Gospel among the slaves

Front matter

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Preface

The following pages record the results of missionary enterprise among the African slaves of the Southern states. From the earliest records available, the editor has obtained the narrative of the operations of various Christian Churches, including Baptists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians. The chief authority for this narrative vi^as kindly forwarded to me by the Hon. Richard H. Clark, a gentleman who honors the judicial office in the city of Atlanta, Ga.

To Miss Annie Maria Barnes is due the credit of collecting the materials of this volume from contemporary sources. The work of the editor has been confined to selection, abbreviation, and arrangement of these materials. When no authority is given for a statement in the text, the editor is responsible.

That the general public will be surprised to learn some of the facts recorded in these pages the editor is firmly persuaded. Who among us realizes the fact that the people of the South expended nearly or quite t-wo millions of dollars for the evangelization of the slaves on the cotton and rice plantations between the years 1829 and 1864.'' This amount does not express the total sum expended by Southern slave holders for the benefit of the negro slaves. '' Plantation missions" are alone represented, and these comprised a minority of the slaves in most of the Southern states. Nor do we include the expenditures made by other Christian Churches. The two millions of dollars were contributed by the slave holders and their friends to forward the missions to the slaves conducted by the Methodist Episcopal Church from 1829 to 1844, and from 1844 to 1864 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. The Editor.

Nashville, Term., January, 1893,

Chapter I

St. Paul and the Greek Slave.

ST. PAUL was the first preacher of the gospel to slaves. It is in his writings that we have the first distinct view of slavery as it existed in New Testament times, and from the pen of this apostle to the Gentiles we have distinctly defined the attitude of the Church toward human slavery:

Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men. Brethren, let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God. (i Cor. vii. 21-24.)

This being the attitude of the Church toward a civil institution, one with which the Church had nothing to do, in enlarging, contracting, or abolishing the relations of master and slave, it is the logical consequence that this apostle should teach as a religious duty the service which the state exacts solely as a political duty. St. Paul says :

Let as many slaves as are under the yoke count their own masters [fW7r(5raf, despots] worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren: but rather do them service, because thej' are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort, (i Tim. vi. i, 2.)

It will be a profitable inquiry if we look brieflv into the character of the civil institution of slavery as it existed in the lifetime of St. Paul. Prof. Becker, one of the most accomplished scholars of modern times, endeavors to account for what he calls a striking contradiction between the principles and the practice of the Greeks. He says:

One of the most striking anomalies in the character of the Greeks is, that though thej acknowledged above all other nations the value of personal freedom, and kept a jealous guard against every thing that threatened it from within, and were ready to resist to the death any encroachment made upon it from without, still they did not recognize the equal claims of all to this blessing, but withheld it from millions of their fellow-men, whom they made mere personal instruments of their will, and reduced to a condition little superior to that of domestic animals. This strange contradiction may be partly due to their assumption that the barbarians were creatures of a naturally inferior order to themselves, though there was nothing in the habits of those nations which could excuse such arrogance. But the root of slavery lies elsewhere, and must be i-ather sought in the general disinclination to menial labor, and that abhorrence to servitude, based on false notions of liberty, which first made the possession of slaves desirable. In process of time this grew into an imperious necessity, which refused to take into consideration the justice or injustice of the case; and as there now existed a class of men which had, by birth and education, become divested of all the habits and feelings that were regarded as the essential characteristics of an e?.ev0£pog (freeman), the notion of their belonging to a different race of mankind seemed justified and strengthened. (Chariclea, p. 356.)

In the ideal republic of Plato human slavery was an integral factor. Different laws are given for the freeman and the slave, verbal censure being the punishment for a freeman, where corporal chastisement should be inflicted upon the slave; and offenses punished by fine in the case of the free-

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man were visited with capital punishment when the criminal was a slave. These distinctions are perfectly in keeping with the Greek view of the inferiority of the slave race or races. Captured in war, and bought sometimes for only a few shillings, the ancestors of the slaves of St. Paul's day were either intellectually or morally incapable of contending for their freedom against their masters.

