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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2015
Centered on understudied manuscript sources located in the Archive of the Francke Foundations, this essay argues that defenses of slavery among eighteenth-century protestants developed from a longstanding tradition of providential thought and narration. This tradition of providential thought and narration was informed by protestants’ transatlantic missionary efforts. Far from encouraging human passivity, faith in God's providential direction motivated protestants to wide-ranging evangelistic endeavors. By focusing on the correspondence and writings of George Whitefield, August Hermann Francke, Gotthilf August Francke, and several missionary Pietists in the colony of Georgia, the essay shows how eighteenth-century protestants confirmed God's providential oversight through the practice of retrospective reflection in their writings and publications. The providential pulse of these writings was integral to knitting together a transatlantic community of protestants in their evangelical zeal and encouraging them to new efforts. Whitefield and the Pietists continued to rely on this providential faith and narrative style as they interpreted their acceptance of slavery in terms of God's direction over the success of their missions, the decisions of temporal authorities, and the conversion of slaves to Christianity.
1 In Ebenezer, Whitefield met the pastors Johann Martin Boltzius and Israel Christian Gronau, who arrived in Georgia in 1734 with a group of Protestant Salzburger refugees. They founded Ebenezer with the support of not only the Francke Foundations, but also the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Georgia Trustees. For an overview of the circumstances for the Salzburgers’ emigration to Georgia, see Jones, George Fenwick, “Introduction,” Henry Newman's Salzburger Letterbooks (Athens: University of Georgia, 1966), 1–9Google Scholar. On the Salzburg expulsion and its significance in Protestant evangelical history, see Ward, W. R., The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (New York: Cambridge University, 1992), 93–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a more recent study on the Salzburgers’ religious situation before expulsion, see Melton, James Van Horn, “Pietism, Print Culture, and Salzburg Protestantism on the Eve of Expulsion,” in Pietism in Germany and North America, 1680–1820, eds. Strom, Jonathan, Lehmann, Hartmut, and Melton (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2009), 229–249.Google Scholar
2 The phrase comes from Gotthilf August Francke: “die in dem Weinberg des HERRN arbeiten.” Gotthilf August Francke to George Whitefield, January 20, 1739, Missionsarchiv der Franckeschen Stiftungen [hereafter AFSt/M] 5A7: 27. See the parable of the vineyard in the book of Matthew, chapter 20. Despite initial concerns over Whitefield's relationship with the Moravians, Francke encouraged the Ebenezer ministers to form a close relationship with Whitefield. See Gotthilf August Francke to Israel Christian Gronau, January 27, 1741, AFSt/M 5A9: 22. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from German to English are the author's own.
3 See historiographical discussion below. Examples of this characterization include: Lambert, Frank, ‘Pedlar in Divinity’: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals, 1737–1770 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University, 1994), 204–205Google Scholar; Gallay, Alan, The Formation of a Planter Elite: Jonathan Bryan and the Southern Colonial Frontier (Athens: University of Georgia, 1989), 53–54.Google Scholar
4 This scholarly misconception is apparent, for example, in literature concerning the eighteenth-century development of and debate over smallpox inoculation. See Gilman, Ernest B., Plague Writing in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 247; Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1953)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 343; Van de Wetering, Maxine, “A Reconsideration of the Inoculation Controversy,” The New England Quarterly 58, no. 1 (March 1985): 46–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; 59, 66. Equally problematic is a tendency of scholarship to conflate providence and predestination, leading to the assumption that providentialism was limited to Calvinists or early English Puritans. This is partly due to the enduring legacy of Thomas, Keith's work, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Scribner, 1971)Google Scholar; see, for example, Wear, Andrew, “Puritan perceptions of illness in seventeenth century England,” in Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre-Industrial Society, ed. Porter, Roy (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University, 1985), 55–99Google Scholar, particularly pages 59–60, where Wear writes, “It has to be remembered that this highly providentialist vision was relatively short-lived and limited mainly to Puritans, and many diaries were written by Puritan ministers who would naturally think in this way.” Walsham, Alexandra's monograph, Providence in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University, 1999)Google Scholar, offers a significant critique of Thomas.
5 On retrospective narration in Puritan literature, see Gilpin, W. Clark's preface to Bunyan, John's The Pilgrim's Progress: From This World to That Which Is to Come and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (New York: Vintage, 2004), ix–xviGoogle Scholar. On retrospection and narrative, see Rosengarten, Richard A., “The Recalcitrant Distentio of Ricoeur's Time and Narrative,” Literature & Theology 27, no. 2 (June 2013): 174–175CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 178; Rosengarten, Richard, Henry Fielding and the Narration of Providence: Divine Design and the Incursions of Evil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000)Google Scholar, xiv. On the development of eighteenth-century evangelical writing and print culture, see Hindmarsh, Bruce, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University, 2008), 43–46Google Scholar, 51–61, 67–80, 94–95, 131. Hindmarsh's study focuses on English evangelicals, but many of his themes are relevant for transatlantic German religious writing and printing. Pietist German periodicals like Geistliches Magazin published accounts and letters emphasizing God's work and revival from missions around the world—including both German- and English-language sources, such as George Whitefield—as well as German translations of popular English evangelical writings. For examples, see: “Einige gute Nachrichten aus dem Reiche Gottes: I. Von dem gegenwärtigen Zustande der Saltzburgischen Emigranten in der Americanischen Provintz Georgien,” Geistliches Magazin 1:1 (1761): 160–175Google Scholar; “Fortsetzung guter Nachrichten aus dem Reiche GOttes, und zwar von den Anstalten zur Bekehrung der armen Negers, auf den Königlich-Dänischen Inselen St. Thomas, St. Croir, und St. Jean,” Geistliches Magazin 1, no. 4 (1762): 410–430Google Scholar; “Vermischte Nachrichten, welche die Ausbreitung der evangelischen Kirche in den Americanischen Landen betreffen,” Geistliches Magazin 2, no. 1 (1763): 91–112Google Scholar; “Leben und Ende Herrn Johann Janewey, Diener des Evangelii, aus dem Englischen übersetzt, Geistliches Magazin 2, no. 5 (1765): 567–590Google Scholar; “Vorläufige Anmerckungen über nachstehende, aus dem Englischen in das Teutsche übersetzte Nachricht, von den Indianischen Armen = Schulen,” Geistliches Magazin 3, no. 2 (1766): 231–302Google Scholar; and “Auszug aus einem Schreiben des Hrn. George Davis, an den Hrn. George Withfield in London,” Geistliches Magazin 4, no. 4 (1770): 442–444Google Scholar. For another popular Pietist publication, see Carl, Johann Samuel, ed., Geistliche Fama (Berleburg: 1730–1744)Google Scholar. Carl sometimes used the pseudonym “Christianus Democritus;” it is occasionally miscataloged under the name of Johann Konrad Dippel, who also used this pseudonym. I consulted Geistliches Magazin in the Archive of the Francke Foundations and Geistliche Fama at the Library Company of Philadelphia.
6 The only secondary study I have located that has used these sources is Zehrer, Karl, “Die Beziehung zwischen dem hallischen Pietismus und dem frühen Methodismus,” in Pietismus und Neuzeit 2 (1975): 43–56Google Scholar. Much of Zehrer's focus is on the relationship between Francke and John Wesley; the section on Whitefield is brief and explores some of the competitive nature that developed in Whitefield and Francke's discussion of their missionary endeavors.
7 Stein, Stephen J., “George Whitefield on Slavery: Some New Evidence,” Church History 42, no. 2 (June 1973): 256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8 Wood, Forrest, The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century (New York: Knopf, 1990), 211–212.Google Scholar
9 Kidd, Colin, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000 (New York: Cambridge University, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 21.
