[Footnote 2: Wightman, Life of William Capers, p. 296.]
His plan of enlightening the blacks did not include literary instruction. His aim was to adapt the teaching of Christian truth to the condition of persons having a "humble intellect and a limited range of knowledge by means of constant and patient reiteration."[1] The old Negroes were to look to preachers for the exposition of these principles while the children were to be turned over to catechists who would avail themselves of the opportunity of imparting these fundamentals to the young at the time their minds were in the plastic state. Yet all instructors and preachers to Negroes had to be careful to inculcate the performance of the duty of obedience to their masters as southerners found them stated in the Holy Scriptures. Any one who would hesitate to teach these principles of southern religion should not be employed to instruct slaves. The bishop was certain that such a one could not then be found among the preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church of South Carolina.[2]
[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 298.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 296.]
Bishop Capers was the leading spirit in the movement instituted in that commonwealth about 1829 to establish missions to the slaves. So generally did he arouse the people to the performance of this duty that they not only allowed preachers access to their Negroes but requested that missionaries be sent to their plantations. Such petitions came from C.C. Pinckney, Charles Boring, and Lewis Morris.[1] Two stations were established in 1829 and two additional ones in 1833. Thereafter the Church founded one or two others every year until 1847 when there were seventeen missions conducted by twenty-five preachers. At the death of Bishop Capers in 1855 the Methodists of South Carolina had twenty-six such establishments, which employed thirty-two preachers, ministering to 11,546 communicants of color. The missionary revenue raised by the local conference had increased from $300 to $25,000 a year.[2]
[Footnote 1: Wightman, Life of William Capers, p. 296.]
[Footnote 2; African Repository, vol. xxiv., p. 157.]
The most striking example of this class of workers was the Rev. C.C. Jones, a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Educated at Princeton with men actually interested in the cause of the Negroes, and located in Georgia where he could study the situation as it was, Jones became not a theorist but a worker. He did not share the discussion of the question as to how to get rid of slavery. Accepting the institution as a fact, he endeavored to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunates by the spiritual cultivation of their minds. He aimed, too, not to take into his scheme the solution of the whole problem but to appeal to a special class of slaves, those of the plantations who were left in the depths of ignorance as to the benefits of right living. In this respect he was like two of his contemporaries, Rev. Josiah Law[1] of Georgia and Bishop Polk of Louisiana.[2] Denouncing the policy of getting all one could out of the slaves and of giving back as little as possible, Jones undertook to show how their spiritual improvement would exterminate their ignorance, vulgarity, idleness, improvidence, and irreligion; Jones thought that if the circumstances of the Negroes were changed, they would equal, if not excel, the rest of the human family "in majesty of intellect, elegance of manners, purity of morals, and ardor of piety."[3] He feared that white men might cherish a contempt for Negroes that would cause them to sink lower in the scale of intelligence, morality, and religion. Emphasizing the fact that as one class of society rises so will the other, Jones advocated the mingling of the classes together in churches, to create kindlier feelings among them, increase the tendency of the blacks to subordination, and promote in a higher degree their mental and religious improvement. He was sure that these benefits could never result from independent church organization.[4]
[Footnote 1: Rev. Josiah Law was almost as successful as Jones in carrying the gospel to the neglected Negroes. His life is a large chapter in the history of Christianity among the slaves of that commonwealth. See Wright, Negro Education in Georgia, p. 19.]
[Footnote 2: Rhodes, History of the U.S., vol. i., p. 331.]