"A man, a Christian.... and a gentleman?": John Day, Southern Baptists, and the nineteenth-century mission to Liberia.

Flowers, Elizabeth H.

As told many times over, the story of Southern Baptists began with an ironic co-mingling of desires involving both missionaries and slaves.

In 1845, the controversy surrounding the refusal of the Triennial Convention to appoint slaveholders as missionaries pushed white Baptists of the South, or rather their educated elite, to form the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). William B. Johnson, architect and first president of the SBC, described their Northern brethren's evil as "FORBIDDING US to speak UNTO THE GENTILES." (1) The SBC immediately established domestic and foreign mission boards. For the next fifty years, missions persisted as the SBC's primary endeavor. Scholarship regarding Southern Baptist missions during this period has focused on China, but in 1846 Liberia counted as the denomination's only other foreign field.

John Day served as the SBC's first Liberia missionary and for thirteen years was its missionary superintendent. Born in 1797, Day was a free black cabinetmaker and preacher from Virginia and North Carolina. In December 1830, he emigrated to Liberia. Shortly afterwards, the Triennial Convention's Baptist Board of Foreign Missions appointed him as a missionary. One of Liberia's educated elite, Day signed its Declaration of Independence and also became the Republic's chief justice. In 1844, Day retired his Triennial Convention missionary post, and a year later he agreed to work as a missionary for the newly formed SBC. In his first letter to James Barnett Taylor, the SBC's Foreign Mission Board (FMB) secretary, Day recorded the accusations of other black emigrants: "I have been accused of abandonment of principle in accepting an appointment from the southern board, and one of my friends remarked to me, I had as well enter the service of a slaver 15 miles from his place." (2)

The charge of disloyalty hit Day hard. Even today, 164 years later, the charge strikes a blow, raising the question of why Day shifted his allegiances to serve a Southern denomination notable for its support of slavery. This question guided this study of Day and the nineteenth-century Southern Baptist mission in Liberia. (3) But the research quickly demonstrated that Day's relationship with Southern Baptists defied any easy summary. This article explores the negotiations that informed, shaped, and limited that unlikely alliance.

The first section sketches the historical background of three ideologies and movements that came together in Day and Southern Baptists: colonization, pro-slavery Christianity, and Africa missions. Unlike abolition, which may seem cut and dried, colonization, pro-slavery Christianity, and Africa missions proved far more ambiguous--tangled, as they were, in a web of relations: North and South, free and enslaved, Africa and America, colonized and colonizer, and the messy in-betweens. The second section focuses on Day's thirteen-year tenure as a Southern Baptist missionary, which demonstrates that he embodied the complexity of all three ideologies as they became on-the-ground movements. When Day first wrote Taylor, he eagerly sought to prove his elite status as a Southerner and a gentleman, but Day changed and so too did Taylor and Southern Baptists. Over thirteen years, Taylor gave Day increasing independence, and that independence sealed Day's commitment to the Southern Baptist endeavor. At the same time, though, Day felt more frustration with the Liberia experience. And he feared a new form of African slavery from the settler class.

While Day's affiliation with the FMB represented a highpoint in the history of Southern Baptist race relations, the moment proved short-lived. White Southern Baptist missionary leaders might have accepted Day as a gentleman, but they could only do so from afar. In the nineteenth-century ante-bellum South, slavery--owning slaves and supporting its practice--marked a gentleman. In the end, Day failed that test.

Black Colonization, the ACS, and White Southern Support

Black colonization ignited controversy. Founded in 1816, the American Colonization Society (ACS) served as the primary agent for the black colonization of Africa. From 1820 to 1861, the society sent 12,000 free black emigrants to Liberia. (4) Some abolitionists initially supported the project, but most eventually lobbied against the ACS because of its refusal to condemn slavery. As the ACS grew, wealthy Southern landowners and politicians became the organization's chief architects and supporters. That meant that while the ACS did not embrace slavery outright, it could not afford to repudiate the practice.

