For some of the whites this occasion was highly festive, for
others, intensely religious; but for any negro it might easily be both at
once. Preachers in relays delivered sermons at brief intervals from
sunrise until after nightfall; and most of the sermons were followed by
exhortations for sinners to advance to the mourners' benches to receive
the more intimate and individual suasion of the clergy and their corps of
assisting brethren and sisters. The condition was highly hypnotic, and the
professions of conversion were often quite as ecstatic as the most fervid
ministrant could wish. The negroes were particularly welcome to the
preachers, for they were likely to give the promptest response to the
pulpit's challenge and set the frenzy going. A Georgia preacher, for
instance, in reporting from one of these camps in 1807, wrote: "The first
day of the meeting, we had a gentle and comfortable moving of the spirit of
the Lord among us; and at night it was much more powerful than before, and
the meeting was kept up all night without intermission. However, before
day the white people retired, and the meeting was continued by the black
people." It is easy to see who led the way to the mourners' bench.
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