Page 72 →Page 73 →Chapter 3“To and Fro Like a Forest in a Storm”

Antebellum Missionary Activity in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, 1829–47

By 1850, many recognized Reverend Charles Colcock Jones for his work regarding the religious instruction of enslaved African Americans. Historian Donald Mathews once linked him with northern abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison noting, “Both devoted their lives to the problem of black-white relationships. They developed, however, in different ways. Garrison personified the northern abolitionist movement; Jones represented the southern Christian mission to the slaves.”¹ Missions to enslaved persons and especially mission work in the Tidewater regions of the South Carolina Lowcountry must begin with an understanding of Charles Colcock Jones and his work along the Georgia coast.

Jones was exposed to the philosophy of anti-enslavement and emancipation while attending Andover Seminary in Massachusetts and later at Princeton. Jones’s experiences as an impressionable youth in a northern, free society, along with his Presbyterian roots informed his style of “slave missions” work. Indeed Mathews noted that Jones’s ideology of missions to enslaved persons gave rise to “a long controversy about the emancipationist implications of Evangelicalism” in the surrounding lowlands of Georgia and South Carolina.² In this space while the emancipationist implications of missions to the enslaved were, in any civic sense, nonexistent, there were examples of ecclesiastical opportunities that served as a impactful force in enslaved African American communities toward expanded freedoms. However what could have served as a liberating force to enslaved African Americans, the Jones model would be used to continue to monitor, observe, and control African American communities, limiting the verbiage on freedom, and emphasizing the language on submission and obedience to white masters. It would be yet another symptom of a disease that had infected Christendom across the US South. Southern Christian missionaries were willing to allow enslaved Page 74 →African Americans to be free spiritually, but they were never willing to grant any kind of cultural, social, political, economic or ultimately even ecclesiastical equality.

This makes the idea of a “slave mission” church, biblically and confessionally speaking, an unorthodox appendage to American Christianity in the US South. In a sense what Jones and other missionaries argued was that enslaved people are humans and have souls. They can be admitted into the church as members and brothers and sisters in Christ. However because of their race and their status as property, they can never have any kind of freedom or autonomy outside of their bondage to their earthly master. This would run headlong into Jesus’s admonition that one cannot serve two masters. For missionaries to the enslaved, the ultimate allegiance for the enslaved in this life was to their earthly master. An enslaved person could give their soul to God, but not anything else. According to proslavery Christianity, after the church service, the soul, to the enslaved, became almost an appendage one might detach and disconnect from anything connected to the world. This also ran counter to historic Christianity and its teachings. If anything of the soul picked up at the mission ran counter to the institution of slavery than it was to be swiftly cut down.

Therefore southern missionary shepherds had let the wolves of economic, political, cultural, and social practice prey upon their flock and inform, as well as undergird, their exegesis and its exposition. Rather than protect and defend the flock these shepherds gave their sheep over to have their marriages torn apart, their children sold away, and their members dehumanized. The savage wolves who promoted the institution of enslavement by purchasing, selling, and expanding enslavement used these shepherds to better control their prey, and the shepherds led their sheep like lambs to the slaughter.

Southern Presbyterians were aware of northern abolitionism and the arguments made by northern pastors on the issues of enslavement. Mathews described Jones’s experiences at Andover noting, “insurrection and abolitionism joined with a national impulse for reform to provide an audience for a man who hoped to save his country and soul by persuading his fellow southerners to create a biracial community based upon Christian precepts.”³ By 1845, Liberty County, Georgia, contained “5,493 slaves, 24 free blacks, and 1,854 whites,” the enslaved Africans outnumbering the Whites almost three to one.⁴ Liberty County, a coastal portion of southeast Georgia, consisted mostly of rice plantations. This meant seasons of malaria and White planter absence for extended periods to escape disease and to partake of social activities closer to cities. Page 75 →While biracial congregations did exist, they were a different kind of mission church than the two in the South Carolina Backcountry and western frontier.

Those in power in the mission churches recognized a kind of functional Docetism, which was the idea that Jesus only appeared to have a human body. The repercussions of this teaching, which was considered heresy in the early church, was that the body was not spiritual and the things of the world were not holy, on the things of the spirit. Within the church, the souls of enslaved African Americans were sacred, but not their bodies. For Jones and others following in his footsteps, “slave missions” would serve as a kind of experiment in both justifying enslavement and attempting to evangelize the enslaved. These missions would simultaneously salve the conscience of the holder of enslaved persons by pursuing the owner’s eternal obligation while justifying the in-human treatment of the enslaved’ s finite existence. Liberty Country therefore would not so much serve as a “biracial community based in Christian precepts” as much as it was an experiment in control, the exertion of power, and spiritual dominance using Christianity as a vehicle to provide a veneer of evangelism while furthering the economic goals of the master class. Jones’s community would use nineteenth-century racial categories to inform ecclesiastical polity, membership, and roles of Whites and African Americans in the church. The institution of enslavement in the US South controlled how southern White Christians and the mission church thought about, preached on, and justified American enslavement and how only African Americans were uniquely situated for such a system.

Born in 1804, Jones began interacting with coastal enslaved African American populations at a young age, raised in “a slaveholding family whose religious inheritance was the stern moral discipline of Presbyterianism.”⁵ After Jones converted to Christianity in his teenage years he became increasingly concerned with the enslaved African American’s condition and determined to work in some way to address that condition.⁶ However as one Liberty County citizen wrote regarding the sentiment among planters, “Here generally speaking, it really appears as if to ‘make cotton to buy Negroes, and buy Negroes to make cotton’ is the dearest wish of their hearts, the sole employment of their noblest faculties. But this is human nature!”⁷ Raised in this context Jones would go to seminary but also recognize that the context of holding of enslaved persons and the grip that the institution of enslavement had on the people of Liberty County would require some finesse as he would move home and begin his ministry. Jones’s family owned 941 acres on a plantation called Montevideo, Page 76 →which included rice and a coastal cotton plantation employing over one hundred enslaved African Americans.⁸

This was an important aspect of Jones’s missions work. The owners of enslaved persons of Liberty County saw him as one of their own. Indeed he could move in separate spheres of influence and gain the trust of owners of enslaved persons, while simultaneously having access to enslaved populations for ministerial purposes. This would prove important to his work as planters were especially cautious of northern abolitionism and interpretations of the Bible deeming enslavement as sinful. In the minds of Liberty County planters, Jones would be undoing his own livelihood by interpreting the Bible with such a hermeneutic. However Jones’s ministry was also allowing the weight of the institution of enslavement to push his biblical and confessional commitment to his “flock.” The concerns of the peculiar institution and the financial concerns of planters would override the concerns of the enslaved. Finally the concerns and preferences of a enslaved-person-owning society would drive the ways in which Christian missions functioned in Liberty County. It would cause Jones to be creative with ecclesiology and biblical passages on the imago dei, which would lead to imbibing of a kind of modern American form of functional Docetism in its Christian practice.⁹ This kind of view would have been necessary for instance if Jones taught his congregants that their spirits or their souls were free, but nothing within their human existence could ever experience freedom or autonomy. For Jones and other missionaries to enslaved persons enslaved people’s obedience and loyalty were to their earthly masters before their church or their vows as church members. In short the church played a secondary role to the institution of enslavement and followed its lead.

Because enslavement was so engrained in the landscape and the mental calculus of men and women at this time Jones and other missionaries could twist the scriptures in an acceptable manner to meet the needs of the “peculiar institution” and those who controlled it, making sure Christianity did not disrupt the driving power structure. This kind of manipulation of scriptures would certainly not have been allowed by a nineteenth-century presbytery in teaching the Ten Commandments or the Trinity. However when it came to passages like Exodus 21:16 (“Whoever steals a man and sells him, and anyone found in possession of him, shall be put to death”) missionaries to enslaved persons could gloss over these passages, negate them, dismiss them, or do the theological gymnastics necessary to display how verses like this supported the system. If the distortion of scripture served the purposes of the owners of enslaved persons, then the contortions were acceptable. If exegesis of biblical Page 77 →texts challenged the power structure or the wealth of enslavers, then such notions were swiftly cut down.

While studying at seminary Jones’s letters home showed an individual wrestling with much conflict over the peculiar institution.¹⁰ Mathews has described these letters as “contrapuntal themes, the divine imperative of moral self-discipline, and the ‘curse’ of slavery. The first theme was common among young southern clergymen in the nineteenth century, but the second was quite uncommon, seldom appearing except as an anguished prayer of confession.”¹¹ For instance Jones seemed embarrassed by his home state in comparison to the North, a place he had come to admire. He mentioned this sentiment in a letter to his fiancée, “Were you my dear to reside a few months only in a free community you would see more clearly than you now do the evil of slavery. There is calmness, an order, a morality, a general sentiment of right and wrong which is not to be looked for in ours.”¹²

Later, Jones founded the “‘Society of Enquiry Concerning Africans,’ before which he delivered a paper urging the establishment of missions to the slaves in Georgia.”¹³ It was perhaps at this point that missions for enslaved persons for Jones became something distinct from what a contemporary southern holder of enslaved persons might have imagined. If enslavers allowed missions for enslaved persons to occur, then it was only to better control the enslaved or as a justification to northern abolitionists of benevolent treatment of enslaved persons. There could be genuine concern over the spiritual station of the enslaved, but that spiritual station should never work to challenge the institution of enslavement, only enforce it. In letters from seminary, it seems that Jones had given much thought to the missionizing of enslaved persons, far beyond the rationale. Indeed, “for some time he (Jones) had been struggling with this issue [enslavement] and an appropriate Christian response to it.”¹⁴ Jones seemed to be testing the waters of his thought process in letters to loved ones. Writing again to his fiancée, Jones was careful to note that enslavement “is a violation of all the laws of God and man at once. A complete annihilation of justice. An inhuman abuse of power.”¹⁵

How truly did these letters to his fiancée reflect Jones’s position? Mathews argued, “Brave words from a pious young man to his fiancée are a special kind of expression. In the early nineteenth century, they were often the exaggerated manifestation of romantic yearnings and were designed to demonstrate the moral sensitivity of the writer.” Mathews went on to display how this argument did not convince him regarding Jones’s expressions. “The austere and intense Jones, however, was not posturing for his lady, whom he had known since Page 78 →they were children. He was genuinely disturbed by the differences between the two sections and their citizens.”¹⁶ Supporting this claim Jones later wrote that “northerners ask favors, southerners demand service,” which Jones accredited to the existence of enslavement.¹⁷ It is clear that Jones was thinking and discerning the appropriateness of the institution of enslavement and the Christian response to it in distinct ways, which were informed by an abolitionist culture and a context removed from the institution.

