Page 110 →Page 111 →Chapter 4 “We Are Marching to Zion”

Antebellum Missionaries in Charleston, South Carolina, 1847–60

Throughout the Bible, Zion is referred to as the glorious “city” or “dwelling place” that God had set apart for His own people.¹ Frequently in the Bible the term “Zion” connotes a holy place, God’s kingdom, or the most holy place, while some biblical references also equate Zion to heaven.² The hymn “We are Marching to Zion” captures Zion as a place of beauty, freedom, and rest. Certainly these scriptural principles were among the enslaved membership’s thoughts when it chose the name in 1858. This is yet another indication of how both the enslaved church members and Girardeau defined their contrasting yet shared identities. The enslaved African American congregation perceived Zion as its own space, a space built for it, that it named. For enslaved African Americans just like God had preserved the city of Zion for his liberated people from Egypt in North Africa to Israel so God perhaps preserved this church for his hopeful yet still enslaved people from Western Africa now in South Carolina. Little did the enslaved African American congregation know in 1858 that in seven years, by 1865, it would be attending a school in Zion Church as freed persons and voting in Zion Church as citizens. In the meantime Girardeau did not dispute the naming of the church and went on to minister in a way that instilled hope, expanded ecclesiastical freedoms, promoted spiritual liberation, but also made sure the mission upheld the racial and institutional status quo of enslavement in Charleston, South Carolina.

Erected in 1859 and said to be “gratuitously furnished,” Zion had a seating capacity of around twenty-five hundred, which made it the largest church building in Charleston and one of the largest churches constructed for enslaved African Americans in the entire state.³ The “architect of the building was Edward C. Jones, who was later an Elder at Zion, and the builder was David Lopez Jr. a leader in Charleston’s Jewish community.”⁴ It was ironic that a member of Page 112 →Charleston’s Jewish community built the church. Jews were a people whose ancient history was one of enslavement and liberation from Egypt.

However not all saw Zion as a holy place. Local residents attempted to tear down the walls of the church upon its construction, and Girardeau’s public reputation as well as his life was threatened on numerous occasions. Despite this vandalism and slander on June 12, 1859, the congregants entered the newly finished church building and took Holy Communion. Girardeau and his congregants endeavored together to form a unique mission’s style. Never had a church in South Carolina like this been constructed. The very building itself was a testament to the seriousness of the work. Beatrice St. Julien Ravenel once described the building as a “barnlike structure, with . . . twin high arched porticos” and the facade took up close to half a city block.⁵ In examining Girardeau’s perspective on ministry, it is clear he was a traditional Presbyterian and a committed church member. There was also something distinct about Girardeau that separated him from his contemporaries. Perhaps it was the “compassionate ethos” of Girardeau, described in reminiscences, or the keen theological sense that something was awry in the ecclesiastical structure. Certainly a man of such theological rigor and rigid views on polity would have understood that something within the church membership itself was askew when his fellow Presbyterians created a separate church specifically for one race and largely to accommodate a system of enslavement. Whatever that “something” was caused Girardeau to approach antebellum missions work in a unique fashion.

Some Charleston citizens, particularly the more militant groups like the Charleston Minute Men, physically threatened Girardeau for his work in this mission. One incident occurred after the new structure on Meeting and Calhoun was completed, and the Charleston Minute Men, with loaded guns, entered Zion Church during a worship service. The Charleston Minute Men had “intended to kill the preacher if he said anything against the recent hanging of a black man. The black man was a member of Zion, and Girardeau did not think him guilty of the alleged crime.”⁶ M. F. Robertson recalled that after the hanging of an innocent African American, Girardeau “announced that he would preach on the Negro’s death. Somehow a report got out that he was going to justify the Negro. An excited state of public feeling developed. A young member of the church heard that a crowd was talking about killing Dr. Girardeau.” The young man then went to the mayor’s office, and the mayor then “secured a strong secret guard to attend the service.”⁷ Unknown to Girardeau at the time “the Charleston Minute Men filled one gallery and an armed guard from the state filled the opposite gallery”⁷

Page 113 →Girardeau came into the church, and “when it came time for the sermon, Dr. Girardeau showed the awful consequences of sin and pointed to the dying form of the Son of God for atonement. The audience broke down and he exhorted them to repent. Those who had misjudged his intention apologized after the service.”⁸ This incident indicated that Girardeau’s work was upsetting to some Charlestonians and that his style of missions to the enslaved might have been too radical for the tastes of his contemporaries. After the writings of “Many Citizens” appeared in the Charleston Mercury in May 1847, the Second Presbyterian Session recorded the interactions in the minutes. The records noted that “the scheme [to start the slave mission] was attacked by a writer in the Charleston Mercury, who misrepresented our plan and endeavored not without success, to rouse popular prejudice against it.”⁹

