Notes to Chapter 2
The Message Trickles South

1. John Richard Dennett, The South As It Is: 1865–1866, ed. Henry M. Christman (1866; repr., New York: Viking Press, 1965), 267–68.

2. “Frederick Ayer, Teacher and Missionary to the Ojibway Indians, 1829–1850,” Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society 6 (1894): 429–37; William E. Bigglestone, “Oberlin College and the Beginning of the Red Lake Mission,” Minnesota History 45 (Spring 1976): 21–31; American Missionary (November 1867): 257–58.

I am indebted to Linda Bryan of Maplewood, Minnesota, for pointing me to the articles and providing information about Ayer’s physical description and his temperance work among the Ojibwe. She conveyed this information in emails to the author on February 14, 2009, September 29, 2009, and June 20, 2011. Bryan has conducted extensive research on Frederic(k) and Elisabeth Ayer’s missionary work among the Ojibwe for a manuscript titled “Servants of God and Man.” This information is used with her permission.

3. Atlanta conducted two local censuses in 1867 and 1869 and counted 9,288 and 13,184 blacks, respectively, making the 1870 U.S. Census count of 9,929 appear to be a sudden decrease. Assuming the accuracy of these numbers, evidently many freed people quickly became disillusioned with city life. The immigration flooded the labor market, depressing already low wages, and on top of that, migrants had to deal with crowded, unsanitary living conditions that increased incidents of disease, making city living very trying at best. If this is what happened, it was a common trend in postbellum cities. Of course it is also likely that transiency caused all of these numbers to be an undercount. See Howard N. Rabinowitz, Race Relations in the Urban South (1978; repr., Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 18; Rabinowitz, “Continuity and Change: Southern Urban Development, 1860–1900,” in The City in Southern History: The Growth of Urban Civilization in the South, ed. Blaine A. Brownell and David R. Goldfield (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977), 99.

4. Tera W. Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 2.

5. My description of Black Atlanta is drawn from Allison Dorsey, To Build Our Lives Together: Community Formation in Black Atlanta, 1875–1906 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004); Joseph O. Jewell, Race, Social Reform, and the Making of a Middle Class: The American Missionary Association and Black Atlanta, 1870–1900 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007); Jerry J. Thornbery, “The Development of Black Atlanta, 1865–1885” (PhD diss., University of Maryland, 1977); Dorothy Slade, “The Evolution of Negro Areas in the City of Atlanta” (Master’s thesis, Atlanta University, 1946); Dana F. White, “The Black Sides of Atlanta: A Geography of Expansion and Containment, 1970–1870,” Atlanta Historical Journal 26 (Summer/Fall 1982): 208–12; Alton Hornsby Jr., A Short History of Black Atlanta, 1847–1990 (Atlanta: APEX Museum, 2003); James M. Russell, “Atlanta, Gate City of the South, 1847–1885” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1971).

6. Frederick Ayer to Samuel Hunt, January 1, 1866; Harriet N. Phillips to Sam Hunt, January 15, 1866; Mrs. E. T. Ayer to Samuel Hunt, February 3, 1866; R. M. Craighead to Samuel Hunt, April 30, 1866, reel 1, American Missionary Association Archives, Georgia Series, microfilm edition (hereafter, AMA); John Kellogg, “Negro Urban Clusters in the Postbellum South,” Geographical Review 67 (July 1977): 310–17.

7. This is $27.90 in 2009 US dollars. See http://www.measuringworth.com/ppowerus/.

8. Frederick Ayer to E. P. Smith, July 22, 1867, reel 3, AMA.

9. Eugene M. Mitchell, “Queer Place Names in Old Atlanta,” Atlanta History Bulletin 1 (April 1931): 29. For examples of how the white press reported on black neighborhoods see “Shermantown,” Daily Intelligencer, June 11, 1867; “The Battle of Jenningstown,” Atlanta Constitution, July 7, 1869; “A Widow’s Troubles,” Atlanta Constitution, September 25, 1875; “Jenningstown Hari-Kari,” Atlanta Constitution, July 9, 1876.

