This school has recently been reorganized and considerably enlarged, and removed to Cheyney, Pa., near Philadelphia, the work being entrusted to Hugh M. Browne, an educator of proved worth and responsibility. It starts out upon a career of increased usefulness, with the express purpose of fitting teachers for their appointed work.
The men and women who have graduated from the Institute have more than justified the generosity of its founder, and they have likewise reflected the unexampled excellence as a teacher of Mrs. Fannie Jackson Coppin, an early graduate of Oberlin, and one of the first principals of this famous school in Philadelphia. Her influence on the lives and careers of many prominent men and women of the Negro race is quite beyond comparison with that of any other of our early Negro educators.
Charlotte L. Fortin, now Mrs. Frank J. Grimké, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Mary Ann Shadd Carey must always be mentioned among the men and women whose devotion to the education of the members of their race has made the American people recognize the justice and the usefulness of giving the Negro the teaching he so earnestly desires.
The lack of economic and industrial opportunities of the free colored people, prior to the Civil War, can be easily inferred from what has already been said concerning the general sentiment of proscription that prevailed. As a general rule, they were not allowed to work at any of the trades and their children were not accepted as apprentices. It has already been noticed how impossible it was for Mr. Douglass, even in Massachusetts, to follow his occupation as a ship-calker, although, as we have seen, he had no trouble in obtaining good employment in Baltimore.
But the Negro, in this as in matters of education, persisted in his effort to learn trades and to work at them. There were in the free-states a considerable number of colored mechanics. Many of them had fitted themselves for their work while in slavery, and either by self-purchase or as runaways, had obtained their freedom. From these mechanics the trades were passed along to others by apprenticeships. In this way colored men entered and maintained themselves in many employments. There were always some people who were willing to hire skilled Negro mechanics. In cities like Philadelphia, they were, for a time, important factors in the industrial life. Indeed, long before slavery was abolished, every large northern city had a certain number of enterprising individuals who had succeeded in establishing themselves in some of the trades. In many communities they were making commendable headway as contractors, caterers, shopkeepers, tailors, shoemakers, and barbers. Not a few of them accumulated small fortunes. A number too had built up enviable reputations in the professions, especially in medicine, the ministry, and journalism. Some obtained their education in England, but most of them managed to get their training in this country.
In all this activity and enterprise they were not without leaders of force and intelligence. In the period covered by the anti-slavery movement, there was a remarkable group of aggressive and influential colored agitators. Without attempting to name all the prominent men who coöperated with Mr. Douglass in the anti-slavery warfare, we should mention a few, in order to make complete any account of the struggle in which their leader was so heroically engaged. Henry Highland Garnet of New York, was a gifted and thoroughly educated man. He was a Presbyterian minister and as such held an influential position, being elected at one time as a delegate to a Peace Conference at Frankfort, Germany. Charles Lennox Remond, Dr. James McCune Smith, Samuel R. Ward, H. Ford Douglass, Martin R. Delaney, John M. Langston, J. Howard Day, and Mifflin W. Gibbs, were men of rare oratorical gifts and were heard and admired on every great anti-slavery occasion. Robert Purvis, of Philadelphia, would have held a high place in any age, and the cause of freedom would have suffered without his aid. He was a man of patrician manners and had all the instincts of an aristocrat. He was for many years, vice-president of the National Anti-Slavery Society, and he enjoyed the intimate acquaintance and association of some of the most eminent men of his time.
It would scarcely be possible to write a history of the anti-slavery movement without mentioning the work of William Still. He had the rare powers of heart and mind that gave him an interest in and a large grasp of affairs. He was one of the original stockholders of The Nation, and a close friend of John Brown’s. It was at his house that the latter’s family were concealed after the Harper’s Ferry tragedy. Mr. Still’s contribution to the literature of the anti-slavery cause has a special value and is nowhere duplicated.
These colored men, who were associated with Mr. Douglass, got their training in the school of adversity. They were permitted to share few of the joys of life. Men of strong faith, they spent themselves in the service of their people. When the history of the Negro in America comes finally to be written and scholars seek to tell the story of the curious problem in civilization which his presence here creates, these dark-skinned heroes of an unpopular race may find their place in the ranks of those who helped to benefit the world.
CHAPTER IX
THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY AND THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW
Pro-slavery and anti-slavery were at this time the names of two sets of ideas and two states of mind that no longer admitted of compromise. The words meant immeasurably more in 1850 than they had in 1830. If they had ever been mere academic terms, they were fast becoming fighting terms,—the standards of two hostile camps. In the minds of the people, they stood, respectively, for irreconcilable principles. With every fresh event affecting either one side or the other, new and more intense animosities were engendered, and the two forces were driven farther and farther apart. Those who believed in the institution, became more and more firmly fixed in their determination not only to resist every attack upon it, but to give it the widest possible extension. Those who stood opposed to slavery were equally fixed in their determination that it should be destroyed.