[Footnote 3: O'Connor, Myrtilla Miner, p. 80.]
The Negroes of Baltimore were almost as self-educating as those of the District of Columbia. The coming of the refugees and French Fathers from Santo Domingo to Baltimore to escape the revolution[1] marked an epoch in the intellectual progress of the colored people of that city. Thereafter their intellectual class had access to an increasing black population, anxious to be enlightened. Given this better working basis, they secured from the ranks of the Catholics additional catechists and teachers to give a larger number of illiterates the fundamentals of education. Their untiring co-worker in furnishing these facilities, was the Most Reverend Ambrose Maréchal, Archbishop of Baltimore from 1817 to 1828.[2] These schools were such an improvement over those formerly opened to Negroes that colored youths of other towns and cities thereafter came to Baltimore for higher training.[3]
[Footnote 1: Drewery, Slave Insurrections in Virginia, p. 121.]
[Footnote 2: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 205.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 205.]
The coming of these refugees to Baltimore had a direct bearing on the education of colored girls. Their condition excited the sympathy of the immigrating colored women. These ladies had been educated both in the Island of Santo Domingo and in Paris. At once interested in the uplift of this sex, they soon constituted the nucleus of the society that finally formed the St. Frances Academy for girls in connection with the Oblate Sisters of Providence Convent in Baltimore, June 5, 1829.[1] This step was sanctioned by the Reverend James Whitefield, the successor of Archbishop Maréchal, and was later approved by the Holy See. The institution was located on Richmond Street in a building which on account of the rapid growth of the school soon gave way to larger quarters. The aim of the institution was to train girls, all of whom "would become mothers or household servants, in such solid virtues and religious and moral principles as modesty, honesty, and integrity."[2] To reach this end they endeavored to supply the school with cultivated and capable teachers. Students were offered courses in all the branches of "refined and useful education, including all that is regularly taught in well regulated female seminaries."[3] This school was so well maintained that it survived all reactionary attacks and became a center of enlightenment for colored women.
[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 205.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 206.]
[Footnote 3: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., p. 206.]
At the same time there were other persons and organizations in the field. Prominent among the first of these workers was Daniel Coker, known to fame as a colored Methodist missionary, who was sent to Liberia. Prior to 1812 he had in Baltimore an academy which certain students from Washington attended when they had no good schools of their own, and when white persons began to object to the co-education of the races. Because of these conditions two daughters of George Bell, the builder of the first colored schoolhouse in the District of Columbia, went to Baltimore to study under Coker.[1] An adult Negro school in this city had 180 pupils in 1820. There were then in the Baltimore Sunday-schools about 600 Negroes. They had formed themselves into a Bible association which had been received into the connection of the Baltimore Bible Society.[2] In 1825 the Negroes there had a day and a night school, giving courses in Latin and French. Four years later there appeared an "African Free School" with an attendance of from 150 to 175 every Sunday.[3]
[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 196.]
[Footnote 2: Adams, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 14.]
[Footnote 3: Adams, Anti-Slavery, etc., pp. 14 and 15.]
By 1830 the Negroes of Baltimore had several special schools of their own.[1] In 1835 there was behind the African Methodist Church in Sharp Street a school of seventy pupils in charge of William Watkins.[2] W. Livingston, an ordained clergyman of the Episcopal Church, had then a colored school of eighty pupils in the African Church at the corner of Saratoga and Ninth Streets.[3] A third school of this kind was kept by John Fortie at the Methodist Bethel Church in Fish Street. Five or six other schools of some consequence were maintained by free women of color, who owed their education to the Convent of the Oblate Sisters of Providence.[4] Observing these conditions, an interested person thought that much more would have been accomplished in that community, if the friends of the colored people had been able to find workers acceptable to the masters and at the same time competent to teach the slaves.[5] Yet another observer felt that the Negroes of Baltimore had more opportunities than they embraced.[6]
[Footnote 1: Buckingham, America, Historical, etc., vol. i., p. 438.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 438; Andrews, Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade, pp. 54, 55, and 56; and Varle, A Complete View of Baltimore, p. 33.]
[Footnote 3: Varle, A Complete View of Baltimore, p. 33; and
Andrews, Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade, pp. 85 and 92.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 33.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 54.]
[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 37.]
These conditions, however, were so favorable in 1835 that when Professor E.A. Andrews came to Baltimore to introduce the work of the American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored People,[1] he was informed that the education of the Negroes of that city was fairly well provided for. Evidently the need was that the "systematic and sustained exertions" of the workers should spring from a more nearly perfect organization "to give efficiency to their philanthropic labors."[2] He was informed that as his society was of New England, it would on account of its origin in the wrong quarter, be productive of mischief.[3] The leading people of Baltimore thought that it would be better to accomplish this task through the Colonization Society, a southern organization carrying out the very policy which the American Union proposed to pursue.[4]
[Footnote 1: On January 14, 1835, a convention of more than one hundred gentlemen from ten different States assembled in Boston and organized the "American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race." Among these workers were William Reed, Daniel Noyes, J.W. Chickering, J.W. Putnam, Baron Stow, B.B. Edwards, E.A. Andrews, Charles Scudder, Joseph Tracy, Samuel Worcester, and Charles Tappan. The gentlemen were neither antagonistic to the antislavery nor to the colonization societies. They aimed to do that which had been neglected in giving the Negroes proper preparation for freedom. Knowing that the actual emancipation of an oppressed race cannot be effected by legislation, they hoped to provide religious and literary instruction for all colored children that they might "ameliorate their economic condition" and prepare themselves for higher usefulness. See the Exposition of the Object and Plans of the American Union, pp. 11-14.]
