Presbyterianism, Slavery, and the Settlement of South Carolina’s Pee Dee Region

Erica Johnson

Page 90 →Presbyterians were among the first Europeans to settle in South Carolina’s Pee Dee region in the 1700s. The Pee Dee consists of twelve counties stretching from the vast pines of the Sandhills to the shores of the Outer Coastal Plain. The region is defined by its rivers—the Great Pee Dee, the Little Pee Dee, and the Waccamaw—its vast pine forests and farms of the interior, and the tourist hotspots along the coast. The region got its name from the Pee Dee Indians, one of at least seven Indigenous tribes that lived in the area before European colonization. After the Interregnum and Restoration in England, King Charles II established the Carolinas, and the proprietors charged with populating the colonies used the promise of religious freedom and land as enticements. Scots–Irish Presbyterians acquired land in the Pee Dee, and they established plantations worked by enslaved laborers. These settlers also founded Presbyterian churches, including Aimwell, Hopewell, Indiantown, Salem, and Williamsburg.¹ For more than a century, the ministers at these churches helped to establish, reinforce, and sometimes reconcile the Presbyterian stance on slavery and the interests of local enslavers. The enslaved peoples who attended these churches in the Pee Dee experienced Presbyterianism as a part of the institution of slavery. This article is about them.

Although scholars have explored the relationship between slavery and Presbyterianism, the historiography has yet to center on the enslaved and their perspectives. White Presbyterians have led the efforts to examine the church’s connections to slavery, often misrepresenting the experiences of the enslaved. In 1966, for example, Presbyterian minister Andrew E. Murray glorified white Christianity in his extensive study, writing, “unlike his white counterpart, who had been nurtured in the Christianized culture of Europe, the American negro came out of a non-Christian culture of Africa.”² Quite the contrary! Historians studying African history have shown that a majority of African societies involved in the Atlantic trade in human beings had been exposed to and even adopted Christianity.³ Murray’s broad claims evidence a disregard of accurate Black history. Other scholars have explored Page 91 →how American Presbyterians reconciled revolutionary and republican ideologies with slavery, concentrating primarily on antislavery Presbyterian clergy, such as Samuel Davies.⁴ In more recent years, authors have started to highlight how Princeton University benefited from Presbyterianism’s ties to slavery.⁵ Although these studies provide significant contributions to the historiography of Presbyterianism and slavery, the authors similarly omit the perspectives of the enslaved in these histories. This article seeks to emphasize their voices and begin to rectify their historiographical silence.

Various methodologies help to recover enslaved experiences despite limited sources. Ethnohistory combines historical and anthropological approaches to preliterate groups, including the enslaved. Enslaved peoples living in the Pee Dee did not leave written records of their lives, religious or otherwise. There are no diaries or letters.⁶ However, four individuals enslaved in the Pee Dee during the nineteenth century recounted their experiences within the Hopewell Presbyterian Church to interviewers who were part of the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s.⁷ Using methodology from ethnohistory, I am able to “upstream” from these later accounts to make inferences about how enslaved peoples from the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century experienced Presbyterianism.⁸ Upstreaming involves “explaining the unknown from the known, hence the past from the present.”⁹ In this case, I use the available oral histories from formerly enslaved peoples in the 1930s to understand the experiences of enslaved peoples between the 1770s and the 1860s. I contextualize these accounts with other primary sources available for the Pee Dee in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Although enslaved peoples left no written and limited oral accounts, white South Carolinians created numerous records related to slavery and Presbyterianism. Presbyteries, synods, ministers, legislators, and enslavers in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century published many sources. I have read against the grain of these documents to glimpse the encounters of the enslaved with the religion and its white practitioners.¹⁰ Social theorist Walter Benjamin claimed, “there is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another.”¹¹ Therefore, he urged historians to “brush history against the grain.”¹² In other words, historians are to separate the history within the source from the “barbarism” of the author. The author was often the assumed “victor” in the story.¹³ Indeed, until the American Civil War and the ratification of the Thirteenth Page 92 →Amendment, the enslavers were the victors in the Pee Dee’s history. In this way, I read against the grain of the white sources, against the authors’ primary intentions, to grasp all the perspectives within a document, even those of the enslaved.

During the early years of South Carolina settlement, there was tension between Presbyterian enslavers and the Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church. The missionary arm of the Church of England, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, proposed converting the growing enslaved population in British American colonies, including South Carolina. Enslavers in South Carolina quickly rebuffed their efforts.¹⁴ Although the enslavers may have been opposed to providing Christian instruction to the enslaved people of South Carolina in the early years of settlement, they also bucked such interference by Anglicans specifically. Presbyterianism originated in the Puritan movement that challenged the Church of England for much of the seventeenth century. Whereas the Anglican Church relied on a hierarchical governance structure, the Presbyterians favored a more democratic form of church governance. This disagreement came to a head during the English Civil War (1642–1652) and Interregnum (1649–1660). When Charles II regained the monarchy in 1660, he embraced the Church of England and its episcopal system, and Presbyterians looked to the Carolinas as a place to freely practice and govern their religion as well as develop plantation agriculture.¹⁵ The imposition of Anglicanism upon the enslaved would have been especially unwelcome.

Notably, Presbyterians continued to embrace democratic principles within religious and political structures but did not extend them to the system of slavery. Ministers and elders of Hopewell Presbyterian Church were active patriots during the American Revolution, fighting for freedom from British hierarchal rule. For instance, James Gregg was a founder and elder of Hopewell. He served as a military captain and provided horses, saddles, and bridles for American forces.¹⁶ British forces burned his home and destroyed much of his property.¹⁷ However, after the war, Gregg obtained over one thousand acres of land, and, according to the 1790 census, enslaved sixteen people.¹⁸ Another Revolutionary War veteran, Reverend Humphrey Hunter, was the first full-time pastor at Hopewell, taking up the call in April 1790. He came to North America by way of Charleston at age four in 1759, and he grew up in Mecklenburg, North Carolina. He was present for the Mecklenburg convention in 1775, which people from that region call “the first American Declaration of Independence.”¹⁹ The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence claimed the British crown had “wantonly trampled” the “rights and Page 93 →liberties” of American colonists and “inhumanly shed the innocent blood of Americans.” Its authors declared themselves “a free and independent people … a sovereign and self-governing people under the power of God and the general Congress; to the maintenance of which independence we solemnly pledge to each other our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor.”²⁰ This document scorned the British crown for trampling their rights—those of white, propertied men—while they did the same to the people they enslaved. During his five years ministering at Hopewell, Hunter led a congregation of enslavers, despite having fought in a war for liberty against the English. South Carolina Presbyterians, like those at Hopewell, fought for democratic governance religiously and politically, but only for white people.

There are two main governing bodies within Presbyterianism, the presbytery and the synod.²¹ A presbytery consists of ministers (known as teaching elders) and elected laymen (known as ruling elders) from churches within an outlined spiritual jurisdiction. The primary role of each presbytery was to ensure that its churches have ministers. In the eighteenth century, the Carolinas were part of the Presbytery of Hanover and then the Presbytery of Orange. South Carolina founded its own presbytery in 1785.²² The Presbytery of South Carolina divided into the First and Second Presbyteries of South Carolina in 1799, and Hopewell became a member of the First Presbytery. In 1810, Hopewell joined the newly formed Harmony Presbytery.²³

A synod is a Presbyterian council that meets to decide matters of doctrine, administration, and discipline. Like the presbytery, it consists of elected ministers and elders. Synods approve the creation of new presbyteries and make doctrinal decisions, such as the church’s stance on slavery. The Synod of the Carolinas formed in 1788.²⁴ Neither presbyteries nor synods in South Carolina included free or enslaved Black members. Presbyterian ideals of religious liberty and democratic governance conflicted with the realities of the plantation hierarchy based on race and subjugation.

