EDUCATING NEGROES TRANSPLANTED TO FREE SOIL
While the Negroes of the South were struggling against odds to acquire
knowledge, the more ambitious ones were for various reasons making
their way to centers of light in the North. Many fugitive slaves
dreaded being sold to planters of the lower South, the free blacks of
some of the commonwealths were forced out by hostile legislation,
and not a few others migrated to ameliorate their condition. The
transplanting of these people to the Northwest took place largely
between 1815 and 1850. They were directed mainly to Columbia and
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Greenwich, New Jersey; and Boston,
Massachusetts, in the East; and to favorable towns and colored
communities in the Northwest.[1] The fugitives found ready helpers
in Elmira, Rochester, Buffalo, New York; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
Gallipolis, Portsmouth, Akron, and Cincinnati, Ohio; and Detroit,
Michigan.[2] Colored settlements which proved attractive to these
wanderers had been established in Ohio, Indiana, and Canada. That most
of the bondmen in quest of freedom and opportunity should seek the
Northwest had long been the opinion of those actually interested in
their enlightenment. The attention of the colored people had been
early directed to this section as a more suitable place for their
elevation than the jungles of Africa selected by the American
Colonization Society. The advocates of Western colonization believed
that a race thus degraded could be elevated only in a salubrious
climate under the influences of institutions developed by Western
nations.
[Footnote 1: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 32.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 32 and 37.]
The rôle played by the Negroes in this migration exhibited the
development of sufficient mental ability to appreciate this truth.
It was chiefly through their intelligent fellows that prior to the
reaction ambitious slaves learned to consider the Northwest Territory
the land of opportunity. Furthermore, restless freedmen, denied
political privileges and prohibited from teaching their children, did
not always choose to go to Africa. Many of them went north of the Ohio
River and took up land on the public domain. Observing this longing
for opportunity, benevolent southerners, who saw themselves hindered
in carrying out their plan for educating the blacks for citizenship,
disposed of their holdings and formed free colonies of their slaves in
the same section. White men of this type thus made possible a new era
of uplift for the colored race by coming north in time to aid the
abolitionists, who had for years constituted a small minority
advocating a seemingly hopeless cause.
A detailed description of these settlements has no place in this
dissertation save as it has a bearing on the development of education
among the colored people. These settlements, however, are important
here in that they furnish the key to the location of many of the early
colored churches and schools of the North and West. Philanthropists
established a number of Negroes near Sandy Lake in Northwestern
Pennsylvania.[1] There was a colored settlement near Berlin
Crossroads, Ohio.[2] Another group of pioneering Negroes emigrating
to this State found homes in the Van Buren township of Shelby County.
Edward Coles, a Virginian, who in 1818 emigrated to Illinois, of which
he later became Governor, made a settlement on a larger scale. He
brought his slaves to Edwardsville, where they constituted a community
known as "Coles' Negroes."[3] The settlement made by Samuel Gist, an
Englishman possessing extensive plantations in Hanover, Amherst, and
Henrico Counties, Virginia, was still more significant. He provided in
his will that his slaves should be freed and sent to the North. It was
further directed "that the revenue from his plantation the last year
of his life be applied in building schoolhouses and churches for their
accommodation," and "that all money coming to him in Virginia be
set aside for the employment of ministers and teachers to instruct
them."[4] In 1818, Wickham, the executor of this estate, purchased
land and established these Negroes in what was called the Upper and
Lower Camps of Brown County, Ohio.
[Footnote 1: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 249.]
[Footnote 2: Langston,_From the Virginia Plantation to the National
Capitol_, p. 35.]
[Footnote 3: Davidson and Stuvé,_A Complete History of Illinois_, pp.
321-322; and Washburne, _Sketch of Edward Cole, Second Governor of
Illinois_, pp. 44 and 53.]
[Footnote 4: _History of Brown County_, pp. 313 _et seq._; and Lane,
_Fifty Years and over of Akron and Summit County, Ohio_, pp. 579-580.]
Augustus Wattles, a native of Connecticut, made a settlement of
Negroes in Mercer County early in the nineteenth century.[1] About the
year 1834 many of the freedmen, then concentrating at Cincinnati, were
induced to take up 30,000 acres of land in the same vicinity.[2] John
Harper of North Carolina manumitted his slaves in 1850 and had them
sent to this community.[3] John Randolph of Roanoke freed his slaves
at his death, and provided for the purchase of farms for them in
Mercer County.[4] The Germans, however, would not allow them to take
possession of these lands. Driven later from Shelby County[5] also,
these freedmen finally found homes in Miami County.[7] Then there was
one Saunders, a slaveholder of Cabell County, now West Virginia, who
liberated his slaves and furnished them homes in free territory. They
finally made their way to Cass County, Michigan, where philanthropists
had established a prosperous colored settlement and supplied it
with missionaries and teachers. The slaves of Theodoric H. Gregg
of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, were liberated in 1854 and sent to
Ohio,[7] where some of them were educated.
