Negroes are a religious as well as a superstitious race. At midnight
Saturday it was their custom to ring the great plantation bell, and
spend the next several hours in exhorting, praying and singing their
curious, doleful hymns. The whites gave them instruction and training
along these lines. Heart and conscious were alike cultivated--not alone
the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Statistics show that there were
466,000 slaves belonging to churches in the South: Methodist, Baptist,
Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and other sects. So the owners of these
christianized people thought that they were doing missionary work
in saving them from the cannibalism of heathen Africa. Both men and
women were taught trades and useful occupations. There were tanners,
shoemakers, blacksmiths, farmers, gardeners, horticulturists and
carpenters among the men. The women could sew, cook, card, spin, weave,
knit, wash, iron, in fact what they produced in this way would put to
shame the acquirements and accomplishments of free labor.
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