For this reason
the political and religious interests and emotions of this people
are quite inseparable. Wherever they meet to worship, there they
will meet to consult of their plans, hopes, and progress, as at once
a distinct race and a part of the American people. Their religion
is tinged with political thought, and their political thought shaped
by religious conviction.
In this respect the colored race in America are the true children
of the Covenanters and the Puritans. Their faith is of the same
unquestioning type, which no disappointment or delay can daunt,
and their view of personal duty and obligation in regard to it is
not less intense than that which led men to sing psalms and utter
praises on board the storm-bound "Mayflower." The most English of
all English attributes has, by a strange transmutation, become the
leading element in the character of the Africo-American. The same
mixed motive of religious duty toward posterity and devotion to
political liberty which peopled the bleak hills of New England and
the fertile lands of Canaan with peoples fleeing from bondage and
oppression, may yet cover the North with dusky fugitives from the
spirit and the situs of slavery.
From time to time there had been political meetings held at the
church or school-house, composed mainly of colored men, though now
and then a little knot of white men would come in and watch their
proceedings, sometimes from curiosity, and sometimes from spleen.
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