion, devotes to them the greater share of his labors, and finds among them the most pleasing tokens of G.o.d's smiles upon his work. Besides the preaching of the word to which they have free access, in many cases a regular system of catechetical instruction for their benefit is pursued, either on the Sabbath at the house of wors.h.i.+p or during the week on the plantations where they reside.... The position taken by our Church with reference to the much agitated subject of slavery secures to us the unlimited opportunities of access to master and slave, and lays us under heavy responsibilities before G.o.d and the world not to neglect our duty to either."

Among the Methodists who directed their attentions to mission work among Negroes no one was more prominent than Bishop William Capers of South Carolina. He had no idea of preparing Negroes for manumission, but looked to the edification of their souls as a preparation for the life to come, justifying the relation of slave and the master by the Bible in keeping with most ministers of his time. He emphasized, on the other hand, the necessity of the masters' being kind to their bondmen and especially in providing for their spiritual needs. After preaching a number of sermons to this effect, he devised a scheme for adapting the teaching of the Christian truth to the mental condition of the slaves.

He planned to have the old Negroes instructed by preachers and the children through catechists by the memory method, while their minds were in a plastic state, always remembering, however, that any minister who did not believe in the southern religion of the relation of master and slave as sanctioned by his sort of Christianity should not enter upon this work. With the support of a number of leading men in that commonwealth Bishop Capers established two missions in 1829 and two additional ones in 1833. Thereafter one or two others were added every year until 1847, when there were seventeen engaging the attention of twenty-five preachers. When Bishop Capers died in 1855 he saw his work, according to his plan, very well done. The Methodists then had 26 missions manned by 32 preachers, having in their churches 11,546 communicants. The cost of this religious instruction had, during the Bishop's time, increased from $300 to $25,000 a year.

The work of the Baptists here and there was almost as effective, but because of their lack of a national body to concentrate the effort of the various local churches, such good results did not always follow. In certain communities, however, especially in the State of Virginia, there were obtained unusually desirable results. This was the case in the cities of Portsmouth, Norfolk, and Petersburg; and still better success was achieved in Richmond through the well organized work of the First African Baptist Church, which, under the direction of the Rev. Robert Ryland, President of Richmond College, served not only to benefit the Negroes of that community, but also to inspire other white churches to make similar provisions for the instruction of the blacks.

Lott Cary himself speaks of religious instruction in this church at an early period. He said: "I was, during the years 1815, 1816, 1817 and 1818, engaged for the benefit of the leading colored members of the church" (referring to the First Baptist Church) "in a gratuitous school at the old Baptist meeting house ... at first in connection with Rev.

David Roper ... and subsequently with Rev. John Bryce, co-pastor of the church."

The work of this church, however, was largely in the hands of the whites. The local government was changed from the democratic to something more Presbyterial than Congregational, because of the belief that the Negroes were not prepared for democracy. The government was vested in the pastor and thirty deacons exercising general supervision over the church and const.i.tuting the source of authority in the church.

The instruction, of course, was at first confined to the catechism and to the memorizing of hymns and special pa.s.sages of the Bible. Ryland himself compiled a catechism for the colored people and hoped to add to it such books as _Pilgrim's Progress_, _The African Preacher_, _The Life of Samuel Pierce_ and _The Church Member's Guide_.

Ryland did not share the distrust of the Negroes who might learn to read. Unlike most of the ministers after this reactionary period, he advocated the thorough instruction of the slaves. He said: "They will make more useful servants, if in a state of bondage, and more safe and reliable residents, if free, by having their minds imbued with rational views of Christianity. How can we expect them to develop the great principles of the gospel in a well ordered life while they are dependent on desultory oral instruction for their entire knowledge? I am fully aware that some will think that I am approaching delicate ground, and yet with the most considerate feelings and with the admission that grave abuses might follow, I am constrained to believe, nevertheless, that greater benefit will accrue both to themselves and to society by increasing their facilities to understand the gospel whose maxim is 'On earth peace, good will toward man.' I am a Southern man by birth, education and habits. I deplore the ultraism and recklessness of the North on this subject and in the least on account of _increased restrictions_ which have been thus occasioned to the colored people. But I would respectfully ask Southern Christians if they are not in danger of neglecting _known, imperative duty_, because others are not disposed to mind their own business. Let us not be led from the path of _real benevolence_ either by the abolitionists of the North or by the morbid sensitiveness of the South."