10. Charlie Bailey to Gov. Joseph M. Brown, March 7, 1912, box 182, Governor’s Incoming Correspondence, Georgia Department of Archives and History (hereafter, GDAH).

11. Blake McKelvey, “Penal Slavery and Southern Reconstruction,” Journal of Negro History 20 (April 1935): 153–55; Martha A. Myers, Race, Labor & Punishment in the New South (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998), 7–21.

12. A. Elizabeth Taylor, “The Origin and Development of the Convict Lease System in Georgia,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 26 (March 1942): 113–18; Report of the Principal Keeper of the Penitentiary, 1868, as quoted in Matthew J. Mancini, “Race, Economics, and the Abandonment of Convict Leasing,” Journal of Negro History 63 (October 1978): 341; Ray Stannard Baker, Following the Color Line: American Negro Citizenship in the Progressive Era (1908; repr., New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 50; W. E. B. DuBois, ed., Some Notes on Negro Crime, Atlanta University Publication, no. 9 (1904; repr., New York: Octagon, 1968), 2–9; Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (London: Verso, 1996), 58.

13. James C. Bonner, “The Georgia Penitentiary at Milledgeville, 1817–1874,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 55 (1971): 318; Matthew J. Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866–1928 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 81–98; A. J. McKelway, “The Convict Lease System of Georgia,” Outlook 90 (September 12, 1908): 67; Lichtenstein, xiv–xv, 3–5, 60.

14. Russell, 303–5; DuBois, Some Notes, 25; Eugene J. Watts, “The Police in Atlanta, 1890–1905,” Journal of Southern History 39 (May 1973): 171–72; Barbara Collier Thomas, “Race Relations in Atlanta, from 1877 through 1890, as Seen in an Analysis of the Atlanta City Council Proceedings and Other Related Works” (Master’s thesis, Atlanta University, 1966), 50–56; Howard N. Rabinowitz, “The Conflict between Blacks and the Police in the Urban South, 1865–1900,” in Race, Ethnicity, and Urbanization: Selected Essays, ed. Howard N. Rabinowitz (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 167–80.

For more on the treatment of blacks in Atlanta’s police court see Howard Steven Goodson, “‘South of the North, North of the South’: Public Entertainment in Atlanta, 1880–1930 (PhD diss., Emory University, 1995), 282–88.

15. Minutes of the Atlanta City Council, 7:511, 534, 549, 629, Atlanta History Center; William J. Mathias and Stuart Anderson, Horse to Helicopter: First Century of the Atlanta Police Department (Decatur, GA: National Graphics, Inc., 1973), 181; Rabinowitz, “The Conflict between Blacks and the Police,” 172–79; Russell, 310–11; “Scarborough’s Trouble,” Atlanta Constitution, August 1, 1883.

16. Although the evidence in the next three paragraphs of the negative effects of drunken white behavior on blacks is from the 1880s and later, there is no reason to believe that these examples were not also typical of the years 1865–1876.

17. “Scarborough’s Trouble,” Atlanta Constitution, August 1, 1883; “A Drunken Policeman,” The Vindicator, August 4, 1883 in box 15, John Emory Bryant Papers, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University Library.

18. The records in 1873 do not indicate who brought the charges or the situation out of which the charges of drunkenness arose.

19. Weekly Defiance, October 8, 22, 29, 1881, October 24, 1882, February 29, 1883, October 3, 1885; Russell, 307–10; Watts, “The Police in Atlanta,” 175.

Police mistreatment of blacks was sometimes decried in the white press. See “To Our Atlanta Readers,” Macon Telegraph, November 5, 1887.

