Part 9

Many there were who had the courage as well as the impulse to protest. One of the firmest and the ablest of these was Jefferson. He had the insight to perceive not only the injustice to the slave, but the injury to the slaveholder. "There must, doubtless," he writes, "be an unhappy influence on the manners of our people by the existence of slavery among us. The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave, he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of passion toward his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of his passions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances."

Yet we are constantly meeting such prodigies in the history of the Cavalier. Men whose pure lives, gentle manners, and courtesy to high and low, whose unselfishness and cheerful benignity may be matched against those of the hardest-working Puritan or the most radical upholder of the equal rights of man. The old _noblesse oblige_ principle still held sway. Governor Gouch, of Virginia, being once on a time reproached for having returned the bow of a negro, replied in the good old Cavalier spirit: "I should be much ashamed that a negro should have better manners than I." The field hands were kept at a distance, but the house-servants were admitted to the closest intimacy, especially when acting in the capacity of maids and nurses. Many a golden head was laid for comfort on the black breast of some faithful Mammy, while the childish sorrows were poured into her listening ear, and many a gray-haired woman recalled as her truest friend, the humble slave whose life had been devoted to her service.

An entry in Washington's journal shows how well he understood the nature of the negro, and how wisely and firmly he dealt with it. One day four of his servants were employed at carpentering, but without accomplishing anything. Instead of scolding, Washington sat himself calmly down to watch their work. Stimulated by his presence, they went on briskly. The wise master noted the work and the time, and then informed them that just so much must be done in his absence. It was owing to such management that the products of the Mount Vernon plantation ranked so high that all barrels marked with the name of George Washington passed the inspectors without examination.

Here, if anywhere, was a man who might be trusted with arbitrary power over his fellow-men, yet he was one of the most outspoken in opposition to slavery; and he, like Jefferson, realized the terrible strain on the character of the master. Woe to the man who lives constantly with inferiors! He is doomed never to hear himself contradicted, never to be told unwelcome truth, never to sharpen his wits and learn to control his temper by argument with equals. The Colonial Cavaliers were little kings, and they proved the truth of the saying of the royal sage of Rome, that the most difficult of tasks is to lead life well in a palace.

His Church

"_Mixe not holy thinges with profane!_" so runs the inscription on the quaint old silver chalice used in the communion service of the Jamestown church.

Had the advice been heeded, the history of the Colonial Church of England would not have been the sorry story it is. In point of fact, holy and profane things are so mixed in its chronicles that it is hard to write of it without seeming levity and flippancy. To call the differences between the parsons and their parishes in the Southern Colonies a struggle, would be to dignify it beyond the warrant of truth. It was simply a series of squabbles without ennobling principle on either side. Yet, in the beginning, better things promised. Great attention was paid to religious forms and observances, and the earliest laws are devoted to the regulation of church affairs.

In the year after the landing of the settlers, Edward Maria Wingfield, first president of the council in Virginia, was brought to trial accused of various high crimes and misdemeanors. Among the charges against him was one of atheism. The most damaging evidence against him was the absence of a Bible from his belongings. He himself felt that this was a point needing explanation, which he made by saying that he had "sorted" many books to take with him to Virginia, and was sure that a Bible was among them, but that in the course of his journey he had found "the truncke" somehow broken open, and the Bible "ymbeasiled."

In rebuttal of evidence showing general godlessness and lack of respect for the Sabbath, he explained that on the Sunday in question, Indian allarums had detained every one at the palisade "till the daie was farre spent." Then, he goes on to say: "the preacher, Master Hunt, did aske me if it weare my pleasure to have a sermon. He said he was prepared for it. I made answer that our men were weary and hungry, and that if it pleased him wee would spare him till some other tyme."

The tact of this reply should certainly have scored a point in Wingfield's defence, especially as he adds: "I never failed to take such noates by wrighting out of his doctrine as my capacity could comprehend, _unless some raynie day hindered my endeavour_."

These excuses, however, were not satisfactory to his judges, and the other charges against him proving only too well-founded, he was deposed from the council, and was glad enough to slip off back to England at the first chance. Three years later, Dale of the iron hand came over fresh from the Netherlands, and put religion, like everything else, under martial law. The captain of the watch was made a sort of tithing-man, whose business it was to preserve order and encourage godliness at the point of the bayonet. It was his duty, half an hour before divine service, morning and evening, to shut the ports and place sentinels, and, the bell having tolled for the last time, to search all the houses, and to command every one (with the exception of the sick and hurt) to go to church. This done, he followed the guards with their arms into the church, where he laid the keys before the governor. On Sunday he was ordered to see that the day was noways profaned by any disorders.

