[Footnote 50:  Official reports quoted in H.M.  Henry, The Police Control of Slaves in South Carolina, pp. 49, 50.]

At an earlier period a South Carolina law had required the public whipping of negro offenders at prominent points on the city streets, but complaints of this as distressing to the inhabitants[51] had brought its discontinuance.  For the punishment of misdemeanants under sentences to hard labor a treadmill was instituted in the workhouse;[52] and the ensuing substitution of labor for the lash met warm official commendation.[53]

[Footnote 51:  Columbian Herald (Charleston), June 26, 1788.]

[Footnote 52:  Charleston City Gazette, Feb. 2, 1826.]

[Footnote 53:  Grand jury presentments, ibid., May 15, 1826.]

In church affairs the two races adhered to the same faiths, but their worship tended slowly to segregate.  A few negroes habitually participated with the whites in the Catholic and Episcopal rituals, or listened to the long and logical sermons of the Presbyterians.  Larger numbers occupied the pews appointed for their kind in the churches of the Methodist and Baptist whites, where the more ebullient exercises comported better with their own tastes.  But even here there was often a feeling of irksome restraint.  The white preacher in fear of committing an indiscretion in the hearing of the negroes must watch his words though that were fatal to his impromptu eloquence; the whites in the congregation must maintain their dignity when dignity was in conflict with exaltation; the blacks must repress their own manifestations the most severely of all, to escape rebuke for unseemly conduct.[54] An obvious means of relief lay in the founding of separate congregations to which the white ministers occasionally preached and in which white laymen often sat, but where the pulpit and pews were commonly filled by blacks alone.  There the sable exhorter might indulge his peculiar talent for “’rousements” and the prayer leader might beseech the Almighty in tones to reach His ears though afar off.  There the sisters might sway and croon to the cadence of sermon and prayer, and the brethren spur the spokesman to still greater efforts by their well timed ejaculations.  There not only would the quaint melody of the negro “spirituals” swell instead of the more sophisticated airs of the hymn book, but every successful sermon would be a symphony and every prayer a masterpiece of concerted rhythm.

[Footnote 54:  A Methodist preacher wrote of an episode at Wilmington:  “On one occasion I took a summary process with a certain black woman who in their love-feast, with many extravagant gestures, cried out that she was ‘young King Jesus,’ I bade her take her seat, and then publicly read her out of membership, stating that we would not have such wild fanatics among us, meantime letting them all know that such expressions were even blasphemous.  Poor Aunt Katy felt it deeply, repented, and in a month I took her back again.  The effect was beneficial, and she became a rational and consistent member of the church.”  Joseph Travis, Autobiography (Nashville, 1855), pp. 71, 72.]