Henry McNeal Turner
Henry McNeal Turner (February 1, 1834 – May 8, 1915) was a minister, politician, and the 12th elected and consecrated bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME); he was a pioneer in Georgia in organizing new congregations of the independent black denomination after the American Civil War. Born free in South Carolina, Turner learned to read and write and became a Methodist preacher. He joined the AME Church in St. Louis, Missouri in 1858, where he became a minister. Later he had pastorates in Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC.
In 1863 during the American Civil War, Turner was appointed as the first black chaplain in the United States Colored Troops. Afterward, he was appointed to the Freedmen’s Bureau in Georgia. He settled in Macon and was elected to the state legislature in 1868 during Reconstruction. He planted many AME churches in Georgia after the war. In 1880 he was elected as the first southern bishop of the AME Church after a fierce battle within the denomination.
Angered by the Democrats’ regaining power and instituting Jim Crow laws in the late nineteenth century South, Turner began to support black nationalism and emigration of blacks to Africa. He was the chief figure to do so in the late nineteenth century; this emigration movement increased after World War I.
At the age of 14, Turner was inspired by a Methodist revival and swore to become a pastor. He received his preacher’s license at the age of 19 from the Methodist Church South in 1853 (the national church had divided in 1844 over the issue of slavery). Turner traveled through the South for a few years as an evangelist and exhorter.
In 1858 he moved with his family to Saint Louis, Missouri. The demand for slaves in the South made him fear that members of his family might be kidnapped and sold into slavery, as has been documented for hundreds of free blacks. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 increased the incentives for capture of fugitive slaves and required slave traders and people they hired as slavecatchers to provide little documentation to prove their slave status. In St. Louis, Turner became ordained as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and studied the classics, Hebrew and divinity at Trinity College.
He also served in pastorates in Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC, where he met influential Republicans.
When the Civil War broke out, Turner was still training in Baltimore. In April 1862 he was assigned to the largest AME church in Washington, D.C., Israel Church on Capitol Hill, near both the heart of government and the war in Virginia. Congressmen and army officers visited to hear Turner preach.
During the American Civil War, Turner organized one of the first regiments of black troops (Company B of the First United States Colored Troops), and was appointed as its chaplain. Turned urged both free-born blacks and “contrabands” to enlist. Turner regularly preached to the men while they trained and reminded them that the “destiny of their race depended on their loyalty and courage”. It was not uncommon for the regiment to march to Turner’s church to hear his patriotic speeches. In July 1863 the regiment had completed its formation and was preparing to leave for war. In November of that year, Turner received his commission as chaplain, becoming the only black officer in the 1st USCT.
Turner discovered that the duties of a Union army chaplain in the Civil War were not well defined. Before the war, chaplains only taught school at army posts. During the war, the duties expanded to include holding worship services and prayer meetings, visiting the sick and wounded in hospitals, and burying the dead. Each chaplain had to work out his role in his regiment according to the expectations of the men in his care and his own talents. For Turner, this appointment allowed him to grow in influence among the African-American population.
Turner was a chaplain for two years. Not long after reporting for duty, he caught smallpox and spent months in the hospital. He returned in May, just in time for his company to participate in its first Battle of Wilson’s Wharf on the James River. From May through December, his unit participated in the fighting around Petersburg and Richmond. At the end of the year, they participated in the massive amphibious attack against Fort Fisher.
Turner spent the spring of 1865 with his men as they joined Sherman’s march through North Carolina. When the fighting ended, he was sent to Roanoke Island to help supervise a large settlement of ex-slaves. Discharged in September, he received another army commission as chaplain of a different African American regiment, which was assigned to the Freedmen’s Bureau in Georgia. Shortly after arriving he resigned and left the army. He turned his attention to politics, civil rights, black nationalism, and the development among the Southern freedmen of the AME Church.
Content: Wikipedia
Photo: Christianity Today
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