The Episcopalians, however, in New York and Philadelphia, had to suffer much, for they were compelled to listen to the preacher on Sunday who would not recognize them on Monday. The settlement of the Revs. Peter Williams at New York, and William Douglass at Philadelphia, seemed to open a new era to the blacks in those cities, and the eloquence of these two divines gave the members of that sect more liberty throughout the country. In the Southern States, the religious liberty of the blacks was curtailed far more than at the North. The stringent slave-law, which punished the negro for being found outside of his master’s premises after a certain time at night, was construed so as to apply to him in his going to and from the house of God; and the poor victim was often flogged for having been found out late, while he was on his way home from church. These laws applied as well to the free blacks as to the slaves, and frequently the educated colored preacher had his back lacerated with the “cat-o’-nine-tails” within an hour of his leaving the pulpit. In all of the slave states laws were early enacted regulating the religious movements of the blacks, and providing that no slave or free colored person should be allowed to preach. The assembling of blacks for religious worship was prohibited, unless three or more white persons were present. CHAPTER XLII. JOHN BROWN’S RAID ON HARPER’S FERRY. The year 1859 will long be memorable for the bold attempt of John Brown and his companions to burst the bolted door of the Southern house of bondage, and lead out the captives by a more effectual way than they had yet known; an attempt in which, it is true, the little band of heroes dashed themselves to bloody death, but, at the same time, shook the prison walls from summit to foundation, and shot wild alarm into every tyrant heart in all the slave-land. What were the plans and purposes of the noble old man is not precisely known, and perhaps will never be; but whatever they were, there is reason to believe they had been long maturing,--brooded over silently and secretly, with much earnest thought, and under a solemn sense of religious duty. Of the five colored men who were with the hero at the attack on Harper’s Ferry, only two, Shields Green and John A. Copeland, were captured alive. The first of these was a native of South Carolina, having been born in the city of Charleston, in the year 1832. Escaping to the North in 1857, he resided in Rochester, New York, until attracted by the unadorned eloquence and native magnetism of John Brown. Shields Green was of unmixed blood, good countenance, bright eye, and small in figure. One of his companions in the Harper’s Ferry fight, says of Green, “He was the most inexorable of all our party; a very Turco in his hatred against the stealers of men. Wiser and better men no doubt there were, but a braver man never lived than Shields Green.”[53]