White Southerners emphasized their support of the ACS as a compassionate endeavor, calling Liberia the "child of American benevolence." In promoting colonization as "betterment" for free blacks, they drew on many pro-slavery arguments. Slaves, claimed one ACS president, were being "protected, provided with food, shelter, and raiments, treated in the most of cases kindly, affectionately." But free blacks, he stated, lacked this solicitous treatment. "Dependent on himself alone," the free black "was living a shorter life than that of the slave and made to feel in a thousand ways his social and political inferior." (5) Colonization meant "delivering the oppressed," touted the ACS. (6)

White Southerners also feared the growing number of free blacks in slave-holding states and viewed colonization as a solution to that "problem." From 1790 to 1840, the free black population increased six-fold. The largest growth occurred in the Upper South, in places like Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, which developed both the most active state ACS chapters and stringent legal codes against free blacks. For many white Southerners, the higher percentage of mulattos among the free black population threatened racial separation and purity. Slaveholders also believed that free blacks would both demand greater access to power and foment slave rebellion. While the ACS remained more guarded in its rhetoric, it catered to white Southern anxiety, emphasizing its formation as an organization to colonize free blacks only. The ACS claimed neutrality, insisting that "with the institution of slavery we have nothing to do ... nor have we any sympathy for the wild fanaticism of ultra-abolitionists." (7) Despite such claims, white Southerners viewed the ACS as means to perpetuate their region's "peculiar institution."

Pro-slavery Christianity, Africa Missions, and Southern Baptists

Black colonization occurred as the Protestant mission movement gained momentum. Such missions often meant promoting Western culture, and Africa proved little exception. Yet many white Southern Christians also conjoined the prevailing missiology with pro-slavery Christianity. (8) According to their view, God pre-ordained slavery as a means to Christianize and civilize Africans. Africans had been brought to America so that they could return to Christianize and civilize their ancestral brothers and sisters. As Southern Baptist editor Eli Ball exclaimed, "God has reserved for the Southern States chiefly the honor of spreading through benighted Africa the light of the blessed gospel, by means of their free colored people, and such slaves as they may see fit to liberate for the purpose of going to Africa." (9) Many white Southern ministers chastised their congregants' weak efforts to evangelize slaves and later interpreted the Civil War as God's retribution for neglecting their duty.

Like other white Southern Protestants, Southern Baptists tied colonization to missions as a means to redeem Africa--and also themselves. Records from both the SBC and the ACS after 1845 reveal an active engagement between the two. Southern Baptist state conventions invited ACS agents and representatives to speak at their meetings and at least one, the Virginia Baptist Convention, wrote its endorsement of the ACS into its constitution. The ACS published letters from Day as well as white Southern Baptist pastors and leaders, and finally, the SBC located the FMB in Richmond, a city of high ACS-funded emigration and activity.

The growing free black presence, of course, threatened white Southern Baptists. The ACS became a general outlet for such fears, but at the local level, white Southern Baptists also fostered close connections to Mack emigrants. Members of the wealthy First Baptist Church of Savannah, for example, worried when missives from former black congregants detailed poverty and death. They successfully implored the FMB to send an emissary to check the situation. Undoubtedly feelings of concern and benevolence, albeit condescending, mixed freely with white fear and Christian guilt as Southern Baptists opened their pockets to the Liberian enterprise.

Black Emigrants, Black Missionaries, and Indigenous Africans

Black emigrants to Liberia resembled other emigrants seeking a better life. (10) Legislation over the first part of the nineteenth century curtailed free blacks' movement, activities, and rights. In the ACS's early years, a disproportionate number of emigrants came from the free black elite of the Upper South--those educated and monied blacks who most felt the curbing of free blacks' power. (11) They soon formed Liberia's ruling class. After 1827, the ACS sent increasing numbers of emancipated slaves, and tensions with the elite class flared.

Liberian emigrants, often called settlers, saw themselves as the new Puritans, building a "city on a hill" which would reveal to all the world black equality and greatness. (12) They touted Liberia as the gateway to Africa and held that they were constructing the next great world civilization. With the name "Liberia," emigrants emphasized a "liberty, in the sober, simple, but complete sense of the word--not a licentious liberty nor a liberty without government but that liberty of speech, action, and conscience, which distinguishes the free enfranchised citizens of a free state." (13) In other words, their liberty expunged slavery, thereby perfecting the American experience.

