SOCIAL PROGRESS, 1820-1860[1]
[Footnote 1: This chapter follows closely upon Chapter III, Section 5,
and is largely complementary to Chapter VIII.]
So far in our study we have seen the Negro as the object of interest
on the part of the American people. Some were disposed to give him a
helping hand, some to keep him in bondage, and some thought that it
might be possible to dispose of any problem by sending him out of the
country. In all this period of agitation and ferment, aside from the
efforts of friends in his behalf, just what was the Negro doing to work
out his own salvation? If for the time being we can look primarily at
constructive effort rather than disabilities, just what do we find that
on his own account he was doing to rise to the full stature of manhood?
Naturally in the answer to such a question we shall have to be concerned
with those people who had already attained unto nominal freedom. We
shall indeed find many examples of industrious slaves who, working in
agreement with their owners, managed sometimes to purchase themselves
and even to secure ownership of their families. Such cases, while
considerable in the aggregate, were after all exceptional, and for the
ordinary slave on the plantation the outlook was hopeless enough.
In 1860 the free persons formed just one-ninth of the total Negro
population in the country, there being 487,970 of them to 3,953,760
slaves. It is a commonplace to remark the progress that the race has
made since emancipation. A study of the facts, however, will show that
with all their disadvantages less than half a million people had before
1860 not only made such progress as amasses a surprising total, but that
they had already entered every large field of endeavor in which the race
is engaged to-day.
When in course of time the status of the Negro in the American body
politic became a live issue, the possibility and the danger of an
_imperium in imperio_ were perceived; and Rev. James W.C. Pennington,
undoubtedly a leader, said in his lectures in London and Glasgow: "The
colored population of the United States have no destiny separate from
that of the nation in which they form an integral part. Our destiny is
bound up with that of America. Her ship is ours; her pilot is ours; her
storms are ours; her calms are ours. If she breaks upon any rock, we
break with her. If we, born in America, can not live upon the same soil
upon terms of equality with the descendants of Scotchmen, Englishmen,
Irishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Hungarians, Greeks, and Poles, then the
fundamental theory of America fails and falls to the ground."[1] While
everybody was practically agreed upon this fundamental matter of the
relation of the race to the Federal Government, more and more there
developed two lines of thought, equally honest, as to the means by which
the race itself was to attain unto the highest things that American
civilization had to offer. The leader of one school of thought was
Richard Allen, founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. When
this man and his friends found that in white churches they were not
treated with courtesy, they said, We shall have our own church; we shall
have our own bishop; we shall build up our own enterprises in any line
whatsoever; and even to-day the church that Allen founded remains as
the greatest single effort of the race in organization. The foremost
representative of the opposing line of thought was undoubtedly Frederick
Douglass, who in a speech in Rochester in 1848 said: "I am well aware of
the anti-Christian prejudices which have excluded many colored persons
from white churches, and the consequent necessity for erecting their own
places of worship. This evil I would charge upon its originators, and
not the colored people. But such a necessity does not now exist to the
extent of former years. There are societies where color is not regarded
as a test of membership, and such places I deem more appropriate for
colored persons than exclusive or isolated organizations." There is much
more difference between these two positions than can be accounted for by
the mere lapse of forty years between the height of the work of Allen
and that of Douglass. Allen certainly did not sanction segregation under
the law, and no man worked harder than he to relieve his people from
proscription. Douglass moreover, who did not formally approve of
organizations that represented any such distinction as that of race,
again and again presided over gatherings of Negro men. In the last
analysis, however, it was Allen who was foremost in laying the basis
of distinctively Negro enterprise, and Douglass who felt that the real
solution of any difficulty was for the race to lose itself as quickly as
possible in the general body politic.
[Footnote 1: Nell: _Colored Patriots of the American Revolution_, 356.]
We have seen that the Church was from the first the race's foremost form
of social organization, and that sometimes in very close touch with
it developed the early lodges of such a body as the Masons. By 1800
emancipation was well under way; then began emigration from the South
to the central West; emigration brought into being the Underground
Railroad; and finally all forces worked together for the development of
Negro business, the press, conventions, and other forms of activity. It
was natural that states so close to the border as Pennsylvania and Ohio
should be important in this early development.
