Trials and Triumphs - Huntington University

SPIRITUAL LIFE IN THE COLONIES 39
provide an incentive to Christian living and service.
"After 1760 the religious life in the Colonies declined sharply,"
according to Behney and Eller in The History of the Evangelical
United Brethren Church. They continued, "By the time of the Revolutionary
War only about five percent (one in twenty) of the colonial
population openly professed religious faith or admitted church relationship."
9
Social conditions of the eighteenth century were still primitive,
oppressive, uncivil, and all aspects of life were affected.
Education of children was restricted to the privileged few. Children
of the wealthy, clergy, and selected individuals were chosen for this
honor. Most were limited to the barest of educational skills and
learning. Children were put to work in shops, on farms, and in stores at
an early age. Their only freedom came at night and during Sabbath
days when they engaged in all types of destructive and exciting pleasures.
Working conditions were oppressive and miserable. Laborers
worked from sunup to sundown. They existed little better than animals
in filthy, dismal, and oppressive conditions.
Slavery was still the curse of civilized, Christian nations. Many
justifications were offered for this racial injustice. It was excused by
some as a method of introducing the black Africans to Christianity.
Often they were described as most happy and privileged. One slaveholder
assured a friend that,". . . the blacks were the happiest people
in the world" and appealing to his wife, said: "Now, my dear, you saw
Mr. T.'s slaves. Do tell Mr. Buxton how happy they looked."
"Well, yes," his wife replied, "they were very happy, I'm sure, only I
used to think it so odd to see the black cooks chained to the fireplace." 10
There is extensive documentation of the barbarities of the slave
ships. The Annual Register in 1762 carried this report:
On Friday the men slaves being very sullen and unruly, having had no sustenance
of any kind for forty-eight hours except a dram, we put one-half of the
strongest of them in irons. On Saturday and Sunday all hands, night and day
could scarce keep the ship clear, and were constantly under arms. On Monday
morning many of the slaves had got out of irons and were attempting to break
up the gratings; and the seamen not daring to go down the hold to clear our
pumps, were obliged, for the preservation of our lives, to kill fifty of the
ringleaders. It is impossible to describe the misery the poor slaves underwent,
having had no fresh water for five days. Their dismal cries and shrieks, and most
frightful looks, added a great deal to our misfortune; four of them were found
dead, and one drowned herself in the hold. 11
In 1788 a slave ship crammed 34 female slaves into sleeping quarters
"measuring only 9 feet 4 inches in length, 4 feet 8 inches main breadth,