The evangelization of Africa also informed emigrants' rhetoric. While they did not justify slavery, many argued that colonization was part of a divine plan. They viewed Liberia as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy promising that "Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hand to God" (Psalm 68:31). Yet like the Puritans' attempts to convert Indians, settlers failed miserably. First, because emigrants arrived in Liberia to face disease and death, missionaries spent their time bolstering colony morale, if not fighting the dreaded "fever" themselves. Then, just as those early emigrants appeared settled, arrival rates doubled. (14) Insisting that Liberia's success depended on its Christian foundation, missionaries busied themselves establishing churches for Liberia's burgeoning settler class. In addition, most missionaries belonged to the elite who also supplied Liberia's leadership. As a result, they balanced a multiplicity of roles, including teacher, politician, merchant, landowner, and more. Few missionaries functioned as anything more than part-time preachers, and despite Liberia's small size, travel was dangerous.

Finally, a more ideological reason explained the low number of African converts. As black emigrants discovered, the gulf between themselves and indigenous Africans proved far greater than anticipated. Black missionaries expressed dismay over what they perceived as Africans' savagery and barbarism. Disputes over land and trade further alienated settlers and Africans and weakened any possible successes missionaries might have had. Some Africans even referred to the black settlers as white men and, equally revealing, settlers chose the name Americo-Liberians.

Americo-Liberians emigrated because of American hypocrisy, white racism, and Southern fear. They envisioned a less contested and more dignified life in a Christianized Africa. But as Day's letters revealed, Liberia did not deliver redemption.

An Unlikely Alliance

In 1845, the Triennial Convention boasted five black emigrant-missionaries serving in Liberia under one white missionary-supervisor. As Southerners formed their own convention, they focused on China and Liberia as mission fields. Baptist missionaries in those locations chose affiliation with either the Northern or Southern mission board. Although retired, Day joined another emigrant missionary, Alexander Jones, in favoring the South. Jones, however, died before assuming any duties, leaving Day as Southern Baptists' sole missionary presence.

From Virginia to Liberia

In asking why Day shifted his loyalties, his place in the overall picture must be considered. Born in 1797 in Hicksford, Virginia, Day boasted a long line of free blacks. His maternal grandfather was Thomas Stewart, one of Virginia's wealthiest black men. Stewart owned more than eight hundred acres and twenty slaves. (15) According to Stewart's will, Day inherited from his grandfather a slave girl named "Thody, though he does not seem to have assumed ownership." (16) His father, John Day, Sr., possessed sixty acres in Sussex County and worked as a cabinetmaker. By Day's late adolescence, his father had fallen on hard financial times. Seeking to escape Virginia's restrictive codes against free blacks and find a more profitable business location, in 1817, Day, Sr., moved his family to Warrenton, North Carolina.

White Baptists figured prominently in Day's religious education and background. He wrote Taylor that at an 1816 camp meeting, a white Baptist minister converted him. In 1820, a white Baptist minister baptized him. A Brother Gardner then urged him to study with the well-recognized minister and teacher Abner Clopton, who also mentored future FMB secretary James Taylor. Clopton introduced Day to Luther Rice. In 1824, Day interviewed for a missionary post in Haiti, but he claimed that his Arminian theology prevented his appointment.

In 1830, Day, his wife, and their four children emigrated to Liberia. All but Day died within a year. Five years later, the Triennial Convention appointed him as a missionary, and he functioned primarily as a preacher. But like other missionaries, Day balanced multiple roles. In 1847, he joined twelve others in drafting Liberia's Declaration of Independence, and over the next twenty years, he also served as the new Republic's lieutenant governor and chief justice. At the same time, he earned an income as farmer and merchant. Clearly, Day belonged to Liberia's ruling class.

As supervisor of the SBC's Liberian mission, Day wrote more than one hundred letters to Taylor and the FMB. Day never supplied any one explanation for affiliating with the Southern Baptists. Instead, his correspondence hinted at varied reasons, and those reasons seemed to change over time. But initially, Day's sense of himself as an elite among Liberians pushed him to the Southern board. Respectability, he felt, could be traced to his Southern, particularly, Virginian, roots.

Status as a Gentleman

Day saw himself as a gentleman. Gaining recognition from Southern Baptist men like Taylor solidified his view. In one of his first letters, Day emphasized his "highly respected" background. (17) Writing to Taylor in 1851, Day insisted: "all I ask on earth is to be treated as a man, a christian, and I hate to add a gentleman, but nothing short of it will do." (18)

Throughout his early missives, Day asserted his status by parading various credentials. First, he highlighted his classical education. He touted his training in systematic theology and moral philosophy as well as his knowledge of Latin and Greek. Tying his education to his Virginian upbringing, Day complained to Taylor of one missionary who "is not like our virginia folks, who will venture into every discipline and show at first sight the depth and breadth of their intellect." (19) Next, as befitting a gentleman, Day stressed his preference for church decorum, or what he called "intelligent orderliness." He adamantly rejected the "ranting," "raving," and "buffooning" of Methodist services, and he encouraged Liberian Baptists to follow his lead. His conversion, he explained, took place in a stand across from "nonsense preachers." (20) Finally, Day even insisted on looking the gentleman. His letters requested velvet and satin vests, black silk, cravats, silk umbrellas, fine stockings, and leather shoes. (21)

As a gentleman, Day endorsed a class hierarchy measured by "genteel" values. Like most settlers, he viewed Africans as trapped in a "thick mental darkness." (22) But he also revealed contempt for many fellow emigrants, particularly those less educated and gentlemanly than himself. He expressed alarm over the increasing number of settlers who exhibited "moral turpitude" and "ignorance." Insisting that emigrants should be more carefully selected, he declared to Taylor that any "colored man" sent to Liberia "must have the same dimension of soul" as a "well educated, talented whiteman." (23)

Taylor and other Southern Baptist elites defined the meaning of gentleman. Acceptance from these men affirmed Day's self-understanding. His status, however, was not the only reason for aligning with the Southern board. Having grown up as a Baptist in the ante-bellum South, Day knew Southern Baptists far better than Northern ones, and that knowledge proved advantageous.

A Southern and Baptist Heritage

From the start, Day expressed appreciation for Southern Baptists. He emphasized that white Baptists of the South were responsible for his conversion, baptism, and early education, and he spared few words in lavishing his early mentors with praise. Clopton received his greatest accolade: "That good man, great theologian and friend of young ministers, [who] gave me access to his library, took the directions of my studies, drilled me on logic and theology ... I love him and love his friends even." (24) Moreover, when Day emigrated to Liberia, he held membership in High Hills Baptist Church in Sussex, Virginia. Many noted Southern Baptist leaders also belonged to High Hills. One, Jeremiah Jeter, served as the FMB's president during Day's tenure. (25) Those early associations created a sense of loyalty.

Day's loyalty towards Southern Baptists contrasted his disappointment with "Northern hypocrisy." After all, he had resigned from the Triennial Convention over disputes in pay. In his first letter to Taylor, Day condemned the Triennial Convention, which he clearly associated with Northerners. "They astound the South," he wrote, "with their profess desire to free and elevate the colored race, while in practice they seem to regard them an atrocity." (26)

Day, however, could not have been so oblivious to Southern hypocrisy. While he accused Northern Baptists of "injustice to colored missionaries," Southern Baptists were likewise guilty. Taylor even admitted that appointing blacks as missionaries had the advantage of lower salaries. Having been raised in the South, however, Day better predicted white Southern Baptists. As he concluded in sketching his early missionary years, "it [is] hard to understand northern men." (27) Writing to Taylor of several black Baptist missionaries in Sierra Leone, Day explained that they "prefer being under the patronage of Southern men because they know them best." (28) Day, too, knew white Southerners best. As a result, he more successfully negotiated the complexities of that relationship.

Day's letters contained numerous examples. First, aware of Southern anxiety and guilt, he highlighted Southern Baptists' role in Africa's redemption. When referring to certain successes, he wrote Taylor of "your converts," "your schools," and "your rewards." Then he explained "the work I call yours, as I felt it should be the glory of the South, to be able to prove themselves, the greatest benefactor of the negro race." (29) At one point, he even referred to a converted African schoolboy as James Taylor.