10 Goetz, Rebecca Anne, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 3, 10, 172.
11 Glasson explicitly disputes the argument that the SPG was a forerunner of “Anglican humanitarianism.” Glasson, Travis, Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (New York: Oxford University, 2011), 4–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 123–129, 200; Glasson, Travis, “‘Baptism doth not bestow Freedom’: Missionary Anglicanism, Slavery, and the Yorke-Talbot Opinion, 1701–1730,” William and Mary Quarterly 67, no. 2 (April 2010): 311–316.Google Scholar
12 Lambert, Pedlar in Divinity, 204–205; Gallay, Formation of a Planter Elite, 53–54.
13 Cf. 2 Thessalonians 3:1.
14 A reference to a Charles Wesley hymn. See Wesley, Charles, “CCXLI. Invitation to our Absent Friends,” in Hymns and Sacred Poems in Two Volumes, vol. 2 (Bristol: Farley, 1749), 326–327.Google Scholar
15 Cf. Isaiah 52:8.
16 Cf. Isaiah 11:6–7.
17 Cf. Isaiah 2:4; Micah 4:3.
18 Cf. Matthew 6:10; Luke 11:2.
19 George Whitefield to Gotthilf August Francke, November 23, 1742, Hauptarchiv der Franckeschen Stiftungen [hereafter AFSt/H] C 532: 2.
20 I consulted the third edition of the German text, Francke, August Hermann, Segensvolle Fußstapfen des noch lebenden und waltenden liebreichen und getreuen Gottes (Halle: in Verlegung des Wäysen-Hauses, 1709)Google Scholar, at the Archive of the Francke Foundations in Halle. The first English translation I have found is: Pietas Hallensis: Or a publick Demonstration of a Divine Being yet in the World (London: J. Downing, 1705)Google Scholar. Francke's account was likely translated into English by Anton Böhme, who was the Lutheran court chaplain in London at this time and who translated many Pietist writings into English. By 1706, Francke's account began appearing with its new title: An Abstract of the Marvellous Footsteps of Divine Providence. In the Building of a very large Hospital, or rather, a Spacious College, For Charitable and Excellent Use in the Maintaining of many Orphans and other Poor People therein (London: Downing, 1706)Google Scholar. On Böhme, see Sames, Arno, Anton Wilhelm Böhme (1673–1722): Studien zum Ökumenischen Denken und Handeln eines Halleschen Pietisten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), 19–22Google Scholar. On Böhme's translation work and the transmission of Halle Pietist texts into English, see Yoder, Peter James, “Rendered ‘Odious’ as Pietists: Anton Wilhelm Böhme's Conception of Pietism and the Possibilities of Prototype Theory,” in The Pietist Impulse in Christianity, eds. Collins-Winn, Christian T. et al. (Eugene, Oreg.: Pickwick, 2011): 17–28.Google Scholar
21 Mather, Cotton, Nuncia Bona e Terra Longinqua. A Brief Account of some Good & Great Things a doing For the Kingdom of God, in the midst of Europe (Boston: B. Green for Samuel Gerrish, 1715), 2–9.Google Scholar
22 Stout, Harry, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991)Google Scholar, 62. See also Roeber, A. G., “‘The Origin of Whatever Is Not English among Us’: The Dutch-speaking and the German-speaking Peoples of Colonial British America,” in Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire, eds. Bailyn, Bernard and Morgan, Philip D. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1991)Google Scholar, 247.
23 George Whitefield to Gotthilf August Francke, November 23, 1742, AFSt/H C 532: 2.
24 Bethesda had quickly become an important part of Whitefield's itinerancy and fundraising and thus also the subject of scrutiny and critique. Whitefield, George, A continuation of the account of the Orphan-House in Georgia, from January 1740/1 to June 1742 (Edinburgh: Lumisden and Robertson, 1742), 3, 19–20Google Scholar; for the Habersham letters, see especially pages 8–14; for Colman, see page 17. I consulted the edition at the Library Company of Philadelphia. See also Lambert, Frank, James Habersham: Loyalty, Politics, and Commerce in Colonial Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia, 2005), 53–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, Harold E., The Fledgling Province: Social and Cultural Life in Colonial Georgia, 1733–1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1976)Google Scholar, 220; Cashin, Edward J., Beloved Bethesda: A History of George Whitefield's Home for Boys, 1740–2000 (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University, 2001)Google Scholar, 1; Lambert, Pedlar in Divinity, 207.
