NOTE 8
(Chapter VII, Page [186])
About 1834, an unknown writer, in South Carolina (a journal published by the State Agricultural Department) makes this significant statement which is strong testimony to the advancement of the race: “Despite the injunction, ‘Judge not,’ it has been asserted that the morality of the Negroes is not in proportion to their religious fervor. A class, marked as distinctly by their inferior social position as they are by race, invites such charges which are far more sweeping than just. If morality be the fruit of religion, it is not surprising (wonderful as the progress of the African in South Carolina has been) that morality has not, in one century and a half, attained the maturity, among the colored race, which has been the result of nearly nineteen centuries of Christian teachings to the European. Nevertheless, it would be a great mistake to suppose that any people exhibit in a higher degree that instinctive faith in the existence of absolute justice, truth, and goodness, which marks the capacity of human nature alike for religion and for morality, than do the colored people of this State.”