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.]