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Pre-Civil War race relations are a major focus in this book and it is the first of mine to do so. Here is a short excerpt from the chapter on Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site), the first African-American church that grew out of Fredericksburg Baptist Church:

…As was often the case during this period, the Caucasian majority often took a paternalistic approach to their African-American neighbors that were less rooted in recognition of equality, and more on the moral obligation to assist those souls held in bondage. Additionally, whites often perceived blacks, especially slaves, to be both ignorant and living in a state of irreligion. In their minds, even slave owners were answering the call to “go forth and make disciples of all nations,” which included those who they ironically deprived the ability to read and write. In essence, the denial of an education in any form, prevented blacks from getting out from under the intellectual shadow of the white population.

Racism obviously posed a conflict of conscience for many practicing Christians, as the very same people offering spiritual nurturing to their “coloured brethren” were often slave owners themselves. This represented a paradoxical relationship that existed between devout believers and their servants. The majority of whites appeared to have been benevolent at best about racial equality. Many citizens, even those who opposed the institution of slavery, still did not consider the black population to be equal. To some, the path to freedom for blacks meant colonization. To others, slavery had been ordained by their personal interpretations of biblical scripture.

However, white supremacy was not embraced by all of Fredericksburg’s citizens. A local Presbyterian woman named Mary B.M. Blackford recorded the hypocrisy that she witnessed during worship as well as one minister’s efforts to seek colonization for freed blacks. She wrote:

[Slave traders] have been using the town jail for their purpose, though it is expressly contrary to law, there being no one possessed of moral courage enough to go forward to have this abuse corrected. The town jail faces the Presbyterian Church and I have sat there during the preaching and looked out at the innocent prisoners peeping through the iron bars, and have thought that they were kept there for the crime of designing to be free and to return to those God commanded then to protect and care for. The words would occur to me as I looked around on the worshippers in the Church, ‘Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke.’

At the time when my heart was weighed down by watching each day the progress made in building the brick wall that was around the negro jail spoken of above where guiltless prisoners were to be immured, and I looked around in vain for a remedy. (My dear husband did all he could do to stop it.) I was called to the door to see a plain looking country gentleman who wished to see Mr. Blackford on business. I told him Mr. B. would soon be at home and asked him to be seated. On entering into conversation with him, I discovered he had been directed by the good and holy man Father Kobler (a Methodist Preacher) to get advice from my husband as to the steps necessary to be taken to procure a passage to Liberia for a young woman, the only Slave he possessed. He told that he was about to remove with his family to Illinois, and he wished to give her her freedom and every advantage. He could have gotten, he told me, four hundred dollars for her in the neighborhood.

This act of disinterestedness cheered me; it was the green spot in the moral desert I had been wandering through. I thank God for showing me just then that there were some who felt for the oppressed; it cheered and refreshed my spirits, and I can better bear to witness the progress of the jail, though I trust I shall never be hardened to such sights. The young woman who was liberated by the gentleman…was sent to town to the care of the Female Colonization Society, and was sent to Liberia by them under the protection of some missionaries who were going to that place. Along with her we sent another freed girl manumitted by Mr. Morton… 

Those who endured the pains of the institution of slavery firsthand best presented the deplorable treatment of African-Americans held for forced labor. In 1850, a convention of fugitive slaves was held in New York City. One of the country’s most outspoken publications on the subject was the Anti-Slavery Bugle. On September 28th, the Bugle printed a piece to coincide with the convention entitled Letters to the American Slaves:

“So galling was our bondage, that to escape from it, we suffered the loss of all things, and braved every peril, and endured every hardship. Some of us left parents, some wives, some children. Some of us were wounded with guns and dogs, as we fled. Some of us secreted ourselves in the suffocating holds of ships. Nothing was so dreadful to us as slavery…”

Frustrated by the notion of being designated as secondary citizens worshipping at a “branch,” the black members of Fredericksburg Baptist petitioned for more independence. In March, the following declaration resolved the matter:

“Whereas the colored portion of our church have applied to us for the privilege of being constituted into a separate church, and having requested us to appoint a committee to draft a constitution for that purpose, therefore, resolved that we will grant this request on the condition that the coloured brethren pledge themselves by a resolution of their body to make good to us the balance of the subscription made by them towards paying for our new house of worship, say the balance of five hundred dollars.”

Upon paying the additional sum of $500, the deed to the church was transferred. The original membership rolls on file at the Shiloh Baptist Church (Old Site) outline the legacy of the African-American congregation. In the first column are listed the names of each individual who was received into membership in November and December of 1853. The second column records the date in which each member was baptized into the faith. The third column shows the month and year when a member was received by letter as a transfer from another church. The fourth column (mostly empty) presents the month and year that a member was reinstated into the church after being previously removed from membership. The fifth column is the most striking, as it lists the date of “May 4, 1856” over and over as the day in which all of the church’s black members were dismissed. This date is significant, as it represents the official split between the races. As the white side of the church “took” the identity of the previously integrated house of worship, the black members were “dismissed” from the official Baptist records. This in turn enabled the newly formed African-American Baptist congregation to be received into the denomination as a separate body from that of their predecessors. Both churches were then required to draft new constitutions.

Despite reaching an agreement over the split, another debate developed regarding the legal requirement of a white pastor shepherding the African-American church. This concern was addressed in multiple meetings that were recorded. Minutes taken by the white congregation on February of 1856 stated that:

“Whereas we desire the coloured portion of our church to enjoy the privilege of regular public worship in the house we formerly occupied, therefore, resolved, that the esteemed Brother Elder George Rowe, who has for several months been laboring among them with much acceptance, be requested to continue these labors, and to administer the ordinances of the gospel among them, and also, in conjunction with our pastor, to attend to the order and discipline of the church so long as it may be mutually agreeable to the parties concerned, the coloured brethren being expected to make him such compensation for his services as he and they may agree upon.”

George Rowe was an elder in the church and owned seven slaves himself. He had established a familiar rapport with the “coloured congregation” and was well versed in the study and preaching of Biblical scripture. By 1858, Shiloh Baptist Church was blossoming and its numbers continued to increase. Rowe remained in the position of congregational “overseer” until President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation took effect. At that time a longtime and active member of the church named George Dixon was appointed as the first African-American pastor.

Unfortunately a short time later, the entire town was devastated by the battle that raged upon the arrival of the Federal Army. This prompted over 300 members, Dixon included, to flee north to Washington where they established a daughter church in a large horse stable christened “ShilohWashington DC.” This church is still in operation today. Those who remained in town met sporadically in homes and an old warehouse on Fifteenth Street. Unfortunately, the church building was counted among the structural casualties of the Battle of Fredericksburg… (Taken from 'Historical Churches of Fredericksburg: Houses of the Holy' by Michael Aubrecht. The History Press, Sept. 2008)