s to their responsibility to God. [Footnote 1:
Madison's Works, vol. in., p. 314; Olmsted, _Back Country_, p. 107;
Birney, _The American Churches_, etc., p. 6; and Jones, _Religious
Instruction_, etc., p. 100.]

Observing closely these conditions one would wonder little that many
Negroes became low and degraded. The very institution of slavery
itself produced shiftless, undependable beings, seeking relief
whenever possible by giving the least and getting the most from their
masters. When the slaves were cut off from the light of the gospel by
the large plantation system, they began to exhibit such undesirable
traits as insensibility of heart, lasciviousness, stealing, and lying.
The cruelty of the "Christian" master to the slaves made the latter
feel that such a practice was not altogether inhuman. Just as the
white slave drivers developed into hopeless brutes by having human
beings to abuse, so it turned out with certain Negroes in their
treatment of animals and their fellow-creatures in bondage. If some
Negroes were commanded not to commit adultery, such a prohibition did
not extend to the slave women forced to have illicit relations with
masters who sold their mulatto offspring as goods and chattels. If the
bondmen were taught not to steal the aim was to protect the supplies
of the local plantation. Few masters raised any serious objection to
the act of their half-starved slaves who at night crossed over to some
neighboring plantation to secure food. Many white men made it their
business to dispose of property stolen by Negroes.

In the strait in which most slaves were, they had to lie for
protection. Living in an environment where the actions of almost any
colored man were suspected as insurrectionary, Negroes were frequently
called upon to tell what they knew and were sometimes forced to say
what they did not know. Furthermore, to prevent the slaves from
cooeperating to rise against their masters, they were often taught to
mistreat and malign each other to keep alive a feeling of hatred. The
bad traits of the American Negroes resulted then not from an instinct
common to the natives of Africa, but from the institutions of the
South and from the actual teaching of the slaves to be low and
depraved that they might never develop sufficient strength to become a
powerful element in society.

As this system operated to make the Negroes either nominal Christians
or heathen, the anti-slavery men could not be silent.[1] J