to
teach them, founding a school for males under the care of a priest,
and a school for girls under the care of the Sisters of Mercy. He was
compelled to suspend the slave schools by the passage of a law making
it criminal to teach a slave to read and write, but he continued the
schools for emancipated blacks.[503] After the Civil War, the
authorities of the Church were better enabled to take an active part
in meeting the religious needs of the Negro. The Plenary Councils of
Baltimore invite the colored people of our country to enter the
Catholic Church. To her pastors the Negro is a man with an immortal
soul to save. Rome, writing to the Bishops of the United States, on
January 31, 1866, in preparation for the Second Plenary Council of
Baltimore, declares: "It is the mind of the Church that the Bishops of
the United States, because of the duty weighing upon them of feeding
the Lord's flock, should take council together, in order to bring
about in a steady way the salvation and the Christian education of the
lately emancipated negroes." When assembled in Council the Bishops of
the United States cordially seconded the wishes of Rome by quoting the
very words in an entire chapter devoted to the question of the
salvation of the colored race. The Council declares: "This is true
charity, if not only temporal prosperity of men be increased, but if
they are sharers in the highest and inestimable benefits, namely, of
that true liberty by which we are called and are sons of God, which
Christ, dying on a cross and smiting the enemy of the human race,
obtains for all men without any exceptions whatsoever."[504] Eighteen
years later, in 1884, the Third Plenary Council, in the same city,
renewed the exhortations of the preceding council. Among other things
it states: "Out of six millions of colored people there is a very
large multitude who stand sorely in need of Christian instruction and
missionary labor; and it is evident that in the poor dioceses, in
which they are mostly found, it is most difficult to bestow on them
the care they need without the generous cooperation of our Catholic
people in more prosperous localities.... Since the greatest part of
the Negroes are as yet outside the fold of Christ, it is a matter of
necessity to seek workmen inflamed with zeal for souls, who will be
sent into this part of the Lord's harvest."[505]

With the encouragement of the higher authorities of the Church, who
sought the spiritual welfar