The Ancient Planters were strict Sunday keepers. The earliest law decrees "The Sabbath to be kept holy, that no journeys be made except in case of emergent necessitie on that day, that no goods bee laden in boates, nor shooteing in gunns or the like tending to the prophanation of the day." The offender who disobeys this decree is sentenced to pay a fine of a hundred pounds of tobacco or "be layd in the stocks."

Henry Coleman was excommunicated for forty days for scornful speeches, and putting on his hat in church. The minister as well as the church was protected by law from irreverence and disrespect. In 1653, it was ordered by the court that, for slandering Rev. Mr. Cotton, "Henry Charlton make a pair of stocks and set in them several Sabbath-days during divine service, and then ask Mr. Cotton's forgiveness for using offensive and slanderous words concerning him." A few years later, Mary Powell, for slandering a minister, was sentenced to receive twenty lashes on her bare shoulders, and to be banished the country. I tremble to think what would have been the fate, had he fallen into episcopal hands, of the Puritan who spoke of bishops as "proud, popish, presumptuous, paltry, pestilent, and pernicious prelates;" and further as "impudent, shameless, and _wainscot-faced_." I, for one, should have voted to take something from his punishment, on the ground of his supplying the world with a new and most expressive phrase.

Maryland, liberal in all sectarian matters, strictly forbade calling names such as "Heretick, Schismatick, Idolator, Papist, Antinomian, etc.," and sentenced the offender to a fine of ten shillings. She also dealt summarily with unbelievers. Her assembly ordained that "whatsoever person or persons shall deny the Holy Trinity, or shall utter reproachful speeches concerning the Trinity or any of the said persons thereof, shall be punished with death and confiscation of land and goods to the Lord Proprietary."

The first church in America was a very simple affair, an old rotten tent set up in the Jamestown marsh under the pines and hemlocks. The soft May weather made even so much shelter unnecessary, and it was replaced by an awning stretched between the rustling boughs. But busy as the settlers were, they set to work at once on a chapel built of logs and covered with sedge and dirt, which in turn was replaced by a church of timber, fifty feet long, by more than twenty in breadth. This finally was replaced by the brick building whose ruined arches alone remain to tell its story.

When Lord De la Warre arrived in Virginia and found the colonists in desperate straits, he wisely occupied their attention by setting them to repair and refurnish the wooden church then in existence, and to decorate it with flowers. Here during his government he worshipped in a degree of state more fitting for a cathedral than for a wooden chapel in the wilderness. He went to church in full dress, attended by his lieutenant-general, admiral, vice-admiral, master of the horse and the rest of the council, with a guard of fifty halberd-bearers in red cloaks behind him. When the service ended, the procession filed out with as much solemnity as it had entered, and escorted the Governor to his house.

Religious observances played an important part in the early days of the settlement. The first statute made by an early legislative assembly, requires that in every plantation some house or room be specially dedicated to the worship of God, sequestered and set apart for that purpose, and not to be of any temporal use whatever.

It is curious, in view of this last clause, to find it recorded of the House of Burgesses itself: "The most convenient place wee could finde to site in was the quire of the churche." Surely no place could have been more appropriate for the gathering of the first free assembly of the people in America, and it was equally fitting that their proceedings should open with a prayer for guidance in the path which was destined to be darker and more difficult than they knew. "Forasmuch as men's affaires doe little prosper when God's service is neglected," a prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the minister, "that it would please God to guide and sanctifie all our proceedings to His owne glory and the good of this Plantation."

If the church of that time was devoted to temporal uses, religious services were not confined within its walls. Alexander Whitaker, the apostle of Virginia, writes home that he _exercises_ at the house of the governor, Sir Thomas Dale, every Saturday night. This "exercising," or hearing of the catechism, with prayer and song, in private houses, was a matter of necessity in days when a parish covered a space hardly to be crossed in a day's journey, with the roads or bridle-paths choked with undergrowth, and blocked by fallen logs. The Rev. Mr. Forbes seems to have been of a complaining nature, yet he rouses one's sympathy when he tells of the difficulties under which he labored.