Jones was torn between a variety of competing ideologies. His newfound sense of the benefits of freedom, his conscience, southern order, a love for his home and family, and his understanding of the state of enslaved African Americans all weighed on him. Indeed Jones would later boldly declare, “What I would not give if our family were not freed of this property and removed beyond its influence.”¹⁸ He even resolved in a letter to his fiancée that he would “postpone their marriage until he could make a living without depending on slave labor.”¹⁹ Further in an ideological departure from the southern planter class he penned these words in 1830:

It is high time that our country was taking some measures of some sort, whose ultimate tendency shall be the emancipation of nearly three millions of men, women & children, who are held in the grossest bondage, and with the highest injustice. And where are the men to devise and execute these measures? No where.²⁰

After completing seminary, Jones decided to come back and live in Liberty County, Georgia. He was drawn to minister among the enslaved populations in the South of whom he believed “are held in the grossest bondage, and with the highest injustice.” By 1830, Jones had decided not only to minister to the enslaved, but to do something to alleviate the horrific conditions of the institution. He again wrote to Mary conflicted that he was not sure about this return to Georgia. However he finally concluded that he would “endeavor to do what I can for [blacks] there . . . or devote myself at once to them, in some special efforts in connection with the colonization society.”²¹ Jones contemplated emancipating his own enslaved persons, but realized this would ruin his ability to minister among enslaved populations and would likely bring financial ruin. In the end Jones felt that he could do more for the enslaved populations in Liberty County by submitting to the acceptable societal norms concerning the institution while attempting to mollify the effect on enslaved African Americans within his spheres of influence. He wrote, “There have been many ministers who have ruined their influence and usefulness in the southern states, by Page 79 →injudicious speech and conduct in regard to the slaves and the general subject of slavery.”²²

However after going home to Georgia, he would find a system so entrenched that even the slightest challenge to it would bring swift retribution. Missionaries to enslaved persons before Jones only asserted enslaved persons’ submission to their masters. One example of missionaries in Georgia was the prominent Bryan family. As John Boles asserted this family “undertook to promote Christianity among their own and neighboring slaves, but they did so in such a way as to support the institution of slavery.” Indeed one abolitionist who lived among missionaries to enslaved persons in the South for several decades, avowed, “I solemnly affirm that during the forty years of my residence [in the South] . . . I never heard a sermon to slaves but what made obedience to masters by the slaves the fundamental and supreme law of religion.” Jones warned “that the slaves saw through and resented these lectures. He advised preachers to the Negroes to concentrate on parables, historical events, biographies, and expositions of the more important biblical verses.”²³ Jones’s idea was not simply to buttress the “peculiar institution” through preaching on texts with the theme “Slaves, obey your masters” but to teach from other passages in the Bible.

This context reflects the early to mid-nineteenth century coastal Lowlands of Georgia and South Carolina regarding the region’s views on enslavement. The fact that a young seminarian was convinced of the truth of American enslavement being unacceptable to a Christian but was unable to ever utter such a phrase publicly, as it would have “ruined” his influence is telling with regard to the strong grip that the institution of enslavement had in this region. Further it displayed the variety of ways in which missionaries to enslaved persons accommodated the culture in order to make enslavement fit within a biblical worldview that could be applied to the southern, slaveholding landscape. Here we see that the shepherds not only allowed the savage wolves of greed and racism to come in and ravage the flock, but they also looked to an exposition of scripture that would justify their system and emphasized texts like Ephesians 6:5 in order to do so. Therefore missionaries to enslaved persons like Jones and those who would follow in his wake were in a dangerous position of being influenced so tremendously by the cultural, political, and economic sway of the region that they freely gave over orthodox teaching, biblical fidelity, and their own consciences on American enslavement to be accepted.

It is likely that if Jones had come back to Georgia, emancipated his enslaved persons, and spoken as an advocate for abolitionism, arguing that southern enslavement was human stealing and thus sinful he might have been Page 80 →imprisoned or perhaps killed. Survival would have been difficult in Georgia for the Andover-trained Jones, and he would have suffered the same fate as other idealistic southern ministers who “had tried emancipating their slaves with unfortunate results.”²⁴ Jones therefore resolved to keep his private beliefs from becoming public, and he would work within the institution of enslavement without challenging enslavement outright. Jones would minister to enslaved people and to their enslavers.

In taking this route Jones and other missionaries moving into the middle of the nineteenth century would teach a religion that allowed one part of his flock to ravage the other. The Christians in the US South who were pro-enslavement and used the Bible to defend enslavement were ravaging their own flocks like wolves. In Matthew chapter 7:15, right after teaching about the Golden Rule, Jesus warns his disciples to “beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.”²⁵ It seems that wolves in sheep’s clothing were prominent in the Presbyterian landscape of the nineteenth-century Georgia and South Carolina Lowlands. The pro-enslavement wolves came into the church and destroyed flock after flock, and the southern shepherds allowed it to happen. Rather than defending slave marriages the shepherds were overwhelmed by wolves who sought to divide families and sell husbands and wives away for profit. Rather than defending enslaved children, which should have been the shepherd’s highest calling, they allowed them to be sold away from their parents. Time and time again southern shepherds allowed greed-filled ravenous wolves to come among their flocks and devour.

As a minister with a long career ahead of him Jones moved cautiously. Those who were planning on successful careers in ministry, especially to enslaved African Americans, throughout the antebellum South had to be extremely careful in order to, in Janet Cornelius’s words, preserve “the best interests of the colored population and the approbations of the whites.”²⁶ Hence upon Jones’s arrival home, he endeavored to become the model prototypical southern, planter-class owner of enslaved persons, and lived the life of a planter’s son while simultaneously earning the trust of his neighbors who owned enslaved persons. After moving South Jones was careful not to use the same language he had used in letters while living in New England. To be sure he must have recognized immediately that the views of enslavement’s positive good in Low-country Georgia would have been overwhelming. Certainly like many shepherds he would have to make calculated decisions about which sins he would comment on and which sins would go unaddressed.

Page 81 →The fulfillment of Jones’s plan came, as Mathews asserted, “at the end of a severe internal struggle, during which he put down on paper carefully and quite self-consciously a condemnation of slavery as an exploitative and dehumanizing system. He knew, therefore, that he must as a morally responsible person fight against it.”²⁷ His “fight” was not always public and was not necessarily forthright. In many ways Jones worked from inside an immoral southern slavocracy, and in seeking to save the souls of enslaved African Americans he often overlooked their earthly suffering. He would robe himself in the codes of the slavocracy, its inner circles, its form of conduct and affectations. He himself would become a kind of wolf in wolves’ clothing. He tried to find a way to shepherd a flock and seek opportunities to promote expanded ecclesiastical opportunities for the enslaved while the wolves would feast. His inward desires were never fully presented to the wolves and resigned to do what he could from within.

As Jones engaged southern society he seemed to fit into John Boles’s model of southern missionaries operating within the framework of a “limited emancipationist impulse.” This emancipationist impulse was not overtly public or political. This impulse would come from within an ecclesiastical context. Jones would have to show his southern neighbors that if enslaved African Americans were equal “in God’s eyes” and “in the eyes of the church,” then perhaps enhanced ecclesiastical opportunities would help display the humanity of enslaved people. As Eugene Genovese had written, “virtually all [slave-owners] insisted that freedom and moral progress had to be understood not simply as the product of recent political developments, but rooted in Christianity.”²⁸ For Jones perhaps by working in the church the enslaved African American member could display to southern enslavers that Christian faith, membership in the household of faith, and moral progress could alleviate the ravaging.

Other historians have hinted at the seemingly controversial nature of Charles C. Jones’s work to raise the ecclesiastical status among enslaved African Americans. Erskine Clarke, in his portrait of Charles Colcock Jones entitled Wrestlin’ Jacob, argued, “If he were not to pursue his anti-slavery sentiments, he could take another path, he could turn to these black people in the hope of bringing them the gospel and elevating their conditions in the midst of slavery.”²⁹ Janet Cornelius has described Charles C. Jones among other “genteel missionaries” as embracing “slave missions as a way to work through the contradictions in their lives and at the same time pursue their benevolent and spiritual goals.”³⁰ Donald G. Mathews avowed:

Page 82 →All these pieces were fitted by the diminutive young man into a mosaic of Christian responsibility, which in turn was laid into the framework of his own social and personal inheritance of slavery. Why he brooded so intently over the problem is impossible to say. But throughout his life there seemed to be a special relationship between himself and blacks—a sense of obligation which he never quite wished to be free of. Somehow he knew as a young man entering his lifework that he must fight against slavery to destroy it; that is what he said.³¹

Men like Charles C. Jones occupied a place within the range of individuals engaged in missions to enslaved persons that accommodated the culture of the landscape.³² Jones was helping to perpetuate the institution of enslavement but also attempting to infuse measured ecclesiastical reform while simultaneously keeping his position in the slavocracy firmly intact. It was Jones’s hope that over time these expanded ecclesiastical roles would produce change in the southern landscape perhaps destroying it slowly from within. Jones’s fiancée Mary touched on this seemingly contradictory and difficult position in her description of Jones stating that she was “disturbed by Charles’ outcries about slavery.” Indeed, she displayed an attraction to Jones because of his ambivalence toward enslavement believing that he was different from all the men that she knew who only “made cotton to buy negroes and bought negroes to make cotton.” “Mary realized that Charles used his letters to her as a sounding board for exploration of new ideas, but his emotional condemnation of slavery was different from his other reform enthusiasms,” and “it revealed a deeply held emotion that was so dangerous that it could not have been expressed in Georgia.”³³ Mary would likely have been concerned for her own, her husband’s, and their children’s well-being if Jones pushed too far.

