1. The centrality of the epistle in this essay is the reason for supplying all of the following data from the title page. A Letter to the Negroes Lately Converted to Christ in America. And Particularly to Those, lately Called out of Darkness, into God's marvellous Light, at Mr. Jonathan Bryan's in South Carolina. Or A Welcome to the Believing Negroes, into the Household of God. By a Friend and Servant of Theirs in England. London, Printed by J. Hart, in Poppings-Court, Fleet-street: And Sold by J. Lewis, in Bartholomew-Close, near West-Smithfield; and Gardner, E., at Milton's Head, in Gracechurch street, 1743Google Scholar. Hereafter this publication will be cited as Letter to the Negroes. The copy used for this research is in the Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut.

2. Tyerman, Luke, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, 2 vols. (London, 1876-1877), 2, p. 273Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Life.

3. See Belcher, Joseph, George Whitefield: A Biography with Special Reference to his Labors in America (New York, 1857), p. 309Google Scholar. “He [Whitefield] now availed himself of the influence he possessed, to forward his intended college, in addition to his orphan-house, for which his plea was, ‘If some such thing be not done, I cannot see how the southern parts will be provided with ministers; for all are afraid to go over.’ On this ground he appealed to the trustees of Georgia; reminding them that he had expended five thousand pounds upon the orphan-house; begging them to relieve it, as a charitable institution, from all quit-rent and taxes; and especially to allow him the labor of blacks in cultivating the farm.” Whitefield was even forced by these circumstances to sell some household furnishings to pay expenses at Bethesda. On the problems of the orphanage, see O'Connell, Neil J., “George Whitefield and Bethesda Orphan-House,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 54 (1970), pp. 41–62.Google Scholar

4. For example, “The great social reforms of the nineteenth century were byproducts of the Gospel he [Whitefield] preached.” Christianity Today, 15 (10. 9, 1970), p. 31Google Scholar. A recent biographer characterizes the evangelist's relationship to the blacks as “warm and familiar”. He concludes that “Whitefield's contribution to the temporal and spiritual welfare of the slave was rich and lasting, and we may well agree that he was, as a modern author has termed him, ‘the first great friend of the American negro’”. See Dallimore, Arnold A., George Whitefield: Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival (London, 1970), 1, pp. 501, 509.Google Scholar

5. Whitefield, George, “Letter III. To the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South-Carolina, concerning their Negroes,” Three Letters from the Reverend Mr. G. Whitefield (Philadelphia, 1740), pp. 13–16Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as “To the Inhabitants.” The standard literature about the religious awakenings in eighteenth-century America has consistently slighted the south. Exceptions to this rule are the early study by Tracy, Joseph, The Great Awakening. A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (Boston, 1841)Google Scholar, and Gewehr, Wesley M., The Great Awakening in Virginia (1740-1790), (Durham, N.C., 1930)Google Scholar. Recently Whitefield's impact in the southern colonies has been discussed in two articles by Kenney, William Howland III, “George Whitefield, Dissenter Priest of the Great Awakening, 1739–1741,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 26 (1969), pp. 75–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Alexander Garden and George Whitefield: The Significance of Revivalism in South Carolina, 1738–1741,” South Carolina Historical Magazine, 71 (1970), pp. 1–16Google Scholar, and in an essay by Morgan, David T. Jr, “George Whitefield and the Great Awakening in the Carolinas and Georgia, 1739–1740,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 54 (1970), pp. 517–539.Google Scholar

6. Whitefield, , “To the Inhabitants,” p. 13.Google Scholar

7. Ibid., p. 14.

8. “Negroes” was the term most often used by Whitefield when he spoke of the blacks. In this paper it is employed only within the context of his discourses.

9. Whitefield, , “To the Inhabitants,” p. 16.Google Scholar

10. Tyerman, , Life, 2, p. 169.Google Scholar

11. For the larger context of the introduction of slavery into Georgia, see Wax, Darold D., “Georgia and the Negro Before the American Revolution,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 51 (1967), pp. 63–77Google Scholar, and Osgood, Herbert L., The American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century, 4 vols. (New York, 1924), 3, ch. 9.Google Scholar

12. Tyerman, , Life, 2, pp. 205–206.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., p. 206.

14. George Whitefield's Journals (1737–1741), a facsimile reproduction of the edition of William Wale in 1905 with an introduction by William V. Davis (Gainesville, FIa., 1969), p. 380Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Journals.

