Ware and Cyrus Francis, unlike Ayer, found it difficult to live in peace with other northern Christian organizations. They challenged rival societies and used the Freedmen's Bureau to prevent the encroachment of the Methodist Church. Francis wrote an article for the American Missionary to warn northerners of the dangers "Romanism" presented for Atlantans. Such religious skirmishes harmed the freedmen. By preventing missionary societies from pooling their resources the denominational conflicts diluted the benefits of northern dollars. To the association, determining what organization would dominate aid to the Negro often took precedence over deciding how best to help him.52

The American Missionary Association initially concentrated on educating the Atlanta freedmen, and only after the missionaries laid the foundation for a school system did they turn to organizing a religious institution. In contrast, missionaries from the northern Methodist Episcopal Church specifically came south to establish congregations. Their failure to make any headway in the Georgia capital caused them to turn their attention to educating the freedmen. While the Methodists never achieved the success of the AMA, their schools did provide badly needed services.

The ME Church moved into Atlanta early in 1866. Bishop Davis W. Clark, with the help of some southern unionist ministers, organized the Western Georgia and Alabama Mission and appointed Rev. James F. Chalfant of Ohio superintendent. Although Chalfant established his office in Atlanta he could entice no fulltime minister to proselytize there. In desperation he hired David Young, a local druggist, to

51

Twenty-Third Annual Report of the American Missionary Association (New York, 1869), p. 36; C. W. Francis to Smith, Oct. 4, 1867, AMA, roll 3. Sinners seldom remained long at First Congregational. Of the eighty-eight people who joined between 1867 and 1870, eleven were excommunicated and two suspended. Records of the First Congregational Church, Atlanta.

52 Rev. Francis's analysis appeared in American Missionary 12 (1869):134. Francis to Smith, Jan. 23, 1869, AMA, roll 4; Ware to Smith, Mar. 17, 1869, ibid., roll 5. The bureau often sided with the AMA at both the national and the local level. Drake, "The American Missionary Association and the Southern Negro," pp. 43, 56-64; Ware to Smith, May 5, 1869, Col. J. R. Lewis to Smith, Nov. 9, 1869, AMA, roll 5.

Three boys among Civil War ruins. Brady collection.

work for the church. Young, who in dealings with the AMA had shown an unwillingness to house "abolitionist preachers" or "nigger teachers," tried unsuccessfully to entice black congregations away from the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Undaunted, he continually hoped to gain a foothold within that denomination. Noting that one black minister "gives most of his time to draying," and "arrogates to himself as much authority as the discipline allows," Young believed that "a popular man could very soon divide this church and establish one for us if we had a place to meet. 1153

53 Young to Rev. James F. Chalfant, Aug. 3, 1866, ME Church Mission in the South, 1865-1867, collection, Interdenominational Theological Center library, Atlanta (hereafter cited as ITC); Young to 'Whom It May Concern," Aug. 3, 1865, AMA, roll 1; Young to Chalfant, Mar. 5, 17, 1866, Chalfant to Rev. J. W. Caldwell, Mar. 15, 1866, ITC; [Atlanta] Methodist Advocate, Jan. 12, 1876.

The early attempts of the Methodist Episcopalians to work with Atlanta freedmen failed. The church created unnecessary division with its raids on black churches and potentially weakened those nascent organizations. Without their own building, northern Methodists could not hope to attract black parishioners; moreover, missionaries seemed more interested in organizing white churches.54

With the arrival of Wesley Prettyman in November 1866 the mission society had a fulltime minister to organize converts. Prettyman, however, was a questionable improvement over Young. He displayed little interest in working with blacks and generated dislike and distrust among his colleagues. Soon he was immersed in controversy and politics, spending considerable time as the chaplain of the Georgia legislature. An opportunist, the missionary considered his job a means to obtain upward mobility, but he found Atlanta a city of disappointments. Lamenting his failure to move in wealthy circles, he wrote to Chalfant in Ohio, "I often think of you, of the elegant homes where you are entertained, as I plow my weary round, stopping at times where it seems impossible that people could live without better accommodations. I could live better in central Asia than in some parts of this country. I have been glad a thousand times you did not remain here." "' 55

