[Footnote 1: Matlack, History of American Slavery and Methodism, pp. 29 et seq.; McTyeire, History of Methodism, p. 28.]

Frequently in contact with men who were advocating the right of the Negroes to be educated, statesmen as well as churchmen could not easily evade the question. Washington did not have much to say about it and did little more than to provide for the ultimate liberation of his slaves and the teaching of their children to read.[1] Less aid to this movement came from John Adams, although he detested slavery to the extent that he never owned a bondman, preferring to hire freemen at extra cost to do his work.[2] Adams made it clear that he favored gradual emancipation. But he neither delivered any inflammatory speeches against slaveholders neglectful of the instruction of their slaves, nor devised any scheme for their enjoyment of freedom. So was it with Hamilton who, as an advocate of the natural rights of man, opposed the institution of slavery, but, with the exception of what assistance he gave the New York African Free Schools[3] said and did little to promote the actual education of the colored people.

[Footnote 1: Lossing, Life of George Washington, vol. iii., p. 537.]

[Footnote 2: Adams, Works of John Adams, vol. viii., p. 379; vol. ix., p. 92; vol. x., p. 380.]

[Footnote 3: Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 57.]

Madison in stating his position on this question was a little more definite than some of his contemporaries. Speaking of the necessary preparation of the colored people for emancipation he thought it was possible to determine the proper course of instruction. He believed, however, that, since the Negroes were to continue in a state of bondage during the preparatory period and to be within the jurisdiction of commonwealths recognizing ample authority over them, "a competent discipline" could not be impracticable. He said further that the "degree in which this discipline" would "enforce the needed labor and in which a voluntary industry" would "supply the defect of compulsory labor, were vital points on which it" might "not be safe to be very positive without some light from actual experiment."[1] Evidently he was of the opinion that the training of slaves to discharge later the duties of freemen was a difficult task but, if well planned and directed, could be made a success.

[Footnote 1: Madison, Works of, vol. iii., p. 496.]

No one of the great statesmen of this time was more interested in the enlightenment of the Negro than Benjamin Franklin.[1] He was for a long time associated with the friends of the colored people and turned out from his press such fiery anti-slavery pamphlets as those of Lay and Sandiford. Franklin also became one of the "Associates of Dr. Bray." Always interested in the colored schools of Philadelphia, the philosopher was, while in London, connected with the English "gentlemen concerned with the pious design,"[2] serving as chairman of the organization for the year 1760. He was a firm supporter of Anthony Benezet,[3] and was made president of the Abolition Society of Philadelphia which in 1774 founded a successful colored school.[4] This school was so well planned and maintained that it continued about a hundred years.

[Footnote 1: Smyth, Works of Benjamin Franklin, vol. v., p. 431.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., vol. iv., p. 23.]

[Footnote 3: Smyth, Works of Benjamin Franklin, vol. v., p. 431.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., vol. x., p. 127; and Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania, p. 253.]

John Jay kept up his interest in the Negro race.[1] In the Convention of 1787 he cooeperated with Gouverneur Morris, advocating the abolition of the slave trade and the rejection of the Federal ratio. His efforts in behalf of the colored people were actuated by his early conviction that the national character of this country could be retrieved only by abolishing the iniquitous traffic in human souls and improving the Negroes.[2] Showing his pity for the downtrodden people of color around him, Jay helped to promote the cause of the abolitionists of New York who established and supported several colored schools in that city. Such care was exercised in providing for the attendance, maintenance, and supervision of these schools that they soon took rank among the best in the United States.

[Footnote 1: Jay, Works of John Jay, vol. i., p. 136; vol. iii, p. 331.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., vol. iii., p. 343.]

More interesting than the views of any other man of this epoch on the subject of Negro education were those of Thomas Jefferson. Born of pioneer parentage in the mountains of Virginia, Jefferson never lost his frontier democratic ideals which made him an advocate of simplicity, equality, and universal freedom. Having in mind when he wrote the Declaration of Independence the rights of the blacks as well as those of whites, this disciple of John Locke, could not but feel that the slaves of his day had a natural right to education and freedom. Jefferson said so much more on these important questions than his contemporaries that he would have been considered an abolitionist, had he lived in 1840.

Giving his views on the enlightenment of the Negroes he asserted that the minds of the masters should be "apprized by reflection and strengthened by the energies of conscience against the obstacles of self-interest to an acquiescence in the rights of others." The owners would then permit their slaves to be "prepared by instruction and habit" for self-government, the honest pursuit of industry, and social duty.[1] In his scheme for a modern system of public schools Jefferson included the training of the slaves in industrial and agricultural branches to equip them for a higher station in life, else he thought they should be removed from the country when liberated.[2] Capable of mental development, as he had found certain men of color to be, the Sage of Monticello doubted at times that they could be made the intellectual equals of white men,[3] and did not actually advocate their incorporation into the body politic.

[Footnote 1: Washington, Works of Jefferson, vol. vi., p. 456.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., vol. viii., p. 380; and Mayo, Educational Movement in the South, p. 37.]

[Footnote 3: As to what Jefferson thought of the Negro intellect we are still in doubt. Writing in 1791 to Banneker, the Negro mathematician and astronomer, he said that nobody wished to see more than he such proofs as Banneker exhibited that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of men of other colors, and that the appearance of a lack of such native ability was owing only to their degraded condition in Africa and America. Jefferson expressed himself as being ardently desirous of seeing a good system commenced for raising the condition both of the body and the mind of the slaves to what it ought to be as fast as the "imbecility" of their then existence and other circumstances, which could not be neglected, would admit. Replying to Gregoire of Paris, who wrote an interesting essay on the Literature of Negroes, showing the power of their intellect, Jefferson assured him that no person living wished more sincerely than he to see a complete refutation of the doubts he himself had entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature and to find that in this respect they are on a par with white men. These doubts, he said, were the result of personal observations in the limited sphere of his own State where "the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so." He said that he had expressed them with great hesitation; but "whatever be the degree of their talent, it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others." In this respect he believed they were gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances were being made toward their reestablishment on an equal footing with other colors of the human family. He prayed, therefore, that God might accept his thanks for enabling him to observe the "many instances of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which could not fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief." Yet a few days later when writing to Joel Barlow, Jefferson referred to Bishop Gregoire's essay and expressed his doubt that this pamphlet was weighty evidence of the intellect of the Negro. He said that the whole did not amount in point of evidence to what they themselves knew of Banneker. He conceded that Banneker had spherical knowledge enough to make almanacs, but not without the suspicion of aid from Ellicott who was his neighbor and friend, and never missed an opportunity of puffing him. Referring to the letter he received from Banneker, he said it showed the writer to have a mind of very common stature indeed. See Washington, Works of Jefferson, vol. v., pp. 429 and 503.]

So much progress in the improvement of slaves was effected with all of these workers in the field that conservative southerners in the midst of the antislavery agitation contented themselves with the thought that radical action was not necessary, as the institution would of itself soon pass away. Legislatures passed laws facilitating manumission,[1] many southerners emancipated their slaves to give them a better chance to improve their condition, regulations unfavorable to the assembly of Negroes for the dissemination of information almost fell into desuetude, a larger number of masters began to instruct their bondmen, and persons especially interested in these unfortunates found the objects of their piety more accessible.[2]

[Footnote 1: Locke, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 14.]

[Footnote 2: Brissot de Warville, New Travels, vol. i., p. 220; Johann Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation, p. 149.]

Not all slaveholders, however, were thus induced to respect this new right claimed for the colored people. Georgia and South Carolina were exceptional in that they were not sufficiently stirred by the revolutionary movement to have much compassion for this degraded class. The attitude of the people of Georgia, however, was then more favorable than that of the South Carolinians.[1] Nevertheless, the Georgia planters near the frontier were not long in learning that the general enlightenment of the Negroes would endanger the institution of slavery. Accordingly, in 1770, at the very time when radical reformers were clamoring for the rights of man, Georgia, following in the wake of South Carolina, reenacted its act of 1740 which imposed a penalty on any one who should teach or cause slaves to be taught or employ them "in any manner of writing whatever."[2] The penalty, however, was less than that imposed in South Carolina.[3] The same measure terminated the helpful mingling of slaves by providing for their dispersion when assembled for the old-time "love feast" emphasized so much among the rising Methodists of the South.

