ment
of that city. Among its white people were found so much toleration
of opinion on slavery and so much sympathy with the efforts for its
removal, that they not only permitted the establishment of Negro
churches, but opened successful colored schools in which white men
and women assisted personally in teaching. Great praise is due
philanthropists of the type of John Breckenridge and Daniel Raymond,
who contributed their time and means to the cause and enlisted the
efforts of others. Still greater credit should be given to William
Crane, who for forty years was known as an "ardent, liberal, and wise
friend of the black man." At the cost of $20,000 he erected in the
central part of the city an edifice exclusively for the benefit of
the colored people. In this building was an auditorium, several
large schoolrooms, and a hall for entertainments and lectures. The
institution employed a pastor and two teachers[1] and it was often
mentioned as a high school.

[Footnote 1: A contributor to the _Christian Chronicle_ found in this
institution a pastor, a principal of the school, and an assistant,
all of superior qualifications. The classes which this reporter heard
recite grammar and geography convinced him of the thoroughness of the
work and the unusual readiness of the colored people to learn. See
_The African Repository_, vol. xxxii., p. 91.]

In northern cities like Philadelphia and New York, where benevolent
organizations provided an adequate number of colored schools, the free
blacks did not develop so much of the power to educate themselves. The
Negroes of these cities, however, cannot be considered exceptions to
the rule. Many of those of Philadelphia were of the most ambitious
kind, men who had purchased their freedom or had developed sufficient
intelligence to delude their would-be captors and conquer the
institution of slavery. Settled in this community, the thrifty class
accumulated wealth which they often used, not only to defray the
expenses of educating their own children, but to provide educational
facilities for the poor children of color.

Gradually developing the power to help themselves, the free people
of color organized a society which in 1804 opened a school with John
Trumbull as teacher.[1] About the same time the African Episcopalians
founded a colored school at their church.[2] A colored man gave three
hundred pounds of the required funds to build the first colored
schoolhouse in Philadelphia.[3] I