[Footnote 2: Andrews, Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade, p. 57.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 188.]
[Footnote 4: Andrews, Slavery, etc., p. 56.]
The instruction of ambitious blacks in this city was not confined to mere rudimentary training. The opportunity for advanced study was offered colored girls in the Convent of the Oblate Sisters of Providence. These Negroes, however, early learned to help themselves. In 1835 considerable assistance came from Nelson Wells, one of their own color. He left to properly appointed trustees the sum of $10,000, the income of which was to be appropriated to the education of free colored children.[1] With this benefaction the trustees concerned established in 1835 what they called the Wells School. It offered Negroes free instruction long after the Civil War.
[Footnote 2: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 353.]
In seeking to show how these good results were obtained by the Negroes' coöperative power and ability to supply their own needs, we are not unmindful of the assistance which they received. To say that the colored people of Baltimore, themselves, provided all these facilities of education would do injustice to the benevolent element of that city. Among its white people were found so much toleration of opinion on slavery and so much sympathy with the efforts for its removal, that they not only permitted the establishment of Negro churches, but opened successful colored schools in which white men and women assisted personally in teaching. Great praise is due philanthropists of the type of John Breckenridge and Daniel Raymond, who contributed their time and means to the cause and enlisted the efforts of others. Still greater credit should be given to William Crane, who for forty years was known as an "ardent, liberal, and wise friend of the black man." At the cost of $20,000 he erected in the central part of the city an edifice exclusively for the benefit of the colored people. In this building was an auditorium, several large schoolrooms, and a hall for entertainments and lectures. The institution employed a pastor and two teachers[1] and it was often mentioned as a high school.
[Footnote 1: A contributor to the Christian Chronicle found in this institution a pastor, a principal of the school, and an assistant, all of superior qualifications. The classes which this reporter heard recite grammar and geography convinced him of the thoroughness of the work and the unusual readiness of the colored people to learn. See The African Repository, vol. xxxii., p. 91.]
In northern cities like Philadelphia and New York, where benevolent organizations provided an adequate number of colored schools, the free blacks did not develop so much of the power to educate themselves. The Negroes of these cities, however, cannot be considered exceptions to the rule. Many of those of Philadelphia were of the most ambitious kind, men who had purchased their freedom or had developed sufficient intelligence to delude their would-be captors and conquer the institution of slavery. Settled in this community, the thrifty class accumulated wealth which they often used, not only to defray the expenses of educating their own children, but to provide educational facilities for the poor children of color.
Gradually developing the power to help themselves, the free people of color organized a society which in 1804 opened a school with John Trumbull as teacher.[1] About the same time the African Episcopalians founded a colored school at their church.[2] A colored man gave three hundred pounds of the required funds to build the first colored schoolhouse in Philadelphia.[3] In 1830 one fourth of the twelve hundred colored children in the schools of that city paid for their instruction, whereas only two hundred and fifty were attending the public schools in 1825.[4] The fact that some of the Negroes were able and willing to share the responsibility of enlightening their people caused a larger number of philanthropists to come to the rescue of those who had to depend on charity. Furthermore, of the many achievements claimed for the colored schools of Philadelphia none were considered more significant than that they produced teachers qualified to carry on this work. Eleven of the sixteen colored schools in Philadelphia in 1822 were taught by teachers of African descent. In 1830 the system was practically in the hands of Negroes.[5]
[Footnote 1: Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, p. 129.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 130.]
[Footnote 3: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 377.]
[Footnote 4: Proceedings of the American Convention, etc., 1825, p. 13.]
[Footnote 5: Proceedings of the Am. Convention, etc., 1830, p.8; and
Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania, p. 253.]