The Church continued the growth that it had begun several decades
before. The A.M.E. denomination advanced rapidly from 7 churches and 400
members in 1816 to 286 churches and 73,000 members by the close of the
Civil War. Naturally such a distinctively Negro organization could
make little progress in the South before the war, but there were small
congregations in Charleston and New Orleans, and William Paul Quinn
blazed a path in the West, going from Pittsburgh to St. Louis.
In 1847 the Prince Hall Lodge of the Masons in Massachusetts, the First
Independent African Grand Lodge in Pennsylvania, and the Hiram Grand
Lodge of Pennsylvania formed a National Grand Lodge, and from one or
another of these all other Grand Lodges among Negroes have descended. In
1842 the members of the Philomathean Institute of New York and of the
Philadelphia Library Company and Debating Society applied for admission
to the International Order of Odd Fellows. They were refused on account
of their race. Thereupon Peter Ogden, a Negro, who had already joined
the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows of England, secured a charter for
the first Negro American lodge, Philomathean, No. 646, of New York,
which was set up March 1, 1843. It was followed within the next two
years by lodges in New York, Philadelphia, Albany, and Poughkeepsie. The
Knights of Pythias were not organized until 1864 in Washington; but the
Grand Order of Galilean Fishermen started on its career in Baltimore in
1856.
The benefit societies developed apace. At first they were small and
confined to a group of persons well known to each other, thus being
genuinely fraternal. Simple in form, they imposed an initiation fee of
hardly less than $2.50 or more than $5.00, a monthly fee of about 50
cents, and gave sick dues ranging from $1.50 to $5.00 a month, with
guarantee of payment of one's funeral expenses and subsequent help to
the widow. By 1838 there were in Philadelphia alone 100 such groups with
7,448 members. As bringing together spirits supposedly congenial, these
organizations largely took the place of clubs, and the meetings were
relished accordingly. Some drifted into secret societies, and after the
Civil War some that had not cultivated the idea of insurance were forced
to add this feature to their work.
In the sphere of civil rights the Negroes, in spite of circumstances,
were making progress, and that by their own efforts as well as those
of their friends the Abolitionists. Their papers helped decidedly. The
_Journal of Freedom_ (commonly known as _Freedom's Journal_), begun
March 30, 1827, ran for three years. It had numerous successors, but
no one of outstanding strength before the _North Star_ (later known as
_Frederick Douglass' Paper_) began publication in 1847, continuing
until the Civil War. Largely through the effort of Paul Cuffe for the
franchise, New Bedford, Mass., was generally prominent in all that made
for racial prosperity. Here even by 1850 the Negro voters held the
balance of power and accordingly exerted a potent influence on Election
day.[1] Under date March 6, 1840, there was brought up for repeal so
much of the Massachusetts Statutes as forbade intermarriage between
white persons and Negroes, mulattoes, or Indians, as "contrary to the
principles of Christianity and republicanism." The committee said that
it did not recommend a repeal in the expectation that the number of
connections, legal or illegal, between the races would be thereupon
increased; but its object rather was that wherever such connections were
found the usual civil liabilities and obligations should not fail to
attach to the contracting parties. The enactment was repealed. In the
same state, by January, 1843, an act forbidding discrimination
on railroads was passed. This grew out of separate petitions or
remonstrances from Francis Jackson and Joseph Nunn, each man being
supported by friends, and the petitioners based their request "not on
the supposition that the colored man is not as well treated as his white
fellow-citizen, but on the broad principle that the constitution allows
no distinction in public privileges among the different classes of
citizens in this commonwealth."[2] In New York City an interesting
case arose over the question of public conveyances. When about 1852
horse-cars began to supersede omnibuses on the streets, the Negro was
excluded from the use of them, and he continued to be excluded until
1855, when a decision of Judge Rockwell gave him the right to enter
them. The decision was ignored and the Negro continued to be excluded as
before. One Sunday in May, however, Rev. James W.C. Pennington, after
service, reminded his hearers of Judge Rockwell's decision, urged them
to stand up for their rights, and especially to inform any friends who
might visit the city during the coming anniversary week that Negroes
were no longer excluded from the street cars. He himself then boarded a
car on Sixth Avenue, refused to leave when requested to do so, and was
forcibly ejected. He brought suit against the company and won his case;
and thus the Negro made further advance toward full citizenship in New
York.[3]
[Footnote 1: Nell, III.]
[Footnote 2: Senate document 63 of 1842.]
[Footnote 3: McMaster, VIII, 74.]
Thus was the Negro developing in religious organization, in his benefit
societies, and toward his rights as a citizen. When we look at the
economic life upon which so much depended, we find that rather amazing
progress had been made. Doors were so often closed to the Negro,
competing white artisans were so often openly hostile, and he himself
labored under so many disadvantages generally that it has often been
thought that his economic advance before 1860 was negligible; but
nothing could be farther from the truth. It must not be forgotten that
for decades the South had depended upon Negro men for whatever was to
be done in all ordinary trades; some brick-masons, carpenters, and
shoemakers had served a long apprenticeship and were thoroughly
accomplished; and when some of the more enterprising of these men
removed to the North or West they took their training with them. Very
few persons became paupers. Certainly many were destitute, especially
those who had most recently made their way from slavery; and in general
the colored people cared for their own poor. In 1852, of 3500 Negroes in
Cincinnati, 200 were holders of property who paid taxes on their real
estate.[1] In 1855 the Negro per capita ownership of property compared
most favorably with that of the white people. Altogether the Negroes
owned $800,000 worth of property in the city and $5,000,000 worth in the
state. In the city there were among other workers three bank tellers,
a landscape artist who had visited Rome to complete his education, and
nine daguerreotypists, one of whom was the best in the entire West.[2]
Of 1696 Negroes at work in Philadelphia in 1856, some of the more
important occupations numbered workers as follows: tailors, dressmakers,
and shirtmakers, 615; barbers, 248; shoemakers, 66; brickmakers, 53;
carpenters, 49; milliners, 45; tanners, 24; cake-bakers, pastry-cooks,
or confectioners, 22; blacksmiths, 22. There were also 15 musicians or
music-teachers, 6 physicians, and 16 school-teachers.[3] The foremost
and the most wealthy man of business of the race in the country about
1850 was Stephen Smith, of the firm of Smith and Whipper, of Columbia,
Pa.[4] He and his partner were lumber merchants. Smith was a man of wide
interests. He invested his capital judiciously, engaging in real estate
and spending much of his time in Philadelphia, where he owned more than
fifty brick houses, while Whipper, a relative, attended to the business
of the firm. Together these men gave employment to a large number of
persons. Of similar quality was Samuel T. Wilcox, of Cincinnati, the
owner of a large grocery business who also engaged in real estate. Henry
Boyd, of Cincinnati, was the proprietor of a bedstead manufactory that
filled numerous orders from the South and West and that sometimes
employed as many as twenty-five men, half of whom were white. Sometimes
through an humble occupation a Negro rose to competence; thus one of the
eighteen hucksters in Cincinnati became the owner of $20,000 worth of
property. Here and there several caterers and tailors became known as
having the best places in their line of business in their respective
towns. John Julius, of Pittsburgh, was the proprietor of a brilliant
place known as Concert Hall. When President-elect William Henry Harrison
in 1840 visited the city it was here that his chief reception was held.
Cordovell became widely known as the name of the leading tailor and
originator of fashions in New Orleans. After several years of success in
business this merchant removed to France, where he enjoyed the fortune
that he had accumulated.
[Footnote 1: Clarke: _Condition of the Free Colored People of the United
States_.]
[Footnote 2: Nell, 285.]
[Footnote 3: Bacon: _Statistics_, 13.]
[Footnote 4: Delany.]
Cordovell was representative of the advance of the people of mixed blood
in the South. The general status of these people was better in Louisiana
than anywhere else in the country, North or South; at the same time
their situation was such as to call for special consideration. In
Louisiana the "F.M.C." (Free Man of Color) formed a distinct and
anomalous class in society.[1] As a free man he had certain rights, and
sometimes his property holdings were very large.[2] In fact, in New
Orleans a few years before the Civil War not less than one-fifth of the
taxable property was in the hands of free people of color. At the same
time the lot of these people was one of endless humiliation. Among some
of them irregular household establishments were regularly maintained by
white men, and there were held the "quadroon balls" which in course of
time gave the city a distinct notoriety. Above the people of this group,
however, was a genuine aristocracy of free people of color who had a
long tradition of freedom, being descended from the early colonists,
and whose family life was most exemplary. In general they lived to
themselves. In fact, it was difficult for them to do otherwise. They
were often compelled to have papers filled out by white guardians, and
they were not allowed to be visited by slaves or to have companionship
with them, even when attending church or walking along the roads.
