Part 4 (1/2)

[Footnote 5: Rush, _An Address to the Inhabitants of_, etc, p 16]

[Footnote 6: Smyth, _Works of Franklin_, vol iv, p 23; vol v, p

431]

[Footnote 7: Wickersham, _History of Ed in Pa_, p 249]

[Footnote 8: _Ibid_, p 250; _Special Report of the US Com of Ed_, 1869, p 375; _African Repository_, vol iv, p 61; Benezet, _Observations_; Benezet, _A Serious Address to the Rulers of America_]

The airoes to take over sufficient of Western civilization to become nominal Christians, not prihten thethen their position these defendants of the education of the blacks cited the customs of the Greeks and Romans, who enslaved not the minds and wills, but only the bodies of men Nor did these benefactors fail to es of education, became poets, teachers, and philosophers, instruher classes There was still the idea of Cotton Mather, illing to treat his servants as part of the family, and to employ such of them as were competent to teach his children lessons of piety[1]

[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Thomas Bacon_, appendix]

The chief objection of these reformers to slavery was that its victims had no opportunity for mental i to the _American Museum_ in 1788, made the institution responsible for the intellectual rudeness of the Negroes who, though ”naturally possessed of strong sagacity and lively parts,”

were by law and custo[1] He styled this policy an effort to bolster up an institution that extinguished the ”divine spark of the slave, crushed the bud of his genius, and kept him unacquainted with the world” Dr

McLeod denounced slavery because it ”debases a part of the human race”

and tends ”to destroy their intellectual powers”[2] ”The slave froed implicitly to obey the will of another There is no circumstance which can stinment of this system Rev David Rice complained that it was in the power of the master to deprive the slaves of all education, that they had not the opportunity for instructing conversation, that it was put out of their power to learn to read, and that their masters kept them from other means of information[3] Slavery, therefore, ht of htened

[Footnote 1: _The American Museum_, vol iv, pp 415 and 511]

[Footnote 2: McLeod, _Negro Slavery_, p 16]

[Footnote 3: Rice, Speech in the Constitutional Convention of Kentucky, p 5]

During this period religion as a factor in the educational progress of the Negroes was not eliminated In fact, representative church the enlightenonists, however, ceased to claiht and dey then interested had not at first seriously objected to the enslave that the lot of these people would not be worse in this country where they htenment But when this result failed to follow, and when the slavery of the Africans' bodies turned out to be the slavery of their ious proclaiht of e, Jonathan Boucher,[1] one of the ed his hearers at the celebration of the Peace of 1763 to iht ”participate in the general joy”

With the hope of inducing e the same duty, Bishop Warburton[2] boldly asserted a few years later that slaves are ”rational creatures endoith all our qualities except that of color, and our brethren both by nature and grace” John Woolman,[3] a Quaker an to preach that liberty is the right of allthe fellow-creatures of their ht to be elevated

[Footnote 1: Jonathan Boucher was a rector of the Established Church in Maryland Though not a prohts of the colonists, Boucher was, however, so moved by the spirit of uplift of the downtrodden that he takes front rank ahts of servants, caused a decided change in the attitude of white roes Boucher was not an immediate abolitionist He abhorred slavery, however, to the extent that he asserted that if ever the colonies would be improved to their utmost capacity, an essential part of that amelioration had to be the abolition of slavery His chief concern then was the cultivation of the ery to their bodies See Boucher, _Causes_, etc, p 39]

[Footnote 2: _Special Report of the US Com of Ed_, 1871, p 363]

[Footnote 3: An influential minister of the Society of Friends and an extensive traveler through the colonies, Wool the policy of those who kept their Negroes in deplorable ignorance, and in coood exa In his _Considerations on the Keeping of Slaves_ he took occasion to praise the Friends of North Carolina for the unusual interest theyhis travels in that colony about the year 1760

With such workers as Woolman in the field it is little wonder that Quakers thereafter treated slaves as brethren, alleviated their burdens, enlightened their minds, emancipated and cared for them until they could provide for themselves See _Works of John Wool the theories of the revolutionary leaders these liberal- with the doctrine of individual liberty that of the freedom of the mind The best expression of this advanced idea came from the Methodist Episcopal Church, which reached the acme of antislavery sentiment in 1784 This sect then boldly declared: ”We view it as contrary to the golden law of God and the prophets, and the inalienable rights of mankind as well as every principle of the Revolution to hold in deepest abasement, in a more abject slavery than is perhaps to be found in any part of the world, except Ae of God”[1]

[Footnote 1: Matlack, _History of American Slavery and Methodism_, pp

29 _et seq_; McTyeire, _History of Methodism_, p 28]

Frequently in contact with roes to be educated, statesmen as well as churchton did not have much to say about it and did little more than to provide for the ulti of their children to read[1] Less aid to this h he detested slavery to the extent that he never owned a bond to hire freemen at extra cost to do his work[2] Adaradual emancipation But he neither delivered any inflalectful of the instruction of their slaves, nor devised any scheme for their enjoyment of freedom So was it with Hahts of man, opposed the institution of slavery, but, with the exception of what assistance he gave the New York African Free Schools[3] said and did little to promote the actual education of the colored people

[Footnote 1: Lossing, _Life of George Washi+ngton_, vol iii, p 537]

[Footnote 2: Adams, _Works of John Adams_, vol viii, p 379; vol

ix, p 92; vol x, p 380]

[Footnote 3: Andrews, _History of the New York African Free Schools_, p 57]