In addition to these evident reasons, slave owners were growing sensi-
tive to critiques of the “peculiar institution.” When religious leaders such as
John Wesley (who denounced slavery as evil), Francis Asbury, and George
Whitefield visited slaveholding areas, attempts were made to boycott them.
One plantation owner, Hugh Bryan in Georgia, was arrested in 1742 for
trying to carry an evangelical message to the slaves and for criticizing what
the whites were doing.
How did religion spread in the face of this formidable opposition, par-
ticularly when so few slaves could read? The fact is that no one knows.
Even more curious is the desire of the slaves to adopt what they must have
thought of as the religion of the masters, particularly a religion that seemed
to justify slavery. We are on safer ground in considering what the blacks did
with Christianity.
Two points stand out. First, blacks chose from Christianity those ele-
ments that spoke to their condition. They found, particularly in the Old
Testament, stories that were parables for their own tribulations. They gen-
erally identified themselves with the “children of Israel” and their masters
with “old Pharaoh.” Second, and more generally, by portraying themselves
as “children of God” slaves overcame the central problem of their exis-
tence, being nonpeople. As slaves became fellow Christians, avoidance of
the question of their humanity became more difficult for any but the most
obdurate whites. Yet it was not until nearly the eve of the Revolution that
whites came to tolerate missionaries’ activities or even limited education for
blacks. Perhaps when they did, it was because neither missions nor school-
ing seemed to be leading toward emancipation.
Virginia, the state with the largest black population, was the scene of the
first emancipation proclamation. How it came about is one of the ironies of
the American struggle for freedom. On November 7, 1775, in his final act in
office, the last royal governor, Lord Dunmore, set out to enroll blacks and
indentured whites to fight the rebellious colonists. Some 800 blacks were
enlisted, but they were little used by the British except to support Scottish
and English raiders on the Virginia coast. The main effect of Dunmore’s
proclamation was to consolidate and energize the southern rebels and to
push an unknown number of wavering whites, who feared that British policy
would provoke a general slave rebellion, into the rebel camp.
184 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA