The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917

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The fact that the Catholic Church has been a leader of mankind to
light and Christian liberty is attested by leading non-Catholic
scholars and historians. The historian Lecky, who holds no brief for
Catholicism, says: "The Catholic Church was the very heart of
Christendom and the spirit that radiated from her penetrated into all
the relations of life. Catholicism laid the very foundations of modern
civilization. Herself the most admirable of all organizations,
there was formed beneath her influence, a vast network of
organizations--political, municipal and social--which supplied a large
proportion of the materials of almost every modern structure. In the
transition from slavery to serfdom, and in the transition from serfdom
to liberty, she was the most zealous, the most unwearied and the most
efficient agent."[491] The French Protestant Guizot says: "There can
be no doubt that the Catholic Church struggled resolutely against the
great vices of the social state--against slavery, for instance. These
facts are so well known that it is needless for me to enter into
details."[492]

Speaking of the development of the colored race under Catholic
influence, Dr. Blyden, a noted Negro scholar, wrote in _Frazer's
Magazine_ for May, 1870, the following words, which he afterwards
incorporated into his _Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race_:

"The thoughtful and cultivated Protestant Negro, though he may,
_ex animo_, subscribe to the tenets of the particular
denomination to which he belongs, as approaching nearest to the
teaching of God's word, yet he cannot read history without
feeling a deep debt of gratitude to the Roman Catholic Church.
The only Christian Negroes who have had the power to successfully
throw off oppression and maintain their position as freemen were
Roman Catholic Negroes--the Haitiens; and the greatest Negro the
Christian world has yet produced was a Roman Catholic--Toussaint
L'Ouverture. In the ecclesiastical system of modern, as was the
case in the military system of ancient Rome, there seems to be a
place for all races and colors. At Rome the names of Negroes,
males as well as females, who have been distinguished for piety
and good works, are found in the calendar under the designation
of saints."[493]

Coming to America, we find that from the beginning of our history, the
Christian forces, which in the past strove to civilize and
Christianize the old world, have exerted themselves in behalf of the
oppressed in the New World. Catholic missionaries have always felt
constrained to carry out the injunction of the Divine Savior to his
apostles, "Go ye into the whole world and preach the Gospel to every
creature."[494] Their object was not to gain gold or worldly fortune,
but to bring the light of Christian truth to the minds of savage
aborigines; to win souls to Christ. To those missionaries, as the
Church teaches, the souls of the children of all races are equally
precious in the sight of God, whatever may be their individual or
racial character. It is for this that they left in young manhood,
their relatives and comfortable homes, with a probability of never
returning. In early ages, they brought Christianity and civilization
to peoples and nations of the lands of the Eastern Hemisphere. After
the discovery of the New World by Columbus, they were with the
explorers of North and South America. From about 1615 we find them
laboring among the Indian tribes from Quebec in Canada to California
in the West. Intrepid apostles like Marquette, Breheuf, Menard,
Millet, Lallemant, Jogues, Le Moyne, Dablon, Garnier, and a host of
others like them blazed the way through the wilderness to labor and
suffer and die for the salvation of the Indians. They made records in
the service of Christ among the Hurons, Algonquins, Iroquois and
Mohawks. To the South, in Florida, Spanish Franciscans fell victims to
the treachery of Creeks and Seminoles. In the middle of the last
century, before the coming of the settlers, Father De Smet spent
nearly forty years among the tribes of the great Western plains and in
the Rocky Mountain region. Other missionaries in Western Canada
penetrated the North as far as the Arctic Circle. In the seventies and
eighties of the nineteenth century, a frail and slender man, in the
person of the learned and saintly Archbishop Charles J. Seghers,
journeyed thousands of miles, to bring the message of the Master to
the red men in the vast territory of distant Alaska. In California,
Arizona and Texas, the traveler meets with many evidences and
monuments of the work of early Spanish Catholic missionaries among the
Indians. The records show that in some instances, the missionaries
were accompanied by Negroes. Probably the first Negro whose name is
recorded in North American history is that of Estevan, or Stephen, who
accompanied Father Marcos de Niza, in 1536, on a missionary
expedition into the territory of the present States of Arizona and New
Mexico.[495]