The statistics of later years show how successful these early efforts had been. By 1849 the colored schools of Philadelphia had developed to the extent that they seemed like a system. According to the Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of Colored People in and about Philadelphia, published that year, there were 1643 children of color attending well-regulated schools. The larger institutions were mainly supported by State and charitable organizations of which the Society of Friends and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society were the most important. Besides supporting these institutions, however, the intelligent colored men of Philadelphia had maintained smaller schools and organized a system of lyceums and debating clubs, one of which had a library of 1400 volumes. Moreover, there were then teaching in the colored families and industrial schools of Philadelphia many men and women of both races.[1] Although these instructors restricted their work to the teaching of the rudiments of education, they did much to help the more advanced schools to enlighten the Negroes who came to that city in large numbers when conditions became intolerable for the free people of color in the slave States. The statistics of the following decade show unusual progress. In the year 1859 there were in the colored public schools of Philadelphia, 1031 pupils; in the charity schools, 748; in the benevolent schools, 211; in private schools, 331; in all, 2321, whereas in 1849 there were only 1643.[2]
[Footnote 1: About the middle of the nineteenth century colored schools of various kinds arose in Philadelphia. With a view to giving Negroes industrial training their friends opened "The School for the Destitute" at the House of Industry in 1848. Three years later Sarah Luciana was teaching a school of seventy youths at this House of Industry, and the Sheppard School, another industrial institution, was in operation in 1850 in a building bearing the same name. In 1849 arose the "Corn Street Unclassified School" of forty-seven children in charge of Sarah L. Peltz. "The Holmesburg Unclassified School" was organized in 1854. Other institutions of various purposes were "The House of Refuge," "The Orphans' Shelter," and "The Home for Colored Children." See Bacon, Statistics of the Colored People of Philadelphia, 1859.
Among those then teaching in private schools of Philadelphia were
Solomon Clarkson, Robert George, John Marshall, John Ross, Jonathan
Tudas, and David Ware. Ann Bishop, Virginia Blake, Amelia Bogle, Anne
E. Carey, Sarah Ann Douglass, Rebecca Hailstock, Emma Hall, Emmeline
Higgins, Margaret Johnson, Martha Richards, Dinah Smith, Mary Still,
and one Peterson were teaching in families. See Statistical Inquiry,
etc., 1849, p. 19; and Bacon, Statistics of the Colored People of
Philadelphia, 1859.]
[Footnote 2: Statistical Inquiry into the Condition of the Colored
People of Philadelphia, in 1859.]
Situated like those of Philadelphia, the free blacks of New York City did not have to maintain their own schools. This was especially true after 1832 when the colored people had qualified themselves to take over the schools of the New York Manumission Society. They then got rid of all the white teachers, even Andrews, the principal, who had for years directed this system. Besides, the economic progress of certain Negroes there made possible the employment of the increasing number of colored teachers, who had availed themselves of the opportunities afforded by the benevolent schools. The stigma then attached to one receiving seeming charity through free schools stimulated thrifty Negroes to have their children instructed either in private institutions kept by friendly white teachers or by teachers of their own color.[1] In 1812 a society of the free people of color was organized to raise a fund, the interest of which was to sustain a free school for orphan children.[2] This society succeeded later in establishing and maintaining two schools. At this time there were in New York City three other colored schools, the teachers of which received their compensation from those who patronized them.[3]
[Footnote 1: See the Address of the American Convention, 1819.]
[Footnote 2: Proceedings of the Am. Convention, etc., 1812, p. 7.
Certain colored women were then organized to procure and make for destitute persons of color. See Andrews, History of the New York African Free Schools, p. 58.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 58.]
Whether from lack of interest in their welfare on the part of the public, or from the desire of the Negroes to share their own burdens, the colored people of Rhode Island were endeavoring to provide for the education of their children during the first decades of the last century. The Newport Mercury of March 26, 1808, announced that the African Benevolent Society had opened there a school kept by Newport Gardner, who was to instruct all colored people "inclined to attend." The records of the place show that this school was in operation eight years later.[1]
[Footnote 1: Stockwell, History of Ed. in R.I., p. 30.]
In Boston, where were found more Negroes than in most New England communities, the colored people themselves maintained a separate school after the revolutionary era. In the towns of Salem, Nantucket, New Bedford, and Lowell the colored schools failed to make much progress after the first quarter of the nineteenth century on account of the more liberal construction of the laws which provided for democratic education. This the free blacks were forced to advocate for the reason that the seeming onerous task of supporting a dual system often caused the neglect, and sometimes the extinction of the separate schools. Furthermore, either the Negroes of some of these towns were too scarce or the movement to furnish them special facilities of education started too late to escape the attacks of the abolitionists. Seeing their mistake of first establishing separate schools, they began to attack caste in public education.
In the eastern cities where colored school systems thereafter continued, the work was not always successful. The influx of fugitives in the rough sometimes jeopardized their chances for education by menacing liberal communities with the trouble of caring for an undesirable class. The friends of the Negroes, however, received more encouragement during the two decades immediately preceding the Civil War. There was a change in the attitude of northern cities toward the uplift of the colored refugees. Catholics, Protestants, and abolitionists often united their means to make provision for the education of accessible Negroes, although these friends of the oppressed could not always agree on other important schemes. Even the colonizationists, the object of attack from the ardent antislavery element, considerably aided the cause. They educated for work in Liberia a number of youths, who, given the opportunity to attend good schools, demonstrated the capacity of the colored people. More important factors than the colonizationists were the free people of color. Brought into the rapidly growing urban communities, these Negroes began to accumulate sufficient wealth to provide permanent schools of their own. Many of these were later assimilated by the systems of northern cities when their separate schools were disestablished.
