What was the religious condition and teaching of the negroes before the Civil War? In 1816 in Philadelphia the African-Methodist Episcopal Church separated from the whites; and they have formed the strongest negro organization in the country. A large number of the negro Methodists remained, however, with the whites; and for some of these, churches were built, and a white preacher regularly set aside by the white Conference to minister to their black people. Others came to the same church with the whites, occupying the gallery or pews allotted to them in the rear of the Church. The colored Baptists and Presbyterians worshipped in the same way with the whites, and were ministered to by white preachers. In the Church we had no colored ministers; but the negroes worshipped with us in separate parts of the same Church building, and the white clergyman felt responsible for the black portion of his flock. In many Churches--I have one now particularly in mind--the white people sat in the front pews in the morning and the negroes in the back. In the afternoon, the same clergyman, in the same Church, preached to the negroes, sitting in front, and the white people, some of whom generally came, sitting behind. At the Holy Communion and at Confirmation whites and blacks came together, the blacks generally last. In South Carolina, when the Civil War began, there were very nearly as many black communicants in the Church as white. On every plantation and in nearly every Christian home throughout the South, without regard to religious affiliations, the negroes were taught in Sunday-schools by the mistress and her older daughters. Many of the large planters employed a regular chaplain for their negroes. I knew intimately the Rev. George Patterson, who began his ministry in East Carolina as chaplain to the negroes belonging to Mr. Josiah Collins.