The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861 Part 10

[Footnote 1: Ba.s.sett, _Slavery in North Carolina_, p. 73.]

From Princeton he went to Virginia to preach to his own people. In 1801 he served at the Hanover Presbytery as a "riding missionary under the direction of the General a.s.sembly."[1] He was then reported also as a regularly commissioned preacher to his people in Lexington. In 1805 he returned to North Carolina where he often preached to various congregations.[2] His career as a clergyman was brought to a close in 1831 by the law enacted to prevent Negroes from preaching.[3]

Thereafter he confined himself to teaching, which was by far his most important work. He opened a cla.s.sical school for white persons, "teaching in Granville, Wake, and Chatham Counties."[4] The best people of the community patronized this school. Chavis counted among his students W.P. Mangum, afterwards United States Senator, P.H.

Mangum, his brother, Archibald and John Henderson, sons of Chief Justice Henderson, Charles Manly, afterwards Governor of that commonwealth, and Dr. James L. Wortham of Oxford, North Carolina.[5]

[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., p. 74; and Baird, _A Collection_, etc., pp.

816-817.]

[Footnote 2: Paul C. Cameron, a son of Judge Duncan of North Carolina, said: "In my boyhood life at my father's home I often saw John Chavis, a venerable old negro man, recognized as a freeman and as a preacher or clergyman of the Presbyterian Church. As such he was received by my father and treated with kindness and consideration, and respected as a man of education, good sense and most estimable character." Mr. George Wortham, a lawyer of Granville County, said: "I have heard him read and explain the Scriptures to my father's family repeatedly. His English was remarkably pure, containing no 'negroisms'; his manner was impressive, his explanations clear and concise, and his views, as I then thought and still think, entirely orthodox. He was said to have been an acceptable preacher, his sermons abounding in strong common sense views and happy ill.u.s.trations, without any effort at oratory or sensational appeals to the pa.s.sions of his hearers." See Ba.s.sett, _Slavery in N.C_., pp. 74-75.]

[Footnote 3: See Chapter VII.]

[Footnote 4: Ba.s.sett, _Slavery in North Carolina_, p. 74.]

[Footnote 5: John S. Ba.s.sett, Professor of History at Trinity College, North Carolina, learned from a source of great respectability that Chavis not only taught the children of these distinguished families, but "was received as an equal socially and asked to table by the most respectable people of the neighborhood." See Ba.s.sett, _Slavery in North Carolina_, p. 75.]

We have no evidence of any such favorable conditions in South Carolina. There was not much public education of the Negroes of that State even during the revolutionary epoch. Regarding education as a matter of concern to persons immediately interested South Carolinians had long since learned to depend on private instruction for the training of their youth. Colored schools were not thought of outside of Charleston. Yet although South Carolina prohibited the education of the slaves in 1740[1] and seemingly that of other Negroes in 1800,[2]

these measures were not considered a direct attack on the instruction of free persons of color. Furthermore, the law in regard to the teaching of the blacks was ignored by sympathetic masters. Colored persons serving in families and attending traveling men shared with white children the advantage of being taught at home. Free persons of color remaining accessible to teachers and missionaries interested in the propagation of the gospel among the poor still had the opportunity to make intellectual advancement.[3]

[Footnote 1: Brevard, _Digest of the Public Statute Law of South Carolina_, vol. ii., p. 243.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 243.]

[Footnote 3: Laws of 1740 and 1800, and Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p.

1078.]

Although not as reactionary as South Carolina, little could be expected of Georgia where slavery had such a firm hold. Unfavorable as conditions in that State were, however, they were not intolerable. It was still lawful for a slave to learn to read, and free persons of color had the privilege of acquiring any knowledge whatsoever.[1] The chief incentive to the education of Negroes in that State came from the rising Methodists and Baptists who, bringing a simple message to plain people, instilled into their minds as never before the idea that the Bible being the revelation of G.o.d, all men should be taught to read that book.[2]

[Footnote 1: Marbury and Crawford, _Digest of the Laws of the State of Georgia_, p. 438.]

