Dwelling Place

by Erskine Clarke

  Even the sympathetic white planters who shared such views must have thought Charles an arrogant young minister with much to learn about the human condition. But he felt that if he had to be prudent in regard to the evils of slavery, he could be zealous for moral rectitude, he could talk about chastity and Sabbath observance and temperance and biblical knowledge. In later years, when his missionary labors were well established, his message to planters was filled with a deep sympathy and a respect for those he had come to know in the settlements. But for now this zealous spirit, this high-handed arrogance, suited his purposes well. He could focus on the morality of the slaves, he could call attention to all the behavior of blacks that offended white sensibilities and that called for remedial action. Such an approach was intended to appeal to white planters, for it meant a major thrust of evangelization would be to socialize the slaves of Liberty County into the morals and manners of white society.

  But if Charles knew how to count the sins of the slaves, he also could accuse the planters as well—with, to be sure, a cautious, prudent accusation. There would be no hint that they were “men-stealers,” or that they were involved in an “inhuman abuse of power,” but he could say that they had not been responsible as masters. If their black slaves were ignorant and destitute, if they were “a nation of heathen in our very midst,” the planters needed to recognize that they had done very little on behalf of the religious welfare of their slaves. It would not do for them to dismiss the problem by saying that Africans or African Americans were somehow incapable of receiving religious instruction. That clearly was not the case, for God had “made of one blood all the nations of men that dwell on the face of the earth.” It could not be plainer that “all men have one common origin, and that all are capable of exercising proper affection toward God.” Charles resisted any racial assumptions about differences between blacks and whites.16 The differences—and he thought they were great—were a matter not so much of race as of class. Black slaves were part of the “mass of the people” of whom Catharine Beecher had spoken with such suspicion. If white planters had doubts about the unity of the races, about the common origin of all races, they needed only take notice of the black slaves around them who understood the Gospel and lived lives of exemplary Christian piety.

  In this way Charles left behind the tensions that had been tearing at his heart during the preceding months. The issue he set before his friends and neighbors was not a competition between Christian duty and home—the issue now was the religion and morals of black slaves and the responsibilities of white owners. To deal with this issue he proposed that a new work be begun for the slaves of Liberty County.

  His plan was for the planters to form themselves into a voluntary association and “take the religious instruction of the coloured population into their own hands.” They would appoint teachers from among their number who would go to stations located near several plantations, where the slaves could come for instruction and worship. There during the week and on the Sabbath the teachers would “communicate instruction orally, and in as systematic and intelligible a manner as possible, embracing all the principles of the Christian religion as understood by orthodox Protestants, and carefully avoiding all points of doctrine that separate different religious denominations.” The teachers would not be sent to any plantation without the “cordial consent of the owner,” nor would they appear except at those times specified by him. The wishes and arrangements of the owners were to be “consulted and complied with.” Teachers were to “confine themselves to the religious instruction of the Negroes wholly.” They were not to “intermeddle with the concerns of the plantation in any manner, nor repeat abroad what their ears hear, or their eyes see on them.” In addition to the work of the teachers, Charles proposed, not unexpectedly, that “a missionary may be employed to take a general supervision of the whole, occupy Sabbath stations, preach also during the week on plantations, and assist in framing courses of instruction.” The planters gathered at the courthouse had, of course, little doubt about the person Charles had in mind to be the missionary to “these heathen” in their midst.17

  Such a plan was a way to secure, Charles thought, what he had told Mary the year before was essential for success—both “the best interests of the coloured population and the approbation of the whites.”18 His proposal was tailored to calm the fears of white masters: the teachers would be local slaveholders, members of the association, who had self-interest as well as community pressure to safeguard their activities; the instructions would be oral, free from the dangers of teaching slaves to read or write—which was, in any case, illegal; the content would be orthodox Protestantism, exempt from denominational squabbling and safe from the radicalism that often infected the unorthodox; and the activities and conditions of the plantations would be off-limits, beyond the interests or concerns of the visiting teacher or missionary.

  But Charles did not stop with these words of assurance. He had to expose himself even more; he had to press on and show his friends that his plan was not only safe but also beneficial. Such religious instruction would encourage a better understanding among both masters and slaves of the relationships that existed between them. In particular, there would be “greater subordination and a decrease of crime amongst the Negroes.” Whites had no reason to fear that religious instruction would promote revolts or the desire for freedom and equality. Just the opposite was the case. The teachers themselves would supplement the patrol system, which, at any rate, was “not efficiently executed now.” (Few Liberty County planters wanted to ride about at night keeping an eye on the blacks!) The simple presence of a white man, however, at “stated times amongst the Negroes,” would “tend greatly to the promotion of good order.” The plan, said Charles, seemed “to carry our security in it.” But more than this external show of authority, there would be an internal change in the heart of the slaves. They would come to accept the authority of their masters: they would think like slaves, act like slaves, and be slaves. “We believe,” said Charles, that the authority of masters “can be strengthened and supported in this way only; for the duty of obedience will never be felt or performed to the extent that we desire it, unless we can bottom it on religious principle.” Here was the key to the complete subordination of the slaves, the way to have their faces grow to fit the masks of obedience that they wore to hide their resistance to bondage. If the blacks would come to believe that obedience to white owners was a religious duty, that submission to their masters was an obligation owed to God, then the authority of the planters would be built upon a solid rock. If, however, blacks resisted that religious principle or substituted another for it, then the authority of masters would be established upon the shifting sands of power and fear.19

