[Footnote 1:Ibid., pp. 323-324.]

The reactionary tendency was in no sense confined to the Southern States. Laws were passed in the North to prevent the migration of Negroes to that section. Their education at certain places was discouraged. In fact, in the proportion that the conditions in the South made it necessary for free blacks to flee from oppression, the people of the North grew less tolerant on account of the large number of those who crowded the towns and cities of the free States near the border. The antislavery societies at one time found it necessary to devote their time to the amelioration of the economic condition of the refugees to make them acceptable to the white people rather than to direct their attention to mere education.[1] Not a few northerners, dreading an influx of free Negroes, drove them even from communities to which they had learned to, repair for education.

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the American Convention.]

The best example of this intolerance was the opposition encountered by Prudence Crandall, a well-educated young Quaker lady, who had established a boarding-school at Canterbury, Connecticut. Trouble arose when Sarah Harris, a colored girl, asked admission to this institution.[1] For many reasons Miss Crandall hesitated to admit her but finally yielded. Only a few days thereafter the parents of the white girls called on Miss Crandall to offer their objections to sending their children to school with a "nigger."[2] Miss Crandall stood firm, the white girls withdrew, and the teacher advertised for young women of color. The determination to continue the school on this basis incited the townsmen to hold an indignation meeting. They passed resolutions to protest through a committee of local officials against the establishment of a school of this kind in that community. At this meeting Andrew T. Judson denounced the policy of Miss Crandall, while the Rev. Samuel J. May ably defended it. Judson was not only opposed to the establishment of such a school in Canterbury but in any part of the State. He believed that colored people, who could never rise from their menial condition in the United States, should not to be encouraged to expect to elevate themselves in Connecticut. He considered them inferior servants who should not be treated as equals of the Caucasians, but should be sent back to Africa to improve themselves and Christianize the natives.[3] On the contrary, Mr. May thought that there would never be fewer colored people in this country than were found here then and that it would be unjust to exile them. He asserted that white people should grant Negroes their rights or lose their own and that since education is the primal, fundamental right of all men, Connecticut was the last place where this should be denied.[4]

[Footnote 1: Jay, An Inquiry, etc., p. 30.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 32 et seq.]

[Footnote 3: Jay, An Inquiry, etc., p. 33; and Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., pp. 328 et seq.]

[Footnote 4: Jay, An Inquiry, etc., p. 33.]

Miss Crandall and her pupils were threatened with violence. Accommodation at the local stores was denied her. The pupils were insulted. The house was besmeared and damaged. An effort was made to invoke the law by which the selectmen might warn any person not an inhabitant of the State to depart under penalty of paying $1.67 for every week he remained after receiving such notice.[1] This failed, but Judson and his followers were still determined that the "nigger school" should never be allowed in Canterbury nor any town of the State. They appealed to the legislature. Setting forth in its preamble that the evil to be obviated was the increase of the black population of the commonwealth, that body passed a law providing that no person should establish a school for the instruction of colored people who were not inhabitants of the State of Connecticut, nor should any one harbor or board students brought to the State for this purpose without first obtaining, in writing, the consent of a majority of the civil authority and of the selectmen of the town.[2]

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 331; and May, Letters to A.T. Judson, Esq., and Others, p. 5.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 5.]

The enactment of this law caused Canterbury to go wild with joy. Miss Crandall was arrested on the 27th of June, and committed to await her trial at the next session of the Supreme Court. She and her friends refused to give bond that the officials might go the limit in imprisoning her. Miss Crandall was placed in a murderer's cell. Mr. May, who had stood by her, said when he saw the door locked and the key taken out, "The deed is done, completely done. It cannot be recalled. It has passed into the history of our nation and age." Miss Crandall was tried the 23d of August, 1833, at Brooklyn, the county seat of the county of Windham. The jury failed to agree upon a verdict, doubtless because Joseph Eaton, who presided, had given it as his opinion that the law was probably unconstitutional. At the second trial before Judge Dagget of the Supreme Court, who was an advocate of the law, Miss Crandall was convicted. Her counsel, however, filed a bill of exceptions and took an appeal to the Court of Errors. The case came up on the 22d of July, 1834. The nature of the law was ably discussed by W.W. Ellsworth and Calvin Goddard, who maintained that it was unconstitutional, and by A.T. Judson and C.F. Cleveland, who undertook to prove its constitutionality. The court reserved its decision, which was never given. Finding that there were defects in the information prepared by the attorney for the State, the indictment was quashed. Because of subsequent attempts to destroy the building, Mr. May and Miss Crandall decided to abandon the school.[1]

[Footnote 1: Jay, An Inquiry, etc., p. 26.]

It resulted then that even in those States to which free blacks had long looked for sympathy, the fear excited by fugitives from the more reactionary commonwealths had caused northerners so to yield to the prejudices of the South that they opposed insuperable obstacles to the education of Negroes for service in the United States. The colored people, as we shall see elsewhere, were not allowed to locate their manual labor college at New Haven[1] and the principal of the Noyes Academy at Canaan, New Hampshire, saw his institution destroyed because he decided to admit colored students.[2] These fastidious persons, however, raised no objection to the establishment of schools to prepare Negroes to expatriate themselves under the direction of the American Colonization Society.[3]

[Footnote 1: Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color, p. 14.]

[Footnote 2: Fourth Annual Report of the American Antislavery Society, p. 34.]

[Footnote 3: Alexander, A History of Colonization on the Western Continent, p. 348.]

Observing these conditions the friends of the colored people could not be silent. The abolitionists led by Caruthers, May, and Garrison hurled their weapons at the reactionaries, branding them as inconsistent schemers. After having advanced the argument of the mental inferiority of the colored race they had adopted the policy of educating Negroes on the condition that they be removed from the country.[1] Considering education one of the rights of man, the abolitionists persistently rebuked the North and South for their inhuman policy. On every opportune occasion they appealed to the world in behalf of the oppressed race, which the hostile laws had removed from humanizing influences, reduced to the plane of beasts, and made to die in heathenism.

[Footnote 1: Jay,An Inquiry, etc., p. 26; Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series xvi., p. 319; and Proceedings of the New York State Colonization Society, 1831, p. 6.]

In reply to the abolitionists the protagonists of the reactionaries said that but for the "intrusive and intriguing interference of pragmatical fanatics"[1] such precautionary enactments would never have been necessary. There was some truth in this statement; for in certain districts these measures operated not to prevent the aristocratic people of the South from enlightening the Negroes, but to keep away from them what they considered undesirable instructors. The southerners regarded the abolitionists as foes in the field, industriously scattering the seeds of insurrection which could then be prevented only by blocking every avenue through which they could operate upon the minds of the slaves. A writer of this period expressed it thus: "It became necessary to check or turn aside the stream which instead of flowing healthfully upon the Negro is polluted and poisoned by the abolitionists and rendered the source of discontent and excitement."[2] He believed that education thus perverted would become equally dangerous to the master and the slave, and that while fanaticism continued its war upon the South the measures of necessary precaution and defense had to be continued. He asserted, however, that education would not only unfit the Negro for his station in life and prepare him for insurrection, but would prove wholly impracticable in the performance of the duties of a laborer.[3] The South has not yet learned that an educated man is a better laborer than an ignorant one.

[Footnote 1: Hodgkin, An Inquiry into the Merits of the Am. Col. Soc., p. 31; and The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Abolitionists, p. 68.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 69.]

[Footnote 3: The South Vindicated from the Treason and Fanaticism of the Abolitionists, p. 69.]



CHAPTER VIII

RELIGION WITHOUT LETTERS

Stung by the effective charge of the abolitionists that the reactionary legislation of the South consigned the Negroes to heathenism, slaveholders considering themselves Christians, felt that some semblance of the religious instruction of these degraded people should be devised. It was difficult, however, to figure out exactly how the teaching of religion to slaves could be made successful and at the same time square with the prohibitory measures of the South. For this reason many masters made no effort to find a way out of the predicament. Others with a higher sense of duty brought forward a scheme of oral instruction in Christian truth or of religion without letters. The word instruction thereafter signified among the southerners a procedure quite different from what the term meant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Negroes were taught to read and write that they might learn the truth for themselves.

