North Carolina, not unlike the border States in their good treatment of free persons of color, placed such little restriction on the improvement of the colored people that they early attained rank among the most enlightened ante-bellum Negroes. This interest, largely on account of the zeal of the antislavery leaders and Quakers,[1] continued unabated from 1780, the time of their greatest activity, to the period of the intense abolition agitation and the servile insurrections. In 1815 the Quakers were still exhorting their members to establish schools for the literary and religious instruction of Negroes.[2] The following year a school for Negroes was opened for two days in a week.[3] So successful was the work done by the Quakers during this period that they could report in 1817 that most colored minors in the Western Quarter had been "put in a way to get a portion of school learning."[4] In 1819 some of them could spell and a few could write. The plan of these workers was to extend the instruction until males could "read, write, and cipher," and until the females could "read and write."[5]
[Footnote 1: Weeks, Southern Quakers, p. 231; Levi Coffin, Reminiscences, pp. 69-71; Bassett, Slavery in North Carolina, p. 66.]
[Footnote 2: Weeks, Southern Quakers, p. 232.]
[Footnote 3: Thwaites, Early Travels, vol. ii., p. 66.]
[Footnote 4: Weeks, Southern Quakers, p. 232.]
[Footnote 5: Ibid., 232.]
In the course of time, however, these philanthropists met with some discouragement. In 1821 certain masters were sending their slaves to a Sunday-school opened by Levi Coffin and his son Vestal. Before the slaves had learned more than to spell words of two or three syllables other masters became unduly alarmed, thinking that such instruction would make the slaves discontented.[1] The timorous element threatened the teachers with the terrors of the law, induced the benevolent slaveholders to prohibit the attendance of their Negroes, and had the school closed.[2] Moreover, it became more difficult to obtain aid for this cause. Between 1815 and 1825 the North Carolina Manumission Societies were redoubling their efforts to raise funds for this purpose. By 1819 they had collected $47.00 but had not increased this amount more than $2.62 two years later.[3]
[Footnote 1: Coffin, Reminiscences, p. 69.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 70.]
[Footnote 3: Weeks, Southern Quakers, p. 241.]