f an epoch of increasing hardship
for the Negro, both in church and state. It was also characterized by
fierce aggressiveness by the slave power, stimulated by the invention
of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney and the impetus which it gave to the
growth and importation of cotton. The acquisition of the Louisiana
Purchase from France added to the possible domain of slave territory
and affected the current of political action for more than half a
century.

During this period the Negro was a most important figure, both in
church and state, the occasion if not the cause of perplexing
problems. In the field of religion and politics, especially, has his
status attracted world-wide attention.

At a very early day the Methodist and Baptist churches had the largest
number of colored followers in both town and city; but these as yet
were not assembled in distinctive organizations. The right of the
Negro, not only to govern but to direct his religious instruction, was
bitterly contested, sometimes by force, at other times by law. The
high-handed manner in which the ordinary rights of worship were
denied the Negro led to the withdrawal of the majority of colored
Methodists in Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland and South Carolina, and
ultimately to the formation of the two denominations, the African
Methodist Episcopal and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches,
that became independent before the end of the first quarter of the
last century.

As to the recognition of the right of colored Baptists to church
fellowship, the white Baptists were more liberal, for we find an
association of white churches recognizing the existence of a colored
Baptist church at Williamsburg, in 1790.

The first colored Episcopal society was received into membership on
the express condition that no delegate was to be admitted in any of
the diocesan conventions.[1] As early as 1801 Rev. John Chavis, a
Negro of North Carolina, was licensed by the Hanover Presbytery of
Virginia as a missionary to his own people.[2] The incompatibility of
an ordained minister of the same denomination being a slave was
recognized in the manumission of Rev. John Gloucester, the slave of
Rev. Gideon Blackburn, of Tennessee, on the organization of the first
colored Presbyterian church of the country, at Philadelphia, in 1807,
and the subsequent settlement of Rev. Gloucester as its pastor.[3]

That the white Baptists really manifested greater liberality in this
period is o