Being aristocratic in its bearing, the Episcopal Church in the South early receded from the position of cultivating the minds of the colored people. As the richest slaveholders were Episcopalians, the clergy of that denomination could hardly carry out a policy which might prove prejudicial to the interests of their parishioners. Moreover, in their propaganda there was then nothing which required the training of Negroes to instruct themselves. As the qualifications of Episcopal ministers were rather high even for the education of the whites of that time, the blacks could not hope to be active churchmen. This Church, therefore, soon limited its work among the Negroes of the South to the mere verbal instruction of those who belonged to the local parishes. Furthermore, because this Church was not exceedingly militant, and certainly not missionary, it failed to grow rapidly. In most parts it suffered from the rise of the more popular Methodists and Baptists into the folds of which slaves followed their masters during the eighteenth century.

The adjustment of the Methodist and Baptist churches in the South to the new work among the darker people, however, was after the first quarter of the nineteenth century practically easy. Each of these denominations had once strenuously opposed slavery, the Methodists holding out longer than the Baptists. But the particularizing force of the institution soon became such that southern churches of these connections withdrew most of their objections to the system and, of course, did not find it difficult to abandon the idea of teaching Negroes to read.[1] Moreover, only so far as it was necessary to prepare men to preach and exhort was there an urgent need for literary education among these plain and unassuming missionaries. They came, not emphasizing the observance of forms which required so much development of the intellect, but laying stress upon the quickening of man's conscience and the regeneration of his soul. In the States, however, where the prohibitory laws were not so rigidly enforced, the instruction received in various ways from workers of these denominations often turned out to be more than religion without letters.[2]

[Footnote 1: Matlack, History of Methodism, etc., p. 132; Benedict, History of the Baptists, p. 212.]

[Footnote 2: Adams, South-side View, p. 59.]

The Presbyterians found it more difficult to yield on this point. For decades they had been interested in the Negro race and had in 1818 reached the acme of antislavery sentiment.[1] Synod after synod denounced the attitude of cruel masters toward their slaves and took steps to do legally all they could to provide religious instruction for the colored people.[2] When public sentiment and reactionary legislation made the instruction of the Negroes of the South impracticable the Presbyterians of New York and New Jersey were active in devising schemes for the education of the colored people at points in the North.[3] Then came the crisis of the prolonged abolition agitation which kept the Presbyterian Church in an excited state from 1818 to 1830 and resulted in the recession of that denomination from the position it had formerly taken against slavery.[4] Yielding to the reactionaries in 1835, this noble sect which had established schools for Negroes, trained ambitious colored men for usefulness, and endeavored to fit them for the best civil and religious emoluments, thereafter became divided. The southern connection lost much of its interest in the dark race, and fell back on the policy of the verbal instruction and memory training of the blacks that they might never become thoroughly enlightened as to their condition.

[Footnote 1: Baird, Collections, etc., pp. 814-817.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 815.]

[Footnote 3: Enormity of the Slave Trade, etc. p. 67.]

[Footnote 4: Baird, Collections, etc., pp. 816, 817.]

Despite the fact that southern Methodists and Presbyterians generally ceased to have much anti-slavery ardor, there continued still in the western slave States and in the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina, a goodly number of these churchmen, who suffered no diminution of interest in the enlightenment of Negroes. In the States of Kentucky and Tennessee friends of the race were often left free to instruct them as they wished. Many of the people who settled those States came from the Scotch-Irish stock of the Appalachian Mountains, where early in the nineteenth century the blacks were in some cases treated as equals of the whites.[1]

[Footnote 2: Fourth Annual Report of the American Antislavery Society, New York, 1837, P. 31; The New England Antislavery Almanac, 1841, p. 31; and The African Repository, vol. xxxii., p. 16.]

The Quakers, and many Catholics, however, were as effective as the mountaineers in elevating Negroes. They had for centuries labored to promote religion and education among their colored brethren. So earnest were these sects in working for the uplift of the Negro race that the reactionary movement failed to swerve them from their course. When the other churches adopted the policy of mere verbal training, the Quakers and Catholics adhered to their idea that the Negroes should be educated to grasp the meaning of the Christian religion just as they had been during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[1] This favorable situation did not mean so much, however, since with the exception of the Catholics in Maryland and Louisiana and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, not many members of these sects lived in communities of a large colored population. Furthermore, they were denied access to the Negroes in most southern communities, even when they volunteered to work as missionaries among the colored people.[2]

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, pp. 217-221.]

[Footnote 2: In several Southern States special laws were enacted to prevent the influx of such Christian workers.]

How difficult it was for these churchmen to carry out their policy of religion without letters may be best observed by viewing the conditions then obtaining. In most Southern States in which Negro preachers could not be deterred from their mission by public sentiment, they were prohibited by law from exhorting their fellows. The ground for such action was usually said to be incompetency and liability to abuse their office and influence to the injury of the laws and peace of the country. The elimination of the Christian teachers of the Negro race, and the prevention of the immigration of workers from the Northern States rendered the blacks helpless and dependent upon a few benevolent white ministers of the slave communities. During this period of unusual proselyting among the whites, these preachers could not minister to the needs of their own race.[1] Besides, even when there was found a white clergyman who was willing to labor among these lowly people, he often knew little about the inner workings of their minds, and failing to enlighten their understanding, left them the victims of sinful habits, incident to the institution of slavery.

[Footnote 1: Jones, Religious Instruction, p. 175.]

To a civilized man the result was alarming. The Church as an institution had ceased to be the means by which the Negroes of the South could be enlightened. The Sabbath-schools in which so many colored people there had learned to read and write had by 1834 restricted their work to oral instruction.[1] In places where the blacks once had the privilege of getting an elementary education, only an inconceivable fraction of them could rise above illiteracy. Most of these were freedmen found in towns and cities. With the exception of a few slaves who were allowed the benefits of religious instruction, these despised beings were generally neglected and left to die like heathen. In 1840 there were in the South only fifteen colored Sabbath-schools, with an attendance of about 1459.

[Footnote 1: Goodell, Slave Code, p. 324.]

There had never been any regular daily instruction in Christian truths, but after this period only a few masters allowed field hands to attend family prayers. Some sections went beyond this point, prohibiting by public sentiment any and all kinds of religious instruction.[1] In South Carolina a formal remonstrance signed by over 300 planters and citizens was presented to a Methodist preacher chosen by a conference of that State as a "cautious and discreet person"[2] especially qualified to preach to slaves, and pledged to confine himself to verbal instruction. In Falmouth, Virginia, several white ladies began to meet on Sunday afternoons to teach Negro children the principles of the Christian religion. They were unable to continue their work a month before the local officials stopped them, although these women openly avowed that they did not intend to teach reading and writing.[3] Thus the development of the religious education of the Negroes in certain parts of the South had been from literary instruction as a means of imparting Christian truth to the policy of oral indoctrination, and from this purely memory teaching to no education at all.

[Footnote 1: The cause of this drastic policy was not so much race hatred as the fear that any kind of instruction might cause the Negroes to assert themselves.]

[Footnote 2: Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 105, 108.]

[Footnote 3: Conway, Testimonies Concerning Slavery, p. 5.]

Thereafter the chief privilege allowed the slaves was to congregate for evening prayers conducted by themselves under the surveillance of a number of "discreet persons." The leader chosen to conduct the services, would in some cases read a passage from the Scriptures and "line a hymn," which the slaves took up in their turn and sang in a tune of their own suitable to the meter. In case they had present no one who could read, or the law forbade such an exercise, some exhorter among the slaves would be given an opportunity to address the people, basing his remarks as far as his intelligence allowed him on some memorized portion of the Bible. The rest of the evening would be devoted to individual prayers and the singing of favorite hymns, developed largely from the experience of slaves, who while bearing their burdens in the heat of the day had learned to sing away their troubles.

For this untenable position the slave States were so severely criticized by southern and northern friends of the colored people that the ministers of that section had to construct a more progressive policy. Yet whatever might be the arguments of the critics of the South to prove that the enlightenment of Negroes was not a danger, it was clear after the Southampton insurrection in 1831 that two factors in Negro education would for some time continue generally eliminated. These were reading matter and colored preachers.

Prominent among the southerners who endeavored to readjust their policy of enlightening the black population, were Bishop William Meade,[1] Bishop William Capers,[2] and Rev. C.C. Jones.[3] Bishop Meade was a native of Virginia, long noted for its large element of benevolent slaveholders who never lost interest in their Negroes. He was fortunate in finishing his education at Princeton, so productive then of leaders who fought the institution of slavery.[4] Immediately after his ordination in the Protestant Episcopal Church, Bishop Meade assumed the role of a reformer. He took up the cause of the colored people, devoting no little of his time to them when he was in Alexandria and Frederick in 1813 and 1814.[5] He began by preaching to the Negroes on fifteen plantations, meeting them twice a day, and in one year reported the baptism of forty-eight colored children.[6] Early a champion of the colonization of the Negroes, he was sent on a successful mission to Georgia in 1818 to secure the release of certain recaptured Africans who were about to be sold. Going and returning from the South he was active in establishing auxiliaries of the American Colonization Society. He helped to extend its sphere also into the Middle States and New-England.[7]

[Footnote 1: Goodloe, Southern Platform, pp. 64-65.]

[Footnote 2: Wightman, Life of Bishop William Capers, p. 294.]

[Footnote 3: Jones, Religious Instruction, Introductory Chapter.]

[Footnote 4: Goodloe, Southern Platform, p. 64.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 65.]

[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 66.]

[Footnote 7: Niles Register, vol. xvi., pp. 165-166.]

Bishop Meade was a representative of certain of his fellow-churchmen who were passing through the transitory stage from the position of advocating the thorough education of Negroes to that of recommending mere verbal instruction. Agreeing at first with Rev. Thomas Bacon, Bishop Meade favored the literary training of Negroes, and advocated the extermination of slavery.[1] Later in life he failed to urge his followers to emancipate their slaves, and did not entreat his congregation to teach them to read. He was then committed to the policy of only lessening their burden as much as possible without doing anything to destroy the institution. Thereafter he advocated the education and emancipation of the slaves only in connection with the scheme of colonization, to which he looked for a solution of these problems.[2]

[Footnote 1: Meade,Sermons of Rev. Thos. Bacon, p. 2; and Goodell, The Southern Platform, pp. 64, 65.]

[Footnote 2:Ibid., p. 65.]

Wishing to give his views on the religious instruction of Negroes, the Bishop found in Rev. Thomas Bacon's sermons that "every argument which was likely to convince and persuade was so forcibly exerted, and that every objection that could possibly be made, so fully answered, and in fine everything that ought to be said so well said, and the same things so happily confirmed ..." that it was deemed "best to refer the reader for the true nature and object of the book to the book itself."[1] Bishop Meade had uppermost in his mind Bacon's logical arraignment of those who neglected to teach their Negroes the Christian religion. Looking beyond the narrow circle of his own sect, the bishop invited the attention of all denominations to this subject in which they were "equally concerned." He especially besought "the ministers of the gospel to take it into serious consideration as a matter for which they also will have to give an account. Did not Christ," said he, "die for these poor creatures as well as for any other, and is it not given in charge of the minister to gather his sheep into the fold?"[2]

[Footnote 1: Meade, Sermons of Rev. Thos. Bacon, pp. 31,32, 81, 90, 93, 95, 104, and 105.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 104.]

Another worker in this field was Bishop William Capers of the Methodist Episcopal Church of South Carolina. A southerner to the manner born, he did not share the zeal of the antislavery men who would educate Negroes as a preparation for manumission.[1] Regarding the subject of abolition as one belonging to the State and entirely inappropriate to the Church, he denounced the principles of the religious abolitionists as originating in false philosophy. Capers endeavored to prove that the relation of slave and master is authorized by the Holy Scriptures. He was of the opinion, however, that certain abuses which might ensue, were immoralities to be prevented or punished by all proper means, both by the Church discipline and the civil law.[2] Believing that the neglect of the spiritual needs of the slaves was a reflection on the slaveholders, he set out early in the thirties to stir up South Carolina to the duty of removing this stigma.

[Footnote 1: Wightman, Life of William Capers, p. 295.]

[Footnote 2: Wightman, Life of William Capers, p. 296.]

His plan of enlightening the blacks did not include literary instruction. His aim was to adapt the teaching of Christian truth to the condition of persons having a "humble intellect and a limited range of knowledge by means of constant and patient reiteration."[1] The old Negroes were to look to preachers for the exposition of these principles while the children were to be turned over to catechists who would avail themselves of the opportunity of imparting these fundamentals to the young at the time their minds were in the plastic state. Yet all instructors and preachers to Negroes had to be careful to inculcate the performance of the duty of obedience to their masters as southerners found them stated in the Holy Scriptures. Any one who would hesitate to teach these principles of southern religion should not be employed to instruct slaves. The bishop was certain that such a one could not then be found among the preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church of South Carolina.[2]

[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 298.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 296.]

Bishop Capers was the leading spirit in the movement instituted in that commonwealth about 1829 to establish missions to the slaves. So generally did he arouse the people to the performance of this duty that they not only allowed preachers access to their Negroes but requested that missionaries be sent to their plantations. Such petitions came from C.C. Pinckney, Charles Boring, and Lewis Morris.[1] Two stations were established in 1829 and two additional ones in 1833. Thereafter the Church founded one or two others every year until 1847 when there were seventeen missions conducted by twenty-five preachers. At the death of Bishop Capers in 1855 the Methodists of South Carolina had twenty-six such establishments, which employed thirty-two preachers, ministering to 11,546 communicants of color. The missionary revenue raised by the local conference had increased from $300 to $25,000 a year.[2]

[Footnote 1: Wightman, Life of William Capers, p. 296.]

[Footnote 2; African Repository, vol. xxiv., p. 157.]

The most striking example of this class of workers was the Rev. C.C. Jones, a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Educated at Princeton with men actually interested in the cause of the Negroes, and located in Georgia where he could study the situation as it was, Jones became not a theorist but a worker. He did not share the discussion of the question as to how to get rid of slavery. Accepting the institution as a fact, he endeavored to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunates by the spiritual cultivation of their minds. He aimed, too, not to take into his scheme the solution of the whole problem but to appeal to a special class of slaves, those of the plantations who were left in the depths of ignorance as to the benefits of right living. In this respect he was like two of his contemporaries, Rev. Josiah Law[1] of Georgia and Bishop Polk of Louisiana.[2] Denouncing the policy of getting all one could out of the slaves and of giving back as little as possible, Jones undertook to show how their spiritual improvement would exterminate their ignorance, vulgarity, idleness, improvidence, and irreligion; Jones thought that if the circumstances of the Negroes were changed, they would equal, if not excel, the rest of the human family "in majesty of intellect, elegance of manners, purity of morals, and ardor of piety."[3] He feared that white men might cherish a contempt for Negroes that would cause them to sink lower in the scale of intelligence, morality, and religion. Emphasizing the fact that as one class of society rises so will the other, Jones advocated the mingling of the classes together in churches, to create kindlier feelings among them, increase the tendency of the blacks to subordination, and promote in a higher degree their mental and religious improvement. He was sure that these benefits could never result from independent church organization.[4]

[Footnote 1: Rev. Josiah Law was almost as successful as Jones in carrying the gospel to the neglected Negroes. His life is a large chapter in the history of Christianity among the slaves of that commonwealth. See Wright, Negro Education in Georgia, p. 19.]

[Footnote 2: Rhodes, History of the U.S., vol. i., p. 331.]

[Footnote 3: Jones, Religious Instruction, p. 103.]

[Footnote 4: Jones, Religious Instruction, pp. 106, 217.]

Meeting the argument of those who feared the insubordination of Negroes, Jones thought that the gospel would do more for the obedience of slaves and the peace of the community than weapons of war. He asserted that the very effort of the masters to instruct their slaves created a strong bond of union between them and their masters.[1] History, he believed, showed that the direct way of exposing the slaves to acts of insubordination was to leave them in ignorance and superstition to the care of their own religion.[2] To disprove the falsity of the charge that literary instruction given in Neau's school in New York was the cause of a rising of slaves in 1709, he produced evidence that it was due to their opposition to becoming Christians. The rebellions in South Carolina from 1730 to 1739, he maintained, were fomented by the Spaniards in St. Augustine. The upheaval in New York in 1741 was not due to any plot resulting from the instruction of Negroes in religion, but rather to a delusion on the part of the whites. The rebellions in Camden in 1816 and in Charleston in 1822 were not exceptions to the rule. He conceded that the Southampton Insurrection in Virginia in 1831 originated under the color of religion. It was pointed out, however, that this very act itself was a proof that Negroes left to work out their own salvation, had fallen victims to "ignorant and misguided teachers" like Nat Turner. Such undesirable leaders, thought he, would never have had the opportunity to do mischief, if the masters had taken it upon themselves to instruct their slaves.[3] He asserted that no large number of slaves well instructed in the Christian religion and taken into the churches directed by white men had ever been found guilty of taking part in servile insurrections.[4]

[Footnote 1: Ibid., pp. 212, 274.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 215.]