25 Whitefield, A continuation of the account of the Orphan-House in Georgia, 18–20, 26–82. On the orphanage and its financial troubles, see Lambert, James Habersham, 46–56.
26 Quoted in Whitefield, A continuation of the account of the Orphan-House in Georgia, 29–30, 36.
27 Ibid., 42, 45, 54, 58, 63, 77.
28 Ibid., 3–5, 20.
29 George Whitefield to Gotthilf August Francke, November 23, 1742, AFSt/H C 532: 2.
30 Whitefield's active support for the introduction of slavery into colonial Georgia has been described by scholars including Arnold Dallimore, Frank Lambert, and Alan Gallay, among others, who have shown how slavery helped Whitefield to provide Bethesda with some financial stability. Historians have also highlighted Whitefield's complex and, indeed, paradoxical relationship to slaveholding. Scholars have explained Whitefield's economic reasoning, his Atlantic and Georgian context—including the larger push for slavery among the colony's Malcontents—and his conviction that slavery, when pursued by Christian masters, could function as a form of Christian mission to the African slave. The historian Betty Wood has well documented Boltzius's resistance to slavery, which was based, in part, on the Ebenezer community's support for the Georgia Trustees and their economic and security policies and, in part, on the community's early experience with slavery in 1734, before its prohibition. See Lambert, Pedlar In Divinity, 204–210; Lambert, James Habersham, 46–49, 54, 78–79; Wood, Betty, Slavery in Colonial Georgia: 1730–1775 (Athens: University of Georgia, 1984), 59–73Google Scholar; Gallay, Formation of a Planter Elite, 41–42, 49–51; Davis, The Fledgling Province, 126–127; Cashin, Beloved Bethesda, 60–62; Dallimore, A., George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival (Westchester, Ill.: Cornerstone Books, 1970), 207–208Google Scholar, 219, 367–368, 521. For Boltzius's concerns over slavery's effect on white wage labor, see his journal entry from July 17, 1750. Available in English translation in Urlsperger, Samuel, Detailed Reports on the Salzburger Emigrants Who Settled in America, vol. 13–14: 1749–1750, trans. Jones, George Fenwick and Roth, David (Athens: University of Georgia, 1990)Google Scholar, 95.
31 Gallay, Formation of a Planter Elite, 50, 53–54.
32 Ibid., 53–54; Lambert, Pedlar in Divinity, 207.
33 Noll, Mark, America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 386, 396.
34 Whitefield to Gotthilf August Francke, November 23, 1742, AFSt/H C 532: 18.
35 For an early example of frustrations in efforts at slave conversion due to masters’ reluctance, see Gilbert Jones to the Secretary, November 6, 1716, Letter Books, American material, Papers of the United Society Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts [hereafter cited SPG Letters], vol. B4, 75. I viewed this correspondence on the USPG microfilm collections available at the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Oxford. The missionaries’ explanations of their difficulties in pursuing slave conversion can be found particularly in their reports from 1725, when they responded to a letter from SPG secretary David Humphreys, who was troubled by reports that “proper care hath not been taken to instruct in the Christian Religion and baptize the Negroes in the Plantations in America,” and who exhorted the missionaries to do better. David Humphreys to all the Missionaries, July 30, 1725, SPG Letters, vol. A19, 113. Exemplary responses to Humphreys's letter include Mr. [Brian] Hunt to the Secretary, November 5, 1725, SPG Letters, vol. A19, 80; Mr. [Richard] Ludlam to the Secretary, December 1, 1725, SPG Letters, vol. A19, 82; Mr. [John] Bartow to the Secretary, November 5, 1725, SPG Letters, vol. A19, 184; Mr. [William] Vesey to the Secretary, November 18, 1725, vol. A19, 185; Mr. [Robert] Jenney to the Secretary, November 19, 1725, SPG Letters, vol. A19, 187. There are some occasional examples of slave instruction and baptism in the SPG reports from the 1720s. See, for example, Francis Varnod to the Secretary, January 13, 1723/4, SPG Letters, vol. A18, 69–75, which describes the efforts of Alexander Skeen and “Mrs. Hague his Sister” to instruct their slaves in South Carolina; cf. the Clergy in South Carolina to the Secretary, March 10, 1723/4, SPG Letters, vol. B5, 141.
36 Glasson Mastering Christianity, 5–11, 123–124, 129; on Barbados see especially 129, 141–170.
37 Ibid., 6. Whitefield was a chief example of the disruption revivalists caused to existing norms. The Pietists in Halle and the SPG both expressed anxieties over Whitefield's habit of preaching outdoors and in pulpits assigned to others. See Gotthilf August Francke to Johann Martin Boltzius and Israel Christian Gronau, June 4, 1739, AFSt/M 5 A 7: 47. For an excellent, although later, example of the distaste with which SPG missionaries regarded Whitefield, see Thomas Bradbury Chandler's report to the SPG, in which he described refusing to allow Whitefield the use of his pulpit in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey: “Mr: Chandler knowing the very exceptionable point of Light in which Mr: Whitefield formerly stood with his Superiours at home, thro’ his undutiful & schismatical Behaviour, & having no Evidence of his Reformation, much less of having made any due Submission to the Governors of the Church, & obtained the Bishop of London's Licence, could not think the Example of the Clergy in Philadelphia, who had given Mr: Whitefield the free use of their Churches, sufficient to justify a Conduct, in his Opinion, so inconsistent with the Rules of Ecclesiastical Polity.” Thomas Bradbury Chandler to the Secretary, July 5, 1764, presented at the General Meeting, December 21, 1764. In Minutes of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1762–1764, ff. 301r-313r, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1124/2.
38 Despite Whitefield's support of slavery and his agreement with the SPG on the benefits of Christianization in creating better slaves, Glasson situates Whitefield on the opposite side of the SPG's entanglement with the status quo. Glasson points to a letter that Whitefield published in 1740 in the Pennsylvania Gazette, which was critical of masters’ cruel behavior toward slaves. Whitefield's letter sparked a debate with Alexander Garden, a leading Anglican clergyman in Charleston, South Carolina, whose argument that slavery was a “benevolent institution” became characteristic of “later defenses of slaveholding.” While Glasson acknowledges that Whitefield was not against slavery, he nonetheless vaguely groups Whitefield with “the forces unleashed by evangelicalism,” which masters feared would lead to social disorder. Glasson, Mastering Christianity, 123, 127. On Whitefield's early critique of slave-owners’ practices see: “A Letter to the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South-Carolina,” The Pennsylvania Gazette, no. 592, April 17, 1740; Gallay, Formation of a Planter Elite, 36–39; Thomas S. Kidd, “Letter to the Inhabitants of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina” (1740), January 18, 2012, Encyclopedia Virginia, http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/_Letter_to_the_Inhabitants_of_Maryland_Virginia_North_and_South_Carolina_1740#start_entry.
39 George Whitefield to Henry Newman, June 20, 1740, AFSt/M 1E4: 76; this letter was apparently a copy. The location of the original manuscript is unclear. A German translation was made (George Whitefield to Henry Newman, June 20, 1740, AFSt/M 5A9: 4), which was apparently forwarded to Francke. For Francke's reference to the letter, see Gotthilf August Francke to Johann Martin Boltzius and Israel Christian Gronau, January 25, 1741, AFSt/M 5A9: 17. For more on cotton production at Bethesda, see Lambert, James Habersham, 48–49.
