Cary had been licensed to preach by the First Baptist Church, Richmond, and he exercised his talent every Lord's day among the colored people on plantations a few miles from Richmond.[24] It was not many months before he was the highly esteemed pastor of the African Baptist Church in Richmond. As a preacher, Cary was not polished, but "his ideas would sometimes burst upon you in their native solemnity, and awaken deeper feelings than the most polished, but less original" and artificial discourses.[25]
Lott Cary early exhibited the power of an organizer. In 1815, William Crane, who was a member of the First Baptist Church, felt that his ought to use his talent among the twelve hundred Negro members of that congregation. Consequently, he and David Roper[26] gratuitously opened a tri-weekly night school in the gallery of the old church with Lott Cary, Colin Teague and fifteen or twenty leading members of the church as pupils.[27] Now Crane was able to inspire such a group to practical missionary service, for he himself had been repeatedly urged to become a missionary and had had close contact with Luther Rice as one of the managers of the General Missionary Convention. But it was left to Lott Cary to excite among the Negroes a strong interest in behalf of Africa. The result was the formation of the Richmond African Baptist Missionary Society in 1815. Crane was the president or corresponding secretary.[28] This was necessary, for since the various uprisings of Negroes[29] were making Virginia a hotbed of discontent, the city of Richmond was wary of having Negro meetings unless they were sponsored by white persons. Crane represented the Society in the General Missionary Convention,[30] formed in 1814, and remained its delegate for about twenty years.
At the first triennial session of the Convention at Philadelphia, in May, 1817, a letter was read from the corresponding secretary of the Richmond African Baptist Missionary Society and it was unanimously
Resolved, that the said letter be noticed on the minutes of the Convention, and that the Board, if they find it practicable, be advised to institute an African Mission, conformably to the wishes of the said African Mission Society; and that the Corresponding Secretary of the Board be requested to communicate this resolution together with an encouraging affectionate letter to that society.[31]
Feeling of sympathy for the African was high. Many slave-holding Baptists felt that they owed the Negro a debt which they should pay.[32] Moreover, the board of the Convention felt that the interest in Foreign missions manifested by the Negro Baptists of Richmond was a providential plan whereby the slaves brought from Africa might be converted and returned to evangelize that continent.[33] Since, therefore, mission work could be propagated in Africa in the English language and for one quarter the expense required for other lands,[34] the Convention felt no hesitancy in acknowledging the claims of Africa.
Luther Rice, while in Richmond during the winter of 1817, visited the African Missionary Society. "It afforded me much pleasure, indeed," he reported,[35] "to observe the zeal, and intelligence and capacity, and success, discovered in the African Mission Society."
As a matter of fact, the formation of the Richmond African Baptist Society was an epochal event. The example was followed by the African Baptist Church of Philadelphia[36] and by the Baptists of Petersburg, Virginia.[37] The African mission spirit even permeated North Carolina and Georgia, for during the years 1816 and 1817 the Negro Baptists of those parts contributed $32.64 to the cause.[38] This contribution far outstripped the donation of the white Baptists to the same cause. During the same time they contributed only $14.27, $12.27 of which was given by the newly formed African Mite Society of Providence, Rhode Island.[39]
Lott Cary resolved that it was his duty to go and preach the gospel in benighted Africa. It was at Crane's night school that this intention was made known. After Crane had reviewed the report of Burgess and Mills, telling of their exploring tour on the coast of Africa, Lott Cary said: "I have been determined for a long time to go to Africa and at least to see the country for myself."[40] There is no doubt that to some extent Gary was awakened to a deep sense of responsibility for his brethren in Africa by that part of this report which dealt with John Kizell, the Baptist leader in Sherbro Island, the president of the Friendly Society established by Paul Cuffee, the escort and guide of Burgess and Mills on their exploring tour, the man directly responsible for the beginning of the impractical scheme of deportation on the continent of Africa by the American Colonization Society.[41]
But how was he to accomplish his object? Crane said,[42] "I had thought of addressing the Corresponding Secretary on their (Cary and Teague) behalf, for the patronage of the American Baptist Mission Society, but again thought, that the Colonization Society might be pleased with taking them under their care, and that their mission might bear a more imposing aspect under the auspices of this society than it would with the Baptists alone." Lott Cary was received by the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions, May 1, 1819, and was accepted by the American Colonization Society to work for them "without pay as other engagements would permit."[43]
The treasurer of the General Missionary Convention reported $2 for Africa received September 21, 1819, from a friend in Nashville Tennessee. The next year the society appropriated $200 in cash and $100 in books. Contrasted with this was the $483.25 paid April 17, 1820, by the Richmond African Baptist Missionary Society to the General Missionary Convention to be appropriated for Africa.[44] Thus the Convention served only as a clearing house for the funds contributed from Richmond. With this in mind we can more clearly understand the following order voted by the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions in 1820: