CHAPTER I

DENOMINATIONAL EDUCATION OF NORTH CAROLINA FREEDMEN

Awake, awake, put on thy strength, Thy beautiful array;

The day of freedom dawns at length, ‘The Lord's appointed day.

Rebuild thy walls, thy bounds enlarge, And send thy heralds forth;

_Say to the South, “Give up thy charge!"

‘ And, 11Keep not back, 0 Northl"

This post-Civil'War hymn typified the exciting spirit felt by the

Methodist Episcopal Church in Reconstruction days, inspiring a great movement into the South to evangelize and educate the recently freed slaves. These emotions, not limited to the Methodist Episcopal Church, resulted in the establishment of such institutions as Bennett College.’

Reasons for the Southern Work 2: the Methodist Episcopal Church.

The Methodist EpiscOpal Church had done some work in the South even be- fore the Civil War was over; its purposes, according to William Warren Sweet, were to help the freedmen and to carry on the Methodist Church work in areas where Southern MethOdist ministers had fled when the Union Army approached.2 The reasons for Methodist Episc0pal Church ef- forts in the South after the Civil War, however, were much more complex. An analysis and comparison of three sources yields what may be consid- ered as eight basic reasons for the intensive “push" into Southern, and especially Negro, territory, such as Greensboro, North carolina, the

‘ . 1Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church, No. 909, (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1882), p. 337.

2 . . William Warren Sweet, Methodism in American History (New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1933), p. 304.

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