labor than masters could well spare from their business. Then there were others who frankly confessed that, being an ignorant and unlearned people themselves, they could not teach others.[1]

[Footnote 1: For a summary of this argument see Meade, Four Sermons of Reverend Bacon, pp. 81-97; also, A Letter to an American Planter from his Friend in London, p. 5.]

Seeing that many leading planters had been influenced by those opposed to the enlightenment of Negroes, Bishop Gibson of London issued an appeal in behalf of the bondmen, addressing the clergy and laymen in two letters[1] published in London in 1727. In one he exhorted masters and mistresses of families to encourage and promote the instruction of their Negroes in the Christian faith. In the other epistle he directed the missionaries of the colonies to give to this work whatever assistance they could. Writing to the slaveholders, he took the position that considering the greatness of the profit from the labor of the slaves it might be hoped that all masters, those especially who were possessed of considerable numbers, should be at some expense in providing for the instruction of those poor creatures. He thought that others who did not own so many should share in the expense of maintaining for them a common teacher.

[Footnote 1: An Account of the Endeavors Used by the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, pp. 16, 21, and 32; and
Dalcho, An Historical Account, etc., pp. 104 et seq.]

Equally censorious of these neglectful masters was Reverend Thomas Bacon, the rector of the Parish Church in Talbot County, Maryland. In 1749 he set forth his protest in four sermons on "the great and indispensable duty of all Christian masters to bring up their slaves in the knowledge and fear of God."[1] Contending that slaves should enjoy rights like those of servants in the household of the patriarchs, Bacon insisted that next to one's children and brethren by blood, one's servants, and especially one's slaves, stood in the nearest relation to him, and that in return for their drudgery the master owed it to his bondmen to have them enlightened. He believed that the reading and explaining of the Holy Scriptures should be made a stated duty. In the course of time the place of catechist in each family might be supplied out of the intelligent slaves by choosing such among them as were best taught to instruct the rest.[2] He was of the opinion, too, that were some of the slaves taught to read, were they sent to school for that purpose when young, were they given the New Testament and other good books to be read at night to their fellow-servants, such a course would vastly increase their knowledge of God and direct their minds to a serious thought of futurity.[3]

[Footnote 1: Meade, Sermons of Thomas Bacon, pp. 31 et seq.]

[Footnote 2: Meade, Sermons of Thomas Bacon, pp. 116 et seq.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 118.]

With almost equal zeal did Bishops Williams and Butler plead the same cause.[1] They deplored the fact that because of their dark skins Negro slaves were treated as a species different from the rest of mankind. Denouncing the more cruel treatment of slaves as cattle, unfit for mental and moral improvement, these churchmen asserted that the highest property possible to be acquired in servants could not cancel the obligation to take care of the religious instruction of those who "despicable as they are in the eyes of man are nevertheless the creatures of God."[2]

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 363.]

[Footnote 2: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 363.]

On account of these appeals made during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a larger number of slaves of the English colonies were thereafter treated as human beings capable of mental, moral, and spiritual development. Some masters began to provide for the improvement of these unfortunates, not because they loved them, but because instruction would make them more useful to the community. A much more effective policy of Negro education was brought forward in 1741 by Bishop Secker.[1] He suggested the employment of young Negroes prudently chosen to teach their countrymen. To carry out such a plan he had already sent a missionary to Africa. Besides instructing Negroes at his post of duty, this apostle sent three African natives to England where they were educated for the work.[2] It was doubtless the sentiment of these leaders that caused Dr. Brearcroft to allude to this project in a discourse before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1741.[3]

[Footnote 1: Secker, Works, vol. v., p. 88.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., vol. vi., p. 467.]

[Footnote 3: An Account of the Endeavors Used by the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, p.6.]

This organization hit upon the plan of purchasing two Negroes named Harry and Andrew, and of qualifying them by thorough instruction in the principles of Christianity and the fundamentals of education, to serve as schoolmasters to their people. Under the direction of Rev. Mr. Garden, the missionary who had directed the training of these young men, a building costing about three hundred and eight pounds was erected in Charleston, South Carolina. In the school which opened in this building in 1744 Harry and Andrew served as teachers.[1] In the beginning the school had about sixty young students, and had a very good daily attendance for a number of years. The directors of the institution planned to send out annually between thirty and forty youths "well instructed in religion and capable of reading their Bibles to carry home and diffuse the same knowledge to their fellow slaves."[2] It is highly probable that after 1740 this school was attended only by free persons of color. Because the progress of Negro education had been rather rapid, South Carolina enacted that year a law prohibiting any person from teaching or causing a slave to be taught, or from employing or using a slave as a scribe in any manner of writing.

[Footnote 1: Meriwether, Education in South Carolina, p. 123;
McCrady, South Carolina, etc., p. 246; Dalcho, An Historical
Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina, pp.
156, 157, 164.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., pp. 157 and 164.]

In 1764 the Charleston school was closed for reasons which it is difficult to determine. From one source we learn that one of the teachers died, and the other having turned out profligate, no instructors could be found to continue the work. It does not seem that the sentiment against the education of free Negroes had by that time become sufficiently strong to cause the school to be discontinued.[1] It is evident, however, that with the assistance of influential persons of different communities the instruction of slaves continued in that colony. Writing about the middle of the eighteenth century, Eliza Lucas, a lady of South Carolina, who afterward married Justice Pinckney, mentions a parcel of little Negroes whom she had undertaken to teach to read.[2]

[Footnote 1: An Account of the Endeavors Used by the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, p. 15.]

[Footnote 2: Bourne, Spain in America, p. 241.]

The work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was also effective in communities of the North in which the established Church of England had some standing. In 1751 Reverend Hugh Neill, once a Presbyterian minister of New Jersey, became a missionary of this organization to the Negroes of Pennsylvania. He