Exactly how much Ryland accomplished at the First African Baptist Church is not known. Referring to his communicants, Ryland recorded that their general appearance was that of serious, intelligent wors.h.i.+p. It is certain that many Negroes, who became impressed with Christianity and endeavored to embrace it, looked upon it as an opportunity and a privilege to belong to this church, and inasmuch as he emphasized consistent Christian conduct, it certainly forced a number of them to live more righteously than they would have, if these rules had not been rigidly enforced. The att.i.tude here might be criticised in that the church was accepting merely those who were known to be persons of good conduct and did not seemingly go out to stir up and reform those who made no pretense to be Christians. When a person made a profession of faith and wanted to join this church he was required to present a certificate of good conduct.[9]

In this work Ryland had the cooperation of Joseph Abrams, a Negro who had been licensed to preach and ordained but had been prohibited from the exercise of his gifts by the hostile legislation proscribing Negro preachers after Nat Turner's insurrection. During the days prior to this reaction Abrams had been a preacher of much success among the Negroes of the First Baptist Church. Afterward he could take no more conspicuous part in the Sunday exercises than to pray a long prayer, into which he sometimes worked a short sermon. "As he enjoyed, however, the confidence of the citizens," says a writer in the _American Baptist Memorial_ of 1853, "he was tolerated in preaching funerals at private houses, and was sparingly invited to close the wors.h.i.+p in the church by words of exhortation." "He was heard with far more interest than I was," said Ryland, "and on this account I should have often requested him to speak but for the fear of involving him and the church in legal trouble."

Abrams died in 1854. From the same pulpit which he had once occupied, his former pastor, John Bryce, delivered to a large crowd of grieving persons within and as many more without one of the most eloquent eulogies in keeping with the life of the man. A long procession of hundreds of persons followed him to his grave, over which the people erected a beautiful monument in the form of an imposing obelisk.

So emphatically was duty of religious instruction urged in certain parts of the South, that not only sympathetic clergymen and their children but men high in official positions championed the cause of literary instruction for the Negroes that they might learn the principles of religion. One important case in evidence is that of J. B. O'Neal of South Carolina. Discussing this matter in detail, O'Neal observed that the extension of the instruction of the Negroes to the extent of learning to read the Bible would hardly do any harm. He did not believe that the Christianization of the Negroes in a slave commonwealth would tend to lift them above their masters and destroy the "legitimate distinction" in the community. General c.o.xe of Fluvanna County, Virginia, had all of his slaves taught to read the Bible in spite of the law and public opinion to the contrary, and so did a farmer whom Frederick Law Olmsted visited in Mississippi. Other instances here and there may be mentioned. Exactly how many other persons of the aristocratic folk of the South had the same att.i.tude is difficult to determine; for the white people of that day, like those of the present time, often conceded privately that the Negroes should enjoy their rights, but were unwilling to suffer the stigma of being called the champions of their cause.