Aristotle does not enter into the question of the origin of slavery, or the moral right that one man has to claim property in the life and service of another. But he distinctly avows the doctrine of the inferiority of the slave race. He contrasts the works, the genius, the achievements in arms, the intellectual eminence of the ruling race with the vices and degradation of the slave, and concludes that the relative position of the two classes is the due of each, the proper reward for innate greatness and innate weakness. He declares that the slave belongs to a eTepoi^ yevog, heteron genos, a foreign race, an outside genus; and therefore the eternal law that the strong must rule the weak is in perfect keeping with all that we know of the fitness of things in the moral government of the universe. This argument compels him to the conclusion that there is a code of laws especially adopted to the wants and necessities of the ^vasi hovT^OL^ the slave natures. Here and there we find a Greek poet, as Philemon, who entered a mild protest against this view of the subject, but from the great mass lo The Gospel among the Slaves.

of the slaves in Greece there was seldom a note of remonstrance or an attempt at self-assertion in contest with their masters for personal liberty.

With the exception of the Helots of Sparta, the Greek slaves were in a much more tolerable condition than those of Rome. The Spartans carried their barbarities to a great length, and in so doing were only giving play to the distinctive features of their character. They were a cruel people. Cruel to their children and to those whom they loved best, it could not be expected that they should be kind and benevolent to those whom they disdained and despised. The clemency of the Athenians toward their slaves does not appear to have been caused by the great preponderance of the slave over the free population. The free burghers of Attica, in the time of Demetrius Phalereus, were found by a census to be twenty-one thousand; there were of resident aliens ten thousand, and of slaves four hundred thousand. Where the physical force was twenty to one against the masters, it was not the lack of power, but the want of capacity or disposition, which prevented the uprising of the servile population against their owners. Nor does it appear that the Greeks anticipated any trouble from the practice of educating their slaves to the various forms of skilled handicraft used in those times. Elevated above the manual labor which they considered servile, the Greek gentlemen did not even employ themselves with the conduct of their own business interests, but placed these in the hands

Si. Paul and Ihe Greek Slave. ii

of a better and costlier class of slaves, for whom they often gave extravagant prices, but not so exorbitant as those paid for a similar class among the Romans.

There are writers who are at a loss to imagine what principle was at stake in producing the longcontinued and virtually voluntary subjection of a people who outnumbered their masters in the proportion of twenty to one. These persons seem to have but little knowledge of their own times, and especially of the classes of theorists whose speculations they represent. New England has been the quarter from which the most offensive and the most fanatical of these agencies have emanated. If we are to believe Mr. J. Fenimore Cooper, "the besetting, the degrading vice of his section of America is the moral cowardice by which men are led to truckle to what is called public opinion." When this public opinion was supposed to be in favor of protecting the manufucturing interests of New England, an abolitionist was mobbed in Boston as freely as a patriotic citizen was threatened with the same treatment if he dared openly to purchase a United States bond in 1814, during the last war with England. Why it was that the Greek slaves, who were not lacking in either intelligence or courage, were really attached to their masters, and would even die in their defense, it is utterly impossible for such worshipers of power to understand. Even Mr. Francis A. Walker, in his recent work on the "Wages

Question," cannot resist the inborn tendency of his people to measure the consciences of others by the clearly defined defects of their own ethical system. He says: " We know, by a mass of revolting testimony, that in all countries avarice, the consuming lust of immediate gain, a passion which stands in the way of a true and enlarged view of self-interest and works unceasing despite to self-interest, has always despoiled the slave of a part of the food and clothing necessary to his highest efficiency as a laborer." (Walker's "Wages Question," p. 59,) To this very oracular statement of matters that may have passed under his own eyes, among the people of his native borough, he characteristically attaches the allegation of a universal custom, holding good in all lands, those of which he has no knowledge as well as those with which he is acquainted. To this oracular deliverance he attaches in a note an ill-grained and surly hypothesis which reveals the weakness of his brethren of the abolition propagandist school in New England. "When slavery was a political and social institution," he says, "as in the Middle States of the American Union, something of grace and kindliness might come to climb upon it." It is a bare possibility that such a thing might be, and this reluctant and ungracious acknowledgment is wrung from this man, who actually believes himself an advocate of truth, by a "mass of testimony" that is "revolting" to fanatics, because it falsifies their declarations and convicts

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them of uttering the foulest slanders against those who have done them no wrong.