Many white Presbyterian settlers in the Pee Dee–owned plantations worked by enslaved laborers. Immigrants to South Carolina from Barbados brought experience and knowledge of how to run a society based on slavery.²⁵ South Carolina, in fact, adopted the Negro Act of 1740, which was almost identical to the one enacted in Barbados nearly a century earlier. It remained in place through the American Revolution, and the legislature for the new state of South Carolina recodified it in the late eighteenth century.²⁶ Although the code focused primarily on prohibitions and punishments for the enslaved, Article Twenty-Two referenced the religious lives of the Page 94 →enslaved. The article did not require enslavers to provide Christian instruction, but it forbade enslavers from working enslaved individuals on Sundays. Of course, there was an exception for “works of absolute necessity and the necessary occasions of the family.”²⁷ Enslavers, undoubtedly, may not have observed the law or felt any obligation to take those whom they enslaved to church. However, accounts from the formerly enslaved suggest that many white Presbyterians did so in the Pee Dee.²⁸

Narratives provided by formerly enslaved individuals living in Marion, South Carolina, which is in the Pee Dee, shed light on their perceptions of their enslavers and the Hopewell Presbyterian Church. When talking about Hopewell, Mom Sara Brown remarked, “Dat a slavery church.”²⁹ Similarly, Mom Ryer Emmanuel described Hopewell as “dat sho a old, old slavery time church.”³⁰ Both women associated the church with the institution of slavery first and foremost. They did not suggest that it was just a church that white people attended. Instead, they suggested that the church was a pillar in the institution of slavery. In addition, they each mentioned the cemetery at the church. Emmanuel noted, “Dat dey slavery graveyard settin right dere in front de church,” and Brown explained, “Oh, my Lord, dere a big slavery graveyard dere at Hopewell Church.”³¹ Brown and Emmanuel remembered those buried there for their roles in a society centered on slavery. Although not everyone buried in the cemetery was an enslaver, connecting the cemetery to slavery suggests a perceived white racial unity in the region.³² For the formerly enslaved, the church and cemetery reflected the racial hierarchies of Pee Dee society.

The enslaved were not the only ones who connected those buried at the cemetery to slavery. Intriguingly, one of the earliest markers still visible in the Hopewell cemetery is that of Elizabeth Gregg. The men of the Gregg family, including her husband James, were founders of Hopewell as well as enslavers on nearby plantations.³³ Buried in 1799, Elizabeth’s marker states that she was “a humane and benevolent Mistress to those under her care and a devout Christian.”³⁴ The family did not deny her role as an enslaver, instead focusing on her kindness and religion. This reflects Article Thirty-Seven of the Negro Act of 1740, as it stated, “Cruelty is not only highly unbecoming those who profess themselves Christians but is odious in the eyes of all men who have any sense of virtue and humanity.” It is important, however, to clarify what the law deemed as cruelty. Of course, the law forbade murder. Cutting out the tongue, putting out an eye, castration, scalding, burning, and depriving of a limb were also punishable with a fine. However, “whipping or beating with a horsewhip, cowskin, switch or small stick” was acceptable.³⁵ Page 95 →This is not to suggest that Elizabeth Gregg did these things, but she would have been within her legal and religious rights if she had and might still have been considered benevolent by her family and congregation.

It is highly likely that some of those buried in the Hopewell cemetery physically punished the people they enslaved. Charlie Grant recalled how the overseer on his enslaver’s plantation whipped the enslaved: “De overseer, he pretty rough sometimes…. Had to go to work fore daybreak en if dey didn’ be dere on time en work like de out to, de overseer so whip dem. Tie de slaves clear de ground by dey thumbs wid nigger cord en make dem tiptoe en draw it tight as could be. Pull clothes off dem fore tie dem up. Dey didn’ care nothin about it. Let everybody look at it.”³⁶ The enslavers humiliated African-descended peoples by removing the enslaved person’s clothing before whipping them and putting them on display for others to see. Grant also explained that his mother had been whipped, but no men had whipped him. However, women had whipped him “wid four plaitted raw cowhide whip.”³⁷ Grant did not name anyone who whipped the enslaved, so we cannot be certain any of them attended Hopewell. Washington Dozier recounted hearing about enslaved people running away because of “bad treatment.” When captured, they were tortured: “[D]ey’ud buff em en gag em en hoss whip em.” However, he stated that his enslaver, Wiles Gregg, did not punish those enslaved along with him.³⁸ Whether the enslaved suffered whippings or worse at the hands of their enslavers and white overseers or just heard about these actions, the memories associated the church’s “slavery graveyard” and its interred white Christians with systematic abuse.