15. Sirmans, M. Eugene, Colonial South Carolina: A Political History 1663–1763 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966), p. 207Google Scholar. For an excellent discussion of the fear of revolt, see Jordan, Winthrop D., White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro (1550–1812) (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1968)Google Scholar, especially chapter 3, “Anxious Oppressors: Freedom and Control in a Slave Society,” which is concerned with the first half of the eighteenth century.

16. Hofstadter, Richard, America at 1750: A Social Portrait (New York, 1971), p. 111Google Scholar. Hofstadter's posthumous publication contains two helpful chapters on “The Slave Trade” and “Black Slavery” in which he discusses the fears and the realities of slave rebellions. For more on the situation in South Carolina, see McCrady, Edward, “Slavery in the Province of South Carolina, 1670–1770,” Annual Report of the American Historical Association 1895 (Washington, 1896), pp. 629–673Google Scholar, and Sirmans, M. Eugene, “The Legal Status of the Slave in South Carolina, 1670–1740,” Journal of Southern History, 28 (1962), pp. 462–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. It was the judgment of some that the revolts stemmed from a policy of leniency. “The Desertion of 23 Negroes from this Neighbourhood to St. Augustine, a Spanish Garrison, on a Proclamation Publish'd there of freedom to all Slaves that Sh [all] Desert to them from Any of the English Plantations, will Considerably Encrease the Prejudice of Planters agst the Negroes, and Occasion a Strict hand, to be kept over them by their Several Owners, those that Deserted having been Much Indulg'd.” A letter of Lewis Jones to [David Humphreys], St. Helen's, South Carolina, May 1, 1739, from the manuscripts of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, quoted in Klingberg, Frank J., An Appraisal of the Negro in Colonial South Carolina (Washington, 1941), p. 68.Google Scholar

18. Whitefield, , Journals, pp. 380–381.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., p. 381.

20. See above, note 5.

21. Whitefield, , “To the Inhabitants,” p. 14.Google Scholar

22. Ibid., p. 16. Here Whitefield is referring clearly to the Stono River affair.

23. Belcher, , George Whitefield, p. 298.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., p. 297.

25. For a discussion of the context of this charge leveled against Whitefield and other revivalists, see Jordan, White Over Black, ch. 5, “The Souls of Men: The Negro's Spiritual Nature.” At least one critic linked Whitefield with the rebellion in New York in 1741. Ibid., p. 181.

26. Gillies, John, Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend George Whitefield. M. A. (Salem, (1801), p. 80Google Scholar. Gillies' biography was first published in 1772, two years after Whitefield's death. Hereafter this work is cited as Memoirs.

27. No references to this work have been located among the major biographies of Whitefield, including the fine study by Henry, Stuart C., George Whitefield: Wayfaring Witness (New York, 1957)Google Scholar. This lack of reference is all the more surprising because Whitefield's relationship to the Bryan family is discussed in some of the accounts of his life and also in Tracy, The Great Awakening (ch. 6). The recent studies on the history of slavery in the West and on the racial attitudes of early America have over looked the publication too. See Jordan, White Over Black, and Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N. Y., 1966)Google Scholar. Both Jordan and Davis give some particular attention to Whitefield. The anonymous letter is listed as No. 40504 in Sabin, Joseph, Bibliotheca Americana. A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from its Discovery to the Present Time. 29 vols. (New York, 1868-1936), 10, p. 271.Google Scholar

28. The only available biographical study of Jonathan Bryan is the sympathetic account by MrsRedding, J. H., née Isabella Cornelia Remshart, Life and Times of Jonathan Bryan, 1708–1788 (Savannah, Ga., 1901)Google Scholar. Isabella, the daughter of the Reverend John Waldhauer Remshart, a Methodist clergyman, could trace her family back to the days of James Oglethorpe. Her father, who spent seven years as a missionary among the blacks along the seacoast in Georgia, married Jane Bryan. Isabella herself married Joseph Henry Redding, a prominent physician at Waycross, Georgia. Hereafter this work is cited as Life and Times. Her only other publication is a tract entitled The League of Nations (Waycross, Ga., 1924).Google Scholar

29. For an assessment of the influence of Whitefield upon the planters in the area, see the recent literature cited above in note 5.

30. “While preaching in the colony, Whitefield frequented Hugh and his brother Jonathan Bryan's plantation near Port Royal and came to think of Hugh Bryan as one of his shining converts.” Kenney, , “Alexander Garden and George Whitefield,” p. 13Google Scholar. Hugh was a very religious man, partly as a result of a year of captivity which he spent in Florida as a youth. Redding, , Life and Times, p. 9Google Scholar. In 1741 he and Whitefield publicly linked forces in an attack upon the Anglican establishment in South Carolina. See the South-Carolina Gazette, Jan. 8, 1741. Also Kenney, “George Whitefield, Dissenter Priest,” and Keen, Quentin B., “The Problems of a Commissary: The Reverend Alexander Garden of South Carolina,” Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 20 (1951), pp. 136–155Google Scholar. Hugh's religiosity is graphically illustrated in Conder, John and Gibbons, Thomas, eds., Living Christianity Delineated, in the Diaries and Letters of Two Eminently pious Persons lately deceased; viz. Mr. Hugh Bryan, and Mrs. Mary Hutson. Both of South-Carolina (London, 1760)Google Scholar. Jonathan met Whitefield in January, 1740. Redding, , Life and Times, pp. 29–30.Google Scholar

31. This is Redding's description of Bryan's condition. Life and Times, p. 29. For a discussion of the expedition to Florida, see Osgood, , American Colonies, 3, pp. 501–510.Google Scholar

32. Whitefield, , Journals, p. 447.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., pp. 447–448.

34. Ibid., p. 448.

35. Redding, , Life and Times, p. 30.Google Scholar

36. Whitefield, , Journals, p. 451.Google Scholar

37. Ibid., p. 504. Bryan's awakening took place over an extended period of time. In October, 1740 he made the following entry in his Bible: “John 3, v and vi. My conversion from corruption to Christianity, the time whereof I bless God, I well remember was October 24th, 1740. O, that this day may be much to be remembered by me when I was brought out of spiritual bondage into the glorious liberty of the Son of God.” Redding, , Life and Times, pp. 30–31.Google Scholar

38. Concerning the new conflict with the Spanish, see Sirmans, , Colonial South Carolina, p. 213.Google Scholar

39. Tyerman, , Life, 2, p. 23Google Scholar. On this same incident, see Redding, , Life and Times, p. 32.Google Scholar

40. Gillies, , Memoirs, p. 80Google Scholar. More than two years later, after Whitefield had arrived at Bethesda again, he wrote to Bryan as follows: “Gratitude Constrains me to send you a Line of Thanks for your last as well as othr former Favours … Jesus is wth & Blesses us. We are coming into a Little ordr. Hopg. to see you & yours at furtherst in ye Xtmas Week & sendg most cordial Salutations for my Dear Wife I subscribe myself.” Christie, John W., ed., “Newly Discovered Letters of George Whitefield, 1745–46,” Journal of The Presbyterian Historical Society, 32 (1954), pp. 75–76Google Scholar. This set of ninety-two letters published in three installments in 1954 which had been unknown prior to that date suggests some of the dynamics whereby works from the hand of Whitefield might have been lost or ignored.

41. For example, see Gillies, , Memoirs, p. 66Google Scholar, and Tyerman, , Life, 2, pp. 23–25.Google Scholar

42. Gillies, , Memoirs, p. 68Google Scholar. When Bryan befriended the community at Bethesda, Whitefield wrote of him as follows:“This Mr. Bryan was converted at the Orphan-house, and is a wealthy planter in South-Carolina. I admire the providence of GOD, in raising him up to take care of the little lambs in this time of their distress.” The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, 6 vols. (London, 1771-1772), 3, p. 454Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as Works.

43. Redding, , Life and Times, p. 33Google Scholar. One of Bryan's slaves became a Baptist minister, preaching on his plantation at Brampton. After being freed by Bryan, he became “the founder of the first colored church in Savannah,” the Bryan Baptist Church. Ibid., pp. 43–44. Bryan's interest in the conversion of blacks remained strong throughout his life time. In 1772 he wrote the following to John Wesley: “But, dear sir, what concerns me more than all is the unhappy condition of our negroes, who are kept in worse than Egyptian bondage. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, and all the superfluities we possess, are the produce of their labours; and what do they receive in return? Nothing equivalent; on the contrary, we keep from them the key of knowledge; so that their bodies and souls perish together in our service! If, therefore, you are not too advanced in years, I say to you, in the name of God, come over and help us; in doing. which you will greatly oblige many thousands, and, among the rest, your friend and brother, JONATHAN BRYAN.” Tyerman, Luke, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley. 3 vols. (2nd edition, London, 1872), 3, p. 117.Google Scholar

