Читать книгу The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 - Carter Godwin Woodson - Страница 9

[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 389, 390.]

It was in the settlements of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York that the Quakers encountered less opposition in carrying out their policy of cultivating the minds of colored people. Among these Friends the education of Negroes became the handmaiden of the emancipation movement. While John Hepburn, William Burling, Elihu Coleman, and Ralph Sandiford largely confined their attacks to the injustice of keeping slaves, Benjamin Lay was working for their improvement as a prerequisite of emancipation.[1] Lay entreated the Friends to "bring up the Negroes to some Learning, Reading and Writing and" to "endeavor to the utmost of their Power in the sweet love of Truth to instruct and teach 'em the Principles of Truth and Religiousness, and learn some Honest Trade or Imployment and then set them free. And," says he, "all the time Friends are teaching of them let them know that they intend to let them go free in a very reasonable Time; and that our Religious Principles will not allow of such Severity, as to keep them in everlasting Bondage and Slavery."[2]

[Footnote 1: Locke, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 31.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 32.]

The struggle of the Northern Quakers to enlighten the colored people had important local results. A strong moral force operated in the minds of most of this sect to impel them to follow the example of certain leaders who emancipated their slaves.[1] Efforts in this direction were redoubled about the middle of the eighteenth century when Anthony Benezet,[2] addressing himself with unwonted zeal to the uplift of these unfortunates, obtained the assistance of Clarkson and others, who solidified the antislavery sentiment of the Quakers and influenced them to give their time and means to the more effective education of the blacks. After this period the Quakers were also concerned with the improvement of the colored people's condition in other settlements.[3]

[Footnote 1: Dr. DuBois gives a good account of these efforts in his Suppression of the African Slave Trade.]

[Footnote 2: Benezet was a French Protestant. Persecuted on account of their religion, his parents moved from France to England and later to Philadelphia. He became a teacher in that city in 1742. Thirteen years later he was teaching a school established for the education of the daughters of the most distinguished families in Philadelphia. He was then using his own spelling-book, primer, and grammar, some of the first text-books published in America. Known to persecution himself, Benezet always sympathized with the oppressed. Accordingly, he connected himself with the Quakers, who at that time had before them the double task of fighting for religious equality and the amelioration of the condition of the Negroes. Becoming interested in the welfare of the colored race, Benezet first attacked the slave trade, so exposing it in his speeches and writings that Clarkson entered the field as an earnest advocate of the suppression of the iniquitous traffic. See Benezet, Observations, p. 30, and the African Repository, vol. iv., p. 61.]

[Footnote 3: Quaker Pamphlet, p. 31.]

What the other sects did for the enlightenment of Negroes during this period, was not of much importance. As the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists did not proselyte extensively in this country prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, these denominations had little to do with Negro education before the liberalism and spirit of toleration, developed during the revolutionary era, made it possible for these sects to reach the people. The Methodists, however, confined at first largely to the South, where most of the slaves were found, had to take up this problem earlier. Something looking like an attempt to elevate the Negroes came from Wesley's contemporary, George Whitefield,[1] who, strange to say, was regarded by the Negro race as its enemy for having favored the introduction of slavery. He was primarily interested in the conversion of the colored people. Without denying that "liberty is sweet to those who are born free," he advocated the importation of slaves into Georgia "to bring them within the reach of those means of grace which would make them partake of a liberty far more precious than the freedom of body."[2] While on a visit to this country in 1740 he purchased a large tract of land at Nazareth, Pennsylvania, for the purpose of founding a school for the education of Negroes.[3] Deciding later to go south, he sold the site to the Moravian brethren who had undertaken to establish a mission for Negroes at Bethlehem in 1738.[4] Some writers have accepted the statement that Whitefield commenced the erection of a schoolhouse at Nazareth; others maintain that he failed to accomplish anything.[5] Be that as it may, accessible facts are sufficient to show that, unwise as was his policy of importing slaves, his intention was to improve their condition. It was because of this sentiment in Georgia in 1747, when slavery was finally introduced there, that the people through their representatives in convention recommended that masters should educate their young slaves, and do whatever they could to make religious impressions upon the minds of the aged. This favorable attitude of early Methodists toward Negroes caused them to consider the new churchmen their friends and made it easy for this sect to proselyte the race.

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 374.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 374.]

[Footnote 3: Turner, The Negro in Pennsylvania, p. 128.]

[Footnote 4: Equally interested in the Negroes were the Moravians who settled in the uplands of Pennsylvania and roamed over the hills of the Appalachian region as far south as Carolina. A painting of a group of their converts prior to 1747 shows among others two Negroes, Johannes of South Carolina and Jupiter of New York. See Hamilton, History of the Church known as the Moravian, p. 80; Plumer, Thoughts on the Religious Instruction of Negroes, p. 3; Reichel, The Moravians in North Carolina, p. 139.]

[Footnote 5: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1869, p. 374.]