Despite Prettyman's lack of enthusiasm, northern Methodists organized a black church, Clark Chapel, in 1867. Instead of locating the chapel in a churchless section of Atlanta, however, the organizers built it near an AME church, thus reducing the potential size of its congregation. White Methodists only reluctantly gave Clark financial support, and Prettyman's unscrupulous activities further retarded the chapel's development. The Methodist Episcopal hierarchy had left money with Prettyman specifically for the black church, but the minister neglected to inform Clark's pastor, J. Thomas Johnson. Only after much verbal coercion would Prettyman part with the funds, and the Clark pastor implied that his less honorable peer

54 Wesley Prettyman to Chalfant, Mar. 31, 1867, ITC; Methodist Advocate, Jan. 12, 1876.

55 Prettyman to Chalfant, June 22, 1868, ITC; see also Prettyman to Chalfant, July 28, 1868, ibid.; Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 14, 1868.

kept some cash for personal use. Johnson observed that the incident "was circulated among the colored people to the injury of our church." 56

The limited success in organizing black congregations encouraged Methodist missionaries in Atlanta to establish schools as a means of attracting the freedmen. Both Prettyman and Chalfant had verbally supported such work, but it was not until 1868 that two missionaries, Rev. and Mrs. J. W. Lee, established a primary class at Clark Chapel. They soon obtained financial support from the Freedmen's Aid Society, a Methodist agency organized in 1866 to establish schools and teach the former slaves. In 1869 the society purchased Ayer School from the AMA, and the Lees moved their school, now called Clark College in honor of Bishop Davis W. Clark, out of the chapel. A year later they relocated once more, occupying a brick building on Whitehall Street. The Freedmen's Aid Society had hoped Clark would become an institution of higher learning, but the rapid turnover of administrators and the limited educational background of the students made that objective difficult to realize. Nonetheless, during the 1870s the school tutored black ministers and helped to fulfill some of the educational needs of Atlanta's freedmen.57

By 1870 only the missionaries continued actively to work in Atlanta. The Freedmen's Bureau had phased out all but a remnant of its staff, and except for periodic confrontations between blacks and Union soldiers the army's presence in the city went unnoticed. Although both federal institutions occasionally had intervened in local affairs, their intrusions made almost no long-range impact upon the AfroAmerican community. The northern religious groups left a more enduring legacy - black schools. Southern whites showed little interest in providing blacks with public education; and only through the missionaries' efforts were black children able to attend school. While the religious societies promoted the growth of educational institutions their attempt to establish white-controlled religious institutions had

56 J. Thomas Johnson to Chalfant, Jan. 31, 1868, ITC.

57 Prettyman to Chalfant, Nov. 23, 1866, Chalfant to Rev.

J. M. Walden, June 14, 1867, ibid.; Willard Range, The Rise and Progress of Negro Colleges in Georgia, 1865-1949 (Athens, Ga., 1951), pp. 23-24; Methodist Advocate, Jan. 6, Aug. 11, 18, 1869, July 5, 1871.

a less salutary effect. Fortunately, during the 1870s, those northerners showed a greater willingness to complement rather than compete with black churches.58

From the perspective of more than a century, one is impressed with how little, rather than how much, northerners intervened on the black man's behalf. The reconstruction move

58 Philip Racine, "Atlanta's Schools- A History of the Public School System, 1865-1955" (Ph.D. diss., Emory Univ., 1969), p. 32.

ment in Atlanta pointed out the limitations of the northern commitment to the freedmen, for in that city southern whites, while hostile to blacks, offered no overt resistance to the army, the bureau, or the religious societies. The attitudes toward race, work, and welfare that restricted the efforts of northerners there probably affected the same efforts elsewhere in the South. Consequently, northerners as well as southerners shared a responsibility for Reconstruction's failure.