Back to Voodooism
The average master and mistress of the old South were missionaries without the name. Religious instruction was a feature of the negro quarters on the Southern plantation—the social settlements for Africans in America.
Masters and mistresses, if themselves religious, usually held Sabbath services and Sunday schools for blacks. Some delegated this task, employing preachers and teachers. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney was the first rice planter to introduce systematic religious instruction among negroes on the Santee, influenced thereto by Bishop Capers. He subscribed to the Methodist Episcopal Mission for them, and a minister came every week to catechise the children and every Sabbath to preach at the negro church which Mr. Pinckney, with the assistance of his neighbours, established for the blacks on his own and neighbouring plantations. Soon fifty chapels on his model sprang up along the seaboard. In the Methodist churchyard in Columbia, a modest monument marks the grave of Bishop Capers, “Founder of the Mission to the Slaves.” Nearby sleeps Rev. William Martin, who was a distinguished preacher to whites and a faithful missionary to blacks. In Zion Presbyterian Church, Charleston, built largely through the efforts of Mr. Robert Adger, no less a preacher than Rev. Dr. Girardeau ministered to negroes. The South entrusted the spiritual care of her negroes to her best and ablest, and what she did for them is interwoven with all her history. You will hear to-day how the great clock on top of the church on Mr. Plowden Weston’s plantation kept time for plantations up and down the Waccamaw. In that chapel, Rev. Mr. Glenrie and an English catechist diligently taught the blacks. After Sherman’s visit to Columbia, Trinity (Episcopal) Church had no Communion service; the sacred vessels of precious metals belonging to the negro chapel on the Hampton place were borrowed for Trinity’s white congregation.
The rule where negroes were not so numerous as to require separate churches was for both races to worship in one building. Slavery usages were modelled on manorial customs in England, where a section of church or chapel is set apart for the peasantry, another for gentry and nobility. The gallery, or some other section of our churches, was reserved for servants, who thus had the same religious teaching we had; there being more of them, they were often in larger evidence than whites at worship. After whites communed, they received the Sacrament from the same hands at the same altar. Their names were on our church rolls. Our pastors often officiated at their funerals; sometimes an old “exhorter” of their own colour did this; sometimes our pastors married them, but this ceremony was not infrequently performed by their masters.
The Old African Church, of Richmond, was once that city’s largest auditorium. In it great meetings were held by whites, and famous speakers and artists (Adelina Patti for one) were heard. One of Mr. Davis’ last addresses as President was made there. The regular congregation was black and their pastor was Rev. Robert Ryland, D. D., President of Richmond College; “Brother Ryland,” they called him. He taught them with utmost conscientiousness; they loved him and he them. When called upon for the marriage ceremony, he would go to the home of their owners, and marry them in the “white folks’ house” or on the lawn before a company of whites and blacks. Then, as fee, a large iced cake would be presented to him by a groomsman with great pomp.
After the war, the old church was pulled down, and a new one erected by the negroes with assistance of whites North and South. Then they wrote Dr. Ryland, who had gone to Kentucky, asking him to return and dedicate it. He answered affectionately, saying he appreciated greatly this evidence of their regard and that nothing would give him greater pleasure, but he was too poor to come; he would be with them in spirit. They replied that the question of expense was none of his business; it was theirs. He wrote that they must apply the sum thus set aside to current expenses, to meet which it would be needed. They answered that they would be hurt if he did not come; they wanted no one else to dedicate their church. So he came, stopping at Mr. Maury’s.
He was greatly touched when he met his old friends, the congregation receiving him standing. So much feeling was displayed on their part, such deep emotion experienced on his, that he had to retire to the study before he could command himself sufficiently to preach.
In religious life, after the war, the negro’s and the white man’s path parted quickly. Negro galleries in white churches soon stood empty. Negroes were being taught that they ought to sit cheek by jowl in the same pews with whites or stay away from white churches.
With freedom, the negro, en masse, relapsed promptly into the voodooism of Africa. Emotional extravaganzas, which for the sake of his health and sanity, if for nothing else, had been held in check by his owners, were indulged without restraint. It was as if a force long repressed burst forth. “Moans,” “shouts” and “trance meetings” could be heard for miles. It was weird. I have sat many a night in the window of our house on the big plantation and listened to shouting, jumping, stamping, dancing, in a cabin over a mile distant; in the gray dawn, negroes would come creeping back, exhausted, and unfit for duty.
In some localities, devil-dancing, as imported from Africa centuries ago, still continues. I have heard of one place in South Carolina where worshippers throw the trance-smitten into a creek, as the only measure sufficiently heroic to bring them out of coma. Devil-worship was rife in Louisiana just after the war.