Jones preached and ministered to the enslaved peoples of the Georgia Low-country for the next fifteen years of his life. Establishing the Association for the Religious Instruction of Slaves was his first task. This association became the first model for a consortium of missions to enslaved persons throughout the South and was at the time the only organization of its kind. Jones was invited to attend meetings and gatherings across the South to help instruct other missionaries and ministers in the finer points of Christianizing the enslaved. Jones’s catechization and instruction of enslaved African Americans was mostly through oral repetition, voluntary from the community, and for the most part White-led. He encouraged masters to be more involved in the religious instruction of their enslaved persons, to improve their physical estate, Page 83 →and to treat their enslaved persons more humanely in accordance with biblical teaching. Jones even created a nondenominational catechism for enslaved persons entitled Catechism of Scripture Doctrine and Practice, which enslavers and missionaries across the South used in an oral call-and-response method.³⁴ Jones also authored The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States, which gained wide circulation and remained the model on the subject until 1865.³⁵

Jones also implemented a “station model” in missions to enslaved persons. These models became laboratories “in which he could test his theories about reshaping slaves according to a Christian view of human destiny.”³⁶ He would attend various plantations or “stations” in Liberty County and at these “stations,” with the permission of the planter or overseer, Jones would find a place where he could address the enslaved; give them religious instruction; preach to them from a sermon he had carefully constructed; and then conduct worship with hymns, prayers, and supplication.³⁷ One author noted, “Three separate houses of worship, located at convenient points, were built for their exclusive use. Every Sunday, at an early hour, Dr. Jones mounted his horse and rode to one of these churches. From all of the neighboring plantations the servants came in crowds, men, women and children.”³⁸

Although Jones performed much of the teaching and preaching, he also thought that having enslaved African American preachers was an important form of the mission work. This was a unique departure from the typical plantation experience described in Albert Raboteau’s “Invisible Institution,” in which enslaved preachers only taught under the cover of darkness and in hiding. Jones “vigorously championed the formal use of unlicensed, untrained Negro ‘exhorters’ as supplementary preachers,” and he pointed out that “numerous black preachers serviced plantations and many of them did a good job.”³⁹ Jones was aware of the important position these preachers already held in the enslaved community, and recognizing their skill and spiritual impact he provided important leadership roles within his own “stations” to more effectively serve the enslaved flock.

Jones’s acknowledgment of enslaved pastor leadership abilities and gifts as preachers showed his belief that these individuals were not mere chattel property but human beings and human beings who were capable of literacy, teaching, spiritual oversight, and leadership. These African American shepherds certainly did not let savage wolves come in among them. They preached that the enslaved were “God’s people” and they were God’s children. These Page 84 →preachers refused to let the savage pro-enslavement wolves come in among the flock and say that African Americans occupied an inferior role in the church. These were the best of the southern missionaries, and like the African American preachers and exhorters at the Monroe Mission their very presence and work displayed the false premise undergirding the institution of enslavement: that enslaved people were chattel property. Property cannot preach.

Jones also employed what he called “watchmen” from among the enslaved African Americans to serve the various stations. It was the duty of the “watchmen” to “lead the assembly in prayer” and “made reports to the pastor with reference to the conduct of the church members on various plantations.”⁴⁰ Thus enslaved African Americans were proving more and more to Jones that they were capable of leadership, teaching, and management and therefore were not meant for enslavement. This spiritual overseer was responsible for guiding the souls of the enslaved parishioners in Jones’ absence. This construction, which also existed on the plantation apart from the church structure, might have served the same purpose as a “trusted” field worker given a special level of autonomy by enslavers in exchange for information or knowledge about the activities of the enslaved. However the “watchmen” in Jones’s model seem to have been appointed or recommended by the enslaved African American membership and possessed spiritual qualities that provided them with a level of trust by the membership.

Further, Jones believed in preserving slave marriages and instructed the White planters in his community to keep enslaved families intact. However his words would accomplish nothing without action by enslavers. He wrote that “masters should guarantee the integrity of black families by requiring formal weddings and refusing to separate parents and children and also by counseling those with marital difficulties and providing separate accommodations for privacy.” Additionally Jones was able to make great strides toward keeping slave families together and “came down especially hard against the disruption of family ties.”⁴¹ To support their families Jones “suggested that slaves be encouraged to grow their own crops.”⁴² Jones also performed many weddings for enslaved people on his own and neighboring plantation stations. An advocate for keeping enslaved families together Jones displayed his belief in the dignity of commitments that enslaved men and women made toward one another. This was yet another subtle assertion that human beings were not meant to be treated as property and were not fit for enslavement. However while Jones argued for this practice he was ultimately unable to prevent an owner of enslaved persons from selling away a wife from her husband or separating children from Page 85 →their parents. Moral suasion could only go so far. The shepherd could merely scream in the wolf’s direction while he watched the wolf ravage his flock.

In a departure from Georgia slave codes and despite the legal and social prohibitions of teaching enslaved persons to read Jones made his preferences clear to some White church members that he wanted to teach enslaved African Americans to read. Later he remarked to a friend named John Cocke, who had trained an enslaved African American female to read the Bible, “it is not every owner who would feel either at liberty, or willing to adopt this plan; but it is said to work well, and to be productive of good results.”⁴³ Jones’s enslaved congregants appreciated these characteristics about the missionary as Genovese noted: “The slaves knew that many of these white preachers cared about them. The Reverend C.C. Jones wore himself out in pursuit of the religious instruction of the blacks, as he called it.”⁴⁴ While there is evidence of private correspondence in the Jones record, it is hard to find any public exhortations that the enslaved should be taught to read.

When speaking to enslavers Jones emphasized the duties of the master to the enslaved persons rather than the enslaved persons’ duties to the master. For instance in 1833 Jones wrote the following to the Synod of South Carolina: “Religion will tell the master that his servants are his fellow-creatures, and that he has a master in heaven to whom he shall account for his treatment of them.”⁴⁵ These statements were no doubt unsettling in the sense that Jones implied a heavenly equality of the enslaved African American to the master. Jones also seemed to imply that poor treatment of enslaved African Americans would result in an “account” made to God, who viewed these men and women as made in the imago dei. This statement implied that owners of enslaved persons were eternally culpable in some way for their actions regarding the treatment of the enslaved.

Another example of Jones’s perspective of missions to the enslaved can be found in the subjects of his sermons. Jones preferred to teach the entire biblical narrative as opposed to particular passages focusing on enslaved persons’ duty to their master. He focused on texts relating to the salvation of the soul, spiritual freedom, and eternal liberation. He also preached to the enslaved in a context meant specifically for enslaved people, thus personalizing the message to his audience rather than preaching to White members with enslaved African Americans on the periphery. Jones also tended to stay away from “slaves obey your masters” passages except for once.⁴⁶ When he did preach on this text once it was to the immense displeasure of his audience who proclaimed, “that cannot be the gospel” and half the audience got up and left.⁴⁷ He recalled, Page 86 →“Some solemnly declared that there was no such epistle in the Bible,’ others ‘that they did not care’ if they ever heard me preach again.”⁴⁸ Jones never forgot this incident, and he learned rather quickly that he could not preach this text to an enslaved African American audience. He realized that “these black slaves had a theological perspective to stand over against the whites.” Jones’s recognition of theological disagreement and his willingness to listen and understand why an African American audience would rebuke this preaching is telling. He was mindful of the theological acumen of his audience and even contemplated his approach to biblical exposition when preaching to the enslaved. Further his willingness to learn from the protest was a point of recognition that enslaved African American members of the flock possessed their own agency and could decipher which was the true gospel and which was not.⁴⁹

Jones’s enslaved congregants took their own theological positions and were encouraged to read, partake in leadership opportunities, and engage in ecclesiastical life. In addition Jones displayed to a wider southern audience that enslaved African Americans were human beings capable of spiritual and theological reflection as well as leadership. Enslavers, including Jones himself, were forced to contemplate how one could go on justifying a slave as inhuman and property if he or she possessed spiritual and theological acumen. Jones wrestled with this question and through his life and work brought it to the forefront of consideration for individuals throughout the South. However it must be acknowledged that Jones continued to let the pro-enslavement position drive the treatment of enslaved people and not this theological conviction.