Many of the formerly enslaved described funerals for enslaved individuals, shedding further light on their associating the church cemetery with enslavers and slavery. Significantly, none of the accounts indicates that the enslaved received a Christian burial near the church. Dozier recounted how funerals for the enslaved were like those after slavery, except they “ne’er hab no preacher ‘bout.”³⁹ This was likely because they typically had to bury enslaved individuals after dark. Emmanuel explained how the enslaved “‘couldn’ bury dem in de day cause dey wouldn’ have time.’”⁴⁰ If they had wanted a proper Christian funeral, the enslavers denied the enslaved that opportunity, prioritizing work during the day. On the other hand, it is possible that the enslaved did not want a Christian burial, and the nighttime burials afforded them privacy and agency in burying their dead, perhaps even observing customs preserved through the African diaspora.⁴¹

For the enslaved, Presbyterianism may have appeared to be more an instrument of oppression than a spiritual community. From a modern Page 96 →perspective, it appears to be a deeply flawed, even hypocritical institution, one predicated on liberty but complicit in cruelty and domination. These dynamics become especially evident in the church’s theological tracts. Presbyterian ministers offered guidance on how enslavers should provide Christian instruction to the enslaved. In 1787, North Carolina Presbyterian Reverend Henry Pattillo wrote The Plain Planter’s Family Assistant, which claimed that enslavers likely felt “a kind of brotherly or paternal affection” for enslaved people and that “the slaves of my Plain Planter, are among the happiest human beings.”⁴² A charitable reading of Pattillo’s work might suggest that he used the rhetorical technique of paraenesis—advice through praise. In other words, he encouraged good treatment of the enslaved by praising enslavers for already providing it. A closer reading of the text, however, suggests that he was more focused on defending slavery and easing the consciences of those engaged in its horrors. Writing just after the American Revolution, he blamed the British for starting slavery, absolving Americans for continuing it. He commended enslavers for their patience in managing enslaved people because of their “real, or pretended ignorance; their obstinacy, and laziness; their endeavors to evade, or flight their work, under his eye; the universal practice of lying, to conceal or lessen their offenses; their provoking or petulant answers, when reproved, or moderately corrected; with a countless train of other faults and deficiencies.”⁴³ He attributed these perceived negative characteristics and behaviors to the coming from “the unenlightened regions of Africa.”⁴⁴ Pattillo believed that religious instruction could deliver the enslaved from these supposed flaws and to not teach them about Christianity would be “a great national evil.”⁴⁵ Pattillo encouraged enslavers to also serve as an example to the enslaved of good Christians. He suggested that the children of enslavers teach the enslaved to prevent “the Negroes” from “corrupting” the white children.⁴⁶ Because both Carolinas belonged to the same synod, it is likely that enslavers in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina utilized Pattillo’s guide. Religious instruction, for theologians such as Pattillo, becomes a means of reinforcing toxic racial stereotypes and diminishing white complicity in an evil practice.

In addition to the extensive explanation and justification for teaching enslaved peoples about Christianity, The Plain Planter’s Family Assistant also provided a catechism and prayer for the enslaved. Pattillo’s “The Negroes Catechism” asked, “How can you be free and bound both?” The expected answer was: “If Jesus Christ has broke the chain of sin, and freed me from the curse of the law, and the slavery of the devil, I am free indeed, although my body and services may be at the command of another.”⁴⁷ Pattillo and Page 97 →Presbyterian enslavers expected the enslaved to reconcile their spiritual freedom through God with their lived enslavement. Christianity, in fact, became a defense for their persecution. The forty-eighth question of the catechism asked, “Is there the same heaven and hell for white and black?” The answer was: “Yes: there will be no difference there, but what more holiness or more sin makes.”⁴⁸ For the enslaved, this may have offered some hope through faith that racial slavery ended after death, but it also suggests that obedience will lead to eternal salvation. Enslavement was a price to pay for redemption. The “Prayer for Negroes” continued these sentiments:

O Thou great God, the Maker and Lord of all creatures, I, a poor sinner, black in body, and full blacker with sin, would humbly try to worship thee … and make the land of my slavery, the place of my true freedom. Lord pity the poor Negroes, that are living without God in the world, and turn and convert them to thee. Bless my master, and all that are his. Make me a faithful servant; and teach me to remember, that what good thing forever any man doth; the same shall receive of the Lord, whether he bound or free.⁴⁹

In the prayer, “true freedom” would come through faith in God. The catechism and prayer sought to reinforce slavery through Presbyterianism, even implying that God was the ultimate enslaver, an idea found in the Apostle Paul’s claim that the saved, having been “made free from sin” become the “servants of righteousness.”⁵⁰ An African-descended person, the prayer suggests, could enjoy their freedom in the next world, only by sacrificing it in this world.

Accounts of the formerly enslaved also provide glimpses into their experiences with Presbyterian teachings. For instance, Emmanuel stated that her enslaver, Anthony Ross made the enslaved go “to preachin every Sunday en dey was mighty strict about us gwine to prayer service, too.”⁵¹ This does not mean that Emmanuel did not embrace Presbyterianism or Christianity more broadly, just that she had no choice as to where to attend. However, she explained that her enslaver told all the enslaved on his land to “carry dey chillum up dere en get dem baptized.”⁵² The enslaver ordered the adults to have their children baptized, regardless of their beliefs. Grant recounted how his enslaver’s daughter, Lizzie Johnson, had a “catechism what dey teach,” where she asked him repeatedly who made him until he answered God (instead of his parents), with the threat that if he “didn’t change” his “chat,” the enslaver would whip him.⁵³ The first two questions of Pattillo’s Page 98 →“The Negroes Catechism” allude to Grant’s experiences with Johnson. The first question read: “Do you know who made the Negroes?” The second question continued: “Do you think white folks and negroes all come from one father?”⁵⁴ In both scripted responses, the enslaved person was to refer to God as the creator of everyone. However, Pattillo did not suggest whipping or threatening to whip an enslaved person for not properly reciting the catechism, as Johnson did. This suggests a level of coercion in the conversion of enslaved peoples. The enslaved experienced Presbyterian teachings through the physical and psychological brutality of enslavement.

Enslaved people in the Pee Dee also experienced Christianity outside of the church and away from enslavers. Dozier, for example, recalled a “spiritual hymn” that angels sang to him in his “slumberin’ hours,” so that he “might gi’e it to de libin’ heah on dis earth.”⁵⁵ He explained that angels communicated with him directly in his dreams, so he could share their messages with others when he woke. It was about Revelation 10:2.⁵⁶ The angels sang, “Chillun, wha’ yuh gwinna do in de judgment mornin’ when old Gable [Gabriel] go down on de seashores? He gwinna place one foot in de sea end de udder on de land, en declare tha’ time would be no more.”⁵⁷ The song is about the end of times and God’s Day of Judgment. The angel Gabriel would come to earth and stop time. The angels were questioning whether Dozier and those around him would be ready for God’s judgment and their eternal fate: Were they right with God? Dozier received this message from the angels, not a minister or child catechist. He also perceived himself as a catechist or lay minister, as he was not allowed to become an elder or ordained minister. His account suggests that enslaved people fellowshipped together as Christians outside of the church. Despite being enslaved by a member of Hopewell Presbyterian Church, Dozier experienced Christian faith on his own terms, and there were likely many others like him.

Formerly enslaved people also gave accounts of their experiences attending Hopewell Church. For instance, they recounted wearing special clothing for services. Emmanuel recalled her baptism and how “oh, my happy, dey been fix us up dat day.” She got to wear “clean homespuns en long drawers” and a new bonnet.”⁵⁸ Similarly, Grant reminisced about his enslaver giving them a “cotton suit to wear on Sunday en de nicest leather shoes dat dey make right dere at home.”⁵⁹ Church afforded the enslaved access to nicer garments. Despite wearing their “Sunday best,” enslaved people had to sit in a segregated upper gallery during services for the most part. Emmanuel, Grant, and Dozier mentioned having to sit up in the gallery.⁶⁰ However, Brown noted that she sat right beside her female enslaver on a “lil chair wid Page 99 →a cowhide bottom.” ⁶¹ It is possible that Brown’s enslaver kept her with them during church in case they needed her assistance. On the other hand, Brown was only around eight years old, and she may not have had other enslaved family members to attend to her behavior during services. Last, Brown’s enslaver could have favored her, as she noted elsewhere in her narrative that her enslaver had her learning to be a nurse from a local doctor and lived in the house “wid her all de time.”⁶² These accounts, once again, show how these individuals perceived Hopewell as a part of their enslavement.

In addition to the accounts from these enslaved individuals, some religious leaders in the Pee Dee published sermons that enslaved people likely heard. Reverend Thomas Reese is one example. Although he was the official minister at Salem Presbyterian Church, he also preached at Hopewell numerous times in the 1780s and delivered the ordination sermon for Hopewell’s first full-time minister, Reverend Hunter, in 1790. Reese was also a charter member of the Presbytery of South Carolina. Most significantly for this study, he was involved a debate with Reverend W. C. Davis about slavery and Presbyterianism in the mid-1790s. Davis denounced slavery and called out enslavers, whereas Reese defended the institution. Reese maintained that slavery was a “local custom” that did not threaten society’s overall moral order.⁶³ The Presbytery of South Carolina and Synod of the Carolinas chose to adopt “a policy of pulpit silence concerning emancipation.”⁶⁴ It is with this in mind, as well as the fact that Reese enslaved people himself, that I read against the grain of his sermons to understand how the enslaved might have received his teachings.⁶⁵

One of Reese’s sermons, “Death the Christian’s Gain” is particularly relevant here considering the accounts of the enslaved about funerals and the Hopewell cemetery. Using words from the Apostle Paul, he explained how Christians should comfort themselves in knowing that death would deliver them from sin. He stated, “He is then freed, fully and completely freed, from all the remains of sin.”⁶⁶ He clarified that all people have sinned, and he repeated the word free half a dozen times throughout the sermon. In another place, he noted how in death the Christian could “rest from his labors and be free from all distress and tribulation. In the blessed state, he shall no longer be subject to pain, sickness or disease.”⁶⁷ This message must have resonated with the enslaved as they labored most days on plantations. The idea of living an eternity free from forced labor and the physical hardships that came with it would have likely offered some hope for the enslaved. Several lines later, Reese exclaimed, “O what a happy exchange does the poor, afflicted, persecuted Christian make, when released from his house of clay! … from Page 100 →bondage to freedom!”⁶⁸ These words would have meant something completely different to a free white person than to an enslaved Black person. Like Patillo, Reese hoped to justify the suffering of the enslaved by positing that affliction and persecution are intrinsic to the Christian experience, necessary preconditions for salvation. Suffering was cosmic design, not earthly oppression.

Reese also published a sermon about Haman and Mordecai from the Old Testament story of Esther.⁶⁹ An official under the Persian king, Haman was full of pride and expected everyone to bow to him, much like enslavers required of peoples of African descent. However, in the story, a Jewish man named Mordecai refused to bow to Haman. Filled with anger, Haman asked the Persian king to kill thousands of Jews, not knowing that Queen Esther was also a Jew. In the end, Haman is hanged on the gallows intended for Mordecai. At the conclusion of the sermon, Reese declared, “Mordecai in a state of poverty and captivity, enjoyed more genuine satisfaction and tranquility of mind, than Haman in the midst of all his riches and honors.”⁷⁰ Perhaps white Presbyterians saw Mordecai as themselves and Haman as King George III’s ministers George Grenville and William Pitt.⁷¹ To his enslaved listeners, Reese undoubtedly hoped to communicate that their positions of poverty and captivity were happier than those of their enslavers, once again using Christianity to support slavery. Reese reinforced this idea when he added, “reprobates all the malignant passions, and inculcates a benevolent, meek, gentle, and forgiving spirit,” and “the command and example of our Redeemer, not only to love our friends, but even our enemies.”⁷² Although white colonists fought against the English for their independence, Reese’s words encouraged trusting God, remaining peaceful, and being forgiving. Enslaved peoples, however, likely saw themselves in Mordecai and the plantation overseers in Haman.