20. Atlanta Constitution, May 12, 1883; Charlie Bailey to Gov. Joseph M. Brown, March 7, 1912, box 182, Governor’s Incoming Correspondence, GDAH; Atlanta Constitution, April 15, 17, 1892; Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974), 645–46. Atlanta also maintained a chain gang from early in the postwar period for those who could not pay the Recorder fines, and the gang remained either all black or mostly black. See Atlanta Daily Herald, January 10, 1873.

21. Atlanta Constitution, September 4, 1885.

22. A “hot toddy” is a hot drink, usually drunk before going to bed. It is made with an alcoholic beverage like whiskey, plus hot water, spices, maybe juice, and a sweetener. It does not have to include alcohol, as mulled cider is also considered a “hot toddy.” “Dram drinking” refers to the practice of drinking a shot of a whiskey (or other hard liquor) several times during the day.

23. My discussion about African and slave alcohol use is drawn from Christmon, 326–27; Denise Herd, “Ambiguity in Black Drinking Norms: An Ethnohistorical Interpretation,” in The American Experience with Alcohol: Contrasting Cultural Perspectives, ed. Linda A. Bennett and Genevieve M. Ames (New York: Plenum Press, 1985), 152–53; William B. Smith, “The Persimmon Tree and the Beer Dance,” in The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals, ed. Bruce Jackson (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), 3–9; Robin Room, “Alcohol, the Individual and Society: What History Teaches Us,” Addiction 92 (1997 Supplement): s8; Emmanuel Akyeampong, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c. 1800 to Recent Times (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1996), 1–8; Charles Ambler, “Alcohol and Disorder in Precolonial Africa,” Working Paper in African Studies, no. 126, African Studies Center, Boston University, 11–13, 1987.

24. Genovese, 577–78, 643–44; Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (1901; repr., New York: Lancer Books, Inc., 1968), 136–38; Shuana Bigham and Robert E. May, “The Time O’ All Times? Masters, Slaves, and Christmas in the Old South,” Journal of the Early Republic 18 (Summer 1998): 271; David W. Blight, ed. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave: With Related Documents (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003), 89–91, 106; Frederick Douglass, “Temperance and Anti-Slavery: An Address Delivered in Paisley, Scotland, on 30 March 1846,” in The Frederick Douglass Papers, series one, vol. 1., ed. John W. Blassingame (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1979), 207; Charles Stearns, The Black Man of the South and the Rebels (1872; repr., New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 334; William Wells Brown, Narrative of William Wells Brown, a Fugitive Slave (Boston: The Anti-Slavery Office, 1847), 21.

For alternative perspectives on slaves’ drinking see Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South (New York: Knopf, 1956), 370–71; Stephanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2004), 66, 90–92, 166; Stanley K. Schultz, “Temperance Reform in the Antebellum South: Social Control and Urban Order,” South Atlantic Quarterly 83 (Summer 1984): 323–39.

Others argue that laws prohibiting slaves from buying alcohol were poorly enforced. If so, Frederick Douglass’s assertion that masters viewed drunken slaves as relatively benign might explain the lax enforcement. Antebellum urban slave drinking patterns would have had little effect on practices in post-emancipation Black Atlanta since the vast majority of its residents were rural slaves before migrating to Atlanta after the war. See William Monroe Geer, “The Temperance Movement in Georgia in the Middle Period” (Master’s thesis, Emory University, 1937), 75–77; Richard C. Wade, Slavery in the Cities: The South, 1820–1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 149–51.

25. Sidney Andrews, The South Since the War (1866; repr., New York: Arno Press, 1969), 376–77; Robert Somers, The Southern States Since the War, 1870–71 (London: Macmillan & Co., 1871), 245; George Campbell, White & Black: The Outcome of a Visit to the United States (1879; repr., New York: Negro Universities Press, 1969), 46; David Macrae, The Americans at Home: Pen-and-ink Sketches of American Men, Manners, and Institutions (Glasgow: Gowans & Gray, 1885), 418–19; Henry M. Field, Blood is Thicker than Water: A Few Days Among Our Southern Brethren (New York: George Munro, Publisher, 1886), 27–28; “Prospects of the Negro,” American Missionary (March 1870): 59; E. A. Ware to E. P. Smith, February 28, 1867, reel 2, AMA.

