Crucible of the Civil War: Virginia from Secession to Commemoration

Race, Religion, and Rebellion: Black and White Baptists in Albemarle County, Virginia, during the Civil War

Race, Religion, and Rebellion Black and White Baptists in Albemarle County, Virginia, during the Civil War Andrew Witmer The reminiscences of Horace Tonsler, born into slavery in Albemarle County, Virginia, in 1857, offer a revealing glimpse into the structure of race relations in central Virginia churches during the Civil War period . “When we git to de church,” Tonsler recalled, “de white folks would go inside, an’ de slaves would sit round under de trees outside. Den de preacher git de white folks to singin’ an’ shoutin’, an’ he start to walkin’ up an’ down de pulpit an’ ev’y once in a while he lean out de winder an’ shout somepin’ out to us black folks.” Relegated to the periphery, the slaves took full advantage of their situation. Tonsler described how from time to time an older member of the black congregation would rise from his place and quietly begin shadow-preaching, waving his arms and contorting his face in imitation of the white minister, to the endless amusement of his fellow slaves. The satirical aspects of these performances were scrupulously concealed from those inside the church, and the practice slowly grew into something more serious. According to Tonsler, whites became accustomed to the arrangement and eventually allowed their slaves to preach and pray for themselves under the shade trees surrounding the church. Whites and blacks performed many such tacit negotiations in churches across the South, but Tonsler’s account indicates that beneath the veneer of peaceful coexistence, the two congregations were deeply distrustful of one another. White leaders carefully regulated their black members, re- race, religion, and rebellion K 137 quiring them to worship quietly within sight of the church. Black members preferred to be left alone to worship in their own manner and looked warily upon white intervention. Tonsler recalled that the black preacher was so far superior to his white counterpart that white boys would come late to church in order to remain outside and listen to him. The white boys’ unwelcome presence forced the minister to choose his words with special care. “Preacher always got quiet when dey come,” Tonsler remembered. “Couldn’t trust dem white boys. Dey go back home an’ tell dey fathers dat de slaves plannin’ to run away.” The patterns of ecclesiastical race relations established during the antebellum years—particularly the circumscribed flexibility that permitted varying degrees of black autonomy—provided much of the distinctive flavor of Southern religious life and thus formed the crucial context for understanding the dramatic changes in Albemarle County churches during the Civil War. While it is clear in retrospect that the war permanently altered Southern race relations, it was not so obvious at the time that this would be the result, and even those who anticipated serious changes did so within the framework of the system they had always known. As the war raged on, the same sorts of competing concerns that divided whites and blacks in Horace Tonsler’s Albemarle congregation persisted and multiplied in Baptist churches across the county, creating racially distinctive expectations of the war’s implications for church life. Many black Baptists pushed for greater autonomy within their racially mixed churches, while many whites, confident of Confederate victory and a return to the relatively malleable racial system of the antebellum years, proved remarkably receptive to limited increases in black ecclesiastical autonomy. Other whites emphasized the need to tighten rather than relax systems of racial control within Baptist congregations. Such patterns can be discerned only by looking more carefully into the life of the institutional church in the antebellum and wartime South. In a religious historiography that understandably prizes expressions of extra -institutional black religious life, the church—where black strategies of autonomy and self-determination are often less immediately obvious—is sometimes undervalued. A number of historians have shown, however, that such strategies did exist within the church, and careful attention to the texture of interracial church life reveals a host of other important dynamics as well. This essay examines some of those dynamics in the experiences of several interracial Virginia congregations, revealing the nature and limits of religious constraint, white and black expectations about how the war would reshape religious life, and the motives of white leaders who 138 K andrew witmer permitted and even welcomed increased black religious autonomy during the war. For a variety of reasons, hundreds of thousands of slaves and free blacks joined...