Another incident occurred in 1859 just after John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. A letter to the editor appeared in the Charleston Mercury under the pseudonym “A Slaveholder.” The author described Zion Church as a breeding ground for insurrection. The author also claimed that the pastor was teaching the enslaved persons doctrines that would incite insurrections and destroy the community. “A Slaveholder” also spoke of the marriage ceremonies conducted by Girardeau at Zion. “Where are we drifting to,” he penned “when in a slaveholding community the ‘nuptials of blacks’ are celebrated in a spacious temple of the most high?”¹⁰ These articles drew much support from the Charleston public in later issues. Girardeau’s biographer, C. N. Willborn, even mentioned that “it appeared strategically while Girardeau was out of town and was designed to evoke public sentiment against the missionary-pastor and the African-Americans who constituted Zion Church.”¹¹ Something in this mission church incited White Charlestonians’ ire. Perhaps this work also added to a distrust of Girardeau and continued to stoke fear among a White population in Charleston concerned about what would happen if enslaved African Americans at Zion ever decided to revolt.

Southern Presbyterians, who were consumed with theological acumen, ecclesiastical order, biblical fidelity, and for things to be done by committee with a process, rules, and in good and decent order. It must have been strange for some to observe fellow church members in South Carolina essentially creating an entirely different ecclesiastical structure that made accommodations and distinction for new kinds of members, roles, instructional activities, weddings, funerals, seating in pews, and even services based on one’s race and whether or not one was enslaved. Thinking back to Alexander McLeod one wonders if he would have created a fully equal structure for enslaved African Americans Page 114 →in Charleston if given the chance. Would advocacy for the ecclesiastical and civic rights of enslaved African Americans have been challenged in Charleston under McLeod’s shepherding oversight? Even the scantiest reading of South Carolina and Charleston history would assuredly affirm that no, McLeod would not have been accepted. One is left to ponder then why these Presbyterians in South Carolina were willing to adjust the church to accommodate an economic system and social order when South Carolinian Presbyterians in Rocky Creek just fifty-six years before had openly challenged it.

Charleston had experienced slave uprisings and had a much larger population of enslaved African Americans compared to Chester district. African Americans in the Lowcountry of South Carolina had been in the majority since at least 1670. This created a heightened sense of fear and concern among Charlestonians compared to Chester, in which the number of enslaved was nowhere close to a majority. Further Charlestonians funding Presbyterian churches had made and possessed sizable fortunes using enslaved labor and in owning enslaved people. While the membership at Rocky Creek might have possessed a half dozen or so enslaved African Americans, members of Presbyterian churches in Charleston possessed hundreds if not thousands. It also took elites to make this slave mission work acceptable in Charleston.

Elite concern over the status of the mission church was mollified, not by the work itself or the assurances of White oversight, but by the willingness of the Adgers, a very prominent and wealthy Charleston family, to be advocates for its continuance. The critics’ voices in the Charleston Mercury were loud, but the status of elite families like the Adgers, Smyths (who married into the Adger family), and other members of the prominent Second Presbyterian Church Session certainly helped to continue the work in the face of open hostility coming from other members of the White elite. Girardeau also was a Charlestonian, a White enslaver himself, who had attended seminary in Columbia, South Carolina and not Andover, Massachusetts. Certainly his privileged status, his prominence as an honor graduate of the College of Charleston, and his family’s owning of enslaved persons helped calm White enslaver anxiety.

One historian, writing about the effort of missionaries to enslaved persons in Charleston, mentioned that South Carolina’s religious leaders “thought that religious education would be the best way to refute the abolitionists. Underlying their strategy was the tenet that proper Christian instruction would reinforce the ideal of a paternalistic society in which the slaves were loyal and obedient servants to a benevolent master.”¹² While this statement is no doubt true for many missionaries to enslaved persons and their work both Anson Page 115 →Street and Zion offered something of a counterexample. Simply because the church was White led did not mean it should fall under a broad category of a church that only “reinforced obedience to the master.” The Charleston public deemed many aspects of Girardeau’s mission work at Anson Street and Zion as repulsive. A more complete examination of Girardeau’s unique features, as well as the antebellum and postbellum work at Zion, allows for greater understanding of the complexity of enslaved person missions and the unique roles that South Carolina’s shepherds played in how missionaries to the enslaved practiced their vocation.

One of the features unique to Zion was that Girardeau divided the church into “classes.” This was common in other denominations, such as Methodism, but elements within the classes were distinct to Zion. The meaning of the classes was “to promote mutual acquaintance and brotherly love among the members; to apprise them of one another’s sickness and need; to acquaint the leaders with the same; and to further the growth of the members in Christian knowledge and experimental religion.”¹³ Each class member and class leader had a particular role and purpose, and recognized each other as members of the church. This affirmation of membership in a community would contribute to the central role religious activities played in the lives of enslaved African American communities. Often enslaved African Americans forged religious communities away from White oversight. At Zion the church promoted community development and helped to strengthen the community in support of one another.