  Charles then took a final, dangerous plunge—he assured his friends and neighbors that in addition to encouraging good order and subordination among their slaves, religious instruction of blacks would provide economic advantages for slaveholders. A faithful servant, he said, “is more profitable than an unfaithful one. He will do more and better work, be less troublesome, and less liable to disease.” Of all the things he said, of all the words he wrote, nothing was to come back to haunt him more than this. His work would never be free from the suspicion that at its heart it was guided by economic motivations, that it was an attempt to increase the profits of the planters. Charles knew only too well that he was in dangerous waters and quickly moved to point out that the salvation of the slaves was the primary goal of religious instruction. While economic self-interest might be a powerful motivation in the hearts of white planters, the purpose was the salvation of the slaves’ souls. “The great object for which we would communicate religious instruction to them,” Charles declared, “is that their souls may be saved. To this all other objects should be subordinated.” Charles believed that. It was fundamental for him. It colored all his perceptions about who he was and what he was about. It gave him courage and patience in trying times and covered his life and his work with g
rand illusions.20

  In concluding his address to the planters, Charles spoke of their responsibility to their slaves. In the providence of God, the blacks had been placed under their care. For this reason they had the heavy responsibility of providing their slaves with religious instruction. Perhaps answering the doubts of his own heart so recently torn by indecision, Charles declared that slavery itself could be justified if one soul were saved. Speaking as a slaveholder and illustrating the great distance that separated him from those who lived in the settlements, he assured his white listeners that it is “certain that the salvation of one soul will more than outweigh all the pain and woe of their capture and transportation, and subsequent residence among us.” His sentiments and focus had come a long way from his conversations in Hartford, Washington, and Baltimore. They had come home to Liberty County.21

  Charles had made his point. He had covered the ground carefully, step by step, so that in the end his family and friends were convinced, and the Liberty County Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes was formed. They organized that very day. (Charles had all the details carefully arranged so that they had little to do but agree.) No one was surprised when Charles was called to be the missionary. For years he would receive no compensation for his labors. His personal wealth would give him the necessary economic freedom for this Liberty County experiment. His wealth—drawn from the toils of Hamlet and Rosetta, Cato and Cassius, Phoebe and Jack, and all the other “hands employed to furnish me with those conveniences of life of which they are in consequence deprived”—such wealth would allow the association the necessary time to gain the strong support of the community.22

  The association was the first of its kind in the South, and, as might be expected, it met with initial difficulties. Few people seemed to believe that it would last or that it would be able to accomplish its goals. There was a “general indifference,” and while influential planters joined, there were only twenty-nine who signed the constitution. Additionally, there was continuing opposition that showered nothing but ridicule or contempt upon the whole project. The greatest difficulty, however, was Charles’s own inexperience and the teachers’ lack of training. Faced with these difficulties, Charles accepted a call, after only a few months, to be the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Savannah. He did this, he later recalled, “with the understanding that, whenever I felt prepared, I might withdraw from the church and return to my chosen field.”23

  In the summer of 1831 Charles and Mary moved to Savannah and took up residence with the family of William King, the brother of Barrington and young Roswell King. The Kings provided a warm and welcoming place for Charles and Mary, and they also found room for Mary’s personal servant Phoebe. Because Mary could not do without her, Phoebe had to leave behind at Carlawter her husband and her two children: six-year-old Clarissa and John, who was just turning one.24

  Charles plunged into his work in Savannah, preaching three times on Sundays and giving special attention to the blacks of the city. One of the services on Sunday was designated as specifically for the blacks, and Charles made friends with the black preachers in the city, including Andrew Marshall at First African and Henry Cunningham at Second African. He became particularly close to Cunningham, who invited him to preach at Second African and who evidently cleared the way for Charles to preach in some of the other African Baptist churches of the city. These were important contacts for Charles, for the black Baptist preachers at the independent black churches in Savannah had an influence that spread throughout the low country. Cunningham had been one of the founders of the Sunbury Baptist Association, which included the church at Sunbury and the Newport Baptist Church near Riceboro. In the coming years Charles was closely connected with these congregations and preached from their pulpits regularly.25