[Footnote 1: Howe, _Ohio Historical Collections_, p. 356.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 356.]
[Footnote 3: Manuscript in the hands of Dr. J.E. Moreland.]
[Footnote 4: _The African Repository_, vol. xxii., pp. 322-323.]
[Footnote 5: Howe, _Ohio Historical Collections_, p. 465.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, p. 466.]
[Footnote 7: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 723.]
Many free persons of color of Virginia and Kentucky went north about
the middle of the nineteenth century. The immediate cause in Virginia
was the enactment in 1838 of a law prohibiting the return of such
colored students as had been accustomed to go north to attend school
after they were denied this privilege in that State.[1] Prominent
among these seekers of better opportunities were the parents
of Richard De Baptiste. His father was a popular mechanic of
Fredericksburg, where he for years maintained a secret school.[2] A
public opinion proscribing the teaching of Negroes was then rendering
the effort to enlighten them as unpopular in Kentucky as it was in
Virginia. Thanks to a benevolent Kentuckian, however, an important
colored settlement near Xenia, Greene County, Ohio, was then taking
shape. The nucleus of this group was furnished about 1856 by Noah
Spears, who secured small farms there for sixteen of his former
bondmen.[3] The settlement was not only sought by fugitive slaves
and free Negroes, but was selected as the site for Wilberforce
University.[4]
[Footnote 1: Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_, Johns Hopkins
University Studies, Series xxxi., No. 3, p. 492; and _Acts of the
General Assembly of Virginia_, 1848, p. 117.]
[Footnote 2: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 352.]
[Footnote 3: Wright, "Negro Rural Communities" (_Southern Workman_,
vol. xxxvii., p. 158).]
[Footnote 4: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, p. 373; and
_Non-Slaveholder_, vol. ii., p. 113.]
During the same period, and especially from 1820 to 1835, a more
continuous and effective migration of southern Negroes was being
promoted by the Quakers of Virginia and North Carolina.[1] One of
their purposes was educational. Convinced that the "buying, selling,
and holding of men in slavery" is a sin, these Quakers with a view to
future manumission had been "careful of the moral and intellectual
training of such as they held in servitude."[2] To elevate their
slaves to the plane of men, southern Quakers early hit upon the scheme
of establishing in the Northwest such Negroes as they had by education
been able to equip for living as citizens. When the reaction in the
South made it impossible for the Quakers to continue their policy of
enlightening the colored people, these philanthropists promoted the
migration of the blacks to the Northwest Territory with still greater
zeal. Most of these settlements were made in Hamilton, Howard, Wayne,
Randolph, Vigo, Gibson, Grant, Rush, and Tipton Counties, Indiana, and
in Darke County, Ohio.[3] Prominent among these promoters was Levi
Coffin, the Quaker Abolitionist of North Carolina, and reputed
President of the Underground Railroad. He left his State and settled
among Negroes at Newport, Indiana.[4] Associated with these leaders
also were Benjamin Lundy of Tennessee and James G. Birney, once a
slaveholder of Huntsville, Alabama. The latter manumitted his slaves
and apprenticed and educated some of them in Ohio.[5]
[Footnote 1: Wright, "Negro Rural Communities" (_Southern Workman_,
vol. xxxvii., p. 158); and Bassett, _Slavery in North Carolina_, p.
68.]
[Footnote 2: A Brief Statement of the Rise and Progress of the
Testimony, etc.]
[Footnote 3: Wright, "Rural Negro Communities in Indiana" (_Southern
Workman_, vol. xxxvii., pp. 162-166); and Bassett, _Slavery in North
Carolina_, pp. 67 and 68.]
[Footnote 4: Coffin, _Reminiscences_, p. 106.]
[Footnote 5: Birney, _James G. Birney and His Times_, p. 139.]
The importance of this movement to the student of education lies in
the fact that it effected an unequal distribution of intelligent
Negroes. The most ambitious and enlightened ones were fleeing to free
territory. As late as 1840 there were more intelligent blacks in the
South than in the North.[1] The number of southern colored people who
could read was then decidedly larger than that of such persons found
in the free States. The continued migration of Negroes to the North,
despite the operation of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, made this
distribution more unequal. While the free colored population of the
slave States increased only 23,736 from 1850 to 1860, that of the
free States increased 29,839. In the South only Delaware, Georgia,
Maryland, and North Carolina showed a noticeable increase in the
number of free persons of color during the decade immediately
preceding the Civil War. This element of the population had only
slightly increased in Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee,
Virginia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. The
number of free Negroes of Florida remained practically constant. Those
of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas diminished. In the North, of
course, the tendency was in the other direction. With the exception of
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, which had about the same
free colored population in 1860 as they had in 1850, there was a
general increase in the number of Negroes in the free States. Ohio
led in this respect having had during this period an increase of
11,394.[2]
[Footnote 1: Jones, _Religious Instruction of the Negroes_, p. 115.]
[Footnote 2: See statistics on pages 237-240.]
On comparing the educational statistics of these sections this truth
becomes more apparent. In 1850 there were 4,354 colored children
attending school in the South, but by 1860 this number had dropped
to 3,651. Slight increases were noted only in Alabama, Missouri,
Delaware, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia. Georgia
and Mississippi had then practically deprived all Negroes of this
privilege. The former, which reported one colored child as attending
school in 1850, had just seven in 1860; the latter had none in 1850
and only two in 1860. In all other slave States the number of pupils
of African blood had materially decreased.[1] In the free States there
were 22,107 colored children in school in 1850, and 28,978 in 1860.
Most of these were in New Jersey, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania,
which in 1860 had 2,741; 5,671; 5,694; and 7,573, respectively.[2]
[Footnote 1: STATISTICS OF THE FREE COLORED POPULATION OF THE
UNITED STATES IN 1850
ATTENDING ADULTS UNABLE
SCHOOL TO READ
STATE Population Males Females Total Males Females Total
Alabama 2,265 33 35 68 108 127 235
Arkansas 608 6 5 11 61 55 116
California 962 1 0 1 88 29 117
Connecticut 7,693 689 575 1,264 292 273 567
Delaware 18,073 92 95 187 2,724 2,921 5,645
Florida 932 29 37 66 116 154 270
Georgia 2,931 1 0 1 208 259 467
Illinois 5,436 162 161 323 605 624 1,229
Indiana 11,262 484 443 927 1,024 1,146 2,170
Iowa 333 12 5 17 15 18 33
Kentucky 10,011 128 160 288 1,431 1,588 3,029
Louisiana 17,462 629 590 1,219 1,038 2,351 3,389
Maine 1,356 144 137 281 77 58 135
Maryland 74,723 886 730 1,616 9,422 11,640 21,062
Massachusetts 9,064 726 713 1,439 375 431 806
Michigan 2,583 106 101 207 201 168 369
Mississippi 930 0 0 0 75 48 123
Missouri 2,618 23 17 40 271 226 497
New Hampshire 520 41 32 73 26 26 52
New Jersey 23,810 1,243 1,083 2,326 2,167 2,250 4,417
New York 49,069 2,840 2,607 5,447 3,387 4,042 7,429
North Carolina 27,463 113 104 217 3,099 3,758 6,857
Ohio 25,279 1,321 1,210 2,531 2,366 2,624 4,990
Pennsylvania 53,626 3,385 3,114 6,499 4,115 5,229 9,344**
[** was 6,344 in error.**]
Rhode Island 3,670 304 247 551 130 137 267
South Carolina 8,960 54 26 80 421 459 880
Tennessee 6,422 40 30 70 506 591 1,097
Texas 397 11 9 20 34 24 58
Vermont 718 58 32 90 32 19 51
Virginia 54,333 37 27 64 5,141 6,374 11,515
Wisconsin 635 32 35 67 55 37 92
District of
Columbia 10,059 232 235 467 1,106 2,108 3,214
Minnesota 30 0 2 2 0 0 0
New Mexico 207 0 0 0 0 0 0
Oregon 24 2 0 2 3 2 5
Utah 22 0 0 0 1 0 1
Total 434,495 13,864 12,597 26,461 40,722 49,800 90,522
See Sixth Census of the United States, 1850.]
[Footnote 2: See statistics on pages 237-240.]
The report on illiteracy shows further the differences resulting from
the divergent educational policies of the two sections. In 1850 there
were in the slave States 58,444 adult free Negroes who could not read,
and in 1860 this number had reached 59,832. In all such commonwealths
except Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi there was an
increase in illiteracy among the free blacks. These States, however,
were hardly exceptional, because Arkansas and Mississippi had suffered
a decrease in their free colored population, that of Florida had
remained the same, and the difference in the case of Louisiana was
very slight. The statistics of the Northern States indicate just the
opposite trend. Notwithstanding the increase of persons of color
resulting from the influx of the migrating element, there was in all
free States exclusive of California, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan,
Ohio, and Pennsylvania a decrease in the illiteracy of Negroes. But
these States hardly constitute exceptions; for California, Wisconsin,
and Minnesota had very few colored inhabitants in 1850, and the others
had during this decade received so many fugitives in the rough that
race prejudice and its concomitant drastic legislation impeded the
educational progress of their transplanted freedmen.[1] In the
Northern States where this condition did not obtain, the benevolent
whites had, in coöperation with the Negroes, done much to reduce
illiteracy among them during these years.
[Footnote 1: STATISTICS OF THE FREE COLORED POPULATION OF THE UNITED
STATES IN 1860
STATE Population| ATTENDING SCHOOL | ADULTS UNABLE TO READ
+----- +----- +------ +-------- +------- +----
--
Males | Males
Females | Females
Total | Total
---------------- +-------- +----- +------- +------- +------- +-------
+------
Alabama 2,690 48 65 114 192 263 455
Arkansas 144 3 2 5 10 13 23
California 4,086 69 84 153 497 207 704
Connecticut 8,627 737 641 1,378 181 164 345
Delaware 19,829 122 128 250 3,056 3,452 6,508
Florida 932 3 6 9 48 72 120
Georgia 3,500 3 4 7 255 318 573
Illinois 7,628 264 347 611 632 695 1,327
Indiana 11,428 570 552 1,122 869 904 1,773
Iowa 1,069 77 61 138 92 77 169
Kansas 625 8 6 14 25 38 63
Kentucky 10,684 102 107 209 1,113 1,350 2,463
Louisiana 18,647 153 122 275 485 717 1,202
Maine 1,327 148 144 292 25 21 46
Maryland 83,942 687 668 1,355 9,904 11,795 21,699
Massachusetts 9,602 800 815 1,615 291 368 659
Michigan 6,797 555 550 1,105 558 486 1,044
Minnesota 259 8 10 18 6 6 12
Mississippi 773 0 2 2 50 60 110
Missouri 3,572 76 79 155 371 514 885
New Hampshire 494 49 31 80 15 19 34
New Jersey 25,318 1,413 1,328 2,741 1,720 2,085 3,805
New York 49,005 2,955 2,739 5,694 2,653 3,260 5,913
North Carolina 30,463 75 58 133 3,067 3,782 6,849
Ohio 36,673 2,857 2,814 5,671 2,995 3,191 6,186
Oregon 128 0 0 2 7 5 12
Pennsylvania 56,949 3,882 3,691 7,573 3,893 5,466 9,359
Rhode Island 3,952 276 256 532 119 141 260
South Carolina 9,914 158 207 365 633 783 1,416
Tennessee 7,300 28 24 52 743 952 1,695
Texas 355 4 7 11 25 37 62
Vermont 709 65 50 115 27 20 47
Virginia 58,042 21 20 41 5,489 6,008 12,397
Wisconsin 1,171 62 50 112 53 45 98
TERRITORIES
Colorado 46 No returns
Dakota 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
District Columbia 11,131 315 363 678 1,131 2,224 3,375
Nebraska 67 1 1 2 6 7 13
Nevada 45 0 0 0 6 1 7
New Mexico 85 0 0 0 12 15 27
Utah 30 0 0 0 0 0 0
Washington 30 0 0 0 1 0 1
Total 488,070 16,594 16,035 32,629 41,275 50,461 91,736
See Seventh Census of the United States, vol. 1.]
How the problem of educating these people on free soil was solved can
be understood only by keeping in mind the factors of the migration.
Some of these Negroes had unusual capabilities. Many of them had
in slavery either acquired the rudiments of education or developed
sufficient skill to outwit the most determined pursuers. Owing so
much to mental power, no man was more effective than the successful
fugitive in instilling into the minds of his people the value of
education. Not a few of this type readily added to their attainments
to equip themselves for the best service. Some of them, like Reverend
Josiah Henson, William Wells Brown, and Frederick Douglass, became
leaders, devoting their time not only to the cause of abolition, but
also to the enlightenment of the colored people. Moreover, the free
Negroes migrating to the North were even more effective than the
fugitive slaves in advancing the cause of education.[1] A larger
number of the former had picked up useful knowledge. In fact, the
prohibition of the education of the free people of color in the South
was one of the reasons they could so readily leave their native
homes.[2] The free blacks then going to the Northwest Territory proved
to be decidedly helpful to their benefactors in providing colored
churches and schools with educated workers, who otherwise would have
been brought from the East at much expense.
[Footnote 1: Howe, _The Refugee from Slavery_, p. 77.]
[Footnote 2: Russell, _The Free Negro in Virginia_ (Johns Hopkins
University Studies, series xxxi., No. 3, p. 107).]
On perusing this sketch the educator naturally wonders exactly what
intellectual progress was made by these groups on free soil. This
question cannot be fully answered for the reason that extant records
give no detailed account of many colored settlements which underwent
upheaval or failed to endure. In some cases we learn simply that a
social center flourished and was then destroyed. On "Black Friday,"
January 1, 1830, eighty Negroes were driven out of Portsmouth, Ohio,
at the request of one or two hundred white citizens, set forth in an
urgent memorial.[1] After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of
1850 the colored population of Columbia, Pennsylvania, dropped from
nine hundred and forty-three to four hundred and eighty-seven.[2] The
Negro community in the northwestern part of that State was broken up
entirely.[3] The African Methodist and Baptist churches of Buffalo
lost many communicants. Out of a membership of one hundred and
fourteen, the colored Baptist church of Rochester lost one hundred and
twelve, including its pastor. About the same time eighty-four members
of the African Baptist church of Detroit crossed into Canada.[4] The
break-up of these churches meant the end of the day and Sunday-schools
which were maintained in them. Moreover, the migration of these
Negroes aroused such bitter feeling against them that their
schoolhouses were frequently burned. It often seemed that it was just
as unpopular to educate the blacks in the North as in the South. Ohio,
Illinois, and Oregon enacted laws to prevent them from coming into
those commonwealths.
[Footnote 1: Evans, _A History of Scioto County, Ohio_, p. 613.]
[Footnote 2: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 249.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., p. 249.]
[Footnote 4: _Ibid_., p. 250.]
We have, however, sufficient evidence of large undertakings to educate
the colored people then finding homes in less turbulent parts beyond
the Ohio. In the first place, almost every settlement made by the
Quakers was a center to which Negroes repaired for enlightenment.
In other groups where there was no such opportunity, they had the
coöperation of certain philanthropists in providing facilities for
their mental and moral development. As a result, the free blacks had
access to schools and churches in Hamilton, Howard, Randolph, Vigo,
Gibson, Rush, Tipton, Grant, and Wayne counties, Indiana,[1] and
Madison, Monroe, and St. Clair counties, Illinois. There were colored
schools and churches in Logan, Clark, Columbiana, Guernsey, Jefferson,
Highland, Brown, Darke, Shelby, Green, Miami, Warren, Scioto, Gallia,
Ross, and Muskingum counties, Ohio.[2] Augustus Wattles said that with
the assistance of abolitionists he organized twenty-five such schools
in Ohio counties after 1833.[3] Brown County alone had six. Not many
years later a Negro settlement in Gallia County, Ohio, was paying a
teacher fifty dollars a quarter.[4]
[Footnote 1: Wright, "Negro Rural Communities in Indiana," _Southern
Workman_, vol. xxxvii., p. 165; Boone, _The History of Education in
Indiana_, p. 237; and Simmons, _Men of Mark_, pp. 590 and 948.]
[Footnote 2: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 948; and Hickok, _The Negro in
Ohio_, p. 85.]
[Footnote 3: Howe, _Historical Collections of Ohio_, p. 355.]
[Footnote 4: Hickok, _The Negro in Ohio_, p. 89.]
Still better colored schools were established in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, and in Springfield, Columbus, and Cincinnati, Ohio.
While the enlightenment of the few Negroes in Pittsburgh did not
require the systematic efforts put forth to elevate the race
elsewhere, much was done to provide them educational facilities in
that city. Children of color first attended the white schools there
just as they did throughout the State of Pennsylvania.[1] But when
larger numbers of them collected in this gateway to the Northwest,
either race feeling or the pressing needs of the migrating freedmen
brought about the establishment of schools especially adapted to their
instruction. Such efforts were frequent after 1830.[2] John Thomas
Johnson, a teacher of the District of Columbia, moved to Pittsburgh
in 1838 and became an instructor in a colored school of that city.[3]
Cleveland had an "African School" as early as 1832. John Malvin, the
moving spirit of the enterprise in that city, organized about that
time "The School Fund Society" which established other colored schools
in Cincinnati, Columbus, and Springfield.[4]
[Footnote 1: Wickersham, _Education in Pennsylvania_, p. 248.]
[Footnote 2: _Life of Martin R. Delaney_, p. 33.]
[Footnote 3: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 214.]
[Footnote 4: Hickok, _The Negro in Ohio_, p. 88.]
The concentration of the freedmen and fugitives at Cincinnati was
followed by efforts to train them for higher service. The Negroes
themselves endeavored to provide their own educational facilities in
opening in 1820 the first colored school in that city. This school
did not continue long, but another was established the same year.
Thereafter one Mr. Wing, who kept a private institution, admitted
persons of color to his evening classes. On account of a lack of
means, however, the Negroes of Cincinnati did not receive any
systematic instruction before 1834. After that year the tide turned in
favor of the free blacks of that section, bringing to their assistance
a number of daring abolitionists, who helped them to educate
themselves. Friends of the race, consisting largely of the students of
Lane Seminary, had then organized colored Sunday and evening schools,
and provided for them scientific and literary lectures twice a week.
There was a permanent colored school in Cincinnati in 1834. In 1835
the Negroes of that city contributed $150 of the $1000 expended for
their education. Four years later, however, they raised $889.03 for
this purpose, and thanks to their economic progress, this sacrifice
was less taxing than that of 1835.[1] In 1844 Rev. Hiram Gilmore
opened there a high school which among other students attracted P.B.S.
Pinchback, later Governor of Louisiana. Mary E. Miles, a graduate
of the Normal School at Albany, New York, served as an assistant of
Gilmore after having worked among her people in Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 83.]
[Footnote 1: Delany, _The Condition of the Colored People_, etc.,
132.]
The educational advantages given these people were in no sense
despised. Although the Negroes of the Northwest did not always keep
pace with their neighbors in things industrial they did not permit
the white people to outstrip them much in education. The freedmen
so earnestly seized their opportunity to acquire knowledge and
accomplished so much in a short period that their educational progress
served to disabuse the minds of indifferent whites of the idea that
the blacks were not capable of high mental development.[1] The
educational work of these centers, too, tended not only to produce men
capable of ministering to the needs of their environment, but to serve
as a training center for those who would later be leaders of their
people. Lewis Woodson owed it to friends in Pittsburgh that he became
an influential teacher. Jeremiah H. Brown, T. Morris Chester, James T.
Bradford, M.R. Delany, and Bishop Benjamin T. Tanner obtained much
of their elementary education in the early colored schools of that
city.[2] J.C. Corbin, a prominent educator before and after the Civil
War, acquired sufficient knowledge at Chillicothe, Ohio, to qualify in
1848 as an assistant in Rev. Henry Adams's school in Louisville.[3]
John M. Langston was for a while one of Corbin's fellow-students at
Chillicothe before the former entered Oberlin. United States Senator
Hiram Revels of Mississippi spent some time in a Quaker seminary in
Union County, Indiana.[4] Rev. J.T. White, one of the leading spirits
of Arkansas during the Reconstruction, was born and educated in Clark
County in that State.[5] Fannie Richards, still a teacher at Detroit,
Michigan, is another example of the professional Negro equipped
for service in the Northwest before the Rebellion.[6] From other
communities of that section came such useful men as Rev. J.W. Malone,
an influential minister of Iowa; Rev. D.R. Roberts, a very successful
pastor of Chicago; Bishop C.T. Shaffer of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church; Rev. John G. Mitchell, for many years the Dean of
the Theological Department of Wilberforce University; and President
S.T. Mitchell, once the head of the same institution.[7]
[Footnote 1: This statement is based on the accounts of various
western freedmen.]
[Footnote 2: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 113.]
[Footnote 3: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 829.]
[Footnote 4: _Ibid._, p. 948.]
[Footnote 5: _Ibid._, p. 590.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, p. 1023.]
[Footnote 7: Wright, "Negro Rural Communities in Indiana," _Southern
Workman_, vol. xxxvii., p. 169.]
In the colored settlements of Canada the outlook for Negro education
was still brighter. This better opportunity was due to the high
character of the colonists, to the mutual aid resulting from the
proximity of the communities, and to the coöperation of the Canadians.
The previous experience of most of these adventurers as sojourners in
the free States developed in them such noble traits that they did not
have to be induced to ameliorate their condition. They had already
come under educative influences which prepared them for a larger task
in Canada. Fifteen thousand of sixty thousand Negroes in Canada in
1860 were free born.[1] Many of those, who had always been free, fled
to Canada[2] when the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 made it possible
for even a dark-complexioned Caucasian to be reduced to a state of
bondage. Fortunately, too, these people settled in the same section.
The colored settlements at Dawn, Colchester, Elgin, Dresden, Windsor,
Sandwich, Queens, Bush, Wilberforce, Hamilton, St. Catherines,
Chatham, Riley, Anderton, Maiden, Gonfield, were all in Southern
Ontario. In the course of time the growth of these groups produced a
population sufficiently dense to facilitate coöperation in matters
pertaining to social betterment. The uplift of the refugees was made
less difficult also by the self-denying white persons who were their
first teachers and missionaries. While the hardships incident to this
pioneer effort all but baffled the ardent apostle to the lowly, he
found among the Canadian whites so much more sympathy than among the
northerners that his work was more agreeable and more successful than
it would have been in the free States. Ignoring the request that the
refugees be turned from Canada as undesirables, the white people of
that country protected and assisted them.[3] Canadians later underwent
some change in their attitude toward their newcomers, but these
British-Americans never exhibited such militant opposition to the
Negroes as sometimes developed in the Northern States.[4]
[Footnote 1: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 222.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, pp. 247-250.]
[Footnote 3: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, pp. 201 and 233.]
[Footnote 4: _Ibid._, 233.]
The educational privileges which the refugees hoped to enjoy in
Canada, however, were not easily exercised. Under the Canadian law
they could send their children to the common schools, or use their
proportionate share of the school funds in providing other educational
facilities.[1] But conditions there did not at first redound to the
education of the colored children.[2] Some were too destitute to
avail themselves of these opportunities; others, unaccustomed to this
equality of fortune, were timid about having their children mingle
with those of the whites, and not a few clad their youths so poorly
that they became too unhealthy to attend regularly[3]. Besides, race
prejudice was not long in making itself the most disturbing factor.
In 1852 Benjamin Drew found the minds of the people of Sandwich much
exercised over the question of admitting Negroes into the public
schools. The same feeling was then almost as strong in Chatham,
Hamilton, and London[4]. Consequently, "partly owing to this
prejudice, and partly to their own preference, the colored people,
acting under the provision of the law that allowed them to have
separate schools, set up their own schools in Sandwich and in many
other parts of Ontario"[5]. There were separate schools at Colchester,
Amherstburg, Sandwich, Dawn, and Buxton[6]. It was doubtless because
of the rude behavior of white pupils toward the children of the blacks
that their private schools flourished at London, Windsor, and other
places[7]. The Negroes, themselves, however, did not object to the
coeducation of the races. Where there were a few white children
in colored settlements they were admitted to schools maintained
especially for pupils of African descent.[8] In Toronto no distinction
in educational privileges was made, but in later years there
flourished an evening school for adults of color.[9]
[Footnote 1: Howe, _The Refugees from Slavery_, p. 77.]
[Footnote 2: Drew said: "The prejudice against the African race is
here [Canada] strongly marked. It had not been customary to levy
school taxes on the colored people. Some three or four years since a
trustee assessed a school tax on some of the wealthy citizens of that
class. They sent their children at once into the public school. As
these sat down the white children near them deserted the benches: and
in a day or two the white children were wholly withdrawn, leaving the
schoolhouse to the teacher and his colored pupils. The matter was
at last 'compromised': a notice 'Select School' was put on the
schoolhouse: the white children were selected _in_ and the black were
selected _out_." See Drew's. _A North-side View of Slavery_, etc., p.
341.]
[Footnote 3: Mitchell, _The Underground Railroad_, pp. 140, 164, and
165.]
[Footnote 4: Drew, _A North-side View of Slavery_, pp. 118, 147, 235,
and 342.]
[Footnote 5: _Ibid_., p. 341.]
[Footnote 6: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 229.]
[Footnote 7: _Ibid_., p. 229.]
[Footnote 8: _First Annual Report of the Anti-slavery Society of
Canada_, 1852, Appendix, p. 22.]
[Footnote 9: _Ibid_., p. 15.]
The most helpful schools, however, were not those maintained by the
state. Travelers in Canada found the colored mission schools with
a larger attendance and doing better work than those maintained at
public expense.[1] The rise of the mission schools was due to the
effort to "furnish the conditions under which whatever appreciation
of education there was native in a community of Negroes, or whatever
taste for it could be awakened there," might be "free to assert itself
unhindered by real or imagined opposition."[2] There were no such
schools in 1830, but by 1838 philanthropists had established the first
mission among the Canadian refugees.[3] The English Colonial Church
and School Society organized schools at London, Amherstburg, and
Colchester. Certain religious organizations of the United States sent
ten or more teachers to these settlements.[4] In 1839 these workers
were conducting four schools while Rev. Hiram Wilson, their inspector,
probably had several other institutions under his supervision.[5] In
1844 Levi Coffin found a large school at Isaac Rice's mission at Fort
Maiden or Amherstburg.[6] Rice had toiled among these people six
years, receiving very little financial aid, and suffering unusual
hardships.[7] Mr. E. Child, a graduate of Oneida Institute, was later
added to the corps of mission teachers.[8] In 1852 Mrs. Laura S.
Haviland was secured to teach the school of the colony of "Refugees'
Home," where the colored people had built a structure "for school and
meeting purposes."[9] On Sundays the schoolhouses and churches were
crowded by eager seekers, many of whom lived miles away. Among these
earnest students a traveler saw an aged couple more than eighty
years old.[10] These elementary schools broke the way for a higher
institution at Dawn, known as the Manual Labor Institute.
[Footnote 1: Drew, _A North-side View of Slavery_, pp. 118, 147, 235,
341, and 342.]
[Footnote 2: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 229.]
[Footnote 3: _Father Henson's Story of His Own Life_, p. 209.]
[Footnote 4: _First Annual Report of the Anti-slavery Society of
Canada_, 1852, p. 22.]
[Footnote 5: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 199.]
[Footnote 6: "While at this place we made our headquarters at Isaac J.
Rice's missionary buildings, where he had a large school for colored
children. He had labored here among the colored people, mostly
fugitives, for six years. He was a devoted, self-denying worker, had
received very little pecuniary help, and had suffered many privations.