Second, Day often drew on a growing regional pride and defensiveness to barter for more money or justify his spending. "My glory in seeing southern people do what I thought noble," he exclaimed, "has induced me to do more that I had authority for." (30) When later building his school, he lamented, "I have written for too small an appropriation to answer the noble purposes for which the institution is designed. I should have had more confidence in the liberality of the southern methods and not have stifled this child our only hope in its birth." (31)

Last, as hostilities between Northerners and Southerners mounted, he directly affirmed Southern Baptists against their Northern critics. He recounted, for instance, his remarks against one particularly harsh English clergyman: "You know nothing of southern men sir. Nobler souls you never saw than in the south I have seen. They are not of the stuff to drive, but leave them free to act, and none will act more noble." (32) Attempting to secure funds for a school and seminary, Day wrote:

 Some of our knowing ones say the buildings are too expensive; the
 board will never pay it. A northern gentleman said to me the other
 day, he heard that, from a gentleman who ought to know, and advised
 me not to involve myself. Now see sir said I the houses are under
 their roofs. The board has paid $2300, $500 more will polish off. I
 shall finish. I trust the board. The southern people ... do not
 stop to calculate the dimension of their ability to give. But touch
 the heart and the purse strings fly. (33)

Instigating a bit of denominational rivalry, Day concluded, "These buildings do not cost what the piazzas and fences of the Methodist seminary did. I am told be economical; but they will wish the buildings to bear some impression of the churches of its patrons." (34)

Day's strategies of playing Southerners against Northerners and Baptists against Methodists did not always work. He constantly requested more money, and funds always fell short. Financial woes, however, seemed the missionary's lot. Despite frustrations, Day never wavered in his loyalty to Southerners over Northerners. Over time, such loyalty included Taylor.

Friendship, Independence, and Success

The letters between Taylor and Day reflected the standard queries and replies of any mission board president and missionary supervisor. Yet as the years progressed, each man became more than a symbol to the other, and the letters testified to a deepening friendship and trust. Trust translated into greater independence for Day, and independence reinforced his commitment to Southern Baptists.

While Day seemed defensive with other emigrants and missionaries, a few years after his appointment, he began to reveal a surprising vulnerability to Taylor. Throughout the 1850s, he lamented his failures at winning converts and controlling bickering missionaries. "Poor missionary," he claimed, "always expecting ever disappointed. Prospects always big, accomplished always little. He intends so much, attempts so much, expects so much, that what is done or realized is nothing." (35) Taylor responded to Day's repeated bouts of depression and discouragement with assurances of the board's support and warned him against harsh judgments and morose thinking. At one point, frustrated over fellow missionaries' bickering and low conversion rates, Day resigned. Taylor rejected his resignation. Over and over, he insisted that "with regard to yourself the Board has been satisfied and thankful to God he has raised you up." (36) Taylor urged Day "to be encouraged in your particular work. Your influence will be felt when you are dead and it will come into your account. The influence you now exercise may be felt and will be felt as long as the world stands." (37)

Like most settlers, Day's constant struggle with illness and family death was wearying, and during especially intense periods, Taylor acted as minister and friend. When Day lost his second wife, Taylor wrote: "It need not be a matter of suspense that you should be so painfully affected. To lose a wife and wife such as yours seems to have been, is one of the sorest trials to which one can be subjected in this life. I sincerely sympathize with you. You need support such as this earth cannot furnish. I will be in prayer that god will sustain you and long permit you to labor in his service." (38) During a particularly trying bout with lung fever, Day decided to cut his missionary income. Taylor, though, refused, stating that the FMB was "unwilling to reduce your salary on account of your feeble health." (39)

As their friendship deepened, Taylor gave Day more independence as superintendent of the Liberian mission. While Northern Baptists appointed a white supervisor to oversee their Liberian station, Day made the missionary appointments, assignments, and firings. Unlike Southern Baptist missionaries to China, he single-handedly managed the budget and allocated its funds. In 1856, Northern Baptists left Liberia, making the country's only Baptist mission a Southern Baptist-funded one.