What made Jones such an important figure in the history of missions to enslaved persons was the creation and implementation of a new system. Jones was able to create a vocational sphere that simultaneously eased his conscience about the horrors of the institution and allowed him to work within the institution of enslavement by offering measured ecclesiastical opportunities to enslaved African Americans while also perpetuating their dehumanization as enslaved chattel property. He did this while also maintaining social respectability and the support of enslavers. One scholar put it this way: “All the important people in Jones’s life reinforced his decision to compromise his actions against the evils of slavery for what he had considered a greater benevolent good. Jones chose a path of lesser resistance.” Indeed Cornelius made the argument that by “pledging his life to slave missions, he was able to advance his personal well-being.”⁵⁰ Through this approach Jones was not only able to assuage his conscience and fulfill his seminarian ideals, but he was also able to carve out for himself status and honor in southern society while never really Page 87 →challenging the status quo. John Boles supported this line of reasoning with the assertion that missionaries to enslaved persons “understood the realities of the economic and social-control imperatives of the institution and occasionally stated explicitly that if they boldly attacked slavery, they would not be allowed to preach to the blacks, thereby–by their lights–causing the unfortunate bondspeople not to hear the gospel.”⁵¹

Further as Mathews avowed, “Then the problem had been slavery and the solution, emancipation; but prudence and piety altered his goal. The missionary ideal was not to challenge social systems but to transform individuals.” Indeed “the brave words and bold expectations of his younger years were tempered by the experience of multiplying responsibilities and subtle social interaction.”⁵² Jones chose the path of least resistance. By choosing this path he continued to allow wolves to ravage the flock of God. Unlike the Covenanter Presbyterians of the Upcountry of South Carolina Jones and the Lowcountry Georgia missionaries fully supported enslavement in America as an acceptable form of property ownership, labor, and means to profit.

This conflict in Jones’s life displayed the complexity, varying interests, and disparate degrees to which missionaries to enslaved persons perceived their tasks. “He frequently spoke of affection between the two races and was sinfully proud of his special relationship with black parishioners.”⁵³ His life exhibited the divergence that some southern missionaries felt toward enslavement, and it further displayed one missionary’s attempt at something resembling Boles’s notion of possessing a “limited emancipationist impulse.” For Jones the world “limited” in “limited emancipationist impulse” became a reality as Mathews noted: “The institution that had to be destroyed became one that might be destroyed; it then became a perpetual apprenticeship in civilization for blacks.” Yet still “in his letters, especially as he railed against the helplessness of pious young black women before their white seducers, he revealed that he understood personally what ideologically he could not admit.”⁵⁴ Ultimately Jones chose accommodation, and the people he was called to shepherd suffered multiple attacks from the wolves in their midst.

Historians like John Boles and Donald Mathews have categorized Presbyterian missionaries to enslaved persons as significantly less successful than Baptist missionaries, William Capers’s Methodists, and William Meade’s Episcopalian counterparts, largely due to the numbers of participants in mission churches. They described Presbyterians as “disproportionately wealthy” and were said to have fewer African American congregants than other Protestant denominations. While Presbyterian numbers were lower across the board and Page 88 →located in a variety of settings “they tended to minister to blacks by providing them special ministers and separate accommodations.”⁵⁵

It may be a fallacy to categorize missionary “success” in terms of numbers of participants. Could there be anything resembling “success” in human enslavement? The content of the missionary’s message might be as important as the numbers that listened. The impact of a missionary who was presenting a model of expanded ecclesiastical opportunity, as opposed to a missionary who reminded enslaved people to obey their enslavers might have possessed a broader impact in terms of preaching efficacy. It was the Presbyterians, through Jones, who started and produced this distinct type of “missions to the slaves” that created and defined a new category for attempting to understand southern domestic missions.

Presbyterians approached missions in a new way and it “motivated some [Presbyterian missionaries to enslaved persons] to devise ways to bring the gospel message to their blacks” and “the Presbyterian church was to remain relatively small but influential beyond its numbers.”⁵⁶ What could have been influential beyond numbers was the way in which Presbyterians applied theological training to educational opportunities within missions to enslaved persons contexts. The use of catechisms, ecclesiological training, and the focus on learning Christianity in a systematic fashion were common. Whatever impact this might have had was corrupted through a synthetic weaving together of Christianity with national and regional interests in enslavement and the wealth it provided. Different catechisms existed for Whites and African Americans, different levels of memberships existed for Whites and African Americans, and White members were allowed to read while enslaved African Americans were largely prohibited from doing so. To truly be effective, the mission churches might have provided educational opportunities beyond recitation and preaching. However property holding trumped biblical conviction and overcame the bonds of a familial and spiritual membership tie. Missionaries to enslaved persons like Jones accommodated the southern way of life, the economic systems that supported it, and let enslavers ravage the flocks.

There are similarities in comparing Methodist, Episcopal, and Baptist missions to enslaved persons to the Presbyterian form, but there are also important distinctions, especially in the Lowcountry of Georgia and South Carolina. In Charleston, South Carolina, for instance, the Presbyterians not only enjoyed the largest congregation of enslaved African Americans in the state, but also remained influential in education, expanded ecclesiastical opportunities, and maintained a biracial religious community beyond the Civil War.⁵⁷ Given the Page 89 →attention historians have paid to the mission efforts of Methodists and Baptists it is telling that the “Father of Slave Missions” and “Apostle to the Negroes,” the creator of the first organization and book outlining Religious Instruction and Catechism for Slaves, and the largest church building for enslaved African Africans (Zion Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina) were Presbyterian initiatives. Further it was Jones “who was the chief theorist of the entire movement; his book was its Bible, his catechism its guidebook, his country the ideal community, his theory the best articulated hope of evangelicals who wished to reshape their society.” All of this while the “Methodist missions spread beyond the South Carolina conference which had spawned them, and as Baptists, Episcopalians wrote to him for advice.”⁵⁸ However the Bible, the catechism, and systematic theological rigor could not shake the bedrock of the institution of enslavement in the southern ecclesiastical landscape.

As Jones was acutely aware “even good, Christian folk seemed to like the idea of the mission better than the work itself; the prejudices against the blacks were too great, the ‘common sense’ observations of black ignorance and perverseness too close to axioms to transform enough whites, let alone, blacks into people like Charles Colcock Jones.”⁵⁹ The Presbyterian style of missions to enslaved persons through the Jones model engendered a unique brand of missionary. Jones pushed the envelope of southern culture regarding the priority of African Americans in missions to ways in which new missionaries tested innovative methods of missionizing enslaved African Americans along the coast of South Carolina.

Missions to enslaved persons allowed Jones and men like him to retreat from an anti-enslavement position. In many ways these missions were spaces for evangelical Protestants to deal with the guilty conscience of knowing enslavement was wrong, yet not wrong enough to denounce it publicly or become advocates for its abolition. Rather than attempting to change the status quo Jones was helping to absolve owners of enslaved persons and justify their actions. Southern Presbyterian missionaries convinced themselves that the salvation of the soul was their only duty, a kind of functional southern Docetism. They could not be engaged in changing any kind of civic or legal status. This position was undergirded by a doctrine known as the spirituality of the church. It became a dualist framework through which pastors and missionaries could excuse themselves from political engagement and advocacy for enslaved people and would allow them to pursue their vocation with theological cover. This doctrine would go on to have devastating effects in southern Presbyterianism during Jim Crow, the era of lynching, the Civil Rights movement, and even Page 90 →into modern concerns over racial injustice. Presbyterians simply told themselves, “Our only jobs are to deal with the spiritual realms” not the social, cultural, political, or economic realms. If the social, cultural, political, or economic realms included a position that Christians were for or that benefitted Christians, then it was acceptable to preach on the topic. Since so many Christians were invested in enslavement it became a position that most pastors were unwilling to challenge directly from the pulpit.

For Jones and others like him to defy enslavement would have been akin to defying the overwhelming membership, leadership of the church, and most important those who tithed generously. Such was the extent, power, and reach of enslavement. It forced Christians to dilute sound theology, biblical exegesis, ecclesiology, and principles of love and service of one’s neighbors to fit with an entrenched institution based on supposed racial inferiority. The shepherd could not speak against such a behemoth evil and live or maintain a vocation in this space. Many of the church’s members made vast fortunes on the backs of enslaved men and women, many livelihoods were directly dependent on the enslavement of human beings, many children were born through rape and abuse of African American women by White Christian men, and many a tithe came from money earned on the labor of the enslaved. Such a powerful force could not be undone without sacrifice and cost.⁶⁰

If Jones’s letters from Andover were ever made public, then it would surely have meant complete social ostracism and perhaps even death. Historians have touched on this dichotomy as Mathews mentioned: “The South’s Protestantism is seen as something of a problem for its ‘democratic’ qualities, but its effect seems generally to have been to mold the ‘paternalism’ of the master class.”⁶¹ The distinctions and various levels of action between the pro-enslavement missionary, the abolitionist missionary, and the missionary leaning toward a “limited emancipationist impulse” or expanded ecclesiastical opportunities have not been thoroughly uncovered in the historiography of missionaries to enslaved persons. Like all movements whether it was abolitionism or civil rights there were always complexities, individualistic beliefs, various levels of fervency, and vicissitudes in ideologies given the context. Missionaries to enslaved persons and their varying principles of Christianization who attempted ecclesiastical reform or evangelization were no different. There were many shades of the southern domestic missionary, and when individuals are lumped into a generalization about the entire effort it robs us of a fuller understanding. Presbyterian domestic missions display men and women working in these Page 91 →spheres with deeply held personal convictions but without the ability to push back on a culture bent on oppression and brutal treatment of an entire race.

Despite his long labor, Jones never deceived himself into believing that he achieved a biracial ecclesiastical community with any sense of equity. Mathews argued that “had there been thirty thousand Charles Colcock Joneses instead of merely one, his ideas might have begun to change the South significantly, but the thought is pure fantasy.” Instead “it reinforces the hopelessness of Jones’s mission.”⁶² It would take individuals forged in the same fire as Jones to take up the “hopeless” work from the 1830s through the Civil War. While there were not hundreds of Joneses, there were Presbyterian missionaries to enslaved persons in Charleston, South Carolina, who were able to put Jones’s vision, hopes, and dreams for the missionization of enslaved African Americans into further action.