[Footnote 3: Jones, Religious Instruction, etc., p. 212.]

[Footnote 4: Plumer, Thoughts, etc., p. 4.]

To meet the arguments of these reformers the slaveholders found among laymen and preachers able champions to defend the reactionary policy. Southerners who had not gone to the extreme in the prohibition of the instruction of Negroes felt more inclined to answer the critics of their radical neighbors. One of these defenders thought that the slaves should have some enlightenment but believed that the domestic element of the system of slavery in the Southern States afforded "adequate means" for the improvement, adapted to their condition and the circumstances of the country; and furnished "the natural, safe, and effectual means"[1] of the intellectual and moral elevation of the Negro race. Another speaking more explicitly, said that the fact that the Negro is such per se carried with it the "inference or the necessity that his education—the cultivation of his faculties, or the development of his intelligence, must be in harmony with itself." In other words, "his instruction must be an entirely different thing from the training of the Caucasian," in regard to whom "the term education had widely different significations." For this reason these defenders believed that instead of giving the Negro systematic instruction he should be placed in the best position possible for the development of his imitative powers—"to call into action that peculiar capacity for copying the habits, mental and moral, of the superior race."[2] They referred to the facts that slaves still had plantation prayers and preaching by numerous members of their own race, some of whom could read and write, that they were frequently favored by their masters with services expressly for their instruction, that Sabbath-schools had been established for the benefit of the young, and finally that slaves were received into the churches which permitted them to hear the same gospel and praise the same God.[3]

[Footnote 1: Smith, Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery, pp. 228 et seq.]

[Footnote 2: Van Evrie, Negroes and Negro Slavery, p. 215.]

[Footnote 3: Smith, Lectures on the Philosophy of Slavery, p. 228.]

Seeing even in the policy of religious instruction nothing but danger to the position of the slave States, certain southerners opposed it under all circumstances. Some masters feared that verbal instruction would increase the desire of slaves to learn. Such teaching might develop into a progressive system of improvement, which, without any special effort in that direction, would follow in the natural order of things.[1] Timorous persons believed that slaves thus favored would neglect their duties and embrace seasons of religious worship for originating and executing plans for insubordination and villainy. They thought, too, that missionaries from the free States would thereby be afforded an opportunity to come South and inculcate doctrines subversive of the interests and safety of that section.[2] It would then be only a matter of time before the movement would receive such an impetus that it would dissolve the relations of society as then constituted and revolutionize the civil institutions of the South.

[Footnote 1: Jones, Religious Instruction, p. 192; Olmsted, Back Country, pp. 106-108.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 106.]

The black population of certain sections, however, was not reduced to heathenism. Although often threatening to execute the reactionary laws, many of which were never intended to be rigidly enforced, the southerners did not at once eliminate the Negro as a religious instructor.[1] It was fortunate that a few Negroes who had learned the importance of early Christian training, organized among themselves local associations. These often appointed an old woman of the plantation to teach children too young to work in the fields, to say prayers, repeat a little catechism, and memorize a few hymns.[2] But this looked too much like systematic instruction. In some States it was regarded as productive of evils destructive to southern society and was, therefore, discouraged or prohibited.[3] To local associations organized by kindly slaveholders there was less opposition because the chief aim always was to restrain strangers and undesirable persons from coming South to incite the Negroes to servile insurrection. Two good examples of these local organizations were the ones found in Liberty and McIntosh counties, Georgia. The constitutions of these bodies provided that the instruction should be altogether oral, embracing the general principles of the Christian religion as understood by orthodox Christians.[4]

[Footnote 1: This statement is based on the testimonies of ex-slaves.]

[Footnote 2: Jones, Religious Instruction, pp. 114, 117.]

[Footnote 3: While the laws in certain places were not so drastic as to prohibit religious assemblies, the same was effected by patrols and mobs.]

[Footnote 4: The Constitution of the Liberty County Association for the Religious Instruction of Negroes, Article IV.]

Directing their efforts thereafter toward mere verbal teaching, religious workers depended upon the memory of the slave to retain sufficient of the truths and principles expounded to effect his conversion. Pamphlets, hymn books, and catechisms especially adapted to the work were written by churchmen, and placed in the hands of discreet missionaries acceptable to the slaveholders. Among other publications of this kind were Dr. Capers's Short Catechism for the Use of Colored Members on Trial in the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina; A Catechism to be Used by Teachers in the Religious Instruction of Persons of Color in the Episcopal Church of South Carolina; Dr. Palmer's Cathechism; Rev. John Mine's Catechism; and C.C. Jones's Catechism of Scripture, Doctrine and Practice Designed for the Original Instruction of Colored People. Bishop Meade was once engaged in collecting such literature addressed particularly to slaves in their stations. These extracts were to be read to them on proper occasions by any member of the family.[1]

[Footnote 1: Meade, Sermons of Rev. Thomas Bacon, p. 2.]

Yet on the whole it can be safely stated that there were few societies formed in the South to give the Negroes religious and moral instruction. Only a few missionaries were exclusively devoted to work among them. In fact, after the reactionary period no propaganda of any southern church included anything which could be designated as systematic instruction of the Negroes.[1] Even owners, who took care to feed, clothe, and lodge their slaves well and treated them humanely, often neglected to do anything to enlighten their understanding as to their responsibility to God. [Footnote 1: Madison's Works, vol. in., p. 314; Olmsted, Back Country, p. 107; Birney, The American Churches, etc., p. 6; and Jones, Religious Instruction, etc., p. 100.]

Observing closely these conditions one would wonder little that many Negroes became low and degraded. The very institution of slavery itself produced shiftless, undependable beings, seeking relief whenever possible by giving the least and getting the most from their masters. When the slaves were cut off from the light of the gospel by the large plantation system, they began to exhibit such undesirable traits as insensibility of heart, lasciviousness, stealing, and lying. The cruelty of the "Christian" master to the slaves made the latter feel that such a practice was not altogether inhuman. Just as the white slave drivers developed into hopeless brutes by having human beings to abuse, so it turned out with certain Negroes in their treatment of animals and their fellow-creatures in bondage. If some Negroes were commanded not to commit adultery, such a prohibition did not extend to the slave women forced to have illicit relations with masters who sold their mulatto offspring as goods and chattels. If the bondmen were taught not to steal the aim was to protect the supplies of the local plantation. Few masters raised any serious objection to the act of their half-starved slaves who at night crossed over to some neighboring plantation to secure food. Many white men made it their business to dispose of property stolen by Negroes.

In the strait in which most slaves were, they had to lie for protection. Living in an environment where the actions of almost any colored man were suspected as insurrectionary, Negroes were frequently called upon to tell what they knew and were sometimes forced to say what they did not know. Furthermore, to prevent the slaves from cooeperating to rise against their masters, they were often taught to mistreat and malign each other to keep alive a feeling of hatred. The bad traits of the American Negroes resulted then not from an instinct common to the natives of Africa, but from the institutions of the South and from the actual teaching of the slaves to be low and depraved that they might never develop sufficient strength to become a powerful element in society.

As this system operated to make the Negroes either nominal Christians or heathen, the anti-slavery men could not be silent.[1] James G. Birney said that the slaveholding churches like indifferent observers, had watched the abasement of the Negroes to a plane of beasts without remonstrating with legislatures against the iniquitous measures.[2] Moreover, because there was neither literary nor systematic oral instruction of the colored members of southern congregations, uniting with the Church made no change in the condition of the slaves. They were thrown back just as before among their old associates, subjected to corrupting influences, allowed to forego attendance at public worship on Sundays, and rarely encouraged to attend family prayers.[3] In view of this state of affairs Birney was not surprised that it was only here and there that one could find a few slaves who had an intelligent view of Christianity or of a future life.

[Footnote 1: Tower, Slavery Unmasked, p. 394.]

[Footnote 2: Birney, American Churches, p. 6.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 7.]

William E. Charming expressed his deep regret that the whole lot of the slave was fitted to keep his mind in childhood and bondage. To Channing it seemed shameful that, although the slave lived in a land of light, few beams found their way to his benighted understanding. He was given no books to excite his curiosity. His master provided for him no teacher but the driver who broke him almost in childhood to the servile tasks which were to fill up his life. Channing complained that when benevolence would approach the slave with instruction it was repelled. Not being allowed to be taught, the "voice which would speak to him as a man was put to silence." For the lack of the privilege to learn the truth "his immortal spirit was systematically crushed despite the mandate of God to bring all men unto Him."[1]

[Footnote 1: Channing, Slavery, p. 77.]

Discussing the report that slaves were taught religion, Channing rejoiced that any portion of them heard of that truth "which gives inward freedom."[1] He thought, however, that this number was very small. Channing was certain that most slaves were still buried in heathen ignorance. But extensive as was this so-called religious instruction, he did not see how the teaching of the slave to be obedient to his master could exert much power in raising one to the divinity of man. How slavery which tends to debase the mind of the bondman could prepare it for spiritual truth, or how he could comprehend the essential principles of love on hearing it from the lips of his selfish and unjust owner, were questions which no defender of the system ever answered satisfactorily for Channing. Seeing then no hope for the elevation of the Negro as a slave, he became a more determined abolitionist.

[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 78.]

William Jay, a son of the first Chief Justice of the United States, and an abolition preacher of the ardent type, later directed his attention to these conditions. The keeping of human beings in heathen ignorance by a people professing to reverence the obligation of Christianity seemed to him an unpardonable sin. He believed that the natural result of this "compromise of principle, this suppression of truth, this sacrifice to unanimity," had been the adoption of expediency as a standard of right and wrong in the place of the revealed will of God.[1] "Thus," continued he, "good men and good Christians have been tempted by their zeal for the American Colonization Society to countenance opinions and practices inconsistent with justice and humanity."[2] Jay charged to this disastrous policy of neglect the result that in 1835 only 245,000 of the 2,245,144 slaves had a saving knowledge of the religion of Christ. He deplored the fact that unhappily the evil influence of the reactionaries had not been confined to their own circles but had to a lamentable extent "vitiated the moral sense" of other communities. The proslavery leaders, he said, had reconciled public opinion to the continuance of slavery, and had aggravated those sinful prejudices which subjected the free blacks to insult and persecution and denied them the blessings of education and religious instruction.[3]

[Footnote 1: Jay, An Inquiry, etc., p. 24.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 25.]

[Footnote 3: Jay, An Inquiry, etc., p. 26.]

Among the most daring of those who censured the South for its reactionary policy was Rev. John G. Fee, an abolition minister of the gospel of Kentucky. Seeing the inevitable result in States where public opinion and positive laws had made the education of Negroes impossible, Fee asserted that in preventing them from reading God's Word and at the same time incorporating them into the Church as nominal Christians, the South had weakened the institution. Without the means to learn the principles of religion it was impossible for such an ignorant class to become efficient and useful members.[1] Excoriating those who had kept their servants in ignorance to secure the perpetuity of the institution of slavery, Fee maintained that sealing up the mind of the slave, lest he should see his wrongs, was tantamount to cutting off the hand or foot in order to prevent his escape from forced and unwilling servitude.[2] "If by our practice, our silence, or our sloth," said he, "we perpetuate a system which paralyzes our hands when we attempt to convey to them the bread of life, and which inevitably consigns the great mass of them to unending perdition, can we be guiltless in the sight of Him who hath made us stewards of His grace? This is sinful. Said the Saviour: 'Woe unto you lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."'[3]

[Footnote 1: Fee, Antislavery Manual, p. 147.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 148.]

[Footnote 3: Fee, Antislavery Manual, p. 149.]



CHAPTER IX

LEARNING IN SPITE OF OPPOSITION

Discouraging as these conditions seemed, the situation was not entirely hopeless. The education of the colored people as a public effort had been prohibited south of the border States, but there was still some chance for Negroes of that section to acquire knowledge. Furthermore, the liberal white people of that section considered these enactments, as we have stated above, not applicable to southerners interested in the improvement of their slaves but to mischievous abolitionists. The truth is that thereafter some citizens disregarded the laws of their States and taught worthy slaves whom they desired to reward or use in business requiring an elementary education. As these prohibitions in slave States were not equally stringent, white and colored teachers of free blacks were not always disturbed. In fact, just before the middle of the nineteenth century there was so much winking at the violation of the reactionary laws that it looked as if some Southern States might recede from their radical position and let Negroes be educated as they had been in the eighteenth century.

The ways in which slaves thereafter acquired knowledge are significant. Many picked it up here and there, some followed occupations which were in themselves enlightening, and others learned from slaves whose attainments were unknown to their masters. Often influential white men taught Negroes not only the rudiments of education but almost anything they wanted to learn. Not a few slaves were instructed by the white children whom they accompanied to school. While attending ministers and officials whose work often lay open to their servants, many of the race learned by contact and observation. Shrewd Negroes sometimes slipped stealthily into back streets, where they studied under a private teacher, or attended a school hidden from the zealous execution of the law.

The instances of Negroes struggling to obtain an education read like the beautiful romances of a people in an heroic age. Sometimes Negroes of the type of Lott Carey[1] educated themselves. James Redpath discovered in Savannah that in spite of the law great numbers of slaves had learned to read well. Many of them had acquired a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic. "But," said he, "blazon it to the shame of the South, the knowledge thus acquired has been snatched from the spare records of leisure in spite of their owners' wishes and watchfulness."[2] C.G. Parsons was informed that although poor masters did not venture to teach their slaves, occasionally one with a thirst for knowledge secretly learned the rudiments of education without any instruction.[3] While on a tour through parts of Georgia, E.P. Burke observed that, notwithstanding the great precaution which was taken to prevent the mental improvement of the slaves, many of them "stole knowledge enough to enable them to read and write with ease."[4] Robert Smalls[5] of South Carolina and Alfred T. Jones[6] of Kentucky began their education in this manner.

[Footnote 1: Mott, Biographical Sketches, p. 87.]

[Footnote 2: Redpath, Roving Editor, etc., p. 161.]

[Footnote 3: Parsons, Inside View, etc., p. 248.]

[Footnote 4: Burke, Reminiscences of Georgia, p. 85.]

[Footnote 5: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 126.]

[Footnote 6: Drew, Refugee, p. 152.]

Probably the best example of this class was Harrison Ellis of Alabama. At the age of thirty-five he had acquired a liberal education by his own exertions. Upon examination he proved himself a good Latin and Hebrew scholar and showed still greater proficiency in Greek. His attainments in theology were highly satisfactory. The Eufaula Shield, a newspaper of that State, praised him as a man courteous in manners, polite in conversation, and manly in demeanor. Knowing how useful Ellis would be in a free country, the Presbyterian Synod of Alabama purchased him and his family in 1847 at a cost of $2500 that he might use his talents in elevating his own people in Liberia.[1]

[Footnote 1: Niles Register, vol. lxxi., p. 296.]

Intelligent Negroes secretly communicated to their fellow men what they knew. Henry Banks of Stafford County, Virginia, was taught by his brother-in-law to read, but not write.[1] The father of Benedict Duncan, a slave in Maryland, taught his son the alphabet.[2] M.W. Taylor of Kentucky received his first instruction from his mother. H.O. Wagoner learned from his parents the first principles of the common branches.[3] A mulatto of Richmond taught John H. Smythe when he was between the ages of five and seven.[4] The mother of Dr. C.H. Payne of West Virginia taught him to read at such an early age that he does not remember when he first developed that power.[5] Dr. E.C. Morris, President of the National Baptist Convention, belonged to a Georgia family, all of whom were well instructed by his father.[6]

[Footnote 1: Drew, Refugee, etc., p. 72.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 110.]

[Footnote 3: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 679.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 873.]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 368.]

[Footnote 6: This is his own statement.]

