Friday, June 20, 2025

The Freedman's Commission and the Diocese of New Jersey after the Civil War

One of the institutions founded through the work of the Freedman's Commission:
St. Augustine's Normal School, Raleigh, NC
(1886-87 catalogue cover, detail, courtesy St. Augustine's University)


At the general convention of 1865, in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the delegates of Episcopal Church voted to found a “Freedman’s Commission.” Though the needs of recently enslaved Black people in the south were indeed both various and very serious, the Commission’s mandate was, in comparison to the need, rather limited. At the time of its creation the Commission’ purpose was circumscribed narrowly to include only the “religious and other instruction of the freedmen.”[1] Even more limited was the success the Commission managed to achieve during its period of operation.[2] Generally speaking, the Commission did not successfully convince White Episcopalians to take up the concerns of the Commission as their own. And though there may have been the potential for New Jersey Episcopalians to respond differently from the rest of the Church, in fact the Diocese of New Jersey supported the work of the Commission only haltingly. 

            There were multiple reasons why New Jersey Episcopalians might have responded more favorably to the work of the Freedman’s Commission than others within the larger denomination. Among these were the fact that New Jersey had remained a slave state, literally in all but name,[3] through the end of the Civil War. Residents of New Jersey were some of the northerners most familiar with the tragedies of slavery and might have been well positioned to recognize the great need to support recently freed Black people. 

Perhaps even more significantly, the priest appointed as director of the Commission work[4] was the Rev. J. Brinton Smith, who hailed from the Diocese of New Jersey.[5] He had resigned from the rectorship of St. Matthew’s Church, Jersey City in order to take the position and brought many relationships with New Jersey clergy and congregations to his work with the Commission. However, these factors seemed to have played little role in convincing many white Episcopalians from the Diocese of New Jersey to support the work.

New Jersey Episcopalians had for years been among those in the state most linked to slavery and most sympathetic to the southern cause.[6] And rather than immediately recognizing the need to support the Freedmen as they carved out a new life of freedom, there was a clear comparative preference in the Diocese in the years following the war for supporting southern churches and clergy who had become poorer as a result of the war. 

The immediate response in the diocese to the creation of the Freedman’s Commission was very limited. The diocesan convention journal of 1866 reports diocesan giving to the work of the Commission of $19.92,[7] augmented only by a gift from “the ladies” of Christ Church, Allentown of “two barrels of clothing.”[8] In comparison, diocesan giving “for the Southern Clergy” and “for Southern Churches” in the same year was reported at $142.22,[9] a difference of an order of magnitude. The Rev. A. Toomer Porter of South Carolina, gave a presentation at the convention on “the relations of the Freedmen and the Church, in South Carolina,”[10] for which the convention resolved to “hail[ him] with pleasure… for the good work in which he is engaged.”[11] Partly in response to his presentation, giving increased the following year, but it was largely not directed at the work of the Freedman’s Commission. The following year nine churches in the diocese[12] reported giving specifically for the work of the Commission but forty-seven to general “Southern Relief” efforts. Bishop Odenheimer’s pastoral letter of March 13, 1867, exhorting the churches of the diocese to take up collection for and send relief to the “sufferers… in the South,”[13] certainly had some effect, but this relative prioritization was certainly also the result of the closer connection white Episcopalians in New Jersey felt to white people in the South. Parochial giving[14] to the Commission in that year amounted to $221.12, while the amount raised to ameliorate “Southern suffering” generally was $3437.31.[15]

Clearly, when compellingly called and meaningfully convinced, the white Episcopalians of the diocese had the capacity to address dramatic perceived needs, it’s just that for a quite a long time they were neither compellingly called to, nor deeply convinced of the need for, significant financial support for the formerly enslaved. Diocesan reporting for 1868 shows that the number of congregations supporting the Freedman’s Commission had increased to thirteen,[16] but the raw total of giving was still entirely eclipsed by giving to “southern clergy” and “destitute southern churches.” In his Episcopal Address of 1868 Bishop Odenheimer called for greater giving, saying “let the claims of… the Freedmen… be promptly and generously responded to,”[17] but it was only a single sentence buried in a list of many other requests. After this half-hearted plea, giving for the Commission did not immediately, or broadly increase, involving only twelve churches in the 1869 diocesan reporting,[18] while giving for general “southern” relief continued to outpace Freedman’s Commission giving dramatically.[19]

After 1868 the Freedman’s Commission was renamed the Commission of Home Missions to Colored People, but support remained limited.[20] In New Jersey it appears that responsibility for overseeing fundraising for the effort during this time was given to the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Board of Missions. However, oversight for Commission giving was lumped in together with (unrelated) Mormon missions, and it appears that the same racial predilections observed in parochial giving prevailed in oversight: In her 1877 convention address, the president of the Woman’s Auxiliary, Mrs. Tiffany, while noting the report on the Freedman’s mission, chose to emphasize how the preparation of boxes for the “clergymen in the South, [had] been a particular pleasure” and how 


in these days of party strife in our country, what may so effectually tend to break its power as the manifestation of the Spirit of our Divine Master, who in His boundless love, ignored all differences of race and condition, and to whom all were ‘one in Christ Jesus.’[21]


