every respect I feel
encouraged to go on." The former wrote: "Of my own negroes and those in my
immediate neighborhood I may speak with confidence. They are attentive to
religious instruction and greatly improved in intelligence and morals, in
domestic relations, etc. Those who have grown up under religious training
are more intelligent and generally, though not always, more improved than
those who have received religious instruction as adults. Indeed the degree
of intelligence which as a class they are acquiring is worthy of deep
consideration." Thomas Fuller, the reporter from the Beaufort neighborhood,
however, was as much apprehensive as hopeful. While the negroes had greatly
improved in manners and appearance as a result of coming to worship in town
every Sunday, said he, the freedom which they were allowed for the purpose
was often misused in ways which led to demoralization. He strongly advised
the planters to keep the slaves at home and provide instruction there.

From the upland cotton belt a Presbyterian minister in the Chester district
wrote: "You are all aware, gentlemen, that the relation and intercourse
between the whites and the blacks in the up-country are very different from
what they are in the low-country. With us they are neither so numerous nor
kept so entirely separate, but constitute a part of our households, and are
daily either with their masters or some member of the white family. From
this circumstance they feel themselves more identified with their owners
than they can with you. I minister steadily to two different congregations.
More than one hundred blacks attend.... The gallery, or a quarter of the
house, is appropriated to them in all our churches, and they enjoy the
preached gospel in common with the whites." Finally, from the Greenville
district, on the upper edge of the Piedmont, where the Methodists and
Baptists were completely dominant among whites and blacks alike, it was
reported: "About one fourth of the members in the churches are negroes.
In the years 1832, '3 and '4 great numbers of negroes joined the churches
during a period of revival. Many, I am sorry to say, have since been
excommunicated. As the general zeal in religion declined, they backslid."
There were a few licensed negro preachers, this writer continued, who were
thought to do some good; but the general improvement in negro character, he
thought, was mainly due to the religious and moral training given by their
masters