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’ cooeperative 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.
For this untenable position the slave States were so severely criticized by southern and northern friends of the colored people that the ministers of that section had to construct a more progressive policy. Yet whatever might be the arguments of the critics of the South to prove that the enlightenment of Negroes was not a danger, it was clear after the Southampton insurrection in 1831 that two factors in Negro education would for some time continue generally eliminated. These were reading matter and colored preachers.
Prominent among the southerners who endeavored to readjust their policy of enlightening the black population, were Bishop William Meade,[1] Bishop William Capers,[2] and Rev. C.C. Jones.[3] Bishop Meade was a native of Virginia, long noted for its large element of benevolent slaveholders who never lost interest in their Negroes. He was fortunate in finishing his education at Princeton, so productive then of leaders who fought the institution of slavery.[4] Immediately after his ordination in the Protestant Episcopal Church, Bishop Meade assumed the role of a reformer. He took up the cause of the colored people, devoting no little of his time to them when he was in Alexandria and Frederick in 1813 and 1814.[5] He began by preaching to the Negroes on fifteen plantations, meeting them twice a day, and in one year reported the baptism of forty-eight colored children.[6] Early a champion of the colonization of the Negroes, he was sent on a successful mission to Georgia in 1818 to secure the release of certain recaptured Africans who were about to be sold. Going and returning from the South he was active in establishing auxiliaries of the American Colonization Society. He helped to extend its sphere also into the Middle States and New-England.[7]
[Footnote 1: Goodloe, _Southern Platform_, pp. 64-65.]
[Footnote 2: Wightman, _Life of Bishop William Capers_, p. 294.]
[Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, Introductory Chapter.]
[Footnote 4: Goodloe, _Southern Platform_, p. 64.]
[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., p. 65.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid_., p. 66.]
[Footnote 7: _Niles Register_, vol. xvi., pp. 165-166.]
Bishop Meade was a representative of certain of his fellow-churchmen who were passing through the transitory stage from the position of advocating the thorough education of Negroes to that of recommending mere verbal instruction. Agreeing at first with Rev. Thomas Bacon, Bishop Meade favored the literary training of Negroes, and advocated the extermination of slavery.[1] Later in life he failed to urge his followers to emancipate their slaves, and did not entreat his congregation to teach them to read. He was then committed to the policy of only lessening their burden as much as possible without doing anything to destroy the institution. Thereafter he advocated the education and emancipation of the slaves only in connection with the scheme of colonization, to which he looked for a solution of these problems.[2]
[Footnote 1: Meade,_Sermons of Rev. Thos. Bacon_, p. 2; and Goodell, _The Southern Platform_, pp. 64, 65.]
[Footnote 2:_Ibid_., p. 65.]
Wishing to give his views on the religious instruction of Negroes, the Bishop found in Rev. Thomas Bacon’s sermons that “every argument which was likely to convince and persuade was so forcibly exerted, and that every objection that could possibly be made, so fully answered, and in fine everything that ought to be said so well said, and the same things so happily confirmed …” that it was deemed “best to refer the reader for the true nature and object of the book to the book itself.”[1] Bishop Meade had uppermost in his mind Bacon’s logical arraignment of those who neglected to teach their Negroes the Christian religion. Looking beyond the narrow circle of his own sect, the bishop invited the attention of all denominations to this subject in which they were “equally concerned.” He especially besought “the ministers of the gospel to take it into serious consideration as a matter for which they also will have to give an account. Did not Christ,” said he, “die for these poor creatures as well as for any other, and is it not given in charge of the minister to gather his sheep into the fold?”[2]
[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Rev. Thos. Bacon_, pp. 31,32, 81, 90, 93, 95, 104, and 105.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 104.]
Another worker in this field was Bishop William Capers of the Methodist Episcopal Church of South Carolina. A southerner to the manner born, he did not share the zeal of the antislavery men who would educate Negroes as a preparation for manumission.[1] Regarding the subject of abolition as one belonging to the State and entirely inappropriate to the Church, he denounced the principles of the religious abolitionists as originating in false philosophy. Capers endeavored to prove that the relation of slave and master is authorized by the Holy Scriptures. He was of the opinion, however, that certain abuses which might ensue, were immoralities to be prevented or punished by all proper means, both by the Church discipline and the civil law.[2] Believing that the neglect of the spiritual needs of the slaves was a reflection on the slaveholders, he set out early in the thirties to stir up South Carolina to the duty of removing this stigma.
[Footnote 1: Wightman, _Life of William Capers_, p. 295.]
[Footnote 2: Wightman, _Life of William Capers_, p. 296.]
His plan of enlightening the blacks did not include literary instruction. His aim was to adapt the teaching of Christian truth to the condition of persons having a “humble intellect and a limited range of knowledge by means of constant and patient reiteration.”[1] The old Negroes were to look to preachers for the exposition of these principles while the children were to be turned over to catechists who would avail themselves of the opportunity of imparting these fundamentals to the young at the time their minds were in the plastic state. Yet all instructors and preachers to Negroes had to be careful to inculcate the performance of the duty of obedience to their masters as southerners found them stated in the Holy Scriptures. Any one who would hesitate to teach these principles of southern religion should not be employed to instruct slaves. The bishop was certain that such a one could not then be found among the preachers of the Methodist Episcopal Church of South Carolina.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 298.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, p. 296.]
Bishop Capers was the leading spirit in the movement instituted in that commonwealth about 1829 to establish missions to the slaves. So generally did he arouse the people to the performance of this duty that they not only allowed preachers access to their Negroes but requested that missionaries be sent to their plantations. Such petitions came from C.C. Pinckney, Charles Boring, and Lewis Morris.[1] Two stations were established in 1829 and two additional ones in 1833. Thereafter the Church founded one or two others every year until 1847 when there were seventeen missions conducted by twenty-five preachers. At the death of Bishop Capers in 1855 the Methodists of South Carolina had twenty-six such establishments, which employed thirty-two preachers, ministering to 11,546 communicants of color. The missionary revenue raised by the local conference had increased from $300 to $25,000 a year.[2]
[Footnote 1: Wightman, _Life of William Capers_, p. 296.]
[Footnote 2; _African Repository_, vol. xxiv., p. 157.]
The most striking example of this class of workers was the Rev. C.C. Jones, a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Educated at Princeton with men actually interested in the cause of the Negroes, and located in Georgia where he could study the situation as it was, Jones became not a theorist but a worker. He did not share the discussion of the question as to how to get rid of slavery. Accepting the institution as a fact, he endeavored to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunates by the spiritual cultivation of their minds. He aimed, too, not to take into his scheme the solution of the whole problem but to appeal to a special class of slaves, those of the plantations who were left in the depths of ignorance as to the benefits of right living. In this respect he was like two of his contemporaries, Rev. Josiah Law[1] of Georgia and Bishop Polk of Louisiana.[2] Denouncing the policy of getting all one could out of the slaves and of giving back as little as possible, Jones undertook to show how their spiritual improvement would exterminate their ignorance, vulgarity, idleness, improvidence, and irreligion; Jones thought that if the circumstances of the Negroes were changed, they would equal, if not excel, the rest of the human family “in majesty of intellect, elegance of manners, purity of morals, and ardor of piety.”[3] He feared that white men might cherish a contempt for Negroes that would cause them to sink lower in the scale of intelligence, morality, and religion. Emphasizing the fact that as one class of society rises so will the other, Jones advocated the mingling of the classes together in churches, to create kindlier feelings among them, increase the tendency of the blacks to subordination, and promote in a higher degree their mental and religious improvement. He was sure that these benefits could never result from independent church organization.[4]
[Footnote 1: Rev. Josiah Law was almost as successful as Jones in carrying the gospel to the neglected Negroes. His life is a large chapter in the history of Christianity among the slaves of that commonwealth. See Wright, _Negro Education in Georgia_, p. 19.]
[Footnote 2: Rhodes, _History of the U.S_., vol. i., p. 331.]
[Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p. 103.]
[Footnote 4: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, pp. 106, 217.]