Sometimes free colored men owned their women and children in order that
the latter might escape the invidious law against Negroes recently
emancipated; or the situation was sometimes turned around, as in
Norfolk, Va., where several women owned their husbands. When the name
of a free man of color had to appear on any formal document--a deed of
conveyance, a marriage-license, a certificate of birth or death, or
even in a newspaper report--the initials F.M.C. had to be appended. In
Louisiana these people petitioned in vain for the suffrage, and at the
outbreak of the Civil War organized and splendidly equipped for the
Confederacy two battalions of five hundred men. For these they chose
two distinguished white commanders, and the governor accepted their
services, only to have to inform them later that the Confederacy
objected to the enrolling of Negro soldiers. In Charleston thirty-seven
men in a remarkable petition also formally offered their services to the
Confederacy.[3] What most readily found illustration in New Orleans or
Charleston was also true to some extent of other centers of free people
of color such as Mobile and Baltimore. In general the F.M.C.'s
were industrious and they almost monopolized one or two avenues of
employment; but as a group they had not yet learned to place themselves
upon the broad basis of racial aspiration.
[Footnote 1: See "The F.M.C.'s of Louisiana," by P.F. de Gournay,
_Lippincott's Magazine_, April, 1894; and "Black Masters," by Calvin
Dill Wilson, _North American Review_, November, 1905.]
[Footnote 2: See Stone: "The Negro in the South," in _The South in the
Building of the Nation_, X, 180.]
[Footnote 3: Note broadside (Charleston, 1861) accessible in Special
Library of Boston Public Library as Document No. 9 in 20th Cab. 3. 7.]
Whatever may have been the situation of special groups, however, it can
readily be seen that there were at least some Negroes in the country--a
good many in the aggregate--who by 1860 were maintaining a high standard
in their ordinary social life. It must not be forgotten that we are
dealing with a period when the general standard of American culture was
by no means what it is to-day. "Four-fifths of the people of the United
States of 1860 lived in the country, and it is perhaps fair to say that
half of these dwelt in log houses of one or two rooms. Comforts such
as most of us enjoy daily were as good as unknown.... For the workaday
world shirtsleeves, heavy brogan boots and shoes, and rough wool hats
were the rule."[1] In Philadelphia, a fairly representative city,
there were at this time a considerable number of Negroes of means or
professional standing. These people were regularly hospitable; they
visited frequently; and they entertained in well furnished parlors with
music and refreshments. In a day when many of their people had not
yet learned to get beyond showiness in dress, they were temperate and
self-restrained, they lived within their incomes, and they retired at a
seasonable hour.[2]
[Footnote 1: W.E. Dodd: _Expansion and Conflict_, Volume 3 of "Riverside
History of the United States," Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1915, p.
208.]
[Footnote 2: Turner: _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, 140.]
In spite moreover of all the laws and disadvantages that they had to
meet the Negroes also made general advance in education. In the South
efforts were of course sporadic, but Negroes received some teaching
through private or clandestine sources.[1] More than one slave learned
the alphabet while entertaining the son of his master. In Charleston
for a long time before the Civil War free Negroes could attend schools
especially designed for their benefit and kept by white people or other
Negroes. The course of study not infrequently embraced such subjects as
physiology, physics, and plane geometry. After John Brown's raid the
order went forth that no longer should any colored person teach Negroes.
This resulted in a white person's being brought to sit in the classroom,
though at the outbreak of the war schools were closed altogether. In the
North, in spite of all proscription, conditions were somewhat better. As
early as 1850 there were in the public schools in New York 3,393 Negro
children, these sustaining about the same proportion to the Negro
population that white children sustained to the total white population.
Two institutions for the higher education of the Negro were established
before the Civil War, Lincoln University in Pennsylvania (1854) and
Wilberforce University in Ohio (1856). Oberlin moreover was founded in
1833. In 1835 Professor Asa Mahan, of Lane Seminary, was offered the
presidency. As he was an Abolitionist he said that he would accept only
if Negroes were admitted on equal terms with other students. After a
warm session of the trustees the vote was in his favor. Though, before
this, individual Negroes had found their way into Northern institutions,
it was here at Oberlin that they first received a real welcome. By the
outbreak of the war nearly one-third of the students were of the Negro
race, and one of the graduates, John M. Langston, was soon to be
generally prominent in the affairs of the country.
