reparing them for living as "good free human
beings."[2] Frances Anne Kemble noted such instances in her diary.[3]
The most interesting of these cases was discovered by the Union Army
on its march through Georgia. Unsuspected by the slave power and
undeterred by the terrors of the law, a colored woman by the name of
Deveaux had for thirty years conducted a Negro school in the city of
Savannah.[4]

[Footnote 1: Bremer, _The Homes of the New World_, vol. ii., p. 499.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 491; Burke, _Reminiscences of Georgia_, p.
85.]

[Footnote 3: Kemble, _Journal_, etc., p. 34.]

[Footnote 4: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 340.]

The city Negroes of Virginia continued to maintain schools despite
the fact that the fear of servile insurrection caused the State to
exercise due vigilance in the execution of the laws. The father of
Richard De Baptiste of Fredericksburg made his own residence a school
with his children and a few of those of his relatives as pupils.
The work was begun by a Negro and continued by an educated
Scotch-Irishman, who had followed the profession of teaching in his
native land. Becoming suspicious that a school of this kind was
maintained at the home of De Baptiste, the police watched the place
but failed to find sufficient evidence to close the institution before
it had done its work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Simmons, _Men of Mark_, p. 352.]

In 1854 there was found in Norfolk, Virginia, what the radically
proslavery people considered a dangerous white woman. It was
discovered that one Mrs. Douglass and her daughter had for three years
been teaching a school maintained for the education of Negroes.[1] It
was evident that this institution had not been run so clandestinely
but that the opposition to the education of Negroes in that city had
probably been too weak to bring about the close of the school at an
earlier date. Mrs. Douglass and her pupils were arrested and brought
before the court, where she was charged with violating the laws of the
State. The defendant acknowledged her guilt, but, pleading ignorance
of the law, was discharged on the condition that she would not commit
the same "crime" again. Censuring the court for this liberal decision
the _Richmond Examiner_ referred to it as offering "a very convenient
way of getting out of the scrape." The editor emphasized the fact
that the law of Virginia imposed on such offenders the penalty of one
hundred dollars fine and