Meeting the argument of those who feared the insubordination of Negroes, Jones thought that the gospel would do more for the obedience of slaves and the peace of the community than weapons of war. He asserted that the very effort of the masters to instruct their slaves created a strong bond of union between them and their masters.[1] History, he believed, showed that the direct way of exposing the slaves to acts of insubordination was to leave them in ignorance and superstition to the care of their own religion.[2] To disprove the falsity of the charge that literary instruction given in Neau’s school in New York was the cause of a rising of slaves in 1709, he produced evidence that it was due to their opposition to becoming Christians. The rebellions in South Carolina from 1730 to 1739, he maintained, were fomented by the Spaniards in St. Augustine. The upheaval in New York in 1741 was not due to any plot resulting from the instruction of Negroes in religion, but rather to a delusion on the part of the whites. The rebellions in Camden in 1816 and in Charleston in 1822 were not exceptions to the rule. He conceded that the Southampton Insurrection in Virginia in 1831 originated under the color of religion. It was pointed out, however, that this very act itself was a proof that Negroes left to work out their own salvation, had fallen victims to “ignorant and misguided teachers” like Nat Turner. Such undesirable leaders, thought he, would never have had the opportunity to do mischief, if the masters had taken it upon themselves to instruct their slaves.[3] He asserted that no large number of slaves well instructed in the Christian religion and taken into the churches directed by white men had ever been found guilty of taking part in servile insurrections.[4]
[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., pp. 212, 274.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 215.]
[Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, etc., p. 212.]
[Footnote 4: Plumer, _Thoughts_, etc., p. 4.]
To meet the arguments of these reformers the slaveholders found among laymen and preachers able champions to defend the reactionary policy. Southerners who had not gone to the extreme in the prohibition of the instruction of Negroes felt more inclined to answer the critics of their radical neighbors. One of these defenders thought that the slaves should have some enlightenment but believed that the domestic element of the system of slavery in the Southern States afforded “adequate means” for the improvement, adapted to their condition and the circumstances of the country; and furnished “the natural, safe, and effectual means”[1] of the intellectual and moral elevation of the Negro race. Another speaking more explicitly, said that the fact that the Negro is such per se carried with it the “inference or the necessity that his education–the cultivation of his faculties, or the development of his intelligence, must be in harmony with itself.” In other words, “his instruction must be an entirely different thing from the training of the Caucasian,” in regard to whom “the term education had widely different significations.” For this reason these defenders believed that instead of giving the Negro systematic instruction he should be placed in the best position possible for the development of his imitative powers–“to call into action that peculiar capacity for copying the habits, mental and moral, of the superior race.”[2] They referred to the facts that slaves still had plantation prayers and preaching by numerous members of their own race, some of whom could read and write, that they were frequently favored by their masters with services expressly for their instruction, that Sabbath-schools had been established for the benefit of the young, and finally that slaves were received into the churches which permitted them to hear the same gospel and praise the same God.[3]
[Footnote 1: Smith, _Lectures on the Philosophy and Practice of Slavery_, pp. 228 _et seq_.]
[Footnote 2: Van Evrie, _Negroes and Negro Slavery_, p. 215.]
[Footnote 3: Smith, _Lectures on the Philosophy of Slavery_, p. 228.]
Seeing even in the policy of religious instruction nothing but danger to the position of the slave States, certain southerners opposed it under all circumstances. Some masters feared that verbal instruction would increase the desire of slaves to learn. Such teaching might develop into a progressive system of improvement, which, without any special effort in that direction, would follow in the natural order of things.[1] Timorous persons believed that slaves thus favored would neglect their duties and embrace seasons of religious worship for originating and executing plans for insubordination and villainy. They thought, too, that missionaries from the free States would thereby be afforded an opportunity to come South and inculcate doctrines subversive of the interests and safety of that section.[2] It would then be only a matter of time before the movement would receive such an impetus that it would dissolve the relations of society as then constituted and revolutionize the civil institutions of the South.
[Footnote 1: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p. 192; Olmsted, _Back Country_, pp. 106-108.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 106.]