[Footnote 1: For interesting examples see C.G. Woodson: _The Education
of the Negro prior to 1861_.]
It has been maintained that in their emphasis on education and on the
highest culture possible for the Negro the Abolitionists were mere
visionaries who had no practical knowledge whatever of the race's real
needs. This was neither true nor just. It was absolutely necessary first
of all to establish the Negro's right to enter any field occupied by any
other man, and time has vindicated this position. Even in 1850, however,
the needs of the majority of the Negro people for advance in their
economic life were not overlooked either by the Abolitionists or the
Negroes themselves. Said Martin V. Delany: "Our elevation must be the
result of _self-efforts_, and work of our _own hands_. No other human
power can accomplish it.... Let our young men and young women prepare
themselves for usefulness and business; that the men may enter into
merchandise, trading, and other things of importance; the young women
may become teachers of various kinds, and otherwise fill places of
usefulness. Parents must turn their attention more to the education of
their children. We mean, to educate them for useful practical business
purposes. Educate them for the store and counting-house--to do everyday
practical business. Consult the children's propensities, and direct
their education according to their inclinations. It may be that there
is too great a desire on the part of parents to give their children a
professional education, before the body of the people are ready for it.
A people must be a business people and have more to depend upon than
mere help in people's houses and hotels, before they are either able to
support or capable of properly appreciating the services of professional
men among them. This has been one of our great mistakes--we have gone
in advance of ourselves. We have commenced at the superstructure of the
building, instead of the foundation--at the top instead of the bottom.
We should first be mechanics and common tradesmen, and professions as a
matter of course would grow out of the wealth made thereby."[1]
[Footnote 1: _The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of
the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered_,
Philadelphia, 1852, P. 45.]
In professional life the Negro had by 1860 made a noteworthy beginning.
Already he had been forced to give attention to the law, though as yet
little by way of actual practice had been done. In this field Robert
Morris, Jr., of Boston, was probably foremost. William C. Nell, of
Rochester and Boston, at the time prominent in newspaper work and
politics, is now best remembered for his study of the Negro in the early
wars of the country. About the middle of the century Samuel Ringgold
Ward, author of the _Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro_, and one of the
most eloquent men of the time, was for several years pastor of a white
Congregational church in Courtlandville, N.Y.; and Henry Highland
Garnett was the pastor of a white congregation in Troy, and well known
as a public-spirited citizen as well. Upon James W.C. Pennington the
degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred by Heidelberg, and generally
this man had a reputation in England and on the continent of Europe as
well as in America. About the same time Bishops Daniel A. Payne and
William Paul Quinn were adding to the dignity of the African Methodist
Episcopal Church.
Special interest attaches to the Negro physician. Even in colonial
times, though there was much emphasis on the control of diseases by
roots or charms, there was at least a beginning in work genuinely
scientific. As early as 1792 a Negro named Cæsar had gained such
distinction by his knowledge of curative herbs that the Assembly of
South Carolina purchased his freedom and gave him an annuity. In the
earlier years of the last century James Derham, of New Orleans, became
the first regularly recognized Negro physician of whom there is
a complete record. Born in Philadelphia in 1762, as a boy he was
transferred to a physician for whom he learned to perform minor duties.
Afterwards he was sold to a physician in New Orleans who used him as
an assistant. Two or three years later he won his freedom, he became
familiar with French and Spanish as well as English, and he soon
commanded general respect by his learning and skill. About the middle
of the century, in New York, James McCune Smith, a graduate of the
University of Glasgow, was prominent. He was the author of several
scientific papers, a man of wide interests, and universally held in high
esteem. "The first real impetus to bring Negroes in considerable numbers
into the professional world came from the American Colonization Society,
which in the early years flourished in the South as well as the North
... and undertook to prepare professional leaders of their race for the
Liberian colony. 'To execute this scheme, leaders of the colonization
movement endeavored to educate Negroes in mechanic arts, agriculture,
science, and Biblical literature. Especially bright or promising youths
were to be given special training as catechists, teachers, preachers,
and physicians. Not much was said about what they were doing, but now
and then appeared notices of Negroes who had been prepared privately in
the South or publicly in the North for service in Liberia. Dr. William
Taylor and Dr. Fleet were thus educated in the District of Columbia. In
the same way John V. De Grasse, of New York, and Thomas J. White, of
Brooklyn, were allowed to complete the medical course at Bowdoin
in 1849. In 1854 Dr. De Grasse was admitted as a member of the
Massachusetts Medical Society.'"[1] Martin V. Delany, more than once
referred to in these pages, after being refused admission at a number of
institutions, was admitted to the medical school at Harvard. He became
distinguished for his work in a cholera epidemic in Pittsburgh in 1854.
