bers to 11,325) was due to the "Separate" Baptist
movement under Stearns and Marshall far more than to the activity of the
churches of the Charleston Association. Both these types of Baptist life
permeated Georgia, the latter making its influence felt in Savannah,
Augusta and the more cultivated communities, the former evangelizing the
masses. Many negro slaves became Baptists in Virginia, the Carolinas and
Georgia. In most cases they became members of the churches of the white
Baptists; but in Richmond, Savannah and some other towns they were
encouraged to have churches of their own.

By 1812 there were in the United States 173,972 Baptist church members, the
denominational numerical strength having considerably more than doubled
since the beginning of the 19th century.

_Foreign Missions_.--Baptists in Boston and vicinity, Philadelphia and
Charleston, and a few other communities had from the beginning of the 19th
century taken a deep interest in the missionary work of William Carey, the
English missionary, and his coadjutors in India, and had contributed
liberally to its support. The conversion to Baptist views of Adoniram
Judson (_q.v._) and Luther Rice (1812), who had just been sent, with
others, by the newly-formed American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions to open up missionary work in India, marks an epoch in American
Baptist history. Judson appealed to his American brethren to support him in
missionary work among the heathen, and Rice returned to America to organize
missionary societies to awaken interest in Judson's mission. In January
1813 there was formed in Boston "The Baptist Society for the Propagation of
the Gospel in India and other Foreign Parts." Other societies in the
Eastern, Middle and Southern states speedily followed. The desirability of
a national organization soon became manifest, and in May 1814 thirty-three
delegates, representing eleven states, met in Philadelphia and organized
the "General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the
United States of America for Foreign Missions." As its meetings were to be
held every three years it came to be known as the "Triennial Convention." A
Board of Commissioners was appointed with headquarters in Philadelphia
(transferred in 1826 to Boston). The need of a larger supply of educated
ministers for home and for mission work alike soon came to be profoundly
felt, and resulted in the establishment of Columbian College, Washington
(no