Is one embraced in the command
'Search the Scriptures'? So is the other."[1] He maintained that
unless masters could lawfully degrade their slaves to the condition of
beasts, they were just as much bound to teach them to read the Bible
as to teach any other class of their population.
[Footnote 1: _African Repository_, vol. xxxii., p. 16.]
But great as was the interest of the religious element, the movement
for the education of the Negroes of the South did not again become a
scheme merely for bringing them into the church. Masters had more
than one reason for favoring the enlightenment of the slaves. Georgia
slaveholders of the more liberal class came forward about the middle
of the nineteenth century, advocating the education of Negroes as a
means to increase their economic value, and to attach them to their
masters. This subject was taken up in the Agricultural Convention
at Macon in 1850, and was discussed again in a similar assembly
the following year. After some opposition the Convention passed a
resolution calling on the legislature to enact a law authorizing the
education of slaves. The petition was presented by Mr. Harlston, who
introduced the bill embodying this idea, piloted it through the lower
house, but failed by two or three votes to secure the sanction of the
senate.
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