Each class had a “leader.” A leader was someone that the all-White session recognized as a person of spiritual maturation with administrative abilities. Through these classes, leaders took up collections from their members for the sick or infirm. Distributions of these funds rested on the need of the one who was sick. A weekly stipend of fifty cents was offered to someone in the time of sickness.¹⁴ The leaders’ duties also included visiting members of their class and reporting on any sickness or discipline matters to the session. Through these leadership positions enslaved African Americans were encouraged to nurture one another. Boles saw this recognition of a White enslaver session as possessing enhanced responsibility in the church, which was “(recognized by whites to have) moral responsibility” or what Timothy L. Smith has called “moral earnestness.”¹⁵

The class leaders also appeared at session meetings as well as church discipline cases, and the elders considered their testimony. It was significant that enslaved African Americans gave testimony in the church courts. Page 116 →Historian Robert Hall has argued that in the church “slaves were allowed to give testimony–sometimes even conflicting with white testimony–and that on occasion their witness overrules the charges of whites.”¹⁶ This occurred in a society in which enslaved African Americans were not allowed to testify against Whites in civil courts. However, at Zion, enslaved African Americans frequently appeared as witnesses and gave testimony either for or against their fellow African Americans. Church cases included discipline or censures for a variety of behaviors including drunkenness, lying, and adultery. In some cases the church charged enslaved African Americans for the same actions as Whites. Boles mentioned that this form of ecclesiastical legal equality existed “nowhere else in southern society,” in which “slaves and whites brought together in an arena where both were held responsible to a code of behavior sanctioned by a source outside the society–the Bible.”¹⁷ As enslaved African Americans were navigating these ecclesiastical spaces, it would be reasonable to assume that thoughts might have crossed their mind regarding leadership opportunities and access to courts. If they could be members of a church and engage in the courts of church, then why could they not be members of a society and engage in civic courts? If enslaved African Americans could serve as functional deacons in their classes as leaders, then why could they not serve in an official or ordained capacity? Indeed many questions might have arisen out of this system.

Girardeau’s classes at Zion also had “exhorters.” Exhorters could conduct funeral services and were able to teach and preach to other members of the church. Allowing enslaved African Americans to conduct funeral services, teach, preach, and perhaps even read to one another sent a clear message to participants in the classes.¹⁸ One historian wrote about the importance of enslaved leaders to the congregation, arguing, “Slaves apparently had their image of being creatures of God strengthened by the sermons they heard—even when that was not the intention of the ministers—and the discipline they accepted. Their evident pleasure in occasionally hearing the black preachers speak to biracial congregations no doubt augmented their sense of racial pride.”¹⁹ Indeed enslaved African Americans were not reliant upon White-controlled institutions to foster their sense of self-worth but neither were they adverse to seizing opportunities wherever they found them and using them appropriately. Certainly “in a society that offered few opportunities for blacks to practice organizational and leadership skills or hear themselves addressed and see themselves evaluated morally on equal basis with whites, small matters could have large meanings.”²⁰ While White ministers may have interpreted having class leaders, Page 117 →exhorters, and ecclesiastical testimony as small responsibilities, the enslaved African American derived hope, self-worth, racial pride, and a sense of identity as a human being with a spiritual and ecclesiastical equality from African American leaders and exhorters.

There is little to no evidence that Girardeau was teaching his congregants to read. South Carolina state literacy laws in place since 1834, outlawed teaching enslaved African Americans to read. But he did teach enslaved African Americans to memorize vast passages of the Bible, catechisms, and hymns. Further the educational curriculum of Second Presbyterian’s sabbath school continued at Zion. Girardeau taught classes for applicants in church membership, Bible, and theology. He used C. C. Jones’s catechism as well as one that he had written himself.²¹ Girardeau taught many theological doctrines including the Trinity, God’s law, the covenants, justification by faith, and the office of Christ. In addition an important distinction between Jones’s catechism and Girardeau’s was that Girardeau made no mention of domestic relationships or the relationship of master to slave. Perhaps this was a subtle recognition that Girardeau was not interested in teaching this doctrine to the enslaved members of his congregation. However the fact that an entirely different catechism for enslaved African Americans even existed is evidence that the education and curricular experiences of African Americans in the church was different from, set apart from, and a kind of second-tier educational practice and experience compared to that of White members. This is further evidence that different categories of ecclesiastical experiences were common for the enslaved and wholly distinct from the experiences of non-enslaved White members.

In 1860, 250 enslaved African American children enrolled in Girardeau’s Sunday school program. According to Willborn, “The presence of Sunday School, an educational and evangelistic device, reveals Girardeau’s commitment to educating the African-Americans, even though teaching them to read was illegal in his motherland from 1834.”²² After the Civil War “Girardeau told the Scotsman David Macrae that he had always wanted to teach the slaves to read but could not because of civil laws and the effect of the radical abolitionists’ writings on Southern attitudes. He could have been arrested and charged with a crime. In his ideal world, slaves would have been taught to read, a view similar to his low country friend John B. Adger,” as well as that of Jones.²³ This sentiment while privately espoused and timely in its presentation (after the war) no doubt was in Girardeau’s mind throughout his work in antebellum Charleston. However it is likely that the tenets of southern legal codes regarding literacy of the enslaved would have kept Girardeau from making this hope Page 118 →a reality. Educating enslaved African Americans to read would also have been breaking South Carolina law. For Girardeau, if word of this had gotten out, not only would “Concerned Citizens” demand the mission to end, but Girardeau could have been arrested and charged with a crime.