CHAPTER VII
THE REACTION
Encouraging as had been the movement to enlighten the Negroes, there had always been at work certain reactionary forces which impeded the intellectual progress of the colored people. The effort to enlighten them that they might be emancipated to enjoy the political rights given white men, failed to meet with success in those sections where slaves were found in large numbers. Feeling that the body politic, as conceived by Locke and Montesquieu, did not include the slaves, many citizens opposed their education on the ground that their mental improvement was inconsistent with their position as persons held to service. For this reason there was never put forward any systematic effort to elevate the slaves. Every master believed that he had a divine right to deal with the situation as he chose. Moreover, even before the policy of mental and moral improvement of the slaves could be given a trial, some colonists, anticipating the "evils of the scheme," sought to obviate them by legislation. Such we have observed was the case in Virginia,[1] South Carolina,[2] and Georgia.[3] To control the assemblies of slaves, North Carolina,[4] Delaware,[5] and Maryland[6] early passed strict regulations for their inspection.
[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 391.]
[Footnote 2: Brevard, Digest of the Public Statute Law of S.C., vol. ii., p.243.]
[Footnote 3: Marbury and Crawford, Digest of Laws of the State of
Georgia, p. 438.]
[Footnote 4: Laws of North Carolina, vol. i., pp. 126, 563, and 741.]
[Footnote 5: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 335.]
[Footnote 6: Ibid., p. 352.]
The actual opposition of the masters to the mental improvement of Negroes, however, did not assume sufficiently large proportions to prevent the intellectual progress of that race, until two forces then at work had had time to become effective in arousing southern planters to the realization of what a danger enlightened colored men would be to the institution of slavery. These forces were the industrial revolution and the development of an insurrectionary spirit among slaves, accelerated by the rapid spreading of the abolition agitation. The industrial revolution was effected by the multiplication of mechanical appliances for spinning and weaving which so influenced the institution of slavery as seemingly to doom the Negroes to heathenism. These inventions were the spinning jenny, the steam engine, the power loom, the wool-combing machine, and the cotton gin. They augmented the output of spinning mills, and in cheapening cloth, increased the demand by bringing it within the reach of the poor. The result was that a revolution was brought about not only in Europe, but also in the United States to which the world looked for this larger supply of cotton fiber.[1] This demand led to the extension of the plantation system on a larger scale. It was unfortunate, however, that many of the planters thus enriched, believed that the slightest amount of education, merely teaching slaves to read, impaired their value because it instantly destroyed their contentedness. Since they did not contemplate changing their condition, it was surely doing them an ill service to destroy their acquiescence in it. This revolution then had brought it to pass that slaves who were, during the eighteenth century advertised as valuable on account of having been enlightened, were in the nineteenth century considered more dangerous than useful.
[Footnote 1: Turner, The Rise of the New West, pp. 45, 46, 47, 48, and 49; and Hammond, Cotton Industry, chaps. i. and ii.]
With the rise of this system, and the attendant increased importation of slaves, came the end of the helpful contact of servants with their masters. Slavery was thereby changed from a patriarchal to an economic institution. Thereafter most owners of extensive estates abandoned the idea that the mental improvement of slaves made them better servants. Doomed then to be half-fed, poorly clad, and driven to death in this cotton kingdom, what need had the slaves for education? Some planters hit upon the seemingly more profitable scheme of working newly imported slaves to death during seven years and buying another supply rather than attempt to humanize them.[1] Deprived thus of helpful advice and instruction, the slaves became the object of pity not only to abolitionists of the North but also to some southerners. Not a few of these reformers, therefore, favored the extermination of the institution. Others advocated the expansion of slavery not to extend the influence of the South, but to disperse the slaves with a view to bringing about a closer contact between them and their masters.[2] This policy was duly emphasized during the debate on the admission of the State of Missouri.
[Footnote 1: Rhodes, History of the United States, vol. i., p. 32; Kemble, Journal, p. 28; Martineau, Society in America, vol. i., p. 308; Weld, Slavery, etc., p. 41.]
[Footnote 2: Annals of Congress, First Session, vol. i., pp. 996 et seq. and 1296 et seq.]
Seeking to direct the attention of the world to the slavery of men's bodies and minds the abolitionists spread broadcast through the South newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets which, whether or not they had much effect in inducing masters to improve the condition of their slaves, certainly moved Negroes themselves. It hardly required enlightenment to convince slaves that they would be better off as freemen than as dependents whose very wills were subject to those of their masters. Accordingly even in the seventeenth century there developed in the minds of bondmen the spirit of resistance. The white settlers of the colonies held out successfully in putting down the early riots of Negroes. When the increasing intelligent Negroes of the South, however, observed in the abolition literature how the condition of the American slaves differed from that of the ancient servants and even from what it once had been in the United States; when they fully realized their intolerable condition compared with that of white men, who were clamoring for liberty and equality, there rankled in the bosom of slaves that insurrectionary passion productive of the daring uprisings which made the chances for the enlightenment of colored people poorer than they had ever been in the history of this country.