It seems that white Episcopalians in New Jersey were very concerned to avoid the appearance of giving preferential treatment to recently freed Black Americans, in part, by making sure to generously support the white Southerners who had participated in their enslavement. By the time the work of the Commission was fully folded into the Board of Missions in 1878, parochial support in the diocese, which had never been consistent, had actually atrophied.[22]

            In the immediate aftermath of the war, Black migration to the north exploded, and between 1870 and 1910 the Black population of New Jersey tripled.[23] However, the single Black Church in the diocese until 1874, St. Philips, Newark, received only mild financial support, and after the diocese split into the Diocese of Newark and the Diocese of (southern) New Jersey, there were no Black churches in the diocese for decades.[24] There was a mission at the Black settlement of Macedonia (in Shrewsbury, NJ) starting in the 1850’s,[25] but it was never supported financially by the diocese, and only haltingly by at most a single white parish at a time. 

By the time the Freedman’s Commission was founded after the war, there was already a well-established pattern of neglect of the needs of Black people in the diocese. And even as a program of diocesan support for freed Black people in the South was slowly developing following the Civil War,[26] the pattern of local neglect in the Diocese of New Jersey did not meaningfully begin to change until Bishop Scarborough’s clear change of heart in 1890.[27] The unfortunate reality is that the diocese did little to welcome Black people after the war, and giving to the Freedman’s Commission operated, essentially, as a way to externalize the issue from the diocese.[28]

            The Freedman’s Commission ultimately ceased to be an independent entity in 1878, folding its operations into the Board of Missions. It had met with significant opposition from White Episcopalians during its existence, including outright hostility in the South, and disinterest and “aversion” in the North.[29] It did manage to create a few enduring educational institutions,[30] but the goal of more significantly and robustly supporting Black Episcopal life in the church in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War was only marginally accomplished at the time.

 


Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D.

Reparations Commission Research Historian

Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey


[1] E. A. White, and J.A. Dykman, eds., Annotated Constitution and Canons of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States (Greenwich, CT: Seabury, 1954), 1:188.

[2] See H. Peers Brewer, “The Protestant Episcopal Freedman’s Commission, 1865-1878,” HMPEC 26.4 (1957): 361-381. Unfortunately, the article by Brewer is exceedingly racist, including even favorable mention of the Ku Klux Klan. Even though Brewer seems to have an agenda of delegitimizing northern interventions in the south, the article does nevertheless manage to articulate many of the actual failings of the Commission.

[3] In 1846 New Jersey ostensibly ended slavery, but only renamed the enslaved “apprentices for life” to their enslavers, who still legally owned their labor. Slavery was not outlawed in all instances except as a punishment for a crime until the Thirteenth Amendment to the (Federal) Constitution had been passed by a majority of states (New Jersey’s state legislature voted against this in 1865 and did not ratify the amendment until it was already the law of the land and a newly elected legislature was seated in 1866).

[4] Technically the position was named “Secretary and General Agent.” See Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Third Annual Convention Held in Grace Church, Newark, on Wednesday, May 30th, M,DCCC,LXVI (Philadelphia: J.B. Chandler, 1866), 72.

[5] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Third Annual Convention, 72.

[6] Such prolific enslavers as Senator Richard Stockton, and John Potter, enslaved hundreds of Black people on their plantations in the South, while maintaining residency in New Jersey and regularly holding important positions of lay authority in the Diocese of New Jersey. See Kyra Pruszinski and Jolyon Pruszinski, ed., “Trinity Church, Princeton and Slavery,” DNJRJR (April 10, 2023): https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2023/04/trinity-church-princeton-and-slavery.html. 

[7] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Third Annual Convention, 32

[8] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Third Annual Convention, 36

[9] That is, $16.64 and $125.58 respectively. Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Third Annual Convention, 32.

[10] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Third Annual Convention, 31.

[11] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Third Annual Convention, 36.

[12] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Fourth Annual Convention Held in St. Mary’s Church, Burlington, on Wednesday and Thursday, May 29th and 30th, MDCCCLXVII (New York: John W. Amerman, 1867), 63-109: St. Mary’s, Burlington ($62.96); Christ Church, Bloomfield ($14.50); St. John’s, Boonton ($20); Grace, Haddonfield ($10); Trinity, Moorestown ($13.78); St. Peter’s, Morristown ($42); Church of the Redeemer, Morristown ($16.91); Christ Church, Newton ($37.17); Christ Church, Waterford ($3.80). Of these nine only five gave more to the Freedman’s work than to general “Southern Relief.”

