The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States by Charles Colcock

About This Item:The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States by Charles Colcock Jones Sr. was published in 1843. The book includes four parts, the first giving a history of the African slave trade. Colcock, himself a minister and plantation owner, called on slave owners and ministers to provide religious instruction to slaves.Charles Colcock Jones Sr. (1804-1863) was a Presbyterian clergyman, educator, missionary, and planter of Liberty County, Georgia.The son of a merchant and planter with deep roots in coastal Georgia, Charles Colcock Jones, Sr. was born on December 20, 1804, at Liberty Hall, his father's plantation in Liberty County.While studying to be a minister in the North, Jones agonized over the morality of owning slaves, but he returned to Liberty County to become a planter, a fervent missionary to the slaves, sometimes called the Apostle to Slaves, and a somewhat reluctant defender of the institution of slavery.Besides many tracts and papers, Jones published several books including The Religious Instruction of the Negroes in the United States (1842), an appeal to slave owners and ministers to provide religious instruction to slaves. His brother-in-law wrote that Jones did more than any other man in arousing the whole church of this country to a new interest in the spiritual welfare of the Africans in our midst.