Charles Colcock Jones, the “father of slave missions,” had a tremendous influence on Charleston Presbyterians John Bailey Adger and John Lafayette Girardeau. Not only did Jones visit Charleston on numerous occasions to talk about his work in missions to enslaved persons, but John Adger translated and used Jones’s catechism in his missionary work in Armenia.⁶³ The English model of missions had informed Adger’s mission work and missionary perspective for the enslaved African Americans in Charleston. In England Thomas Chalmers worked with “the vilest portion of Edinburgh’s low and filthy lanes, or Wynds.” After visiting with Chalmers on a trip to England, Adger found the situation with enslaved African Americans in Charleston weighed heavily on his mind throughout 1846 and 1847. Distinct from Jones’s work, in that the mission situation in Charleston was in a more urban context than the Liberty County model, Adger’s idea for a mission to enslaved persons included a separate meeting place or church structure strictly for the use of enslaved African Americans. He found that there was not an appropriate amount of seating for the enslaved throughout churches in the city, and he believed that the members relegated enslaved African Americans to spectator status by forcing them to sit in the galleries.⁶⁴

In 1844, the Reverend Thomas Smyth of Second Presbyterian complained about the gallery in which enslaved people sat during church services.⁶⁵ Later in 1846, about two hundred enslaved African Americans were attending or forced to attend the church. Smyth did recognize “the humanity of his black servants as possessors of the Imago Dei.” He believed that “the Africans deserved humanitarian considerations. Against those insensitive to the needy, he pled for the improvement of the temporal and religious conditions of the Page 92 →slave.”⁶⁶ Smyth was a staunch supporter of Adger, and in conjunction with creating a separate meetinghouse strictly for the purposes of enslaved African Americans, he oversaw the development of sabbath schools for the religious instruction of the enslaved at Second Presbyterian. In an important move toward realizing this vision Smyth asked Adger to outline his own concept for a mission for enslaved persons in Charleston.

Adger deployed his philosophy in a speech made to the congregation of Second Presbyterian in May 1847. He remarked, “Nowhere are the poor so closely and intimately connected with the higher classes as are our poor with us. They belong to us. We also belong to them.” He went on to say that “they are our poor—our poor brethren; children of our God and Father; dear to our Savior; to the like of whom he preached; for the like of whom he died, and to the least of whom every act of Christian compassion and kindness which we show he will consider as shown also to himself.” Erskine Clarke argued that this speech was “perhaps the clearest and most eloquent expression of the paternalism that characterized the Charleston churches in the work among blacks in the city.”⁶⁷ Adger was not saying that the enslaved members were equal in the church to White members for indeed their seating in the balcony displayed their inferior status. On the other hand, creating a separate mission church might do several things for Second Presbyterian Church. First it might remove the presence of enslaved African American people from the church for them to be “out of sight and out of mind” when worshipping. It might also work to the benefit of enslavers to have enslaved persons under the oversight of a White pastor, White session, and organizing structure rather than as mere attendees and spectators. However this might also be a kind of ecclesiastical separation or what was known as “organic separation” that would become fully realized in the highest ecclesiastical courts in 1874.

There also seemed to be a genuine concern for the condition of enslaved people that Adger was attempting to invoke in the consciences of the congregation. While paternalism was certainly a chief component of the speech, there was more going on. Adger and the largely enslaving membership of Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, knew that they had a duty to care for enslaved people and their “poor brethren” among them as the Bible commanded. They also acknowledged that these were “children of God.” Yet to Adger, Smythe, and the membership the enslaved were not full members of the church. Had that been the case then a full status of membership at Second Presbyterian Church would have been offered rather than at a separate “mission” church. The fellow children of God would have been brought into the life Page 93 →of Second Presbyterian Church with full ecclesiastical rights as other members and with duties and oaths that White members took. This was not offered, and the reason is that Adger, Smythe, and the membership never could have accepted an enslaved African American as a “fellow” member who would be equal in status in the life of the church.

For Adger and leading lights at Second Presbyterian church, there needed to be something to signify the spiritual and ecclesiastical worth of the enslaved yet also highlight difference and inferiority. With the church recognizing racial inferiority by seating, a nonmembership status, and a need to later be removed to a “mission church” Adger and Second Presbyterian were signaling to enslavers that the church supported an inferior status of enslaved people and that they should occupy their own spaces with paternalistic oversight. In creating a separate worship space with separate ministers missions to enslaved persons in cities were used to reinforce, rather than challenge, the denigrated ecclesiastical position that enslaved African Americans occupied. In creating these churches and not offering full ecclesiastical rights to enslaved people the church was sanctioning the destruction of the flock rather than advocating for the protection of the weak and vulnerable among them. In creating mission churches for the enslaved the southern Presbyterians took the lead in spiritually sanctioning American enslavement not just theologically but also in an ecclesiological way.

In 1846, the Second Presbyterian Session commissioned Adger to oversee the work of caring for the spiritual needs of the enslaved African Americans of Second Presbyterian.⁶⁸ Similar to how “Charles Jones was a missionary to the plantation slaves under the sponsorship of the Liberty County Association for the Religious Instruction of Negroes, Adger would be a missionary to city blacks under the sponsorship of the session of the Second Presbyterian Church.”⁶⁹ Like Jones, Adger “received no financial support from the sponsor. What he would receive, like Jones, was the necessary approval and supervision from influential whites which would make his work appearing legitimate and acceptable to a suspicious white community.”⁷⁰ Adger’s work was “spiritual” only. To advocate in any way for ecclesiastical equality or full status as members in the church with voting rights or equality with White members would likely have brought destruction of this vision before it even took shape.

In August 1849, the Minutes of Session of Second Presbyterian noted that the “building committee of the Second Presbyterian Church, appointed to erect a building in which religious instruction may be afforded on a better plan than that formerly pursued by us.” However despite some early support Page 94 →many Charleston community members rejected domestic missions work with enslaved African Americans. The Second Presbyterian Session seemed to be aware of this as it mentioned in the minutes “a missionary effort, which it is the duty of the church to enter, and though some difficulties still exist, these, it is hoped, will gradually be removed by Christian zeal, patience, prudence, and perseverance.”⁷¹

One individual wrote letters to the Charleston Mercury’s editor under the pseudonym “Many Citizens.”⁷² The writer described the Anson Street work as a “dark and dangerous movement.”⁷³ He argued that “the blacks would be joined together in an organized society with the right to consult and deliberate and be heard in matters of church government.” He went onto say that “they would develop a spiritual allegiance to the church,” that “they would learn that what they suffer for the church will be a proud distinction,” and “to minds thus matured, what will be the language of the master or the owner.”⁷⁴ The fear of large numbers of enslaved African Americans congregating in a church building was fresh in the minds of Charlestonians, including Adger, who only twenty-five years earlier witnessed the hanging of twenty-one enslaved African Americans, including Denmark Vesey who had been a member at Second Presbyterian Church, after an attempted slave revolt.⁷⁵

Adger as shepherd promptly replied to the concerns that “blacks would always be under the supervision of whites and that the need for a new work was desperate.” These new churches were not havens for biracial Christian community and ecclesiastical equality. They were meant to be spaces of further control, “supervision,” and keeping the enslaved more closely under the eyes of Whites. A shepherd in this context was not a shepherd. His chief functions were watching and rigidly enforcing the will of the pro-enslavement wolves. However even these promises were not enough to cool the heated debate, which became more inflamed by the continued writings of “Many Citizens,” among others.⁷⁶

Charleston at this time was concerned about the possibility of continued slave insurrections. Uprisings of the enslaved, such as Charleston in 1822, Camden in 1816, and even the Stono Rebellion in 1739 were always on fearful enslavers’ minds. Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1831 added much anxiety to an already cautious Charleston community when it discovered that many involved in the Denmark Vesey plot meetings took place at Morris Brown AME Church, where Vesey was also a member. The 1850 census displayed why that caution existed in Charleston, which was 24,580 White, 3,849 free Black, and 44,375 enslaved. Another large church structure built specifically for the instruction Page 95 →of many enslaved African Americans, which could serve as a meeting space for potential insurrectionists, was not something that helped to allay White fears. The shepherds needed to show the wolves how these spaces were ones of control and not liberation.

The Second Presbyterian Session, as well as the Presbytery of Charleston, approved Adger’s plan in May 1847. The plan was unique in that it called for building a separate church for African Americans themselves rather than Jones’s method of visiting the plantation and preaching in modest churches located near the enslaved’s quarters. It was also much different from the predominant slave missions’ model, which allowed enslaved African Americans and free people of color to attend White churches but forced them to sit in the galleries or balconies. In Adger’s mission work, enslaved African Americans were the priority and so were afforded the best seats. In contrast to slave codes and most southern enslavers’ overwhelming belief, Adger favored teaching enslaved African Americans to read and worked to promote the repeal of the law against slave literacy.⁷⁷ While the intent of Adger’s advocacy is debatable, the interest was most surely spiritual. There was no belief that enslaved people needed to read to attend school or to promote their own economic opportunities. This belief was purely for spiritual improvement and with the idea that enslaved people would only read the Bible, catechisms, and spiritual songs or hymns.

Later in June of 1847, what would eventually grow into the Anson Street Mission began first in the basement of a building on Society Street, which was known as the Presbyterian Lecture Hall or Presbyterian Lecture Room. The minutes of session noted that “this Lecture Room was in Society Street, South Side, a few doors from Meeting Street. Here the egg of the church was laid.”⁷⁸ Very small numbers of individuals attended these meetings compared to the numbers of enslaved African Americans who would later attend Zion. Much of the reason for this was John Adger’s failing health; the limited space of the building; and according to the minutes, “the morning being an inconvenient hour for many of the Blacks, that service was attended generally by only forty or fifty people.”⁷⁹ An interesting omission in the session records is that the new mission church did not seem to advocate to the enslaver membership that it allow enslaved people the day off to attend worship. Surely a strictly Sabbatarian church, as many Southern Presbyterian churches were in the nineteenth-century South, would have made sure that the members would be in attendance regularly on Sundays. While the expectation of fulfilling the Fourth Commandment existed for White members, this advocacy was not Page 96 →extended to enslaved African American members, whose labor took priority. The wolves preferred worship and rest for some members of the flock but labor for others at all costs.

