Note (return) — Chapter II

As yet there was no racial consciousness, no church, no business organization, and the chief coöperative effort was in insurrection. Until the great chain of slavery was thrown off, little independent effort could be put forth. Even in the state of servitude or slavery, however, the social spirit of the race yearned to assert itself, and such an event as a funeral was attractive primarily because of the social features that it developed. As early as 1693 there is record of the formation of a distinct society by Negroes. In one of his manuscript diaries, preserved in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society,45 Cotton Mather in October of this year wrote as follows: "Besides the other praying and pious meetings which I have been continually serving in our neighborhood, a little after this period a company of poor Negroes, of their own accord, addressed me, for my countenance to a design which they had, of erecting such a meeting for the welfare of their miserable nation, that were servants among us. I allowed their design and went one evening and prayed and preached (on Ps. 68.31) with them; and gave them the following orders, which I insert duly for the curiosity of the occasion." The Rules to which Mather here refers are noteworthy as containing not one suggestion of anti-slavery sentiment, and as portraying the altogether abject situation of the Negro at the time he wrote; nevertheless the text used was an inspiring one, and in any case the document must have historical importance as the earliest thing that has come down to us in the nature of the constitution or by-laws for a distinctively Negro organization. It is herewith given entire: