y the plantation system. The Negro priest, therefore, early
became an important figure on the plantation and found his function as the
interpreter of the supernatural, the comforter of the sorrowing, and as
the one who expressed, rudely but picturesquely, the longing and
disappointment and resentment of a stolen people. From such beginnings
arose and spread with marvelous rapidity the Negro church, the first
distinctively Negro American social institution. It was not at first by
any means a Christian church, but a mere adaptation of those rites of
fetish which in America is termed obe worship, or "voodooism."[93]
Association and missionary effort soon gave these rites a veneer of
Christianity and gradually, after two centuries, the church became
Christian, with a simple Calvinistic creed, but with many of the old
customs still clinging to the services. It is this historic fact, that the
Negro church of to-day bases itself upon the sole surviving social
institution of the African fatherland, that accounts for its extraordinary
growth and vitality.

The slave codes at first were really labor codes based on an attempt to
reestablish in America the waning feudalism of Europe. The laborers were
mainly black and were held for life. Above them came the artisans, free
whites with a few blacks, and above them the master class. The feudalism
called for the plantation system, and the plantation system as developed
in America, and particularly in Virginia, was at first a feudal domain. On
these plantations the master was practically supreme. The slave codes in
early days were but moderately harsh, allowing punishment by the master,
but restraining him in extreme cases and providing for care of the slaves
and of the aged. With the power, however, solely in the hands of the
master class, and with the master supreme on his own plantation, his power
over the slave was practically what he wished it to be. In some cases the
cruelty was as great as on the worst West Indian plantations. In other
cases the rule was mild and paternal.

Up through this American feudalism the Negro began to rise. He learned in
the eighteenth century the English language, he began to be identified
with the Christian church, he mingled his blood to a considerable extent
with the master class. The house servants particularly were favored, in
some cases receiving education, and the number of free Negroes gradually
increased.

Present-day students are often puzzl