worked among them fifteen years. Dr. Smith, Provost of the College of Philadelphia, devoted a part of his time to the work, and at the death of Neill in 1766 enlisted as a regular missionary of the Society.[1] It seems, however, that prior to the eighteenth century not much had been done to enlighten the slaves of that colony, although free persons of color had been instructed. Rev. Mr. Wayman, another missionary to Pennsylvania about the middle of the eighteenth century, asserted that "neither" was "there anywhere care taken for the instruction of Negro slaves," the duty to whom he had "pressed upon masters with little effect."[2]

[Footnote 1: Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 362.]

[Footnote 2: Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania, p. 248.]

To meet this need the Society set the example of maintaining catechetical lectures for Negroes in St. Peter's and Christ Church of Philadelphia, during the incumbency of Dr. Jennings from 1742 to 1762. William Sturgeon, a student of Yale, selected to do this work, was sent to London for ordination and placed in charge in 1747.[1] In this position Rev. Mr. Sturgeon remained nineteen years, rendering such satisfactory services in the teaching of Negroes that he deserves to be recorded as one of the first benefactors of the Negro race.

[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 241.]

Antedating this movement in Pennsylvania were the efforts of Reverend Dr. Thomas Bray. In 1696 he was sent to Maryland by the Bishop of London on an ecclesiastical mission to do what he could toward the conversion of adult Negroes and the education of their children.[1] Bray's most influential supporter was M. D'Alone, the private secretary of King William. D'Alone gave for the maintenance of the cause a fund, the proceeds of which were first used for the employment of colored catechists, and later for the support of the Thomas Bray Mission after the catechists had failed to give satisfaction. At the death of this missionary the task was taken up by certain followers of the good man, known as the "Associates of Doctor Bray."[2] They extended their work beyond the confines of Maryland. In 1760 two schools for the education of Negroes were maintained in Philadelphia by these benefactors. It was the aid obtained from the Dr. Bray fund that enabled the abolitionists to establish in that city a permanent school which continued for almost a hundred years.[3] About the close of the French and Indian War, Rev. Mr. Stewart, a missionary in North Carolina, found there a school for the education of Indians and free Negroes, conducted by Dr. Bray's Associates. The example of these men appealing to him as a wise policy, he directed to it the attention of the clergy at home.[4]

[Footnote 1: Ibid., p. 252; Smyth, Works of Franklin, vol. iv., p. 23; and vol. v., p. 431.]

[Footnote 2: Smyth, Works of Franklin, vol. v., p. 431.]

[Footnote 3: Wickersham, History of Education in Pennsylvania, p. 249.]

[Footnote 4: Bassett, Slavery and Servitude in North Carolina, Johns
Hopkins University Studies, vol. xv., p. 226.]

Not many slaves were found among the Puritans, but the number sufficed to bring the question of their instruction before these colonists almost as prominently as we have observed it was brought in the case of the members of the Established Church of England. Despite the fact that the Puritans developed from the Calvinists, believers in the doctrine of election which swept away all class distinction, this sect did not, like the Quakers, attack slavery as an institution. Yet if the Quakers were the first of the Protestants to protest against the buying and selling of souls, New England divines were among the first to devote attention to the mental, moral, and spiritual development of Negroes.[1] In 1675 John Eliot objected to the Indian slave trade, not because of the social degradation, but for the reason that he desired that his countrymen "should follow Christ his Designe in this matter to promote the free passage of Religion" among them. He further said: "For to sell Souls for Money seemeth to me to be dangerous Merchandise, to sell away from all Means of Grace whom Christ hath provided Means of Grace for you is the Way for us to be active in destroying their Souls when they are highly obliged to seek their Conversion and Salvation." Eliot bore it grievously that the souls of the slaves were "exposed by their Masters to a destroying Ignorance meerly for the Fear of thereby losing the Benefit of their Vassalage."[2]

[Footnote 1: Pennsylvania Magazine of History, vol. xiii., p. 265.]

[Footnote 2: Locke, Anti-slavery Before 1808, p. 15; Mather, Life of John Eliot, p. 14; New Plymouth Colony Records, vol. x., p. 452.]

Further interest in the work was manifested by Cotton Mather. He showed his liberality in his professions published in 1693 in a set of Rules for the Society of Negroes, intended to present the claims of the despised race to the benefits of religious instruction.[1] Mather believed that servants were in a sense like one's children, and that their masters should train and furnish them with Bibles and other religious books for which they should be given time to read. He maintained that servants should be admitted to the religious exercises of the family and was willing to employ such of them as were competent to teach his children lessons of piety. Coming directly to the issue of the day, Mather deplored the fact that the several plantations which lived upon the labor of their Negroes were guilty of the "prodigious Wickedness of deriding, neglecting, and opposing all due Means of bringing the poor Negroes unto God." He hoped that the masters, of whom God would one day require the souls of slaves committed to their care, would see to it that like Abraham they have catechised servants. They were not to imagine that the "Almighty God made so many thousands reasonable Creatures for nothing but only to serve the Lusts of Epicures, or the Gains of Mammonists."[2]

[Footnote 1: Locke, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 15.]

[Footnote 2: Meade, Sermons of Thomas Bacon, p. 137 et seq.]

The sentiment of the clergy of this epoch was more directly expressed by Richard Baxter, the noted Nonconformist, in his "Directions to Masters in Foreign Plantations," incorporated as rules into the Christian Directory.[1] Baxter believed in natural liberty and the equality of man, and justified slavery only on the ground of "necessitated consent" or captivity in lawful war. For these reasons he felt that they that buy slaves and "use them as Beasts for their meer Commodity, and betray, or destroy or neglect their Souls are fitter to be called incarnate Devils than Christians, though they be no Christians whom they so abuse."[2] His aim here, however, is not to abolish the institution of slavery but to enlighten the Africans and bring them into the Church.[3] Exactly what effect Baxter had on this movement cannot be accurately figured out. The fact, however, that his creed was extensively adhered to by the Protestant colonists among whom his works were widely read, leads us to think that he influenced some masters to change their attitude toward their slaves.

[Footnote 1: Baxter, Practical Works, vol. i., p. 438.]

[Footnote 2: Baxter, Practical Works, vol. i., p. 438-40.]

[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 440.]

The next Puritan of prominence who enlisted among the helpers of the African slaves was Chief Justice Sewall, of Massachusetts. In 1701 he stirred his section by publishing his Selling of Joseph, a distinctly anti-slavery pamphlet, based on the natural and inalienable right of every man to