It is at a later period, however, than that of these early
missionaries, that the coming of the Negro as a notable part of the
population of the American Colonies begins. This growth takes its rise
with the revival of the slave trade in America after the first
importation of slaves brought to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. There
was long a demand for laborers, and thus an increasing number of
slaves were brought from Africa to the various colonies on the
Atlantic seaboard, from Massachusetts to Louisiana. British ships at
that time supplied not only English colonies with slave labor, but
also those of France and Spain.[496] Catholic colonists were confined
to Maryland and Louisiana. They also had slaves in their homes and on
their plantations, but it is known that they provided for their
religious needs and were obliged by their religion to regard their
slaves as human beings and not as mere chattels. Under Lord
Baltimore's government in the English Colony of Maryland, the Catholic
Proprietary himself tells us in his answer to the Lords in 1676,
concerning the law that had been enacted "to encourage the baptizing
and the instructing of those kinds of servants in the faith of
Christ."[497] There had been remissness towards the slaves in this
respect among other sections of the population, but such denominations
were spurred to action by the example of Catholics. The work of
Spanish and French missionaries, as Dr. Woodson points out, influenced
the education of the Negro throughout America.[498] The freedom and
welfare of the unhappy slaves were especially promoted in the famous
"Code Noir," the most humane legislation in their behalf which had
been devised before the repeal of slavery. In 1724, M. de Bienville
drew up the "Code Noir," containing all the legislation applicable to
slaves in Louisiana, which remained in force until 1803. This code,
signed in the name of the King, and inspired by Catholic teaching and
practice, was probably based on a similar code, which was promulgated
in 1685, in Santo Domingo, by Louis XIV, King of France. The Edict
ordained that all slaves be instructed and that they be admitted to
the sacraments and rites of the Roman Catholic Church. It allowed the
slave time for instruction, worship and rest, not only every Sunday,
but every festival usually observed by the Church. It prohibited under
severe penalties all masters and managers from corrupting their female
slaves, and provided for the Christian marriage of the slave. It did
not allow the Negro, husband, wife or infant children, to be sold
separately. It forbade the use of torture or immoderate and inhuman
punishments. It obliged the owners to maintain their old and decrepit
slaves. If the Negroes were not fed or clothed as the law prescribed,
or if they were in any way cruelly treated, they might apply to the
procurer, who was obliged by his office to protect them. A somewhat
similar edict, known as the Spanish Code, was promulgated in the
Spanish West Indies in 1789.

At the time of the Revolutionary War such Catholic patriots as Charles
Carroll, of Carrollton, the Polish General Kosciuszko, and General
Lafayette, of France, gave evidence of their interest in the
improvement of the Negro. Kosciuszko provided in his will that the
property which he acquired in America should be used for the purchase
of slaves to be educated for higher service and citizenship.[499]
Lafayette persistently urged that the blacks be educated and
emancipated.[500]

The impression seems to prevail in some quarters that the Catholic
Church in the United States has been indifferent to the welfare of the
Negro. Sir Harry H. Johnston in his work, _The Negro in the New
World_, rather unjustly asserts that the Church maintains "nothing in
the way of Negro education and has never at any time shown particular
sympathy or desire to help the Negro slave." At the same time he
acknowledges that the Roman Catholic Church in the West Indies and
South America has been the great opponent of slavery. Johnston states
"that the infractions of the Code Noir," and the increased
mal-treatment of slaves and free mulattoes did not take place until
the Catholic order of Jesuits had been expelled from Saint Dominique
about 1766. Here, as in Brazil, and Paraguay, they had exasperated the
white colonists by standing up for the natives or the Negro slaves;
and in Hispaniola they had endeavored to exact from the local
government a full application of the various slave-protecting edicts.
Whatever faults and mistakes they may have been guilty of in the
nineteenth century, the Jesuits played, for two hundred years, a noble
part in acting as a buffer between the Caucasian on the one hand, and
the backward peoples on the other.[501]

Before the emancipation of the slaves in the United States, great
difficulties prevented the Catholic Church from benefiting the slaves,
especially in those parts where the Church had no adherents and no
freedom to act. The Church had but a limited number of clergy and
small means. The most of the South was predominantly Protestant and in
some sections, penal laws were in force against Catholics. In many
States laws were enacted against the instruction of slaves in any
manner whatever.

Notwithstanding these obstacles, we find Catholic schools in
Washington and Baltimore educating Negro children as early as
1829.[502] The Rt. Rev. John England, the first Catholic Bishop of
Charleston, South Carolina, who held his office from 1820 until his
death in 1842, cared much for the poor friendless slaves. He began 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 welfare and progress of the race, religious
orders and missionary associations took up the work for the Negro. The
first of these was the Fathers of the Society of St. Joseph, founded
by Cardinal Vaughan, of England. They are known as the Josephites and
now have priests and missionaries in nearly all Southern States and
dioceses. There are also laboring in this field Fathers of the Holy
Ghost, as also members of the Society of the African Missions, and the
Society of the Divine Word. Furthermore, there are a number of colored
and white Sisterhoods conducting orphanages, academies and Christian
Schools for colored children.

