[Footnote 1: Locke, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 31.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 32.]
The struggle of the Northern Quakers to enlighten the colored people had important local results. A strong moral force operated in the minds of most of this sect to impel them to follow the example of certain leaders who emancipated their slaves.[1] Efforts in this direction were redoubled about the middle of the eighteenth century when Anthony Benezet,[2] addressing himself with unwonted zeal to the uplift of these unfortunates, obtained the assistance of Clarkson and others, who solidified the antislavery sentiment of the Quakers and influenced them to give their time and means to the more effective education of the blacks. After this period the Quakers were also concerned with the improvement of the colored people's condition in other settlements.[3]
[Footnote 1: Dr. DuBois gives a good account of these efforts in his Suppression of the African Slave Trade.]
[Footnote 2: Benezet was a French Protestant. Persecuted on account of their religion, his parents moved from France to England and later to Philadelphia. He became a teacher in that city in 1742. Thirteen years later he was teaching a school established for the education of the daughters of the most distinguished families in Philadelphia. He was then using his own spelling-book, primer, and grammar, some of the first text-books published in America. Known to persecution himself, Benezet always sympathized with the oppressed. Accordingly, he connected himself with the Quakers, who at that time had before them the double task of fighting for religious equality and the amelioration of the condition of the Negroes. Becoming interested in the welfare of the colored race, Benezet first attacked the slave trade, so exposing it in his speeches and writings that Clarkson entered the field as an earnest advocate of the suppression of the iniquitous traffic. See Benezet, Observations, p. 30, and the African Repository, vol. iv., p. 61.]
[Footnote 3: Quaker Pamphlet, p. 31.]
What the other sects did for the enlightenment of Negroes during this period, was not of much importance. As the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists did not proselyte extensively in this country prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, these denominations had little to do with Negro education before the liberalism and spirit of toleration, developed during the revolutionary era, made it possible for these sects to reach the people. The Methodists, however, confined at first largely to the South, where most of the slaves were found, had to take up this problem earlier. Something looking like an attempt to elevate the Negroes came from Wesley's contemporary, George Whitefield,[1] who, strange to say, was regarded by the Negro race as its enemy for having favored the introduction of slavery. He was primarily interested in the conversion of the colored people. Without denying that "liberty is sweet to those who are born free," he advocated the importation of slaves into Georgia "to bring them within the reach of those means of grace which would make them partake of a liberty far more precious than the freedom of body."[2] While on a visit to this country in 1740 he purchased a large tract of land at Nazareth, Pennsylvania, for the purpose of founding a school for the education of Negroes.[3] Deciding later to go south, he sold the site to the Moravian brethren who had undertaken to establish a mission for Negroes at Bethlehem in 1738.[4] Some writers have accepted the statement that Whitefield commenced the erection of a schoolhouse at Nazareth; others maintain that he failed to accomplish anything.[5] Be that as it may, accessible facts are sufficient to show that, unwise as was his policy of importing slaves, his intention was to improve their condition. It was because of this sentiment in Georgia in 1747, when slavery was finally introduced there, that the people through their representatives in convention recommended that masters should educate their young slaves, and do whatever they could to make religious impressions upon the minds of the aged. This favorable attitude of early Methodists toward Negroes caused them to consider the new churchmen their friends and made it easy for this sect to proselyte the race.
[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 374.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 374.]
[Footnote 3: Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, p. 128.]
[Footnote 4: Equally interested in the Negroes were the Moravians who settled in the uplands of Pennsylvania and roamed over the hills of the Appalachian region as far south as Carolina. A painting of a group of their converts prior to 1747 shows among others two Negroes, Johannes of South Carolina and Jupiter of New York. See Hamilton, History of the Church known as the Moravian, p. 80; Plumer, Thoughts on the Religious Instruction of Negroes, p. 3; Reichel, The Moravians in North Carolina, p. 139.]
[Footnote 5: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1869, p. 374.]
