The History of the Negro Church Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: ALEXANDER CRUMMELL]

Thus barred from entering upon his life's work, Crummell could not then influence the public to the same extent as Negro leaders laboring in the more inviting fields. Presenting his case to the clergy in Boston in 1842, he was ordained deacon by Bishop Griswold. After studying two years under Dr. A. H. Vinton of Providence, Rhode Island, Crummell was ordained priest by Bishop Lee of Delaware at St. Paul's Church in Philadelphia, and engaged to work in a barren field. Here poverty and ill health overtook him and rendered his circ.u.mstances all but intolerable. To earn a livelihood he conducted for four men a private school, which, after having a promising beginning, proved inadequate to his support.

He then went to England, where he was well received as a preacher and given the opportunity to prosecute further his studies at Queen's College, Cambridge University, from which he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1853. Crummell then began his career as a missionary and educator, working in Liberia and Sierra Leone for about twenty years. He returned to the United States in 1873 and entered upon his work as an Episcopal priest in Was.h.i.+ngton, where, as the rector of St.

Mary's, and as the founder of the American Negro Academy, he experienced the culmination of his usefulness as a scholar, a clergyman, and a champion of the rights of his people.

Among these workers should be mentioned also James W. C. Pennington, another minister of the Presbyterian Church. Pennington was born a slave on a farm in Maryland and there became a blacksmith by trade. Upon reaching maturity he escaped to the North, where he early embraced the opportunities for learning. He developed into an unusually bright scholar in Greek, Latin, and German; and soon manifested an inclination for the study of theology, in which he showed much proficiency.

Impressed with his worth as an educated man well trained for the ministry, the Presbyterians ordained him to preach and stationed him at Hartford, Connecticut, where he served some years. He later became the pastor of the s.h.i.+loh Church in New York City.

[Ill.u.s.tration: J. W. C. PENNINGTON]

While Dr. Pennington did not drift so far from the ministry as many of his colaborers, he was at once in demand for work in various other fields. He went to Europe three times in the capacity of a lecturer. His second visit was the occasion on which he remained for four years, preaching, lecturing and attending the Peace Congresses held at Paris, Brussels, and London. While at Paris in 1849 he was invited to conduct divine services at the Protestant Church, which on that occasion was visited by the American and English delegates. His sermon was an elegant production, left a marked impression upon his hearers, and above all made a more logical case for the Negro. While in Germany the degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred upon him by the University of Heidelberg. Returning to this country, he labored zealously and successfully for the education and the moral, social, and religious elevation of the race, until he went to Jamaica, where he died.

Rev. E. Payson Rogers, another Presbyterian preacher stationed as pastor of a church at Newark, New Jersey, divided his time between writing and preaching. He was a man of education, research, and literary ability.

Although not a fluent and easy speaker, he was logical and spoke with a degree of refinement seldom observed. Possessing the inclination to write verse to express the thought and feeling of a struggling people, he wrote a poem on the Missouri Compromise which he read in many of the New England cities and towns in 1856. This poem contained brilliant thought and amusing suggestions. Anxious to benefit his race, he visited Africa in 1861, where he was attacked by a fever and died in a few days.

J. Theodore Holly was another minister of versatile genius. He acquired a good education through studious habits and contact with men of culture. Although he became a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church and was for several years pastor at New Haven, where he sustained the reputation of being an interesting and eloquent preacher, he set about to establish what he called Negro nationality. He was not primarily interested in African colonization, but believed that the redemption of Africa could be effected through Haitian emigration. In the _Anglo-African_, a magazine published in 1859, he contributed a dissertation setting forth these facts. Impressed with the idea that Haiti might be used as an asylum for free persons of color, he raised a colony in keeping with the resolution pa.s.sed by the Convention of Free Persons of Color in Rochester in 1853 and sailed for Haiti in 1861. As the location which he selected was infelicitous, most of those who went with him, including his own family, died, and he returned to the United States, where he finally rendered greater service and from which he was later commissioned as Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Haiti.

One of the most interesting men of this type was Leonard A. Grimes, a Baptist minister, born in Leesburg, Loudoun County, Virginia, in 1815.

Although he was a man of free parentage he was subjected to all of the disabilities that his race had to endure in the South except that of an actual slave. He spent his youth working at the butcher's trade and at an apothecary's establishment in Was.h.i.+ngton but subsequently hired himself out to a slaveholder whose confidence he gained. In accompanying his employer in his travels in the remote parts of the South he had an opportunity to see slavery in its worst form and to reach a decision that he would make every effort possible to destroy the evil. Returning to Was.h.i.+ngton very soon thereafter, he began to express an interest in the operations of the Underground Railroad, in connection with which he rendered valuable service. Upon being appealed to by a free man of color with a slave wife and seven children, he aided them to escape to Canada. Suspicion, however, fell upon Grimes and he was soon thereafter apprehended, tried, found guilty, and sent to the State penitentiary at Richmond for two years.

