making such changes as were necessary to subserve the purposes
intended.[1] The plan was not to convert this into a colored school.
The promoters hoped to maintain there a model academy for the
co-education of the races "on the manual labor system." The treasurer
of the Antislavery Society was to turn over certain moneys to this
academy to provide for the needs of the colored students, who then
numbered fourteen of the fifty-two enrolled. But although it had
been reported that the people of the town were in accord with the
principal's acceptance of this proposition, there were soon evidences
to the contrary. Fearing imaginary evils, these modern Canaanites
destroyed the academy, dragging the building to a swamp with a hundred
yoke of oxen.[2] The better element of the town registered against
this outrage only a slight protest. H.H. Garnett and Alexander
Crummell were among the colored students who sought education at this
academy.

[Footnote 1: _The Liberator_, July 4, 1835.]

[Footnote 2: _Minutes and Proceedings of the Third Annual Convention
for the Improvement of the Free People of Color_, p. 34; and Monroe,
_Cyclopaedia of Education_, vol. iv., p. 406.]

This work was more successful in the State of New York. There,
too, the cause was championed by the abolitionists.[1] After the
emancipation of all Negroes in that commonwealth by 1827 the New York
Antislavery Society devoted more time to the elevation of the free
people of color. The rapid rise of the laboring classes in this
swiftly growing city made it evident to their benefactors that they
had to be speedily equipped for competition with white mechanics or be
doomed to follow menial employments. The only one of that section to
offer Negroes anything like the opportunity for industrial training,
however, was Gerrit Smith.[2] He was fortunate in having sufficient
wealth to carry out the plan. In 1834 he established in Madison
County, New York, an institution known as the Peterboro Manual Labor
School. The working at trades was provided not altogether to teach the
mechanic arts, but to enable the students to support themselves while
attending school. As a compensation for instruction, books, room,
fuel, light, and board furnished by the founder, the student was
expected to labor four hours daily at some agricultural or mechanical
employment "important to his education."[3] The faculty estimated the
four hours of labor as worth on an average of about 12-1/2 ce