negroes are capable of education, or that their religious condition would improve if their general enlightenment of mind were not studiously prevented.
"I have often heard the remark made," says the Rev. C. C. Jones, in a treatise on the "Religious Instruction of Slaves," printed at Savannah, Georgia, 1842, "by men whose standing and office in the churches afforded them abundant opportunity for observation, that the more they have had to do with coloured members, the less confidence they have been compelled to place in their Christian professions."
A portion of a letter written for publication by the wife of the pastor of a church in the capital of Alabama, given below, naïvely reveals the degree of enlightenment prevailing among the Christianized Africans at a point where their means of instruction are a thousand times better than they are on an average throughout the country.
"Having talked to him seriously, and in the strongest light held up to
him the enormity of the crime of forsaking his lawful wife and taking
another, Colly replied, most earnestly, and not taking in at all the idea of
guilt, but deeply distressed at having offended his master:
"'Lor, Massa Harry, what was I to do, sir? She tuk all I could git, and more too, sir, to put on her back; and tellin' de truf, sir, dress herself as no poor man's wife hav' any right to. I 'monstrated wid her, massa, but to no purpose; and den, sir, w'y I jis did all a decent man could do—lef her, sir, for some oder nigger better off 'an I is.'
"'Twas no use. Colly could not be aroused to conscientiousness on the subject.
"Not one in a thousand, I suppose, of these poor creatures have any conception whatever of the sanctity of marriage; nor can they be made to have; yet, strange to say, they are perfect models of conjugal fidelity and devotion while the temporary bondage lasts. I have known them to walk miles after a hard day's work, not only occasionally, but every night, to see the old woman, and cut her wood for her, etc. But to see the coolness with which they throw off the yoke is diverting in the extreme.
"I was accosted one morning in my husband's study by a respectable-looking negro woman, who meekly inquired if Mr. B. was at home.
