[Footnote 1: The laws of Georgia were not so harsh as those of South
Carolina. A larger number of intelligent persons of color were
found in the rural districts of Georgia. Charleston, however, was
exceptional in that its Negroes had unusual educational advantages.]
[Footnote 2: Marbury and Crawford, _Digest of the Laws of the State of
Georgia_, p. 438.]
[Footnote 3: Brevard, _Digest of the Public Statutes of South
Carolina_, vol. ii., p. 243.]
Those advocating the imposition of restraints upon Negroes acquiring
knowledge were not, however, confined to South Carolina and Georgia
where the malevolent happened to be in the majority. The other States
had not seen the last of the generation of those who doubted that
education would fit the slaves for the exalted position of citizens.
The retrogressives made much of the assertion that adult slaves lately
imported, were, on account of their attachment to heathen practices
and idolatrous rites, loath to take over the Teutonic civilization,
and would at best learn to speak the English language imperfectly
only.[1] The reformers, who at times admitted this, maintained that
the alleged difficulties encountered in teaching the crudest element
of the slaves could not be adduced as an argument against the
religious instruction of free Negroes and the education of the
American born colored children.
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