they generally taught the unfortunates
everything that would broaden their horizon and help them to
understand life. The abolitionists and Protestant churches were also
in the field, but the work of the early fathers in these cities was
more effective. These forces at work in Georgetown made it, by the
time of its incorporation into the District of Columbia, a center
sending out teachers to carry on the instruction of Negroes. So
liberal were the white people of this town that colored children were
sent to school there with white boys and girls who seemed to raise
no objection.[2] Later in the nineteenth century the efforts made to
educate the Negroes of the rural districts of Maryland were eclipsed
by the better work accomplished by the free blacks in Baltimore and
the District of Columbia.

[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed_., pp. 195 _et
seq_., and pp. 352-353.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., p. 353.]

Having a number of antislavery men among the various sects buoyant
with religious freedom, Virginia easily continued to look with favor
upon the uplift of the colored people. The records of the Quakers of
that day show special effort in this direction there about 1764, 1773,
and 1785. In 1797 the abolitionists of Alexandria, some of whom were
Quakers, had been doing effective work among the Negroes of that
section. They had established a school with one Benjamin Davis as a
teacher. He reported an attendance of one hundred and eight pupils,
four of whom "could write a very legible hand," "read the Scriptures
with tolerable facility," and had commenced arithmetic. Eight others
had learned to read, but had made very little progress in writing.
Among his less progressive pupils fifteen could spell words of three
or four syllables and read easy lessons, some had begun to write,
while the others were chiefly engaged in learning the alphabet and
spelling monosyllables.[1] It is significant that colored children
of Alexandria, just as in the case of Georgetown, attended schools
established for the whites.[2] Their coeducation extended not only
to Sabbath schools but to other institutions of learning, which some
Negroes attended during the week.[3] Mrs. Maria Hall, one of the early
teachers of the District of Columbia, obtained her education in a
mixed school of Alexandria.[4] Controlled then by aristocratic people
who did not neglect the people of color, Alexandria also became a sort
of center for the uplift of t