40 Gallay, Formation of a Planter Elite, 41–54; Dallimore, George Whitefield, 219; Lambert, James Habersham, 1–4, 74–79.
41 Hermann Heinrich Lemke to Gotthilf August Francke, September 10, 1747, AFSt/M 5A11: 73. For Boltzius's account of this unrest, see Johann Martin Boltzius to Gotthilf August Francke, September 7, 1747, AFSt/M 5A11: 72; and Johann Martin Boltzius to Gotthilf August Francke, January 4, 1748, AFSt/M 5A11: 77; for an English summary of the events, see B. Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 65–72. Boltzius's journals from 1749–1750 reflect the strained relationship between himself and Whitefield. See entries from April 23 and August 11, 1749, and September 19, 1750, in Urlsperger, Detailed Reports, 42, 94, 146–147. See also Cashin, Beloved Bethesda, 61–62; Lambert, James Habersham, 78; Julie Anne Sweet, William Stephens: Georgia's Forgotten Founder (Baton Rouge: Louisiana University, 2010), 150–151. Ebenezer's economic success was not entirely due to its inhabitants’ industry. Unlike other communities in colonial Georgia, Ebenezer received immense advantages in support from the Georgia Trustees, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge and the Francke Foundations. For example, the trustees provided immigrants to Ebenezer with supplies, including cattle, construction materials, and food, for three years after their arrival. The trustees further paid for the salary and provisions for a medical doctor. In addition, the SPCK paid the salaries of the ministers, while the Francke Foundations provided a pool of trained ministers and doctors along with more material goods, such as medicines, linens, books, and other donations forwarded from interested benefactors. Historian Renate Wilson estimated the yearly monetary value of this support and these donations at 1,000 pounds sterling. Renate Wilson, Halle and Ebenezer: Pietism, Agriculture and Commerce in Colonial Georgia (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 1988), 45–51. On supplies provided by the trustees during the first years of settlement: Friedrich Michael Ziegenhagen to James Vernon, February 22, 1737, AFSt/M 5A3: 41; on the trustees’ financial support of a medical doctor for Ebenezer: Harman Verelst to Friedrich Michael Ziegenhagen, March 10, 1737, AFSt/M 5A5: 14, and Gotthilf August Francke to Johann Martin Boltzius and Israel Christian Gronau, January 19, 1739, AFSt/M 5A5: 24; on the Francke Foundations’ shipments of linen, books, and medicine: Johann Martin Boltzius and Israel Christian Gronau to Gotthilf August Francke, August 1743, AFSt/M 5A11: 3, Johann Martin Boltzius to Friedrich Michael Ziegenhagen, July 9, 1746, AFSt/M 5A11: 54a, and Gotthilf August Francke to Christian Ernst Thilo, July 17, 1748, AFSt/M 5A11: 84.
42 Lemke to Francke, September 10, 1747, AFSt/M 5A11: 73. Although I was unable to find a record of Meyer's first name, the historian Renate Wilson referred to him as Johann Ludwig Mayer. See Wilson, Renate, Pious Traders in Medicine: A German Pharmaceutical Network in Eighteenth-Century North America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2000), 170–171.Google Scholar
43 Lemke to Francke, September 10, 1747, AFSt/M 5A11: 73; see Philippians 3:19.
44 See entries from February 1 and August 8, 1750 in Urlsperger, Detailed Reports, 18, 112–113.
45 See entries from February 1, July 17, and April 19, 1750 in ibid., 18, 95, 55.
46 See entries from August 8 and August 23, 1750 in ibid., 112–113, 121.
47 Humphreys, David, An Account of the Endeavours used by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to Instruct the Negroe Slaves in New York. Together with two of Bp. Gibson's Letters on that Subject. Being an Extract from Dr. Humphrey's Historical Account of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, from its Foundation to the Year 1728 (London, 1730), 17–20Google Scholar, 26–27, 35, 41–43. I consulted the copy available at the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House, Oxford. See also Glasson, “Baptism”; Goetz, Baptism of Early Virginia.