Of course, other factors beyond Taylor's friendship and trust also explained Day's independence. Since Day and later Liberian missionaries had emigrated, they never returned to the States. Only twice did the FMB send an agent to check on the mission. Lack of contact spoke to negligence as much as trust. Still, it reinforced Day's independence as a missionary supervisor, and it prevented Taylor and the black missionaries from encountering racial barriers more easily ignored in written letters and reports.

While the racial politics surrounding the Liberian mission were messy, like most ventures, success assured greater independence. Despite Day's complaints, under his supervision, the Liberia mission grew. By 1859, Day oversaw approximately thirty teachers and preachers, fifteen mission locations, and a nearly ten thousand dollar budget. (40) When Northern Baptists abandoned the field to Southern Baptists, Taylor must have sensed victory.

A Final Stand

In his early letters, Day's stand on slavery might have seemed unclear. Like most black emigrants, he condemned its practice in Liberia. He dismissed one missionary for keeping his African servants in chains, (41) and he rejected the involuntary apprentice system practiced by European colonizers. Nevertheless, in his beginning correspondence, Day expressed more concern with his status as gentleman than in rejecting its associated practice of Southern slavery.

Of course, Day could not directly air any abolitionist thought. As late as 1854, when he was running the mission, Taylor intervened and fired a Liberian missionary, John Cheeseman, for articulating abolitionist views. Referencing a letter that Cheeseman had sent to the board's treasurer, Taylor chastised Cheeseman for his "most extravagant" and ultra-abolitionist views," and stated, "if you regard us as involved in such an enormous sin as your letter indicates because we sustain the relation we do to our slaves, I see not how you work with us." (42) Shortly afterwards, Day convinced Taylor to rehire Cheeseman. Citing Cheeseman's "intoxication with letter leaving," Day told Taylor that "he is fond of writing and nearly wrote [his abolitionist letter] to show how well he could do it." (43)

In the Cheeseman incident, Day carefully sidestepped the issue. But as he gained more independence and moved closer to death, Day's rhetoric changed. By the late 1850s, Day became more vocal. Fearful that the Liberian experiment was failing, he made a final stand against slavery.

In his final letters, Day flatly rejected the argument privileging the benefits of slavery. As more manumitted slaves emigrated to Liberia, tensions between the ruling class, many of whom, like Day, had been free blacks, and new settlers flared. He insisted that "only in rare instances should men be taken [as emigrants] who were under the blighting influence of slavery," since the effect "follows them through life, disqualifying them for generous and noble action." (44) At several points, Day ascribed the new settler's "dullness and stupor" to the "soul crushing influences under which they were reared." (45) In sum, while proslavery Christians argued that slavery provided protection and moral uplift, slavery, argued Day, led to moral turpitude and ignorance.

In those later missives, Day also worried over a new form of slavery threatened black colonization and the Liberian experience. As he grew more disillusioned with the settler class, he resigned most governmental responsibilities to devote himself to indigenous Africans, and he invoked the language of slavery to describe not only Africans' spiritual enslavement to a superstitious religion but their physical enslavement to the immigrant class. As early as 1853, Day predicted that "if the Bassas do not identify with us, nor expatriate, they will be with us a separate and distinct class; the servants, of servants. I use that word instead of another which I hate to pronounce. If my conclusions are logical, and I believe they are; it is clear that the Bassas should be elevated as fast as possible." (46) While he never substituted a physical salvation for a spiritual one, Day saw the two as conjoined.

Day devoted his latter years to fighting that dual African enslavement. His means to achieving victory was through building Day's Hope, a high school and seminary intended to train African boys as missionaries to their own people. In 1856, he began boarding African students. Writing to Taylor, he pled, "The Bassa mission and Day's Hope are the occupiers of my greatest desire. Whatever must be neglected don't let these be." (47) From 1856 on, Day's letters concentrated on Day's Hope. If political necessity forced Day to sidestep the issue of slavery in America, anger drove him to make a final stand against slavery in Africa. But the two were interconnected. While he never challenged Southern Baptist views directly, his motives were dear. Day's Hope would help prevent history from repeating itself.

Day's reasons for affiliating with the SBC are only conjecture. Clearly, though, his motives shifted, for the Southern gentleman of 1846 little resembled Edward Blyden's elegiac description of a "worn and feeble form in the school room." (48) By 1859, Day had no use for "genteel" dress, spending all he had to supply his African pupils with books, food, and adequate clothing. In a rare letter to free blacks in the Southern states, he explained "I dislike as much as you the unkind, and in some instances, unjust remarks of many who have written and spoken on the subject of colonization. The ACS is, however, one in which elements combine in working out a good." (49) Similarly, Southern Baptists were the most efficient means to an end, and in affiliating with Southern Baptists, Day ironically gained the authority, independence, and support necessary to wage war against what he recognized as the newest form of slavery.

Conclusion

Day coagulated a confusing mixture of emotions and beliefs. He accommodated some white Southern values while ignoring others. He demanded status as a Southern gentleman while making a final stand against the Southern gentleman's chief practice. He articulated a patronizing elitism that rejected freed slaves while fighting African enslavement.

Day's relationship with Southern Baptists was no less messy. On the one hand, it seemed a highpoint in nineteenth-century SBC race relations. Day's appreciation for white Southerners and Baptists moved beyond mere flattery. Taylor's trust in Day and respect for his success led to a surprising independence. But if Taylor and his fellow Southern Baptists affirmed Day's early request, and treated Day, a free black, as a "man, a christian ... and a gentleman," they did so with an ocean between them, and their acceptance proved short-lived. As the war over Southern slavery quickened, the highpoint in race relations passed. After Day's death in 1859, long, grief-filled letters from his widow begging the FMB for support went unanswered. Short of funds, in 1871, the SBC closed the mission. The alliance between Day and Taylor, between black emigrant missionaries and white Southern Baptists, carried all the tensions of black colonization, pro-slavery Christianity, and Africa missions. In the end, that burden proved too great.

(1.) William B. Johnson, "Address of the Convention," Annual, Southern Baptist Convention, 1845, 18.

(2.) John Day, letter to James Barnett Taylor, Dec. 15, 1846, Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee.

(3.) Research of Day based on the 118 letters he sent to James Barnett Taylor, president of the SBC's Foreign Mission Board. While the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives holds the original letters, Janie Leigh Carter also transcribed them as part of her M.A. thesis; Carter, "John Day: A Founder of the Republic of Liberia and the Southern Baptist Liberian Missionary Movement" (M.A. thesis, Wake Forest University, 1998). For a helpful overview of the nineteenth-century Southern Baptist mission in Liberia, see Eddie Stepp, "The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here: Baptist Beginnings in Liberia," Baptist History and Heritage 42, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 47-58.

(4.) information regarding the ACS and Liberia's colonization came primarily from my reading of the ACS newsletter, The African Repository and Colonial Journal, 1-37 (January 1825-December 1861). I also consulted: Amos J. Beyan, The American Colonization Society and the Creation of the Liberian State: A Historical Perspective, 1822-1900 (Lanham, MD: The University Press of America, 1991); Lamin Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad: American Blacks and the Making of Modern Africa (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); and Tom W. Shick, Behold the Promised Land: A History of Afro American Settler Society in Nineteenth-Century Liberia (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).

(5.) African Repository 35 (August 1859): 227-28.

(6.) Ibid., 22 (January 1846): 6.

(7.) Ibid., 27 (July 1851): 194.

(8.) In researching black missionaries to Liberia, I again relied on the African Repository. I also consulted the following secondary works, though most of the literature here focused on black mission boards developed during the post-bellum period: Sylvia Jacobs, "The Historical Role of Afro-Americans in American Missionary Efforts in Africa," Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa, ed. Jacobs (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982); Sandy D. Martin, Black Baptists and African Missions: The Origins of a Movement, 18801915 (Mercer, GA: Mercer University Press, 1989); Lamin Sanneh, Abolitionists Abroad; Walter L. Williams, Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 1877-1900 (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982); and David W. Wills, "Introduction," Black Apostles at Home and Abroad: Afro-Americans and the Christian Mission from Revolution to Reconstruction, ed. Wills and Richard Newman (Boston: G. K. Hail and Co., 1982), xi-xxxiv. For an understanding of pro-slavery Christianity, see Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); and Donald G. Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). Finally, Mathews introduced me to Day and proved invaluable in reading several drafts of this paper.