But in direct antagonism with all the declarations of self-styled " philanthropists," the Greek slave was attached to his master, as a rule, and therefore the advice of St. Paul was by no means a hardship. "Art thou called being a slave?" Do not suppose that any merely outward circumstances can procure or promote the happiness of the soul. Do not sorrow over the social relation that makes you the inferior of the so-called "higher classes," but accept the grace of God, be faithful to the trusts committed to you, and make your inferior position a means of showing forth the power and glory of the gospel. Nevertheless, if your master sees proper to release you from the estate of bondage, accept the gift of freedom, and use it as wisely as you would have employed yourself in the service of a master. The calling is the same to all men, there is neither bond nor free in the kingdom of God, for all are brethren. And because all are brethren, " let every man, wherein he is called, therein abide with God." To strive against the bonds that Providence has permitted to be placed upon you is to challenge the justice of God, professedly under the influence of the saving grace of the gospel.

The annals of the world have many records of super-serviceable people who have been dissatisfied with Providence, and, like Rebecca, have endeavored to hurry up the plans and purposes of divine wisdom. In every case such well-meant actions have involved the subjects of their interference in sorrow and disaster. Rebecca's stratagem, by which she caused Jacob to personate his elder brother, Esau, was successful in stealing a blessing that would have been rightfully and regularly bestowed upon her favorite son if she had suffered the hand of Providence to direct his own counsels.

Against this folly the apostle cautions the Greek slave. " Let as many slaves as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed." The bare refusal to do honor to the master is declared to be blasphemy against the name of God and his doctrine ! How utterly irreconcilable is that teaching with the anarchical declarations that pronounce the slave's master a fiend, and the slave's condition a crime, the one to be murdered by knife and bullet, and the other to be abolished by fire and sword !

"And they that have believing masters," continues St. Paul, " let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit." The caution against the abuse of the brotherhood of Christ, by making it a pretense to assert the equality of social station, and because all men are equal in the kingdom of Christ, in point of privilege, to wrest this principle by applying it to the organization of society,

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where all are not equal, never have been, and never w^ill be, even in the millennial state; to do this, is to desj^ise the master and dishonor the Lord Christ. " These things teach and exhort."

These were the doctrines that gave Christianity an open door to the Greek and Roman world. The revolutionary theories and incendiary speeches of a Clarkson, a Wilberforce, or even a Wesley, to say nothing of the heaven- daring impiety of New England fanatics, whose souls seemed in many instances to relapse into a state of positive savagery, would have doomed the early Church to extinction in the lifetime of the first preachers of the gospel.

I am aware that these utterances of mine are not popular in this generation, but popularity is not evidence of truth. When hard pressed with these writings of St. Paul, the abolitionists of forty years ago renounced St. Paul, the Bible, and the God of heaven, because it was impossible to defend their insane denunciations of Southern slaveholders by the pages of Holy Writ.

Nor was the motive of these crusaders the same that actuated St. Paul in his exhortations to the slaves of Greece. Paul loved the souls of these men. The abolitionists, as a class, cared nothing for the religious welfare of the negro. They were ready to move heaven and earth, and they declared that they were willing to sink the nation in the gulf of irretrievable ruin, unless they could abolish slavery. But once set free, the negro might starve for aught they cared. To do an in jury to his master, in his pocket or his pride, they were ready to spend and be spent; but when the unfortunate subject of their zeal had perpetrated ah the wrong against his owner that he was capable of doing, then these marvelous "philanthropists" turned the freedman out of doors to look out for himself. They did not hesitate to say that their mission was ended when the bonds of the slave were broken.

"O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united."

CHAPTER II. The Degradation of a Name

IT is a singular fact that the word slave occurs but once in the Authorized Version of the New Testament, and in that case it is not a translation of the original word employed by St= John. The fall of *' Babylon the great" is vividly described in Revelation xviii., and part of the merchandise lamented as forever lost by the " merchants of the earth " are the proceeds of the sale of " wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men." In the Greek text the word translated " slaves" is Gcd^arav, the bodies of men, as the souls of men form the counterpart in the next phrase. In Jeremiah ii. 14 our translators have supplied the term slave, placing the word in italic letters to show that there was nothing in the original Hebrew to answer to it. The word occurs nowhere else in the English Bible. The text in Jeremiah is one of the many cases in which our English version departs from the letter to preserve the spirit of the Hebrew text. Undoubtedly the prophet intended to ask the question, " Is Israel a slave? Is he born in the house, the property of a master? Why then is he despoiled?" So far from inferring any degradation in this question, 2 (17)

the prophet's mind is engaged in considering the fact that as a slave, belonging to a great master, who was able and willing to defend his own property; it is an anomalous thing to find Israel " despoiled." With the usual strength of the parallel inquiry, "Is he a homeborn slave?" the prophet calls attention to the fact that Israel is a member of his master's household, a part of his family, entitled to the protection of the sovereign power, the head of the family. Therefore, the despoiling of Israel is a surprising fact, and the reason for it can only be found in the treachery and desertion of the favored slave who has cast away his master's shield and fallen a victim to enemies stronger than he.