[Footnote 1: The laws of Georgia were not so harsh as those of South Carolina. A larger number of intelligent persons of color were found in the rural districts of Georgia. Charleston, however, was exceptional in that its Negroes had unusual educational advantages.]

[Footnote 2: Marbury and Crawford, Digest of the Laws of the State of Georgia, p. 438.]

[Footnote 3: Brevard, Digest of the Public Statutes of South Carolina, vol. ii., p. 243.]

Those advocating the imposition of restraints upon Negroes acquiring knowledge were not, however, confined to South Carolina and Georgia where the malevolent happened to be in the majority. The other States had not seen the last of the generation of those who doubted that education would fit the slaves for the exalted position of citizens. The retrogressives made much of the assertion that adult slaves lately imported, were, on account of their attachment to heathen practices and idolatrous rites, loath to take over the Teutonic civilization, and would at best learn to speak the English language imperfectly only.[1] The reformers, who at times admitted this, maintained that the alleged difficulties encountered in teaching the crudest element of the slaves could not be adduced as an argument against the religious instruction of free Negroes and the education of the American born colored children.[2] This problem, however, was not a serious one in most Northern States, for the reason that the small number of slaves in that section obviated the necessity for much apprehension as to what kind of education the blacks should have, and whether they should be enlightened before or after emancipation. Although the Northern people believed that the education of the race should be definitely planned, and had much to say about industrial education, most of them were of the opinion that ordinary training in the fundamentals of useful knowledge and in the principles of Christian religion, was sufficient to meet the needs of those designated for freedom.

[Footnote 1: Meade, Sermons of Thomas Bacon, pp. 81-87.]

[Footnote 2: Porteus, Works of, vol. vi., p. 177; Warburton, A Sermon, etc., pp. 25 and 27.]

On the other hand, most southerners who conceded the right of the Negro to be educated did not openly aid the movement except with the understanding that the enlightened ones should be taken from their fellows and colonized in some remote part of the United States or in their native land.[1] The idea of colonization, however, was not confined to the southern slaveholders, for Thornton, Fothergill, and Granville Sharp had long looked to Africa as the proper place for enlightened people of color.[2] Feeling that it would be wrong to expatriate them, Benezet and Branagan[3] advocated the colonization of such Negroes on the public lands west of the Alleghanies. There was some talk of giving slaves training in the elements of agriculture and then dividing plantations among them to develop a small class of tenants. Jefferson, a member of a committee appointed in 1779 by the General Assembly of that commonwealth to revise its laws, reported a plan providing for the instruction of its slaves in agriculture and the handicrafts to prepare them for liberation and colonization under the supervision of the home government until they could take care of themselves.[4]

[Footnote 1: Writings of James Monroe, vol. iii., pp. 261, 266, 292, 295, 321, 322, 336, 338, 349, 351, 352, 353, 378.]

[Footnote 2: Brissot de Warville, Travels, vol. i., p. 262.]

[Footnote 3: Tyrannical Libertymen, pp. 10-11; Locke, Anti-slavery, etc., pp. 31-32; Branagan, Serious Remonstrance, p. 18.]

[Footnote 4: Washington, Works of Jefferson, vol. iii., p. 296; vol. iv., p. 291 and vol. viii., p. 380.]

Without resorting to the subterfuge of colonization, not a few slaveholders were still wise enough to show why the improvement of the Negroes should be neglected altogether. Vanquished by the logic of Daniel Davis[1] and Benjamin Rush,[2] those who had theretofore justified slavery on the ground that it gave the bondmen a chance to be enlightened, fell back on the theory of African racial inferiority. This they said was so well exhibited by the Negroes' lack of wisdom and of goodness that continued heathenism of the race was justifiable.[3] Answering these inconsistent persons, John Wesley inquired: "Allowing them to be as stupid as you say, to whom is that stupidity owing? Without doubt it lies altogether at the door of the inhuman masters who give them no opportunity for improving their understanding and indeed leave them no motive, either from hope or fear to attempt any such thing." Wesley asserted, too, that the Africans were in no way remarkable for their stupidity while they remained in their own country, and that where they had equal motives and equal means of improvement, the Negroes were not only not inferior to the better inhabitants of Europe, but superior to some of them.[4]

[Footnote 1: Davis was a logical antislavery agitator. He believed that if the slaves had had the means of education, if they had been treated with humanity, making slaves of them had been no more than doing evil that good might come. He thought that Christianity and humanity would have rather dictated the sending of books and teachers into Africa and endeavors for their salvation.]

[Footnote 2: Benjamin Rush was a Philadelphia physician of Quaker parentage. He was educated at the College of New Jersey and at the Medical School of Edinburgh, where he came into contact with some of the most enlightened men of his time. Holding to the ideals of his youth, Dr. Rush was soon associated with the friends of the Negroes on his return to Philadelphia. He not only worked for the abolition of the slave trade but fearlessly advocated the right of the Negroes to be educated. He pointed out that an inquiry into the methods of converting Negroes to Christianity would show that the means were ill suited to the end proposed. "In many cases," said he, "Sunday is appropriated to work for themselves. Reading and writing are discouraged among them. A belief is inculcated among some that they have no souls. In a word, every attempt to instruct or convert them has been constantly opposed by their masters." See Rush, An Address to the Inhabitants, etc., p. 16.]

[Footnote 3: Meade, Sermons of Rev. Thomas Bacon, pp. 81-97.]

[Footnote 4: Wesley, Thoughts upon Slavery, p. 92.]

William Pinkney, the antislavery leader of Maryland, believed also that Negroes are no worse than white people under similar conditions, and that all the colored people needed to disprove their so-called inferiority was an equal chance with the more favored race.[1] Others like George Buchanan referred to the Negroes' talent for the fine arts and to their achievements in literature, mathematics, and philosophy. Buchanan informed these merciless aristocrats "that the Africans whom you despise, whom you inhumanly treat as brutes and whom you unlawfully subject to slavery with tyrannizing hands of despots are equally capable of improvement with yourselves."[2]

[Footnote 1: Pinkney, Speech in Maryland House of Delegates, p. 6.]

[Footnote 2: Buchanan, An Oration on the Moral and Political Evil of Slavery, p. 10.]

Franklin considered the idea of the natural inferiority of the Negro as a silly excuse. He conceded that most of the blacks were improvident and poor, but believed that their condition was not due to deficient understanding but to their lack of education. He was very much impressed with their achievements in music.[1] So disgusting was this notion of inferiority to Abbe Gregoire of Paris that he wrote an interesting essay on "Negro Literature" to prove that people of color have unusual intellectual power.[2] He sent copies of this pamphlet to leading men where slavery existed. Another writer discussing Jefferson's equivocal position on this question said that one would have thought that "modern philosophy himself" would not have the face to expect that the wretch, who is driven out to labor at the dawn of day, and who toils until evening with a whip over his head, ought to be a poet. Benezet, who had actually taught Negroes, declared "with truth and sincerity" that he had found among them as great variety of talents as among a like number of white persons. He boldly asserted that the notion entertained by some that the blacks were inferior in their capacities was a vulgar prejudice founded on the pride or ignorance of their lordly masters who had kept their slaves at such a distance as to be unable to form a right judgment of them.[3]

[Footnote 1: Smyth, Works of Franklin, vol. vi., p. 222.]

[Footnote 2: Gregoire, La Litterature des Negres.]

[Footnote 3: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 375.]



CHAPTER IV

ACTUAL EDUCATION

Would these professions of interest in the mental development of the blacks be translated into action? What these reformers would do to raise the standard of Negro education above the plane of rudimentary training incidental to religious instruction, was yet to be seen. Would they secure to Negroes the educational privileges guaranteed other elements of society? The answer, if not affirmative, was decidedly encouraging. The idea uppermost in the minds of these workers was that the people of color could and should be educated as other races of men.

In the lead of this movement were the antislavery agitators. Recognizing the Negroes' need of preparation for citizenship, the abolitionists proclaimed as a common purpose of their organizations the education of the colored people with a view to developing in them self-respect, self-support, and usefulness in the community.[1]

[Footnote 1: Smyth, Works of Benjamin Franklin, vol. x., p. 127; Torrey, Portraiture of Slavery, p. 21. See also constitution of almost any antislavery society organized during this period.]