As with Jones, the reach of slavey on missionaries to enslaved persons was long, and it severely limited whatever prophetic voice might have come from the church challenging the institution. Also the South’s ruling elite, its government, and its institutions were bent on preserving enslavement. To speak, challenge, or act in any way contrary to the laws and mandates buttressing the institution would have meant complete ostracism, imprisonment, or perhaps even death for Girardeau.

Yet another distinction was that Girardeau conducted wedding ceremonies with large numbers in attendance and in the middle of a prominent social district of the city of Charleston. Typically enslaved persons’ weddings were small ceremonies on the plantation outside of the public eye. As a Presbyterian Girardeau believed in the importance of the institution of marriage and that it was a display of a covenant that should be publicly celebrated. Further Girardeau, like his cousin Jones, tried to preserve families in his congregations from being separated or sold away. Girardeau likely used large wedding displays to affirm the sacredness of marriage between enslaved people and display to the broader Charleston community that marriage was a sacred institution that could not allow the separation of a family to make a profit in enslavement trading. However when a sale separated a marriage Girardeau was forced to accept the decision, and he could not do anything to appeal or to stop the enslaver from the sale or purchase. He could appeal to God’s law, but it could not prevent an enslaver from selling a portion of his or her chattel property away for profit, which was protected under South Carolina and national law. There is also no evidence that he publicly ever tried to do so.

For many enslaved African Americans marriage was often a tenuous commitment based on the whims of the owner. Often the owner sold one or both partners regardless of whether they had been married. It was common to hear in marriages of enslaved people “’til death or distance do you part.” In stark contrast to these accepted principles regarding enslavement Girardeau believed that enslaved African Americans were human beings made in the imago dei, they possessed a soul, and their marriages were valid before God. Further Girardeau taught that the marriages of enslaved Africans were legitimate institutions that ought to be preserved. This certainly showed the influence of previous missionary John Adger who had argued that “slaveholders should not Page 119 →separate, nor allow the separation of husband wife, unless for cause lawful before God.”²⁴ Moral suasion under the weight of economic incentives driven by racism and supported by law had minimal effect.

Southern Presbyterians highly valued marriage. When ministers officiated at a wedding, it was an official act of the church and recognized by the state as legal. It is interesting that rather than fight for marriage as any Southern Presbyterian shepherd would do for a White family, the Presbyterian missionaries to enslaved African Americans simply gave in to the status quo and accepted that African American marriages had no civic meaning. Southern Presbyterians possessed a great deal of wealth, political influence, and power in the nineteenth-century South. If for some reason the state or economic system was invalidating or not accepting the marriages of White members then the shepherds would most certainly have gone to war to defend the right of their members to marry. Such was the zeal and passion for the institution of marriage. If the federal government would have sought to abridge or challenge the sacredness of marriage the pastors would not worry about violating the “spirituality of the church doctrine” in their preaching.

However, it was also clear that Girardeau regarded his enslaved membership as human beings with an identity separate from their enslavement. This was particularly apparent in Zion’s church roll books. Girardeau wrote down all names of individuals who became members, whom he baptized, and those for whom he performed marriage ceremonies. Contrary to many record books of enslaved African Americans during his time, Girardeau wrote down their first or “given” names as well as their surnames in the roll books. In antebellum southern society, owners of enslaved persons typically did not record surnames of enslaved persons as this suggested a status as a human being with a lineage rather than as chattel property.²⁵ John Boles has noted the importance of such a demarcation: “This equality in terms of address may seem insignificant today, but in an age when whites were accorded the titles of Mr. and Mrs., and it was taboo for a white to so address a black, any form of address that smacked of equality was notable.”²⁶ Indeed this small decision by Girardeau to record full names was an ecclesiastical action that led to some semblance of human equality for enslaved members. In a society that sought to destroy any semblance of equality, small matters could have large meanings.