The more alarming insurrections of the first quarter of the nineteenth century were the immediate cause of the most reactionary measures. It was easily observed that these movements were due to the mental improvement of the colored people during the struggle for the rights of man. Not only had Negroes heard from the lips of their masters warm words of praise for the leaders of the French Revolution but had developed sufficient intelligence themselves to read the story of the heroes of the world, who were then emboldened to refresh the tree of liberty "with the blood of patriots and tyrants."[1] The insurrectionary passion among the colored people was kindled, too, around Baltimore, Norfolk, Charleston, and New Orleans by certain Negroes who to escape the horrors of the political upheaval in Santo Domingo,[2] immigrated into this country in 1793. The education of the colored race had paved the way for the dissemination of their ideas of liberty and equality. Enlightened bondmen persistently made trouble for the white people in these vicinities. Negroes who could not read, learned from others the story of Toussaint L'Ouverture, whose example colored men were then ambitious to emulate.
[Footnote 1: Washington, Works of Jefferson, vol. iv., p. 467.]
[Footnote 2: Drewery, Insurrections in Virginia, p. 121.]
The insurrection of Gabriel in Virginia and that of South Carolina in the year 1800 are cases in evidence. Unwilling to concede that slaves could have so well planned such a daring attack, the press of the time insisted that two Frenchmen were the promoters of the affair in Virginia.[1] James Monroe said there was no evidence that any white man was connected with it.[2] It was believed that the general tendency of the Negroes toward an uprising had resulted from French ideas which had come to the slaves through intelligent colored men.[3] Observing that many Negroes were sufficiently enlightened to see things as other men, the editor of the Aurora asserted that in negotiating with the "Black Republic" the United States and Great Britain had set the seal of approval upon servile insurrection.[4] Others referred to inflammatory handbills which Negroes extensively read.[5] Discussing the Gabriel plot in 1800, Judge St. George Tucker said: "Our sole security then consists in their ignorance of this power (doing us mischief) and their means of using it—a security which we have lately found is not to be relied on, and which, small as it is, every day diminishes. Every year adds to the number of those who can read and write; and the increase in knowledge is the principal agent in evolving the spirit we have to fear."[6]
[Footnote 1: The New York Daily Advertiser, Sept. 22, 1800; and The
Richmond Enquirer, Oct. 21, 1831.]
[Footnote 2: Writings of James Monroe, vol. iii., p. 217.]
[Footnote 3: Educated Negroes then constituted an alarming element in
Massachusetts, Virginia, and South Carolina. See The New York Daily
Advertiser, Sept. 22, 1800.]
[Footnote 4: See The New York Daily Advertiser, Sept. 22, 1800.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid., Oct. 7, 1800.]
[Footnote 6: Letter of St. George Tucker in Joshua Coffin's Slave
Insurrections.]
Camden was disturbed by an insurrection in 1816 and Charleston in 1822 by a formidable plot which the officials believed was due to the "sinister" influences of enlightened Negroes.[1] The moving spirit of this organization was Denmark Vesey. He had learned to read and write, had accumulated an estate worth $8000, and had purchased his freedom in 1800[2] Jack Purcell, an accomplice of Vesey, weakened in the crisis and confessed. He said that Vesey was in the habit of reading to him all the passages in the newspapers, that related to Santo Domingo and apparently every accessible pamphlet that had any connection with slavery.[3] One day he read to Purcell the speeches of Mr. King on the subject of slavery and told Purcell how this friend of the Negro race declared he would continue to speak, write, and publish pamphlets against slavery "the longest day he lived," until the Southern States consented to emancipate their slaves.[4]
[Footnote 1: The City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser
(Charleston, South Carolina), August 21, 1822.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., August 21, 1822.]
[Footnote 3: The City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser,
August 21, 1822.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., August 21, 1822.]
The statement of the Governor of South Carolina also shows the influence of the educated Negro. This official felt that Monday, the slave of Mr. Gill, was the most daring conspirator. Being able to read and write he "attained an extraordinary and dangerous influence over his fellows." "Permitted by his owner to occupy a house in the central part of this city, he was afforded hourly opportunities for the exercise of his skill on those who were attracted to his shop by business or favor." "Materials were abundantly furnished in the seditious pamphlets brought into the State by equally culpable incendiaries, while the speeches of the oppositionists in Congress to the admission of Missouri gave a serious and imposing effect to his machinations."[1] It was thus brought home to the South that the enlightened Negro was having his heart fired with the spirit of liberty by his perusal of the accounts of servile insurrections and the congressional debate on slavery.
[Footnote 1: The Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald, Aug. 30, 1822.]