The white parents of Negroes often secured to them the educational facilities then afforded the superior race. The indulgent teacher of J. Morris of North Carolina was his white father, his master.[1] W.J. White acquired his education from his mother, who was a white woman.[2] Martha Martin, a daughter of her master, a Scotch-Irishman of Georgia, was permitted to go to Cincinnati to be educated, while her sister was sent to a southern town to learn the milliner's trade.[3] Then there were cases like that of Josiah Settle's white father. After the passage of the law forbidding free Negroes to remain in the State of Tennessee, he took his children to Hamilton, Ohio, to be educated and there married his actual wife, their colored mother.[4]

[Footnote 1: This is based on an account given by his son.]

[Footnote 2: The Crisis, vol. v., p. 119.]

[Footnote 3: Drew, Refugee, p. 143.]

[Footnote 4: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 539.]

The very employment of slaves in business establishments accelerated their mental development. Negroes working in stores often acquired a fair education by assisting clerks. Some slaves were clerks themselves. Under the observation of E.P. Burke came the notable case of a young man belonging to one of the best families of Savannah. He could read, write, cipher, and transact business so intelligently that his master often committed important trusts to his care.[1] B.K. Bruce, while still a slave, educated himself when he was working at the printer's trade in Brunswick, Missouri. Even farther south where slavery assumed its worst form, we find that this condition obtained. Addressing to the New Orleans Commercial Bulletin a letter on African colonization, John McDonogh stated that the work imposed on his slaves required some education for which he willingly provided. In 1842 he had had no white man over his slaves for twenty years. He had assigned this task to his intelligent colored manager who did his work so well that the master did not go in person once in six months to see what his slaves were doing. He says, "They were, besides, my men of business, enjoyed my confidence, were my clerks, transacted all my affairs, made purchases of materials, collected my rents, leased my houses, took care of my property and effects of every kind, and that with an honesty and fidelity which was proof against every temptation."[2] Traveling in Mississippi in 1852, Olmsted found another such group of slaves all of whom could read, whereas the master himself was entirely illiterate. He took much pride, however, in praising his loyal, capable, and intelligent Negroes.[3]

[Footnote 1: Burke, Reminiscences of Georgia, p. 86.

Frances Anne Kemble gives in her journal an interesting account of her observations in Georgia. She says: "I must tell you that I have been delighted, surprised, and the very least perplexed, by the sudden petition on the part of our young waiter, Aleck, that I will teach him to read. He is a very intelligent lad of about sixteen, and preferred his request with urgent humility that was very touching. I will do it; and yet, it is simply breaking the laws of the government under which I am living. Unrighteous laws are made to be broken—perhaps—but then you see, I am a woman, and Mr.—— stands between me and the penalty—. I certainly intend to teach Aleck to read; and I'll teach every other creature that wants to learn." See Kemble, Journal, p. 34.]

[Footnote 2: McDonogh, "Letter on African Colonization."]

[Footnote 3: Olmsted, Cotton Kingdom, vol. ii., p. 70.]

White persons deeply interested in Negroes taught them regardless of public opinion and the law. Dr. Alexander T. Augusta of Virginia learned to read while serving white men as a barber.[1] A prominent white man of Memphis taught Mrs. Mary Church Terrell's mother French and English. The father of Judge R.H. Terrell was well-grounded in reading by his overseer during the absence of his master from Virginia.[2] A fugitive slave from Essex County of the same State was not allowed to go to school publicly, but had an opportunity to learn from white persons privately.[3] The master of Charles Henry Green, a slave of Delaware, denied him all instruction, but he was permitted to study among the people to whom he was hired.[4] M.W. Taylor of Kentucky studied under attorneys J.B. Kinkaid and John W. Barr, whom he served as messenger.[5] Ignoring his master's orders against frequenting a night school, Henry Morehead of Louisville learned to spell and read sufficiently well to cause his owner to have the school unceremoniously closed.[6]

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 258.]

[Footnote 2: This is based on the statements of Judge and Mrs. Terrell.]

[Footnote 3: Drew, Refugee, p. 335.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 96.]

[Footnote 5: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 933.]

[Footnote 6: Drew, Refugee, p. 180.]

The educational experiences of President Scarborough and of Bishop Turner show that some white persons were willing to make unusual sacrifices to enlighten Negroes. President Scarborough began to attend school in his native home in Bibb County, Georgia, at the age of six years. He went out ostensibly to play, keeping his books concealed under his arm, but spent six or eight hours each day in school until he could read well and had mastered the first principles of geography, grammar, and arithmetic. At the age of ten he took regular lessons in writing under an old South Carolinian, J.C. Thomas, a rebel of the bitterest type. Like Frederick Douglass, President Scarborough received much instruction from his white playmates.[1]

[Footnote 1: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 410.]

Bishop Turner of Newberry Court House, in South Carolina, purchased a spelling book and secured the services of an old white lady and a white boy, who in violation of the State law taught him to spell as far as two syllables.[1] The white boy's brother stopped him from teaching this lad of color, pointing out that such an instructor was liable to arrest. For some time he obtained help from an old colored gentleman, a prodigy in sounds. At the age of thirteen his mother employed a white lady to teach him on Sundays, but she was soon stopped by indignant white persons of the community. When he attained the age of fifteen he was employed by a number of lawyers in whose favor he ingratiated himself by his unusual power to please people. Thereafter these men in defiance of the law taught him to read and write and explained anything he wanted to know about arithmetic, geography, and astronomy.[2]

[Footnote 1: Bishop Turner says that when he started to learn there were among his acquaintances three colored men who had learned to read the Bible in Charleston. See Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 806.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 806.]

Often favorite slaves were taught by white children. By hiding books in a hayloft and getting the white children to teach him, James W. Sumler of Norfolk, Virginia, obtained an elementary education.[1] While serving as overseer for his Scotch-Irish master, Daniel J. Lockhart of the same commonwealth learned to read under the instruction of his owner's boys. They were not interrupted in their benevolent work.[2] In the same manner John Warren, a slave of Tennessee, acquired a knowledge of the common branches.[3] John Baptist Snowden of Maryland was secretly instructed by his owner's children.[4] Uncle Cephas, a slave of Parson Winslow of Tennessee, reported that the white children taught him on the sly when they came to see Dinah, who was a very good cook. He was never without books during his stay with his master.[5] One of the Grimke Sisters taught her little maid to read while brushing her young mistress's locks.[6] Robert Harlan, who was brought up in the family of Honorable J.M. Harlan, acquired the fundamentals of the common branches from Harlan's older sons.[7] The young mistress of Mrs. Ann Woodson of Virginia instructed her until she could read in the first reader.[8] Abdy observed in 1834 that slaves of Kentucky had been thus taught to read. He believed that they were about as well off as they would have been, had they been free.[9] Giving her experiences on a Mississippi plantation, Susan Dabney Smedes stated that the white children delighted in teaching the house servants. One night she was formally invited with the master, mistress, governess, and guests by a twelve-year-old school mistress to hear her dozen pupils recite poetry. One of the guests was quite astonished to see his servant recite a piece of poetry which he had learned for this occasion.[10] Confining his operations to the kitchen, another such teacher of this plantation was unusually successful in instructing the adult male slaves. Five of these Negroes experienced such enlightenment that they became preachers.[11]

[Footnote 1: Drew, Refugee, p. 97.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 45.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 185.]

[Footnote 4: Snowden, Autobiography, p. 23.]

[Footnote 5: Albert, The House of Bondage, p. 125.]

[Footnote 6: Birney, The Grimke Sisters, p. 11.]

[Footnote 7: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 613.]

[Footnote 8: This fact is stated in one of her letters.]

[Footnote 9: Abdy, Journal of a Residence and Tour in U.S.A., 1833-1834. P. 346.]

[Footnote 10: Smedes, A Southern Planter, pp. 79-80.]

[Footnote 11: Ibid., p. 80.]

Planters themselves sometimes saw to the education of their slaves. Ephraim Waterford was bound out in Virginia until he was twenty-one on the condition that the man to whom he was hired should teach him to read.[1] Mrs. Isaac Riley and Henry Williamson, of Maryland, did not attend school but were taught by their master to spell and read but not to write.[2] The master and mistress of Williamson Pease, of Hardman County, Tennessee, were his teachers.[3] Francis Fredric began his studies under his master in Virginia. Frederick Douglass was indebted to his kind mistress for his first instruction.[4] Mrs. Thomas Payne, a slave in what is now West Virginia, was fortunate in having a master who was equally benevolent.[5] Honorable I.T. Montgomery, now the Mayor of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, was, while a slave of Jefferson Davis's brother, instructed in the common branches and trained to be the confidential accountant of his master's plantation.[6] While on a tour among the planters of East Georgia, C.G. Parsons discovered that about 5000 of the 400,000 slaves there had been taught to read and write. He remarked, too, that such slaves were generally owned by the wealthy slaveholders, who had them schooled when the enlightenment of the bondmen served the purposes of their masters.[7]

[Footnote 1: Drew, A North-Side View of Slavery, p. 373.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 133.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 123.]