(9.) African Repository 28 (November 1852): 344.

(10.) Unless otherwise indicated, demographics and statistics regarding emigrants came from Tom Shick's three works: Behold the Promised Land; "A Quantitative Analysis of Liberian Colonization from 1820 to 1843, with a Special Reference to Mortality," Journal of African History 12, no. 1 (1971): 45-59; and Emigrants to Liberia, 1820 to 1843: An Alphabetical Listing (Newark, DE: Department of Anthropology, The University of Delaware, and Liberian Studies Association in America, 1971).

(11.) While the number of mulattos is not available, descriptions of the ruling class frequently included their light skin color.

(12.) In this paper, I will use the terms emigrant, settler, colonist, and Americo Liberian interchangeably.

(13.) African Repository 3 (December 1827): 301.

(14.) While 4,571 emigrated to Liberia from the years 1820 to 1842, approximately 8,000 arrived in the next twenty-year period.

(15.) See entries for both the Day and Stewart families in Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans of North Carolina and Virginia (Baltimore: Clearfield Company, 1997), 254-59, 647, 660. In her study of John Day's brother, the noted cabinetmaker Thomas Day, Laurel C. Sneed traced the Day family's genealogy; Sneed, Uncovering the Hidden History of Thomas Day: Finding and Methodology (Durham: The Thomas Day Education Project, 1995).

(16.) Sneed, Uncovering the Hidden History of Thomas Day, 6. No records indicated that Day assumed ownership of any slave. Furthermore, in 1832, two years after Day had emigrated to Liberia, Stewart's will was contested in the Dwindle County Chancery Court. See Heinegg, 651.

(17.) Day, letter to Taylor, October 16, 1847.

(18.) Day, letter to Taylor, September 18, 1851.

(19.) Day, letter to Taylor, November 22, 1848.

(20.) Day, letter to Taylor, April 30, 1847. See also October 16, 1847.

(21.) Day, letters to Taylor, April 7, 1848; November 22, 1848.

(22.) Day, letter to Taylor and the Female Society of the African Church of Richmond, October 18, 1849.

(23.) Day, letter to Taylor, December 1, 1847.

(24.) Day, letter to Abram Poindexter, July 8, 1857. Poindexter served as Taylor's associate.

(25.) Carter, "John Day,: 52, note 14.

(26.) Day, letter to Taylor, December 15, 1846.

(27.) Ibid.

(28.) Day, letter to Taylor, April 2, 1855. See also January 16, 1859.

(29.) Day, letter to Taylor, December 1, 1847.

(30.) Day, letter to Taylor, April 10, 1850.

(31.) Day, letter to Taylor, December 1, 1856.

(32.) Ibid.

(33.) Day, letter to Taylor, April 8, 1857.

(34.) Ibid.

(35.) Day, letter to Taylor, July 5, 1850.

(36.) Taylor, letter to Day, July 9, 1851.

(37.) Taylor, letter to Day, May 30, 1853.

(38.) Taylor, letter to Day, July 8, 1851.

(39.) Taylor, letter to Day, December 22, 1851.

(40.) Foreign Mission Board, Minutes, April 14, 1858, October 4, 1858, and May 6, 1859 (International Mission Board Archives, Richmond, Virginia).

(41.) Day, letter to Taylor, April 23, 1849.

(42.) Taylor, letter to Cheeseman, November 23, 1854.

(43.) Day, letter to Taylor, February 10, 1855.

(44.) Day, letter to Taylor, September 10, 1857.

(45.) Day, letter to Foreign Mission Board, March 4, 1858.

(46.) Day, letter to Taylor, February 1, 1853.

(47.) Day, letter to Taylor, October 1858.

(48.) Edward Blyden "Extracts from a Eulogy of John Day," The Commission 4 (July 1859): 8.

(49.) Day, "To the free people of color of the United States," African Repository (May 1854): 146.

Elizabeth H. Flowers is assistant professor of religion at Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, Texas.