s; in North Carolina one in 115 whites and one in 480 blacks. In
South Carolina, where in 1860 the whites and blacks were about equal,
the whites have gone forward to seven thousand, and the negroes have
fallen back to one thousand. Yet that is not the most unsatisfactory
part of the matter. We are not strongly attracting to the Church the
element we ought to have; the exceptional negroes, the educated and
enterprising, the leaders of their race. Why? Let the facts answer. I
have already said that the Church strove to continue after the war the
same method of dealing with the negroes as before. She tried to keep the
races together; but she has found it impractical, that impracticability
growing more and more clear as the years have run on. The races have
been steadily drifting apart in all social or semi-social life; the
better class of each race is coming less and less into contact with each
other; and race prejudice is increasing and deepening in the great
masses of both the white and the black people. Soon after the war,
wherever the negroes were in great numbers, we found it necessary to
build separate churches for them. We admitted their clergymen and laymen
to the Councils of the diocese on equal terms with the whites; but that
custom has been steadily changing. Some twenty years ago South Carolina
and Virginia, dreading too great an increase of negro clergy and laity,
led the way to new conditions. South Carolina excluded them entirely
from the Diocesan Council, without any further provision for them.
Virginia did not disturb those already having seats in the Council, but
simply refused to let any more come in on the same terms. She erected a
separate Convocation for the negroes, and now allows a certain number to
have seats as representatives from the Convocation to the Council. Two
years ago Arkansas put the negroes aside into a separate Convocation
with no representation in the Council of the Diocese. Georgia last year
formed a separate Convocation; but has allowed them by the act of
separation to come into the Council to vote for the Standing Committee,
the deputies to the General Convention and for the Bishop, whenever one
is to be elected: giving them, you see, legal representation in
important affairs. The Convention of the Diocese of North Carolina is
now discussing the matter of separation, and is only delaying its own
action, while waiting to see what shall be done next fall by the General
Convention. In