But in the New Testament we can scarcely ascertain the reason that induced our translators to omit the rendering "slave" wherever the Greek word hovkoc, occurs. It is absolutely certain that a bondman, one bound to a master, bought with his money, or transferred to him as he'mg property, is the meaning of the original word. It is a term of specific meaning. It never signifies a hired servant. The word for hired servant in Luke xv. 17, 19, is fiLGdiOL, paid servants, or, as the Latin Vulgate has it, mercenary, mercenaries, serving for wages. It is worthy of notice that in the process of time these words, "slave " and "hired servant," have changed places. As early as the old Itala, and later, in the days of Jerome, the latter part of the fourth and beginning of the fifth

The Degradation of a Name. 19

century, a hired servant was a mercenary^ one in whom the employer had no other interest than the contract of service warranted. The degraded relation is further shown in the parable of the prodigal son. When the homeless wanderer " comes to himself " in the far country, finding himself reduced to share with the swine in their coarse and revolting food, he remembered not the slaves of the family, for these were nearer to his own station and place, but the hired servants. " How many hired servants of my father's house have bread enough and to spare!" In the progress of the world, the " hired servant" is now the honorable relation, and the "slave " is odious and infamous.

In all ages and in all countries the existence of a principle which produces a true aristocracy in society has been the most important factor in the progress and elevation of mankind. An aristocracy is nothing more than the organization of the best members of the social compact. When the tests of superiority are virtue, gentleness, refinement, education, and usefulness, there can be no possible objection to the sentiment which produces and the fidelity which preserves this distinction among men. It is the legitimate product of the world's renowned maxim, " Knowledge is power," and there can be no possible injury to society as a whole by the maintenance of such distinctions.

But when the possession of money, however obtained, whether dishonestly or righteously, by oppressing the poor, the orphan and the widow, or by dihgence, frugaht}^, and self-denial — when wealth is the only test of aristocratic place and position, a great good is transformed into a great evil. We can have patience with the man who lives in the past and boasts of the great deeds of his ancestors. It is a laudable pride when the descendant proves himself worthy of those who have gone before him, but not otherwise. When it is made the basis of a claim to honors and privileges not possessed by the masses of the people, and when illustrious birth is made an excuse for a debased life and degrading actions, the very reference to the honors of a noble ancestry aggravates the crimes of those who dishonor their parentage while they cover themselves with infamy.

But no man can rightly become indifferent to the sentiment that creates an aristocracy of worth. In early times, physical strength, united to courage and moral worth, designated the proper subjects for the possession of social distinctions, in titles conferred by kings, and honors pointed out by the voice of the people. The various grades of European nobility are founded upon supposed merit, not upon kingly caprice nor popular partiality. In the course of ages, here and there, instances have occurred in which the true principle of aristocracy has been overlooked, or despised, but the advancement of our race from the moral degradation of paganism to the present position of civilized society is largely due to the principle of

The Degradation of a Name. 21

honoring and ennobling the best members of the social compact.

The Christian Church knows nothing of antagonism to this aristocracy of merit. The estimate placed by St. Paul upon these social dignities would be sufficient to illustrate the importance of the principle. St. Paul does not disdain to mention the prominence of Tarsus, the city of his birth, as a claim that demands at least a hearing at the hands of his enemies. When under guard at Jerusalem, and accosted by the chief captain as " that Egyptian " which had gathered a mob of four thousand men and led them out into the wilderness for purposes of robbery and murder (Acts xxi.), he does not hesitate to assert his respectability, and says: "I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city." But while he shows himself to be proud of the city of his nativity, he does not expect or desire exemption from righteous punishment, or escape from just responsibility on that account. He desires to be heard, to defend himself by the highest and grandest of all the forms of logic : the logic of truth.

Prior to this time he had been imprisoned in Philippi, after having endured that most excruciating of all corporal sufferings, the chastisement of the rod. In the noise, confusion, and madness of the hour the apostle had no opportunity to make his voice heard, or he would doubtless have uttered the plea which was so effective the next day. (Actsxvi.) After the wonderful occurrences of the night, the earthquake, the open doors of the prison, the conversion of the jailer, and the sudden alarm of the magistrates of Philippi, word is brought to Paul and Silas in the morning, that the magistrates have ordered their release.