CHAPTER III
EDUCATION AS A RIGHT OF MAN
In addition to the mere diffusion of knowledge as a means to teach religion there was a need of another factor to make the education of the Negroes thorough. This required force was supplied by the response of the colonists to the nascent social doctrine of the eighteenth century. During the French and Indian War there were set to work certain forces which hastened the social and political upheaval called the American Revolution. "Bigoted saints" of the more highly favored sects condescended to grant the rising denominations toleration, the aristocratic elements of colonial society deigned to look more favorably upon those of lower estate, and a large number of leaders began to think that the Negro should be educated and freed. To acquaint themselves with the claims of the underman Americans thereafter prosecuted more seriously the study of Coke, Milton, Locke, and Blackstone. The last of these was then read more extensively in the colonies than in Great Britain. Getting from these writers strange ideas of individual liberty and the social compact theory of man's making in a state of nature government deriving its power from the consent of the governed, the colonists contended more boldly than ever for religious freedom, industrial liberty, and political equality. Given impetus by the diffusion of these ideas, the revolutionary movement became productive of the spirit of universal benevolence. Hearing the contention for natural and inalienable rights, Nathaniel Appleton[1] and John Woolman,[2] were emboldened to carry these theories to their logical conclusion. They attacked not only the oppressors of the colonists but censured also those who denied the Negro race freedom of body and freedom of mind. When John Adams heard James Otis basing his argument against the writs of assistance on the British constitution "founded in the laws of nature," he "shuddered at the doctrine taught and the consequences that might be derived from such premises."[3]
[Footnote 1: Locke, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 19, 20, 23.]
[Footnote 2: Works of John Woolman in two parts, pp. 58 and 73;
Moore, Notes on Slavery in Mass., p. 71.]
[Footnote 3: Adams, Works of John Adams, vol. x., p. 315; Moore, Notes on Slavery in Mass., p. 71.]
So effective was the attack on the institution of slavery and its attendant evils that interest in the question leaped the boundaries of religious organizations and became the concern of fair-minded men throughout the country. Not only did Northern men of the type of John Adams and James Otis express their opposition to this tyranny of men's bodies and minds, but Laurens, Henry, Wythe, Mason, and Washington pointed out the injustice of such a policy. Accordingly we find arrayed against the aristocratic masters almost all the leaders of the American Revolution.[1] They favored the policy, first, of suppressing the slave trade, next of emancipating the Negroes in bondage, and finally of educating them for a life of freedom.[2] While students of government were exposing the inconsistency of slaveholding among a people contending for political liberty, and men like Samuel Webster, James Swan, and Samuel Hopkins attacked the institution on economic grounds;[3] Jonathan Boucher,[4] Dr. Rush,[5] and Benjamin Franklin[6] were devising plans to educate slaves for freedom; and Isaac Tatem[7] and Anthony Benezet[8] were actually in the schoolroom endeavoring to enlighten their black brethren.
[Footnote 1: Cobb, Slavery, etc., p. 82.]
[Footnote 2: Madison, Works of, vol. iii., p. 496; Smyth, Works of Franklin, vol. v., p. 431; Washington, Works of Jefferson, vol. ix., p. 163; Brissot de Warville, New Travels, vol. i., p. 227; Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies, 1794, 1795, 1797.]
[Footnote 3: Webster, A Sermon Preached before the Honorable
Council, etc.; Webster, Earnest Address to My Country on Slavery;
Swan, A Dissuasion to Great Britain and the Colonies; Hopkins,
Dialogue Concerning Slavery.]
[Footnote 4: Boucher, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the
American Revolution, p. 39.]
[Footnote 5: Rush, An Address to the Inhabitants of, etc., p. 16.]
[Footnote 6: Smyth, Works of Franklin, vol. iv., p. 23; vol. v., p. 431.]
[Footnote 7: Wickersham, History of Ed. in Pa., p. 249.]
[Footnote 8: Ibid., p. 250; Special Report of the U.S. Com. of
Ed., 1869, p. 375; African Repository, vol. iv., p. 61; Benezet,
Observations; Benezet, A Serious Address to the Rulers of
America.]
The aim of these workers was not merely to enable the Negroes to take over sufficient of Western civilization to become nominal Christians, not primarily to increase their economic efficiency, but to enlighten them because they are men. To strengthen their position these defendants of the education of the blacks cited the customs of the Greeks and Romans, who enslaved not the minds and wills, but only the bodies of men. Nor did these benefactors fail to mention the cases of ancient slaves, who, having the advantages of education, became poets, teachers, and philosophers, instrumental in the diffusion of knowledge among the higher classes. There was still the idea of Cotton Mather, who was willing to treat his servants as part of the family, and to employ such of them as were competent to teach his children lessons of piety.[1]
[Footnote 1: Meade, Sermons of Thomas Bacon, appendix.]