AMA missionaries who reported excessive drinking were mostly in rural areas. See American Missionary (February 1866): 27, (February 1869): 25, (March 1870): 64–66, and (April 1870): 75.

26. National Republican as quoted in Charles Nordhoff, The Cotton States in the Spring and Summer of 1875 (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1876), 105.

The following travelers through the postbellum South omitted any reference to blacks and liquor: John Trowbridge, Henry Latham, John Kennaway, Linda Slaughter, W. Robbins Falkiner, Lady Duffus Hardy, Henry McElwin, Timothy Harley, and George Augustus Sala.

27. John W. Alvord, Letters from the South, Relating to the Condition of the Freedmen, Addressed to Major General O. O. Howard (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1870), 18–27; Alvord, Fourth Semi-Annual Report, July 1, 1867, in Semi-Annual Report on Schools for Freedom (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1868), 71–72.

28. Until 1871 the mayor of Atlanta personally dispensed with misdemeanors such as public drunkenness and fighting. In 1871 the state established a Recorder’s Court, or police court, for Atlanta that assumed the functions of the Mayor’s Court. Because blacks were mostly arrested for petty crimes, this was an important element of the system used to control blacks’ behavior and was the center of a lot of abuse. Watts, “The Police in Atlanta,” 170–72.

My analysis in the following paragraphs is based on extensive reading in the following Atlanta newspapers: Daily Intelligencer, Daily New Era, Atlanta Constitution, Weekly Sun, Atlanta Daily Herald, Atlanta Daily News, Daily Evening Commonwealth, and Atlanta Journal.

29. Some newspapers gave the names of people brought before the court, while others just mentioned case numbers or mentioned what charges were brought against people that day, and the total number of each type of charge.

30. Weekly Sun, June 17, 1871; Daily New Era, July 6, 1870; Atlanta Daily Herald, July 6, 1873; Harriet Beecher Stowe, “The Education of Freedmen,” North American Review 128 (June 1879): 613.

31. I searched the newspapers listed in note 28 for the dates immediately following Emancipation Day/New Year’s Day, Independence Day, and Christmas. On several occasions there were either no extant papers or no reports about the holiday.

32. African American communities celebrated emancipation on various dates. Atlantans celebrated on January 1, the date the Emancipation Proclamation took effect, while other communities were known to celebrate it on the date it was issued (September 22), or on the date the Civil War ended (April 9).

33. Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 45–46, 54; “Negro Demonstration on the Glorious Fourth,” Atlanta Constitution, July 5, 1868; Daily New Era, July 6, 1871; “African Odd Fellows,” Daily Sun, January 3, 1872; Atlanta Constitution, July 5, 1885. Also, on July 4, 1882, the papers reported that “by noon the stationhouse was full of drunks and crooks.” While the report does not indicate race, it is reasonable to assume most were whites. See “Independence Day,” Atlanta Constitution, July 5, 1882.

34. Atlanta Constitution, December 28, 1875; December 27, 1876; December 27, 1877; December 27, 1878.

35. Daily Intelligencer, July 6, 1866.

36. Daily Intelligencer, July 6, 1867; “Negro Demonstration on the Glorious Fourth,” Atlanta Constitution, July 5, 1868; Daily New Era, July 6, 1871.

37. Daily Intelligencer, July 6, 1866; “Closing of Bar-Rooms,” Daily Intelligencer, July 3, 1867.

38. Atlanta Constitution, September 4, 1885; M. L. Wells, “Southern Awakenings,” Union Signal, June 4, 1885. According to the Tenth U.S. Census (1880), black people died from alcoholism at less than half the rate of native-born whites or people of Irish or German parentage. John S. Billins, Department of the Interior, Tenth Census, Report on the Mortality and Vital Statistics of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1885), xxxviii.