The proposition to cultivate the minds of the slaves came as a happy solution of what had been a perplexing problem. Many Americans who considered slavery an evil had found no way out of the difficulty when the alternative was to turn loose upon society so many uncivilized men without the ability to discharge the duties of citizenship.[1] Assured then that the efforts at emancipation would be tested by experience, a larger number of men advocated abolition. These leaders recommended gradual emancipation for States having a large slave population, that those designated for freedom might first be instructed in the value and meaning of liberty to render them comfortable in the use of it.[2] The number of slaves in the States adopting the policy of immediate emancipation was not considered a menace to society, for the schools already open to colored people could exert a restraining influence on those lately given the boon of freedom. For these reasons the antislavery societies had in their constitutions a provision for a committee of education to influence Negroes to attend school, superintend their instruction, and emphasize the cultivation of the mind as the necessary preparation for "that state in society upon which depends our political happiness."[3] Much stress was laid upon this point by the American Convention of Abolition Societies in 1794 and 1795 when the organization expressed the hope that freedmen might participate in civil rights as fast as they qualified by education.[4]

[Footnote 1: Washington, Works of Jefferson, vol. vi., p. 456; vol. viii., p. 379; Madison, Works of, vol. iii., p. 496; Monroe, Writings of, vol. iii., pp. 321, 336, 349, 378; Adams, Works of John Adams, vol. ix., p. 92 and vol. x., p. 380.]

[Footnote 2: Proceedings of the American Convention, etc., 1797, address.]

[Footnote 3: The constitution of almost any antislavery society of that time provided for this work. See Proc. of Am. Conv., etc., 1795, address.]

[Footnote 4: Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies, 1794, p. 21; and 1795, p. 17; and Rise and Progress of the Testimony of Friends, etc., p. 27.]

This work was organized by the abolitionists but was generally maintained by members of the various sects which did more for the enlightenment of the people of color through the antislavery organizations than through their own.[1] The support of the clergy, however, did not mean that the education of the Negroes would continue incidental to the teaching of religion. The blacks were to be accepted as brethren and trained to be useful citizens. For better education the colored people could then look to the more liberal sects, the Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, who prior to the Revolution had been restrained by intolerance from extensive proselyting. Upon the attainment of religious liberty they were free to win over the slaveholders who came into the Methodist and Baptist churches in large numbers, bringing their slaves with them.[2] The freedom of these "regenerated" churches made possible the rise of Negro exhorters and preachers, who to exercise their gifts managed in some way to learn to read and write. Schools for the training of such leaders were not to be found, but to encourage ambitious blacks to qualify themselves white ministers often employed such candidates as attendants, allowing them time to observe, to study, and even to address their audiences.[3]

[Footnote 1: The antislavery societies were at first the uniting influence among all persons interested in the uplift of the Negroes. The agitation had not then become violent, for men considered the institution not a sin but merely an evil.]

[Footnote 2: Coke, Journal, etc., p. 114; Lambert, Travels, p. 175; Baird, A Collection, etc., pp. 381, 387 and 816; James, Documentary, etc., p. 35; Foote, Sketches of Virginia, p. 31; Matlack, History of American Slavery and Methodism, p. 31; Semple, History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia, p. 222.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., and Coke, Journal, etc., pp. 16-18.]

It must be observed, however, that the interest of these benevolent men was no longer manifested in the mere traditional teaching of individual slaves. The movement ceased to be the concern of separate philanthropists. Men really interested in the uplift of the colored people organized to raise funds, open schools, and supervise their education.[1] In the course of time their efforts became more systematic and consequently more successful. These educators adopted the threefold policy of instructing Negroes in the principles of the Christian religion, giving them the fundamentals of the common branches, and teaching them the most useful handicrafts.[2] The indoctrination of the colored people, to be sure, was still an important concern to their teachers, but the accession to their ranks of a militant secular element caused the emphasis to shift to other phases of education. Seeing the Negroes' need of mental development, the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Pennsylvania urged the members of that denomination in 1787 to give their slaves "such good education as to prepare them for a better enjoyment of freedom."[3] In reply to the inquiry as to what could be done to teach the poor black and white children to read, the Methodist Conference of 1790 recommended the establishment of Sunday schools and the appointment of persons to teach gratis "all that will attend and have a capacity to learn."[4] The Conference recommended that the Church publish a special text-book to teach these children learning as well as piety.[5] Men in the political world were also active. In 1788 the State of New Jersey passed an act preliminary to emancipation, making the teaching of slaves to read compulsory under a penalty of five pounds.[6]

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies, 1797.]

[Footnote 2: Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies, 1797.]

[Footnote 3: Locke, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 44.]

[Footnote 4: Washington, Story of the Negro, vol. ii, p. 121.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 121.]

[Footnote 6: Laws of New Jersey, 1788.]

With such influence brought to bear on persons in the various walks of life, the movement for the effective education of the colored people became more extensive. Voicing the sentiment of the different local organizations, the American Convention of Abolition Societies of 1794 urged the branches to have the children of free Negroes and slaves instructed in "common literature."[1] Two years later the Abolition Society of the State of Maryland proposed to establish an academy to offer this kind of instruction. To execute this scheme the American Convention thought that it was expedient to employ regular tutors, to form private associations of their members or other well-disposed persons for the purpose of instructing the people of color in the most simple branches of education.[2]

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies, 1796, p. 18.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., 1797, p. 41.]

The regular tutors referred to above were largely indentured servants who then constituted probably the majority of the teachers of the colonies.[1] In 1773 Jonathan Boucher said that two thirds of the teachers of Maryland belonged to this class.[2] The contact of Negroes with these servants is significant. In the absence of rigid caste distinctions they associated with the slaves and the barrier between them was so inconsiderable that laws had to be passed to prevent the miscegenation of the races. The blacks acquired much useful knowledge from servant teachers and sometimes assisted them.

[Footnote 1: See the descriptions of indentured servants in the advertisements of colonial newspapers referred to on pages 82-84; and Boucher, A View of the Causes, etc., p. 39.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 39 and 40.]

Attention was directed also to the fact that neither literary nor religious education prepared the Negroes for a life of usefulness. Heeding the advice of Kosciuszko, Madison and Jefferson, the advocates of the education of the Negroes endeavored to give them such practical training as their peculiar needs demanded. In the agricultural sections the first duty of the teacher of the blacks was to show them how to get their living from the soil. This was the final test of their preparation for emancipation. Accordingly, on large plantations where much supervision was necessary, trustworthy Negroes were trained as managers. Many of those who showed aptitude were liberated and encouraged to produce for themselves. Slaves designated for freedom were often given small parcels of land for the cultivation of which they were allowed some of their time. An important result of this agricultural training was that many of the slaves thus favored amassed considerable wealth by using their spare time in cultivating crops of their own.[1]

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 196.]

The advocates of useful education for the degraded race had more to say about training in the mechanic arts. Such instruction, however, was not then a new thing to the blacks of the South, for they had from time immemorial been the trustworthy artisans of that section. The aim then was to give them such education as would make them intelligent workmen and develop in them the power to plan for themselves. In the North, where the Negroes had been largely menial servants, adequate industrial education was deemed necessary for those who were to be liberated.[1] Almost every Northern colored school of any consequence then offered courses in the handicrafts. In 1784 the Quakers of Philadelphia employed Sarah Dwight to teach the colored girls sewing.[2] Anthony Benezet provided in his will that in the school to be established by his benefaction the girls should be taught needlework.[3] The teachers who took upon themselves the improvement of the free people of color of New York City regarded industrial training as one of their important tasks.[4]

[Footnote 1: See the Address of the Am. Conv. of Abolition Societies, 1794; ibid., 1795; ibid., 1797 et passim.]

[Footnote 2: Wickersham, History of Ed. in Pa., p. 249.]

[Footnote 3: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1869, p. 375.]

[Footnote 4: Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 20.]

