The History of the Negro Church

by Carter Godwin Woodson

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 Shiloh Church in New York City.

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 passed 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.

HENRY HIGHLAND GARNETT

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 Washington 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 Washington 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 Washington and soon then went to New Bedford, Massachusetts, 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 institution. He passed 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 passage 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."