Mathews - Charles Colcock Jones and the Southern Evangelical Crusade to Form a Biracial Community

Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

Charles Colcock Jones and the Southern Evangelical Crusade to Form a BiracialCommunity

Donald G. Mathews

The Journal of Southern History

, Vol. 41, No. 3. (Aug., 1975), pp. 299-320.

Stable URL:http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-4642%28197508%2941%3A3%3C299%3ACCJATS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L

The Journal of Southern History

is currently published by Southern Historical Association.Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtainedprior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/journals/sha.html.Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers,and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.http://www.jstor.orgWed Jan 23 04:53:29 2008

Charles Colcock Jones and the Southern Evangelical Crusade to Form a ~iraGal ommunity 

CHARLES

COLCOCK WILLIAMLLOYDGARRISONOSES

ASD

HAD

much in common. Both were Evangelical Christians and moralelitists who wanted a perfect society. Both devoted their lives to theproblem of black-white relationships. At one time both wrote aboutthe necessity of destroying African slavery. They developed,however, in different ways. Garrison personified the northernabolitionist movement; Jones represented the southern Christianmission to the slaves. Although historians know a great deal aboutGarrison's pilgrimage, they know little about Jones's. Identifiedwith the efforts of antebellum southerners to vindicate their socialsystem, the mission as a historical institution and idea has sufferedfrom the sentimentality of conservatives and the righteous indigna-tion of radicals. Awareness of class interest, religious self-delusion,and racial fears, however, should not prevent historians from con-sidering the ironies and almost hopeless contradictions thatbemired southern Evangelicals. If the mission was a movement toimpose social control, it nevertheless sprang from some of the bestinclinations of white southerners. And

if

the best was inadequate todeal with social problems, perhaps the monumental quality of theinadequacy is worth remembering.Until the Great Awakening in the South race relations had beenshaped by the whites' need to control an indispensable if potential-ly dangerous labor force and had been only haphazardly affected byreligious institutions. As a movement attracting blacks as well aswhites and emphasizing the moral bases of life, the Awakeningdemanded careful scrutiny of the master-slave relationship. Thisaction, facilitated by Revolutionary ideals of egalitarianism, gaverise to a long controversy about the emancipationist implications ofEvangelicalism. Although emancipationists failed in their ultimate

MR.

hl

\.ITIEII.S

is professor of history at the University of North Carolina atChapel Hill.

THE

Joi

11\

11.

06

H1s.1.0111OL.I.FIEIIY

Yo]

XLI, No

3,

Ar~gust

1973

300

THE JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY

aim, they succeeded in making slaves the moral charges of whites,as blacks were slowly brought within the orbit of ProtestantChristianity. In the 1820s and 1830s southern clergymen felt a newsense of urgency with the stirring of slaves in the South and radicalsin the North. Insurrection and abolitionism joined with a nationalimpulse for reform to provide an audience for a man who hoped tosave his country and soul by persuading his fellow southerners tocreate a biracial community based upon Christian precepts.Charles Colcock Jones (1804-1863) grew up in a world wheremen and women daily exercised power and responsibility with thefretfully persistent knowledge of their ultimate powerlessness andmoral failing. He was raised in a slaveholding family whosereligious inheritance was the stern moral discipline ofPresbyterianism. His natal county, Liberty (Georgia), had beenfounded by descendants of Puritans who since 1630 had arrivedfrom England by way of New England and South Carolina. Thechurch and religious society, called Midway, still formed thenucleus of social life; the words of the pastor still brought thepromise of eternal life:

"I

rejoice to hear that God has showed youyour unworthiness

&

wretchedness, because

I

am persuaded that heis about to bestow on you remarkable Comforts."' This tensionbetween original sin and eternal bliss-with its conseq~~encesfpersonal anxiety and self-discipline-was the religious contextwithin which masters viewed their slaves. Wanting their slaves tohold the same views, masters brought them into Midway Church.'There young Charles could see black and white together and museabout the special obligation which masters owed their slaves3But Jones did not at once articulate that obligation. An orphan,he was apprenticed by his uncle and guardian to a Savannah count-inghouse in 1819 until a serious illness sent him into a personalcrisis that resulted in his religious conversion. Steadily, he thoughtthrough the problems of becoming a minister until in 1825 he wentnorth to Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. After gradua-tion he attended both Andover and Princeton theologicalseminaries, graduating from the latter in the autumn of 1830.4Dur-

John Boggs to Mrs.

-

Jones. March 29. 1813. Charles Colcock Jones Papers (TulaneUniversity, New Orleans. La.).The author wishes gratefully to acknowledge a grant from theKational Endowment for the Humanities which made research for this article possibleSee Mr~rdockMurphy Diary, Jrlly 10, 1819 (Alabama Department of Archives andHistory, Montgomery. Ala.); James Stacy.

History of the Midway Congregational Church,Liberty County, Georgia

(Newnan, Ga., 1903). 208-39.See for example the report of planters' activities for their slaves in Robert Quarterman toMary Jones, December

25,

1828. C

C.

Jones PapersColl~mbia S.C

)

Sotrthern Presbyterian,

June

4.

1863: Mary Jones. "Miscellaneo~~sRemembrances of Charles Colcock Jones,"

C. C

Jones Papers For a brief overview of C. C.

of 00

Leave a Comment