None urged this duty upon the directors of these schools more persistently than the antislavery organizations. In 1794 the American Convention of Abolition Societies recommended that Negroes be instructed in "those mechanic arts which will keep them most constantly employed and, of course, which will less subject them to idleness and debauchery, and thus prepare them for becoming good citizens of the United States."[1] Speaking repeatedly on this wise the Convention requested the colored people to let it be their special care to have their children not only to work at useful trades but also to till the soil.[2] The early abolitionists believed that this was the only way the freedmen could learn to support themselves.[3] In connection with their schools the antislavery leaders had an Indenturing Committee to find positions for colored students who had the advantages of industrial education.[4] In some communities slaves were prepared for emancipation by binding them out as apprentices to machinists and artisans until they learned a trade.

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the American Convention, 1794, p. 14.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., 1795, p. 29; ibid., 1797, pp. 12, 13, and 31.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., 1797, p. 31.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., 1818, p. 9.]

Two early efforts to carry out this policy are worthy of notice here. These were the endeavors of Anthony Benezet and Thaddeus Kosciuszko. Benezet was typical of those men, who, having the courage of their conviction, not only taught colored people, but gladly appropriated property to their education. Benezet died in 1784, leaving considerable wealth to be devoted to the purpose of educating Indians and Negroes. His will provided that as the estate on the death of his wife would not be sufficient entirely to support a school, the Overseers of the Public Schools of Philadelphia should join with a committee appointed by the Society of Friends, and other benevolent persons, in the care and maintenance of an institution such as he had planned. Finally in 1787 the efforts of Benezet reached their culmination in the construction of a schoolhouse, with additional funds obtained from David Barclay of London and Thomas Sidney, a colored man of Philadelphia. The pupils of this school were to study reading, writing, arithmetic, plain accounts, and sewing.[1]

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 375.]

With respect to conceding the Negroes' claim to a better education, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, the Polish general, was not unlike Benezet. None of the revolutionary leaders were more moved with compassion for the colored people than this warrior. He saw in education the powerful leverage which would place them in position to enjoy the newly won rights of man. While assisting us in gaining our independence, Kosciuszko acquired here valuable property which he endeavored to devote to the enlightenment of the slaves. He authorized Thomas Jefferson, his executor, to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes and liberating them in the name of Kosciuszko, "in giving them an education in trades or otherwise, and in having them instructed for their new condition in the duties of morality." The instructors were to provide for them such training as would make them "good neighbors, good mothers or fathers, good husbands or wives, teaching them the duties of citizenship, teaching them to be defenders of their liberty and country, and of the good order of society, and whatsoever might make them useful and happy."[1] Clearly as this was set forth the executor failed to discharge this duty enjoined upon him. The heirs of the donor instituted proceedings to obtain possession of the estate, which, so far as the author knows, was never used for the purpose for which it was intended.

[Footnote 1: African Repository, vol. xi., pp. 294-295.]

In view of these numerous strivings we are compelled to inquire exactly what these educators accomplished. Although it is impossible to measure the results of their early efforts, various records of the eighteenth century prove that there was lessening objection to the instruction of slaves and practically none to the enlightenment of freedmen. Negroes in considerable numbers were becoming well grounded in the rudiments of education. They had reached the point of constituting the majority of the mechanics in slaveholding communities; they were qualified to be tradesmen, trustworthy helpers, and attendants of distinguished men, and a few were serving as clerks, overseers, and managers.[1] Many who were favorably circumstanced learned more than mere reading and writing. In exceptional cases, some were employed not only as teachers and preachers to their people, but as instructors of the white race.[2]

[Footnote 1: Georgia and South Carolina had to pass laws to prevent Negroes from following these occupations for fear that they might thereby become too well informed. See Brevard, Digest of Public Statute Laws of S.C., vol. ii., p. 243; and Marbury and Crawford, Digest of the Laws of the State of Georgia, p. 438.]

[Footnote 2: Bassett, Slavery in North Carolina, p. 74; manuscripts relating to the condition of the colored people of North Carolina, Ohio, and Tennessee now in the hands of Dr. J.E. Moorland.]

A more accurate estimate of how far the enlightenment of the Negroes had progressed before the close of the eighteenth century, is better obtained from the reports of teachers and missionaries who were working among them. Appealing to the Negroes of Virginia about 1755, Benjamin Fawcett addressed them as intelligent people, commanding them to read and study the Bible for themselves and consider "how the Papists do all they can to hide it from their fellowmen." "Be particularly thankful," said he, "for the Ministers of Christ around you, who are faithfully laboring to teach the truth as it is in Jesus."[1] Rev. Mr. Davies, then a member of the Society for Promoting the Gospel among the Poor, reported that there were multitudes of Negroes in different parts of Virginia who were "willingly, eagerly desirous to be instructed and embraced every opportunity of acquainting themselves with the Doctrine of the Gospel," and though they had generally very little help to learn to read, yet to his surprise many of them by dint of application had made such progress that they could "intelligently read a plain author and especially their Bible." Pity it was, he thought, that any of them should be without necessary books. Negroes were wont to come to him with such moving accounts of their needs in this respect that he could not help supplying them.[2] On Saturday evenings and Sundays his home was crowded with numbers of those "whose very Countenances still carry the air of importunate Petitioners" for the same favors with those who came before them. Complaining that his stock was exhausted, and that he had to turn away many disappointed, he urged his friends to send him other suitable books, for nothing else, thought he, could be a greater inducement to their industry to learn to read.

[Footnote 1: Fawcett, Compassionate Address, etc., p. 33.]

[Footnote 2: Fawcett, Compassionate Address, etc., p. 33.]

Still more reliable testimony may be obtained, not from persons particularly interested in the uplift of the blacks, but from slaveholders. Their advertisements in the colonial newspapers furnish unconscious evidence of the intellectual progress of the Negroes during the eighteenth century. "He's an 'artful,'"[1] "plausible,"[2] "smart,"[3] or "sensible fellow,"[4] "delights much in traffic,"[5] and "plays on the fife extremely well,"[6] are some of the statements found in the descriptions of fugitive slaves. Other fugitives were speaking "plainly,"[7] "talking indifferent English,"[8] "remarkably good English,"[9] and "exceedingly good English."[10] In some advertisements we observe such expressions as "he speaks a little French,"[11] "Creole French,"[12] "a few words of High-Dutch,"[13] and "tolerable German."[14] Writing about a fugitive a master would often state that "he can read print,"[15] "can read writing,"[16] "can read and also write a little,"[17] "can read and write,"[18] "can write a pretty hand and has probably forged a pass."[19] These conditions obtained especially in Charleston, South Carolina, where were advertised various fugitives, one of whom spoke French and English fluently, and passed for a doctor among his people,[20] another who spoke Spanish and French intelligibly,[21] and a third who could read, write, and speak both French and Spanish very well.[22]

[Footnote 1: Virginia Herald (Fredericksburg), Jan. 21, 1800; The Maryland Gazette, Feb. 27, 1755; Dunlop's Maryland Gazette and Baltimore Advertiser, July 23, 1776; The State Gazette of South Carolina, May 18, 1786; The State Gazette of North Carolina, July 2, 1789.]

[Footnote 2: The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston, S.C.), Sept. 26, 1797, and The Carolina Gazette, June 3, 1802.]

[Footnote 3: The Charleston Courier, June 1, 1804; The State Gazette of South Carolina, Feb. 20, and 27, 1786; and The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, Feb. 19, 1793.]

[Footnote 4: South Carolina Weekly Advertiser, Feb. 19 and April 2, 1783; State Gazette of South Carolina, Feb. 20 and May 18, 1786.]

[Footnote 5: The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advocate, Oct. 17, 1780.]

[Footnote 6: The Virginia Herald (Fredericksburg), Jan. 21, 1800; and The Norfolk and Portsmouth Chronicle, April 24, 1790.]

[Footnote 7: The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, Jan. 20 and March 1, 1800; and The South Carolina Weekly Gazette, Oct. 24 to 31, 1759.]

[Footnote 8: The City Gaz. and Daily Adv., Jan. 20 and March 1, 1800; and S.C. Weekly Gaz., Oct. 24 to 31, 1759.]