Reese addressed his farewell sermon to the Aimwell, Hopewell, Indiantown, Salem, and Williamsburg churches, all of which had white and Black congregants. Toward the middle of the sermon, Reese delved into the issue of religious liberty in “an age of revolutions.”⁷³ While highlighting the importance of freedom of religion, as Presbyterians had broken away from the Anglican Church, he also cautioned the congregants against quickly accepting new sects or doctrines. He wrote this sermon just before the beginning of the Second Great Awakening and during a time when revivalists such as Methodists and Baptists had begun to move into the South and increasingly more religious leaders throughout the United States were advocating for abolition.⁷⁴ Even within South Carolina, Presbyterian Reverend Page 101 →James Gilliland’s opposition to slavery led the Synod of the Carolinas to intervene. The Synod would only ordain him if he agreed not to speak publicly on the issue. He attempted to honor the Synod’s ruling for a brief time, but he eventually moved to Ohio where he could freely advocate for the end of slavery.⁷⁵ Although enslaved peoples may not have known about the inner religious politics, they would have been aware of abolitionist religious leaders.⁷⁶ Peoples of African descent may have seen Reese’s warnings as worth consideration so as to not be filled with false hope. On the other hand, his sermon may have sounded like a desperate appeal by an enslaver to try to perpetuate the idea of Christian slavery.

There were divisions in Presbyterianism over slavery, and Southerners protected the institution through their churches. In 1818, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church issued a statement on slavery that represented a compromise: It condemned slavery as immoral without damning enslavers or calling for immediate abolition. The statement acknowledged how slavery violated God’s law while not calling enslavers sinners. The church vowed to promote more humane treatment of enslaved peoples and gradual abolition.⁷⁷ However, the church did not portray African-descended peoples as equal to white people and called for the relocation of formerly enslaved peoples to Africa by means of colonization societies.⁷⁸ The statement in 1818 was an effort to keep the church unified, but it did not last. In 1837, the church divided itself into the New School and the Old School. Although not all members of the New School were abolitionists, it was predominantly Northern and Midwestern. Southerners gravitated toward the Old School.⁷⁹ Joseph Brown became the minister of Hopewell in 1838, and he served there until his passing in 1859.⁸⁰ According to the 1850 census, Reverend Brown enslaved nineteen people.⁸¹ It is likely that Brown included the people he enslaved in the church’s numbers of Black congregants during his twenty-one year tenure as minister at Hopewell. According to church records of congregants, there were one hundred fifteen white and one hundred thirty-nine Black congregants in 1841; one hundred twenty-six white and forty-six Black congregants in 1849; and one hundred and twenty white and one hundred Black congregants in 1852.⁸² Having an enslaver as head of the church was sure to keep Presbyterianism and slavery intertwined in the area.

The Presbyterian Church included enslaved peoples in their numbers of congregants in the 1850s, but the church assumed membership through a Presbyterian enslaver. In an 1852 report, Reverend John Robinson provided numbers as well as his logic in calculating them. He claimed that members of the Presbyterian Church likely enslaved around seventy thousand people. Page 102 →He did not assert that all members of the church were enslavers; instead, he believed that “one-third of the ministers, and one-half of the members of the Church, who are heads of families, own slaves.”⁸³ He determined that Presbyterians enslaved approximately thirty thousand adults in the South, and over twenty percent of those enslaved adults were “professors of religion.” He listed Hopewell’s sister churches—Salem, Indiantown, and Williamsburg—as having more Black congregants than white.⁸⁴ Hopewell reported having one hundred twenty white and one hundred Black members in 1858, one year before Reverend Brown died.⁸⁵ Robinson and the Pee Dee’s Presbyterian churches assumed that an enslaved person accompanying an enslaver to church meant the enslaved person had adopted the religion and accepted membership in the church. However, he neglected to acknowledge that enslaved people would not have had a choice in attendance or baptism. This is not to deny their agency in professing a religion, but it highlights that going to church was a part of their enslavement.

