Others with a higher sense of duty brought forward a
scheme of oral instruction in Christian truth or of religion without
letters. The word instruction thereafter signified among the
southerners a procedure quite different from what the term meant in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Negroes were taught to
read and write that they might learn the truth for themselves.
Being aristocratic in its bearing, the Episcopal Church in the South
early receded from the position of cultivating the minds of the
colored people. As the richest slaveholders were Episcopalians, the
clergy of that denomination could hardly carry out a policy which
might prove prejudicial to the interests of their parishioners.
Moreover, in their propaganda there was then nothing which required
the training of Negroes to instruct themselves. As the qualifications
of Episcopal ministers were rather high even for the education of the
whites of that time, the blacks could not hope to be active churchmen.
This Church, therefore, soon limited its work among the Negroes of
the South to the mere verbal instruction of those who belonged to the
local parishes. Furthermore, because this Church was not exceedingly
militant, and certainly not missionary, it failed to grow rapidly.
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