The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 Part 5

The retrogressives made much of the a.s.sertion that adult slaves lately imported, were, on account of their attachment to heathen practices and idolatrous rites, loath to take over the Teutonic civilization, and would at best learn to speak the English language imperfectly only.[1] The reformers, who at times admitted this, maintained that the alleged difficulties encountered in teaching the crudest element of the slaves could not be adduced as an argument against the religious instruction of free Negroes and the education of the American born colored children.[2] This problem, however, was not a serious one in most Northern States, for the reason that the small number of slaves in that section obviated the necessity for much apprehension as to what kind of education the blacks should have, and whether they should be enlightened before or after emanc.i.p.ation.

Although the Northern people believed that the education of the race should be definitely planned, and had much to say about industrial education, most of them were of the opinion that ordinary training in the fundamentals of useful knowledge and in the principles of Christian religion, was sufficient to meet the needs of those designated for freedom.

[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Thomas Bacon_, pp. 81-87.]

[Footnote 2: Porteus, _Works of_, vol. vi., p. 177; Warburton, _A Sermon_, etc., pp. 25 and 27.]

On the other hand, most southerners who conceded the right of the Negro to be educated did not openly aid the movement except with the understanding that the enlightened ones should be taken from their fellows and colonized in some remote part of the United States or in their native land.[1] The idea of colonization, however, was not confined to the southern slaveholders, for Thornton, Fothergill, and Granville Sharp had long looked to Africa as the proper place for enlightened people of color.[2] Feeling that it would be wrong to expatriate them, Benezet and Branagan[3] advocated the colonization of such Negroes on the public lands west of the Alleghanies. There was some talk of giving slaves training in the elements of agriculture and then dividing plantations among them to develop a small cla.s.s of tenants. Jefferson, a member of a committee appointed in 1779 by the General a.s.sembly of that commonwealth to revise its laws, reported a plan providing for the instruction of its slaves in agriculture and the handicrafts to prepare them for liberation and colonization under the supervision of the home government until they could take care of themselves.[4]

[Footnote 1: _Writings of James Monroe_, vol. iii., pp. 261, 266, 292, 295, 321, 322, 336, 338, 349, 351, 352, 353, 378.]

[Footnote 2: Brissot de Warville, _Travels_, vol. i., p. 262.]

[Footnote 3: _Tyrannical Libertymen_, pp. 10-11; Locke, _Anti-slavery_, etc., pp. 31-32; Branagan, _Serious Remonstrance_, p.

18.]

[Footnote 4: Was.h.i.+ngton, _Works of Jefferson_, vol. iii., p. 296; vol.

iv., p. 291 and vol. viii., p. 380.]

Without resorting to the subterfuge of colonization, not a few slaveholders were still wise enough to show why the improvement of the Negroes should be neglected altogether. Vanquished by the logic of Daniel Davis[1] and Benjamin Rush,[2] those who had theretofore justified slavery on the ground that it gave the bondmen a chance to be enlightened, fell back on the theory of African racial inferiority.

This they said was so well exhibited by the Negroes' lack of wisdom and of goodness that continued heathenism of the race was justifiable.[3] Answering these inconsistent persons, John Wesley inquired: "Allowing them to be as stupid as you say, to whom is that stupidity owing? Without doubt it lies altogether at the door of the inhuman masters who give them no opportunity for improving their understanding and indeed leave them no motive, either from hope or fear to attempt any such thing." Wesley a.s.serted, too, that the Africans were in no way remarkable for their stupidity while they remained in their own country, and that where they had equal motives and equal means of improvement, the Negroes were not only not inferior to the better inhabitants of Europe, but superior to some of them.[4]

[Footnote 1: Davis was a logical antislavery agitator. He believed that if the slaves had had the means of education, if they had been treated with humanity, making slaves of them had been no more than doing evil that good might come. He thought that Christianity and humanity would have rather dictated the sending of books and teachers into Africa and endeavors for their salvation.]

[Footnote 2: Benjamin Rush was a Philadelphia physician of Quaker parentage. He was educated at the College of New Jersey and at the Medical School of Edinburgh, where he came into contact with some of the most enlightened men of his time. Holding to the ideals of his youth, Dr. Rush was soon a.s.sociated with the friends of the Negroes on his return to Philadelphia. He not only worked for the abolition of the slave trade but fearlessly advocated the right of the Negroes to be educated. He pointed out that an inquiry into the methods of converting Negroes to Christianity would show that the means were ill suited to the end proposed. "In many cases," said he, "Sunday is appropriated to work for themselves. Reading and writing are discouraged among them. A belief is inculcated among some that they have no souls. In a word, every attempt to instruct or convert them has been constantly opposed by their masters." See Rush, _An Address to the Inhabitants_, etc., p. 16.]