It was of course not until after the Civil War that medical departments
were established in connection with some of the new higher institutions
of learning for Negro students.
[Footnote 1: Kelly Miller: "The Background of the Negro Physician,"
_Journal of Negro History_, April, 1916, quoting in part Woodson: _The
Education of the Negro prior to 1861_.]
Before 1860 a situation that arose more than once took from Negroes the
real credit for inventions. If a slave made an invention he was not
permitted to take out a patent, for no slave could make a contract. At
the same time the slave's master could not take out a patent for him,
for the Government would not recognize the slave as having the legal
right to make the assignment to his master. It is certain that Negroes,
who did most of the mechanical work in the South before the Civil War,
made more than one suggestion for the improvement of machinery. We have
already referred to the strong claim put forth by a member of the race
for the real credit of the cotton-gin. The honor of being the first
Negro to be granted a patent belongs to Henry Blair, of Maryland, who in
1834 received official protection for a corn harvester.
Throughout the century there were numerous attempts at poetical
composition, and several booklets were published. Perhaps the most
promising was George Horton's _The Hope of Liberty_, which appeared in
1829. Unfortunately, Horton could not get the encouragement that he
needed and in course of time settled down to the life of a janitor at
the University of North Carolina.[1] Six years before the war Frances
Ellen Watkins (later Mrs. Harper) struck the popular note by readings
from her _Miscellaneous Poems_, which ran through several editions.
About the same time William Wells Brown was prominent, though he also
worked for several years after the war. He was a man of decided talent
and had traveled considerably. He wrote several books dealing with Negro
history and biography; and he also treated racial subjects in a novel,
_Clotel_, and in a drama, _The Escape_. The latter suffers from an
excess of moralizing, but several times it flashes out with the quality
of genuine drama, especially when it deals with the jealousy of a
mistress for a favorite slave and the escape of the latter with her
husband. In 1841 the first Negro magazine began to appear, this being
issued by the A.M.E. Church. There were numerous autobiographies, that
of Frederick Douglass, first appearing in 1845, running through edition
after edition. On the stage there was the astonishing success of Ira
Aldridge, a tragedian who in his earlier years went to Europe, where he
had the advantage of association with Edmund Kean. About 1857 he was
commonly regarded as one of the two or three greatest actors in the
world. He became a member of several of the continental academies of
arts and science, and received many decorations of crosses and medals,
the Emperors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia being among
those who honored him. In the great field of music there was much
excellent work both in composition and in the performance on different
instruments. Among the free people of color in Louisiana there were
several distinguished musicians, some of whom removed to Europe for the
sake of greater freedom.[2] The highest individual achievement was that
of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, of Philadelphia. This singer was of the
very first rank. Her voice was of remarkable sweetness and had a compass
of twenty-seven notes. She sang before many distinguished audiences in
both Europe and America and was frequently compared with Jenny Lind,
then at the height of her fame.
[Footnote 1: See "George Moses Horton: Slave Poet," by Stephen B. Weeks,
_Southern Workman_, October, 1914.]
[Footnote 2: See Washington: _The Story of the Negro_, II, 276-7.]
It is thus evident that honorable achievement on the part of Negroes
and general advance in social welfare by no means began with the
Emancipation Proclamation. In 1860 eight-ninths of the members of the
race were still slaves, but in the face of every possible handicap the
one-ninth that was free had entered practically every great field of
human endeavor. Many were respected citizens in their communities, and a
few had even laid the foundations of wealth. While there was as yet
no book of unquestioned genius or scholarship, there was considerable
intellectual activity, and only time and a little more freedom from
economic pressure were needed for the production of works of the first
order of merit.