This unique attribution separated the Presbyterian Zion mission church from other denominations in that “typical Baptist or Methodist churches included black members, who often signed (or put their ‘X’)” and “were not accorded genuine equality.”²⁷ Enslaved African Americans were listed in most Page 120 →church roll books as, for example, “Sam, servant of John Dawson.”²⁸ For decades, owners of enslaved persons throughout the South had denied their enslaved persons surnames to show that enslaved persons had no lasting family connections because of their status as property.²⁹ Church historian Erskine Clarke discussed this phenomenon further stating:

Across the South, whites have refused to recognize that African Americans had surnames—blacks were simply Sam and Toney, Rose and Mingo, Tissey and Joe, with no surnames acknowledged–except that when needed, the name of the owner could be used. Such a practice was a powerful symbol, declaring that African Americans, within the world view of whites, had no lasting family connections of their own; they were rather the property of whites and belonged to their owners. Such a symbol allowed African Americans to be sold and to be separated from parents and children, from husbands and wives, without the appearance of any separation but only as a transfer of property.³⁰

Zion members who claimed surnames were consciously making a bold display of independence. By encouraging this action, Girardeau made Zion Presbyterian Church a place where the enslaved could publicly declare that they too had a family history and they had an allegiance to people other than their owners.³¹ Zion was distinct from other churches throughout the South. In many churches “such a worldview [enslaved African Americans only listing Christian and not surnames] and its accompanying ethos and social system were legitimated in the roll books of the churches.”³² Zion embodied a different practice, which suggested a measured ecclesiastical equality. Indeed the session clerk at Zion (E. C. Jones) as well as Girardeau himself “recorded not only the owners of the hundreds of slaves who joined Zion but also the surnames of the slaves.”³³ Behind this subtle distinction was the idea Zion’s leadership accepted: that all members, regardless of their race, enjoyed some measure of ecclesiastical equality or human equality through church membership in the church leadership’s sight and in the eyes of God. However this advocacy never went beyond the walls of the church.

Further, the enslaved African Americans did not just pick the names of their owners but “by the late 1850’s, more than 92 percent of the slaves who joined Zion gave as their own surnames names that were different from those of their owners. Moreover, in addition to claiming the name of their families of origin, wives gave the surnames of their husbands, affirming their slave marriages.”³⁴ Encouraging members to choose a surname was indicative of a Page 121 →unique mind-set toward enslaved African Americans in antebellum Charleston. While at first glance this might be seen as a small detail of this particular slave mission, it was (along with the seating structure and classes) indicative of the larger philosophy behind Girardeau’s experimental work. As indicated in the Zion Presbyterian Minutes the White leadership avowed, “We enter this church as white members of the same, with the fullest understanding that its primary design and chief purpose is to benefit the coloured and especially the slave population of this city.”³⁵ The mission’s focus was on the enslaved. Therefore the church’s activities were focused on the benefit to the slave and not on the benefit to the White leadership. This simple refocus was both intentional and somewhat drastic. White individuals who attended a service at Zion would not be seated in front of the pulpit and the focus of the teaching and preaching was not directed at them. To many White southerners, whose churches and pulpits revolved around addressing their lives, this would have been jarring.

Augmenting this philosophy and affirmation of humanity at Zion was the place where enslaved Africans sat in the church or “the place of honors.”³⁶ Unlike in many southern Presbyterian churches or churches in general of the time African Americans sat in the pews at Zion while Whites sat in the balconies and galleries. The environment that Girardeau created for African Americans in his church has been described as “their church, as no other church in Charleston had been theirs since Morris Brown and the African Methodist Church. It was a building, a place that had been built for them. Here they could gather, could claim a community and thus a humanity in the very midst of an alienating and dehumanizing bondage.”³⁷ Southern Presbyterians believed in the primacy of “God’s word” in worship: preaching the Bible was the most important portion of the worship service. Southern Presbyterians believed that the Bible was the word of God opened and taught alongside the power of the Holy Spirit to communicate his word to his people. Therefore pulpits in the nineteenth century were elevated above the congregation to communicate that the word of God was coming from a higher power or authority.

Further, the pulpit’s place, facing the pews, was important. Presbyterian pulpits were typically centered in the middle of the pews to have the most commanding effect for the entire audience. For someone sitting in a balcony this effect would be lost. The listener’s preference would have been to sit in front of the pew looking up at the preacher, not sitting in a balcony above the preacher looking down. This practice allowed the preacher to make eye contact with his listeners, which communicated to them that they were the primary audience. Page 122 →In the US South and Charleston in particular heat rose to the balconies so sitting there was drastically more uncomfortable than sitting in the pews below. Thus the seating preference was given to enslaved African Americans at Zion and not to Whites.

One visitor, John Grimball, wrote home to his family on November 27, 1859, about this phenomenon, which he had never before witnessed. He steamed, “I waited until after J.L. Girardeau had performed the service for the Negroes. There were there unusually large numbers and occupied all of the pews of the church.”³⁸ This practice was another not-so-subtle display of Girardeau’s belief in his congregants’ humanity. This seating arrangement sent a message to African American attendees regarding their spiritual value. It also sent a message to White participants that they were of secondary importance in Girardeau’s mission. Visitors such as Grimball were undoubtedly shocked by Girardeau’s failure to ascribe to the cultural milieu’s societal as well as accepted ecclesiastical hierarchies. According to Grimball and many others offense was taken that Girardeau provided for the preferences of enslaved people over White visitors.

