The reactionary movement, however, was not confined to the South. The increased migration of fugitives and free Negroes to the asylum of Northern States, caused certain communities of that section to feel that they were about to be overrun by undesirable persons who could not be easily assimilated. The subsequent anti-abolition riots in the North made it difficult for friends of the Negroes to raise funds to educate them. Free persons of color were not allowed to open schools in some places, teachers of Negroes were driven from their stations, and colored schoolhouses were burned.
Ashamed to play the role of a Christian clergy guarding silence on the indispensable duty of saving the souls of the colored people, certain of the most influential southern ministers hit upon the scheme of teaching illiterate Negroes the principles of Christianity by memory training or the teaching of religion without letters. This the clergy were wont to call religious instruction. The word instruction, however, as used in various documents, is rather confusing. Before the reactionary period all instruction of the colored people included the teaching of the rudiments of education as a means to convey Christian thought. But with the exception of a few Christians the southerners thereafter used the word instruction to signify the mere memorizing of principles from the most simplified books. The sections of the South in which the word instruction was not used in this restricted sense were mainly the settlements of Quakers and Catholics who, in defiance of the law, persisted in teaching Negroes to read and write. Yet it was not uncommon to find others who, after having unsuccessfully used their influence against the enactment of these reactionary laws, boldly defied them by instructing the Negroes of their communities. Often opponents to this custom winked at it as an indulgence to the clerical profession. Many Scotch-Irish of the Appalachian Mountains and liberal Methodists and Baptists of the Western slave States did not materially change their attitude toward the enlightenment of the colored people during the reactionary period. The Negroes among these people continued to study books and hear religious instruction conveyed to maturing minds.
Yet little as seemed this enlightenment by means of verbal instruction, some slaveholders became sufficiently inhuman to object to it on the grounds that the teaching of religion would lead to the teaching of letters. In fact, by 1835 certain parts of the South reached the third stage in the development of the education of the Negroes. At first they were taught the common branches to enable them to understand the principles of Christianity; next the colored people as an enlightened class became such a menace to southern institutions that it was deemed unwise to allow them any instruction beyond that of memory training; and finally, when it was discovered that many ambitious blacks were still learning to stir up their fellows, it was decreed that they should not receive any instruction at all. Reduced thus to the plane of beasts, where they remained for generations, Negroes developed bad traits which since their emancipation have been removed only with great difficulty.
Dark as the future of the Negro students seemed, all hope was not yet gone. Certain white men in every southern community made it possible for many of them to learn in spite of opposition. Slaveholders were not long in discovering that a thorough execution of the law was impossible when Negroes were following practically all the higher pursuits of labor in the South. Masters who had children known to be teaching slaves protected their benevolent sons and daughters from the rigors of the law. Preachers, on finding out that the effort at verbal education could not convey Christian truths to an undeveloped mind, overcame the opposition in their localities and taught the colored people as before. Negroes themselves, regarding learning as forbidden fruit, stole away to secret places at night to study under the direction of friends. Some learned by intuition without having had the guidance of an instructor. The fact is that these drastic laws were not passed to restrain "discreet" southerners from doing whatever they desired for the betterment of their Negroes. The aim was to cut off their communication with northern teachers and abolitionists, whose activity had caused the South to believe that if such precaution were not taken these agents would teach their slaves principles subversive of southern institutions. Thereafter the documents which mention the teaching of Negroes to read and write seldom even state that the southern white teacher was so much as censured for his benevolence. In the rare cases of arrest of such instructors they were usually acquitted after receiving a reprimand.
With this winking at the teaching of Negroes in defiance of the law a better day for their education brightened certain parts of the South about the middle of the nineteenth century. Believing that an enlightened laboring class might stop the decline of that section, some slaveholders changed their attitude toward the elevation of the colored people. Certain others came to think that the policy of keeping Negroes in ignorance to prevent servile insurrections was unwise. It was observed that the most loyal and subordinate slaves were those who could read the Bible and learn the truth for themselves. Private teachers of colored persons, therefore, were often left undisturbed, little effort was made to break up the Negroes' secret schools in different parts, and many influential white men took it upon themselves to instruct the blacks who were anxious to learn.
Other Negroes who had no such opportunities were then finding a way of escape through the philanthropy of those abolitionists who colonized some freedmen and fugitives in the Northwest Territory and promoted the migration of others to the East. These Negroes were often fortunate. Many of them settled where they could take up land and had access to schools and churches conducted by the best white people of the country. This migration, however, made matters worse for the Negroes who were left in the South. As only the most enlightened blacks left the slave States, the bondmen and the indigent free persons of color were thereby deprived of helpful contact. The preponderance of intelligent Negroes, therefore, was by 1840 on the side of the North. Thereafter the actual education of the colored people was largely confined to eastern cities and northern communities of transplanted freedmen. The pioneers of these groups organized churches and established and maintained a number of successful elementary schools.
In addition to providing for rudimentary instruction, the free Negroes of the North helped their friends to make possible what we now call higher education. During the second quarter of the nineteenth century the advanced training of the colored people was almost prohibited by the refusals of academies and colleges to admit persons of African blood. In consequence of these conditions, the long-put-forth efforts to found Negro colleges began to be crowned with success before the Civil War. Institutions of the North admitted Negroes later for various reasons. Some colleges endeavored to prepare them for service in Liberia, while others, proclaiming their conversion to the doctrine of democratic education, opened their doors to all.
The advocates of higher education, however, met with no little opposition. The concentration in northern communities of the crude fugitives driven from the South necessitated a readjustment of things. The training of Negroes in any manner whatever was then very unpopular in many parts of the North. When prejudice, however, lost some of its sting, the friends of the colored people did more than ever for their education. But in view of the changed conditions most of these philanthropists concluded that the Negroes were very much in need of practical education. Educators first attempted to provide such training by offering classical and vocational courses in what they called the "manual labor schools." When these failed to meet the emergency they advocated actual vocational training. To make this new system extensive the Negroes freely coöperated with their benefactors, sharing no small part of the real burden. They were at the same time paying taxes to support public schools which they could not attend.
This very condition was what enabled the abolitionists to see that they had erred in advocating the establishment of separate schools for Negroes. At first the segregation of pupils of African blood was, as stated above, intended as a special provision to bring the colored youth into contact with sympathetic teachers, who knew the needs of their students. When the public schools, however, developed at the expense of the state into a desirable system better equipped than private institutions, the antislavery organizations in many Northern States began to demand that the Negroes be admitted to the public schools. After extensive discussion certain States of New England finally decided the question in the affirmative, experiencing no great inconvenience from the change. In most other States of the North, however, separate schools for Negroes did not cease to exist until after the Civil War. It was the liberated Negroes themselves who, during the Reconstruction, gave the Southern States their first effective system of free public schools.