rist." Bryan's master interceded
for him and "was most affected and grieved" at his punishment. He gave
Bryan and his followers a barn to worship in, after Chief Justice
Osbourne had given them their liberty. This was the origin of what was
probably the first Negro church in America.

George Liele and Andrew Bryan were probably not exceptional men even
for their day. The Rev. James Cook wrote of Bryan: "His gifts are
small but he is clear in the grand doctrines of the Gospel. I believe
him truly pious and he has been the instrument of doing more good
among the poor slaves than all the learned doctors in America."[8] The
significant thing is that, with the appearance of these men, the
Negroes in America ceased to be a mission people. At least, from this
time on, the movement went on of its own momentum, more and more
largely under the direction of Negro leaders. Little Negro
congregations, under the leadership of Negro preachers, sprang up
wherever they Were tolerated. Often they were suppressed, more often
they were privately encouraged. Not infrequently they met in secret.

In 1787 Richard Allen and Absolom Jones had formed in Philadelphia the
Free African Society, out of which four years later, in 1790, arose
the first separate denominational organization of Negroes, the African
Methodist-Episcopal Church. George Liele, Andrew Bryan, Richard Allen,
and the other founders of the Negro church were men of some education,
as their letters and other writings show. They had had the advantage
of life in a city environment and the churches which they founded were
in all essentials faithful copies of the denominational forms as they
found them in the churches of that period.

The religion of the Negroes on the plantation was then, as it is
today, of a much more primitive sort. Furthermore, there were
considerable differences in the cultural status of different regions
of the South and these differences were reflected in the Negro
churches. There was at that time, as there is today, a marked contrast
between the Upland and the Sea Island Negroes. Back from the coast the
plantations were smaller, the contact of the master and slave were
more intimate. On the Sea Island, however, where the slaves were and
still are more completely isolated than elsewhere in the South, the
Negro population approached more closely to the cultural status of the
native African. The Sea Islands were taken possession of in the first
years of the war