Pastoral Letter.

This 1854 reprint of a pastoral letter was written twenty years earlier by the Reverend William Meade, then the assistant Episcopal bishop of Virginia. In it he issues a directive "to the Ministers, Members, and Friends of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Virginia on the Duty of Affording Religious Instruction to Those in Bondage." Though he freed his own slaves, Meade did not denounce slaveholding as sinful and he urged slave masters to provide religious instruction for their human property. Meade was an early proponent of the American Colonization Society's plan to send free African Americans to Africa.

Citation: Pastoral Letter of the Right Rev. William Meade, Assistant Bishop of Virginia, to the Ministers, Members, and Friends, of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Virginia, on the Duty of Affording Religious Instruction to Those in Bondage. E185.7 .M4 1854. Special Collections, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA