In the very heart of the South, however, the Presbyterians did not fail to aid the instruction of Negroes wherever public opinion permitted it, although they had to confine themselves largely to verbal instruction. In the mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky, where the Scotch-Irish element dominated, there was no diminution of ardor in the religious instruction of the Negroes. Expressions of interest came also from the Presbyterian synods of Georgia and Alabama, while those in the mountains openly advocated literary instruction as a preparation for thorough indoctrination. In the States of Maryland, Tennessee, and Kentucky, they were not handicapped by laws prohibiting the education of the Negroes. They, therefore, spoke out more boldly for the establishment of schools, and especially Sabbath schools, which paid as much attention to the teaching of reading as it did to the actual instruction in the Bible. Among the Presbyterians in the South the most efficient worker was the Rev. C. C. Jones, who toiled among the Negroes in Georgia. Taking the situation as it was rather than complaining because it was not different, Jones addressed himself to the task of trying to convince the slave owners as to the advisability of religious instruction. He believed that if the circumstances of the Negroes were changed, they would equal if not excel the rest of the human family in religion, intellect, purity of morals and ardor of piety. He feared that white men would cherish a contempt for the Negroes which would cause them to sink lower in the scale of morality and religion. He, therefore, advocated the attendance of both races upon the same services that they might learn by contact from their masters. The independent church organization for which the Negroes contended, he believed, would rather give them an opportunity to deteriorate. By a logical array of facts, moreover, he tried to prove that Negroes who had been instructed in the doctrines of Christianity had less tendency toward servile insurrection than those who had been left in heathenism. Even the Southampton insurrection started by Nat Turner, he believed, was due to the fact that, being unable to understand the real scheme of things, he had misguided the slaves by his false prophecy. Those Negroes who had been well instructed in the principles of Christianity had never been found guilty of any such crimes.