The article discusses the trials of Baptist Minister Robert Ryland, president of the University of Richmond. Topics include Ryland's argument in the "Religious Herald" that white Christians had the right and responsibility to minister to enslaved people around them, attacks against him by those who wanted to use his ministry to ensnare runaways, and his final message in his memoirs in 1899 when a new system of segregation was being created regarding the misconception of the African race.