[Footnote 9: The Newbern Gazette, May 23 and Aug. 15, 1800; The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, Feb. 19, 1793; The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston, S.C.), Sept. 26, 1797; Oct. 5, 1798; Aug. 23 and Sept. 9, 1799; Aug. 18 and Oct. 3, 1800; and March 7, 1801; and Maryland Gazette, Dec. 30, 1746; and April 4, 1754; South Carolina Weekly Advertiser, Oct. 24 to 31, 1759; and Feb. 19, 1783; The Gazette of the State of South Carolina, Sept. 13 and Nov. 1, 1784; and The Carolina Gazette, Aug. 12, 1802.]

[Footnote 10: The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, Sept. 26, 1797; May 15, 1799; and Oct. 3, 1800; The State Gazette of South Carolina, Aug. 21, 1786; The Gazette of the State of South Carolina, Aug. 26, 1784; The Maryland Gazette, Aug. 1, 1754; Oct. 28, 1773; and Aug. 19, 1784; and The Columbian Herald, April 30, 1789.]

[Footnote 11: The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, Oct. 5, 1798; Aug. 18 and Sept. 18, 1800; The Gazette of the State of South Carolina, Aug. 16, 1784.]

[Footnote 12: The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, Oct. 5, 1798.]

[Footnote 13: The Maryland Gazette, Aug. 19, 1784.]

[Footnote 14: The State Gazette of South Carolina, Feb. 20 and 27, 1780.]

[Footnote 15: The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, Oct. 17, 1780. Dunlop's Maryland Gazette and Baltimore Advertiser, July 23, 1776.]

[Footnote 16: The Maryland Gazette, May 21, 1795.]

[Footnote 17: The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, Oct. 17, 1780; and Sept. 20, 1785; and The Maryland Gazette, May 21, 1795; and January 4, 1798; The Carolina Gazette, June 3, 1802; and The Charleston Courier, June 29, 1803. The Norfolk and Portsmouth Chronicle, March 19, 1791.]

[Footnote 18: The Maryland Gazette, Feb. 27, 1755; and Oct. 27, 1768; The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, Oct. 1, 1793; The Virginia Herald (Fredericksburg), Jan. 21, 1800.]

[Footnote 19: The Maryland Gazette, Feb. 1, 1755 and Feb. 1, 1798; The State Gazette of North Carolina, April 30, 1789; The Norfolk and Portsmouth Chronicle, April 24, 1790; The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston, South Carolina), Jan. 5, 1799; and March 7, 1801; The Carolina Gazette, Feb. 4, 1802; and The Virginia Herald (Fredericksburg), Jan. 21, 1800.]

[Footnote 20: The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, Jan. 5, 1799; and March 5, 1800; The Gazette of the State of South Carolina, Aug. 16, 1784; and The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, Sept. 20, 1793.]

[Footnote 21: The City Gazette of South Carolina, Jan. 5, 1799.]

[Footnote 22: The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston, South Carolina), June 22 and Aug. 8, 1797; April 1 and May 15, 1799.]

Equally convincing as to the educational progress of the colored race were the high attainments of those Negroes who, despite the fact that they had little opportunity, surpassed in intellect a large number of white men of their time. Negroes were serving as salesmen, keeping accounts, managing plantations, teaching and preaching, and had intellectually advanced to the extent that fifteen or twenty per cent. of their adults could then at least read. Most of this talented class became preachers, as this was the only calling even conditionally open to persons of African blood. Among these clergymen was George Leile,[1] who won distinction as a preacher in Georgia in 1782, and then went to Jamaica where he founded the first Baptist church of that colony. The competent and indefatigable Andrew Bryan[2] proved to be a worthy successor of George Leile in Georgia. From 1770 to 1790 Negro preachers were in charge of congregations in Charles City, Petersburg, and Allen's Creek in Lunenburg County, Virginia.[3] In 1801 Gowan Pamphlet of that State was the pastor of a progressive Baptist church, some members of which could read, write, and keep accounts.[4] Lemuel Haynes was then widely known as a well-educated minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church. John Gloucester, who had been trained under Gideon Blackburn of Tennessee, distinguished himself in Philadelphia where he founded the African Presbyterian Church.[5] One of the most interesting of these preachers was Josiah Bishop. By 1791 he had made such a record in his profession that he was called to the pastorate of the First Baptist Church (white) of Portsmouth, Virginia.[6] After serving his white brethren a number of years he preached some time in Baltimore and then went to New York to take charge of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.[7] This favorable condition of affairs could not long exist after the aristocratic element in the country began to recover some of the ground it had lost during the social upheaval of the revolutionary era. It was the objection to treating Negroes as members on a plane of equality with all, that led to the establishment of colored Baptist churches and to the secession of the Negro Methodists under the leadership of Richard Allen in 1794. The importance of this movement to the student of education lies in the fact that a larger number of Negroes had to be educated to carry on the work of the new churches.

[Footnote 1: He was sometimes called George Sharp. See Benedict, History of the Baptists, etc., p. 189.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 189.]

[Footnote 3: Semple, History of the Baptists, etc., p. 112.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 114.]

[Footnote 5: Baird, A Collection, etc., p. 817.]

[Footnote 6: Semple, History of the Baptists, etc., p. 355.]

[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 356.]

The intellectual progress of the colored people of that day, however, was not restricted to their clergymen. Other Negroes were learning to excel in various walks of life. Two such persons were found in North Carolina. One of these was known as Caesar, the author of a collection of poems, which, when published in that State, attained a popularity equal to that of Bloomfield's.[1] Those who had the pleasure of reading the poems stated that they were characterized by "simplicity, purity, and natural grace."[2] The other noted Negro of North Carolina was mentioned in 1799 by Buchan in his Domestic Medicine as the discoverer of a remedy for the bite of the rattlesnake. Buchan learned from Dr. Brooks that, in view of the benefits resulting from the discovery of this slave, the General Assembly of North Carolina purchased his freedom and settled upon him a hundred pounds per annum.[3]

[Footnote 1: Baldwin, Observations, etc., p. 20.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 21.]

[Footnote 3: Smyth, A Tour in the U.S., p. 109; and Baldwin, Observations, p. 20.]

To this class of bright Negroes belonged Thomas Fuller, a native African, who resided near Alexandria, Virginia, where he startled the students of his time by his unusual attainments in mathematics, despite the fact that he could neither read nor write. Once acquainted with the power of numbers, he commenced his education by counting the hairs of the tail of the horse with which he worked the fields. He soon devised processes for shortening his modes of calculation, attaining such skill and accuracy as to solve the most difficult problems. Depending upon his own system of mental arithmetic he learned to obtain accurate results just as quickly as Mr. Zerah Colburn, a noted calculator of that day, who tested the Negro mathematician.[1] The most abstruse questions in relation to time, distance, and space were no task for his miraculous memory, which, when the mathematician was interrupted in the midst of a long and tedious calculation, enabled him to take up some other work and later resume his calculation where he left off.[2] One of the questions propounded him, was how many seconds of time had elapsed since the birth of an individual who had lived seventy years, seven months, and as many days. Fuller was able to answer the question in a minute and a half.

[Footnote 1: Baldwin, Observations, p. 21.]

[Footnote 2: Needles, An Historical Memoir, etc., p. 32.]

Another Negro of this type was James Durham, a native slave of the city of Philadelphia. Durham was purchased by Dr. Dove, a physician in New Orleans, who, seeing the divine spark in the slave, gave him a chance for mental development. It was fortunate that he was thrown upon his own resources in this environment, where the miscegenation of the races since the early French settlement, had given rise to a thrifty and progressive class of mixed breeds, many of whom at that time had the privileges and immunities of freemen. Durham was not long in acquiring a rudimentary education, and soon learned several modern languages, speaking English, French, and Spanish fluently. Beginning his medical education early in his career, he finished his course, and by the time he was twenty-one years of age became one of the most distinguished physicians[1] of New Orleans. Dr. Benjamin Rush, the noted physician of Philadelphia, who was educated at the Edinburgh Medical College, once deigned to converse professionally with Dr. Durham. "I learned more from him than he could expect from me," was the comment of the Philadelphian upon a conversation in which he had thought to appear as instructor of the younger physician.[2]

[Footnote 1: Brissot de Warville, New Travels, vol. i., p. 223.]

[Footnote 2: Baldwin, Observations, etc., p. 17.]