39. “The Freed People and Temperance,” National Temperance Advocate 8 (January 1873): 10; Twenty-Third Annual Report of the AMA (1869), 87; Twenty-Sixth Annual Report of the AMA (1872), 116.

40. H. Shelton Smith, In His Image, But . . . Racism in Southern Religion, 1780–1910 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972), 216–17; James McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy: From Reconstruction to the NAACP (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975), 201.

41. George Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817–1914 (1971; repr., Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), 101–2; “The Necessity of Great Enlargement in the Work among the Freedmen,” American Missionary 11 (February 1867): 34.

42. “Colored Pupils Compared with White,” Home Mission Echo 7 (June 1891): 5; H. L. Morehouse, “The Negro Problem,” Home Mission Echo 7 (February 1891): 9; “Culture is Colorless,” Home Mission Monthly 15 (November 1894): 436; George A. Towns, “The Sources of the Tradition of Atlanta University,” Phylon 3 (Second Quarter 1942); Molly Oshatz, Slavery and Sin: The Fight against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

43. The Southern Advance Association of Atlanta, Georgia, box 16, John Emory Bryant Papers, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Thirteenth Annual Report of the Woman’s American Baptist Home Missions Society (1891), 4; Minutes of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the National Council of Congregational Churches, 1883 (Boston: Congregational Publishing Society, 1883), 128.

I do not mean to suggest that everyone in the AMA shared Strieby’s thinking, only that it was accepted and embraced by the organization’s leadership. Michael Strieby’s speeches and writings provide an excellent example of the ability of AMA leadership to discern institutional racism and systemic or structural injustices. See Strieby’s entire speech, titled “History of Congregationalism in the Southern States,” given at the Fifth Annual National Council Meeting cited above, and his report, “The Religious Aspects of the Work of the American Missionary Association,” included in the Minutes of the National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States at their Third Session, 1877 (Boston: Congregational Publishing Society, 1877), 105–13, especially page 107.

44. Tate and Daniels remained to assist Ayer after he arrived. See Dorsey, 193n5.

45. Frederick Ayer to Samuel Hunt, January 1, 1866; Rose Kinney to Samuel Hunt, January 27, 1866; R. M Craighead to Samuel Hunt, February 1, 1866; Mrs. E. T. Ayer to Sam Hunt, February 3, 1866; Frederick Ayer to George Whipple, February 15, 1866, reel 1, AMA; American Missionary 10 (March 1866): 63; American Missionary 10 (May 1866): 98. A classic example of romantic racialist and culturalist thought is the AMA report The Nation Still in Danger; or Ten Years after the War (New York: American Missionary Association, 1875).

46. “Teachers: Their Qualifications and Support,” American Missionary 10 (July 1866): 151–52; Sandra E. Small, “The Yankee Schoolmarm in Freedmen’s Schools: An Analysis of Attitudes,” Journal of Southern History 45 (August 1979): 394.

47. Ruth Miller Elson, Guardians of Tradition: American Schoolbooks of the Nineteenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964), 8–9; Robert C. Morris, Reading, ’Riting, and Reconstruction: The Education of the Freedmen in the South, 1861–1870 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 185–91, 198–99. Non-religious freedmen’s organizations did not like ATrS literature.

48. Paul A. Cimbala, Under the Guardianship of the Nation: The Freedmen’s Bureau and the Reconstruction of Georgia, 1865–1870 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997), 124; G. S. Eberhart to Samuel Hunt, December 2, 1865, Frederick Ayer to George Whipple, February 15, 1866, G. S. Eberhart to Samuel Hunt, February 8, 1866, AMA; Report of G. S. Eberhart, State Superintendent of Schools for the State of Georgia, October 1, 1865–October 1, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, microfilm edition; “Storrs School, Atlanta, GA,” American Missionary 11 (May 1867): 98; Ebem Shute to Frederick Ayer, April 28, 1866, folder 6, box 8, Atlanta University Presidential Records, 1856–1984, Archives and Special Collections, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center (hereafter, AUC).

