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“The Prospect Before Us”: A Massachusetts Congregationalist in Reconstruction Alabama AMONG THE SHATTERING CHANGES ASSOCIATED WITH RECONSTRUCTION was the attempt, often inspired and undertaken by visiting northerners, to educate ex-slaves and provide guidance with a Christian emphasis . The American Missionary Association (AMA) best epitomized the commitment and idealism to carry out this work. For members of the AMA, emancipation—albeit rectifying a stain on the Republic and indeed humanity—represented only the first step in their effort to transform former slaves into contributing citizens. Educating the freedmen was central to the effort; providing an unwritten primer of self-conduct was just as important to the thousands of AMA missionaries who came south immediately after the war. Founded in 1846, the AMA was an evangelical and interdenominational society that was dedicated to abolishing slavery. During the Civil War its representatives carried the cause south, educating and preachingamongtheAfricanAmericanpopulation.Aftertheconflict, the AMA increased its southern activities. A close connection existed between the AMA and the Congregational Church; most of the AMA representatives who traveled to the South were Congregationalists. Extending that New England–based denomination and initiating the freedmen in Congregationalist dogma dovetailed with the paternalistic impulses of the AMA.1 W I L L I A M W A R R E N R O G E R S J R . William Warren Rogers Jr. holds a doctorate in history from Auburn University. He teaches at Gainesville State College in Athens and Gainesville, Georgia. He would like to thank the following librarians and archivists for helping him with the research on this article: Heidi Dodson at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, Peter Nelson at the Archives and Special Collections Department of Amherst College, Mary O’Connell at the Bridgewater Public Library, Dr. Harold F. Worthley at the Congregational Library in Boston, and Bob Hanson in Loganville, Georgia. 1 Joe M. Richardson, Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary Association and Southern Blacks, 1861–1890 (Athens, Ga., l986), 3–37, l45–47; Jacqueline Jones, Soldiers of Light and T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 4 The Black Belt of Alabama offered a potentially productive AMA field. That region, stretching across the central part of the state, took its name from the rich, black earth and the large number of African Americans living there. The Black Belt, where the highest concentration of slaves in the state had labored, offered the AMA substantial potential for progress in its mission among the ex-slaves. Nevertheless, AMA missionaries in the region faced daunting challenges and the prospect that the promise of the AMA could fail utterly. This essay examines developments in one Black Belt locale—Marion, Alabama— and the efforts of Nathan and Lucy Willis to provide educational and spiritual guidance among freedmen there.2 Nathan Elliot Willis, the second son of Nathan and Rebecca Willis, was born in the small town of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, on July 12, 1838. Nathan Willis Sr., a shoemaker, provided a comfortable living for the family. At Bridgewater Academy, the likeable and bright boy gained an educational foundation, and at the local Congregational church, spiritual grounding. In 1855, seventeen-year-old Nathan entered Bridgewater Normal School.3 He completed the two-year curriculum and graduated in 1857. Although not yet twenty years old, and possibly unsure of a career, Nathan was at least certain he would not pursue the shoe trade. He took and passed the entrance examination to Amherst College.4 Nathan joined seventy-three other freshmen at Amherst in the fall of 1858. The private school, appealingly situated on rolling terrain in western Massachusetts, had expanded in size and scope since opening in 182l. Established largely to train young men for the ministry, Love: Northern Teachers and Georgia Blacks, 1865–1873 (Chapel Hill, N.C., l980), 11, 15–18, 37; A. Knighton Stanley, The Children Is Crying: Congregationalism Among Black People (New York, 1979), 22–23, 41–47. For a case study in Georgia, see Titus Brown, Faithful, Firm, and True: African American Education in the South (Macon, Ga., 2002). 2 For AMA activities in Alabama, see Loren Schweninger, “The American Missionary Association and Northern Philanthropy in Reconstruction...

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