[2] The master and mistress of Williamson Pease, of
Hardman County, Tennessee, were his teachers.[3] Francis Fredric began
his studies under his master in Virginia. Frederick Douglass was
indebted to his kind mistress for his first instruction.[4] Mrs.
Thomas Payne, a slave in what is now West Virginia, was fortunate
in having a master who was equally benevolent.[5] Honorable I.T.
Montgomery, now the Mayor of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, was, while a
slave of Jefferson Davis's brother, instructed in the common branches
and trained to be the confidential accountant of his master's
plantation.[6] While on a tour among the planters of East Georgia,
C.G. Parsons discovered that about 5000 of the 400,000 slaves there
had been taught to read and write. He remarked, too, that such slaves
were generally owned by the wealthy slaveholders, who had them
schooled when the enlightenment of the bondmen served the purposes of
their masters.[7]
[Footnote 1: Drew, _A North-Side View of Slavery_, p. 373.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 133.]
[Footnote 3: Ibid., p. 123.]
[Footnote 4: Lee, _Slave Life in Virginia and Kentucky_, p. x.]
[Footnote 5: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p.
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