presented with a Bible and a solemn charge to faithfulness by Mr. Holcombe."[58] The Methodists were probably not far behind the Baptists in this policy.  The Presbyterians and Episcopalians, with much smaller numbers of negro co-religionists to care for, followed the same trend in later decades.  Thus the presbytery of Charleston provided in 1850, at a cost of $7,700, a separate house of worship for its negro members, the congregation to be identified officially with the Second Presbyterian Church of the city.  The building had a T shape, the transepts appropriated to the use of white persons.  The Sunday school of about 180 pupils had twenty or thirty white men and women as its teaching staff.[59]

[Footnote 58:  Henry Holcombe ed., The Georgia Analytical Repository (a Baptist magazine of Savannah, 1802), I, 20, 21.  For further data concerning Francis and other colored Baptists of his time see the Journal of Negro History, I, 60-92.]

[Footnote 59:  J.H.  Thornwell, D.D., The Rights and Duties of Masters:  a sermon preached at the dedication of a church erected at Charleston, S.C. for the benefit and instruction of the colored population (Charleston, 1850).]

Such arrangements were not free from objection, however, as the Episcopalians of Charleston learned about this time.  To relieve the congestion of the negro pews in St. Michael’s and St. Philip’s, a separate congregation was organized with a few whites included in its membership.  While it was yet occupying temporary quarters in Temperance Hall, a mob demolished Calvary Church which was being built for its accommodation.  When the proprietor of Temperance Hall refused the further use of his premises the congregation dispersed.  The mob’s action was said to be in protest against the doings of the “bands” or burial societies among the Calvary negroes.[60]

[Footnote 60:  Public Proceedings relating to Calvary Church and the Religious Instruction of Slaves (Charleston, 1850).]

The separate religious integration of the negroes both slave and free was obstructed by the recurrent fear of the whites that it might be perverted to insurrectionary purposes.  Thus when at Richmond in 1823 ninety-two free negroes petitioned the Virginia legislature on behalf of themselves and several hundred slaves, reciting that the Baptist churches used by the whites had not enough room to permit their attendance and asking sanction for the creation of a “Baptist African Church,” the legislature withheld its permission.  In 1841, however, this purpose was in effect accomplished when it was found that a negro church would not be in violation of the law provided it had a white pastor.  At that time the First Baptist Church of Richmond, having outgrown its quarters, erected a new building to accommodate its white members and left its old one to the negroes.  The latter were thereupon organized as the African Church with a white minister and with the choice of its deacons vested in a white committee.  In 1855, when this congregation had grown to three thousand members, the Ebenezer church was established as an offshoot, with a similar plan of government.[61]