Presbyterian churches in the Pee Dee supported the Confederacy during the American Civil War. In 1861, members of the Old School in Southern states broke away from the rest of Presbyterians in the United States, and they formed the Presbyterian Church of the Confederate States of America.⁸⁶ Dozier recounted attending Hopewell with his enslaver Wiles Gregg while David Ethan Frierson preached there.⁸⁷ Frierson served Hopewell during the American Civil War and Reconstruction (1859–1871), and he made contributions to the Confederate war effort through the South Carolina Tract Society.⁸⁸ Although he did not publish any of his sermons, they likely reflected the numerous religious pamphlets the society published during the war. One such pamphlet, An Appeal to Young Soldiers, suggested, “This war is waged for the establishment of Truth, Justice, and Mercy—for the rescue of the gracious King’s subjects from the tyranny of a cruel oppressor, who seeks to delude them into serving him—and if they do not leave him, he will lead them into a place where they will be tortured for ever and ever.”⁸⁹ The author continued, “Will you resign yourself to ‘everlasting chains and slavery,’ when the great ‘Captain of our salvation’ is willing to admit to you ‘the glorious liberty of the children of God?’”⁹⁰ With unintentional irony, the pamphlet uses the metaphor of slavery as well as the threat of eternal damnation to encourage Confederates to fight against the Union. Although white Confederates, including those in the Pee Dee, were making claims that the North would oppress and enslave them, they were doing just that to the African-descended peoples who attended Presbyterian churches with them and whom they claimed as fellow congregants.

Page 103 →There are numerous men and women buried at Hopewell Presbyterian Church Cemetery who aided and fought for the Confederacy. There are as many as thirty-eight Confederate soldiers buried in the Hopewell cemetery. One of those was Anthony Ross, Mom Ryer Emmanuel’s enslaver.⁹¹ Another Confederate soldier buried there is Wilds Gregg, Washington Dozier’s enslaver.⁹² There are fourteen other Gregg men who fought for the Confederacy buried alongside him. Even the founder of Florence, General William Wallace Harllee, signatory of the South Carolina Ordinance of Secession, rests in the Hopewell cemetery.⁹³ For enslaved people such as Emmanuel and Dozier, the Hopewell cemetery represented their enslavers’ determination to preserve slavery, so much so that they broke from the United States and fought in a war. Emmanuel even recounted how the Ross family hid rations under the houses of the enslaved and fled to the swamp to hide from “dem Yankees.”⁹⁴ The women of Hopewell Presbyterian Church also contributed to the Confederate war effort. They formed the Ladies’ Aid Society, raising funds and collecting supplies for Confederate soldiers. The first president of the society was Amelia Harllee, wife of Dr. Robert Harllee, General W. W. Harllee’s brother. Their son, Robert Armstrong Harllee was a Confederate soldier who died in 1862. All three rest at Hopewell cemetery.⁹⁵ In 1860, Robert Harllee enslaved one hundred fourteen people, and W. W. Harllee enslaved thirty-five people.⁹⁶ Although these enslaved peoples would have been listed among the church’s congregants, they would not have been a part of the church’s democratic form of governance, and they would have known that their enslavers were fighting a war to keep them enslaved.

Enslaved peoples in the Pee Dee experienced Presbyterianism as a part of slavery. Many of the people who founded the Pee Dee’s Presbyterian churches also established the region’s plantations. Later accounts from four formerly enslaved individuals revealed how they associated churches with slavery above all else. They did not simply describe the churches as somewhere they attended during slavery but as “slavery churches.” This would have weighed heavily on how they received sermons and perceived ministers. It is likely that they did not associate Christianity with slavery, as certain sects and other denominations opposed their enslavement and many Black churches appeared in the Pee Dee after abolition. In white Presbyterian churches, Black congregants had to worship from segregated galleries under “white paternal leadership.”⁹⁷ The Presbyterian Church would not permit Black congregants to establish Black Presbyterian churches or have Black church leadership. After the American Civil War and the abolition of slavery, Black Christians preferred to start their own churches or Page 104 →join another denomination to “second-class membership” in a Presbyterian church.⁹⁸ African-descended peoples did not just want freedom in death, as Reese had preached. Once they got that freedom, they continued to find hope and comfort in Christianity, but not in slavery’s churches.

Erica Johnson is associate professor of history and codirector of African and African American Studies at Francis Marion University (FMU). A native of Oklahoma, she specializes in the history of the Atlantic World. She is author of a monograph, Philanthropy and Race in the Haitian Revolution, part of the Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). She has published articles in The History Teacher, Southern Quarterly, Journal of Transnational American Studies, and Journal of Western Society for French History. Her research interests include race, religion, and revolution in the greater Atlantic World. She is the faculty coordinator for FMU’s Universities Studying Slavery initiative.