[Footnote 4: Lee, Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky, p. x.]

[Footnote 5: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 368.]

[Footnote 6: This is his own statement.]

[Footnote 7: Parsons, Inside View, etc., p. 248.]

The enlightenment of the Negroes, however, was not limited to what could be accomplished by individual efforts. In many southern communities colored schools were maintained in defiance of public opinion or in violation of the law. Patrick Snead of Savannah was sent to a private institution until he could spell quite well and then to a Sunday-school for colored children.[1] Richard M. Hancock wrote of studying in a private school in Newbern, North Carolina;[2] John S. Leary went to one in Fayetteville eight years;[3] and W.A. Pettiford of this State enjoyed similar advantages in Granville County during the fifties. He then moved with his parents to Preston County where he again had the opportunity to attend a special school.[4] About 1840, J.F. Boulder was a student in a mixed school of white and colored pupils in Delaware.[5] Bishop J.M. Brown, a native of the same commonwealth, attended a private school taught by a friendly woman of the Quaker sect.[6] John A. Hunter, of Maryland, was sent to a school for white children kept by the sister of his mistress, but his second master said that Hunter should not have been allowed to study and stopped his attendance.[7] Francis L. Cardozo of Charleston, South Carolina, entered school there in 1842 and continued his studies until he was twelve years of age.[8] During the fifties J.W. Morris of the same city attended a school conducted by the then distinguished Simeon Beard.[9] In the same way T. McCants Stewart[10] and the Grimke brothers [11] were able to begin their education there prior to emancipation.

[Footnote 1: Drew, Refugee, p. 99.]

[Footnote 2: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 406.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 432.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 469]

[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 708.]

[Footnote 6: Ibid., 930.]

[Footnote 7: Drew, Refugee, p. 114.]

[Footnote 8: Simmons, Men of Mark, 428]

[Footnote 9: Ibid., p. 162]

[Footnote 10: Ibid., p. 1052]

[Footnote 11: This is their own statement.]

More schools for slaves existed than white men knew of, for it was difficult to find them. Fredrika Bremer heard of secret schools for slaves during her visit to Charleston, but she had extreme difficulty in finding such an institution. When she finally located one and gained admission into its quiet chamber, she noticed in a wretched dark hole a "half-dozen poor children, some of whom had an aspect that testified great stupidity and mere animal life."[1] She was informed, too, that there were in Georgia and Florida planters who had established schools for the education of the children of their slaves with the intention of preparing them for living as "good free human beings."[2] Frances Anne Kemble noted such instances in her diary.[3] The most interesting of these cases was discovered by the Union Army on its march through Georgia. Unsuspected by the slave power and undeterred by the terrors of the law, a colored woman by the name of Deveaux had for thirty years conducted a Negro school in the city of Savannah.[4]

[Footnote 1: Bremer, The Homes of the New World, vol. ii., p. 499.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 491; Burke, Reminiscences of Georgia, p. 85.]

[Footnote 3: Kemble, Journal, etc., p. 34.]

[Footnote 4: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 340.]

The city Negroes of Virginia continued to maintain schools despite the fact that the fear of servile insurrection caused the State to exercise due vigilance in the execution of the laws. The father of Richard De Baptiste of Fredericksburg made his own residence a school with his children and a few of those of his relatives as pupils. The work was begun by a Negro and continued by an educated Scotch-Irishman, who had followed the profession of teaching in his native land. Becoming suspicious that a school of this kind was maintained at the home of De Baptiste, the police watched the place but failed to find sufficient evidence to close the institution before it had done its work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 352.]

In 1854 there was found in Norfolk, Virginia, what the radically proslavery people considered a dangerous white woman. It was discovered that one Mrs. Douglass and her daughter had for three years been teaching a school maintained for the education of Negroes.[1] It was evident that this institution had not been run so clandestinely but that the opposition to the education of Negroes in that city had probably been too weak to bring about the close of the school at an earlier date. Mrs. Douglass and her pupils were arrested and brought before the court, where she was charged with violating the laws of the State. The defendant acknowledged her guilt, but, pleading ignorance of the law, was discharged on the condition that she would not commit the same "crime" again. Censuring the court for this liberal decision the Richmond Examiner referred to it as offering "a very convenient way of getting out of the scrape." The editor emphasized the fact that the law of Virginia imposed on such offenders the penalty of one hundred dollars fine and imprisonment for six months, and that its positive terms "allowed no discretion in the community magistrate."[2]

[Footnote 1: Parsons, Inside View of Slavery, p. 251; and Lyman, Leaven for Doughfaces, p. 43.]

[Footnote 2: 13th Annual Report of the American and Foreign Antislavery Societies, 1853, p. 143.]

All such schools, however, were not secretly kept. Writing from Charleston in 1851 Fredrika Bremer made mention of two colored schools. One of these was a school for free Negroes kept with open doors by a white master. Their books which she examined were the same as those used in American schools for white children.[1] The Negroes of Lexington, Kentucky, had in 1830 a school in which thirty colored children were taught by a white man from Tennessee.[2] This gentleman had pledged himself to devote the rest of his life to the uplift of his "black brethren."[3] Travelers noted that colored schools were found also in Richmond, Maysville, Danville, and Louisville decades before the Civil War.[4] William H. Gibson, a native of Baltimore, was after 1847 teaching at Louisville in a day and night school with an enrollment of one hundred pupils, many of whom were slaves with written permits from their masters to attend.[5] Some years later W.H. Stewart of that city attended the schools of Henry Adams, W.H. Gibson, and R.T.W. James. Robert Taylor began his studies there in Robert Lane's school and took writing from Henry Adams.[6] Negroes had schools in Tennessee also. R.L. Perry was during these years attending a school at Nashville.[7] An uncle of Dr. J.E. Moorland spent some time studying medicine in that city.

[Footnote 1: Bremer, The Homes of the New World, vol. ii., p. 499.]

[Footnote 2: Abdy, Journal of a Residence and Tour in U.S.A., 1833-34, p. 346.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., pp. 346-348.]

[Footnote 4: Tower, Slavery Unmasked; Dabney, Journal of a Tour through the U.S. and Canada, p. 185; Niles Register, vol. lxxii., p. 322; and Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 631.]

[Footnote 5: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 603.]

[Footnote 6: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 629.]

[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 620.]

Many of these opportunities were made possible by the desire to teach slaves religion. In fact the instruction of Negroes after the enactment of prohibitory laws resembled somewhat the teaching of religion with letters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Thousands of Negroes like Edward Patterson and Nat Turner learned to read and write in Sabbath-schools. White men who diffused such information ran the gauntlet of mobs, but like a Baptist preacher of South Carolina who was threatened with expulsion from his church, if he did not desist, they worked on and overcame the local prejudice. When preachers themselves dared not undertake this task it was often done by their children, whose benevolent work was winked at as an indulgence to the clerical profession. This charity, however, was not restricted to the narrow circle of the clergy. Believing with churchmen that the Bible is the revelation of God, many laymen contended that no man should be restrained from knowing his Maker directly.[1] Negroes, therefore, almost worshiped the Bible, and their anxiety to read it was their greatest incentive to learn. Many southerners braved the terrors of public opinion and taught their Negroes to read the Scriptures. To this extent General Coxe of Fluvanna County, Virginia, taught about one hundred of his adult slaves.[2] While serving as a professor of the Military Institute at Lexington, Stonewall Jackson taught a class of Negroes in a Sunday-school.[3]

[Footnote 1: Orr, "An Address on the Need of Education in the South, 1879."]

[Footnote 2: This statement is made by several of General Coxe's slaves who are still living.]

[Footnote 3: School Journal, vol. lxxx., p. 332.]