In the Second and Third Plenary Councils, the Bishops of the Catholic
Church in the United States as a body took up the cause of the Negro
race. The Bishops have when occasion offered, by word and deed, shown
their friendship and zeal in behalf of the Negro. They have
individually raised their voices for humanity and the black man.
Cardinal Gibbons, who has long been the leading prelate among the
American Bishops, has not only often spoken a good word for the Negro,
when the occasion called for it, but has proved by actions his
Christian spirit and heroic charity. Among the many instances of his
zeal and self-sacrifice, it is related that when he was a young priest
in charge of the parish of Elk Ridge, near Baltimore, smallpox broke
out in the village, and a general exodus at once followed. One old
Negro man, lying at the point of death, had been abandoned by his
family and was left alone in his cabin, without food or medicine.
Father Gibbons, hearing of the case, hastened to the old man's relief;
he procured everything necessary for him, and stood by and tended him
until he died. He then procured a coffin and having placed the corpse
in it, carried it to the graveyard and buried it with his own
hands.[506] A similar incident is told of Rev. J. A. Cunnane, of Upper
Marlboro, Maryland, now a pastor in Baltimore. When stationed in
Charles County he attended an old colored man during an epidemic of
smallpox, "took the body to the grave on a wheelbarrow, and with his
own hands buried it."[507]

Cardinal Gibbons, some years ago, wrote a letter in which occur the
following sentiments:

"What then is the first need of the colored people? A sound
religious education; an education that will bring them to a
practical knowledge of God, that will teach them their origin and
the sublime destiny that awaits them in a better world; an
education that will develop their superior being, that will
inspire them with the love of wisdom and hatred for sin, that
will make them honest, moral and God-fearing men. Such an
education will elevate and ennoble them and place them on a
religious footing with the white man.

"And secondly, it is a matter of observation that few colored
people are mechanics. Now, to be a factor in their country's
prosperity, to make their presence felt and to give any influence
whatever to their attempts to better their status, it is
absolutely necessary that, besides a sound religious training
they should be taught to be useful citizens; they should be
brought up from childhood to habits of industry. They should be
taught that to labor is honorable, and that the idler is a menace
to the commonwealth. Institutions should be founded wherein the
young men may learn the trades best suited to their inclinations.
Thus equipped--on the one hand well-instructed Christians, on the
other skilled workmen--our colored people may look forward
hopefully to the future. I am happy to bear testimony from
personal observation to the many virtues exhibited among so many
of the colored people of Maryland, especially their deep sense of
religion, their gratitude for favors shown, and their
affectionate disposition."[508]

The Cardinal used his great influence against the lynching evil and
in an article in the _North American Review_ for October, 1905,
pronounced lynching "a blot on our American civilization."[509] It
should be stated too that in Catholic countries of Central and South
America we rarely ever hear of lynching nor of unnatural crimes which
provoke it. In an address announcing "Colorphobia" as a "malignantly
unchristian disease," Mr. John C. Minkins, a journalist, not long ago
told a Baptist Ministers' Conference of Providence, Rhode Island, that
the lynchings in the United States are nearly all in States where
there are scarcely any Catholics. He based his statements on figures
from the Research Bureau of the Negro Industrial Institute at
Tuskegee, Alabama.[510]

In March, 1904, Cardinal Gibbons wrote the following letter to the
Rev. George F. Bragg, of Baltimore:

"In reply to your letter of yesterday, I hasten to say that the
introduction of the 'Jim Crow' bill into the Maryland Legislature
is very distressing to me. Such a measure must of necessity
engender very bitter feelings in the colored people against the
whites. Peace and harmony can never exist where there is unjust
discrimination, and where the members of every community must
constantly strive for its peace, especially now in the hour of
our affliction. While calamity and disaster are frowning upon our
city, mutual helpfulness should be the common endeavor and no
action should be lightly taken which would precipitate enmities,
strife and acrimonious feelings. The duty of every man is to
lighten the burdens that weigh heavily upon his neighbor to the
full extent of his power. It is equally the duty of every member
of a community to avoid any action which is calculated to make
hard and bitter the lot of a less fortunate race. Furthermore, it
would be most injudicious to make the whole race suffer for the
delinquencies of a few individuals, to visit upon thousands who
are innocent that punishment and chastisement which should be
meted out to the guilty alone."