[Footnote 3: Meade, _Sermons of Rev. Thomas Bacon_, pp. 81-97.]

[Footnote 4: Wesley, _Thoughts upon Slavery_, p. 92.]

William Pinkney, the antislavery leader of Maryland, believed also that Negroes are no worse than white people under similar conditions, and that all the colored people needed to disprove their so-called inferiority was an equal chance with the more favored race.[1] Others like George Buchanan referred to the Negroes' talent for the fine arts and to their achievements in literature, mathematics, and philosophy.

Buchanan informed these merciless aristocrats "that the Africans whom you despise, whom you inhumanly treat as brutes and whom you unlawfully subject to slavery with tyrannizing hands of despots are equally capable of improvement with yourselves."[2]

[Footnote 1: Pinkney, _Speech in Maryland House of Delegates_, p. 6.]

[Footnote 2: Buchanan, _An Oration on the Moral and Political Evil of Slavery_, p. 10.]

Franklin considered the idea of the natural inferiority of the Negro as a silly excuse. He conceded that most of the blacks were improvident and poor, but believed that their condition was not due to deficient understanding but to their lack of education. He was very much impressed with their achievements in music.[1] So disgusting was this notion of inferiority to Abbe Gregoire of Paris that he wrote an interesting essay on "Negro Literature" to prove that people of color have unusual intellectual power.[2] He sent copies of this pamphlet to leading men where slavery existed. Another writer discussing Jefferson's equivocal position on this question said that one would have thought that "modern philosophy himself" would not have the face to expect that the wretch, who is driven out to labor at the dawn of day, and who toils until evening with a whip over his head, ought to be a poet. Benezet, who had actually taught Negroes, declared "with truth and sincerity" that he had found among them as great variety of talents as among a like number of white persons. He boldly a.s.serted that the notion entertained by some that the blacks were inferior in their capacities was a vulgar prejudice founded on the pride or ignorance of their lordly masters who had kept their slaves at such a distance as to be unable to form a right judgment of them.[3]

[Footnote 1: Smyth, _Works of Franklin_, vol. vi., p. 222.]

[Footnote 2: Gregoire, _La Litterature des Negres_.]

[Footnote 3: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 375.]

CHAPTER IV

ACTUAL EDUCATION

Would these professions of interest in the mental development of the blacks be translated into action? What these reformers would do to raise the standard of Negro education above the plane of rudimentary training incidental to religious instruction, was yet to be seen.

Would they secure to Negroes the educational privileges guaranteed other elements of society? The answer, if not affirmative, was decidedly encouraging. The idea uppermost in the minds of these workers was that the people of color could and should be educated as other races of men.

In the lead of this movement were the antislavery agitators.

Recognizing the Negroes' need of preparation for citizens.h.i.+p, the abolitionists proclaimed as a common purpose of their organizations the education of the colored people with a view to developing in them self-respect, self-support, and usefulness in the community.[1]

[Footnote 1: Smyth, _Works of Benjamin Franklin_, vol. x., p. 127; Torrey, _Portraiture of Slavery_, p. 21. See also const.i.tution of almost any antislavery society organized during this period.]

The proposition to cultivate the minds of the slaves came as a happy solution of what had been a perplexing problem. Many Americans who considered slavery an evil had found no way out of the difficulty when the alternative was to turn loose upon society so many uncivilized men without the ability to discharge the duties of citizens.h.i.+p.[1] a.s.sured then that the efforts at emanc.i.p.ation would be tested by experience, a larger number of men advocated abolition. These leaders recommended gradual emanc.i.p.ation for States having a large slave population, that those designated for freedom might first be instructed in the value and meaning of liberty to render them comfortable in the use of it.[2]

The number of slaves in the States adopting the policy of immediate emanc.i.p.ation was not considered a menace to society, for the schools already open to colored people could exert a restraining influence on those lately given the boon of freedom. For these reasons the antislavery societies had in their const.i.tutions a provision for a committee of education to influence Negroes to attend school, superintend their instruction, and emphasize the cultivation of the mind as the necessary preparation for "that state in society upon which depends our political happiness."[3] Much stress was laid upon this point by the American Convention of Abolition Societies in 1794 and 1795 when the organization expressed the hope that freedmen might partic.i.p.ate in civil rights as fast as they qualified by education.[4]

[Footnote 1: Was.h.i.+ngton, _Works of Jefferson_, vol. vi., p. 456; vol. viii., p. 379; Madison, _Works of_, vol. iii., p. 496; Monroe, _Writings of_, vol. iii., pp. 321, 336, 349, 378; Adams, _Works of John Adams_, vol. ix., p. 92 and vol. x., p. 380.]