With this new impetus given religious instruction in many parts, however, it was very difficult to overcome the desire for the more thorough evangelization of the Negroes. There was not only a manifestation of interest here and there in the South; but during the forties and fifties there followed considerable improvement, especially through such local organizations as those in Liberty and MacIntosh counties in Georgia and in the Presbyterian synods of Kentucky, Alabama, North Carolina, and Tennessee. A few Negroes, who prior to the reaction had learned to read and write and had a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible, were sometimes employed in the more liberal portions of the South to teach the aged and the young to say prayers, repeat a little of the catechism, and to memorize hymns. Here their instruction depended entirely upon the memory. What could not be thus done for them was neglected. Literature especially adapted to this end prepared by churchmen safeguarding the interests of the slaveholding South was preferably used. Some of these works were Dr. Capers' _Short Catechism for the Use of Colored Members on Trial in the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina_, _A Catechism to be Used by Teachers in the Religious Instruction of Persons of Color in the Episcopal Church of South Carolina_, John Mines' _Catechism_, Dr. C. C. Jones' _Catechism of Scripture, Doctrine and Practice Designed for the Original Instruction of Colored People_, Dr. Robert Ryland's _The Scripture Catechism for Colored People_, and E. T. Winkler's _Notes and Questions for the Oral Instruction of Colored People with Appropriate Texts and Hymns_.

CHAPTER VIII

PREACHERS OF VERSATILE GENIUS

The situation in the North was then more encouraging, though far from being ideal. During the critical period through which the Negroes were pa.s.sing between 1830 and the Civil War the Negro minister had to divide his attention so as to take care of all of the varying interests of an oppressed race. Among the poor it has never been considered exceptional for a minister to work at some occupation to increase the meager income which he receives from his paris.h.i.+oners. We have already observed above that Andrew Bryan made himself independent as a planter, that Richard Allen at first earned his living as a teamster, and that Andrew Marshall with much business ac.u.men maintained himself in a local express business. During the critical period from 1830 to 1860, however, the Negro minister was not only compelled sometimes thus to support himself, but often had to devote part of his time to the problems of education, abolition, colonization and the Underground Railroad.

Education for the Negro was both a test and a challenge. Few persons believed that the Negro was capable of the mental development known to the white man. The challenge to them, then, was: Show that your race has possibilities in the intellectual world, bring forth proof to uproot the argument that your race is the inferior of the other peoples. To make the challenge more concrete, can a Negro master the grammar, language, and literature of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew? Can he learn to think? Can he understand the significant things of life as expounded by mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers? A few Negroes had demonstrated here and there unusual ability in these fields; but they were not generally known or their achievements were accounted for by their racial connection with the white race in this country or with some Arabic stock of Africa, known to be Caucasian rather than Negroid.

The greater impetus to education among Negro ministers, however, came not so much from the desire to meet this requirement as from the need of it in promoting the work of the church. It is true that the whites were subjecting the blacks to a mental test, but it required very little logic to show that the contention as to Negro inferiority was a case of making desire father to the thought. The independent church movement had to depend on education; and the Negroes themselves, as they made progress, required of their ministry the service of instructors to bring the people to a higher standard of thought. Acquiring an education then was not always an easy task. Negroes had no advanced schools of their own and they were generally refused in most of those of the North. Until the rise of the Union Literary Inst.i.tute in Indiana, Oberlin and Wilberforce in Ohio, Ashmun Inst.i.tute in Pennsylvania, and Oneida Inst.i.tute in New York, the Negro had to break his way into whatever inst.i.tution of learning he entered. Negroes who were ignorant themselves could not always appreciate what the struggle for educational opportunities actually meant.

The Negro ministers, moreover, were at the same time in the midst of a life and death struggle. During the thirties and forties the questions involving the Negroes engaged the attention of almost everybody. The Negro ministers, the then best developed leaders among their people, could not be silent. Inasmuch as men had to be won to the support of the cause, these apostles to the lowly had to appear before the other race in the North as spokesmen of an oppressed people. Preaching was important enough, but there could be no preaching without the liberty to preach. Except in a few such cases as that of William Dougla.s.s, the rector of St. Thomas Church, Philadelphia, and that of Peter Williams, the rector of St. Phillips', in New York City, where the pro-slavery church hierarchy hushed the Negro ministers loyally speaking for their people, the Negro clergyman spoke out fearlessly for the emanc.i.p.ation of his race and its elevation to citizens.h.i.+p.

