THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
to Nature worship and that belief in witchcraft common to all primitive peoples. Some had more or less vague ideas of a supreme being and higher religious ideas, while a few were Mohammedans, and fewer Christians. Some actual 1. Religious priests were transported and others Condition assumed the functions of priests, and
of Early soon a form of African religion and
Slaves. witchcraft appeared in the West Indies, which was known as Obi, or sorcery. The French Creoles called it Vaudois (" Waldensian "), because of the witchcraft charged against the followers of Peter Waldo, whence comes the dialect term Voodoo or Hoodoo. While in its origins the system was undoubtedly African, and part of some more or less well-defined religious system, it often degenerated into mere imposture. There were probably traces of blood sacrifice and worship of the moon, but unfortunately information comes not from serious students of curious human phenomena, but rather from persons apparently unable to understand why a transplanted heathen should cling to heathen rites. The most obvious reason for the spread of witchcraft and persistence of heathen rites among Negro slaves was the fact that at first no effort was made by masters to offer them anything better, due to the wide-spread idea that it was contrary to law to hold Christians as slaves, an idea which had become well established by the end of the sixteenth century. This did not involve any wide-spread abhorrence of forced labor from serfs or apprentices, and it was linked with the idea that the enslavement of the heathen was meritorious, since it punished their blasphemy on the one hand and gave them a chance for conversion on the other. When, therefore, the slave-trade from Africa began it met only feeble opposition here and there. That opposition was in nearly all cases stilled when it was stated that the slave-trade was a method of converting the heathen to Christianity. The corollary that the conscience of Europe immediately drew was that after conversion the Negro slave was to become in all essential respects like other servants and laborers, bound to toil under general regulations, but personally free with recognized rights and duties. Most colonists believed that this was not only actually right, but according to English law. And while they early began to combat the idea they continually doubted the legality of their action in English courts.
It was not until 1667 that Virginia attacked the
issue squarely and declared by law: " Baptisme
doth not alter the condition of the per-
2. Lack son as to his bondage or freedom, in
of Early order that diverse masters freed from
Missionary this doubt may more carefully endeavor
Effort, the propagation of Christianity "
(quoted from a law passed in Virginia
in 1667; cf. Henning,^ Statutes, vol. ii., p. 260).
Following this Virginia took three further steps in
1670, 1682, and 1705. First she declared that only
slaves imported from Christian lands should be
free. Next she excepted Negroes and mulattoes
from even this restriction unless they were born of
Christians and were Christians when taken into
slavery. Finally personal Christianity in Africa or
actual freedom in a Christian country exempted a Virginia Negro slave from lifelong slavery. This changing attitude of Christians toward Negroes was reflected in John Locke's Fundamental Constitutions of South Carolina (published in B. It. Carroll, Historical Collections of South Carolina, vol. ii., New York, 1836), one article of which read: " Since charity obliges us to wish well to the souls of all men, and religion ought to alter nothing in any man's civil estate or right, it shall be lawful for slaves as well as others to enter themselves and to be of what church and profession any of them shall think best, and thereof be as fully members as any freeman. But yet no slaves shall be hereby exempted from the civil dominion his master hath over him, but be in all things in the same state and condition he was in before." So much did this please the Carolinas that it was one of the few articles reenacted in the constitution of 1688. It is clear from these citations that in the seventeenth century not only was there little missionary effort to convert Negro slaves, but that there was, on the contrary, positive refusal to let slaves be converted, and that this refusal was one incentive to explicit statements of the doctrine of perpetual slavery for Negroes. The French Code Noir of 1685 made baptism and religious instruction of Negroes obligatory. There was no such legislation in English colonies. In Massachusetts John Elliot and Cotton Mather both were much concerned that " so little care was taken of their [the Negroes'] precious and immortal souls," which were left to " a destroying ignorance merely for fear of thereby losing the benefit of their vassalage." So throughout the colonies it was reported in 1678 that masters, " out of covetousness," refuse to allow their slaves to be baptized; and in 1700 there was an earnest plea in Massachusetts for religious instruction of Negroes since it was " notorious " that masters discourage the " poor creatures " from baptism. In 1709 a Carolina clergyman wrote to the secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in England that only a few of 200 or more Negroes in his community were taught Christianity, and they were not allowed to be baptized. This state of affairs led to further laws, and the instructions to some of the royal governors contain a clause ordering them to " find out the best means to facilitate and encourage the conversion of Negroes and Indians to the Christian religion."
In 1729 an appeal from several colonies was made to England on the subject in order to increase the conversion of blacks. The crown attorney and solicitor-general replied that baptism in no way changed the slave's status. The first organized effort to convert slaves was by the So- 3. Efforts ciety for the Propagation of the Gos-
Evan eliz°a-pel in ForeiSn Parts- In 1702 some **on work was done among the Negroes of
Carolina, and in 1704 a Negro school was established in New York, under Elias Neau, a French Protestant. The records of the society abundantly establish the fact that the greatest obstruction to the religious instruction of the Negroes was in the masters themselves. From 1711 to 1783 thousands of sermons and leaflets advocating the conversion of slaves were distributed in