[Footnote 2: _Proceedings of the American Convention_, etc., 1797, address.]

[Footnote 3: The const.i.tution of almost any antislavery society of that time provided for this work. See _Proc. of Am. Conv._, etc., 1795, address.]

[Footnote 4: _Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies_, 1794, p. 21; and 1795, p. 17; and _Rise and Progress of the Testimony of Friends_, etc., p. 27.]

This work was organized by the abolitionists but was generally maintained by members of the various sects which did more for the enlightenment of the people of color through the antislavery organizations than through their own.[1] The support of the clergy, however, did not mean that the education of the Negroes would continue incidental to the teaching of religion. The blacks were to be accepted as brethren and trained to be useful citizens. For better education the colored people could then look to the more liberal sects, the Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians, who prior to the Revolution had been restrained by intolerance from extensive proselyting. Upon the attainment of religious liberty they were free to win over the slaveholders who came into the Methodist and Baptist churches in large numbers, bringing their slaves with them.[2] The freedom of these "regenerated" churches made possible the rise of Negro exhorters and preachers, who to exercise their gifts managed in some way to learn to read and write. Schools for the training of such leaders were not to be found, but to encourage ambitious blacks to qualify themselves white ministers often employed such candidates as attendants, allowing them time to observe, to study, and even to address their audiences.[3]

[Footnote 1: The antislavery societies were at first the uniting influence among all persons interested in the uplift of the Negroes.

The agitation had not then become violent, for men considered the inst.i.tution not a sin but merely an evil.]

[Footnote 2: c.o.ke, _Journal_, etc., p. 114; Lambert, _Travels_, p. 175; Baird, _A Collection_, etc., pp. 381, 387 and 816; James, _Doc.u.mentary_, etc., p. 35; Foote, _Sketches of Virginia_, p. 31; Matlack, _History of American Slavery and Methodism_, p. 31; Semple, _History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia_, p.

222.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, and c.o.ke, _Journal_, etc., pp. 16-18.]

It must be observed, however, that the interest of these benevolent men was no longer manifested in the mere traditional teaching of individual slaves. The movement ceased to be the concern of separate philanthropists. Men really interested in the uplift of the colored people organized to raise funds, open schools, and supervise their education.[1] In the course of time their efforts became more systematic and consequently more successful. These educators adopted the threefold policy of instructing Negroes in the principles of the Christian religion, giving them the fundamentals of the common branches, and teaching them the most useful handicrafts.[2] The indoctrination of the colored people, to be sure, was still an important concern to their teachers, but the accession to their ranks of a militant secular element caused the emphasis to s.h.i.+ft to other phases of education. Seeing the Negroes' need of mental development, the Presbyterian Synod of New York and Pennsylvania urged the members of that denomination in 1787 to give their slaves "such good education as to prepare them for a better enjoyment of freedom."[3] In reply to the inquiry as to what could be done to teach the poor black and white children to read, the Methodist Conference of 1790 recommended the establishment of Sunday schools and the appointment of persons to teach gratis "all that will attend and have a capacity to learn."[4]

The Conference recommended that the Church publish a special text-book to teach these children learning as well as piety.[5] Men in the political world were also active. In 1788 the State of New Jersey pa.s.sed an act preliminary to emanc.i.p.ation, making the teaching of slaves to read compulsory under a penalty of five pounds.[6]

[Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies_, 1797.]

[Footnote 2: _Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies_, 1797.]

[Footnote 3: Locke, _Anti-slavery_, etc., p. 44.]

[Footnote 4: Was.h.i.+ngton, _Story of the Negro_, vol. ii, p. 121.]

[Footnote 5: _Ibid._, p. 121.]

[Footnote 6: Laws of New Jersey, 1788.]

With such influence brought to bear on persons in the various walks of life, the movement for the effective education of the colored people became more extensive. Voicing the sentiment of the different local organizations, the American Convention of Abolition Societies of 1794 urged the branches to have the children of free Negroes and slaves instructed in "common literature."[1] Two years later the Abolition Society of the State of Maryland proposed to establish an academy to offer this kind of instruction. To execute this scheme the American Convention thought that it was expedient to employ regular tutors, to form private a.s.sociations of their members or other well-disposed persons for the purpose of instructing the people of color in the most simple branches of education.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the American Convention of Abolition Societies_, 1796, p. 18.]