were deprived of the helpful contact of free persons of color
by driving them out of some Southern States; masters who had employed
their favorite blacks in positions which required a knowledge of
bookkeeping, printing, and the like, were commanded by law to
discontinue that custom; and private and public teachers were
prohibited from assisting Negroes to acquire knowledge in any manner
whatever.

The majority of the people of the South had by this time come to the
conclusion that, as intellectual elevation unfits men for servitude
and renders it impossible to retain them in this condition, it should
be interdicted. In other words, the more you cultivate the minds of
slaves, the more unserviceable you make them; you give them a higher
relish for those privileges which they cannot attain and turn what you
intend for a blessing into a curse. If they are to remain in slavery
they should be kept in the lowest state of ignorance and degradation,
and the nearer you bring them to the condition of brutes the better
chance they have to retain their apathy. It had thus been brought to
pass that the measures enacted to prevent the education of Negroes had
not only forbidden association with their fellows for mutual help and
closed up most colored schools in the South, but had in several States
made it a crime for a Negro to teach his own children.

The contrast of conditions at the close of this period with those
of former days is striking. Most slaves who were once counted as
valuable, on account of their ability to read and write the English
language, were thereafter considered unfit for service in the
South and branded as objects of suspicion. Moreover, when within a
generation or so the Negroes began to retrograde because they had been
deprived of every elevating influence, the white people of the South
resorted to their old habit of answering their critics with the bold
assertion that the effort to enlighten the blacks would prove futile
on account of their mental inferiority. The apathy which these
bondmen, inured to hardships, consequently developed was referred to
as adequate evidence that they were content with their lot, and
that any effort to teach them to know their real condition would be
productive of mischief both to the slaves and their masters.

The reactionary movement, however, was not confined to the South. The
increased migration of fugitives and free Negroes to the asylum of
Northern States, caused certai