49. “The Cure of the Drunkard,” The Freedman 3 (January 1866): 4.

50. See The Freedman, January 1866, May 1866, July 1866, March 1867, August 1867, March 1868, June 1868, October 1868, March 1869 and Freedman’s Journal, April 1866, June 1866, July 1866, August 1866, September 1866, October 1866.

51. Each “class” had several lessons. Students were not necessarily taught either one class per day or one lesson per day.

52. American Tract Society, The Freedman’s Spelling-Book; The Freedman’s Second Reader; The Freedman’s Third Reader (1865–1866; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1980), 13, 44, 46, 48, 62, 79 (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1980).

53. American Tract Society, The Freedman’s Spelling-Book ; The Freedman’s Second Reader; the Freedman’s Third Reader, 52–55, 57–58; Tenth Annual Report of the New England Branch of the American Tract Society (1869), 16.

54. Report of G. S. Eberhart, State Superintendent of Schools for the State of Georgia, October 1, 1865–October 1, 1866, Records of the Assistant Commissioner for the State of Georgia, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, 1865–1869, microfilm edition; “The American Tract Society’s Work among the Freedmen,” Freedman’s Journal 2 (November 1866): 42; “Our Papers in Georgia,” The Freedman’s Journal 2 (August 1866): 30–31; Forty-Third Annual Report of the American Tract Society—New York (1868), 31, 36; Fifty-Fourth Annual Report of the American Tract Society for the Year Ending April 30, 1868—Boston, 83–84.

55. “Advice to Freedmen” and “A Warning to Freedmen against Intoxicating Drinks,” box 1, group 1484, Isaac W. Brinckerhoff Papers, American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, Georgia; Rev. G. S. F. Savage to Frederick Ayer, August 7, 1866, folder 5, box 8, Atlanta University Presidential Records, 1856–1984, AUC.

56. Herbert Gutman, “Schools for Freedom: The Post-Emancipation Origins of Afro-American Education,” in Power and Culture: Essays on the American Working Class, ed. Ira Berlin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 260–97; Heather Andrea Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 72–79.

57. Stories of Lincoln’s abstinence circulated in temperance/prohibition circles into the twentieth century. See Richard F. Hamm, “The Prohibitionists’ Lincoln,” Illinois Historical Journal 86 (Summer 1993): 93–118.

58. “President Lincoln’s Treat,” The Freedman 3 (May 1866): 20; “President Lincoln a Temperate Man,” Freedman’s Journal 2 (August 1866): 31; June 30, 1866, Minute Book—Publication Committee of the National Temperance Society and Publication House, June 30, 1866–December 26, 1882, item 3, box 3, series 2, Record Group 54, National Temperance Society and Publication House Records, Presbyterian Historical Society (hereafter, NTS-PHS); Twenty-First Annual Report of the AMA, 1867 (New York: American Missionary Association, 1867), 17; “Temperance,” American Missionary 11 (July 1867): 155–56.

59. E. A. Ware to E. P. Smith, February 28, 1867, AMA.

60. “Temperance,” American Missionary 11 (July 1867): 155–56; John W. Alvord to M. E. Strieby, July 31, 1867, District of Columbia series, AMA Archives, Amistad Research Center; Alvord, Fourth Semi-Annual Report, July 1, 1867, in Semi-Annual Report on Schools for Freedom, Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1868), 71–72; “Intemperance Among the Freedmen,” The American Freedman 2 (June 1867): 226; A. E. Newton, Manual of the Vanguard of Freedom (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1867); Fourth Annual Report of the National Temperance Society and Publication Society (1869), 18.

