e intrusted to individual
enterprise and too extensive to be successfully prosecuted by the heads of
the Church only. The ministrations of the Established Church were then
limited to a few places in Virginia, New York, Maryland and the cities of
Boston and Philadelphia. To supply this deficiency the Society endeavored
to use missionaries as a direct means to convert the heathen of all races,
whether Europeans, Indians or Negroes. There were cruel masters who
objected to the conversion of their slaves,[1] but that any race should be
denied the message of salvation because of its color was ever repudiated by
the Society. From the very beginning of this work the conversion of the
Negroes was as important to the Society as that of bringing the whites or
the Indians into the church. Such dignitaries of the church, as Rev. Thomas
Bacon and Bishops Fleetwood, Lowth, Sanderson and Wilson, ever urged this
duty upon their brethren at home and abroad.[2]

The first really effective work of the Society was done in South Carolina.
Reverend Mr. Thomas of Goose Creek Parish in that State early instructed
the Indian and Negro slaves of his vicinity. He directed his attention to
the Negroes in 1695 and ten years later counted among his communicants
twenty blacks, who with several others "well understanding the English
tongue," could read and write. He further said, in 1705: "I have here
presumed to give an account of one thousand slaves so far as they know of
it and are desirous of Christian knowledge and seem willing to prepare
themselves for it, in learning to read, for which they redeem the time
from their labor. Many of them can read the Bible distinctly and great
numbers of them were learning when I left the province."[3]

This work, however, had not proceeded without much opposition. The
sentiment as to the enlightenment of the blacks was largely that of the
youth who resolved never to go to the holy table while slaves were
received there. Others felt like the lady who inquired: "Is it possible
that any of my slaves should go to heaven, and must I see them there?"[4]
The earnest workers sent out by the Society, however, did not cease to
labor in behalf of the Negroes and the number of masters willing to have
their slaves instructed gradually increased. Among these liberal owners
were John Morris, of St. Bartholomew's, Lady Moore, Captain David Davis,
Mrs. Sarah Baker at Goose Creek, Landgrave Joseph Morton and his wife of
St. Paul