Most prominent among these brainy persons of color were Phyllis Wheatley and Benjamin Banneker. The former was a slave girl brought from Africa in 1761 and put to service in the household of John Wheatley of Boston. There, without any training but that which she obtained from her master's family, she learned in sixteen months to speak the English language fluently, and to read the most difficult parts of sacred writings. She had a great inclination for Latin and made some progress in the study of that language. Led to writing by curiosity, she was by 1765 possessed of a style which enabled her to count among her correspondents some of the most influential men of her time. Phyllis Wheatley's title to fame, however, rested not on her general attainments as a scholar but rather on her ability to write poetry. Her poems seemed to have such rare merit that men marveled that a slave could possess such a productive imagination, enlightened mind, and poetical genius. The publishers were so much surprised that they sought reassurance as to the authenticity of the poems from such persons as James Bowdoin, Harrison Gray, and John Hancock.[1] Glancing at her works, the modern critic would readily say that she was not a poetess, just as the student of political economy would dub Adam Smith a failure as an economist. A bright college freshman who has studied introductory economics can write a treatise as scientific as the Wealth of Nations. The student of history, however, must not "despise the day of small things." Judged according to the standards of her time, Phyllis Wheatley was an exceptionally intellectual person.

[Footnote 1: Baldwin, Observations, etc., p. 18; Wright, Poems of Phyllis Wheatley, Introduction.]

The other distinguished Negro, Benjamin Banneker, was born in Baltimore County, Maryland, November 9, 1731, near the village of Ellicott Mills. Banneker was sent to school in the neighborhood, where he learned reading, writing, and arithmetic. Determined to acquire knowledge while toiling, he applied his mind to things intellectual, cultivated the power of observation, and developed a retentive memory. These acquirements finally made him tower above all other American scientists of his time with the possible exception of Benjamin Franklin. In conformity with his desire to do and create, his tendency was toward mathematics. Although he had never seen a clock, watches being the only timepieces in the vicinity, he made in 1770 the first clock manufactured in the United States,[1] thereby attracting the attention of the scientific world. Learning these things, the owner of Ellicott Mills became very much interested in this man of inventive genius, lent him books, and encouraged him in his chosen field. Among these volumes were treatises on astronomy, which Banneker soon mastered without any instruction.[2] Soon he could calculate eclipses of sun and moon and the rising of each star with an accuracy almost unknown to Americans. Despite his limited means, he secured through Goddard and Angell of Baltimore the publication of the first almanac produced in this country. Jefferson received from Banneker a copy, for which he wrote the author a letter of thanks. It appears that Jefferson had some doubts about the man's genius, but the fact that the philosopher invited Banneker to visit him at Monticello in 1803, indicates that the increasing reputation of the Negro must have caused Jefferson to change his opinion as to the extent of Banneker's attainments and the value of his contributions to mathematics and science.[3]

[Footnote 1: Washington, Jefferson's Works, vol. v., p. 429.]

[Footnote 2: Baldwin, Observations, etc., p. 16.]

[Footnote 3: Washington, Jefferson's Works, vol. v., p. 429.]

So favorable did the aspect of things become as a result of this movement to elevate the Negroes, that persons observing the conditions then obtaining in this country thought that the victory for the despised race had been won. Traveling in 1783 in the colony of Virginia, where the slave trade had been abolished and schools for the education of freedmen established, Johann Schoepf felt that the institution was doomed.[1] After touring Pennsylvania five years later, Brissot de Warville reported that there existed then a country where the blacks were allowed to have souls, and to be endowed with an understanding capable of being formed to virtue and useful knowledge, and where they were not regarded as beasts of burden in order that their masters might have the privilege of treating them as such. He was pleased that the colored people by their virtue and understanding belied the calumnies which their tyrants elsewhere lavished against them, and that in that community one perceived no difference between "the memory of a black head whose hair is craped by nature, and that of the white one craped by art."[2]

[Footnote 1: Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation, p. 149.]

[Footnote 2: Brissot de Warville, New Travels, vol. I., p. 220.]



CHAPTER V

BETTER BEGINNINGS

Sketching the second half of the eighteenth century, we have observed how the struggle for the rights of man in directing attention to those of low estate, and sweeping away the impediments to religious freedom, made the free blacks more accessible to helpful sects and organizations. We have also learned that this upheaval left the slaves the objects of piety for the sympathetic, the concern of workers in behalf of social uplift, a class offered instruction as a prerequisite to emancipation. The private teaching of Negroes became tolerable, benevolent persons volunteered to instruct them, and some schools maintained for the education of white students were thrown open to those of African blood. It was the day of better beginnings. In fact, it was the heyday of victory for the ante-bellum Negro. Never had his position been so advantageous; never was it thus again until the whole race was emancipated. Now the question which naturally arises here is, to what extent were such efforts general? Were these beginnings sufficiently extensive to secure adequate enlightenment to a large number of colored people? Was interest in the education of this class so widely manifested thereafter as to cause the movement to endure? A brief account of these efforts in the various States will answer these questions.

In the Northern and Middle States an increasing number of educational advantages for the white race made germane the question as to what consideration should be shown to the colored people.[1] A general admission of Negroes to the schools of these progressive communities was undesirable, not because of the prejudice against the race, but on account of the feeling that the past of the colored people having been different from that of the white race, their training should be in keeping with their situation. To meet their peculiar needs many communities thought it best to provide for them "special," "individual," or "unclassified" schools adapted to their condition.[2] In most cases, however, the movement for separate schools originated not with the white race, but with the people of color themselves.

[Footnote 1: Niles's Register, vol. xvi., pp. 241-243 and vol. xxiii., p. 23.]

[Footnote 2: See The Proceedings of the Am. Conv. of Abolition Societies.]

In New England, Negroes had almost from the beginning of their enslavement some chance for mental, moral, and spiritual improvement, but the revolutionary movement was followed in that section by a general effort to elevate the people of color through the influence of the school and church. In 1770 the Rhode Island Quakers were endeavoring to give young Negroes such an education as becomes Christians. In 1773 Newport had a colored school, maintained by a society of benevolent clergymen of the Church of England, with a handsome fund for a mistress to teach thirty children reading and writing. Providence did not exhibit such activity until the nineteenth century. Having a larger black population than any other city in New England, Boston was the center of these endeavors. In 1798 a separate school for colored children, under the charge of Elisha Sylvester, a white man, was established in that city in the house of Primus Hall, a Negro of very good standing.[1] Two years later sixty-six free blacks of that city petitioned the school committee for a separate school, but the citizens in a special town meeting called to consider the question refused to grant this request.[2] Undaunted by this refusal, the patrons of the special school established in the house of Primus Hall, employed Brown and Hall of Harvard College as instructors, until 1806.[3] The school was then moved to the African Meeting House in Belknap Street where it remained until 1835 when, with funds contributed by Abiel Smith, a building was erected. An epoch in the history of Negro education in New England was marked in 1820, when the city of Boston opened its first primary school for the education of colored children.[4]

[Footnote 1: Special Report of U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 357.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 357.]

[Footnote 3: Next to be instructor of this institution was Prince Saunders, who was brought to Boston by Dr. Channing and Caleb Bingham in 1809. Brought up in the family of a Vermont lawyer, and experienced as a diplomatic official of Emperor Christopher of Hayti, Prince Saunders was able to do much for the advancement of this work. Among others who taught in this school was John B. Russworm, a graduate of Bowdoin College, and, later, Governor of the Colony of Cape Palmas in Southern Liberia. See Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 357; and African Repository, vol. ii., p. 271.]

[Footnote 4: Special Rep. of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 357.]

Generally speaking, we can say that while the movement for special colored schools met with some opposition in certain portions of New England, in other parts of the Northeastern States the religious organizations and abolition societies, which were espousing the cause of the Negro, yielded to this demand. These schools were sometimes found in churches of the North, as in the cases of the schools in the African Church of Boston, and the Sunday-school in the African Improved Church of New Haven. In 1828 there was in that city another such school supported by public-school money; three in Boston; one in Salem; and one in Portland, Maine.[1]

[Footnote 1: Adams, Anti-slavery, p. 142.]