St. Paul exhibits a greatness of soul that astounds his enemies, particularly when they become aware of the cause of his refusal to depart. " They have beaten us openly uncondemned," he declares, and surely this was a charge of sufficient magnitude to cost any magistrate his official position; but Paul adds two words of fearful import to these unworthy officers: "being Romans." There was magic power in that expression, and when the guilty men heard of it, they were only too glad to humble themselves in the presence of these Jews whom they had despised a few hours before. "They came and besought them." That liberty of which they had deprived Paul and Silas was now tendered to them, with the most abject fear and the basest alarm, lest the Roman citizen, whose birthright of immunity from the lictor's rod had been grossly violated, should prosecute them in just retaliation, and bring the power of Caesar into exercise in vindication of Roman citizenship.

Paul proceeds no further, however, than to humiliate the magistrates, while he gives to the gospel whatever there may be of more favorable consideration from the discovery of his social position. " I am a Roman citizen " was a truly noble rec-

The Degradation of a JVame. 23

ord. It did equal honor to the giver and to the receiver. Citizenship in a state that was master of the world was a partnership with all Rome in the glories of more than seven hundred years of the most wonderful history known to men.

Once more the apostle has an opportunity to employ that magic phrase, " I am a Roman citizen," and on this occasion it protects him from the brutality of the Roman scourgers. The chief captain ordered Paul to be punished in order to find out the cause of the unreasonable madness of the mob that clamored for his life. Paul appeals to well-known principles of Roman jurisprudence. Although Caesar is all-powerful, the law is Cesar's mouthpiece. "Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is a Roman, and uncondemned?" No Roman could be scourged, whether condemned or uncondemned. In this case, the language of St. Paul is the strongest possible statement of the outrage, indignity, and crime which they were about to commit. The centurion sought the chief captain and cautioned him. "Take heed what thou doest; for this man is a Roman." (Acts xxii. 26.) Fear lends celerity to the chief captain's movements. He interrogates the prisoner: " Tell me. Art thou a Roman?" "Yea." Then said the chief captain; "With a great sum obtained I this freedom." "But I," replied Paul, "was freeborn."

Whether the Roman citizenship of St. Paul was due to the honor conferred upon the city of Tarsus, or whether it was a special favor conferred upon the family of St. Paul, is a question that cannot be definitely determined. There are weighty arguments on both sides, but the legitimate inference from the conduct of the chief captain is in favor of the hypothesis of a family gift. When Paul informed his custodian that he was a native of Tarsus, " no mean city," the chief captain certainly did not infer from that statement that Paul was a Roman citizen, which must have been the case if at his birth Tarsus had conferred that privilege. It is possible, however, that this citizenship was only conferred upon a particular class, upon those, for example, who were born in the higher stations of society. The language of Paul, " but I was freeborn," may be understood to apply to the birthright of the Roman citizen, if we reject the word "free," supplied by our translators, and read, in substance, "but I am a Roman citizen by birth." This is a sufficient contrast with the man who had bought his privileges with "a great sum." Plowever the fact may be, the greatness of the honor increased the ground of apprehension on the part of the chief captain. But this apostle, a nobleman of nature, did not seek to inflict punishment upon the petty officer who had endangered place and even life itself by dishonoring a Roman citizen. He makes no plea, utters no complaint, but, when occasion comes, tells his experience and preaches through his own past history the unsearchable riches of Christ.

The Degradation of a Name. 25

What shall we think of this apostle, then, when we find him announcing himself in Romans i. i as " the slave of Jesus Christ? " Is there a special ignominy, an incurable, indelible stain imparted by the word " slave ? ' ' Why then does the apostle use it in regard to himself? Why does he make the strange contrast in Galatians i. 10: " If I yet pleased men, I should not be the slave of Christ?" How shall we account for the peculiar form of argument which asserts in Galatians iv. i: "Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a slave, though he be lord of all?" In Titus he combines the word with the apostolic function: " Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ." There is nothing peculiar to St. Paul in this use of the word. St. Peter calls all Christians the ^^ slaves of God" in i Peter ii. 16. So St. James (i. i.) calls himself "« slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ." So also Jude i. and St. John the Divine, Revelation i. i.