The black population of certain sections, however, was not reduced to heathenism. Although often threatening to execute the reactionary laws, many of which were never intended to be rigidly enforced, the southerners did not at once eliminate the Negro as a religious instructor.[1] It was fortunate that a few Negroes who had learned the importance of early Christian training, organized among themselves local associations. These often appointed an old woman of the plantation to teach children too young to work in the fields, to say prayers, repeat a little catechism, and memorize a few hymns.[2] But this looked too much like systematic instruction. In some States it was regarded as productive of evils destructive to southern society and was, therefore, discouraged or prohibited.[3] To local associations organized by kindly slaveholders there was less opposition because the chief aim always was to restrain strangers and undesirable persons from coming South to incite the Negroes to servile insurrection. Two good examples of these local organizations were the ones found in Liberty and McIntosh counties, Georgia. The constitutions of these bodies provided that the instruction should be altogether oral, embracing the general principles of the Christian religion as understood by orthodox Christians.[4]
[Footnote 1: This statement is based on the testimonies of ex-slaves.]
[Footnote 2: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, pp. 114, 117.]
[Footnote 3: While the laws in certain places were not so drastic as to prohibit religious assemblies, the same was effected by patrols and mobs.]
[Footnote 4: The Constitution of the Liberty County Association for the Religious Instruction of Negroes, Article IV.]
Directing their efforts thereafter toward mere verbal teaching, religious workers depended upon the memory of the slave to retain sufficient of the truths and principles expounded to effect his conversion. Pamphlets, hymn books, and catechisms especially adapted to the work were written by churchmen, and placed in the hands of discreet missionaries acceptable to the slaveholders. Among other publications of this kind were Dr. Capers’s Short Catechism for the Use of Colored Members on _Trial in the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina; A Catechism to be Used by Teachers in the Religious Instruction of Persons of Color in the Episcopal Church of South Carolina_; Dr. Palmer’s _Cathechism_; Rev. John Mine’s _Catechism_; and C.C. Jones’s _Catechism of Scripture, Doctrine and Practice Designed for the Original Instruction of Colored People._ Bishop Meade was once engaged in collecting such literature addressed particularly to slaves in their stations. These extracts were to be read to them on proper occasions by any member of the family.[1]
[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Rev. Thomas Bacon_, p. 2.]
Yet on the whole it can be safely stated that there were few societies formed in the South to give the Negroes religious and moral instruction. Only a few missionaries were exclusively devoted to work among them. In fact, after the reactionary period no propaganda of any southern church included anything which could be designated as systematic instruction of the Negroes.[1] Even owners, who took care to feed, clothe, and lodge their slaves well and treated them humanely, often neglected to do anything to enlighten their understanding as to their responsibility to God. [Footnote 1: Madison’s Works, vol. in., p. 314; Olmsted, _Back Country_, p. 107; Birney, _The American Churches_, etc., p. 6; and Jones, _Religious Instruction_, etc., p. 100.]
Observing closely these conditions one would wonder little that many Negroes became low and degraded. The very institution of slavery itself produced shiftless, undependable beings, seeking relief whenever possible by giving the least and getting the most from their masters. When the slaves were cut off from the light of the gospel by the large plantation system, they began to exhibit such undesirable traits as insensibility of heart, lasciviousness, stealing, and lying. The cruelty of the “Christian” master to the slaves made the latter feel that such a practice was not altogether inhuman. Just as the white slave drivers developed into hopeless brutes by having human beings to abuse, so it turned out with certain Negroes in their treatment of animals and their fellow-creatures in bondage. If some Negroes were commanded not to commit adultery, such a prohibition did not extend to the slave women forced to have illicit relations with masters who sold their mulatto offspring as goods and chattels. If the bondmen were taught not to steal the aim was to protect the supplies of the local plantation. Few masters raised any serious objection to the act of their half-starved slaves who at night crossed over to some neighboring plantation to secure food. Many white men made it their business to dispose of property stolen by Negroes.
In the strait in which most slaves were, they had to lie for protection. Living in an environment where the actions of almost any colored man were suspected as insurrectionary, Negroes were frequently called upon to tell what they knew and were sometimes forced to say what they did not know. Furthermore, to prevent the slaves from cooeperating to rise against their masters, they were often taught to mistreat and malign each other to keep alive a feeling of hatred. The bad traits of the American Negroes resulted then not from an instinct common to the natives of Africa, but from the institutions of the South and from the actual teaching of the slaves to be low and depraved that they might never develop sufficient strength to become a powerful element in society.