61. C. W. Francis to E. P. Smith, October 7, 1867, reel 3, AMA; American Missionary (May 1868): 108, (November 1868): 244, (September 1881): 268.

62. Records of the First Congregational Church of Atlanta, Georgia, 1867–1882, box 1, folder 12, Records of the First Congregational Church, U.C.C., Atlanta, Georgia Collection, Atlanta University Center, Archives and Special Collections, Robert W. Woodruff Library, AUC. The excommunication steps as I determined them from First Congregational’s records were as follows: Those brought up on charges underwent a process modeled on the teachings of Jesus and the Apostle Paul in Matthew 18:15–18 and I Corinthian 5:1–6:2, and apparently without any significant gender discrimination. After charges were brought to the pastor or deacons, a committee was appointed to meet with the person to verify the truthfulness of the charges, and if they were correct, to admonish them and to seek a confession. Sometimes individuals were asked to come to a church meeting to answer charges. If the person refused to confess, or even talk to the church or the committee, they would be excommunicated by a formal statement that would be read during the next Sunday morning service so all would understand why the action was taken. The statements invariably claimed that their evidence was solid because they had several witnesses to the charges and ended by saying they had prayed about their decision, regretted having to do it, and were praying for the person to be restored at some point. Occasionally they went on at length about their opposition to the particular sin and then added that this action should be a warning to those in the church. In each case, however, there were multiple charges, the first being that the person had ignored attendance at God’s house for an extended period of time. The process seemed to apply to people who had already been absenting themselves for an extended period of time, and about whom news had had plenty of time to spread. The formal statements also lamented the damage the person had done to the cause of Christ, and/or their church.

63. Dougherty went on to become Atlanta’s first black lawyer.

64. Records of the First Congregational Church of Atlanta, Georgia, 1867–1882, AUC.

65. Records of the First Congregational Church of Atlanta, Georgia, 1867–1882, AUC. No reasons are given for excommunication after March 1877.

66. Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Central South Congregational Conference, 1873–1877; Minutes of the Annual Meeting of the Georgia Congregational Conference, 1878–1888. One study of black Baptists showed that they excommunicated only about 60 percent of those charged, compared to First Congregational’s 95 percent. See Gregory Wills, Democratic Religion: Freedom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785–1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), chapter 5.

67. Daniel Alexander Payne, The African M. E. Church in its Relations to the Freedmen (Xenia, OH: Torchlight Co., 1868), 4–7; Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years (Nashville: AME Sunday School Union, 1888), 162; Walker, 21–24.

68. Thornbery, 138–43. Gaines’s education consisted of studying theology privately under various white clergymen.

69. Wesley J. Gaines, African Methodism in the South, or Twenty-Five Years of Freedom (Atlanta: Franklin Publishing House, 1890), 34; Minutes of the 5th Session of the Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church (1871), 13–14, Benjamin Arnett Papers, Stokes Library, Archives, Wilberforce University (hereafter, BAP); Minutes of the 6th Session of the Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church (1872), 51–52, 70–71, BAP.

70. Minutes of the 1st Session of the North Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church (1874), 19, 25, BAP; Minutes of the 2nd Session of the North Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church (January 1875), 11, BAP; Minutes of the 3rd Session of the North Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church (December 1875), 12, BAP; Minutes of the 4th Session of North Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church (1876), 26, BAP.

71. Minutes of the 5th Session of the Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church (1871), Church Table, BAP; Minutes of the 6th Session of the Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church (1872), Church Table, BAP.

72. Minutes of the 18th Annual Session of the North Georgia Annual Conference of the AME Church (1890), Church Table, BAP.

73. “Extract from Report of 1867,” reel 3, AMA; Mrs. F. Ayer to Samuel Hunt, September 1, 1866, reel 2, AMA.

74. Fourth Annual Report of the National Temperance Society and Publication House (1869), 18.

75. Christian Recorder, February 2, 1867.