mpted many to become oscillating proselytes,
yielding to the allurements first of the one and then of the other, and on
each occasion holding the center of the stage as a brand snatched from the
burning, a lost sheep restored to the fold, a cause and participant of
rapture.

In these manifestations the negroes merely followed and enlarged upon the
example of some of the whites. The similarity of practices, however,
did not promote a permanent mingling of the two races in the same
congregations, for either would feel some restraint upon its rhapsody
imposed by the presence of the other. To relieve this there developed in
greater or less degree a separation of the races for purposes of worship,
white ministers preaching to the blacks from time to time in plantation
missions, and home talent among the negroes filling the intervals. While
some of the black exhorters were viewed with suspicion by the whites,
others were highly esteemed and unusually privileged. One of these at
Lexington, Kentucky, for example, was given the following pass duly signed
by his master: "Tom is my slave, and has permission to go to Louisville for
two or three weeks and return here after he has made his visit. Tom is a
preacher of the reformed Baptist church, and has always been a faithful
servant."[7] As a rule the greater the proportion of negroes in a district
or a church connection, the greater the segregation in worship. If the
whites were many and the negroes few, the latter would be given the gallery
or some other group of pews; but if the whites were few and the negroes
many, the two elements would probably worship in separate buildings. Even
in such case, however, it was very common for a parcel of black domestics
to flock with their masters rather than with their fellows.

[Footnote 7: Dated Aug. 6, 1856, and signed E. McCallister. MS. in the New
York Public Library.]

The general regime in the fairly typical state of South Carolina was
described in 1845 in a set of reports procured preliminary to a convention
on the state of religion among the negroes and the means of its betterment.
Some of these accounts were from the clergy of several denominations,
others from the laity; some treated of general conditions in the several
districts, others in detail of systems on the writers' own plantations. In
the latter group, N.W. Middleton, an Episcopalian of St. Andrew's parish,
wrote that he and his wife and sons were the only religious teache