University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2014 The hC arleston "School of Slavery": Race, Religion, and Community in the Capital of Southern Civilization Eric Rose University of South Carolina - Columbia Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Rose, E.(2014). The Charleston "School of Slavery": Race, Religion, and Community in the Capital of Southern Civilization. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/2763 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE CHARLESTON “SCHOOL OF SLAVERY”: Race, Religion, and Community in the Capital of Southern Civilization by Eric William Rose Bachelor of Arts College of Charleston, 1999 Master of Arts George Mason University, 2004 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2014 Accepted by: Lacy K. Ford, Jr., Major Professor Don H. Doyle, Committee Member Mark M. Smith, Committee Member Shevaun Watson, Committee Member Lacy K. Ford, Jr., Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies DEDICATION Dedicated to my Mom, Margaret Saville Rose, whose spirited support made this, and everything else, possible. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation is a partial repayment for debts owed at archives all over the southeast. I am particularly indebted to the staff at the South Caroliniana Library, the South Carolina Historical Society, Avery Research Center, and the College of Charleston. Special thanks also go to R. Philip Stone at Wofford College Library, Erskine Clarke, and the archivists at Columbia Theological Seminary. Insightful guidance and feedback from mentors, colleagues, and friends enriched the dissertation at each stage of its ten-year development. First credits go to the enduring support of the History Department at the University of South Carolina, particularly Lacy Ford, Don Doyle, Michael Scardaville, Carol Harrison, and Mark Smith. Jane Turner Censer and Mike O’Malley, my mentors at George Mason, deserve special credit for igniting the spark that became this great conflagration. Special thanks go to the gracious readers who helped to refine earlier drafts and related projects, particularly G. Thomas Sheffer, Shevaun Watson, Jay Richardson, Edward Blum, Bob Elder, Christine Ames, David Prior, and Simons Tate. Behind every good dissertation are a number of good women. Whether or not this is a good dissertation, the women behind its author are great. I drew from a reservoir of inspiration filled by my grandmother Louise Pugh Saville, and her daughters Margaret Saville Rose, Mary Louise (Saville) DeSarran, and Elizabeth Saville Burns. My mother- iii in-law, Roberta Sheffer, provided care, compassion, and cookies. The love, spice, and sacrifice contributed by my wife, Meredith Sheffer, make this dissertation hers as much as my own. iv ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the interracial religious communities of antebellum South Carolina to highlight patterns of racial consciousness and nation-building and demonstrate that the southern path to modernity was much closer to that of their northern contemporaries than previously recognized. The ready-made system of human classification inherent in racial slavery did not insulate southerners from the modern impulses that transfigured northern racial relations; instead, this dissertation argues that Carolinians white and black, free and slave, participated in a discourse of religious modernization that redirected the potentially destabilizing social implications of evangelicalism and progress into an idealized community structure that served the spiritual needs of black Carolinians, yet also reinforced white supremacy and strengthened the institution of slavery. In response to the external challenge of antislavery and the internal challenge of African-American religious autonomy, white Carolinians invented a tradition of black dependence and parlayed this myth into a modern ethos of community: the bi-racial southern nation. By focusing this study of race and community formation on South Carolina, the vanguard of proslavery argument and separatism, this dissertation demonstrates striking parallels of racial consciousness common to both northern and southern societies, but also that the racial dynamics of community formation played a formative role in the v development of sectional consciousness. Charleston was not the most typical of southern scenes, but the processes of racial modernization that unfolded in the churches of the “Holy City” were common to many American cities, and the idealized social order modeled and reflected in the sacred spaces of her bi-racial churches provided the quintessential cultural validation for southern nationalism. The strong localized sense of community, modernized through the churches of Charleston over the course of a century, ultimately assumed a position of priority over the more distant imagined community of the United States and convinced most white Charlestonians to volunteer their lives, fortunes, and slaves to the cause of Civil War. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ iii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................... v CHAPTER 1. Civilization and Conversion: Americanization in the Churches of Charleston .................................................. 1 CHAPTER 2. “The Tyranny of (Black) Majority”: Race, Space, and Ownership in the Churches of Charleston............................... 68 CHAPTER 3. The Invented Tradition of Black Dependence ....................................... 130 CHAPTER 4.“There is no Back Kitchen in Heaven”: Race and Community in the Late Antebellum Lowcountry ................................ 201 CHAPTER 5. The Charleston “School of Slavery”: The Separate Churches Movement ................................................................... 265 EPILOGUE. “A Nation within a Nation” .................................................................... 339 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................... 368 APPENDIX A: Racial Demography .......................................................................... 377 APPENDIX B: Colored Church Membership in Charleston....................................... 378 APPENDIX C: Circular Questionnaires ..................................................................... 379 vii CHAPTER ONE Civilization and Conversion: Americanization in the Churches of Charleston Finding a young Negro there, who seemed more sensible than the rest, I asked her how long she had been in Carolina. She said two or three years; but that she was born in Barbados, and had lived there in a minister’s family from a child. I asked whether she went to church there. She said, “Yes, every Sunday – to carry the mistress’s children.” I asked what she had learned at church. She said, “Nothing: I heard a deal, but did not understand it.” “But what did your master teach you at home?” “Nothing.” “Nor your mistress?” “No.” - John Wesley, Journaling from Charleston, April 23, 1737 The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. 1 In 1808, David Ramsay distilled a century of religious history in South Carolina into a synthetic narrative of tradition and adaptation. Though the essence of “real religion” in South Carolina had (always) been constant, “fashions” and “modes” of religious expression varied according to “times and circumstances.” First transplanted to a frontier society, then “Awakened” during the mid-eighteenth century and transfigured through the formative struggles of independence and disestablishment, Carolina’s religious institutions were continuously enriched by the social and political challenges of their time. When the dynamic energy of modernization ran up against the cumulative weight of religious tradition, the result was a divergent array of religious experiences “worthy of historical notice.” In the same spirit as Ramsay’s evaluation, this chapter 1 tracks the balance of new and old through the variable “modes” of the revolutionary era to assemble the elements, influences, and experiences that framed religious consciousness for post-colonial Charlestonians. This chapter also augments Ramsay’s contemporary vantage by demonstrating the formative role that racial relations and racial discourse played in developing this framework.1 Ramsay’s religious attentions were disproportionately skewed to the tendencies of white Carolinians. He documented the spiritual patterns of Carolina Negroes as merely peripheral data, but in so doing reflected larger social trends at work in post- Revolutionary Charleston. In his denominational summary of the city’s religious activity, most congregational figures did not merit racial breakdown, but the overwhelming black majority of the Methodist Church – 170 white