Other Charlestonians worried about the numbers of enslaved African Americans who were attending. As a direct result of the Vesey plot, slave codes were strictly enforced regarding the congregating of enslaved African Americans at a given space. Embodying Charlestonians’ fears, a leading attorney in Charleston, Henry DeSaussure, contended that the education of enslaved African Americans should not be permitted, nor should there be separate Black churches.⁸⁰ This made Adger and Second Presbyterian proceed with caution, often writing to the Charleston Mercury to defend their work and assuage the fears of men like DeSaussure, “A Slaveholder,” “Concerned,” and “Many Citizens,” who often wrote to the newspaper with concerns.⁸¹ In easing the fears of Charleston Whites Adger was functioning as a shepherd of his flock. However rather than advocating from a biblical position as to the rights of Christians Adger chose to assuage enslavers’ concerns. He promised observance, oversight, and limited opportunity for unsupervised interaction. In doing so the slave mission experiment was allowed to commence as long as it continued to serve the interests of enslavers.

The mission work on Society Street was similar to sabbath schools established at Second Presbyterian Church on Meeting Street. Adger would teach and preach to enslaved African Americans followed by oral question-and-response exercises directly from the Jones catechism. Several White members of Second Presbyterian, especially the women of the Church, helped with enslaved African Americans’ religious instruction. The Society Street mission set apart a space for missionary work with enslaved African Americans in an urban context in contrast to the limited instruction received from balconies and instruction on plantations in the Jones model. Providing enslaved African Americans with their own place of worship, their own space, their own pastor, and their own community space was unique and set the Presbyterians in Charleston apart from other denominations.⁸²

To be sure, provision of a worship space must have been something of a comfort to enslaved people and must have provided a welcome space for respite in the midst of unremitting toil. However one must wonder how the enslaved members of this mission church perceived their presence. Their attendance was not voluntary as their presence in Second Presbyterian balconies was not voluntary in the 1840s. These members were present at the behest of their owners, and certainly they would have preferred hearing from their own preachers Page 97 →and teachers who looked like them. Since there are few records of this early work other than session minutes we are only left to speculate.

In 1850, the work on Society Street soon moved to a Gothic structure, which was constructed by Second Presbyterian on 91 Anson Street. In 1861, it became St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church and today is the home of St. John’s Reformed Episcopal Church. The cost of this building “was seven thousand and seven hundred dollars, and this was paid by the congregation of the Second Church.”⁸³ On May 26, 1850, the mission conducted the opening service in this new location on Anson Street. While in other churches enslaved African Americans were relegated to galleries, at Anson they now sat in front of the preacher in the pews, and they occupied the entire space. Lois Simms, the first historian of this mission church in Charleston, has called this occupancy “the main body—the place of honors—in the area.”⁸⁴ To move from the balconies to the pews in front of the pulpit was an important shift in terms of how the enslavers and the enslaved perceived the mission.⁸⁵ This was also the first church for African American enslaved people south of Calhoun Street. All other churches for African Americans were north of Calhoun Street. South of Calhoun Street in 1850 was living and meeting space for Whites only. For African Americans to occupy this space was significant. This was yet another way in which the Presbyterian work was distinctive.

For the dedication service at the new Anson Street Mission “Thomas Smyth and John Adger were there to hear a sermon preached by James Henry Thornwell.”⁸⁶ In his book on James Henry Thornwell entitled The Metaphysical Confederacy, James Farmer noted, “As sectional tensions were being inflamed by debate on California’s petition for statehood, an event of little fanfare but substantial symbolic significance took place in Charleston. Zion Church, also called Anson Street Church, was dedicated.” Thornwell preached, oddly, to a congregation of all Whites and “considering the opposition to this enterprise and the Northern attack on slavery, it was decided to combine the dedication with a presentation of the views of the South’s religious community on Slavery.” Thornwell preached on Colossians 4:1, which read, “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal, knowing that ye also have a master in heaven.” Farmer found that of all the verses Thornwell could have chosen to preach he chose the text “that focuses on the duties of masters.” The Anson Street Mission, Thornwell maintained, “was a far better way of meeting the abolitionists than embracing the doctrine of separate creation and asserting that the black man is a fit subject for slavery because he is not human for ‘We are not ashamed to call him our brother,’ he insisted.”⁸⁷

Page 98 →The use of “brother” is very important here. Thornwell means that the enslaved African American is a brother “in Christ” in the family household of God. Since we can assume he did not mean literal brother then we are left with the assertion that Thornwell thought of the enslaved African American Christian as a brother “in Christ.” This would mean that the brother was deserving of all the ecclesiastical rights and privileges that a White “brother” would have access to in the church: full membership status, voting rights, the ability to serve on committees, and being open for nomination as a deacon or elder. None of these were available to enslaved African Americans in Thornwell’s own church. What Thornwell was suggesting was not a brotherhood, but a second-class ecclesiastical position based on the race of the enslaved. African Americans could be spiritual brothers and perhaps one day in heaven they could be equal, but Thornwell and many other Southern Presbyterians never openly advocated for African Americans’ equal ecclesiastical rights. Therefore the similar dichotomy existed for Thornwell that existed for Jones. Spiritually the African American could be a brother or sister, but in no way was this equality a bodily reality in a real-world or even ecclesiastical perspective. In every other way, other than spiritually, the enslaved African American was inferior. This position is a radical departure from orthodox Christianity and a departure from what the scriptures of Christianity teach. This displays the grip of the institution of enslavement upon the shepherds. The shepherds could never acknowledge any kind of equality, other than spiritual, with their African American flock.

Thornwell continued, “‘The slave has rights,’ indeed ‘all the rights which belong essentially to humanity, and without his nature could not be human or his conduct susceptible of praise or blame. In the enjoyment of these rights, religion demands he should be protected. The right which the master has is a right not to the man, but to his labor.’” Thornwell even noted that “this building is a public testimonial to our faith that the negro is of one blood with ourselves” and that “one of the highest and most solemn obligations which rest upon the masters of the South is to give their servants to the utmost of their ability, free access to the instructions and institutions of the gospel.”⁸⁸ Thornwell insisted that enslaved African Americans were human and of “one blood” with Whites, that they had certain rights, and that the owner of enslaved persons had no right to the ownership of persons, but only of their labor. Masters were to give to their servants that which was “just and equal” concerning their opportunities to worship. To say that an enslaver had no ownership of persons but only of their labor would have certainly been startling to the largely White enslaver Page 99 →audience. Also in attendance was “C.C. Jones, who had preached to the enslaved African members” at Anson Street earlier that afternoon and participated in the service with the opening prayer. The White members sat on either side, to the left and right of the pulpit.⁸⁹ That Jones was present and participated in the mission’s grand opening was indicative of how much influence he had in the new work. Further it displayed Adger’s vision, which was informed by and similar to that of Jones’s work in Liberty County.

Thornwell’s presence and sermon were important but not because of a representation of any expanded rights offered to the enslaved by the church. Thornwell was there to justify that the kind of enslavement or master and servant relationship Paul discussed in Colossae was the same form of enslavement being practiced in Charleston, South Carolina almost two thousand years later. This sermon was one of many preached by pro-enslavement shepherds across the US South, who directly adopted the form of enslavement as it existed in the US South and compared it to Roman, Greek, or even enslavement as it existed in Israel in the times of the kings and, before that, the patriarchs like Abraham. This position justified Christian enslavers’ rights as supported by an apostle in the bible, supported by Israel’s example as a kingdom, if not supported Jesus himself. However there was no recognition or evidence provided that the enslaved experience in Greece or Rome was anything similar or akin to the African American experience of being kidnapped, stolen, and sold into a trans-Atlantic, market-driven system in which their labor was exploited in perpetuity because of their race.

Likewise there was also no discussion regarding treating enslaved people as equals in the church. Instead of advocating for the ecclesiastical rights and privileges of enslaved peoples as equal members of God’s church, Thornwell took this opportunity to address larger national and political issues. He was speaking directly to abolitionists and anti-enslavement persons as if to say, “we in the South are biblical and do things appropriately.” Rather than challenging the institution of enslavement, how it robbed humans of their worth and dignity, or how being a church member afforded African Americans rights due to their equal status as members of the kingdom of God, Thornwell was justifying southern enslavement over and against northern abolition as the biblical and therefore right position. The mission church to enslaved persons in Charleston provided him with merely an example to prove his point. The enslaved members of Anson Street would hear the Bible and the Gospel preached, but they would continue in enforced labor with no hope of freedom, and their full rights as church members would not be fulfilled to the same degree as the rights of Page 100 →White members. Also, while Thornwell advocated in word that an enslaver had no right to the human, but only to his labor, there was no action that followed this. The church still created a second-class membership for the enslaved. White Presbyterian church members could have the facade of Christian charity and benevolence while maintaining, buttressing, and supporting unbiblical enslavement using the Bible, missions, and separate churches with separate forms of membership based on one’s race to justify their true submissiveness: to the institution of enslavement and the power brokers behind it.

