The elimination of the Christian teachers of the Negro race, and the prevention of the immigration of workers from the Northern States rendered the blacks helpless and dependent upon a few benevolent white ministers of the slave communities.

During this period of unusual proselyting among the whites, these preachers could not minister to the needs of their own race.[1] Besides, even when there was found a white clergyman who was willing to labor among these lowly people, he often knew little about the inner workings of their minds, and failing to enlighten their understanding, left them the victims of sinful habits, incident to the institution of slavery.
[Footnote 1: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p.

175.] To a civilized man the result was alarming.

The Church as an institution had ceased to be the means by which the Negroes of the South could be enlightened.

The Sabbath-schools in which so many colored people there had learned to read and write had by 1834 restricted their work to oral instruction.[1] In places where the blacks once had the privilege of getting an elementary education, only an inconceivable fraction of them could rise above illiteracy.