the community. When he attained
the age of fifteen he was employed by a number of lawyers in whose
favor he ingratiated himself by his unusual power to please people.
Thereafter these men in defiance of the law taught him to read and
write and explained anything he wanted to know about arithmetic,
geography, and astronomy.[2]

[Footnote 1: Bishop Turner says that when he started to learn there
were among his acquaintances three colored men who had learned to read
the Bible in Charleston. See Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 806.]

[Footnote 2: Ibid., p. 806.]

Often favorite slaves were taught by white children. By hiding books
in a hayloft and getting the white children to teach him, James W.
Sumler of Norfolk, Virginia, obtained an elementary education.[1]
While serving as overseer for his Scotch-Irish master, Daniel
J. Lockhart of the same commonwealth learned to read under the
instruction of his owner's boys. They were not interrupted in their
benevolent work.[2] In the same manner John Warren, a slave of
Tennessee, acquired a knowledge of the common branches.[3] John
Baptist Snowden of Maryland was secretly instructed by his owner's
children.[4] Uncle Cephas, a slave of Parson Winslow of Tennessee,
reported that the white children taught him on the sly when they came
to see Dinah, who was a very good cook. He was never without books
during his stay with his master.[5] One of the Grimke Sisters taught
her little maid to read while brushing her young mistress's locks.[6]
Robert Harlan, who was brought up in the family of Honorable J.M.
Harlan, acquired the fundamentals of the common branches from Harlan's
older sons.[7] The young mistress of Mrs. Ann Woodson of Virginia
instructed her until she could read in the first reader.[8] Abdy
observed in 1834 that slaves of Kentucky had been thus taught to read.
He believed that they were about as well off as they would have
been, had they been free.[9] Giving her experiences on a Mississippi
plantation, Susan Dabney Smedes stated that the white children
delighted in teaching the house servants. One night she was formally
invited with the master, mistress, governess, and guests by a
twelve-year-old school mistress to hear her dozen pupils recite
poetry. One of the guests was quite astonished to see his servant
recite a piece of poetry which he had learned for this occasion.[10]
Confining his operations to the kitchen, another such teacher of this
plantation was unusually succes