Circulating in the Southern Baptist press this week is a brief piece from a correspondent in the Confederate capital of Richmond who profiles a Baptist leader who has devoted himself to the “religious instruction of our slaves.”
In the midst of wide spread indifference toward the religious instruction of our slaves, and the efforts of base-minded men to embarrass their instruction by casting doubt on the “loyalty” of slave churches, I take pleasure in stating that one of the most gifted among the brethren in this city, has decided to devote his Sabbath labors to the Spiritual welfare of that class. He belongs to the bar, is a rising member of his profession, and has published several works creditable alike to this legal attainments and his general culture. Often solicited and often refusing to accept of ordination, he has, I believe, determined at length to seek it, with the understanding that he shall preach exclusively to colored congregations.–When it is remembered that he has no reason to regard even the higher spheres of ministerial effort as beyond his reach, may we not hope that the Spirit of God is prompting him to cultivate this humbler field? May we not commend his example to the imitation of many others, in the city and country alike, who might assist to fill up the measure of our christian obligation, as a people, to this dependent race?
White southern suspicion of slaves grows as the war drags onward. Most Southern Baptist congregations have slave members, in which racial tensions rise in tandem with the larger mounting nervousness of whites in relation to blacks. The hundreds, if not thousands, of slaves escaping daily and fleeing northward only reinforce suspicions and tensions.
Source: “A Noble Example,” Biblical Recorder, August 26, 1863 (link)
