Identifier: southernstatesof00kingrich (find matches)
Title: The Southern states of North America: a record of journeys in Louisiana, Texas, the Indian territory, Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland
Year: 1875 (1870s)
Authors: King, Edward, 1848-1896
Subjects: Southern States -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : Blackie & son
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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cal contortionsof face, and mighty stampings of feet and waving of arms, for effect on thecongregations. Listening outside the open windows of a negro chiuxh inFlorida one evening, I heard thepreacher furiously pounding the Biblewhich lay on the sacred desk. Hiswords were incoherent, his logic wassadly at fault; some of his appealsseemed ludicrous, but every thump onthe holy volume brought a tempest ofshoutings, sighs, and moans from thedusky hearers. On the plantations thecamp-meetings and revivals sometimestotally unfit the negroes for labor dur-ing the whole week. Men and womenfoam at the mouth, wander about thefields and forests half distracted, aspasm of spiritual insanity havingtaken possession of them. In suchmoments of rare enthusiasm theysometimes descend to orgies ; whiskeyand licentiousness do their work, andthe whole meeting will be transformedinto an assembly of blackamoormaenads and satyrs. A clever Nor-therner, who has for many yearsdwelt in the South, once told me that
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Southern Types—A Negro Constable. he considered the Christianity of the negro as Fetichism with a Christian cloak on. This may seem a hard and unfriendly judgment of negro character, but the careful observer who studies the characteristics of the whole black population will yet not fail to see signs of encouragement. He will discover that a mighty 782 AN AMUSING EXAMPLE. uplifting has really been going on since 1865, and that an influx of good teachers,who shall teach industry, thrift, continence, and self-respect, will in anotherdecade raise the four and a-half million negroes in the South to pretty near thelevel of Christian manhood and womanhood. Such discouraging vie^s of thenegroes in the Gulf States as are taken by many of the native whites, are theresult of a mistaken judgment. Even Caucasian ministers of the gospel, whosehearts are supposed to be filled with charity for and faith in all men, refuse to seeany tendency on the part of poor Sambo to improve his advantages. They

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