"Intimately connected with their ignorance is their superstition. They believe in second sight, in apparitions, charms, witchcraft, and in a kind of irresistible Satanic influence. The superstitions brought from Africa have not been wholly laid aside (p. 128). Ignorance and superstition render them easy dupes to their teachers, doctors, prophets, conjurers; to artful, designing men. When fairly committed to such leaders, they may be brought to the commission of almost any crime. Facts in their history prove this. On certain occasions, they have been made to believe, that, while they carried about their persons some charm with which they had been furnished, they were _invulnerable_.[C] They have, on certain other occasions, been made to believe that they were under a protection that rendered them invincible.... They have been known to be so perfectly and fearfully under the influence of some leader or conjurer or minister, that they have not dared to disobey him in the least particular; nor to disclose their own intended or perpetrated crimes, in view of inevitable death itself; notwithstanding all other influences brought to bear upon them."
"The discipline of colored members is involved, tedious, vexatious, and _disgusting_" (p. 131). "_Excommunications and suspensions are of perpetual occurrence, for crimes shocking in character_, and of themselves sufficient to show the general state of morals; _such, for example, as adultery, fornication, theft, lying, drunkenness, quarrelling, and fighting_. The first three are their most common vices." Page 135: "They are, proverbially, _thieves_. They bear this character in Africa; they have borne it in all countries whither they have been carried; it has been the character of slaves in all ages, whatever their nation or color. They steal from each other, from their masters, from anybody.... Their veracity is nominal." Page 136: "The number, the variety, and ingenuity of falsehoods that can be told by them in a few brief moments, is most astonishing.... Servants, however, who will neither steal nor lie, may be found, and in no inconsiderable numbers."
Other similar extracts, and touching other vices, might be given; but these seem amply sufficient to justify the general conclusion to which Mr. Jones arrives, p. 153, that "they are, intellectually and morally, a degraded people, the most so of any in the United States; and while, from their universal (?) profession of the Christian system, and their attendance upon its ordinances of worship, and the absence of all fixed forms of idolatry, they cannot _strictly_ be termed _heathen_, yet may they with propriety be termed _the heathen of our land_." In a sermon preached by him in Georgia, and published at Savannah in 1831, he calls them "_a nation of heathen in our very midst_" ("Jay's Letter," p. 11). Abundant confirmation of this conclusion exists. The Hon. Chas. C. Pinckney, in his "Address before the Agricultural Society of South Carolina" (Charleston, 1829, second edit. pp. 10-12; Jones's "Relig. Inst." p. 141), says, "There needs no stronger illustration of the doctrine of human depravity than the state of morals on plantations in general." "Who would credit it," asks the Committee of the Synod of South Carolina and Georgia in 1833, "that, in these years of revival and benevolent effort, in this Christian republic, there are _over two millions of human beings in the condition of heathen, and in some respects in a worse condition_? From long-continued and close observation, we believe that their moral and religious condition is such that they may justly be considered the _heathen_ of this Christian country." The Executive Committee of the Kentucky Union for the Moral and Religious Improvement of the Colored Race, in their "Circular to the Ministers of the Gospel in Kentucky," 1834 (Jones's "Relig. Inst." p. 143), say, "We desire not to represent that condition worse than it is. Doubtless, the light that shines around them, more or less illuminates their minds, and moralizes their characters. We hope and believe, that some of them, though poor in this world's goods, will be found rich in spiritual possessions in the day when the King of Zion shall make up his jewels. We know that many of them are included in the visible church, and frequently exhibit great zeal; but it is to be feared, that it is often a zeal without knowledge; and of the majority it must be confessed, that the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. After making all reasonable allowances, _our colored population can be considered, at the most, but semi-heathen_."