The chief objection of these reformers to slavery was that its victims had no opportunity for mental improvement. "Othello," a free person of color, contributing to the American Museum in 1788, made the institution responsible for the intellectual rudeness of the Negroes who, though "naturally possessed of strong sagacity and lively parts," were by law and custom prohibited from being instructed in any kind of learning.[1] He styled this policy an effort to bolster up an institution that extinguished the "divine spark of the slave, crushed the bud of his genius, and kept him unacquainted with the world." Dr. McLeod denounced slavery because it "debases a part of the human race" and tends "to destroy their intellectual powers."[2] "The slave from his infancy," continued he, "is obliged implicitly to obey the will of another. There is no circumstance which can stimulate him to exercise his intellectual powers." In his arraignment of this system Rev. David Rice complained that it was in the power of the master to deprive the slaves of all education, that they had not the opportunity for instructing conversation, that it was put out of their power to learn to read, and that their masters kept them from other means of information.[3] Slavery, therefore, must be abolished because it infringes upon the natural right of men to be enlightened.
[Footnote 1: The American Museum, vol. iv., pp. 415 and 511.]
[Footnote 2: McLeod, Negro Slavery, p. 16.]
[Footnote 3: Rice, Speech in the Constitutional Convention of
Kentucky, p. 5.]
During this period religion as a factor in the educational progress of the Negroes was not eliminated. In fact, representative churchmen of the various sects still took the lead in advocating the enlightenment of the colored people. These protagonists, however, ceased to claim this boon merely as a divine right and demanded it as a social privilege. Some of the clergy then interested had not at first seriously objected to the enslavement of the African race, believing that the lot of these people would not be worse in this country where they might have an opportunity for enlightenment. But when this result failed to follow, and when the slavery of the Africans' bodies turned out to be the slavery of their minds, the philanthropic and religious proclaimed also the doctrine of enlightenment as a right of man. Desiring to see Negroes enjoy this privilege, Jonathan Boucher,[1] one of the most influential of the colonial clergymen, urged his hearers at the celebration of the Peace of 1763 to improve and emancipate their slaves that they might "participate in the general joy." With the hope of inducing men to discharge the same duty, Bishop Warburton[2] boldly asserted a few years later that slaves are "rational creatures endowed with all our qualities except that of color, and our brethren both by nature and grace." John Woolman,[3] a Quaker minister, influenced by the philosophy of John Locke, began to preach that liberty is the right of all men, and that slaves, being the fellow-creatures of their masters, had a natural right to be elevated.
[Footnote 1: Jonathan Boucher was a rector of the Established Church in Maryland. Though not a promoter of the movement for the political rights of the colonists, Boucher was, however, so moved by the spirit of uplift of the downtrodden that he takes front rank among those who, in emphasizing the rights of servants, caused a decided change in the attitude of white men toward the improvement of Negroes. Boucher was not an immediate abolitionist. He abhorred slavery, however, to the extent that he asserted that if ever the colonies would be improved to their utmost capacity, an essential part of that amelioration had to be the abolition of slavery. His chief concern then was the cultivation of the minds in order to make amends for the drudgery to their bodies. See Boucher, Causes, etc., p. 39.]
[Footnote 2: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 363.]
[Footnote 3: An influential minister of the Society of Friends and an extensive traveler through the colonies, Woolman had an opportunity to do much good in attacking the policy of those who kept their Negroes in deplorable ignorance, and in commending the good example of those who instructed their slaves in reading. In his Considerations on the Keeping of Slaves he took occasion to praise the Friends of North Carolina for the unusual interest they manifested in the cause at their meetings during his travels in that colony about the year 1760. With such workers as Woolman in the field it is little wonder that Quakers thereafter treated slaves as brethren, alleviated their burdens, enlightened their minds, emancipated and cared for them until they could provide for themselves. See Works of John Woolman in two parts, pp. 58 and 73.]
Thus following the theories of the revolutionary leaders these liberal-minded men promulgated along with the doctrine of individual liberty that of the freedom of the mind. The best expression of this advanced idea came from the Methodist Episcopal Church, which reached the acme of antislavery sentiment in 1784. This sect then boldly declared: "We view it as contrary to the golden law of God and the prophets, and the inalienable rights of mankind as well as every principle of the Revolution to hold in deepest abasement, in a more abject slavery than is perhaps to be found in any part of the world, except America, so many souls that are capable of the image of God."[1]
[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 coöperated 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 Grégoire 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 reëstablishment 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 Grégoire'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, reënacted 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 Abbé Grégoire 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: Grégoire, La Littérature des Nègres.]
[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]