So it is reported that by the 19th century: "Few Negroes escaped some religious instruction from those good people. Usually on Sunday afternoons, but sometimes in the morning, the slaves would be gathered in the great house and lessons in the catechism had to be learned. The Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments were also taught. Hymns were sung and prayers rose to Heaven. Many good masters read sermons to their slaves. Other masters hired ministers.... Others preached themselves."[12]
Another source of contact with Christianity was that resulting from the attitude of persons who worked, not for the religious development of their own slaves alone, but who, with a larger human interest, unmindful of the benefits that might come to their individual households, gave their lives to bless all slaves. One of the very purposes of American slavery being to benefit the slaves, one can readily see how missionary work among them grew with the system of slavery itself.
"After 1716," Woodson tells us, "when Jesuits were taking over slaves in large numbers, and especially after 1726, when Law's Company was importing many to meet the demand for laborers in Louisiana, we read of more instances of the instruction of Negroes by the Catholics. ... Le Petit spoke of being 'settled to the instruction of the boarders, the girls who live without, and the Negro women.' In 1738 he said, 'I instruct in Christian morals the slaves of our residence, who are Negroes, and as many others as I can get from their masters.'"
Awakened by what the zealous French in Louisiana were doing, English missionaries made progressive plans for preaching the gospel to the blacks. During the 18th century numerous missionaries, catechists, and school-masters, sent from England to America, founded schools for the slaves, and distributed many sermons, lectures, and Bibles among them. In 1705 Thomas counted among his communicants in South Carolina twenty Negroes who could read and write. Later, making a report of the work he and his associates were doing, he said: "I have here presumed to give an account of 1,000 slaves so far as they know of it and are desirous of Christian knowledge and seem willing to prepare themselves for it, in learning to read, for which they redeem the time from their labor. Many of them can read the Bible distinctly, and great numbers of them were learning when I left the province."[14]
"After some opposition," Woodson further says, "this work began to progress somewhat in Virginia. The first school established in that colony was for Indians and Negroes.... On the binding out a 'bastard or pauper-child black or white,' churchwardens specifically required that he should be taught 'to read and write and calculate as well as to follow some profitable form of labor.' ... Reports of an increase in the number of colored communicants came from Accomac County where four or five hundred families were instructing their slaves at home and had their children catechised on Sunday."[15]
Side by side with the work done by missionaries, men of different denominations vied with one another in bringing slaves into the light of a Christian atmosphere. Some founded Sunday schools, some preached of the "inner light in every man," others more successfully preached salvation by faith in the power of a risen Christ, who died for the sins of men. Soon after the first Negroes were placed upon the shores of Jamestown, slaves began to be baptized, and received into the Episcopal Church. Earnest says that "at least one Negro was baptized soon after the contact with the colonists in Virginia."[16] Washington says that only five years after slavery was introduced into Virginia a Negro child named William was baptized, and that from that time on the names of Negroes can be found upon the register of most of the churches. In the old record-book of Bruton Parish, 1,122[17] Negro-baptisms were recorded between 1746 and 1797.[18] In 1809 there were about 9,000 Negro Baptists in Virginia.[19] The African Baptist Church of Richmond alone subsequently increased from 1,000 to 3,832 in 24 years. The Methodist Magazine of October, 1827, reports that as early as 1817 there were 43,411 Negro members in the Methodist societies.[20]
"The Negro seems, from the beginning," says Washington, "to have been very closely associated with the Methodists in the United States. When the Reverend Thomas Coke was ordained by John Wesley, as Superintendent or Bishop of the American Society in 1784, he was accompanied on most of his travels throughout the United States by Harry Hosier, a colored minister who was at the same time the Bishop's servant and an evangelist of the Church. Harry Hosier, who was the first American Negro preacher of the Methodist Church in the United States, was one of the notable characters of his day."[21]
Let us now consider the effects of these early religious contacts upon the life of slave-preachers, some of whom were comparatively well educated. Concerning Jack of Virginia it is said that "his opinions were respected, his advice followed, and yet he never betrayed the least symptoms of arrogance or self-conceit. His dwelling was a rude log-cabin, his apparel was of the plainest, coarsest materials.... He refused gifts of better clothing, saying, 'These clothes are a great deal better than are generally worn by people of my color, and, besides, if I wear them I find I shall be obliged to think about them even at meetings.'"[22]
With an influence among the slaves equal to Jack's, two other Negro messengers of the gospel, Andrew Bryan and Samson, his brother, who earlier had appeared in Georgia, were publicly whipped and imprisoned with 50 companions, but they joyously declared that they would suffer death for their faith found in Christ, whom they expected to preach until death.[23] By their uncompromising attitude,[24] which silenced opponents and raised up friends, they won for themselves among the slaves that sacred esteem belonging to saintly martyrs like Polycarp, Huss, and Fox.
There were other itinerant ministers in these days, who were either given their freedom or purchased it by working as common laborers while preaching. Being better educated, and more closely in contact with the religious life of the whites than the masses of slaves, they were carriers of Christian sentiment from the whites to the blacks, inspiring them with the hope of life in an unseen world. One day there arrived in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Henry Evans, a Methodist preacher, a free Negro from Virginia, who worked as a carpenter during the week and preached on Sunday. Forbidden by the Town Council of Fayetteville to preach, he made his meetings secret, changing them from time to time until he was tolerated. Just before his death, while leaning on the altar-rail, he said to his followers: