Part 5 (1/2)

The retrogressives made much of the assertion 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 refored difficulties encountered in teaching the crudest eleainst 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 eh the Northern people believed that the education of the race should be definitely planned, and had much to say about industrial education,in the fundae and in the principles of Christian religion, was sufficient to nated 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, ro to be educated did not openly aid the htened 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 thean[3] advocated the colonization of such Negroes on the public lands west of the Alleghanies There was soriculture and then dividing plantations a them to develop a small class of tenants Jefferson, a member of a committee appointed in 1779 by the General assembly of that co for the instruction of its slaves in agriculture and the handicrafts to prepare them for liberation and colonization under the supervision of the hoovernment until they could take care of thes 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 Reton, _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 shohy the iether 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 bondhtened, fell back on the theory of African racial inferiority

This they said was so well exhibited by the Negroes' lack of wisdooodness that continued heathenis these inconsistent persons, John Wesley inquired: ”Allowing the? Without doubt it lies altogether at the door of the inhu their understanding and indeed leave them no ” Wesley asserted, 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 roes were not only not inferior to the better inhabitants of Europe, but superior to soical antislavery agitator He believed that if the slaves had had the means of education, if they had been treated with hu evil that good ht that Christianity and hu of books and teachers into Africa and endeavors for their salvation]

[Footnote 2: Benjae He was educated at the College of New Jersey and at the Medical School of Edinburgh, where he cahtenedto the ideals of his youth, Dr Rush was soon associated 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 roes 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 the the 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 Thohts 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 e 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 who 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 usting 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 paJefferson'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 a a like number of white persons He boldly asserted 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 forment 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 US 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 reforro education above the plane of rudiious instruction, was yet to be seen

Would they secure to Negroes the educational privileges guaranteed other elements of society? The answer, if not affir 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