Matthews’s sympathies may have been instantly aroused by the sight of African Methodists at prayer. Along with the Quakers, the Methodists, and some smaller denominations, the Anti-Burghers had stood in the religious vanguard of American anti-slavery since the end of the eighteenth century. Although Matthews would never register any formal anti-slavery commitment, he would have learned as a boy to regard human bondage as a cruel blasphemy, a violation of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. He also would have learned to reject the cruder forms of racialist dogma. Anti-Burgher churches, including
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