t of his life to
the uplift of his colored brethren. One of these free Negroes in
Lexington had accumulated wealth to the amount of $20,000. In
Louisville, also a center of free colored population, efforts were
being made to educate ambitious Negroes. Travelers noted that colored
schools were found there generations before the Civil War and
mentioned the intelligent and properly speaking colored preachers,
who were bought and supported by their congregations. Charles Dabney,
another traveler through this State in 1837, observed that the slaves
of this commonwealth were taught to read and believed that they were
about as well off as they would have been had they been free. See
Dabney, _Journal of a Tour through the U.S. and Canada_, p. 185.]

[Footnote 2: Abdy, _Journal of a Tour_, etc., 1833-1834, pp. 346-348.]

It was the desire to train up white men to carry on the work of their
liberal fathers that led John G. Fee and his colaborers to establish
Berea College in Kentucky. In the charter of this institution was
incorporated the declaration that "God has made of one blood all
nations that dwell upon the face of the earth." No Negroes were
admitted to this institution before the Civil War, but they came in
soon thereafter, some being accepted while returning home wearing
their uniforms.[1] The State has since prohibited the co-education of
the two races.

[Footnote 1: Catalogue of Berea College, 1896-1897.]

The centers of this interest in the mountains of Tennessee were
Maryville and Knoxville. Around these towns were found a goodly number
of white persons interested in the elevation of the colored people.
There developed such an antislavery sentiment in the former town that
half of the students of the Maryville Theological Seminary became
abolitionists by 1841.[1] They were then advocating the social uplift
of Negroes through the local organ, the _Maryville Intelligencer_.
From this nucleus of antislavery men developed a community with ideals
not unlike those of Berea.[2]

[Footnote 1: Some of the liberal-mindedness of the people of Kentucky
and Tennessee was found in the State of Missouri. The question of
slavery there, however, was so ardently discussed and prominently kept
before the people that while little was done to help the Negroes, much
was done to reduce them to the plane of beasts. There was not so much
of the tendency to wink at the violation of the law on the part of
masters in teaching their slaves