He was well situated in Ohio as pastor of a Presbyterian Church, and
had fine prospects before him, but believed that the Lord called him
to this field of missionary labor among the fugitive slaves, who
came here by hundreds and by thousands, poor, destitute, ignorant,
suffering from all the evil influences of slavery. We entered into
deep sympathy with him and his labors, realizing the great need there
was here for just such an institution as he had established. He had
sheltered at his missionary home many hundred of fugitives till other
homes for them could be found. This was the great landing point, the
principal terminus of the Underground Railroad of the West." See
Coffin's _Reminiscences_, p. 251.]
[Footnote 7: _Ibid_., pp. 249-251.]
[Footnote 8: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 202.]
[Footnote 9: Haviland, _A Woman's Work_, pp. 192, 196, 201.]
[Footnote 10: Haviland, _A Woman's Work_, pp. 192, 193.]
With these immigrants, however, this was not a mere passive
participation in the work of their amelioration. From the very
beginning the colored people partly supported their schools. Without
the coöperation of the refugees the large private schools at London,
Chatham, and Windsor could not have succeeded. The school at Chatham
was conducted by Alfred Whipper,[1] a colored man, that at Windsor by
Mary E. Bibb, the wife of Henry Bibb,[2] the founder of the Refugees'
Home Settlement, and that at Sandwich by Mary Ann Shadd, of
Delaware.[3] Moreover, the majority of these colonists showed
increasing interest in this work of social uplift.[4] Foregoing their
economic opportunities many of the refugees congregated in towns of
educational facilities. A large number of them left their first abodes
to settle near Dresden and Dawn because of the advantages offered
by the Manual Labor Institute. Besides, the Negroes organized "True
Bands" which effected among other things the improvement of schools
and the increase of their attendance[5].
[Footnote 1: Drew, _A North-side View of Slavery_, p. 236.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 322.]
[Footnote 3: Delany, _The Condition of the Colored People_, etc.,
131.]
[Footnote 4: Howe, _The Refugees from Slavery_, pp. 70, 71, 108, and
110.]
[Footnote 5: According to Drew a True Band was composed of colored
persons of both sexes, associated for their own improvement. "Its
objects," says he, "are manifold: mainly these:--the members are to
take a general interest in each other's welfare; to pursue such plans
and objects as may be for their mutual advantage; to improve all
schools, and to induce their race to send their children into the
schools; to break down all prejudice; to bring all churches as far as
possible into one body, and not let minor differences divide them; to
prevent litigation by referring all disputes among themselves to a
committee; to stop the begging system entirely (that is, going to the
United States and thereby representing that the fugitives are starving
and suffering, raising large sums of money, of which the fugitives
never receive the benefit,--misrepresenting the character of the
fugitives for industry and underrating the advance of the country,
which supplies abundant work for all at fair wages); to raise such
funds among themselves as may be necessary for the poor, the sick,
and the destitute fugitive newly arrived; and prepare themselves
ultimately to bear their due weight of political power." See Drew, _A
North-side View of Slavery_, p. 236.]
The good results of these schools were apparent. In the same degree
that the denial to slaves of mental development tended to brutalize
them the teaching of science and religion elevated the fugitives in
Canada. In fact, the Negroes of these settlements soon had ideals
differing widely from those of their brethren less favorably
circumstanced. They believed in the establishment of homes, respected
the sanctity of marriage, and exhibited in their daily life a moral
sense of the highest order. Travelers found the majority of them
neat, orderly, and intelligent[1]. Availing themselves of their
opportunities, they quickly qualified as workers among their fellows.
An observer reported in 1855 that a few were engaged in shop keeping
or were employed as clerks, while a still smaller number devoted
themselves to teaching and preaching.[2] Before 1860 the culture of
these settlements was attracting the colored graduates of northern
institutions which had begun to give men of African blood an
opportunity to study in their professional schools.
[Footnote 1: According to the report of the Freedmen's Inquiry
Commission published by S.G. Howe, an unusually large proportion of
the colored population believed in education. He says: "Those from the
free States had very little schooling in youth; those from the slave
States, none at all. Considering these things it is rather remarkable
that so many can now read and write. Moreover, they show their esteem
for instruction by their desire to obtain it for their children. They
all wish to have their children go to school, and they send them all
the time that they can be spared.
"Canada West has adopted a good system of public instruction, which
is well administered. The common schools, though inferior to those of
several of the States of the United States, are good. Colored children
are admitted to them in most places; and where a separate school is
open for them, it is as well provided by the government with teachers
and apparatus as the other schools are. Notwithstanding the growing
prejudice against blacks, the authorities evidently mean to deal
justly by them in regard to instruction; and even those who advocate
separate schools, promise that they shall be equal to white schools.
"The colored children in the mixed schools do not differ in their
general appearance and behavior from their white comrades. They are
usually clean and decently clad. They look quite as the whites; and
are perhaps a little more mirthful and roguish. The association
is manifestly beneficial to the colored children." See Howe, _The
Refugees_, etc., p. 77.]
[Footnote 2: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 226.]