Upon the expiration of his imprisonment Grimes returned to Was.h.i.+ngton and soon then went to New Bedford, Ma.s.sachusetts, where he resided two years. He next went to Boston. Having early in his career been impressed with the thought that he was called to the ministry, he had spent much of his time in this work while engaged as an agent of the Underground Railroad. Finding a group of persons in Boston at that time in need of a pastor, he entered upon the task of serving them in that capacity. This congregation was known as the Twelfth Baptist Church, of which he was the pastor for more than twenty-five years, ministering to some of the best persons of color in that city in such a way as to make his work a monument to which Bostonians still point with pride. As a preacher he was a man of power, though not an easy speaker. He manifested great amiability of character and always had a pleasant word for those with whom he came into contact. Although primarily engaged in the work of the ministry during the great crisis in this country, he never abandoned entirely the anti-slavery cause, in spite of the fact that many of his denomination were trying to defend that inst.i.tution. He pa.s.sed away in 1873, after having experienced some of the freedom for which he struggled.

Among the prominent Negro ministers who lived through this critical period no one exhibited more versatility than Samuel R. Ward. Impressed with the superior gifts with which he was endowed, Gerrit Smith enabled him to secure a liberal education. Ward then entered upon the ministry in the Presbyterian Church. For several years he was settled over a white church at South Butler, New York, where, according to William Wells Brown, Ward "preached with great acceptance and was highly respected." Coming to the aid of his race during the trying days of the abolition agitation, Ward took the platform and from 1840 to the pa.s.sage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 preached or lectured in every church, hall, or schoolhouse in Western and Central New York. "Standing about six feet in height, possessing a strong voice, and energetic in his gestures, Ward," says his biographer, "always impressed his highly finished and logical speeches upon his hearers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAMUEL R. WARD]

Ward became more of a platform orator than a preacher. His aim seemed to be not so much to preach the gospel of heaven as to preach the gospel of this world that men calling themselves Christians might learn to respect the natural and political rights of their fellows. In the interest of this cause he traveled through much of this country, visited England in 1852, and then went to Jamaica, where he finally resided until he died at an early age. Referring to the death of R. B. Elliot, Frederick Dougla.s.s, Ward's most famous contemporary, remarked: "I have known but one other black man to be compared with Elliot, and that was Samuel R.

Ward, who, like Elliot, died in the midst of his years. The thought of both men makes me sad. We are not over rich with such men, and we may well mourn when one such has fallen."

No better example of the varying interests of the Negro can be mentioned than that of Hiram R. Revells, who after the Civil War became one of the two Negroes who have served in the United States Senate. Revells was born a free man at Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1822. There he pa.s.sed his boyhood and then went to Indiana, because the laws of North Carolina in 1835 forbade the establishment of schools for persons of color. He had experienced some educational development by private instruction and was prepared to profit by the advanced training received in a Quaker school in Indiana. He then moved to Darke County, Ohio, where he remained for some time. He was subsequently graduated at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. Revells then entered the ministry as a preacher of the African Methodist Church at the age of twenty-five, holding his first charge in Indiana. He filled important posts in Missouri, Maryland, Kentucky, and Kansas, but did not succeed so well in St. Louis, where the church developed into a turmoil, resulting in the resignation of the pastor.

Upon the outbreak of the war, Revells directed his attention to other matters. He a.s.sisted in raising the first Negro regiment in Maryland and the first one in Missouri. He then returned to Mississippi in 1864, settling at Vicksburg and later at Jackson, where he had charge of congregations. He also a.s.sisted in the extension of the work of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in other parts and in establis.h.i.+ng a school system. His health having failed, however, he returned to the North after the close of hostilities and remained there eighteen months, at the expiration of which he again came to Natchez, Mississippi, where he preached regularly to large audiences. Entering politics, he was appointed alderman by General Ames, who was then military governor there. In 1869 he was elected to the State Senate and the following year to the United States Senate.

CHAPTER IX

THE CIVIL WAR AND THE CHURCH

The outbreak of the Civil War was also an outbreak in the church. The versatile minister then proclaimed war and sometimes donned the uniform.