Outside of the city of New York, not so much interest was shown in the education of Negroes as in the States which had a larger colored population.[1] Those who were scattered through the State were allowed to attend white schools, which did not "meet their special needs."[2] In the metropolis, where the blacks constituted one-tenth of the inhabitants in 1800, however, the mental improvement of the dark race could not be neglected. The liberalism of the revolutionary era led to the organization in New York of the "Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves and Protecting such of them as have been or may be liberated." This Society ushered in a new day for the free persons of color of that city in organizing in 1787 the New York African Free School.[3] Among those interested in this organization and its enterprises were Melancthon Smith, John Bleecker, James Cogswell, Jacob Seaman, White Matlock, Matthew Clarkson, Nathaniel Lawrence, and John Murray, Jr.[4] The school opened in 1790 with Cornelius Davis as a teacher of forty pupils. In 1791 a lady was employed to instruct the girls in needle-work.[5] The expected advantage of this industrial training was soon realized.

[Footnote 1: La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Travels, etc., p. 233.]

[Footnote 2: Am. Conv., 1798, p. 7.]

[Footnote 3: Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 14.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., pp. 14 and 15.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 16.]

Despite the support of certain distinguished members of the community, the larger portion of the population was so prejudiced against the school that often the means available for its maintenance were inadequate. The struggle was continued for about fifteen years with an attendance of from forty to sixty pupils.[1] About 1801 the community began to take more interest in the institution, and the Negroes "became more generally impressed with a sense of the advantages and importance of education, and more disposed to avail themselves of the privileges offered them."[2] At this time one hundred and thirty pupils of both sexes attended this school, paying their instructor, a "discreet man of color," according to their ability and inclination.[3] Many more colored children were then able to attend as there had been a considerable increase in the number of colored freeholders. As a result of the introduction of the Lancastrian and monitorial systems of instruction the enrollment was further increased and the general tone of the school was improved. Another impetus was given the work in 1810.[4] Having in mind the preparation of slaves for freedom, the legislature of the State of New York, made it compulsory for masters to teach all minors born of slaves to read the Scriptures.[5]

[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 17.]

[Footnote 2: Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies, 1801, p. 6.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., 1801, Report from New York.]

[Footnote 4: Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 20.]

[Footnote 5: Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies, 1812, p. 7.]

Decided improvement was noted after 1814. The directors then purchased a lot on which they constructed a building the following year.[1] The nucleus then took the name of the New York "African Free Schools." These schools grew so rapidly that it was soon necessary to rent additional quarters to accommodate the department of sewing. This work had been made popular by the efforts of Misses Turpen, Eliza J. Cox, Ann Cox, and Caroline Roe.[2] The subsequent growth of the classes was such that in 1820 the Manumission Society had to erect a building large enough to accommodate five hundred pupils.[3] The instructors were then not only teaching the elementary branches of reading, writing, arithmetic, and geography, but also astronomy, navigation, advanced composition, plain sewing, knitting, and marking.[4] Knowing the importance of industrial training, the Manumission Society then had an Indenturing Committee find employment in trades for colored children, and had recommended for some of them the pursuit of agriculture.[5] The comptrollers desired no better way of measuring the success of the system in shaping the character of its students than to be able to boast that no pupils educated there had ever been convicted of crime.[6] Lafayette, a promoter of the emancipation and improvement of the colored people, and a member of the New York Manumission Society, visited these schools in 1824 on his return to the United States. He was bidden welcome by an eleven-year-old pupil in well-chosen and significant words. After spending the afternoon inspecting the schools the General pronounced them the "best disciplined and the most interesting schools of children" he had ever seen.[7]

[Footnote 1: Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 18.]

[Footnote 2: Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 17.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 18.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 19.]

[Footnote 5: Proceedings of the Am. Convention of Abolition Soc., 1818, P. 9; Adams, Anti-slavery, p. 142.]

[Footnote 6: Proceedings of the American Convention, etc., 1820.]

[Footnote 7: Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 20.]

The outlook for the education of Negroes in New Jersey was unusually bright. Carrying out the recommendations of the Haddonfield Quarterly Meeting in 1777, the Quakers of Salem raised funds for the education of the blacks, secured books, and placed the colored children of the community at school. The delegates sent from that State, to the Convention of the Abolition Societies in 1801, reported that there had been schools in Burlington, Salem, and Trenton for the education of the Negro race, but that they had been closed.[1] It seemed that not much attention had been given to this work there, but that the interest was increasing. These delegates stated that they did not then know of any schools among them exclusively for Negroes. In most parts of the State, and most commonly in the northern division, however, they were incorporated with the white children in the various small schools scattered over the State.[2] There was then in the city of Burlington a free school for the education of poor children supported by the profits of an estate left for that particular purpose, and made equally accessible to the children of both races. Conditions were just as favorable in Gloucester. An account from its antislavery society shows that the local friends of the indigent had funds of about one thousand pounds established for schooling poor children, white and black, without distinction. Many of the black children, who were placed by their masters under the care of white instructors, received as good moral and school education as the lower class of whites.[3] Later reports from this State show the same tendency toward democratic education.

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the American Convention, etc., 1801, p. 12.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 12, and Quaker Pamphlet, p. 40.]

[Footnote 3: Proceedings of the American Conv., etc., 1801, p. 12.]

The efforts made in this direction in Delaware, were encouraging. The Abolition Society of Wilmington had not greatly promoted the special education of "the Blacks and the people of color." In 1801, however, a school was kept the first day of the week by one of the members of the Society, who instructed them gratis in reading, writing, and arithmetic. About twenty pupils generally attended and by their assiduity and progress showed themselves as "capable as white persons laboring under similar disadvantages."[1] In 1802 plans for the extension of this system were laid and bore good fruit the following year.[2] Seven years later, however, after personal and pecuniary aid had for some time been extended, the workers had still to lament that beneficial effects had not been more generally experienced, and that there was little disposition to aid them in their friendly endeavors.[3] In 1816 more important results had been obtained. Through a society formed a few years prior to this date for the express purpose of educating colored children, a school had been established under a Negro teacher. He had a fair attendance of bright children, who "by the facility with which they took in instruction were silently but certainly undermining the prejudice"[4] against their education. A library of religious and moral publications had been secured for this institution. In addition to the school in Wilmington there was a large academy for young colored women, gratuitously taught by a society of young ladies. The course of instruction covered reading, writing, and sewing. The work in sewing proved to be a great advantage to the colored girls, many of whom through the instrumentality of that society were provided with good positions.[5]

[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 20.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., 1802, p. 17.]

[Footnote 3: Proceedings of the American Convention, etc., 1809, p. 20.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., 1816, p. 20.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., 1821, p. 18.]

In Pennsylvania the interest of the large Quaker element caused the question of educating Negroes to be a matter of more concern to that colony than it was to the others. Thanks to the arduous labors of the antislavery movement, emancipation was provided for in 1780. The Quakers were then especially anxious to see masters give their "weighty and solid attention" to qualifying slaves for the liberty intended. By the favorable legislation of the State the poor were by 1780 allowed the chance to secure the rudiments of education.[1] Despite this favorable appearance of things, however, friends of the despised race had to keep up the agitation for such a construction of the law as would secure to the Negroes of the State the educational benefits extended to the indigent. The colored youth of Pennsylvania thereafter had the right to attend the schools provided for white children, and exercised it when persons interested in the blacks directed their attention to the importance of mental improvement.[2] But as neither they nor their defenders were numerous outside of Philadelphia and Columbia, not many pupils of color in other parts of the State attended school during this period. Whatever special effort was made to arouse them to embrace their opportunities came chiefly from the Quakers.

[Footnote 1: A.M.E. Church Review, vol. xv., p. 625.]

[Footnote 2: Wickersham, History of Education in Pa., p. 253.]

Not content with the schools which were already opened to Negroes, the friends of the race continued to agitate and raise funds to extend their philanthropic operations. With the donation of Anthony Benezet the Quakers were able to enlarge their building and increase the scope of the work. They added a female department in which Sarah Dwight[1] was teaching the girls spelling, reading, and sewing in 1784. The work done in Philadelphia was so successful that the place became the rallying center for the Quakers throughout the country,[2] and was of so much concern to certain members of this sect in London that in 1787 they contributed five hundred pounds toward the support of this school.[3] In 1789 the Quakers organized "The Society for the Free Instruction of the Orderly Blacks and People of Color." Taking into consideration the "many disadvantages which many well-disposed blacks and people of color labored under from not being able to read, write, or cast accounts, which would qualify them to act for themselves or provide for their families," this society in connection with other organizations established evening schools for the education of adults of African blood.[4] It is evident then that with the exception of the school of the Abolition Society organized in 1774, and the efforts of a few other persons generally cooeperating like the anti-slavery leaders with the Quakers, practically all of the useful education of the colored people of this State was accomplished in their schools. Philadelphia had seven colored schools in 1797.[5]

[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 251.]

