The Journal of Negro History, Volume 8, 1923

by Various

G. R. Wilson.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This dissertation was submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature of the University of Chicago in candidacy for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, March, 1921, by Gold Refined Wilson.

[2] Working toward this end, I have examined a vast amount of material on slavery, much of which is controversial, having been written by men who favored slaves, or by abolitionists and slaves who were able to see only one side of the question discussed. Such literature, being biased, so distorts the truth that it is extremely difficult to discover what is social fact. As sources, however, I have used books and magazine-articles, written from a more scientific point of view. There are a few representative ones. Kingsley's West African Studies, which, although expressing the attitude of the author, gives us a comprehensive picture of what the life in Africa is. Washington, in the Story of the Negro, in a simple, sincere manner, sets forth the struggles of the Negro in his contact with a higher civilization. Woodson's Education of the Negro prior to 1861 shows to what extent effort was made by the whites to bring the slaves into contact with the white civilization. The Religious Development of the Negro in Virginia, by Earnest, shows how the church of the Negro slave, beginning in the church of the whites, grew to be an independent organization. Fragmentary evidence in the histories of the religious denominations shows the same progressive development. A few of the stories of fugitive slaves, though written for other purposes, still speak very clearly of how dependent the slave was upon his cultural surroundings for his religious ideas. The stories of the lives of Nat Turner, the Virginia slave insurrectionist, and of Harriet, the Moses of Her People, are filled with apocalyptic imagery. Concerning the phenomena of cultural contacts, the most scholarly piece of work yet produced is that by Prof. Park, which shows the tendency of one civilization to accommodate itself to another, by assimilation of concepts, expressed in language and custom. For a study of the religion of the slave, however, the best of all the sources is that spontaneous, naive body of literature consisting of the slave-songs, sometimes called "spirituals," which were sung by individuals upon various occasions, and by shouting groups of religious enthusiasts. Krehbiel, who set many of these primitive verses to printed scales, made of them a psychological interpretation that has given the slave-mood. Colonel T. W. Higginson, the commander of a "black regiment" in South Carolina, during the Civil War, an eyewitness of many of the slave religious meetings, gives the circumstances under which a number of the "spirituals" arose. But Odum, in Volume III of the Journal of Religious Psychology and Education, makes of all the classes of slave-songs a psychological interpretation that is unsurpassed. The value of these collections is the common longing found therein, a burning enthusiasm to live in heaven.

[3] In the preparation of this dissertation the following works were used: R. H. Nassau, Fetichism in West Africa, 1904; Mary H. Kingsley, West African Studies (London, 1901); J. B. Earnest, The Religious Development of the Negro in Virginia (Charlottesville, Va., 1914); H. M. Henry, Slavery in South Carolina (Emory, Va., 1914); Ivan E. McDougle, Slavery in Kentucky, 1792-1865 (Reprinted from The Journal of Negro History, vol. III, No. 3, July, 1918); H. A. Trexler, Slavery in Missouri, 1804-1865, Being a Dissertation in Johns Hopkins University Studies (Baltimore, 1914); J. C. Ballagh, Slavery in Virginia, Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol. XXIX, 1902 (Baltimore); J. H. Russell, Free Negro in Virginia, 1619-1865, Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series 31, No. 3 (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1913); J. R. Brackett, Negro in Maryland (Baltimore, 1889); G. H. Moore, Slavery in Massachusetts (New York, 1866); R. Q. Mallard, Plantation Life before Emancipation (Richmond, Virginia, 1892); Frances Anne Kemble, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-9 (New York, 1863); C. G. Woodson, The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 (New York, 1915); The Journal of Negro History, edited by C. G. Woodson, vols. I-IV, 1916-1919 (The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, Inc., Washington, D. C.); Alcee Fortier, History of Louisiana, 4 vols. (New York, 1904); Code Noir, I (Published 1724); M. W. Jernegan, Slavery and Conversion in the American Colonies (Reprinted from The American Historical Review, vol. XXI, No. 3, April, 1916); G. M. West, Status of the Negro in Virginia during the Colonial Period (New York); L. A. Chamerorzow, Slave Life in Georgia; Narrative of John Brown (London, 1865); B. T. Washington, Story of the Negro, 2 vols. (New York, 1909); Baptist Annual Register; A. N. Waterman, A Century of Caste (Chicago, 1901); Geo. Thompson, Prison Life and Reflections, 3d Edition (Hartford, 1849); Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston, 1861); Sarah H. Bradford, Harriet, The Moses of Her People (New York, 1861); Thos. W. Higginson, Life of a Black Regiment (Boston, 1870); Jas. B. Avirett, The Old Plantation, Great House and Cabin before the War, 1817-65 (New York, Chicago, London, 1901); Jno. S. Abbott, South and North (New York, 1860). Lucius P. Little, Ben Harding, His Times and Contemporaries (Louisville, 1867); De Bow's Commercial Review (New Orleans, 1847); Life of Josiah Henson (Boston, 1849); Baptist Home Missions in America (New York, 1883); Presbyterian Magazine, I (Philadelphia, 1851); Methodist Magazine, X (New York, 1827); W. L. Grissom, History of Methodism in North Carolina, 1772-1805, vol. I; Sermons by John Wesley, 3d Edition, vols. I-II (New York); B. F. Riley, History of Baptists in Southern States East of Mississippi (Philadelphia, 1888); John Rankin, 1793-1886, Letters on Slavery (Boston, 1833); W. G. Hawkins, Lunsford Lane (Boston, 1863); Frederick Douglass, My Bondage and Freedom (New York, 1857); K. E. R. Pickard, The Kidnapped and the Ransomed, Recollections of Peter Still and His Wife Vina, 3d Ed. (Syracuse, 1865); Fifty Years in Chains, Life of an American Slave (New York); H. E. Krehbiel, Afro-American Folk-Songs, R. E. Park, Education, Conflicts, and Fusions, American Sociological Society, vol. XIII (Sept. 3, 1918); Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. XIV (1901), pp. 1-11, vol. XXVII (1914), pp. 241-5, vol. XXIII, p. 435, vol. XXIV, p. 255; Songs by Thos. P. Fennes; W. F. Allen, Slave Songs of the United States (New York, 1867); Twenty-two Years Work of Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (Hampton, 1893); T. P. Fenner, Hampton and its Students by Two of its Teachers, with 50 Cabin and Plantation Songs (New York, 1875); American Journal of Religious Psychology and Education, vol. III, pp. 265-365; Negro Year-Book; E. W. Pearson, Letters from Port Royal (1916); C. H. Jones, Instruction of Negro Slave (1842).

[4] Tylor's Anthropology.

[5] Earnest, p. 28.

[6] Fifty Years in Chains, p. 14.

[7] Jernegan, pp. 506-7.

[8] Education, Conflicts, and Fusion, p. 47.