As the American Colonization Society went only half way in carrying out this program in that it advocated the emanc.i.p.ation of the Negroes for deportation to Africa, merely to rid the country of freemen belonging to another than the Caucasian race, the Negro ministers were generally opposed to that organization. They fearlessly attacked the promoters of the cause, saying, "Here we were born, here we fought for the independence of this country, and here we intend to die and be buried in the soil hallowed by the blood of our fathers shed in defense of this country." When, however, the increasing intelligence of the Negroes made their humiliation in this country less and less durable, the Negro ministers became divided among themselves on this important question; for a few of the leaders of that day began to advocate colonization in some other country than Africa.

In the meantime, moreover, almost every Negro minister was otherwise engaged in spiriting away fugitives from the slaveholding States through the North into Canada. They were in touch with men in other centers, found out what was going on, learned what was the trend of things, and planned to act accordingly. And well might they be so engaged; for not a few of these ministers were fugitives themselves, and whether or not their freedom had such origin, all Negroes in the North were, after the pa.s.sage of that unconst.i.tutional drastic Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, in danger of being apprehended and enslaved without what civilized countries regard as due process of law. Some of the ministers themselves had to move for safety into Canada during this crisis, carrying in some cases practically all of their congregations with them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOSIAH HENSON

A pioneer Methodist preacher in Canada. The Prototype of Uncle Tom's Cabin.]

The Negro minister easily learned also the power of the press. Much time which they would have under other circ.u.mstances devoted to the edification of their flocks they had to spend in raising funds to purchase printing plants and in editing the publications issuing therefrom. They could deliver their message to their congregations, they could occasionally address thus groups of the other race; but their message needed a wider circulation in a more enduring form. There were, therefore, during this crisis few Negro ministers of literary attainments who did not either undertake to edit a newspaper or to contribute thereto. If they had a message worth while, the abolition papers would generally delight in publis.h.i.+ng it. If they refused and the message was a burning one, the Negroes would establish an organ of their own.

To bring out this idea of the minister of divided interests serving his people in many ways, no career is more illuminating than that of Bishop Daniel A. Payne. Having been much better trained than most of his coworkers, he emphasized education as a necessary foundation for thorough work in the ministry. Taking this position, he made himself at first more of a teacher than a preacher, devoting most of his time to actual cla.s.sroom instruction, hoping to raise the standard of the ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, with which he finally cast his lot after being graduated at the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg. Taking this position, he had arrayed against him all the enemies of culture. One writer charged him with branding the ministry with infamy and with reckless slander on the general character of his own denomination. There was great fear that there might follow discord and dissolution between the ignorant and the intelligent portion of the church. Preaching to his congregation, the ignorant minister would often boast of having not rubbed his head against the college walls, whereupon the congregation would respond: "Amen." Sometimes one would say: "I did not write out my sermon." With equal fervor the audience would cry out: "Praise ye the Lord." Working zealously, however, Bishop Payne committed the denomination to the policy of thorough education for the ministry, a position from which the African Methodist Episcopal Church has never departed, and to which it owes not a few of the advantages that it now enjoys in having so many intelligent men in its ministry.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BISHOP DANIEL A. PAYNE]

While Bishop Payne as a churchman did not become altogether involved in the anti-slavery movement, so many distinguished men in the church did.

John N. Marrs of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church was more of an anti-slavery lecturer than a preacher. Thomas James of the same denomination was equally as effective as an anti-slavery lecturer. He was much readier to fight than to preach when he thought of the enormities of slavery. Another Zionite, Dempsey Kennedy, a pioneer preacher of remarkable skill in stirring up audiences, rendered as much service as an abolitionist as he did as a minister.

One of the best examples of this type is Charles Bennett Ray, born in Falmouth, Ma.s.sachusetts, December 28, 1807. He was educated at the Wesleyan Academy of Wilbraham, Ma.s.sachusetts, and later at Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. After studying theology he became a Congregational minister. For twenty years he was the pastor of the Bethesda Church in New York City, where many learned to wait upon his ministry. He is better known to fame, however, by the work which he did outside of his chosen field in connection with the anti-slavery movement, the Underground Railroad, and _The Colored American_, which he creditably edited from 1839 to 1843.