This was especially significant as Girardeau’s contemporaries regarded him as one of the finest preachers in America. Many referred to him as the “Spurgeon of America” and made connections between the most prominent preacher in England (Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who was known as the prince of preachers) and Girardeau. Many had heard of the young preacher’s renowned ability and visited Zion to catch a glimpse of his famed oratory. One such visitor was the eventual Union general Benjamin F. Butler of Massachusetts. During the National Democratic Convention of 1860 in Charleston Butler asked his friend Alfred Robb, “Where are you going?” Robb stated, “To hear a great white preacher whose life is consecrated to the salvation of negroes.” Butler replied, “Well, as I have never heard of any such thing as that, I will go with you.” When they entered the church, they had to sit in the galleries while the enslaved African Americans occupied the pews before the pulpit. Colonel Robb went on to describe the scene:

The prayer of the preacher was earnest, simple and humble as of a man pleading with God. The singing was general, heartfelt and grand. The sermon was tender and spiritual, and though profound, was plain, delivered with fire and unction. After the preacher took his seat, deeply impressed, I was with closed eyes meditating on the wonderful sermon, when I heard someone sobbing. Looking around I saw General Butler’s face bathed in tears. Just then the church officers came for the usual collection and at Page 123 →once General Butler drew from his pockets both hands full of silver coin (put there to tip the waiters), and cast it into the basket, with the audible remark, “Well, I have never heard such a man and have never heard such a sermon.” In two years from that day Colonel Robb had died on the field of battle fighting for the South, Dr. Girardeau was a chaplain in the Confederate States Army, and General Butler was hated by the men and women of Dixie.³⁹

Such was the impact that Girardeau’s oratorical skill left on many. It was also the reason why Zion could expect anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 attendees on a given Sunday. It was indeed rare that one as talented as Girardeau would reserve his skill for the most rejected and subjugated people of his time: enslaved African Americans.

Typically young pastors eventually hoped for a more affluent pastorate in an influential White church. Missionary work was good preparation for leading a more prominent congregation but it was not typically the most sought-after vocation among ministers. Churches and denominations reserved the best preaching for a majority White audience. In stark contrast Girardeau gave up prominent positions in Columbus, Atlanta, and the Northeast to continue his work with enslaved African Americans in Charleston. He often said, “I would rather accept $400.00 and a cabin in a country church in South Carolina than the $4000.00 and the splendid manse in the magnificent city of Atlanta.”⁴⁰

Girardeau also conducted ceremonies and services on the entire corpus of biblical literature that spoke to enslaved African Americans. Presbyterians believed in preaching through an entire book of the Bible at a time and were careful not to skip passages because they might be hard to preach. This style of preaching through the entirety of a book meant that enslaved African Americans were exposed to a variety of teachings. This makes Presbyterian missions to enslaved African Americans distinct from other denominations. John Blassingame saw that “an overwhelming majority of the slaves throughout the antebellum period attended church with their masters. Then, after the regular services ended, the ministers held special services for the slaves.”⁴¹ These special services, John Boles asserted, “were more typical of Episcopal and Presbyterian churches” whereas “Methodist and Baptist preachers would usually, sometimes toward the end of the service, call for something like ‘a special word for our black brothers and sisters.’” The ministers would then “turn to them in the back pews or in the balcony and address them with a didactic sermon that often-stressed obedience to earthly masters.”⁴² At Zion not only were the Page 124 →enslaved African Americans seated in front of the pulpit, but they also received teaching on a variety of topics not related to issues surrounding obedience to one’s master. It was a worship service that belonged to them and was intended for them. At Zion enslaved African Americans were no longer on the periphery or in the balconies; they were the core audience.

Girardeau’s primary function was the salvation and liberation of the soul. He did not preach sermons that merely enforced the legal and cultural structure of the institution of enslavement, nor did he preach sermons about freedom or civic liberation. Indeed as John Boles has noted of the majority of missionaries to enslaved persons, “their paternalistic efforts towards the blacks under their control seemed a truncated version of Christianity.”⁴³ Usually the primary function of the paternalistic slave missionary was to serve the White community by preaching about obedience and subservience to enslaved Africans in order that enslaved persons might learn to “obey their masters.” One enslaved person recalled that the “White preacher he preach to de white fo’ks an’ when he git thu’ wid dem he preach some to de ‘Niggers.’ Tell’em to mind dere Marster an’ b’have deyself an’ dey’ll go to Hebben when dey die.”⁴⁴ Such was not the case in Girardeau’s sermons, whose topics ranged from “The Last Judgment” and “Sanctification by Grace” to “the Efficacy of Prayer.”⁴⁵ Girardeau preached the entire counsel of God’s word and a variety of theological topics.

