Would they secure to Negroes the educational privileges guaranteed
other elements of society? The answer, if not affirmative, was
decidedly encouraging. The idea uppermost in the minds of these
workers was that the people of color could and should be educated as
other races of men.

In the lead of this movement were the antislavery agitators.
Recognizing the Negroes' need of preparation for citizenship, the
abolitionists proclaimed as a common purpose of their organizations
the education of the colored people with a view to developing in them
self-respect, self-support, and usefulness in the community.[1]

[Footnote 1: Smyth, _Works of Benjamin Franklin_, vol. x., p. 127;
Torrey, _Portraiture of Slavery_, p. 21. See also constitution of
almost any antislavery society organized during this period.]

The proposition to cultivate the minds of the slaves came as a happy
solution of what had been a perplexing problem. Many Americans who
considered slavery an evil had found no way out of the difficulty when
the alternative was to turn loose upon society so many uncivilized men
without the ability to discharge the duties of citizenship.[1] Assured
then that the efforts at emancipation would be tested by experience,
a larger number of men advocated abolition. These leaders recommended
gradual emancipation for States having a large slave population, that
those designated for freedom might first be instructed in the value
and meaning of liberty to render them comfortable in the use of it.[2]
The number of slaves in the States adopting the policy of immediate
emancipation was not considered a menace to society, for the schools
already open to colored people could exert a restraining influence
on those lately given the boon of freedom. For these reasons the
antislavery societies had in their constitutions a provision for
a committee of education to influence Negroes to attend school,
superintend their instruction, and emphasize the cultivation of the
mind as the necessary preparation for "that state in society upon
which depends our political happiness."[3] Much stress was laid upon
this point by the American Convention of Abolition Societies in 1794
and 1795 when the organization expressed the hope that freedmen might
participate in civil rights as fast as they qualified by education.[4]

[Footnote 1: Washington, _Works of Jefferson_, vol. vi., p. 456;
vol. viii., p. 379; Madison, _Works of_, vol. iii., p. 496; Monroe,
_Writi