One half of the nation had preached that G.o.d hath made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth; the other half insisted that the plan of the Creator was a caste system by which one element of the population should be made hewers of wood and drawers of water for the other. The ordeal of battle was then on, and it was believed that the exhibition of the greater force on one of the two sides would determine the will of G.o.d. Men of both sections fought for what they believed to be right. Sermons resounded with the ring of freedom, the Bible was quoted to strengthen the belief in a just war, and songs of a militant tone made the welkin ring with that enthusiasm with which the Christian boy was inspired to give his life as a sacrifice, fighting for freedom or defending his section from the invasion of the ruthless foe.

G.o.d was here; G.o.d was there; in fact, he was, as the partic.i.p.ants would have it, fighting the battles of all.

Negroes realized that the Christianity of America was being subjected to a test. They had entered the church themselves but only with the belief that this liberal doctrine of the power of G.o.d to free a man's soul from sin meant also that such power would eventually be adequate to free the body. They had borne the burden in the heat of the day, even walked through the flames of that fiery ordeal of death; but they had never lost faith in G.o.d. Here and there an old hero in the midst of his martyrdom had prophesied upon his dying bed that G.o.d would deliver his people from the hands of the oppressors; a heroine of vision had dreamed that her Maker had poured healing oils upon her lacerated back, a.s.suaged her excruciating pain, and made her free. Patience had been the watchword of the Negro. G.o.d was moving in a mysterious way to perform wonders which in the near future would make all things plain. Stand still, therefore, and see the salvation of the Lord.

Would these dreams come true? Evidently they would, the Negroes thought, when they heard of churchmen denouncing slavery in no uncertain terms, memorializing the State legislatures and Congress for its abolition, and a.s.suring the nation of their heartiest support in the suppression of the rebellion occasioned by the effort to save the tottering inst.i.tution.

The Negroes could not fail to see the hand of G.o.d in the declaration of these churchmen that our national sorrows and calamities had resulted from our forgetfulness of G.o.d and the oppression of our fellowmen.

Chastened by the affliction of the Civil War, many like the Methodists hoped that the nation might humbly repent of its sins, lay aside its haughty pride, honor G.o.d in all her future legislation, and render justice to all who had been wronged. They honored Lincoln for his proclamation of freedom and rejoiced in the enactment of the measures designed to reach this end. And so impressed with this militant service of the church, Lincoln had to say in reply to this denomination: "The Methodist Episcopal Church, not less devoted than the best, is, by its greater numbers the most important of all. It is no fault in others that the Methodist Church sends more soldiers to the field, more nurses to the hospitals, more prayers to Heaven, than any. G.o.d bless the Methodist Church! Bless all the Churches! And blessed be G.o.d, who, in this our great trial, giveth us the churches!"

Because of this militant att.i.tude of the church, the Negroes thought more of fighting for freedom than they did of saving souls. The slaves breathed the spirit of the song:

"Oh, freedom! Freedom over me!

Before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave And go home to my Lord and be free!"

Negroes known to be pious gladly donned the uniform and some ministers of the gospel abandoned their charges to recruit men to fight for the cause. The friends of the Negroes, moreover, were militantly arrayed against their former brethren in the South. The abolition churches of the North received the anathemas of the churches of the South and vice versa. The war was religious as well as political, causing wounds which having not yet been healed even unto this day seriously affect church work among Negroes in the South.

The Civil War as a social and political upheaval made necessary some readjustments in the church. The Negroes in the South were no longer bondmen to be circ.u.mscribed in keeping with the regulations of a slave commonwealth and the Negroes in the North might then exercise more liberty without the fear of incurring the displeasure of those having the impression that the Negroes should in religious as well as in other matters be subject to men who enjoy a superior social position. It was then, moreover, a different question from what it was before. Prior to the Civil War one had inquired as to what should be done for the Negro.

It was then a question as to what the Negro would do for himself. Things for which he had long asked theretofore were thereafter readily given or taken.

For example, during the period intervening between the separation of the northern and southern wings of the church in 1844 and the Civil War, the Negro members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the North asked for separate conferences, a more general recognition of their local preachers, and a larger partic.i.p.ation in the affairs of the church. The reason given was that the African Methodists, holding up to these Negro communicants the contempt with which they had been treated by their white superiors, caused large numbers of Negro Methodists to join the independent African churches. The policy of the Methodist Church was not to grant such recognition, deciding, as it did in 1848, that such separate conferences were inexpedient. Some encouragement was given the employment of Negro local preachers. In 1852, in reply to an urgent request of this sort from the Negro Methodists of the Philadelphia and New Jersey conferences, where they were losing many to the African Methodists, a sort of annual meeting of the Negro Methodist pastors was allowed, if the bishop of the diocese concerned found it practicable.

