note 6: Smyth, _Works of Franklin_, vol. iv., p. 23; vol. v., p.
431.]

[Footnote 7: Wickersham, _History of Ed. in Pa_., p. 249.]

[Footnote 8: _Ibid_., p. 250; _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of
Ed_., 1869, p. 375; _African Repository_, vol. iv., p. 61; Benezet,
_Observations_; Benezet, _A Serious Address to the Rulers of
America_.]

The aim of these workers was not merely to enable the Negroes to take
over sufficient of Western civilization to become nominal Christians,
not primarily to increase their economic efficiency, but to enlighten
them because they are men. To strengthen their position these
defendants of the education of the blacks cited the customs of the
Greeks and Romans, who enslaved not the minds and wills, but only the
bodies of men. Nor did these benefactors fail to mention the cases of
ancient slaves, who, having the advantages of education, became poets,
teachers, and philosophers, instrumental in the diffusion of knowledge
among the higher classes. There was still the idea of Cotton Mather,
who was willing to treat his servants as part of the family, and to
employ such of them as were competent to teach his children lessons of
piety.[1]

[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Thomas Bacon_, appendix.]

The chief objection of these reformers to slavery was that its victims
had no opportunity for mental improvement. "Othello," a free person
of color, contributing to the _American Museum_ in 1788, made the
institution responsible for the intellectual rudeness of the Negroes
who, though "naturally possessed of strong sagacity and lively parts,"
were by law and custom prohibited from being instructed in any kind
of learning.[1] He styled this policy an effort to bolster up an
institution that extinguished the "divine spark of the slave, crushed
the bud of his genius, and kept him unacquainted with the world." Dr.
McLeod denounced slavery because it "debases a part of the human race"
and tends "to destroy their intellectual powers."[2] "The slave from
his infancy," continued he, "is obliged implicitly to obey the will of
another. There is no circumstance which can stimulate him to exercise
his intellectual powers." In his arraignment of this system Rev. David
Rice complained that it was in the power of the master to deprive
the slaves of all education, that they had not the opportunity for
instructing conversation, that it was put out of their power to
learn to read, and that their masters kept them from