the Last Ten Years_, p. 345.]

Later the problem of educating Negroes in this section became more
difficult. The trouble was that contrary to the stipulation in the
treaty of purchase that the inhabitants of the territory of Louisiana
should be admitted to all the rights and immunities of citizens of the
United States, the State legislation, subsequent to the transfer of
jurisdiction, denied the right of education to a large class of mixed
breeds.[1] Many of these, thanks to the liberality of the French, had
been freed, and constituted an important element of society. Not a few
of them had educated themselves, accumulated wealth, and ranked with
white men of refinement and culture.[2]

[Footnote 1: Laws of Louisiana.]

[Footnote 2: Alliot, _Collections Historiques_, p. 85; and Thwaites,
_Early Western Travels_, vol. iv., pp. 320 and 321; vol. xii., p. 69;
and vol. xix., p. 126.]

Considering the few Negroes found in the West, the interest shown
there in their mental uplift was considerable. Because of the scarcity
of slaves in that section they came into helpful contact with their
masters. Besides, the Kentucky and Tennessee abolitionists, being much
longer active than those in most slave States, continued to emphasize
the education of the blacks as a correlative to emancipation.
Furthermore, the Western Baptists, Methodists, and Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians early took a stand against slavery, and urged the
masters to give their servants all the proper advantages for acquiring
the knowledge of their duty both to man and God. In the large towns
of Tennessee Negroes were permitted to attend private schools, and in
Louisville and Lexington there were several well-regulated colored
schools.

Two institutions for the education of slaves in the West are mentioned
during these years. In October, 1825, there appeared an advertisement
for eight or ten Negro slaves with their families to form a community
of this kind under the direction of an "Emancipating Labor Society"
of the State of Kentucky. In the same year Frances Wright suggested a
school on a similar basis. She advertised in the "Genius of Universal
Emancipation" an establishment to educate freed blacks and mulattoes
in West Tennessee. This was supported by a goodly number of persons,
including George Fowler and, it was said, Lafayette. A letter from a
Presbyterian clergyman in South Carolina says that the first slave
for this institution went from York District of