44. See Whitefield, , Journals, p. 451Google Scholar; Belcher, , George Whitefield, p 146Google Scholar; and Redding, , Life and Times, pp. 33, 44.Google Scholar

45. Redding, , Life and Times, p. 43Google Scholar. This copy is now in the Rare Book Department of the Boston Public Library. For evidence regarding the evangelical successes in the Charleston and Savannah areas during Whitefield's absence, see Prince, Thomas Jr, ed., The Christian History, 2 vols. (Boston, 1744-1745), 1, pp. 364–366; 2, pp. 103–104.Google Scholar

46. An excellent account of Whitefield's theology is contained in Henry, George Whitefield, Part II, “The Message and How It Was Received.”

47. Whitefield, , Letter to the Negroes, p. 3.Google Scholar

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid., p. 4. For assessments of the theological changes taking place in America at this time, see Haroutunian, Joseph, Piety Versus Moralism: The Passing of the New England Theology (New York, 1932)Google Scholar, and Wright, Conrad, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America (Boston, 1955)Google Scholar. On the English theological context, see Cragg's, G. B. volumes, The Church and the Age of Reason (Baltimore, 1960)Google Scholar, and Reason and Authority in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1964).Google Scholar

50. Whitefield, , Letter to the Negroes, pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

51. Ibid., p. 7.

52. Ibid., p. 9.

53. Ibid., p. 10.

54. Ibid., pp. 16–17. The description of this welcome is similar to the account of the return of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11–32, a favorite biblical text of Whitefield. See Whitefield, , The Prođigal Son: A Lecture (Glasgow, 1741).Google Scholar

55. Whitefield, , Letter to the Negroes, p. 17.Google Scholar

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid., p. 18.

58. Ibid., p. 19.

59. Ibid., p. 20.

60. Ibid., pp. 20–21.

61. Ibid., pp. 23, 24. Whitefield apparently felt that the promise of spiritual release from pain was reason enough for the blacks to work hard. In subsequent years he remained dedicated to the system of slavery, acquiring more and more blacks for the plantation at Bethesda. For example, in 1745, six years before slaveholding was legalized in Georgia, Whitefield wrote to Mr. Hutson, the pastor of Stoney Creek Independent Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, the congregation attended by the Bryans, as follows: “I find there will be no Notice taken of Negroes at all & therefore if you think propr as you once sd. to give me a Negroe, I will venture to keep him, & if he shod, be seized it is but for me to buy him again I leave it to you to do as you find in your heart. Let me have a Sober one.” Christie, , “Newly Discovered Letters,” pp. 76–77Google Scholar. Years later, writing to Jonathan Bryan in 1753, Whitefield exhorted: “… and I hope to hear shortly that Doctor B…., with your assistance, hath purchased more negroes. My dear friend, do exert yourself a little for me in this time of my absence, and I trust the Orphan-house affairs will shortly be so ordered, that none shall be troubled about its affairs, but my own domestics.” Whitefield, , Works, 3, pp. 3–4.Google Scholar

62. Whitefield, , Letter to the Negroes, pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

63. Ibid., p. 26.

64. Ibid., pp. 26–27.

65. For some recent reflections upon the role played by religion during earlier periods of black experience in America, see Washington, Joseph B. Jr, Black Religion: The Negro and Christianity in the United States (Boston, 1964)Google Scholar; Cone, James H., Black, Theology and Black Power (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; and Jones, Major T., Black Awareness: A Theology of Hope (Nashville, Tenn., 1971)Google Scholar. The historical portions of these works should be used with caution, for they have been colored by the pressures of the times.

66. Whitefield, , Letter to the Negroes, p. 28.Google Scholar

67. Ibid., pp. 29–30.

68. Ibid., p. 31.

69. For a discussion of the reconciliation of slavery and evangelicalism in a later period, see Bellot, Leland J., “Evangelicals and the Defense of Slavery in Britain's Old Colonial Empire,” Journal of Southern History, 37 (1971), pp. 19–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70. The long range effects—direct or indirect—of eighteenth-century evangelicalism upon the rise and fall of slavery in America are perhaps more difficult to determine. For a good example of the complexity involved in such judgments, see Freehling, William W., “The Founding Fathers and Slavery,” The American Historical Review, 77 (1972), pp. 81–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar