The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 Part 17

[Footnote 4: The Const.i.tution of the Liberty County a.s.sociation for the Religious Instruction of Negroes, Article IV.]

Directing their efforts thereafter toward mere verbal teaching, religious workers depended upon the memory of the slave to retain sufficient of the truths and principles expounded to effect his conversion. Pamphlets, hymn books, and catechisms especially adapted to the work were written by churchmen, and placed in the hands of discreet missionaries acceptable to the slaveholders. Among other publications of this kind were Dr. Capers's Short Catechism for the Use of Colored Members on _Trial in the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina; A Catechism to be Used by Teachers in the Religious Instruction of Persons of Color in the Episcopal Church of South Carolina_; Dr. Palmer's _Cathechism_; Rev. John Mine's _Catechism_; and C.C. Jones's _Catechism of Scripture, Doctrine and Practice Designed for the Original Instruction of Colored People._ Bishop Meade was once engaged in collecting such literature addressed particularly to slaves in their stations. These extracts were to be read to them on proper occasions by any member of the family.[1]

[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Rev. Thomas Bacon_, p. 2.]

Yet on the whole it can be safely stated that there were few societies formed in the South to give the Negroes religious and moral instruction. Only a few missionaries were exclusively devoted to work among them. In fact, after the reactionary period no propaganda of any southern church included anything which could be designated as systematic instruction of the Negroes.[1] Even owners, who took care to feed, clothe, and lodge their slaves well and treated them humanely, often neglected to do anything to enlighten their understanding as to their responsibility to G.o.d. [Footnote 1: Madison's Works, vol. in., p. 314; Olmsted, _Back Country_, p. 107; Birney, _The American Churches_, etc., p. 6; and Jones, _Religious Instruction_, etc., p. 100.]

Observing closely these conditions one would wonder little that many Negroes became low and degraded. The very inst.i.tution of slavery itself produced s.h.i.+ftless, undependable beings, seeking relief whenever possible by giving the least and getting the most from their masters. When the slaves were cut off from the light of the gospel by the large plantation system, they began to exhibit such undesirable traits as insensibility of heart, lasciviousness, stealing, and lying.

The cruelty of the "Christian" master to the slaves made the latter feel that such a practice was not altogether inhuman. Just as the white slave drivers developed into hopeless brutes by having human beings to abuse, so it turned out with certain Negroes in their treatment of animals and their fellow-creatures in bondage. If some Negroes were commanded not to commit adultery, such a prohibition did not extend to the slave women forced to have illicit relations with masters who sold their mulatto offspring as goods and chattels. If the bondmen were taught not to steal the aim was to protect the supplies of the local plantation. Few masters raised any serious objection to the act of their half-starved slaves who at night crossed over to some neighboring plantation to secure food. Many white men made it their business to dispose of property stolen by Negroes.

In the strait in which most slaves were, they had to lie for protection. Living in an environment where the actions of almost any colored man were suspected as insurrectionary, Negroes were frequently called upon to tell what they knew and were sometimes forced to say what they did not know. Furthermore, to prevent the slaves from cooperating to rise against their masters, they were often taught to mistreat and malign each other to keep alive a feeling of hatred. The bad traits of the American Negroes resulted then not from an instinct common to the natives of Africa, but from the inst.i.tutions of the South and from the actual teaching of the slaves to be low and depraved that they might never develop sufficient strength to become a powerful element in society.

As this system operated to make the Negroes either nominal Christians or heathen, the anti-slavery men could not be silent.[1] James G.

Birney said that the slaveholding churches like indifferent observers, had watched the abas.e.m.e.nt of the Negroes to a plane of beasts without remonstrating with legislatures against the iniquitous measures.[2]

Moreover, because there was neither literary nor systematic oral instruction of the colored members of southern congregations, uniting with the Church made no change in the condition of the slaves. They were thrown back just as before among their old a.s.sociates, subjected to corrupting influences, allowed to forego attendance at public wors.h.i.+p on Sundays, and rarely encouraged to attend family prayers.[3]

In view of this state of affairs Birney was not surprised that it was only here and there that one could find a few slaves who had an intelligent view of Christianity or of a future life.

[Footnote 1: Tower, _Slavery Unmasked_, p. 394.]

[Footnote 2: Birney, _American Churches_, p. 6.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid_., p. 7.]

William E. Charming expressed his deep regret that the whole lot of the slave was fitted to keep his mind in childhood and bondage. To Channing it seemed shameful that, although the slave lived in a land of light, few beams found their way to his benighted understanding. He was given no books to excite his curiosity. His master provided for him no teacher but the driver who broke him almost in childhood to the servile tasks which were to fill up his life. Channing complained that when benevolence would approach the slave with instruction it was repelled. Not being allowed to be taught, the "voice which would speak to him as a man was put to silence." For the lack of the privilege to learn the truth "his immortal spirit was systematically crushed despite the mandate of G.o.d to bring all men unto Him."[1]

[Footnote 1: Channing, _Slavery_, p. 77.]

Discussing the report that slaves were taught religion, Channing rejoiced that any portion of them heard of that truth "which gives inward freedom."[1] He thought, however, that this number was very small. Channing was certain that most slaves were still buried in heathen ignorance. But extensive as was this so-called religious instruction, he did not see how the teaching of the slave to be obedient to his master could exert much power in raising one to the divinity of man. How slavery which tends to debase the mind of the bondman could prepare it for spiritual truth, or how he could comprehend the essential principles of love on hearing it from the lips of his selfish and unjust owner, were questions which no defender of the system ever answered satisfactorily for Channing. Seeing then no hope for the elevation of the Negro as a slave, he became a more determined abolitionist.

[Footnote 1: _Ibid._, p. 78.]

William Jay, a son of the first Chief Justice of the United States, and an abolition preacher of the ardent type, later directed his attention to these conditions. The keeping of human beings in heathen ignorance by a people professing to reverence the obligation of Christianity seemed to him an unpardonable sin. He believed that the natural result of this "compromise of principle, this suppression of truth, this sacrifice to unanimity," had been the adoption of expediency as a standard of right and wrong in the place of the revealed will of G.o.d.[1] "Thus," continued he, "good men and good Christians have been tempted by their zeal for the American Colonization Society to countenance opinions and practices inconsistent with justice and humanity."[2] Jay charged to this disastrous policy of neglect the result that in 1835 only 245,000 of the 2,245,144 slaves had a saving knowledge of the religion of Christ. He deplored the fact that unhappily the evil influence of the reactionaries had not been confined to their own circles but had to a lamentable extent "vitiated the moral sense" of other communities.

The proslavery leaders, he said, had reconciled public opinion to the continuance of slavery, and had aggravated those sinful prejudices which subjected the free blacks to insult and persecution and denied them the blessings of education and religious instruction.[3]

[Footnote 1: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc., p. 24.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 25.]

[Footnote 3: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc., p. 26.]

Among the most daring of those who censured the South for its reactionary policy was Rev. John G. Fee, an abolition minister of the gospel of Kentucky. Seeing the inevitable result in States where public opinion and positive laws had made the education of Negroes impossible, Fee a.s.serted that in preventing them from reading G.o.d's Word and at the same time incorporating them into the Church as nominal Christians, the South had weakened the inst.i.tution. Without the means to learn the principles of religion it was impossible for such an ignorant cla.s.s to become efficient and useful members.[1]

Excoriating those who had kept their servants in ignorance to secure the perpetuity of the inst.i.tution of slavery, Fee maintained that sealing up the mind of the slave, lest he should see his wrongs, was tantamount to cutting off the hand or foot in order to prevent his escape from forced and unwilling servitude.[2] "If by our practice, our silence, or our sloth," said he, "we perpetuate a system which paralyzes our hands when we attempt to convey to them the bread of life, and which inevitably consigns the great ma.s.s of them to unending perdition, can we be guiltless in the sight of Him who hath made us stewards of His grace? This is sinful. Said the Saviour: 'Woe unto you lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered."'[3]

[Footnote 1: Fee, _Antislavery Manual_, p. 147.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 148.]

[Footnote 3: Fee, _Antislavery Manual_, p. 149.]

CHAPTER IX

LEARNING IN SPITE OF OPPOSITION

Discouraging as these conditions seemed, the situation was not entirely hopeless. The education of the colored people as a public effort had been prohibited south of the border States, but there was still some chance for Negroes of that section to acquire knowledge.

Furthermore, the liberal white people of that section considered these enactments, as we have stated above, not applicable to southerners interested in the improvement of their slaves but to mischievous abolitionists. The truth is that thereafter some citizens disregarded the laws of their States and taught worthy slaves whom they desired to reward or use in business requiring an elementary education. As these prohibitions in slave States were not equally stringent, white and colored teachers of free blacks were not always disturbed. In fact, just before the middle of the nineteenth century there was so much winking at the violation of the reactionary laws that it looked as if some Southern States might recede from their radical position and let Negroes be educated as they had been in the eighteenth century.

The ways in which slaves thereafter acquired knowledge are significant. Many picked it up here and there, some followed occupations which were in themselves enlightening, and others learned from slaves whose attainments were unknown to their masters. Often influential white men taught Negroes not only the rudiments of education but almost anything they wanted to learn. Not a few slaves were instructed by the white children whom they accompanied to school.

While attending ministers and officials whose work often lay open to their servants, many of the race learned by contact and observation.

Shrewd Negroes sometimes slipped stealthily into back streets, where they studied under a private teacher, or attended a school hidden from the zealous execution of the law.

The instances of Negroes struggling to obtain an education read like the beautiful romances of a people in an heroic age. Sometimes Negroes of the type of Lott Carey[1] educated themselves. James Redpath discovered in Savannah that in spite of the law great numbers of slaves had learned to read well. Many of them had acquired a rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic. "But," said he, "blazon it to the shame of the South, the knowledge thus acquired has been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the spare records of leisure in spite of their owners' wishes and watchfulness."[2] C.G. Parsons was informed that although poor masters did not venture to teach their slaves, occasionally one with a thirst for knowledge secretly learned the rudiments of education without any instruction.[3] While on a tour through parts of Georgia, E.P. Burke observed that, notwithstanding the great precaution which was taken to prevent the mental improvement of the slaves, many of them "stole knowledge enough to enable them to read and write with ease."[4]

Robert Smalls[5] of South Carolina and Alfred T. Jones[6] of Kentucky began their education in this manner.

[Footnote 1: Mott, _Biographical Sketches_, p. 87.]

[Footnote 2: Redpath, _Roving Editor_, etc., p. 161.]

[Footnote 3: Parsons, _Inside View_, etc., p. 248.]

[Footnote 4: Burke, _Reminiscences of Georgia_, p. 85.]

[Footnote 5: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 126.]

[Footnote 6: Drew, _Refugee_, p. 152.]

Probably the best example of this cla.s.s was Harrison Ellis of Alabama.

At the age of thirty-five he had acquired a liberal education by his own exertions. Upon examination he proved himself a good Latin and Hebrew scholar and showed still greater proficiency in Greek. His attainments in theology were highly satisfactory. _The Eufaula s.h.i.+eld_, a newspaper of that State, praised him as a man courteous in manners, polite in conversation, and manly in demeanor. Knowing how useful Ellis would be in a free country, the Presbyterian Synod of Alabama purchased him and his family in 1847 at a cost of $2500 that he might use his talents in elevating his own people in Liberia.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Niles Register_, vol. lxxi., p. 296.]

Intelligent Negroes secretly communicated to their fellow men what they knew. Henry Banks of Stafford County, Virginia, was taught by his brother-in-law to read, but not write.[1] The father of Benedict Duncan, a slave in Maryland, taught his son the alphabet.[2] M.W.

Taylor of Kentucky received his first instruction from his mother.

H.O. Wagoner learned from his parents the first principles of the common branches.[3] A mulatto of Richmond taught John H. Smythe when he was between the ages of five and seven.[4] The mother of Dr. C.H.

Payne of West Virginia taught him to read at such an early age that he does not remember when he first developed that power.[5] Dr. E.C.

Morris, President of the National Baptist Convention, belonged to a Georgia family, all of whom were well instructed by his father.[6]

[Footnote 1: Drew, _Refugee_, etc., p. 72.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 110.]

[Footnote 3: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 679.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., p. 873.]