Southerners of all types thereafter attacked the policy of educating Negroes.[1] Men who had expressed themselves neither one way nor the other changed their attitude when it became evident that abolition literature in the hands of slaves would not only make them dissatisfied, but cause them to take drastic measures to secure liberty. Those who had emphasized the education of the Negroes to increase their economic efficiency were largely converted. The clergy who had insisted that the bondmen were entitled to, at least, sufficient training to enable them to understand the principles of the Christian religion, were thereafter willing to forego the benefits of their salvation rather than see them destroy the institution of slavery.
[Footnote 1: Hodgson, Whitney's Remarks during a Journey through
North America, p. 184.]
In consequence of this tendency, State after State enacted more stringent laws to control the situation. Missouri passed in 1817 an act so to regulate the traveling and assembly of slaves as to make them ineffective in making headway against the white people by insurrection. Of course, in so doing the reactionaries deprived them of the opportunities of helpful associations and of attending schools.[1] By 1819 much dissatisfaction had arisen from the seeming danger of the various colored schools in Virginia. The General Assembly, therefore, passed a law providing that there should be no more assemblages of slaves, or free Negroes, or mulattoes, mixing or associating with such slaves for teaching them reading and writing.[2] The opposition here seemed to be for the reasons that Negroes were being generally enlightened in the towns of the State and that white persons as teachers in these institutions were largely instrumental in accomplishing this result. Mississippi even as a Territory had tried to meet the problem of unlawful assemblies. In the year 1823 it was declared unlawful for Negroes above the number of five to meet for educational purposes.[3] Only with the permission of their masters could slaves attend religious worship conducted by a recognized white minister or attended by "two discreet and reputable persons."[4]
[Footnote 1: Laws of Missouri Territory, etc., p. 498.]
[Footnote 2: Tate, Digest of the Laws of Virginia, pp. 849-850.]
[Footnote 3: Poindexter, Revised Code of the Laws of Mississippi, p. 390.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 390.]
The problem in Louisiana was first to keep out intelligent persons who might so inform the slaves as to cause them to rise. Accordingly in 1814[1] the State passed a law prohibiting the immigration of free persons of color into that commonwealth. This precaution, however, was not deemed sufficient after the insurrectionary Negroes of New Berne, Tarborough, and Hillsborough, North Carolina,[2] had risen, and David Walker of Massachusetts had published to the slaves his fiery appeal to arms.[3] In 1830, therefore, Louisiana enacted another measure, providing that whoever should write, print, publish, or distribute anything having the tendency to produce discontent among the slaves, should on conviction thereof be imprisoned at hard labor for life or suffer death at the discretion of the court. It was provided, too, that whoever used any language or became instrumental in bringing into the State any paper, book, or pamphlet inducing this discontent should suffer practically the same penalty. All persons who should teach, or permit or cause to be taught, any slave to read or write, should be imprisoned not less than one month nor more than twelve.[4]
[Footnote 1: Bullard and Curry, A New Digest of the Statute Laws of the State of Louisiana, p. 161.]
[Footnote 2: Coffin, Slave Insurrections, p. 22.]
[Footnote 3: Walker mentioned "our wretchedness in consequence of slavery, our wretchedness in consequence of ignorance, our wretchedness in consequence of the preachers of the religion of Jesus Christ, and our wretchedness in consequence of the colonization plan." See Walker's Appeal.]
[Footnote 4: Acts passed at the Ninth Session of the Legislature of
Louisiana, p. 96.]
Yielding to the demand of slaveholders, Georgia passed a year later a law providing that any Negro who should teach another to read or write should be punished by fine and whipping. If a white person should so offend, he should be punished with a fine not exceeding $500 and with imprisonment in the common jail at the discretion of the committing magistrate.[1]
[Footnote 1] Dawson, A Compilation of the Laws of the State of
Georgia, etc., p. 413.
In Virginia where the prohibition did not then extend to freedmen, there was enacted in 1831 a law providing that any meeting of free Negroes or mulattoes for teaching them reading or writing should be considered an unlawful assembly. To break up assemblies for this purpose any judge or justice of the peace could issue a warrant to apprehend such persons and inflict corporal punishment not exceeding twenty lashes. White persons convicted of teaching Negroes to read or write were to be fined fifty dollars and might be imprisoned two months. For imparting such information to a slave the offender was subject to a fine of not less than ten nor more than one hundred dollars.[1]
[Footnote 1]Laws of Virginia, 1830-1831, p. 108, Sections 5 and 6.
The whole country was again disturbed by the insurrection in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831. The slave States then had a striking example of what the intelligent Negroes of the South might eventually do. The leader of this uprising was Nat Turner. Precocious as a youth he had learned to read so easily that he did not remember when he first had that attainment.[1] Given unusual social and intellectual advantages, he developed into a man of considerable "mental ability and wide information." His education was chiefly acquired in the Sunday-schools in which "the text-books for the small children were the ordinary speller and reader, and that for the older Negroes the Bible."[2] He had received instruction also from his parents and his indulgent young master, J.C. Turner.
[Footnote 1] Drewery, Insurrections in Virginia, p. 27.
[Footnote 2: Drewery, Insurrections in Virginia, p. 28.]