48 George Whitefield to Gotthilf August Francke, May 19, 1752, AFSt/H C 532: 6. Note that the original letter is in Latin. I am grateful to Vincent Evener for his assistance in translation. Zehrer also offers a partial translation into German. Zehrer, “Die Beziehung zwischen,” 53.
49 Gotthilf August Francke to George Whitefield, July 19, 1752, AFSt/H C 532: 7. As with the previous letter, the original is in Latin, and I again relied on translation assistance from Vincent Evener. Zehrer provides a partial translation into German. Zehrer, “Die Beziehung zwischen,” 53.
50 See entries from April 23, 1749 and September 19, 1750 in Urlsperger, Detailed Reports, 42, 146–147; on Boltzius's racism, see B. Wood, Slavery in Colonial Georgia, 72–73.
51 Goetz, Baptism of Early Virginia, 6–10. While Goetz's book is provocative, it must be pointed out that she is mistaken when she claims that within Christianity there was a “traditional link between baptism and freedom” (6), which was severed in Anglo-Virginia. Throughout Christian history, the connection between baptism and political or civil freedom has been denied and disputed. For another excellent study of Christian mission, slavery, and baptism in the American colonies, see Glasson, “Baptism.”
52 Rabenhorst wrote Francke in 1763, describing how he tried through example and by speaking to his slaves to bring them to Christianity, but he saw “no means and way to save them.” He was pleased with their labor and esteemed their “truth and diligence” above white servants, but “they are and remain heathen, who, in order to please me well, convey the name of God in the mouth but do not desire him from the heart.” Rabenhorst acquired slaves both through marriage and through management of the pastor's plantation in Ebenezer. Christian Rabenhorst to Gotthilf August Francke, February 21, 1763, AFSt/M 5B2: 65. It is unclear, however, if in using “heathen,” Rabenhorst meant to indicate race or rather non-Christian, as was typical in early modern discussions of religion.
53 Johann Martin Boltzius, “Nachrichten aus Amerika für Sr. Hochwürden Herrn D. und Prof. Francken,” December 1756, Francke-Nachlaß der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin-Preußischer Kulturbesitz 32/10: 10. I viewed this item on microfilm at the Archive of the Francke Foundations in Halle. On slaves’ use of Sundays for work and socialization, see Glasson, Mastering Christianity, 157–158.
54 See, for example, entry from July 17, 1750 in Urlsperger, Detailed Reports, 93, 95.
55 The first transport to Ebenezer included approximately 50 immigrants. Wilson, Halle and Ebenezer, 86; Russell Kleckley, ed. and trans., The Letters of Johann Martin Boltzius: Lutheran Pastor in Ebenezer, Georgia, in collaboration with Jürgen Gröschl (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 2009), 35n79. The first transport was supplemented by transports in 1735, 1737, and 1741, bringing the population to 249 adults and children by the end of 1742. This number did not significantly change until the early 1750s, when new transports of immigrants and increasing childhood survival rates finally brought the population to approximately 650 people by 1754. Although small, this number nonetheless represented, according to Wilson, 12 percent of the population of the entire colony of Georgia at this time (Wilson, 99–100). See especially Boltzius's journal entries from January 28; October 12, 21; November 3, 6, 9, 17, 18, 24, 26, 28; December 6, 8, 9, 13, 1750, in Urlsperger, Detailed Reports, 161–207. For the translator's explanation of the Rothe Friesel, see his comments on v-vi, and 226n24.
56 See entry from July 17, 1750, Urlsperger, Detailed Reports, 93.
57 See entries from February 15 and December 23, 1750 in ibid., 27, 212.
58 Gotthilf August Francke to George Whitefield, July 19, 1752, AFSt/H C 532: 7.
