Sacred history bears ample testimony to the learning of the Egyptians. "Solomon's wisdom excelled the wisdom of all the children of the East country and all the wisdom of Egypt." Even in our own country, under the oppressive system which slavery and prejudice have reared to crush the people of color, the superiority which occasionally shines out, notwithstanding all the disabilities by which we have surrounded them, proves beyond dispute that they are the gifted children of our Heavenly Father. In proof of this, we shall adduce from numerous testimonies, that of F. A. Sayre, for nine years a teacher of one of the public schools in Cincinnati.
"Facts have been developed in the progress of the day schools and Sunday schools here, which have made me believe that the colored people are not only equal to white people in natural capacity to be taught, but that they exceed them: they do not receive instruction; they seize it as a person who has long been famishing for food—seize the smallest crumb."
I several times visited the different schools for colored children and have always been gratified to observe the good order and attention to study which the pupils manifest, and particularly with the affection with which they regard their teachers. I have, however, known more particularly the school for boys which brother W—— teaches, there I have seen boys of from 9 to 12 years of age, who had learned the alphabet within a year, who were able to exhibit to advantage, in reading and spelling, to write legibly, to recite long lessons in History, which they had been a short time studying, and to undergo an examination in Arithmetic, which when I first witnessed it, perfectly astonished me. I have taught common schools for about 15 years at intervals, and have visited many taught by others, and I must candidly say, that I have never been acquainted with one which for rapid progress in the different studies pursued, and for the interests manifested by the pupils could be compared with this, nor have I ever seen so much good feeling in the intercourse of teacher and pupils."
And, in corroboration of the above position, we shall mention a few out of many instances in which persons of color have surmounted every obstacle to mental and moral improvement. James Derham, who was originally a slave, was skilled in the languages, and became the most distinguished Physician at New Orleans. Dr. Rush, of Philadelphia, says, "I conversed with him, and found him very learned: I thought I could give him information concerning the treatment of diseases, but I learned more from him than he could expect from me." Benjamin Bannaker was a slave in Maryland: he obtained his freedom, and removed to Philadelphia. Without any encouragement but his passion for acquiring knowledge, and with no other books than the works of Ferguson and the tables of Tobias Mayer, he applied himself to the study of Astronomy. In 1794 and '95, he published Almanacs at Philadelphia, in which are calculated and exhibited the different aspects of the planets, a table of the motions of the sun and moon, their risings and sittings, and the courses of the bodies of the planetary system. Bannaker sent his Almanac in manuscript to Thomas Jefferson, previous to its publication, accompanied by a long and interesting letter on the condition of his brethren; and the following extracts are taken from Jefferson's reply:—"Sir, I thank you sincerely for your letter, and for the Almanac it contained. Nobody wishes more than I do, to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men; and that the appearance of the want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America. I have taken the liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condorcet, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and Member of the Philanthropic Society, because I considered it a document to which your whole color had a right for their justification against the opinions which have been entertained of them." A late West India paper mentions the death of Mr. Watkis, a colored lawyer in Jamaica, "by which the bar was deprived of one of its brightest ornaments." In the Island of St. Kitts, the proportion of colored members is increasing every year, and several of the special magistrates are colored men. The Editor of the St. Christopher Weekly Intelligencer and Advertiser is a colored man, who has been a bold advocate of liberal principles. He is described as a thorn in the side of the planters, and a great blessing to the Island. And in the United States of America, there are men and women now living whose talents, piety, and worth, are undeniable.
If we contemplate the moral character of the colored man we shall meet with even more frequent demonstrations of the kind care of our beneficent Creator who hath made of one blood all nations, and bestowed upon his rational creatures those qualities of the heart which are the brightest ornament of human nature. "In maternal, filial and fraternal affections," says Wadstrom, "I scruple not to pronounce them superior to any Europeans I was ever among." "Of all the people I have ever met I think they are the kindest, they will let none of their people want for victuals, they will lend and not look for it again, they will even lend clothes to each other if they want to go any where, if strangers come to them they will give them victuals for nothing, they will go out of their beds that strangers may sleep in them."—We not unfrequently have the evidence of slaveholders themselves to the faithfulness and tender attachment of their slaves. In a sermon preached by George W. Freeman, Rector of Christ Church, Raleigh, North Carolina, in which he endeavors to prove that slavery is a Bible institution we find the following testimony to the moral worth of those whom he calls a different race of men." "To many of our servants, to them who serve us faithfully, who are ever attentive to our wants, who cheerfully fulfil our commands, who labor abroad for us when we are in health, and who come at our call to nurse us in our sickness, and who, laying aside, as it were, all regard to their own comforts, submit without murmuring, or impatience to the most wearying and exhausting of all employments, complying with our most unreasonable whims, and meekly bearing with our fretfulness and caprices; to them, and I must do this class of people the justice to say there are many such among us—to such of our domestics as these we surely owe a debt of gratitude, which all our kindliest acts, should we even live beyond the age of man would scarce suffice to discharge.