"My parish," he says, "extendeth LX miles in length, in breadth about XI." Over this distance were scattered some four hundred families, to whom he was expected to minister. "Sometimes," he goes on plaintively, "after I have travelled Fifty Miles to Preach at a Private House, the weather happening to prove bad on the day of our meeting so that very few met, or else being hindred by Rivers and Swamps rendred impassable with much rain, I have returned with doing of nothing to their benefit or mine own satisfaction."

Few clergymen of that day and region took their duties so seriously. They were for the most part quite willing to have service read by some deputy-priest or layman in the "chapels of ease;" or if they must officiate, they chose some sermon from Thomas Fuller or Jeremy Taylor, or, as a last resort, constructed one at small expense of labor on a scaffolding of headings resting on an underpinning of text. A fine example of this method of sermon-building I find in the discourse sent home by the pious Whitaker. He takes as his text, "Cast thy bread upon the waters," and expounds it after this fashion:

"1. The dutie to be performed: _Cast thy bread._ Be liberal to all.

"2. The manner of bestowing alms: By _casting_ it away.

"3. What is to be given? _Bread_; all things needful, yes, and of the best kind.

"4. Who may be liberal? Even those that have it. It must be _thy_ bread--thine own.

"5. To whom we must be liberal: To all; yea to the _Waters_."

This kind of sermon had the double advantage of being easy for the preacher, and restful to the congregation. It went along at a comfortable jog-trot, like a family horse, and the hearer was in no danger of being hurled over the head of revival eloquence into lurid threats of future punishment. If the preachers of the Church of England did not kindle spiritual ardor, at least they did not keep children awake o' nights, nor frighten nervous women into hysterics.

While these drowsy discourses were going on in the Southern colonies, the Puritan divine in the New England pulpit was throwing off such cheerful observations as these: "Every natural man and woman is born full of all sin, as full as a toad is of poison, as full as ever his skin can hold; mind, will, eyes, mouth; every limb of his body and every piece of his mind." The future awaiting such a wretch, he sets forth vividly: "Thou canst not endure the torments of a little kitchen-fire on the tip of thy finger, not one-half hour together. How wilt thou bear the fury of this infinite, endless, consuming fire in body and soul!" To these inspiring doctrines of the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, another Puritan preacher added his conviction that "there are infants in hell not a span long."

To the credit of the Colonial Church of England be it recorded that no such sentiments disgraced its pulpit and made its Sabbath terrible to little children. The day was one of innocent enjoyment, and the church building was dear to generation after generation, as a peaceful and memory-hallowed spot. The early settlers had little money to spend in adorning their churches, yet from the beginning there was a great difference between the bare and square wooden New England meeting-house and the quaint Southern church of brick or stone, recalling in every line the beloved parish churches of Old England. The churchmen, unlike the Puritans, found no sin in beauty or adornment. St. John's Church at Hampton bore the royal arms carved on its steeple. Colonel Springer left by his will one thousand pounds of tobacco to pay for having the Lord's Prayer and Commandments put up in the new church at Northampton. By a statute of 1660, parishes are enjoined to provide at their own cost a great church Bible and two books of Common Prayer in folio for the minister and "clark"; also communion-plate, pulpit-cloth, and cushion, "that all things may be done orderly and decently in the church."

In the next century, there is a record of an order sent to England for gold-leaf to enrich a chancel, which was to be made gorgeous with an original painting of an angel holding back a crimson curtain, draped with a golden cord and tassel.

The pulpits in the old churches were placed at an angle, if the church were in the form of a cross; or if the building were an oblong on one side. These pulpits were so high that, unless the preacher were very tall, nothing could be seen by the congregation but the top of his head. Bishop Meade confesses that when he was to speak from one of these old box-pulpits, he would often hurry to church before his hearers, in order to pile up bricks or boards on which to stand. The good bishop must sometimes have found his thoughts sadly distracted from the sermon by the necessity of keeping his balance on his improvised platform.