“Slaves saw through” and “felt contempt for the self-serving attention they received.” As Boles discovered in many of the sermons offered by sincere ministers “slaves heard a more complete version of the gospel, and despite whatever social-control uses some ministers tried to put religion to in a portion of the Sunday service, most slaves found grounds for hope and a degree of spiritual liberation through their participation.”⁴⁶ Girardeau worked within and was a part of the framework for southern Presbyterian theologians who argued that slave missions were a justification for the benevolence of the institution of enslavement. His mission work was not just to simply buttress enslavement, pacify a guilt-ridden conscience, or justify the institution to northern abolitionists. Missionaries to enslaved persons like Girardeau believed that their work would bring spiritual freedom and ecclesiastical reform. As noted previously it was a genuine affection for enslaved African Americans and a true calling to the ministry that undergirded Girardeau’s work. Girardeau’s mission work to enslaved African Americans was not rooted in professional advancement, notoriety, or prominence. This affection however was limited, and it was limited to the confines of the church structure.

Page 125 →Spiritual freedom became the backbone of the African American community in Charleston as it sought survival during enslavement and social justice, liberty, and civil equality throughout Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and into the civil rights periods. It was the church that provided African Americans a respite from a predominantly White, violent, and oppressive culture, as well as a base from which to draw its leadership. The church was a place in which spiritual fulfillment allowed for hope in the face of overwhelming odds, faith in the face of a history of enslavement, and the love and grace to recognize that any worthwhile protest activity be conducted without violence and would display forgiveness.

Other historians have hinted at this continuity, mentioning that postbellum Charleston churches “were largely formed out of the membership of several antebellum churches. All of these old but new African American congregations took with them into the postwar period histories and traditions, leaders and a sense of identity that had been nurtured and kept alive during the difficult days of slavery.” Further “they indicated that African Americans, no less than whites, had a sense of loyalty to congregations and theological traditions.”⁴⁷ The antebellum mission churches’ interracial nature and the work to promote ecclesiastical freedoms must be factored into this historical record. The identity, sense of loyalty, and prolonged interaction in biracial churches had an affirming effect on the individualities of both Whites as enslavers and enslaved African Americans as human beings in the midst of a degrading bondage.

To be sure there were many instances within slave mission churches in which Whites belittled African Americans, created a second-class church membership, or supported a degradation of the human condition sharpened by harsh and unrelenting systemic oppression. However this is not the only story. The biracial slave mission churches, such as Zion, were also spaces for expanded spiritual and ecclesiastical freedoms. As John Boles has so eloquently noted:

Slaves apparently had their image of being creatures of God strengthened by the sermons they heard—even when that was not the intention of the ministers—and the discipline they accepted. Their evident pleasure in occasionally hearing the black preachers speak to biracial congregations no doubt augmented their sense of racial pride. Taking communion together with whites, serving as deacons or Sunday school teachers, being baptized or confirmed in the same ceremonies, even contributing their mite to the temporal upkeep of the church, could surely have been Page 126 →seen as symbolic ways of emphasizing their self-respect and equality before God.⁴⁸

While Erskine Clarke argued that the White-led Zion was “strictly regulated” with “vigorous oversight,” he admitted that there were distinctions between Zion and other slave mission churches. While Zion was White-led, “there was also a significant expansion of the freedom of African Americans, and an African American controlled structure was put into place with black leaders and teachers.”⁴⁹ This same structure would become an important cornerstone for the building up of autonomous African American churches, schools, and organizations in the mid to late 1860s and early 1870s.⁵⁰ Under a different slave mission “leaders” and “exhorters” would have been watched at all times by a White overseer and never would have been allowed to read, preach, or show other enslaved Africans that they could read and preach in a public setting. Further Whites at Zion did not oversee all African American “leaders” and “exhorters,” thus going against the very basic fundamental principles of a paternalistic, racist system such as enslavement, which would have enslaved African Americans rely on White oversight at every instance. Instead Girardeau promoted leadership from among the enslaved African American community in the church, African Americans pushed for expanded rights within the church, and this would continue to have ripple effects across the African American community in antebellum Charleston, throughout Reconstruction, and into the twentieth century.

In 1869 Zion ordained as elders many of the antebellum “class leaders” and “exhorters” such as Paul Trescot, John Warren, and William Price. Expanded ecclesiastical freedoms allowed enslaved African Americans to maintain positions of honor in an otherwise degrading environment. To be sure enslaved African Americans at Zion did not possess any civic equality, but they found ecclesiastical recognition, hope, and acknowledgment. As one historian has argued, “through the church slaves found a meaning for their lives that could give a touch of moral grandeur to the tragic dimension of their bondage.” Indeed “participation in the biracial churches was one of the ways slaves found the moral and psychological strength to survive their bondage.”⁵¹

However Girardeau rigidly affirmed the institution of enslavement, buttressed it in the church, and used the slave mission to display that enslavement was the preferred space for enslaved African Americans until Whites could decide when they were ready for emancipation. While helping to create a space for expanded ecclesiastical equalities Girardeau also created a space Page 127 →that openly supported American enslavement, aided and abetted enslavers, and provided theological, and ecclesiastical cover for enslavers as they sought to morally justify the institution of enslavement. On March 27, 1860, on the eve of Civil War, John Lafayette Girardeau gave a commencement address to the Society of Alumni at the College of Charleston that embodied secessionist sentiment and thus justifying South Carolina’s eventual action. Girardeau said forcefully, “It sometimes happens when the fundamental law of the land is violated by the powers which administer the government. Here it is a conflict between the duty to adhere to constitutional law, and the duty to render obedience to those who are entrusted with the conduct of the government.” He argued further, “The disobedience to the law of the land is really chargeable on the existing government, and not on the citizens to maintain their duty to obey the law and to resist all encroachments on the fundamental principles of the Constitution. Disobedience to government, in such a case, is obedience to constitutional law.”⁵²

