In
most parts it suffered from the rise of the more popular Methodists
and Baptists into the folds of which slaves followed their masters
during the eighteenth century.
The adjustment of the Methodist and Baptist churches in the South to
the new work among the darker people, however, was after the first
quarter of the nineteenth century practically easy. Each of these
denominations had once strenuously opposed slavery, the Methodists
holding out longer than the Baptists. But the particularizing force
of the institution soon became such that southern churches of these
connections withdrew most of their objections to the system and, of
course, did not find it difficult to abandon the idea of teaching
Negroes to read.[1] Moreover, only so far as it was necessary to
prepare men to preach and exhort was there an urgent need for literary
education among these plain and unassuming missionaries. They came,
not emphasizing the observance of forms which required so much
development of the intellect, but laying stress upon the quickening
of man's conscience and the regeneration of his soul. In the States,
however, where the prohibitory laws were not so rigidly enforced,
the instruction received in various ways from workers of these
denominations often turned out to be more than religion without
letters.
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