Ray aided the cause of liberty by lending practical aid which men in high places often had neither the time nor the patience to give, using his home as a mecca for the meetings of such men as Lewis Tappan, Simeon S. Josselyn, Gerrit Smith, the land philanthropist, and James Sturge, the celebrated English philanthropist, interested in the abolition of slavery. In cooperation with wealthy abolitionists he a.s.sisted many a slave to the light of freedom, especially through the aid of Henry Ward Beecher of the Plymouth Church in Brooklyn. Ray found himself cooperating also with the group of radical free people of color meeting in Philadelphia and in other cities of the North from 1830 until the Civil War. When one reads of his partic.i.p.ation in this work with James Forten, a business man, and Charles B. Purvis, another layman, he is inclined to forget that Charles B. Ray was a minister, as his name appears in the records of practically all of these conventions of the free people of color and his work stands out as an important factor contributing to the success with which these aggressive Negroes kept their case before the world and gradually hastened the dawn of their freedom. In all of his various employments, however, Ray did not lose interest in and did not necessarily neglect his mission to promote the moral uplift of his fellows. A contemporary, William Wells Brown, paying him a tribute as a terse, vigorous writer and an able and eloquent speaker, well informed upon all subjects of the day, says also that he was "blameless in his family relations, guided by the highest moral rect.i.tude, a true friend of everything that tends to better the moral, social, religious and political condition of man."

In the cla.s.s with Ray should be mentioned Henry Highland Garnett, another minister of the Presbyterian Church, devoting most of his time to the many movements which attracted the attention of his colaborers.

Having escaped from Maryland to the North in 1822, Garnett experienced sufficient mental development to ask for admission to the Canaan Academy, where he, along with Alexander Crummell and others, caused the school to be broken up by a mob arraying itself against the idea of permitting persons of color to enjoy such privileges in that community.

Proceeding, however, to the Oneida Inst.i.tute in New York, he succeeded in laying a foundation for his work under the n.o.ble-hearted friend of man, Beriah Green. Here Garnett attained the reputation of an accomplished man, an able and eloquent debater and a good writer. He soon developed into a preacher of power of the evangelical type, whose discourses showed much thought and careful study. He had complete command of his voice and used it with skill, never failing to fill the largest hall. Soon there was a demand for him as a preacher. He was sent as a missionary to the Island of Jamaica. He later spent some time in Was.h.i.+ngton as the pastor of the Presbyterian Church and served at another time at the s.h.i.+loh Church in New York City.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HENRY HIGHLAND GARNETT]

Garnett, however, was soon more than a preacher. From the time he made his first public appearance in New York City in 1837 he secured for himself a standing among first-cla.s.s orators. In 1843 he delivered before the National Convention of Colored Americans at Buffalo, New York, one of the most remarkable addresses ever uttered by man. His contemporary says: "None but those who heard that speech have the slightest idea of the tremendous influence which he exercised over the a.s.sembly." For forty years thereafter he was an advocate of the rights of his race, a forcible and daring speaker wherever he had an opportunity to present his cause. Visiting England in 1850, he was well received as an orator. Garnett, moreover, served much of his time as an educator, having been President of Avery College, where he pa.s.sed as a man of learning.

In this group of enterprising clergymen of this period should be mentioned Alexander Crummell, although his more important service to the race belongs to the two generations following the Civil War. Crummell was a native of New York, but a descendant of a Timanee chief in West Africa. Early in his career he attended a Quaker school with Thomas S.

Sidney and Henry Highland Garnett in New York, and later experienced with the latter, as mentioned above, the humiliation of seeing the Academy of Canaan, New Hamps.h.i.+re, broken up because of the admission of Negroes. Crummell then studied three years under Beriah Green at the Oneida Inst.i.tute. Having then the aspiration to enter the ministry of the Episcopal Church, he applied for admission to the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church of New York, which, in keeping with its hostile att.i.tude toward the Negro, refused to accept him.