There is striking proof of the high estimate which the more enlightened
people of the country put upon the Negro’s character and capabilities in
the enterprises for African colonization which were made so much of in
the first half of the last century. An interesting feature of this
movement was the union of benevolent people in the South with those of
like mind in the North, and the harmony of spirit which long prevailed.
With the teachings of the Declaration of Independence dominant
everywhere, thinking people felt that slavery could not be countenanced
forever in a free country; and the practical way to deal with the
Negroes seemed to be to set them off in colonies by themselves.
Jefferson suggested that there might be such a colony in some part of
the region northwest of the Ohio or that a retreat be found for them in
the West Indies; and, later, in 1811, after the colony of Sierra Leone
had been planted by the British Government, he wrote that nothing was
more to be wished than that the United States should undertake to make
such an establishment on the coast of Africa. In 1816, the Legislature
of Virginia took action to the same end, and a year later, the American
Colonization Society was organized at the Capital of the Nation, with
Justice Bushrod Washington as president and distinguished men from all
parts of the land in the list of vice presidents. During the following
15 years, until 1832, vigorous efforts were made for the support of this
society in all the different States. State societies, county societies,
church societies and local bands, auxiliary to the national
organization, were started; in 1832, a list was printed of 231 such
auxiliaries, of which 127 were in the slave States and 104 elsewhere. In
the lists of their presidents, secretaries, and treasurers are found the
names of John Marshall and James Madison, of Virginia; Charles Carroll,
of Maryland; Charles C. Pinckney, of South Carolina; Theodore
Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey; Edward Everett, of Massachusetts; Gerrit
Smith and Arthur Tappan, of New York; Jeremiah Day and Leonard Bacon, of
Connecticut, with others of similar standing in the North and South
alike, governors, judges, ministers of the gospel, and prominent
business men. The purpose on which the country was thus united was the
building up of Liberia, the establishment in Africa of a Republic upon
the pattern of the United States, to be made up of freed slaves from
America. That shows what was thought of the Negroes at that time; how
the ablest men believed in them as equal to grave civil
responsibilities. However wild the project looks today, the very
launching of it was a significant tribute to these people.
Prior to 1830 the thoughtful people of the South were not opposed to the
education of their slaves. There was a special recognition of the need
of teaching reading as a means of becoming familiar with the Bible and
the doctrines of Christianity. It was necessary for practical reasons
that some of the slaves on a large estate should know how to read. Some
of the house servants who were depended on for the care of the masters
children, aided them in their lessons, and for this reason needed to
have some knowledge of reading, writing, and simple arithmetic. The
history of the South in early times tells of men and women, here and
there, who interested themselves particularly in the welfare of the
slaves and in teaching them to read as a prerequisite for religious
training and membership in the church. In 1695 the minister of Goose
Creek Parish, near Charleston, gathered a class of Negroes and gave them
a course of systematic instruction in Christian truth. Before 1700 the
Friends of North Carolina were especially active in similar efforts. In
1744 two young colored men, who had received a special education for the
purpose, were set over a school in Charleston which opened with some
sixty pupils and was continued for a number of years. Later the free
colored people of Charleston, who were prosperous and had ample means,
maintained their own schools; and in the early part of the nineteenth
century, when the law forbade Negroes to teach, white teachers were
employed in their schools. Particularly interesting is the story of the
Mood brothers, the eldest of whom began to teach Negro children in 1638,
and was followed by his three brothers and a brother-in-law, one after
another, till they had together given instruction to some 1,200 pupils.
Carter Goodwin Woodson’s book, The Education of the Negro, gives an
impressive array of historical illustrations. Dr. Woodson relates
briefly how more than fifty Negroes of some distinction severally
received in slavery days the beginnings of their education, usually by
the favor of some one who was personally interested in their
improvement. He estimates that in 1863 some ten per cent. of the adult
Negroes in the United States had the rudiments of education, to which he
adds the opinion that the number was much less than it had been about
1825.
It seems open to question whether there were more educated Negroes in
1825 than in 1863. Undoubtedly there were more in some cities where the
harsh measures used against them led to a flight to more favorable
abodes. But the removal, for example, of Frederick Douglass, from
Baltimore to New York, or of Daniel A. Payne from Charleston to
Gettysburg, or of the Quakers in North Carolina to a freer air in Ohio,
did not by any means eliminate them from the Negro ranks; but rather set
them in positions where their own education could go on by leaps and
bounds, and their inspiring personality become a ten-fold greater force
in promoting the educational ambition of their comrades. In 1825
education for the Negro was undoubtedly more in honor among the white
people than afterwards. The advertisements of the time show that it was
sometimes regarded as adding to the market value of a slave, so as to be
put forward to help the sale. By the middle of the century all this was
changed; the schools of free Negroes were frowned upon and teaching
slaves was under the ban; an intelligent Negro became an object of
suspicion, and it was not politic for one to be known as able to read
and write. On this account the estimate of their number was likely to be
much below what is actually was.