[Footnote 2: Quaker Pamphlet, p. 42.]

[Footnote 3: Wickersham, History of Ed. in Pa., p. 252.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 251.]

[Footnote 5: Turner, The Negro in Pa., p. 128.]

The next decade was of larger undertakings.[1] The report of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society of 1801 shows that there had been an increasing interest in Negro education. For this purpose the society had raised funds to the amount of $530.50 per annum for three years.[2] In 1803 certain other friends of the cause left for this purpose two liberal benefactions, one amounting to one thousand dollars, and the other to one thousand pounds.[3] With these contributions the Quakers and Abolitionists erected in 1809 a handsome building valued at four thousand dollars. They named it Clarkson Hall in honor of the great friend of the Negro race.[4] In 1807 the Quakers met the needs of the increasing population of the city by founding an additional institution of learning known as the Adelphi School.[5]

[Footnote 1: Parish, Remarks on the Slavery, etc., p. 43.]

[Footnote 2: Proceedings of the American Conv., 1802, p. 18.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., 1803, p. 13.]

[Footnote 4: Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the Colored People of Philadelphia, p. 19.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 20.]

After the first decade of the nineteenth century the movement for the uplift of the Negroes around Philadelphia was checked a little by the migration to that city of many freedmen who had been lately liberated. The majority of them did not "exhibit that industry, economy, and temperance" which were "expected by many and wished by all."[1] Not deterred, however, by this seemingly discouraging development, the friends of the race toiled on as before. In 1810 certain Quaker women who had attempted to establish a school for colored girls in 1795 apparently succeeded.[2] The institution, however, did not last many years. But the Clarkson Hall schools maintained by the Abolition Society were then making such progress that the management was satisfied that they furnished a decided refutation of the charge that the "mental endowments of the descendants of the African race are inferior to those possessed by their white brethren."[3] They asserted without fear of contradiction that the pupils of that seminary would sustain a fair comparison with those of any other institution in which the same elementary branches were taught. In 1815 these schools were offering free instruction to three hundred boys and girls, and to a number of adults attending evening schools. These victories had been achieved despite the fact that in regard to some of the objects of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade "a tide of prejudice, popular and legislative, set strongly against them."[4] After 1818, however, help was obtained from the State to educate the colored children of Columbia and Philadelphia.

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the American Conv., 1809, p. 16, and 1812, p. 16.]

[Footnote 2: Wickersham, History of Ed. in Pa., p. 252.]

[Footnote 3: Proceedings of the American Convention, etc., 1812, Report from Philadelphia.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., 1815, Report from Phila.]

The assistance obtained from the State, however, was not taken as a pretext for the cessation of the labors on the part of those who had borne the burden for more than a century. The faithful friends of the colored race remained as active as ever. In 1822 the Quakers in the Northern Liberties organized the Female Association which maintained one or more schools.[1] That same year the Union Society founded in 1810 for the support of schools and domestic manufactures for the benefit of the "African race and people of color" was conducting three schools for adults.[2] The Infant School Society of Philadelphia was also doing good work in looking after the education of small colored children.[3] In the course of time crowded conditions in the colored schools necessitated the opening of additional evening classes and the erection of larger buildings.

[Footnote 1: Wickersham, History of Education in Pa., p. 252.]

[Footnote 2: One of these was at the Sessions House of the Third Presbyterian Church; one at Clarkston Schoolhouse, Cherry Street; one in the Academy on Locust Street. See Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the Colored People of Philadelphia, p. 19; and Wickersham, Education in Pa., p. 253.]

[Footnote 3: Statistical Inquiry, etc., p. 19.]

At this time Maryland was not raising any serious objection to the instruction of slaves, and public sentiment there did not seem to interfere with the education of free persons of color. Maryland was long noted for her favorable attitude toward her Negroes. We have already observed how Banneker, though living in a small place, was permitted to attend school, and how Ellicott became interested in this man of genius and furnished him with books. Other Negroes of that State were enjoying the same privilege. The abolition delegates from Maryland reported in 1797 that several children of the Africans and other people of color were under a course of instruction, and that an academy and qualified teachers for them would be provided.[1] These Negroes were then getting light from another source. Having more freedom in this State than in some others, the Quakers were allowed to teach colored people.

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the American Convention, etc., 1797, p. 16.]

Most interest in the cause in Maryland was manifested near the cities of Georgetown and Baltimore.[1] Long active in the cause of elevating the colored people, the influence of the revolutionary movement was hardly necessary to arouse the Catholics to discharge their duty of enlightening the blacks. Wherever they had the opportunity to give slaves religious instruction, they generally taught the unfortunates everything that would broaden their horizon and help them to understand life. The abolitionists and Protestant churches were also in the field, but the work of the early fathers in these cities was more effective. These forces at work in Georgetown made it, by the time of its incorporation into the District of Columbia, a center sending out teachers to carry on the instruction of Negroes. So liberal were the white people of this town that colored children were sent to school there with white boys and girls who seemed to raise no objection.[2] Later in the nineteenth century the efforts made to educate the Negroes of the rural districts of Maryland were eclipsed by the better work accomplished by the free blacks in Baltimore and the District of Columbia.

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., pp. 195 et seq., and pp. 352-353.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 353.]

Having a number of antislavery men among the various sects buoyant with religious freedom, Virginia easily continued to look with favor upon the uplift of the colored people. The records of the Quakers of that day show special effort in this direction there about 1764, 1773, and 1785. In 1797 the abolitionists of Alexandria, some of whom were Quakers, had been doing effective work among the Negroes of that section. They had established a school with one Benjamin Davis as a teacher. He reported an attendance of one hundred and eight pupils, four of whom "could write a very legible hand," "read the Scriptures with tolerable facility," and had commenced arithmetic. Eight others had learned to read, but had made very little progress in writing. Among his less progressive pupils fifteen could spell words of three or four syllables and read easy lessons, some had begun to write, while the others were chiefly engaged in learning the alphabet and spelling monosyllables.[1] It is significant that colored children of Alexandria, just as in the case of Georgetown, attended schools established for the whites.[2] Their coeducation extended not only to Sabbath schools but to other institutions of learning, which some Negroes attended during the week.[3] Mrs. Maria Hall, one of the early teachers of the District of Columbia, obtained her education in a mixed school of Alexandria.[4] Controlled then by aristocratic people who did not neglect the people of color, Alexandria also became a sort of center for the uplift of the blacks in Northern Virginia.

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the Am. Conv., etc., 1797, p. 35.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., 1797, p. 36.]

[Footnote 3: Proceedings of the Am. Conv., p. 17; ibid., 1827, p. 53.]

[Footnote 4: Special Report of U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 198.]

Schools for the education of Negroes were established in Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk. An extensive miscegenation of the races in these cities had given rise to a very intelligent class of slaves and a considerable number of thrifty free persons of color, in whom the best people early learned to show much interest.[1] Of the schools organized for them in the central part of the commonwealth, those about Richmond seemed to be less prosperous. The abolitionists of Virginia, reporting for that city in 1798, said that considerable progress had been made in the education of the blacks, and that they contemplated the establishment of a school for the instruction of Negroes and other persons. They were apprehensive, however, that their funds would be scarcely sufficient for this purpose.[2] In 1801, one year after Gabriel's Insurrection, the abolitionists of Richmond reported that the cause had been hindered by the "rapacious disposition which emboldened many tyrants" among them "to trample upon the rights of colored people even in the violation of the laws of the State." For this reason the complainants felt that, although they could not but unite in the opinion with the American Convention of Abolition Societies as to the importance of educating the slaves for living as freedmen, they were compelled on account of a "domineering spirit of power and usurpation"[3] to direct attention to the Negroes' bodily comfort.