The Negro in Tennessee, 1790-1865

by C. Perry Patterson

III. Cumberland Presbyterians.

The Cumberland Presbyterians present the interesting situation of a church originating in a slave state after slavery was rather substantially established. This church was organized in Tennessee in 1810 in the log cabin of Samuel McAdoo. Samuel McAdoo, Finis Ewing, and Samuel King, all ordained ministers of the Presbyterian church, were the constituent founders of the first Presbytery.[114] Of these three cofounders, Ewing was a slaveholder, but he soon emancipated his slaves.[115]

One would expect this church, born of the environment of slavery, to be rather mild in its opposition to slavery, if, indeed, not pro-slavery, but, as a matter of fact, it was strongly anti-slavery. Ewing, after freeing his slaves, boldly preached against “the traffic in human flesh.” He said:

But where shall we begin? Oh! is it indeed true that in this enlightened age, there are so many palpable evils in the church that it is difficult to know where to commence enumerating them? The first evil which I shall mention is a traffic in human flesh and human souls. It is true that many professors of religion, and, I fear, some of my Cumberland brethren, do not scruple to sell for life their fellow-beings, some of whom are brethren in the Lord. And what is worse, they are not scrupulous to whom they sell, provided they can obtain a better price. Sometimes husbands and wives, parents and children, are thus separated, and I doubt not their cries reach the ears of the Lord of Sabbath.... Others who constitute a part of the visible Church half feed, half clothe, and oppress the servants. Indeed, they seem by their conduct toward them, not to consider them fellow-beings. And it is to be feared that many of them are taking no pains at all to give their servants religious instruction of any kind, and especially are they making no efforts to teach them or cause them to be taught to read that Book which testifies of Jesus, whilst others permit, perhaps require, their servants to work, cook, etc., while the white people are praying around the family altar.[116]

He says again, “I have determined not to hold, nor to give, nor to sell, nor to buy any slave for life. Mainly from the influence of that passage of God’s word which says, ‘Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal.’”

Samuel McAdoo, one of the three founders of the church, and a Cumberland preacher, was a most outspoken opponent of slavery. He did not want his family through marriage or inheritance or otherwise to become connected with it. To accomplish this he joined the contingent of anti-slavery leaders that Tennessee contributed to the Northwest. He moved to Illinois, where he could preach his convictions without fear and trembling.[117]

Some of the early Cumberland preachers, who were very conscientious on the subject of slavery, wanted to free their slaves, but they did not believe they could be self-sustaining and independent members of society. Rev. Ephriam McLean was one of these who decided that he would perform the experiment of giving his slaves a chance to demonstrate that they could be self-supporting. He gave his slaves the use of a farm, farming implements, and live stock adequate for their purposes, and set them free to work for themselves. In a few years idleness and drunkenness brought them to suffering, and they begged him to take them back. He did so.[118]

Rev. Robert Donnel, a Cumberland minister, inherited slaves. He taught his slaves the Scriptures and called them to family prayer daily. He wanted to free his slaves, but they did not wish freedom, because they did not want to go to Liberia. The free states at the North did not want them. He could not drive them to Africa. The state would not let him free them unless he sent them outside of it, so he did not know how to dispose of them.[119]

Southern anti-slavery men would buy the slaves of their own brothers to keep them from being sold separately to pay their debts. Such men would intend to emancipate these slaves, but they would soon discover that the slaves had rather die than be sent to Canada or Africa. They remained slaveholders because they had a real interest in negroes. In 1855, Dr. Beard, a leading Cumberland Presbyterian minister, said, “the longer I live the more deeply I regret that I ever became involved in it. My heart always hated it, and now loathes it more and more every day.”[120]

Not only were the leading ministers in the Church anti-slavery, but the literature of the Church denounced slavery, and the legislation of the Southern States. The Revivalist, a Cumberland paper published at Nashville from 1830 to 1836, speaking of legislation of South Carolina upon slavery, said: “Such acts are foul blots upon the records of a free people, which our posterity will blush to behold. They are not only unjust and cruel but actually impolitic.”