The Methodist Church held this position, however, despite the fact that on this account it lost not less than one-fourth of the members.h.i.+p of its churches from the year 1844 to the time when the annual conference of the Negro pastors was provided for in 1866. These white Methodists, however, consecrated Francis Burns for the service as Bishop of Africa in 1858 and in 1866 thus elevated to the episcopacy John W. Roberts, another man of color. As the appeal for the Negro conference was still more urgent this time not only from the Negroes of the Philadelphia and New Jersey conferences but from that of Baltimore, the General Conference had to take more definite action than merely to say that such a step was inexpedient.

The reasons for this action were many and complicated. In the first place, even after the secession of those in the South, there were in the Methodist Episcopal Church a number of members who, wis.h.i.+ng to get rid of the Negroes, thought that a refusal to grant this request would alienate their affections to the extent that they would secede as the other African Methodists had done. Some of these communicants actually encouraged the Negroes in saying that, should the blacks go out and establish themselves independently of the whites, the latter would have more respect for them because of this exhibition of their self-reliance.

To impress this on the Negro, some white Methodists went so far as to invite to their pulpits the ministers of the African Methodist Churches, whereas the Negro ministers in the Methodist Church itself were ignored.

When this method of trying to convince the Negro that he was an intruder failed, the busy-bodies would often say that the white management of the Methodist Church was merely using the Negro members as tools.

Some then thought that, because of love for the Negroes, the Methodist Church did not want to see them go. Others believed that a majority felt that the Negroes should have their own choice whether for separate organization or to unite with one of the African Methodist Churches but that, should such action be taken, the public would get the impression that the Methodists had organized another Negro church to break the other two down. It was thought wise, moreover, to defer action of such far-reaching effects until the Negro question then so intensely agitated should approach nearer a definite settlement. A Negro national church, furthermore, could not minister to the wants of all Negroes inasmuch as the one proposed, like the other two already in the field, could not have prior to emanc.i.p.ation operated among the Negro Methodists in the South. The Methodist Church was neutral, if anything, during the Civil War period. It did not try to get rid of its Negro members.h.i.+p and it made no particular effort to increase it. Wherever one of the two African Methodist Churches was in a position to minister to the spiritual needs of the Negroes, the Methodists made no effort to proselyte such Negroes, although Negroes desiring admission to the Methodist churches were not refused.

This question was further agitated and had to be given serious consideration in 1864. The conference after discussing the memorials from the Negro members.h.i.+p took the position that it must retain oversight of the Negroes to give them efficient supervision. The conference, however, encouraged _colored pastorates_ for _colored people_ wherever practicable. It authorized the organization of mission conferences. These separate conferences, however, were not to impair the existing rights of the colored members nor yet to forbid the transfer of white ministers to such conferences where it might be deemed practicable and necessary. The Negroes in the Methodist Church had at last received some right to share in the management of their own pastorates, which, however, were still subject to the supervision of the white bishops. The African Methodists still made inroads on the Negro members.h.i.+p, therefore, because they could point with pride to men in authority in their church and the Negro members of the white connection usually conceded their point as well taken in that they received the bishops of the African Methodists in their homes and churches and gave them every possible consideration.

Some less numerous Negro communicants of white denominations were at this time severing their connection with their former coworkers. In 1865 the Negro members of the white Primitive Baptist Churches of the South organized at Columbia, Tennessee, the Colored Primitive Baptists in America. In 1866 the African Union First Colored Methodist Protestant Church of America and elsewhere was established by merging the African Union Church with the First Colored Methodist Protestant Church. In 1869 the General a.s.sembly of the c.u.mberland Presbyterian Church organized its Negro members.h.i.+p as the Colored c.u.mberland Presbyterian Church.

The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, with a much larger number of Negro members than all of these denominations easily solved the problem of Negro members.h.i.+p, as the c.u.mberland Presbyterians had done. While the Methodists in the North reluctantly loosed their hold on the Negro members.h.i.+p by granting the people of color active partic.i.p.ation in their affairs through an annual conference, the Methodist Church, South, almost voluntarily agreed to organize its Negro const.i.tuency as a separate organization known as the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church.

Whether the southern Methodists did this to eliminate the Negroes or because they thought that the Negroes in their new status as freemen could do their own work better than white men, is a much mooted question. It is clear that many of the slaveholding type of Christians would want to get rid of the Negro members since they could no longer determine their faith and how it should be exercised. The only reason there was for the Negro to belong to the same church as that of his master was to control the exercise of his religious belief. As this was no longer necessary, the Negroes, so far as one element was concerned, could then easily go.