Hostile legislation to the colored people was opposed by a noted
Catholic layman of Maryland, the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, Attorney
General of the United States, under President Roosevelt. Mr.
Bonaparte rendered service and wrote sympathetic words to Mr. Bragg,
in 1904, concerning the proposed restriction of the elective
franchise. He said: "Whatever the restrictions imposed, they should be
the same for all citizens; there should not be one law for white men
and another law for black men, one law for Americans of two
generations and another for Americans of three."[511]

The distinguished Archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, John Ireland, a
man of wide influence, on May 5, 1890, spoke on the race problem in a
sermon delivered at St. Augustine's Church, Washington, D. C.
Secretary Windom, Recorder Bruce, the whole Minnesota delegation to
Congress and many Senators and others prominent in public life were
among the congregation. The bold and outspoken stand of the Archbishop
on this occasion created somewhat of a sensation throughout America.
Among other things he said:

"It make me ashamed as a man, as a citizen, as a Christian, to
see the prejudice that is acted against the colored citizens of
America because of his color. As to the substance, the colored
man is equal to the white man; he has a like intellect, the same
blood courses in their veins; they are both equally the children
of a common Father, who is in heaven. A man shows a narrowness of
mind and becomes unworthy of his humanity by refusing any
privilege to his fellowman because he is colored. Every prejudice
entertained, every breach of justice and charity against a
fellow-citizen because of color is a stain flung upon the banner
of our liberty that floats over us. No church is a fit temple of
God where a man, because of his color, is excluded or made to
occupy a corner. Religion teaches that we cannot be pleasing to
God unless we look upon all mankind as children of our Father in
heaven. And they who order and compel a man because he is colored
to betake himself to a corner marked off for his race,
practically contradict the principles of justice and of equal
rights established by the God of Mercy, who lives on the altar.
Let Christians act out their religion, and there is no more race
problem. Equality for the colored man is coming. The colored
people are showing themselves worthy of it. Let the colored be
industrious, purchase homes, respect law and order, educate
themselves and their children, and keep insisting on their
rights. The color line must go; the line will be drawn at
personal merit."[512]

There may be cited other instances of the friendly interest of leading
prelates and Bishops of the Church in the welfare of the Negro and of
care for their spiritual interests. They have ever been anxious that
justice be done to the race. The late Pope Pius X, sometime before his
death, wrote a letter through his secretary to the Rt. Rev. Thomas S.
Byrne, Bishop of Nashville, Tennessee, saying that he "most earnestly
wishes that the work of the Apostolate to the colored people, worthy
of being encouraged and applauded beyond any other undertaking of
Christian civilization, may find numerous and generous contributors."

JOSEPH BUTSCH

ST. JOSEPH'S SEMINARY,
BALTIMORE, MD.

FOOTNOTES:

[478] Dollinger, "The Gentile and the Jew," II, p. 265.

[479] Aristotle, "Politics," I, 3-4.

[480] Plato, "The Laws," VI, p. 233.

[481] Cardinal Gibbons, "Our Christian Heritage," pp. 416-420.

[482] Cardinal Gibbons, "Our Christian Heritage," p. 432.

[483] Cardinal Gibbons, "Our Christian Heritage," pp. 429-430.

[484] P. Allard, "Les Esclaves Chretiens," p. 215.

[485] Cardinal Gibbons, _op. cit._, p. 436.

[486] Lecky, "History of European Morals," Vol. II, p. 76.

[487] St. Gregory I, "Letter VI."

[488] In treating of an early period of Spanish American history,
undue importance seems to be given by some writers and historians,
such as Bancroft, Robertson and Blyden, to the fact that Bartholomew
de Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapa, when before the Court of Charles V of
Spain, in 1517, counseled that Negro slaves take the place of Indians,
as he considered the Negroes a hardier race. Other reliable
authorities, such as Fiske and MacNutt, claim that Las Casas merely
tolerated for a time, what already existed and what he could not
prevent. All agree that Las Casas in later life bitterly regretted
having approved of slavery under any form or condition whatever. John
Fiske, in his "The Discovery of America," Vol. II, p. 458, says, "that
the life work of Las Casas did much to diminish the volume of Negro
slavery and the spiritual corruption attendant upon it." This
non-Catholic writer furthermore declares that "when the work of Las
Casas is deeply considered, we cannot make him anything else but an
antagonist of human slavery in all its forms, and the mightiest and
most effective antagonist, withal, that has ever lived." F. A. MacNutt
in his work "Bartholomew De Las Casas," page 98, speaks of him in like
manner. In connection with Negro slavery in the West Indies it should
be said that the famous Cardinal Ximenes, of Spain, had protested
already in 1516 against the recruiting of Negro slaves in Africa as
then carried on for the West Indies.

[489] Cardinal Gibbons, _op. cit._, p. 434.

[490] Leo XIII to the Bishops of Brazil in a Letter dated Rome, May 5,
1888. Among the strong opponents of slavery before and during the
Civil War in America was the noted Catholic philosopher and publicist,
Orestes A. Brownson. His views on slavery and allied questions are
found in his "Works," Vol. XVII, edited by his son, Henry F. Brownson.

[491] Lecky, "History of Rationalism," Vol. II, pp. 31-32.

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