Further, the irony of Thornwell preaching this sermon must have been palpable. Thornwell had been a very strong proponent of the spirituality of the church doctrine that taught the church should only preach the gospel and not politics. One theologian has argued the doctrine of the spirituality of the church is that “there are limits to church power and this power must not be confused with the power of the state.” The church is limited in how it can weigh in on political issues. “Through most of Reformed history, the spirituality of the church has not entailed a silence on all political matters, but rather a commitment to the uniqueness of the church’s mission and a principled conviction that the concerns of the church should not be swallowed up by the concerns of the state.”⁹⁰ Therefore the church should weigh in on political matters it deems necessary in terms of challenging biblical principles. However since enslavement was acceptable, biblically speaking, according to southern theologians, then Thornwell would have seen no reason to challenge enslavement, despite the fact that it violated the very tenet spoken of in his sermon: true brotherhood in Christ and equal ecclesiastical rights. Further since enslavement was legal according to federal, state, and municipal law in 1850 then there was no need for the theologian to engage in political statements from the pulpit.

The sermon was as much a response to abolitionism and the political context of the day as it was intended for religious instruction for the primary audience. It was a sermon with political overtones disguised as not being political, as many Southern Presbyterian ministers in the nineteenth century were adept at doing. Thornwell was engaging in a larger political struggle and national debate without specifically mentioning politics. The focus of the sermon could have the “look” of being about the gospel, but what he was also doing was showing abolitionists that southern Presbyterians had the proper biblical understanding of enslavement and were appropriately applying that understanding in a theological and ecclesiastical framework. Since enslavement, abolition, and a future vision for enslavement’s expansion into Kansas were Page 101 →also an ongoing political debate in Washington, DC, and Thornwell accepted the southern vision as the appropriate and biblical form, he now had a mission church dedicated to enslaved persons to display the ways in which the southern Presbyterian vision was superior and more biblically grounded than the northern abolitionist vision. Hence the sermon was most certainly political.

While the spirituality of the church doctrine did include “a principled conviction that the concerns of the church should not be swallowed up by the concerns of the state,”⁹¹ it also left it up to the church to decide which measures were considered “principled convictions.” If the church had deemed enslavement a matter of principle and a biblical violation, as earlier Presbyterians had done, it would have certainly been costly to most southern Presbyterian congregations given the immense amount of wealth many members of Presbyterian churches in South Carolina accumulated through the institution. The church therefore made the decision that matters of principle that just so happened to benefit the membership financially were political issues that the church could not address or on which it could not preach. If the government or a political party was doing something to potentially tamper with the profits of the enslaving members of the church, then they no doubt saw it as a “principled conviction” to speak out on such a violation. The crux of the matter is that, historically speaking, southern Presbyterians were able to pick and choose which political issues to speak about and they typically chose the ones that benefitted them financially, politically or culturally. If the issues did not benefit them financially, politically or culturally, then a southern Presbyterian pastor would hide behind a spirituality of the church doctrine to prevent them from having to speak or put themselves in a difficult position.

The church decided which issues were and were not spiritual and could find or hide behind the appropriate biblical texts to justify this decision. For instance from 1890 to 1940, southern Presbyterians decided that both segregation and lynching were acceptable issues and not worth political engagement. Southern Presbyterians would also decide that from 1955–64 the civil rights movement was not something on which the church should comment. However when the political winds were blowing in a way that might affect White southerners’ wealth, power, or status then they most assuredly would find that it would be a necessity to speak and act politically from the pulpit. Thornwell’s presence at the mission and his sermon were strong symbolic connections to the southern pro-enslavement position, and the mission work among the enslaved was used to justify the institution of enslavement as the “biblically sanctioned” position. However this sermon was not meant for an African American audience, but Page 102 →a White one. The preaching to African American enslaved people was left to Adger.⁹²

Many considered Adger’s preaching at the church on Anson Street to be very basic, and it was meant to appeal “to the level of the illiterate and uneducated with hopes that they might understand the gospel in its rudimentary form.”⁹³ This was not due to Adger’s personal abilities as a minister. On the contrary he had served at Second Presbyterian for many years and was noted as a prominent teacher.⁹⁴ Instead it likely resulted from the elderly Adger’s health problems. He knew that he needed a younger and more vibrant successor who shared his vision to carry on the mission work at Anson. It was Adger who laid the groundwork from 1846 to 1851, but he would turn to John Lafayette Girardeau to carry on the work.⁹⁵

John Lafayette Girardeau, born in 1825, was a descendant of French Huguenots, the first College of Charleston honors graduate and cousin to the aforementioned “father of slave missions” Charles Colcock Jones. Girardeau was raised on James Island, was familiar with the Gullah language, and had displayed an interest early on to minister to enslaved African Americans. Girardeau had been doing similar work since graduation from seminary at Adam’s Run and Wilton Presbyterian Churches by employing the Jones model of visiting plantation “stations” and preaching to enslaved African Americans where and when he could find a place and time. As W. F. Robertson noted, “he gave the best part of his life towards seeking the salvation of the Negroes of Charleston. One cannot study the work of this minister without realizing that his Soul’s greatest passion—like that of Paul about the Jews—was that the Negro might be saved, and he realized that he was a ‘man of like passions’ with other men.”⁹⁶ Throughout Girardeau’s career it is indeed evident that his professional interests lay in ministering to those on the margins of southern society in the nineteenth century.

In 1852, disabling eye problems caused Adger’s health to fail, and in December 1853, at the age of twenty-nine, John Lafayette Girardeau filled the pulpit at the Anson Street Mission Church. Reverend George Blackburn described Anson’s ministry under Girardeau’s guidance as experiencing “steady growth” and was “divided into classes, each under a proper leader and the sick, with a sick fund were regularly looked after. The energetic work of Dr. Girardeau, at the Bible weekly instruction, led the leading negroes of other churches to admit that the Anson Street work was ‘of the Lord.’”⁹⁷ Girardeau’s ministry and preaching attracted great numbers of enslaved African Americans, and the congregation soon outgrew the building on Anson Street as it “quickly became Page 103 →the most prominent gathering place for the African American community of the city.”⁹⁸ The location of Anson, south of Calhoun Street, would have been attractive as well as a church in which enslaved African Americans occupied the pews and not the balconies. Because it had been established for the specific purpose of ministry to enslaved people in Charleston the Anson Street Mission was a space in which enslavers at Second Presbyterian church would send their enslaved people to worship on Sunday.

Blackburn described Girardeau as “a child of the sea islands, at home with the Gullah dialect and the African Americans of the city. A powerful preacher, a master of classical rhetoric and the techniques of folk preaching, he could deeply move a congregation of blacks or whites.”⁹⁹ Girardeau used what he referred to as “key words” in his sermons and would emphasize these words with dramatic facial expressions and vocal inflection to emphasize the larger points that he was trying to communicate. For instance, “Holy God,’ he said in a tone of awe and ‘sin hateful’ with a look of intense abhorrence.”¹⁰⁰ Indeed, “he was a gifted speaker, writer and teacher . . . who was heard to pray ‘Oh, Lord be merciful to Thy unworthy servant.’ In fact, this phrase was used so frequently that an admiring member [at Zion] who was patterning his prayer life after Dr. Girardeau was heard to pray, ‘Oh, Lord be merciful to Thy unworthy servant, the pastor of this church, and keep him in health to do Thy work.’”¹⁰¹ It is evidence from his ministerial interests, preaching technique, prayer life, and the cultural context of his childhood that Girardeau was the appropriate choice for this position.

Girardeau’s early life helped to shape his vision for missionary work among enslaved African Americans. He was born on November 14, 1825, on James Island, just slightly southwest of Charleston, South Carolina. The island consisted of White planters and enslavers as well as a large population of Sea Island enslaved African Americans. His childhood playmates included young African American children living on the surrounding plantations of James Island. Living in relatively close quarters with such a large population of enslaved African Americans afforded Girardeau the opportunity to learn the Gullah language and to experience that enslaved people were fellow human beings who suffered greatly. These experiences became a driving impetus in Girardeau’s life pushing him into a career of ministering to enslaved African Americans. Indeed, “even as a young man he held prayer-meeting for the benefit of the colored people on his father’s plantation” and “while teaching school in another place he visited a number of plantations one after another on certain afternoons during the week and gave religious instruction.”¹⁰² From an early Page 104 →age and into his schooling Girardeau was interested in ministering to enslaved African American communities. Adger and Girardeau’s views were that a biracial religious community could be created in which enslaved African Americans and free Whites could worship together if the same racial hierarchies that existed outside the church were reinforced inside the church.

John Adger hinted at this biracial religious environment of Whites and Lowcountry enslaved people worshipping together and described the interactions being “divided out among us and mingled up with us, and we with them in a thousand ways. They live with us, eating from the same store-houses, drinking from the same fountains, dwelling from the same enclosures, forming parts of the same families.”¹⁰³ The proximity to enslaved African Americans allowed many missionaries to enslaved persons a familiarity with the culture of enslaved African American communities that northern missionaries did not have access to. Familiarity with communities and the culture of those communities might have afforded the White missionaries to the enslaved a certain measure of enhanced knowledge regarding the focus of the mission. However that mission often served to reinforce the status quo. Familiarity did not breed advocacy for enhanced ecclesiastical rights.

Second Presbyterian Church’s Minutes of Session noted this phenomenon: “Unacquainted with the nature of our institution—strangers to the prejudices, habits, and peculiarities of the Negro—incapable of appreciating his peculiar sympathies and associations—ministers from abroad, even if they were permitted to enter the field, could not be expected to cultivate it with the same success as our own men.”¹⁰⁴ Perhaps an example of understanding the “habits and peculiarities” of the enslaved African American was that Girardeau spoke Gullah with proficiency, which was the language of Sea Island African Americans, and would later incorporate it into his conversations and dialogue with church members. He was also moved to care for the enslaved as children through his mother’s example. Girardeau wrote, “The poor negroes of the Island were often the recipients of [his mother’s] kindness. She was kind to all, but especially the sick and needy negroes.”¹⁰⁵ Girardeau’s childhood experiences and the ways in which he was introduced to African American culture and the African American experience certainly shaped his interests.