  While Charles was busy with his pastoral work, both Mary and Phoebe were unhappy about being in Savannah. To be sure, there was a lively social life, even for Phoebe. She was becoming interested in the church and was beginning to attend regularly. And there were errands to run, and in the evenings after work she could see something of the city. But she missed her home and especially her children. “Do my dear sister,” Mary wrote Betsy Maxwell, “whenever you write, mention the health of Phoebe’s children as she appears anxious about them and it is her only means of hearing from them.” And Mary Robarts wrote back, “Tell Phoebe her chicks are well.” But Phoebe, perhaps as only a body servant could, evidently was putting pressure on Mary for them to return to Liberty County.26

  Mary did not need much encouragement. At the end of October she gave birth to Charles Colcock Jones, Jr., and within a few weeks she, Phoebe, and little Charlie were back in Liberty County for an extended stay at the Retreat and Solitude. Charles wrote regularly and made quick trips to Liberty, but he was unhappy to be separated from his wife and young son. “My dear Mary,” he wrote her, “it seems as if my affection for you increases with the days of our marriage state; I never, never wish to be separated from you a day, and I have had a struggle in my mind to know whether my affection for you is not exceeding that to my Saviour and his cause.”27

  Charles’s work, however, kept him busy. Shortly after Mary left Savannah with Phoebe and Charlie, Charles left the city for the Presbyterian synod meeting in Columbia, South Carolina.28 The meeting provided an opportunity for Charles to be with some of the leaders in the church who were to be his colleagues for years to come. Moses Waddel, the president of Franklin College (a few decades later the college became the University of Georgia), was a leading member of the synod, as was Alonzo Church, who soon followed Waddel as president. Thomas Smyth, the scholarly young pastor of the Second Presbyterian Churchin Charleston, was there. He and Charles had been at Princeton together and over the coming years they became close colleagues. Charles met for the first time George Howe, who had left a position at Dartmouth and had recently accepted a professorship at the seminary. Outside of his family, no one was to be closer to Charles during the coming years than this New Englander. But at this meeting of the synod in 1831, his closest colleague was Benjamin Gildersleeve, editor of the Charleston Observer, a widely circulating religious periodical. Gildersleeve’s father had been the pastor of Midway Church, had baptized Charles, and had made the first serious effort by a pastor of Midway to reach out to the slaves of Liberty County.29

  Gildersleeve continued his father’s interests in the evangelization of the slaves, and he and Charles immediately set about bringing before the synod a resolution to that end. Columbia, however, was not a hospitable place for such a resolution, and strong voices in the city, fearing anything that might hint of emancipation, made known to the synod their opposition. Charles made a speech addressing the fears and shaped the resolution to meet the challenge head-on. Why, he asked in the resolution, “will the religious instruction be emancipation? Do not the majority, perhaps of our citizens who make this objection, consider slavery sanctioned by the Bible?” If they sincerely believe this, “why then do they hesitate to have the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, preached to their servants?” But what if they believe the Bible does not sanction slavery? What if they believe the Bible leads to emancipation? “Then our answer is but a word. Shall thousands, and even millions of immortal minds be sacrificed at the shrine of cupidity? Which ought to prevail for the good of mankind, for the glory of our country, for the prosperity of the cause of God—principle or interest? Right or wrong? Let the enlightened conscience of the philanthropist, of the patriot, and of the Christian, return the answer.”30

  Then Charles showed that he had not so quickly forgotten what he had learned in New England, that he shared a widespread confidence in the future, with its trains and steamboats and spreading evangelical Protestantism. What was feared in the religious instruction of slaves, he wrote, was the moral influence of Christianity, “which we cannot possibly avoid, do what we may. It is folly to contend against God. Christianity is ultimately to prevail on the earth, and in d
ue course of time, will reach our servants.” If emancipation, feared by those who object to religious instruction, were to come “by the preaching of the Gospel, happy are we in believing that it could not come in a more gradual, in an easier, nor in a safer way. It will be the work of the Almighty, the effect of the Divine principles of His word, which, in their operation, while they impel the master to the end, will restrain the servant from all acts of precipitate violence to attain it. And thus may the Glory of the removal of the evil be laid at the foot of the Cross.” So Charles named slavery an evil—an evil that could best be abolished by the influence of Christianity that could not, in any case, be successfully resisted.31

  The synod passed the resolution and ordered that it be published in the Charleston Observer. Some proslavery forces were furious over what was said in the resolution, and Charles soon felt the wrath of at least one powerful political leader in the Palmetto State. But for now he had gotten the resolution through the influential Presbyterian synod and there was time to see something of Columbia and its state legislature. A Charleston cousin, Judge Charles Jones Colcock, took him to see the impeachment of Thomas Cooper, the president of South Carolina College. The charge against Cooper was “on account of his infidel principles”—Cooper, a staunch proslavery advocate, represented the lingering twilight of eighteenth-century rationalism—but state politics, Charles noted, were of course deeply involved in the proceedings. Judge Colcock asked for a copy of the synod resolution and shared it with several friends in the legislature.32