As this system operated to make the Negroes either nominal Christians or heathen, the anti-slavery men could not be silent.[1] James G. Birney said that the slaveholding churches like indifferent observers, had watched the abasement of the Negroes to a plane of beasts without remonstrating with legislatures against the iniquitous measures.[2] Moreover, because there was neither literary nor systematic oral instruction of the colored members of southern congregations, uniting with the Church made no change in the condition of the slaves. They were thrown back just as before among their old associates, subjected to corrupting influences, allowed to forego attendance at public worship on Sundays, and rarely encouraged to attend family prayers.[3] In view of this state of affairs Birney was not surprised that it was only here and there that one could find a few slaves who had an intelligent view of Christianity or of a future life.
[Footnote 1: Tower, _Slavery Unmasked_, p. 394.]
[Footnote 2: Birney, _American Churches_, p. 6.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., p. 7.]
William E. Charming expressed his deep regret that the whole lot of the slave was fitted to keep his mind in childhood and bondage. To Channing it seemed shameful that, although the slave lived in a land of light, few beams found their way to his benighted understanding. He was given no books to excite his curiosity. His master provided for him no teacher but the driver who broke him almost in childhood to the servile tasks which were to fill up his life. Channing complained that when benevolence would approach the slave with instruction it was repelled. Not being allowed to be taught, the “voice which would speak to him as a man was put to silence.” For the lack of the privilege to learn the truth “his immortal spirit was systematically crushed despite the mandate of God to bring all men unto Him.”[1]
[Footnote 1: Channing, _Slavery_, p. 77.]
Discussing the report that slaves were taught religion, Channing rejoiced that any portion of them heard of that truth “which gives inward freedom.”[1] He thought, however, that this number was very small. Channing was certain that most slaves were still buried in heathen ignorance. But extensive as was this so-called religious instruction, he did not see how the teaching of the slave to be obedient to his master could exert much power in raising one to the divinity of man. How slavery which tends to debase the mind of the bondman could prepare it for spiritual truth, or how he could comprehend the essential principles of love on hearing it from the lips of his selfish and unjust owner, were questions which no defender of the system ever answered satisfactorily for Channing. Seeing then no hope for the elevation of the Negro as a slave, he became a more determined abolitionist.
[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 78.]
William Jay, a son of the first Chief Justice of the United States, and an abolition preacher of the ardent type, later directed his attention to these conditions. The keeping of human beings in heathen ignorance by a people professing to reverence the obligation of Christianity seemed to him an unpardonable sin. He believed that the natural result of this “compromise of principle, this suppression of truth, this sacrifice to unanimity,” had been the adoption of expediency as a standard of right and wrong in the place of the revealed will of God.[1] “Thus,” continued he, “good men and good Christians have been tempted by their zeal for the American Colonization Society to countenance opinions and practices inconsistent with justice and humanity.”[2] Jay charged to this disastrous policy of neglect the result that in 1835 only 245,000 of the 2,245,144 slaves had a saving knowledge of the religion of Christ. He deplored the fact that unhappily the evil influence of the reactionaries had not been confined to their own circles but had to a lamentable extent “vitiated the moral sense” of other communities. The proslavery leaders, he said, had reconciled public opinion to the continuance of slavery, and had aggravated those sinful prejudices which subjected the free blacks to insult and persecution and denied them the blessings of education and religious instruction.[3]
[Footnote 1: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc., p. 24.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 25.]
[Footnote 3: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc., p. 26.]
Among the most daring of those who censured the South for its reactionary policy was Rev. John G. Fee, an abolition minister of the gospel of Kentucky. Seeing the inevitable result in States where public opinion and positive laws had made the education of Negroes impossible, Fee asserted that in preventing them from reading God’s Word and at the same time incorporating them into the Church as nominal Christians, the South had weakened the institution. Without the means to learn the principles of religion it was impossible for such an ignorant class to become efficient and useful members.[1] Excoriating those who had kept their servants in ignorance to secure the perpetuity of the institution of slavery, Fee maintained that sealing up the mind of the slave, lest he should see his wrongs, was tantamount to cutting off the hand or foot in order to prevent his escape from forced and unwilling servitude.[2] “If by our practice, our silence, or our sloth,” said he, “we perpetuate a system which paralyzes our hands when we attempt to convey to them the bread of life, and which inevitably consigns the great mass of them to unending perdition, can we be guiltless in the sight of Him who hath made us stewards of His grace? This is sinful. Said the Saviour: ‘Woe unto you lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.”‘[3]
[Footnote 1: Fee, _Antislavery Manual_, p. 147.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 148.]