The sharp distinction of classes, which was so marked a feature of the Cavalier Colonies, showed itself even in church. Certain pews were set apart and marked "Magistrates" and "Magistrates' Ladies." Into these the great folks marched solemnly on Sundays, followed by their slaves bearing prayer-books, and never suspecting that their conduct was at variance with gospel principles. The great families kept their private pews for generations, and held firmly to their privileges. Matthew Kemp, as churchwarden, was commended by his vestry for displacing "a presuming woman, who would fain have taken a pew above her degree." In the very earliest church, Lord De la Warre's seat was upholstered in green velvet with a green "cooshoon;" Governor Spotswood's pew in Bruton Parish Church at Williamsburg was raised from the floor, and covered with a canopy, while the interior was ornamented with his name in gilt letters. In 1750, it was ordered by the vestry of St. Paul's Church, Norfolk, that "three captains and Mr. Charles Sweeny be allowed to build a gallery reaching from the gallery of Mr. John Taylor to the school-boys' gallery, to be theirs and their heirs' forever."

Washington's pew was an ample square, fitted with cushions for sitting and kneeling. The Puritans would have thought it a glaring iniquity to pay such heed to creature comfort in the house of God. They would have been more in sympathy with the Virginia dame of high degree who, in tardy atonement for her pride, directed that her body be buried under the pavement in the aisle occupied by the poor of the church, that they might trample on her dust. Such gloomy and ascetic associations with the house of God were rare at the South. The church was a centre of cheerfulness, and the Sabbath was supposed to be a day of innocent enjoyment. All work was frowned upon as inconsistent with a due observance of its sanctity, however; and the Grand Jury in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1704, presented Thomas Simms, for travelling on the road on Sunday with a loaded beast, William Montague and Garrett Minor for bringing oysters ashore on the Sabbath, James Senis for swearing and cursing on the holy day; but outside such restrictions as these, no Blue Laws enforced gloom as part of the decorum of Sunday-keeping.

When the church-bell, hung usually from the bough of a tree, began to ring for service, the roads were filled with worshippers moving churchward, full of peace and good-will. First might be seen the young men on horseback, with the tails of their coats carefully pinned in front, to protect them from the sweat of their horses' flanks. Lumbering slowly after these equestrians came the great family-coaches, from which the ladies are assisted by the dismounted gallants. Every young damsel is planning some social festivity. Before or after service, invitations are given, and visits of weeks in length are arranged at the church door. It is to be feared that these colonial maidens sometimes allow their thoughts to wander in sermon-time, from their quaint little prayer-books, with their uneven type and crooked f's, and that they are thinking of dinners while they confess themselves sinners. But their levity is not treated severely by the priest, for he is as eager for his Madeira as his young parishioners are eager for their minuet.

They were jolly dogs, those colonial clergymen of the Church of England in the eighteenth century, and no more to be taken seriously than Friar Tuck, whose apostolic successors they were. Parishioners who wished spiritual counsel had difficulty in finding the parson. In the morning he was fox-hunting, in the afternoon he was over (or under) the dining-table, and the midnight candle shone on his wine-cup and dice-box.

Like their brethren across the Atlantic, the colonial clergy were strong on doctrine. "They abhorred popery, atheism, and idolatries in general, and hiccupped 'Church and State!' with fervor." Yet their morals were at so low an ebb as to justify the complaint made against them that they were "such as wore black coats and could gabble in a pulpit, roar in a tavern, exact from their parishioners, and rather by their dissoluteness destroy than feed their flock."

One clergyman assaulted a dignitary in vestry-meeting, pulling off his wig and subjecting him to various indignities, and capped the climax of audacity by preaching the next Sunday from the text: "I contended with them and cursed them, and smote certain of them and pulled off their hair." Another minister fought a duel behind his church, and a third, the Rev. Thomas Blewer (pronounced probably _Blower_), was presented by the Grand Jury as a common swearer. All efforts to reform the clergy were in vain. Ministers were sometimes tried for drunkenness, and some of the tests of what constitutes drunkenness were laid down by the court: "Sitting an hour or longer in the company where they are drinking strong drink and in the mean time drinking of healths, or otherwise taking the cups as they come round, like the rest of the company; striking or challenging or threatening to fight." Staggering, reeling, and incoherent speech are justly regarded as suspicious circumstances, and the advice continues: "Let the proof of these signs proceed so far till the judges conclude that behavior at such time was scandalous, undecent, unbecoming the dignity of a minister." There is unfortunately only too clear a case against the colonial clergy; but it is only fair to take into account the condition of the church at home. If the clergymen in Maryland and Virginia gambled and drank, so did those in England and Wales. Did not Sterne grace the cassock? Did not Gay propose taking orders for a living, and did not Swift write from a deanery stuff too vile for print? There was some talk at one time of sending this great Dr. Swift over to Virginia as a bishop, and a worthy one he would have been, to such a church.