“The extensive slaveholder,” said the Revivalist, “is at too great a remove from the slave to learn the workings of his mind and the feelings of his heart. There is no contact of feeling, no interchange of sympathies between most Southern planters and their servants. They govern, control, and direct their slaves by proxy; and too many masters are dependent upon their representatives of heartless overseers for a knowledge of the character and disposition of their own slaves. Southern planters, who govern by proxy, are, therefore, unprepared to do justice to the African character.”[121]

The Revivalist exhorted slaveholders to teach their slaves to read and to give them moral and religious instruction. This, it said, “will not only make better men of them but better servants.”[122]

The Cumberland Presbyterian, of Nashville, mother organ of the Church, said in 1835: “We proclaim it abroad we do not own slaves. We never shall. We long to see the black man free and happy, and thousands of Christians who now hold them in bondage entertain the same sentiments.”[123]

It will be shown in the chapter on abolition that a change of attitude toward slavery followed the action of the Convention of 1834. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church was no exception to this rule. The action of a Pennsylvania Synod in 1847 precipitated the issue. This Synod met and rescinded its action at a previous session declaring that the relation between it and American slavery to be such as to require “no action thereon,” and adopted the resolution, “That the system of slavery in the United States is contrary to the principles of the Gospel, hinders the progress thereof, and ought to be abolished.”[124]

The General Assembly of the Church of 1848, which met at Memphis, appointed a committee to review the action of the Pennsylvania Synod. This committee in its report regretted the action of the Synod and disapproved “any attempt by jurisdiction of the church to agitate the exciting subject of slavery,” closing with the observation that “the tendency of such resolutions, if persisted in, we believe is to gender strife, produce distraction in the church, and thereby hinder the progress of the Gospel.”[125]

The General Assembly of 1851, which met at Pittsburg, received six memorials on slavery from Ohio and Pennsylvania with about one hundred and fifty signatures.[126] The committee to whom these memorials were referred made the following report, which was adopted:

The Church of God is a spiritual body, whose jurisdiction extends only to matters of faith and morals. She has no power to legislate upon subjects on which Christ and his apostles did not legislate, nor to establish terms of union, where they have given no express warrant. Your committee, therefore, believe that this question on which you are asked by the memorialists to take action, is one which belongs rather to civil than ecclesiastical legislation; and we are all fully persuaded that legislation on that subject in any of the judicatories of the church, instead of mitigating the evils connected with slavery, will only have a tendency to alienate feeling between brethren; to engender strife and animosities in your church; and tend, ultimately to a separation between brethren who hold a common faith, an event leading to the most disastrous results, and one which we believe ought to be deprecated by every true patriot and Christian.

But your committee believe that members of the church holding slaves should regard them as rational and accountable beings, and treat them as such, affording them as far as possible the means of grace.

Finally, your committee would recommend the adoption of the following resolutions:

1. That inasmuch as the Cumberland Presbyterian Church was originally organized and has since existed and prospered under the conceded principle that slavery was not and should not be regarded as a bar to communion; we, therefore, believe that it should not now be so regarded.

2. That, having entire confidence in the honesty and sincerity of the memorialists and cherishing the tenderest regard for their feelings and opinions, it is the conviction of this General Assembly that the agitation of this question which has already torn asunder other branches of the church, can be productive of no real benefit to master or slave. We would, therefore, in the fear of God, and with the utmost solicitude for the peace and welfare of the churches under our care, advise a spirit of mutual forbearance and brotherly love; and, instead of censure and proscription, that we endeavor to cultivate a fraternal feeling one toward another.[127]

This platform remained the orthodox position of the Church to the abolition of slavery. The Cumberland Church was primarily a Southern church, and, therefore, never divided on the question. It would have suffered very little loss of either membership or property by a division.

The Cumberland Church, it appears, took the most sensible position on the slavery question of any of the churches in Tennessee. It always preached abolition and ultimate freedom as the final solution of the problem, but, at no time did it overlook the entire set of facts connected with the institution. It recognized that slavery had been forced on the forefathers, that it had become the central institution of Southern society, that, therefore, it would be violent revolution to abolish the institution at one stroke of the pen. It appreciated the fact that only a small part of the slave population was ready for freedom and a responsible place in the body politic. The Cumberland Presbyterians believed that slavery was an evil, but denied responsibility for it. They thought that slavery was an educating institution, that the rights of the slave should be restored to him as fast as his evolution would permit, but that in this process the welfare of society as a whole was the major consideration.