Noble instances are recorded of their self-denial and liberality.—"Jasmin Thoumazeau was born in Africa, brought to St. Domingo and sold for a slave when he was 22 years of age, but afterwards obtaining his freedom he established a Hospital at the Cape, in 1756 for poor persons of color. More than forty years were devoted by himself and his wife to this benevolent institution, and his fortune was subservient to their wants. The only regret they felt, while their time and substance was devoted to these destitute objects, arose from a fear that after they were gone the Hospital might be abandoned." Joseph Rachel, a trader, who resided in the island of Barbadoes went to a man who had lost his property and to whom in the early part of his life he owed some obligations and gave him the fragment of his burnt bond for £60 and his discharged account for a considerable sum, telling him he was sensibly affected with his misfortunes and releasing him from all obligation to pay the debts. The philanthropists of England take pleasure in speaking of him. Having become rich by commerce, he consecrated all his fortune to acts of benevolence. The unfortunate without DISTINCTION OF COLOR had a claim on his affections. He gave to the indigent, lent to those who could not make a return—visited prisoners, gave them good advice and endeavored to bring back the guilty to virtue." Two slaves in New Orleans who by industry and economy had purchased their freedom and laid up about $400, bought with their earnings the freedom of another slave.—One day as the wife was sitting in the door of her cottage she said to herself "I have so much money and if I can make it the instrument of redeeming one of my fellow-beings from slavery, then I can say to my soul 'depart in peace.' She accordingly purchased one for $250 and in order to place her in a situation where she would hear the gospel preached, she brought her to the city of New-York. A more noble instance of genuine benevolence does not adorn the annals of philanthropy than is exhibited in this illiterate daughter of Africa, who gave nearly her all to redeem one captive sister. We have in this city a colored sister well known and beloved who by the labor of her own hands has ransomed eleven slaves.—But for her they would probably have dragged out their lives in hopeless bondage.—Her "witness is in heaven, her record is on high. [1] Similar accounts might be multiplied but enough has been said to prove to any candid mind the truth of our position, we will therefore only add the testimony of some of our Southern sisters who affirm that they have known slaves of exalted piety, high intelligence and warm affections, who under circumstances the most trying have exhibited a degree of practical Christianity they have rarely witnessed.
[ [1] In citing these instances of benevolence we wish it understood, that while we approve of redeeming a captive from bondage, we utterly deny the right of the master to sell or hold the slave as property, just as we deny the right of the Corsair to the persons of his prisoners, or the ransom which may be offered for their redemption.
We cannot forbear mentioning in connection with this subject the noble example which the colored slaveholders of Martinique have set to their white brethren by petitioning the French Chamber of Deputies to abolish slavery in that island, stating that they regarded it as an act not only of justice but of policy.—This is the only record on the page of history of such an act of mercy but we hope it may stimulate slaveholders in these United States to petition Congress to exert her influence in destroying the horrible system of American Slavery by abolishing it in the District of Columbia and in Florida, and by exterminating the interstate slave trade.
We earnestly entreat you to emulate the conduct of your brethren in Martinique by letting your righteousness exceed the righteousness of our white fellow-citizens. "That whereas they speak evil against you as evil doers, they may by your good works which they shall behold glorify God. For so is the will of God that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men." Your situation is in some respects more favorable to the growth of piety than that of the whites, you are in the furnace of affliction, and adversity has a much more salutary influence on the mind than prosperity. We believe that our Almighty Father has permitted your unparallelled sufferings, because he designs to bring you up to his assistance in regenerating our guilty country—he has been at infinite pains to refine you as silver is refined, that you may reflect more perfectly in your conduct and conversation the image of Jesus Christ. "Beloved think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you, but rejoice in as much as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings." You have the advantage of standing aloof from the political chicanery and wickedness which seem inseparable from public life, you are shielded from many of those temptations which encircle the fashionable world, and in a measure from the love of money, which is the root of all evil, because the acquisition of wealth is not with you as with your paler brethren, the certain means of worldly distinction. You may examine with a philosophic and impartial eye, the baneful effect of all these influences upon our white population, and as you rise from under the unhallowed prejudice which now crushes you to the earth, remember the solemn responsibilities which rest upon you and keep yourselves unspotted from the world, that your praise may be of God and not of men.
With deep regret we have heard that some of our colored brethren and sisters in our great cities frequent the theatre. This is a sink of vice from which we earnestly beseech you to keep yourselves entirely separate. Let the language of every one amongst you be, "Oh my soul, come not thou into their secret, unto their assembly mine honor, be not thou united." Sometimes in these scenic representations, your "countrymen in chains" are held up to the scorn and derision of an unfeeling multitude; the poor slave is introduced to be the object of heartless mirth. Can any colored man or woman voluntarily witness these dreadful pictures of the degradation of their brethren, and does not your presence identify you with the oppressors, who thus wantonly hold up to public contempt those whom they have first debased, and then despised.