The Wheeling Daily Register

In the New School Presbyterian General Assembly, now in session in Brooklyn, the committee on Domestic Missions made a report in which allusion was made to the field of labor now open to the church among the freed negroes of the South.

Considerable discussion was called out by the questions mooted in the report, particularly that relating to the freedmen, and the Rev. John B. Reeve, of the Fourth Presbytery of Philadelphia, made a telling speech in favor of his brethren. He said that it is the duty of the church to take possession of the field that Providence has opened for it, and then to treat the black men as men and brothers, not as dependents upon charity and sympathy. We are tired of sympathy; we want fair and manly recognition of justice and of our prerogatives. We are not at all ashamed of the name of Africans, but we are Americans, and wish to be admitted among you as such, not to have a bone thrown at us. We expected to come back for more. Establish churches among our people South and they will soon take care of themselves; our churches now do more for themselves than our white brethren, proportionately. Our people are naturally Presbyterians; it has only been their unchangeable faith in the eternal purpose of God that has sustained them through the bitter past. They are not Methodists—they are Calvinists, quite as much as their masters, except that the latter believed God had one eternal purpose, and the down-trodden race believe the exact reverse.

The Rev. Charles H. Thompson, of the Newark (N. J.) Presbytery, objected most strenuously to putting the freemen into the churches with the whites; a white pastor over a colored congregation would be an impossibility. Mr. Reeve had quoted an instance in his own parish on that point. He had once a white clergyman to come to preach for him—which was generally a source of anxiety to him lest there should be some misstep—and the good brother got through his sermon and the other exercises very well until he came to his closing prayer, and then he would say, "Oh! Lord! we know that the soul of the black man is as dear to Thee as the soul of the white man," and that, of course, spoiled all the rest. The fact is, the blacks are much prejudiced against the whites. [Laughter.] Mr. Thompson deemed Presbyterianism the proper faith for the negro; Methodism degrades them, since it excites and rouses their sensibilities, which need rather to be quieted: and as to the Roman Catholics, who are seeking to win them over to that faith, a negro deems all Roman Catholics Irishmen, and that is enough for that argument.

Both of the above speeches were listened to with great interest and were warmly seconded by others.