The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 Part 19

[Footnote 7: Parsons, _Inside View_, etc., p. 248.]

The enlightenment of the Negroes, however, was not limited to what could be accomplished by individual efforts. In many southern communities colored schools were maintained in defiance of public opinion or in violation of the law. Patrick Snead of Savannah was sent to a private inst.i.tution until he could spell quite well and then to a Sunday-school for colored children.[1] Richard M. Hanc.o.c.k wrote of studying in a private school in Newbern, North Carolina;[2] John S.

Leary went to one in Fayetteville eight years;[3] and W.A. Pettiford of this State enjoyed similar advantages in Granville County during the fifties. He then moved with his parents to Preston County where he again had the opportunity to attend a special school.[4] About 1840, J.F. Boulder was a student in a mixed school of white and colored pupils in Delaware.[5] Bishop J.M. Brown, a native of the same commonwealth, attended a private school taught by a friendly woman of the Quaker sect.[6] John A. Hunter, of Maryland, was sent to a school for white children kept by the sister of his mistress, but his second master said that Hunter should not have been allowed to study and stopped his attendance.[7] Francis L. Cardozo of Charleston, South Carolina, entered school there in 1842 and continued his studies until he was twelve years of age.[8] During the fifties J.W. Morris of the same city attended a school conducted by the then distinguished Simeon Beard.[9] In the same way T. McCants Stewart[10] and the Grimke brothers [11] were able to begin their education there prior to emanc.i.p.ation.

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

[Footnote 2: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 406.]

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

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 469]

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

[Footnote 6: Ibid., 930.]

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

[Footnote 8: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, 428]

[Footnote 9: Ibid., p. 162]

[Footnote 10: Ibid., p. 1052]

[Footnote 11: This is their own statement.]

More schools for slaves existed than white men knew of, for it was difficult to find them. Fredrika Bremer heard of secret schools for slaves during her visit to Charleston, but she had extreme difficulty in finding such an inst.i.tution. When she finally located one and gained admission into its quiet chamber, she noticed in a wretched dark hole a "half-dozen poor children, some of whom had an aspect that testified great stupidity and mere animal life."[1] She was informed, too, that there were in Georgia and Florida planters who had established schools for the education of the children of their slaves with the intention of preparing them for living as "good free human beings."[2] Frances Anne Kemble noted such instances in her diary.[3]

The most interesting of these cases was discovered by the Union Army on its march through Georgia. Unsuspected by the slave power and undeterred by the terrors of the law, a colored woman by the name of Deveaux had for thirty years conducted a Negro school in the city of Savannah.[4]

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

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 491; Burke, _Reminiscences of Georgia_, p.

85.]

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

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

The city Negroes of Virginia continued to maintain schools despite the fact that the fear of servile insurrection caused the State to exercise due vigilance in the execution of the laws. The father of Richard De Baptiste of Fredericksburg made his own residence a school with his children and a few of those of his relatives as pupils.

The work was begun by a Negro and continued by an educated Scotch-Irishman, who had followed the profession of teaching in his native land. Becoming suspicious that a school of this kind was maintained at the home of De Baptiste, the police watched the place but failed to find sufficient evidence to close the inst.i.tution before it had done its work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 352.]

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

[Footnote 1: Parsons, _Inside View of Slavery_, p. 251; and Lyman, _Leaven for Doughfaces_, p. 43.]

[Footnote 2: _13th Annual Report of the American and Foreign Antislavery Societies_, 1853, p. 143.]

All such schools, however, were not secretly kept. Writing from Charleston in 1851 Fredrika Bremer made mention of two colored schools. One of these was a school for free Negroes kept with open doors by a white master. Their books which she examined were the same as those used in American schools for white children.[1] The Negroes of Lexington, Kentucky, had in 1830 a school in which thirty colored children were taught by a white man from Tennessee.[2] This gentleman had pledged himself to devote the rest of his life to the uplift of his "black brethren."[3] Travelers noted that colored schools were found also in Richmond, Maysville, Danville, and Louisville decades before the Civil War.[4] William H. Gibson, a native of Baltimore, was after 1847 teaching at Louisville in a day and night school with an enrollment of one hundred pupils, many of whom were slaves with written permits from their masters to attend.[5] Some years later W.H.

Stewart of that city attended the schools of Henry Adams, W.H. Gibson, and R.T.W. James. Robert Taylor began his studies there in Robert Lane's school and took writing from Henry Adams.[6] Negroes had schools in Tennessee also. R.L. Perry was during these years attending a school at Nashville.[7] An uncle of Dr. J.E. Moorland spent some time studying medicine in that city.

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

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

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

[Footnote 4: Tower, _Slavery Unmasked_; Dabney, _Journal of a Tour through the U.S. and Canada_, p. 185; _Niles Register_, vol. lxxii., p. 322; and Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 631.]

[Footnote 5: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 603.]

[Footnote 6: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 629.]

[Footnote 7: _Ibid._, p. 620.]

Many of these opportunities were made possible by the desire to teach slaves religion. In fact the instruction of Negroes after the enactment of prohibitory laws resembled somewhat the teaching of religion with letters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Thousands of Negroes like Edward Patterson and Nat Turner learned to read and write in Sabbath-schools. White men who diffused such information ran the gauntlet of mobs, but like a Baptist preacher of South Carolina who was threatened with expulsion from his church, if he did not desist, they worked on and overcame the local prejudice.

When preachers themselves dared not undertake this task it was often done by their children, whose benevolent work was winked at as an indulgence to the clerical profession. This charity, however, was not restricted to the narrow circle of the clergy. Believing with churchmen that the Bible is the revelation of G.o.d, many laymen contended that no man should be restrained from knowing his Maker directly.[1] Negroes, therefore, almost wors.h.i.+ped the Bible, and their anxiety to read it was their greatest incentive to learn. Many southerners braved the terrors of public opinion and taught their Negroes to read the Scriptures. To this extent General c.o.xe of Fluvanna County, Virginia, taught about one hundred of his adult slaves.[2] While serving as a professor of the Military Inst.i.tute at Lexington, Stonewall Jackson taught a cla.s.s of Negroes in a Sunday-school.[3]

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

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

[Footnote 3: _School Journal_, vol. lx.x.x., p. 332.]

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

[Footnote 1: _African Repository_, vol. x., pp. 174, 205, and 245.]

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

[Footnote 3: Goodell, _Slave Code_, pp. 323-324.]

[Footnote 4: _The Enormity of the Slave Trade, etc_., p. 74.]

Some of the objects of such charity turned out to be interesting characters. Samuel Lowry of Tennessee worked and studied privately under Rev. Mr. Talbot of Franklin College, and at the age of sixteen was sufficiently advanced to teach with success. He united with the Church of the Disciples and preached in that connection until 1859.[1]

In some cases colored preachers were judged sufficiently informed, not only to minister to the needs of their own congregations, but to preach to white churches. There was a Negro thus engaged in the State of Florida.[2] Another colored man of unusual intelligence and much prominence worked his way to the front in Giles County, Tennessee. In 1859 he was the pastor of a Hard-sh.e.l.l Baptist Church, the members.h.i.+p of which was composed of the best white people in the community. He was so well prepared for his work that out of a four days' argument on baptism with a white minister he emerged victor. From this appreciative congregation he received a salary of from six to seven hundred dollars a year.[3]

[Footnote 1: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 144.]

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

[Footnote 3: _The Richmond Enquirer_, July, 1859; and _Afr.

Repository_, vol. x.x.xv., p. 255.]

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