[Footnote 3: Fee, _Antislavery Manual_, p. 149.]
CHAPTER IX
LEARNING IN SPITE OF OPPOSITION
Discouraging as these conditions seemed, the situation was not entirely hopeless. The education of the colored people as a public effort had been prohibited south of the border States, but there was still some chance for Negroes of that section to acquire knowledge. Furthermore, the liberal white people of that section considered these enactments, as we have stated above, not applicable to southerners interested in the improvement of their slaves but to mischievous abolitionists. The truth is that thereafter some citizens disregarded the laws of their States and taught worthy slaves whom they desired to reward or use in business requiring an elementary education. As these prohibitions in slave States were not equally stringent, white and colored teachers of free blacks were not always disturbed. In fact, just before the middle of the nineteenth century there was so much winking at the violation of the reactionary laws that it looked as if some Southern States might recede from their radical position and let Negroes be educated as they had been in the eighteenth century.
The ways in which slaves thereafter acquired knowledge are significant. Many picked it up here and there, some followed occupations which were in themselves enlightening, and others learned from slaves whose attainments were unknown to their masters. Often influential white men taught Negroes not only the rudiments of education but almost anything they wanted to learn. Not a few slaves were instructed by the white children whom they accompanied to school. While attending ministers and officials whose work often lay open to their servants, many of the race learned by contact and observation. Shrewd Negroes sometimes slipped stealthily into back streets, where they studied under a private teacher, or attended a school hidden from the zealous execution of the law.
The instances of Negroes struggling to obtain an education read like the beautiful romances of a people in an heroic age. Sometimes Negroes of the type of Lott Carey[1] educated themselves. James Redpath discovered in Savannah that in spite of the law great numbers of slaves had learned to read well. Many of them had acquired a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic. “But,” said he, “blazon it to the shame of the South, the knowledge thus acquired has been snatched from the spare records of leisure in spite of their owners’ wishes and watchfulness.”[2] C.G. Parsons was informed that although poor masters did not venture to teach their slaves, occasionally one with a thirst for knowledge secretly learned the rudiments of education without any instruction.[3] While on a tour through parts of Georgia, E.P. Burke observed that, notwithstanding the great precaution which was taken to prevent the mental improvement of the slaves, many of them “stole knowledge enough to enable them to read and write with ease.”[4] Robert Smalls[5] of South Carolina and Alfred T. Jones[6] of Kentucky began their education in this manner.
[Footnote 1: Mott, _Biographical Sketches_, p. 87.]
[Footnote 2: Redpath, _Roving Editor_, etc., p. 161.]
[Footnote 3: Parsons, _Inside View_, etc., p. 248.]
[Footnote 4: Burke, _Reminiscences of Georgia_, p. 85.]
[Footnote 5: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 126.]
[Footnote 6: Drew, _Refugee_, p. 152.]
Probably the best example of this class was Harrison Ellis of Alabama. At the age of thirty-five he had acquired a liberal education by his own exertions. Upon examination he proved himself a good Latin and Hebrew scholar and showed still greater proficiency in Greek. His attainments in theology were highly satisfactory. _The Eufaula Shield_, a newspaper of that State, praised him as a man courteous in manners, polite in conversation, and manly in demeanor. Knowing how useful Ellis would be in a free country, the Presbyterian Synod of Alabama purchased him and his family in 1847 at a cost of $2500 that he might use his talents in elevating his own people in Liberia.[1]
[Footnote 1: _Niles Register_, vol. lxxi., p. 296.]
Intelligent Negroes secretly communicated to their fellow men what they knew. Henry Banks of Stafford County, Virginia, was taught by his brother-in-law to read, but not write.[1] The father of Benedict Duncan, a slave in Maryland, taught his son the alphabet.[2] M.W. Taylor of Kentucky received his first instruction from his mother. H.O. Wagoner learned from his parents the first principles of the common branches.[3] A mulatto of Richmond taught John H. Smythe when he was between the ages of five and seven.[4] The mother of Dr. C.H. Payne of West Virginia taught him to read at such an early age that he does not remember when he first developed that power.[5] Dr. E.C. Morris, President of the National Baptist Convention, belonged to a Georgia family, all of whom were well instructed by his father.[6]
[Footnote 1: Drew, _Refugee_, etc., p. 72.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 110.]