When Nat Turner appeared, the education of the Negro had made the way somewhat easier for him than it was for his predecessors. Negroes who could read and write had before them the revolutionary ideas of the French, the daring deeds of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the bold attempt of General Gabriel, and the far-reaching plans of Denmark Vesey. These were sometimes written up in the abolition literature, the circulation of which was so extensive among the slaves that it became a national question.[1]
[Footnote 1: These organs were The Albany Evening Journal, The New
York Free Press, The Genius of Universal Emancipation, and The
Boston Liberator. See The Richmond Enquirer, Oct. 21, 1831.]
Trying to account for this insurrection the Governor of the State lays it to the charge of the Negro preachers who were in position to foment much disorder on account of having acquired "great ascendancy over the minds" of discontented slaves. He believed that these ministers were in direct contact with the agents of abolition, who were using colored leaders as a means to destroy the institutions of the South. The Governor was cognizant of the fact that not only was the sentiment of the incendiary pamphlets read but often the words.[1] To prevent the "enemies" in other States from communicating with the slaves of that section he requested that the laws regulating the assembly of Negroes be more rigidly enforced and that colored preachers be silenced. The General Assembly complied with this request.[2]
[Footnote 1: The Richmond Enquirer, Oct. 21, 1831.]
[Footnote 2: The Laws of Virginia, 1831-1832, p. 20.]
The aim of the subsequent reactionary legislation of the South was to complete the work of preventing the dissemination of information among Negroes and their reading of abolition literature. This they endeavored to do by prohibiting the communication of the slaves with one another, with the better informed free persons of color, and with the liberal white people; and by closing all the schools theretofore opened to Negroes. The States passed laws providing for a more stringent regulation of passes, defining unlawful assemblies, and fixing penalties for the same. Other statutes prohibited religious worship, or brought it under direct supervision of the owners of the slaves concerned, and proscribed the private teaching of slaves in any manner whatever.
Mississippi, which already had a law to prevent the mental improvement of the slaves, enacted in 1831 another measure to remove from them the more enlightened members of their race. All free colored persons were to leave the State in ninety days. The same law provided, too, that no Negro should preach in that State unless to the slaves of his plantation and with the permission of the owner.[1] Delaware saw fit to take a bold step in this direction. The act of 1831 provided that no congregation or meeting of free Negroes or mulattoes of more than twelve persons should be held later than twelve o'clock at night, except under the direction of three respectable white persons who were to attend the meeting. It further provided that no free Negro should attempt to call a meeting for religious worship, to exhort or preach, unless he was authorized to do so by a judge or justice of the peace, upon the recommendation of five "respectable and judicious citizens." [2] This measure tended only to prevent the dissemination of information among Negroes by making it impossible for them to assemble. It was not until 1863 that the State of Delaware finally passed a positive measure to prevent the assemblages of colored persons for instruction and all other meetings except for religious worship and the burial of the dead.[3] Following the example of Delaware in 1832, Florida passed a law prohibiting all meetings of Negroes except those for divine worship at a church or place attended by white persons.[4] Florida made the same regulations more stringent in 1846 when she enjoyed the freedom of a State.[5]
[Footnote 1] Hutchinson, Code of Mississippi, p. 533.
[Footnote 2] Laws of Delaware, 1832, pp. 181-182.
[Footnote 3] Ibid., 1863, p. 330 et seq.
[Footnote 4: Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of
Florida, 1832, p. 145.]
[Footnote 5: Acts of Florida, 1846, ch. 87, sec. 9.]
Alabama had some difficulty in getting a satisfactory law. In 1832 this commonwealth enacted a law imposing a fine of from $250 to $500 on persons who should attempt to educate any Negro whatsoever. The act also prohibited the usual unlawful assemblies and the preaching or exhorting of Negroes except in the presence of five "respectable slaveholders" or unless the officiating minister was licensed by some regular church of which the persons thus exhorted were members.[1] It soon developed that the State had gone too far. It had infringed upon the rights and privileges of certain creoles, who, being residents of the Louisiana Territory when it was purchased in 1803, had been guaranteed the rights of citizens of the United States. Accordingly in 1833 the Mayor and the Aldermen of Mobile were authorized by law to grant licenses to such persons as they might deem suitable to instruct for limited periods, in that city and the counties of Mobile and Baldwin, the free colored children, who were descendants of colored creoles residing in the district in 1803.[2]
[Footnote 1: Clay, Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama, p. 543.]
[Footnote 2: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 323.]
Another difficulty of certain commonwealths had to be overcome. Apparently Georgia had already incorporated into its laws provisions adequate to the prevention of the mental improvement of Negroes. But it was discovered that employed as they had been in various positions either requiring knowledge, or affording its acquirement, Negroes would pick up the rudiments of education, despite the fact that they had no access to schools. The State then passed a law imposing a penalty not exceeding one hundred dollars for the employment of any slave or free person of color "in setting up type or other labor about a printing office requiring a knowledge of reading and writing."[1] In 1834 South Carolina saw the same danger. In addition to enacting a more stringent law for the prevention of the teaching of Negroes by white or colored friends, and for the destruction of their schools, it provided that persons of African blood should not be employed as clerks or salesmen in or about any shop or store or house used for trading.[2]
[Footnote 1: Cobb, Digest of the Laws of Georgia, p. 555; and
Prince, Digest of the Laws of Georgia, p. 658.]
