Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/70

56 accelerated progress, till he becomes entitled to entire manumission."

11.—Operation of the laws interferes with religious privileges.

No places of public worship are prepared for the negro; and churches are so scarce in the slave holding States, compared with the number of white inhabitants, that it is not to be supposed great numbers of them follow their masters to such places; and if they did, what could their rude, and merely sensual minds comprehend of a discourse addressed to educated men? In Georgia, there is a law which forbids any congregation or company of negroes to assemble themselves contrary to the act regulating patrols. Every justice of the peace may go in person, or send a constable, to disperse any assembly or meeting of slaves, which may disturb the peace, endanger the safety, &c., and every slave taken at such meetings may, by order of the justice, without trial, receive on the bare back twentyfive stripes with whip, switch, or cowskin. In South Carolina, an act forbids the police officers to break into any place of religious meeting before nine o'clock, provided a majority of the assembly are white persons; but if the quorum of white people should happen to be wanting, every slave would be liable to twentyfive lashes of the cowskin.

These, and various similar regulations, are obviously made to prevent insurrections; but it is plain that they must materially interfere with the slave's opportunities for religious instruction. The fact is, there are inconveniences attending a general diffusion of Christianity in a slave holding State—light must follow its path, and that light would reveal the surrounding darkness,—slaves might begin to think whether slavery could be reconciled with religious precepts,—and then the system is quite too republican—it teaches that all men are children of the same Heavenly Father, who careth alike for all.

The West India planters boldly and openly declared, that slavery and Christianity could not exist together; in their minds the immediate inference was, that Christianity must be put down; and very consistently they