The proslavery leaders, he said, had reconciled public opinion to the
continuance of slavery, and had aggravated those sinful prejudices
which subjected the free blacks to insult and persecution and denied
them the blessings of education and religious instruction.[3]
[Footnote 1: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc., p. 24.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 25.]
[Footnote 3: Jay, _An Inquiry_, etc., p. 26.]
Among the most daring of those who censured the South for its
reactionary policy was Rev. John G. Fee, an abolition minister of
the gospel of Kentucky. Seeing the inevitable result in States where
public opinion and positive laws had made the education of Negroes
impossible, Fee asserted that in preventing them from reading God's
Word and at the same time incorporating them into the Church as
nominal Christians, the South had weakened the institution. Without
the means to learn the principles of religion it was impossible for
such an ignorant class to become efficient and useful members.[1]
Excoriating those who had kept their servants in ignorance to secure
the perpetuity of the institution of slavery, Fee maintained that
sealing up the mind of the slave, lest he should see his wrongs, was
tantamount to cutting off the hand or foot in order to prevent his
escape from forced and unwilling servitude.
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