[Footnote 3: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 679.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 873.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid., p. 368.]
[Footnote 6: This is his own statement.]
The white parents of Negroes often secured to them the educational facilities then afforded the superior race. The indulgent teacher of J. Morris of North Carolina was his white father, his master.[1] W.J. White acquired his education from his mother, who was a white woman.[2] Martha Martin, a daughter of her master, a Scotch-Irishman of Georgia, was permitted to go to Cincinnati to be educated, while her sister was sent to a southern town to learn the milliner’s trade.[3] Then there were cases like that of Josiah Settle’s white father. After the passage of the law forbidding free Negroes to remain in the State of Tennessee, he took his children to Hamilton, Ohio, to be educated and there married his actual wife, their colored mother.[4]
[Footnote 1: This is based on an account given by his son.]
[Footnote 2: _The Crisis_, vol. v., p. 119.]
[Footnote 3: Drew, _Refugee_, p. 143.]
[Footnote 4: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 539.]
The very employment of slaves in business establishments accelerated their mental development. Negroes working in stores often acquired a fair education by assisting clerks. Some slaves were clerks themselves. Under the observation of E.P. Burke came the notable case of a young man belonging to one of the best families of Savannah. He could read, write, cipher, and transact business so intelligently that his master often committed important trusts to his care.[1] B.K. Bruce, while still a slave, educated himself when he was working at the printer’s trade in Brunswick, Missouri. Even farther south where slavery assumed its worst form, we find that this condition obtained. Addressing to the New Orleans _Commercial Bulletin_ a letter on African colonization, John McDonogh stated that the work imposed on his slaves required some education for which he willingly provided. In 1842 he had had no white man over his slaves for twenty years. He had assigned this task to his intelligent colored manager who did his work so well that the master did not go in person once in six months to see what his slaves were doing. He says, “They were, besides, my men of business, enjoyed my confidence, were my clerks, transacted all my affairs, made purchases of materials, collected my rents, leased my houses, took care of my property and effects of every kind, and that with an honesty and fidelity which was proof against every temptation.”[2] Traveling in Mississippi in 1852, Olmsted found another such group of slaves all of whom could read, whereas the master himself was entirely illiterate. He took much pride, however, in praising his loyal, capable, and intelligent Negroes.[3]
[Footnote 1: Burke, _Reminiscences of Georgia_, p. 86.
Frances Anne Kemble gives in her journal an interesting account of her observations in Georgia. She says: “I must tell you that I have been delighted, surprised, and the very least perplexed, by the sudden petition on the part of our young waiter, Aleck, that I will teach him to read. He is a very intelligent lad of about sixteen, and preferred his request with urgent humility that was very touching. I will do it; and yet, it is simply breaking the laws of the government under which I am living. Unrighteous laws are made to be broken–perhaps–but then you see, I am a woman, and Mr.—- stands between me and the penalty–. I certainly intend to teach Aleck to read; and I’ll teach every other creature that wants to learn.” See Kemble, _Journal_, p. 34.]
[Footnote 2: McDonogh, “Letter on African Colonization.”]
[Footnote 3: Olmsted, _Cotton Kingdom_, vol. ii., p. 70.]
White persons deeply interested in Negroes taught them regardless of public opinion and the law. Dr. Alexander T. Augusta of Virginia learned to read while serving white men as a barber.[1] A prominent white man of Memphis taught Mrs. Mary Church Terrell’s mother French and English. The father of Judge R.H. Terrell was well-grounded in reading by his overseer during the absence of his master from Virginia.[2] A fugitive slave from Essex County of the same State was not allowed to go to school publicly, but had an opportunity to learn from white persons privately.[3] The master of Charles Henry Green, a slave of Delaware, denied him all instruction, but he was permitted to study among the people to whom he was hired.[4] M.W. Taylor of Kentucky studied under attorneys J.B. Kinkaid and John W. Barr, whom he served as messenger.[5] Ignoring his master’s orders against frequenting a night school, Henry Morehead of Louisville learned to spell and read sufficiently well to cause his owner to have the school unceremoniously closed.[6]
[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 258.]
[Footnote 2: This is based on the statements of Judge and Mrs. Terrell.]
[Footnote 3: Drew, _Refugee_, p. 335.]
[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 96.]
[Footnote 5: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 933.]
[Footnote 6: Drew, _Refugee_, p. 180.]
The educational experiences of President Scarborough and of Bishop Turner show that some white persons were willing to make unusual sacrifices to enlighten Negroes. President Scarborough began to attend school in his native home in Bibb County, Georgia, at the age of six years. He went out ostensibly to play, keeping his books concealed under his arm, but spent six or eight hours each day in school until he could read well and had mastered the first principles of geography, grammar, and arithmetic. At the age of ten he took regular lessons in writing under an old South Carolinian, J.C. Thomas, a rebel of the bitterest type. Like Frederick Douglass, President Scarborough received much instruction from his white playmates.[1]
[Footnote 1: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 410.]
Bishop Turner of Newberry Court House, in South Carolina, purchased a spelling book and secured the services of an old white lady and a white boy, who in violation of the State law taught him to spell as far as two syllables.[1] The white boy’s brother stopped him from teaching this lad of color, pointing out that such an instructor was liable to arrest. For some time he obtained help from an old colored gentleman, a prodigy in sounds. At the age of thirteen his mother employed a white lady to teach him on Sundays, but she was soon stopped by indignant white persons of the community. When he attained the age of fifteen he was employed by a number of lawyers in whose favor he ingratiated himself by his unusual power to please people. Thereafter these men in defiance of the law taught him to read and write and explained anything he wanted to know about arithmetic, geography, and astronomy.[2]
[Footnote 1: Bishop Turner says that when he started to learn there were among his acquaintances three colored men who had learned to read the Bible in Charleston. See Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 806.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 806.]
Often favorite slaves were taught by white children. By hiding books in a hayloft and getting the white children to teach him, James W. Sumler of Norfolk, Virginia, obtained an elementary education.[1] While serving as overseer for his Scotch-Irish master, Daniel J. Lockhart of the same commonwealth learned to read under the instruction of his owner’s boys. They were not interrupted in their benevolent work.[2] In the same manner John Warren, a slave of Tennessee, acquired a knowledge of the common branches.[3] John Baptist Snowden of Maryland was secretly instructed by his owner’s children.[4] Uncle Cephas, a slave of Parson Winslow of Tennessee, reported that the white children taught him on the sly when they came to see Dinah, who was a very good cook. He was never without books during his stay with his master.[5] One of the Grimke Sisters taught her little maid to read while brushing her young mistress’s locks.[6] Robert Harlan, who was brought up in the family of Honorable J.M. Harlan, acquired the fundamentals of the common branches from Harlan’s older sons.[7] The young mistress of Mrs. Ann Woodson of Virginia instructed her until she could read in the first reader.[8] Abdy observed in 1834 that slaves of Kentucky had been thus taught to read. He believed that they were about as well off as they would have been, had they been free.[9] Giving her experiences on a Mississippi plantation, Susan Dabney Smedes stated that the white children delighted in teaching the house servants. One night she was formally invited with the master, mistress, governess, and guests by a twelve-year-old school mistress to hear her dozen pupils recite poetry. One of the guests was quite astonished to see his servant recite a piece of poetry which he had learned for this occasion.[10] Confining his operations to the kitchen, another such teacher of this plantation was unusually successful in instructing the adult male slaves. Five of these Negroes experienced such enlightenment that they became preachers.[11]
[Footnote 1: Drew, _Refugee_, p. 97.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 45.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 185.]
[Footnote 4: Snowden, _Autobiography_, p. 23.]
[Footnote 5: Albert, _The House of Bondage_, p. 125.]
[Footnote 6: Birney, _The Grimke Sisters_, p. 11.]
[Footnote 7: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 613.]
[Footnote 8: This fact is stated in one of her letters.]
[Footnote 9: Abdy, _Journal of a Residence and Tour in U.S.A._, 1833-1834. P. 346.]
[Footnote 10: Smedes, _A Southern Planter_, pp. 79-80.]
[Footnote 11: Ibid., p. 80.]