[Footnote 2: Laws of South Carolina, 1834.]
North Carolina was among the last States to take such drastic measures for the protection of the white race. In this commonwealth the whites and blacks had lived on liberal terms. Negroes had up to this time enjoyed the right of suffrage there. Some attended schools open to both races. A few even taught white children.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bassett, Slavery in North Carolina, p. 74; and testimonies of various ex-slaves.]
The intense feeling against Negroes engendered by the frequency of insurrections, however, sufficed to swing the State into the reactionary column by 1835. An act passed by the Legislature that year prohibited the public instruction of Negroes, making it impossible for youth of African descent to get any more education than what they could in their own family circle.[1] The public school system established thereafter specifically provided that its benefits should not extend to any descendant from Negro ancestors to the fourth generation inclusive.[2] Bearing so grievously this loss of their social status after they had toiled up from poverty, many ambitious free persons of color, left the State for more congenial communities.
[Footnote 1: Revised Statutes of North Carolina, 578.]
[Footnote 2: Laws of North Carolina, 1835, C.6, S.2.]
The States of the West did not have to deal so severely with their slaves as was deemed necessary in Southern States. Missouri found it advisable in 1833 to amend the law of 1817[1] so as to regulate more rigorously the traveling and the assembling of slaves. It was not until 1847, however, that this commonwealth specifically provided that no one should keep or teach any school for the education of Negroes.[2] Tennessee had as early as 1803 a law governing the movement of slaves but exhibited a little more reactionary spirit in 1836 in providing that there should be no circulation of seditious books or pamphlets which might lead to insurrection or rebellion among Negroes.[3] Tennessee, however, did not positively forbid the education of colored people. Kentucky had a system of regulating the egress and regress of slaves but never passed any law prohibiting their instruction. Yet statistics show that although the education of Negroes was not penalized, it was in many places made impossible by public sentiment. So was it in the State of Maryland, which did not expressly forbid the instruction of anyone.
[Footnote 1: Laws of the Territory of Missouri, p. 498.]
[Footnote 2: Laws of the State of Missouri, 1847, pp. 103 and 104.]
[Footnote 3: Public Acts passed at the First Session of the General
Assembly of the State of Tennessee, p. 145, chap. 44.]
These reactionary results were not obtained without some opposition. The governing element of some States divided on the question. The opinions of this class were well expressed in the discussion between Chancellor Harper and J.B. O'Neal of the South Carolina bar. The former said that of the many Negroes whom he had known to be capable of reading, he had never seen one read anything but the Bible. He thought that they imposed this task upon themselves as a matter of duty. Because of the Negroes' "defective comprehension and the laborious nature of this employment to them"[1] he considered such reading an inefficient method of religious instruction. He, therefore, supported the oppressive measures of the South. The other member of the bar maintained that men could not reflect as Christians and justify the position that slaves should not be permitted to read the Bible. "It is in vain," added he, "to say there is danger in it. The best slaves of the State are those who can and do read the Scriptures. Again, who is it that teaches your slaves to read? It is generally done by the children of the owners. Who would tolerate an indictment against his son or daughter for teaching a slave to read? Such laws look to me as rather cowardly."[2] This attorney was almost of the opinion of many others who believed that the argument that to Christianize and educate the colored people of a slave commonwealth had a tendency to elevate them above their masters and to destroy the "legitimate distinctions" of the community, could be admitted only where the people themselves were degraded.
[Footnote 1: DeBow, The Industrial Resources of the Southern and
Western States, vol. ii., p. 269.]
[Footnote 2: DeBow, The Industrial Resources of the Southern and
Western States, vol. ii., p. 279.]
After these laws had been passed, American slavery extended not as that of the ancients, only to the body, but also to the mind. Education was thereafter regarded as positively inconsistent with the institution. The precaution taken to prevent the dissemination of information was declared indispensable to the system. The situation in many parts of the South was just as Berry portrayed it in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1832. He said: "We have as far as possible closed every avenue by which light may enter their [the slaves'] minds. If we could extinguish the capacity to see the light, our work would be completed; they would then be on a level with the beasts of the field and we should be safe! I am not certain that we would not do it, if we could find out the process, and that on the plea of necessity."[1]
[Footnote 1: Coffin, Slave Insurrections, p. 23; and Goodell, Slave
Code, p. 323.]
It had then come to pass that in the South, where once were found a considerable number of intelligent Negroes, they had become exceedingly scarce or disappeared from certain sections altogether. On plantations of hundreds of slaves it was common to discover that not one of them had the mere rudiments of education. In some large districts it was considered almost a phenomenon to find a Negro who could read the Bible or sign his name.[1]
[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.