Meeting the argument of those who feared the insubordination of Negroes, Jones thought that the gospel would do more for the obedience of slaves and the peace of the community than weapons of war. He asserted that the very effort of the masters to instruct their slaves created a strong bond of union between them and their masters.[1] History, he believed, showed that the direct way of exposing the slaves to acts of insubordination was to leave them in ignorance and superstition to the care of their own religion.[2] To disprove the falsity of the charge that literary instruction given in Neau's school in New York was the cause of a rising of slaves in 1709, he produced evidence that it was due to their opposition to becoming Christians. The rebellions in South Carolina from 1730 to 1739, he maintained, were fomented by the Spaniards in St. Augustine. The upheaval in New York in 1741 was not due to any plot resulting from the instruction of Negroes in religion, but rather to a delusion on the part of the whites. The rebellions in Camden in 1816 and in Charleston in 1822 were not exceptions to the rule. He conceded that the Southampton Insurrection in Virginia in 1831 originated under the color of religion. It was pointed out, however, that this very act itself was a proof that Negroes left to work out their own salvation, had fallen victims to "ignorant and misguided teachers" like Nat Turner. Such undesirable leaders, thought he, would never have had the opportunity to do mischief, if the masters had taken it upon themselves to instruct their slaves.[3] He asserted that no large number of slaves well instructed in the Christian religion and taken into the churches directed by white men had ever been found guilty of taking part in servile insurrections.[4] [Footnote 1: _Ibid_., pp. 212, 274.] [Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 215.] [Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, etc., p. 212.] [Footnote 4: Plumer, _Thoughts_, etc., p. 4.]