Further interest in the cause was shown by the Evangelical Society of the Synods of North Carolina and Virginia in 1834.[1] Later Presbyterians of Alabama and Georgia urged masters to enlighten their slaves.[2] The attitude of many mountaineers of Kentucky was well set forth in the address of the Synod of 1836, proposing a plan for the instruction and emancipation of the slaves.[3] They complained that throughout the land, so far as they could learn, there was but one school in which slaves could be taught during the week. The light of three or four Sabbath-schools was seen "glittering through the darkness" of the black population of the whole State. Here and there one found a family where humanity impelled the master, mistress, or children, to the laborious task of private instruction. In consequence of these undesirable conditions the Synod recommended that "slaves be instructed in the common elementary branches of education."[4]

[Footnote 1: African Repository, vol. x., pp. 174, 205, and 245.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., vol. xi., pp. 140 and 268.]

[Footnote 3: Goodell, Slave Code, pp. 323-324.]

[Footnote 4: The Enormity of the Slave Trade, etc., p. 74.]

Some of the objects of such charity turned out to be interesting characters. Samuel Lowry of Tennessee worked and studied privately under Rev. Mr. Talbot of Franklin College, and at the age of sixteen was sufficiently advanced to teach with success. He united with the Church of the Disciples and preached in that connection until 1859.[1] In some cases colored preachers were judged sufficiently informed, not only to minister to the needs of their own congregations, but to preach to white churches. There was a Negro thus engaged in the State of Florida.[2] Another colored man of unusual intelligence and much prominence worked his way to the front in Giles County, Tennessee. In 1859 he was the pastor of a Hard-shell Baptist Church, the membership of which was composed of the best white people in the community. He was so well prepared for his work that out of a four days' argument on baptism with a white minister he emerged victor. From this appreciative congregation he received a salary of from six to seven hundred dollars a year.[3]

[Footnote 1: Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 144.]

[Footnote 2: Bremer, Homes of the New World, vol. ii., pp. 488-491.]

[Footnote 3: The Richmond Enquirer, July, 1859; and Afr. Repository, vol. xxxv., p. 255.]

Statistics of this period show that the proportionately largest number of Negroes who learned in spite of opposition were found among the Scotch-Irish of Kentucky and Tennessee. Possessing few slaves, and having no permanent attachment to the institution, those mountaineers did not yield to the reactionaries who were determined to keep the Negroes in heathendom. Kentucky and Tennessee did not expressly forbid the education of the colored people.[1] Conditions were probably better in Kentucky than in Tennessee. Traveling in Kentucky about this time, Abdy was favorably impressed with that class of Negroes who though originally slaves saved sufficient from their earnings to purchase their freedom and provide for the education of their children.[2]

[Footnote 1: In 1830 one-twelfth of the population of Lexington consisted of free persons of color, who since 1822 had had a Baptist church served by a member of their own race and a school in which thirty-two of their children were taught by a white man from Tennessee. He had pledged himself to devote the rest of his life to the uplift of his colored brethren. One of these free Negroes in Lexington had accumulated wealth to the amount of $20,000. In Louisville, also a center of free colored population, efforts were being made to educate ambitious Negroes. Travelers noted that colored schools were found there generations before the Civil War and mentioned the intelligent and properly speaking colored preachers, who were bought and supported by their congregations. Charles Dabney, another traveler through this State in 1837, observed that the slaves of this commonwealth were taught to read and believed that they were about as well off as they would have been had they been free. See Dabney, Journal of a Tour through the U.S. and Canada, p. 185.]

[Footnote 2: Abdy, Journal of a Tour, etc., 1833-1834, pp. 346-348.]

It was the desire to train up white men to carry on the work of their liberal fathers that led John G. Fee and his colaborers to establish Berea College in Kentucky. In the charter of this institution was incorporated the declaration that "God has made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth." No Negroes were admitted to this institution before the Civil War, but they came in soon thereafter, some being accepted while returning home wearing their uniforms.[1] The State has since prohibited the co-education of the two races.

[Footnote 1: Catalogue of Berea College, 1896-1897.]

The centers of this interest in the mountains of Tennessee were Maryville and Knoxville. Around these towns were found a goodly number of white persons interested in the elevation of the colored people. There developed such an antislavery sentiment in the former town that half of the students of the Maryville Theological Seminary became abolitionists by 1841.[1] They were then advocating the social uplift of Negroes through the local organ, the Maryville Intelligencer. From this nucleus of antislavery men developed a community with ideals not unlike those of Berea.[2]

[Footnote 1: Some of the liberal-mindedness of the people of Kentucky and Tennessee was found in the State of Missouri. The question of slavery there, however, was so ardently discussed and prominently kept before the people that while little was done to help the Negroes, much was done to reduce them to the plane of beasts. There was not so much of the tendency to wink at the violation of the law on the part of masters in teaching their slaves. But little could be accomplished by private teachers in the dissemination of information among Negroes after the free persons of color had been excluded from the State.]

[Footnote 2: Fourth Annual Report of the American Antislavery Society, New York, 1837, p. 48; and the New England Antislavery Almanac for 1841, p. 31.]

The Knoxville people who advocated the enlightenment of the Negroes expressed their sentiment through the Presbyterian Witness. The editor felt that there was not a solitary argument that might be urged in favor of teaching a white man that might not as properly be urged in favor of enlightening a man of color. "If one has a soul that will never die," said he, "so has the other. Has one susceptibilities of improvement, mentally, socially, and morally? So has the other. Is one bound by the laws of God to improve the talents he has received from the Creator's hands? So is the other. Is one embraced in the command 'Search the Scriptures'? So is the other."[1] He maintained that unless masters could lawfully degrade their slaves to the condition of beasts, they were just as much bound to teach them to read the Bible as to teach any other class of their population.

[Footnote 1: African Repository, vol. xxxii., p. 16.]

But great as was the interest of the religious element, the movement for the education of the Negroes of the South did not again become a scheme merely for bringing them into the church. Masters had more than one reason for favoring the enlightenment of the slaves. Georgia slaveholders of the more liberal class came forward about the middle of the nineteenth century, advocating the education of Negroes as a means to increase their economic value, and to attach them to their masters. This subject was taken up in the Agricultural Convention at Macon in 1850, and was discussed again in a similar assembly the following year. After some opposition the Convention passed a resolution calling on the legislature to enact a law authorizing the education of slaves. The petition was presented by Mr. Harlston, who introduced the bill embodying this idea, piloted it through the lower house, but failed by two or three votes to secure the sanction of the senate.[1] In 1855 certain influential citizens of North Carolina[2] memorialized their legislature asking among other things that the slaves be taught to read. This petition provoked some discussion, but did not receive as much attention as that of Georgia.

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., p. 339]

[Footnote 2: African Repository, vol. xxxi., pp. 117-118.]

In view of this renewed interest in the education of the Negroes of the South we are anxious to know exactly what proportion of the colored population had risen above the plane of illiteracy. Unfortunately this cannot be accurately determined. In the first place, it was difficult to find out whether or not a slave could read or write when such a disclosure would often cause him to be dreadfully punished or sold to some cruel master of the lower South. Moreover, statistics of this kind are scarce and travelers who undertook to answer this question made conflicting statements. Some persons of that day left records which indicate that only a few slaves succeeded in acquiring an imperfect knowledge of the common branches, whereas others noted a larger number of intelligent servants. Arfwedson remarked that the slaves seldom learned to read; yet elsewhere he stated that he sometimes found some who had that ability.[1] Abolitionists like May, Jay, and Garrison would make it seem that the conditions in the South were such that it was almost impossible for a slave to develop intellectual power.[2] Rev. C.C. Jones[3] believed that only an inconsiderable fraction of the slaves could read. Witnesses to the contrary, however, are numerous. Abdy, Smedes, Andrews, Bremer, and Olmsted found during their stay in the South many slaves who had experienced unusual spiritual and mental development.[4] Nehemiah Adams, giving the southern view of slavery in 1854, said that large numbers of the slaves could read and were furnished with the Scriptures.[5] Amos Dresser, who traveled extensively in the Southwest, believed that one out of every fifty could read and write.[6] C.G. Parsons thought that five thousand out of the four hundred thousand slaves of Georgia had these attainments.[7] These figures, of course, would run much higher were the free people of color included in the estimates. Combining the two it is safe to say that ten per cent. of the adult Negroes had the rudiments of education in 1860, but the proportion was much less than it was near the close of the era of better beginnings about 1825.