[13] This letter is reprinted in Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Fourth Annual Convention (page 161), in the appendix to the Episcopal address: “MARCH 13TH, 1867. ON THE FAMINE IN THE SOUTH. To the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of New-Jersey: BELOVED BRETHREN: Authentic statements assure us that a famine exists in large sections of the South, and that men, women and children are dying for want of food. Let us, for JESUS’ sake, help our suffering brethren, and let us do it promptly, cheerfully, generously. I recommend that a collection, for the relief of the sufferers by famine in the South, be made in each Church, Chapel and Mission of the Diocese of New-Jersey, at the earliest day possible; and that the proceeds be immediately forwarded to James M. Brown, Esq., No. 61 Wall-street, New-York, Treasurer of the Southern Relief Commission. Affectionately, your Bishop, WILLIAM HENRY ODENHEIMER. LENT, A.D. 1867.”

[14] From churches in the Diocese of New Jersey

[15] This latter figure includes giving for “Southern clergy.” See Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Fourth Annual Convention, 64-111.

[16] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Fifth Annual Convention, Held in Grace Church, Newark, on Wednesday and Thursday, May 27th and 28th, MDCCCLXVIII (New York: John W. Amerman, 1868), 64-107: Christ Church, Belleville ($7); Christ Church, Bloomfield ($20.85); Christ Church, Elizabeth ($37.30); St. Paul’s, Englewood ($35); Trinity, Moorestown ($10.06); St. Peter’s, Morristown ($50.75); Redeemer, Morristown ($18.50); St. Andrew’s, Mounty Holly ($15.35); Trinity, Mount Holly ($20.38); St. John’s, Passaic ($13.37); Holy Communion, S. Orange ($13.50); Trinity, Swedesboro ($39.50); St. Michael’s, Trenton ($106.50); these totaled to $388.06.

[17] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Fifth Annual Convention, 175.

[18] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Sixth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New Jersey, Held in St. Mary’s Church, Burlington, on Tuesday and Wednesday, May 25th and 26th, MDCCCLXIX (New York: John W. Amerman, 1869), 47-84: St. Mary’s, Burlington ($41.50); Trinity, Bayonne ($40); St. Paul’s, Englewood ($30.85); Trinity, Moorestown ($8.04); St. Peter’s, Morristown ($37); Grace, Newark ($26.04); Trinity, Newark ($237.85); St. John the Evangelist, New Brunswick ($12.61); Grace, Orange ($159.18); St. Paul’s, Paterson ($40); St. John’s, Salem ($51.77); Trinity, Swedesboro ($24.19); for a total of only $709.03.

[19] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Eighty-Sixth Annual Convention, 47-92.

[20] It did grow slowly over time, though.

[21] Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Ninety-fourth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, In the Diocese of New Jersey, Held in St. John’s Church, Elizabeth, Tuesday and Wednesday, May 29th and 30th, MDCCCLXXVII (Trenton, NJ: John L. Murphy, 1877), 35.

[22] The 1879 diocesan convention journal only reports eight congregations supporting the work, and the support is comparatively modest. Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the Ninety-Sixth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the Diocese of New Jersey, Held in Christ Church, New Brunswick, Tuesday and Wednesday, May 27th and 28th, MDCCCLXXIX (Princeton: C.S. Robinson, 1879), 104-136. For the next few years support was very modest.

[23] Giles R. Wright, Afro-Americans in New Jersey: A Short History (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1988), 45.

[24] Though, of course, St. Philip’s joined the Diocese of Newark.

[25] Jolyon Pruszinski, “The Episcopal Mission at the Free Black Settlement of Macedonia, NJ,” DNJRJR (May 26, 2025): https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2025/05/the-episcopal-mission-at-free-black.html. 

[26] This took the form of giving for domestic “colored” missions in the South. However during this period it was never more than a small minority of churches in the diocese that were involved, and even the raw totals of giving to support the Commission at the parishes did give, rarely eclipsed 1% of their total giving. See Jolyon Pruszinski, “All Parochial Giving (1866-1878) to the Freedman’s Commission in the Diocese of New Jersey,” DNJRJR (May 8, 2025): https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2025/05/all-parochial-giving-1866-1878-to.html.

[27] Jolyon Pruszinski, “Bishop Scarborough’s Convention Address of 1890,” DNJRJR (January 1, 2024): https://dionj-racialjusticereview.blogspot.com/2024/01/bishop-scarboroughs-convention-address.html. 

[28] As intimated by Bishop Scarborough in The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Jersey, Journal of the Proceedings of the One Hundred and Eighteenth Convention, Being the One Hundred and Fifth Year of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of New Jersey; Held in St. Mary’s Church, Burlington, Tuesday, May 6th, and Wednesday, May 7th, 1890. Together with Appendices and the Episcopal Address (Princeton: The Princeton Press, 1890), 168-169.

[30] Such as St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, NC (originally founded as a “Normal School”).

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