After college Girardeau attended Columbia Theological Seminary to train for the ministry. There he continued to care for the poor and socially disadvantaged until his graduation in 1848. During seminary Girardeau conducted mission services in abandoned warehouses in the poorest sections of Columbia for enslaved people, prostitutes, and other social outcasts.¹⁰⁶ Throughout his Page 105 →seminary career Girardeau expressed a strong interest in evangelism in combination with a desire to share the Gospels with enslaved African Americans in his native Lowcountry of South Carolina. In a letter dated Friday May 15, 1846, to his “Dear Sister” there is a glimpse of the young seminarian’s evangelistic focus: “Sister dear Sister, when shall this be? Come oh come to Jesus and give yourself away. Why do you delay? ‘My savior bids me come. Ah, why do I delay? He calls the weary sinner home and yet from him I stay.’ Oh my constant prayer is that God would awake you and . . . to sit at Jesus’ feet and weep and praise Him for His gracious love.”¹⁰⁷ George A. Blackburn, Girardeau’s son-in-law and original biographer, observed that “on his trips back to Charleston [from seminary] he would ordinarily stop at some plantation and preach to the negroes. His heart sought the salvation of their souls, and he threw the zeal of his great soul into the work of their salvation.”¹⁰⁸ This fervor would not change for the rest of his life and career.

Girardeau described this himself in a partly autobiographical sketch found at the South Carolina Historical Society

While at the Theological Seminary in Columbia, the questions agitated me whether I should devote myself to a Foreign Mission work, but the fact that slaves at the South could only be ministered to by Southern men, powerfully impressed my mind, and I felt called to preach the Gospel to them . . . I determined to accept an invitation to preach at the Wappetaw Church in Christ Church Parish, S.C., in the bounds of which were a large body of coloured people. In November, 1848, I began to preach there. An immense coloured congregation gathered from the two parishes of Christ Church and St. Thomas Sabbath after Sabbath at that church. they crowded in the building and used to saw to and fro like a forest in a storm. In April 1849, I accepted an invitation from the Wilton Church in St. Paul’s Parish to preach to them. The parting with the coloured congregation at Wappetaw was most affecting. One poor little African woman followed me to the buggy crying, “O Massa, are you going to leave us? O Massa, are you going to leave us?”¹⁰⁹

Girardeau was most certainly affected by this experience, and it was likely confirmed in his professional life.

Upon graduation from seminary, the Presbytery of Charleston ordained Girardeau and he began his work of ministering to the enslaved population.¹¹⁰ One author noted that Girardeau even “refused a call to a larger and important church because he considered it to be his duty to preach to the mass of slaves Page 106 →on the seaboard of South Carolina.”¹¹¹ Girardeau described this refusal saying, “The church was pleased to call me to be its pastor, but having learned that there were only five coloured members in connection with it” he decided to preach in the Wappetaw Church in Christ Church Parish, South Carolina, “in the bounds of which were a large body of coloured people” in November 1848.¹¹² To turn down what would have been a larger salary with a much more influential congregation than the people of Wappetaw Girardeau was prioritizing in his first vocational choice the people who he felt most needed his services and who had been a priority in his life since childhood. This decision is a unique departure from the thinking of seminary graduates in the mid-nineteenth century South who were often all too eager to have larger congregations with more wealth and influence as a sign of “the fruit” or success of one’s ministry. In April 1849, while he was working at the Wilton Presbyterian Church in St. Paul’s Parish, enslaved African Americans came in large crowds to hear Girardeau preach. He remarked, “They would pour in and throng the seats vacated by their masters—yes, crowding the building up to the pulpit. I have seen them rock to and fro under the influence of their feelings, like a wood in the storm. What singing! What hearty handshakings after the service. I have had my finger joints stripped of their skin in the consequence of them.”¹¹³

Second Presbyterian Church in Charleston, South Carolina, had established a church, largely for enslaved African American Congregants. Stokes noted that Girardeau “like Smyth, shared the view expressed by John B. Adger that ‘southern slavery was just a grand civilizing and Christianizing school, providentially prepared’ and that, ‘the two races were steadily and constantly marching onwards and upwards together’ to eventual emancipation, when enslaved people were ready to ‘graduate.’”¹¹⁴ However, with Draconian literacy laws, limited educational opportunity, and no property rights, how were enslaved African Americans ever going to receive emancipation in a society in which freedom was connected to property ownership and the ability to buy and sell using documents, which required literacy. This statement was little more than a justification for the institution of enslavement and meant as a southern response to abolitionists and nothing more.

After the Second Presbyterian Church had established the Anson Street mission, and the work of Adger had taken root, Girardeau left in 1853 to take this call. He wrote:

I commenced preaching to the Wilton Church in April of 1849, and was ordained to the Ministry and installed pastor of the at church in April Page 107 →of 1850. In November of 1853, I bade a reluctant farewell to take charge of the Anson Street Missionary work in Charleston. I found a small handful of coloured people. Sometimes only a dozen were present at prayer meetings. But the congregation increased in number until in 1858, the building became too strait for them, the fences around it being occupied by those who could not get in, and sometimes even the trees in the rear. In that year a most remarkable outpouring of the Holy Spirit was vouchsafed us and hundreds professed conversion. I have preserved a list of white persons who professed hope. They were about 120. How many more white persons experienced hope will not be known until the last day. Crowds of coloured peopled people were added to the church.¹¹⁵

It is interesting to note that while Girardeau’s call was specifically to the “coloured people” of Charleston, it is the White converts who are deemed worthy of keeping a list and numbering. The enslaved African American congregants Girardeau described as “crowds” who were “added to the church.”

As soon as Girardeau had taken over the helm at Anson Street he obtained permission from the Session at Second Presbyterian (which owned the Anson Street Church) to create a separate mission under his own control. He received permission from the session and then received the same from the presbytery on May 13, 1855. From then on Anson Street went from being a part of Second Presbyterian to “a Missionary Church, under the care of the Rev. John L. Girardeau.”¹¹⁶ Girardeau must have believed that if there were going to be a separate church for enslaved African Americans there also had to be a separate mission identity and that he must have autonomy to make decisions leading his own session, which removed it from under the control of the session at the Second Presbyterian Session. The work continued to grow, and “under his leadership the Anson Church was soon overflowing.” Girardeau began with thirty-six members in 1854, and by 1860, there were over six hundred enrolled members with an attendance of over fifteen hundred in a regular Sabbath congregation.

In 1857, the six-hundred-seat Anson Street building was simply not large enough to accommodate the individuals attending, and it was decided that a new building was needed.¹¹⁷ Later in 1857, Robert Adger, the brother or John Adger, approached Thomas Smyth with the idea of sending an all-White session to Anson so that the mission could be formally organized into a particularized church within the presbytery. Thomas Smyth gave his consent stating, “The cause was good and great, and Mr. Girardeau noble and devoted.”¹¹⁸ The Page 108 →presbytery determined that a larger church be erected, and “Robert Adger located a prime piece of property near the corner of Meeting Street and Calhoun Street–barely a block from Second Church-and bought it for $7,220.”¹¹⁹ The location on Meeting Street was near the old Citadel Military College as well as some very fine houses, business establishments, and churches in the city. Supporters raised more than $25,000 for a new building with the Adger family supplying most of the funding.¹²⁰

One can only imagine the fear and concern from the Charleston White elite when at the close of service on Sunday the church opened its doors and almost two thousand enslaved African Americans poured onto Calhoun Street in Charleston.¹²¹ Whether intentional or not Girardeau was sending a message to the White population of Charleston regarding his belief in the ecclesiastical work among enslaved African Americans. One historian, author of Southern Presbyterianism and Racial Issues, noted that “Presbyterian converts among the slaves were not permitted to form independent congregations. Instead, they attended white Presbyterian Churches but were generally barred from officeholding and were seated in separated areas of the sanctuary.”¹²² Displaying the complexity of the history of Presbyterian missions to the enslaved in South Carolina many enslaved African Americans came to Girardeau’s church because he acknowledged their need to have an identity independent of the White congregations in Charleston.¹²³ Girardeau acknowledged that enslaved African Americans needed to be treated as valued congregants in the life of the church and not peripheral attendees. By providing this in his mission Girardeau endeared himself to his flock.

Stokes wrote that “having consecrated his life to his special calling, Girardeau turned down a number of offers from prominent churches in other cities, North and South, which would have afforded him a more lucrative position and prestigious position.” Stokes also mentioned that Girardeau operated within and perpetuated a paternalistic framework but one that was “deeply compassionate toward slaves.” As evidence Stokes noted that “he had an extraordinary ability to communicate the Gospel” to enslaved African Americans, and that he would even tailor his sermons “speaking in a simplified but emotionally powerful narrative style enhanced by his knowledge of Gullah” experiences and culture.¹²⁴

Later, John Adger was careful to remark that “the negroes named it [the church] Zion.”¹²⁵ The name Zion means a “glorious city” or “dwelling place” that God had given to his people. While this might seem insignificant at first the naming of the church carried tremendous significance for enslaved African Page 109 →Americans. For the church to adopt a name selected from among the enslaved displayed the central role that the enslaved played in the mission and function of Zion. Further it provided some sense of dignity to the enslaved as naming, calling someone by name, and giving someone who is enslaved the right to name had meaning. Enslaved people were sometimes not even allowed to formally document the name of their own children, much less an institution like a church. To have the opportunity to decide the naming of the mission was symbolic of the mission’s priorities. Naming displayed that the church was a real home, also pointing toward a spiritual home. The concept of “home” was important in this naming. As Katherine Dvorak has mentioned, “For an enslaved people stolen from African homes and too often torn from ‘home’ slave communities by sale, home became an eschatological symbol celebrated in slave songs as a new Jerusalem, as Canaan’s shore, as promised land.”¹²⁶