[Footnote 2: Orr, _Education in the South_.]

In the territory known as Louisiana the good treatment of the mixed breeds and the slaves by the French a.s.sured for years the privilege to attend school. Rev. James Flint, of Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, received letters from a friend in Louisiana, who, in pointing out conditions around him, said: "In the regions where I live masters allow entire liberty to the slaves to attend public wors.h.i.+p, and as far as my knowledge extends, it is generally the case in Louisiana. We have,"

said he, "regular meetings of the blacks in the building where I attend public wors.h.i.+p. I have in the past years devoted myself a.s.siduously, every Sabbath morning, to the labor of learning them to read. I found them quick of apprehension, and capable of grasping the rudiments of learning more rapidly than the whites."[1]

[Footnote 1: Flint, _Recollections of the Last Ten Years_, p. 345.]

Later the problem of educating Negroes in this section became more difficult. The trouble was that contrary to the stipulation in the treaty of purchase that the inhabitants of the territory of Louisiana should be admitted to all the rights and immunities of citizens of the United States, the State legislation, subsequent to the transfer of jurisdiction, denied the right of education to a large cla.s.s of mixed breeds.[1] Many of these, thanks to the liberality of the French, had been freed, and const.i.tuted an important element of society. Not a few of them had educated themselves, acc.u.mulated wealth, and ranked with white men of refinement and culture.[2]

[Footnote 1: Laws of Louisiana.]

[Footnote 2: Alliot, _Collections Historiques_, p. 85; and Thwaites, _Early Western Travels_, vol. iv., pp. 320 and 321; vol. xii., p. 69; and vol. xix., p. 126.]

Considering the few Negroes found in the West, the interest shown there in their mental uplift was considerable. Because of the scarcity of slaves in that section they came into helpful contact with their masters. Besides, the Kentucky and Tennessee abolitionists, being much longer active than those in most slave States, continued to emphasize the education of the blacks as a correlative to emanc.i.p.ation.

Furthermore, the Western Baptists, Methodists, and Scotch-Irish Presbyterians early took a stand against slavery, and urged the masters to give their servants all the proper advantages for acquiring the knowledge of their duty both to man and G.o.d. In the large towns of Tennessee Negroes were permitted to attend private schools, and in Louisville and Lexington there were several well-regulated colored schools.

Two inst.i.tutions for the education of slaves in the West are mentioned during these years. In October, 1825, there appeared an advertis.e.m.e.nt for eight or ten Negro slaves with their families to form a community of this kind under the direction of an "Emanc.i.p.ating Labor Society"

of the State of Kentucky. In the same year Frances Wright suggested a school on a similar basis. She advertised in the "Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation" an establishment to educate freed blacks and mulattoes in West Tennessee. This was supported by a goodly number of persons, including George Fowler and, it was said, Lafayette. A letter from a Presbyterian clergyman in South Carolina says that the first slave for this inst.i.tution went from York District of that State. The enterprise, however, was not well supported, and little was heard of it in later years. Some a.s.serted it was a money-making scheme for the proprietor, and that the Negroes taught there were in reality slaves; others went to the press to defend it as a benevolent effort. Both sides so muddled the affair that it is difficult to determine exactly what the intentions of the founders were.[1]

[Footnote 1: Adams, _Anti-slavery_, p. 152.]

CHAPTER VI

EDUCATING THE URBAN NEGRO

Such an impetus was given Negro education during the period of better beginnings that some of the colored city schools then established have existed even until to-day. Negroes learned from their white friends to educate themselves. In the Middle and Southern States, however, much of the sentiment in favor of developing the intellect of the Negro pa.s.sed away during the early part of the nineteenth century. This reform, like many others of that day, suffered when Americans forgot the struggle for the rights of man. Recovering from the social upheaval of the Revolution, caste soon began to claim its own. To discourage the education of the lowest cla.s.s was natural to the aristocrats who on coming to power established governments based on the representation of interests, restriction of suffrage, and the ineligibility of the poor to office. After this period the work of enlightening the blacks in the southern and border States was largely confined to a few towns and cities where the concentration of the colored population continued.

The rise of the American city made possible the contact of the colored people with the world, affording them a chance to observe what the white man was doing, and to develop the power to care for themselves.

The Negroes who had this opportunity to take over the western civilization were servants belonging to the families for which they worked; slaves hired out by their owners to wait upon persons; and watermen, embracing fishermen, boatmen, and sailors. Not a few slaves in cities were mechanics, clerks, and overseers. In most of these employments the rudiments of an education were necessary, and what the master did not seem disposed to teach the slaves so situated, they usually learned by contact with their fellowmen who were better informed. Such persons were the mulattoes resulting from miscegenation, and therefore protected from the rigors of the slave code; house servants, rewarded with unusual privileges for fidelity and for manifesting considerable interest in things contributing to the economic good of their masters; and slaves who were purchasing their freedom.[1] Before the close of the first quarter of the nineteenth century not much was said about what these cla.s.ses learned or taught. It was then the difference in circ.u.mstances, employment, and opportunities for improvement that made the urban Negro more intelligent than those who had to toil in the fields. Yet, the proportion did not differ very much from that of the previous period, as the first Negroes were not chiefly field hands but to a considerable extent house servants, whom masters often taught to read and write.

[Footnote 1: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p. 117.]

Urban Negroes had another important advantage in their opportunity to attend well-regulated Sunday-schools. These were extensively organized in the towns and cities of this country during the first decades of the last century. The "Sabbath-school" const.i.tuted an important factor in Negro education. Although cloaked with the purpose of bringing the blacks to G.o.d by giving them religious instruction the inst.i.tution permitted its workers to teach them reading and writing when they were not allowed to study such in other inst.i.tutions.[1] Even the radical slaveholder was slow to object to a policy which was intended to facilitate the conversion of men's souls. All friends especially interested in the mental and spiritual uplift of the race hailed this movement as marking an epoch in the elevation of the colored people.

[Footnote 1: See the reports of almost any abolition society of the first quarter of the nineteenth century. _Special Report of the U.S.

Com. of Ed_., 1871, p. 200; and Plumer, _Thoughts on the Religious Instruction of Negroes_.]

In the course of time racial difficulties caused the development of the colored "Sabbath-school" to be very much like that of the American Negro Church. It began as an establishment in the white churches, then moved to the colored chapels, where white persons a.s.sisted as teachers, and finally became an organization composed entirely of Negroes. But the separation here, as in the case of the church, was productive of some good. The "Sabbath-schools," which at first depended on white teachers to direct their work, were thereafter carried on by Negroes, who studied and prepared themselves to perform the task given up by their former friends. This change was easily made in certain towns and cities where Negroes already had churches of their own. Before 1815 there was a Methodist church in Charleston, South Carolina, with a members.h.i.+p of eighteen hundred, more than one thousand of whom were persons of color. About this time, Williamsburg and Augusta had one each, and Savannah three colored Baptist churches.

By 1822 the Negroes of Petersburg had in addition to two churches of this denomination, a flouris.h.i.+ng African Missionary Society.[1] In Was.h.i.+ngton, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston the free blacks had experienced such a rapid religious development that colored churches in these cities were no longer considered unusual.

[Footnote 1: Adams, _Anti-slavery_, etc., pp. 73 and 74.]

The increase in the population of cities brought a larger number of these unfortunates into helpful contact with the urban element of white people who, having few Negroes, often opposed the inst.i.tution of slavery. But thrown among colored people brought in their crude state into sections of culture, the antislavery men of towns and cities developed from theorists, discussing a problem of concern to persons far away, into actual workers striving by means of education to pave the way for universal freedom.[1] Large as the number of abolitionists became and bright as the future of their cause seemed, the more the antislavery men saw of the freedmen in congested districts, the more inclined the reformers were to think that instant abolition was an event which they "could not reasonably expect, and perhaps could not desire." Being in a state of deplorable ignorance, the slaves did not possess sufficient information "to render their immediate emanc.i.p.ation a blessing either to themselves or to society."[2]

[Footnote 1: As some masters regarded the ignorance of the slaves as an argument against their emanc.i.p.ation, the antislavery men's problem became the education of the master as well as that of the slave.

Believing that intellectual and moral improvement is a "safe and permanent basis on which the arch of freedom could be erected," Jesse Torrey, harking back to Jefferson's proposition, recommended that it begin by instructing the slaveholders, overseers, their sons and daughters, hitherto deprived of the blessing of education. Then he thought that such enlightened masters should see to it that every slave less than thirty years of age should be taught the art of reading sufficiently for receiving moral and religious instruction from books in the English language. In presenting this scheme Torrey had the idea of most of the antislavery men of that day, who advocated the education of slaves because they believed that, whenever the slaves should become qualified by intelligence and moral cultivation for the rational enjoyment of liberty and the performance of the various social duties, enlightened legislators would listen to the voice of reason and justice and the spirit of the social organization, and permit the release of the slave without banis.h.i.+ng him as a traitor from his native land. See Torrey's _Portraiture of Domestic Slavery_, p. 21.]

[Footnote 2: Sidney, _An Oration Commemorative of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the United States_, p. 5; and Adams, _Anti-slavery_, etc., pp. 40, 43, 65, and 66.]

Yet in the same proportion that antislavery men convinced masters of the wisdom of the policy of gradual emanc.i.p.ation, they increased their own burden of providing extra facilities of education, for liberated Negroes generally made their way from the South to urban communities of the Northern and Middle States. The friends of the colored people, however, met this exigency by establis.h.i.+ng additional schools and repeatedly entreating these migrating freedmen to avail themselves of their opportunities. The address of the American Convention of Abolition Societies in 1819 is typical of these appeals.[1] They requested free persons of color to endeavor as much as possible to use economy in their expenses, to save something from their earnings for the education of their children ... and "let all those who by attending to this admonition have acquired means, send their children to school as soon as they are old enough, where their morals will be an object of attention as well as their improvement in school learning." Then followed some advice which would now seem strange.

They said, "Encourage, also, those among you who are qualified as teachers of schools, and when you are able to pay, never send your children to free schools; for this may be considered as robbing the poor of their opportunities which are intended for them alone."[2]

[Footnote 1: _Proceedings of the American Convention_, etc., 1819, p.

21.]

[Footnote 2: _Proceedings of the American Convention_, etc., 1819, p.

22.]

The concentration of the colored population in cities and towns where they had better educational advantages tended to make colored city schools self-supporting. There developed a cla.s.s of self-educating Negroes who were able to provide for their own enlightenment. This condition, however, did not obtain throughout the South. Being a proslavery farming section of few large towns and cities, that part of the country did not see much development of the self-sufficient cla.s.s.

What enlightenment most urban blacks of the South experienced resulted mainly from private teaching and religious instruction. There were some notable exceptions, however. A colored "Santo Dominican" named Julian Troumontaine taught openly in Savannah up to 1829 when such an act was prohibited by law. He taught clandestinely thereafter, however, until 1844.[1] In New Orleans, where the Creoles and freedmen counted early in the nineteenth century as a substantial element in society, persons of color had secured to themselves better facilities of education. The people of this city did not then regard it as a crime for Negroes to acquire an education, their white instructors felt that they were not condescending in teaching them, and children of Caucasian blood raised no objection to attending special and parochial schools accessible to both races. The educational privileges which the colored people there enjoyed, however, were largely paid for by the progressive freedmen themselves.[2] Some of them educated their children in France.

[Footnote 1: Wright, _Negro Education in Georgia_, p. 20.]

[Footnote 2: Many of the mixed breeds of New Orleans were leading business men.]