Desiring to attach to this branch of the Methodist Church the stigma of their having been once connected with their oppressors, some Negroes themselves have referred to these Colored Methodists as "seceders" and "a Democratic Rebel concern" intended to lead the Negroes back into slavery. Such statements are most uncharitable and they not only do the Negroes concerned an injustice but question the good motives of a number of benevolent southern men who took this step, feeling that it was the best way for the Negroes to develop their religious life after emanc.i.p.ation. There were many masters who believed that, since the Negroes had finally become free, they should have every encouragement to learn how to take care of themselves.

It would be most uncharitable, moreover, to suffer any stigma to attach to the Colored Methodists on this account. The Negroes who const.i.tuted this church went with the southern wing of that denomination at the time of its secession because they were compelled so to do. The independent African Methodists were by law and public opinion prohibited from extensive proselyting in the South and prior to the Civil War they had with the exception of their establishments in the liberal border States hardly touched the large body of the black population south of the Mason and Dixon line. The free Negroes in the South were, as in the case of Morris Brown and his followers in 1822, cut off from their brethren in the North and the slaves were compelled to wors.h.i.+p according to the rigid regulations set forth above and in the same churches to which their masters belonged.

The separation of the Negro members.h.i.+p from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, came after the Civil War. In 1866 the conference meeting that year in New Orleans made provision for the organization of the Negro members in separate congregations and for district and annual conferences, if the Negroes so desired. It was further provided on this occasion that if it were acceptable to the Negroes and it met the approval of the bishops of the church, the freedmen might have a general conference like that of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, according to the regulations of which the Negro deacons, elders, and bishops, if necessary, should be ordained to conduct this work among their own people. It was further determined that should the time arrive when the Negro members should be so set apart, all the property intended for the use of such members, held by the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, should be transferred to duly qualified trustees of the new organization.

At the next conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, meeting in Memphis in 1870, it was reported that the Negro members.h.i.+p had organized five annual conferences and unanimously desired to be organized as a distinct body. The Memphis Conference thereupon agreed to comply with this request. Delegates were then elected to the first general conference which a.s.sembled in Jackson, Tennessee, October 15, 1870. From the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, there were sent as representatives Bishops Robert Paine and H. N. McTyeire; and as ministers, A. L. P. Green, Samuel Watson, Thomas Taylor, Edmund W.

Sehon, Thomas Whitehead, and B. J. Morgan. The prominent delegates from the five annual conferences of the Negro members were Richard Samuels, Solon Graham, Anderson Jackson, R. T. Thiergood, L. H. Holsey, I. H.

Anderson, R. H. Vanderhorst, W. H. Miles, W. P. Churchill, Isaac Lane, John W. Lane, Job Grouch, F. Ambrose, and William Jones.

After having had read to this body the action of the conference it was suggested that a committee be appointed to find a new name for this proposed body. The name proposed was the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America, which was unanimously accepted. The body then proceeded to elect bishops. W. H. Miles was elected on the first ballot.

Afterward R. H. Vanderhorst was also chosen. Bishops Paine and McTyiere then consecrated them the first two bishops of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church in America. Three additional bishops, L. H. Holsey, J.

A. Beebe, and Isaac Lane, were elected and ordained in March, 1873.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BISHOP W. H. MILES,

of the C. M. E. Church.]

The large body of Negroes, however, were attracted after the war not by the Methodist Church but by the Baptist. The freedom, which even prior to emanc.i.p.ation meant so much in the growth of the Baptists, was thereafter a still greater cause for their expansion. It was easier than ever for a man to become a prominent figure in the Baptist Church. While the Methodists were hesitating as to what recognition should be allowed the Negroes or whether they should be set apart as a separate body, the Negro Baptists were realizing upon their new freedom which made possible the enjoyment of greater democracy in the church. Every man was to be equal to every other man and no power without had authority to interfere.

This situation in the Baptist Church appealed very strongly to the then recently enfranchised Negro in the reconstructed States. As the white man of the South had over emphasized politics and the professions to the extent that these avenues in that section were overmanned, the Negro in his undeveloped state accordingly made the same mistake in trying to escape drudgery. A rather hard row to hoe, or an unusually heavy burden was too often abandoned on hearing a call to the ministry, and the devotee thus impressed had practically no difficulty in securing a hearing in this locally democratic Baptist Church. The grade of intellect possessed by the novice in this ministerial service had little to do with his acceptability; for there were all sorts of degrees of mental development among the freedmen and every man preferred to follow the one who saw the spiritual world from his own particular angle and explained its mysteries in the dialect and in the manner in which he could understand it. If in delivering the gospel message the verb might not every time agree with the subject, that had little to do with the power to start a soul on the way to glory.