Little did Girardeau realize the drastic repercussions of the actions South Carolina took in December 1860 and subsequent actions of the Confederate States of America on behalf of maintaining the state’s right to preserve the institution of enslavement. The decision was put to the test through five years of war, death, suffering, and civil strife. The decision of his state, South Carolina, would also cost Girardeau. He left his beloved Zion to serve as a Confederate chaplain and thus sacrificed his great passion to service on the battlefield.⁵³ Throughout the war Girardeau would long to be back with the enslaved peoples of the South Carolina Lowcountry. It was a longing that would never be fulfilled, at least in the way that Girardeau experienced it in the antebellum context. The end of the war and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment would forever change the institution of enslavement in South Carolina. However Girardeau still had a longing to pastor African Americans, and this did not leave him during Reconstruction. That desire had also not left some former enslaved members. John Boles once wrote, “The kinship between the white and black churches of today is readily apparent, and it points back to a time more that a century ago when the religious culture of the South was fundamentally biracial.”⁵⁴ To be sure the Reconstruction era integrated churches built upon relationships forged in the antebellum context.

Despite this kinship, as the church accommodated owners of enslaved persons by making room in the house of God for the institution of enslavement, the church simultaneously was sullying the bride of Christ and tarnishing its ability to speak or act against racial injustice. Southern Presbyterians believed Page 128 →that the church was the “bride of Christ.” It was the job of Southern Presbyterian Christians to care for that bride, steward her, and present her as a “spotless and stainless offering” back to the Lord Jesus upon his return. Therefore it would be very strange to see a Presbyterian going to such great lengths to make changes to this bride to force her to fit into and accommodate the systems of the world. By forcing the bride to accept worldly institutions (like American enslavement), southern shepherds contributed to a “sullying” of the white dress of the bride of Christ.

This “sullying” was also indicative of the ways in which human greed was brought into the life of the church. The nineteenth-century southern Presbyterian church acted as if this command to enslave based on one’s race came from Jesus, the Bible, or church history. It did not. Jesus was also very clear about the “sullying” of his bride. Upon entering Jerusalem Jesus overturned the money changers’ tables. In Matthew 21, verse 13 he said, “‘It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”⁵⁵ A church filled with enslavers and enslaved people meant that enslavers purchased men and women who were stolen, which the Old Testament law had made illegal in Exodus 21:16: “Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death.” This meant that the church in Charleston was not a house of prayer but a den of robbers. The very nature of Zion itself, a church for the enslaved, who were stolen, and that was created by enslavers, was a violation of God’s law and condemned by the Bible. In turning over the tables of the money changers Jesus was speaking directly to those who sought to make a profit and used the church as a space to expand those profits at the expense of his flock.

The racial ramifications of these Southern Presbyterian shepherds’ decisions would be felt into Jim Crow segregation, the civil rights movement, and the twenty-first century. Southern Presbyterians sanctioned racial separation, White control, and White violence through lynching and continued to deny civic rights to African American citizens all in the name of protecting their own political power, profits, and status. They would use the “spirituality of the church” doctrine as theological cover. This began in the early nineteenth century with the argument for slave missions and the practical creation of slave missions’ churches as a response to abolitionism. Southern Presbyterians argued that slave missions were the best way to justify American enslavement as a biblically sanctioned institution.

In doing this the church aligned, supported, and gave approval to the entire system of American enslavement and made room for it to exist as a sanctioned Page 129 →relationship within the church. The church created separate memberships, offices, church structures, catechisms, and processes specifically to accommodate enslavement. The church created a second-class membership status for enslaved African Americans that did not include all the privileges of White church members. The church bestowed a sense of holiness upon White members and pastors who participated in these missions thereby assuaging, rather than challenging, the consciences of their members toward the institution of enslavement in America. On the contrary those who challenged enslavement received an apostate’s insignia.

However due to his antebellum ministry experience Girardeau was more adequately prepared to promote greater ecclesiastical equalities for freedmen after the Civil War and into Reconstruction. Not just Girardeau’s antebellum work but also his postbellum work had a lasting impact on the African American ecclesiastical community in Charleston. While many of Girardeau’s contemporary southerners fought integration, African American ecclesiastical leadership, and the rights of the newly freed people after the Civil War from 1866 to 1874, Girardeau was willing to work for the expanded ecclesiastical rights of African American freed persons in the confines of one of the last White-controlled institutions in South Carolina during Reconstruction: the church.