ccompanied to school.
While attending ministers and officials whose work often lay open to
their servants, many of the race learned by contact and observation.
Shrewd Negroes sometimes slipped stealthily into back streets, where
they studied under a private teacher, or attended a school hidden from
the zealous execution of the law.

The instances of Negroes struggling to obtain an education read like
the beautiful romances of a people in an heroic age. Sometimes Negroes
of the type of Lott Carey[1] educated themselves. James Redpath
discovered in Savannah that in spite of the law great numbers
of slaves had learned to read well. Many of them had acquired a
rudimentary knowledge of arithmetic. "But," said he, "blazon it to the
shame of the South, the knowledge thus acquired has been snatched from
the spare records of leisure in spite of their owners' wishes and
watchfulness."[2] C.G. Parsons was informed that although poor masters
did not venture to teach their slaves, occasionally one with a thirst
for knowledge secretly learned the rudiments of education without any
instruction.[3] While on a tour through parts of Georgia, E.P. Burke
observed that, notwithstanding the great precaution which was taken
to prevent the mental improvement of the slaves, many of them "stole
knowledge enough to enable them to read and write with ease."[4]
Robert Smalls[5] of South Carolina and Alfred T. Jones[6] of Kentucky
began their education in this manner.

[Footnote 1: Mott, _Biographical Sketches_, p. 87.]

[Footnote 2: Redpath, _Roving Editor_, etc., p. 161.]

[Footnote 3: Parsons, _Inside View_, etc., p. 248.]

[Footnote 4: Burke, _Reminiscences of Georgia_, p. 85.]

[Footnote 5: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 126.]

[Footnote 6: Drew, _Refugee_, p. 152.]

Probably the best example of this class was Harrison Ellis of Alabama.
At the age of thirty-five he had acquired a liberal education by his
own exertions. Upon examination he proved himself a good Latin and
Hebrew scholar and showed still greater proficiency in Greek. His
attainments in theology were highly satisfactory. _The Eufaula
Shield_, a newspaper of that State, praised him as a man courteous in
manners, polite in conversation, and manly in demeanor. Knowing how
useful Ellis would be in a free country, the Presbyterian Synod of
Alabama purchased him and his family in 1847 at a cost of $2500 that
he might use his talents in elevating his own people in Liberia.[1]

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