privileges for fidelity
and for manifesting considerable interest in things contributing to
the economic good of their masters; and slaves who were purchasing
their freedom.[1] Before the close of the first quarter of the
nineteenth century not much was said about what these classes learned
or taught. It was then the difference in circumstances, employment,
and opportunities for improvement that made the urban Negro more
intelligent than those who had to toil in the fields. Yet, the
proportion did not differ very much from that of the previous
period, as the first Negroes were not chiefly field hands but to a
considerable extent house servants, whom masters often taught to read
and write.

[Footnote 1: Jones, _Religious Instruction_, p. 117.]

Urban Negroes had another important advantage in their opportunity to
attend well-regulated Sunday-schools. These were extensively organized
in the towns and cities of this country during the first decades of
the last century. The "Sabbath-school" constituted an important factor
in Negro education. Although cloaked with the purpose of bringing the
blacks to God by giving them religious instruction the institution
permitted its workers to teach them reading and writing when they were
not allowed to study such in other institutions.[1] Even the radical
slaveholder was slow to object to a policy which was intended to
facilitate the conversion of men's souls. All friends especially
interested in the mental and spiritual uplift of the race hailed this
movement as marking an epoch in the elevation of the colored people.

[Footnote 1: See the reports of almost any abolition society of the
first quarter of the nineteenth century. _Special Report of the U.S.
Com. of Ed_., 1871, p. 200; and Plumer, _Thoughts on the Religious
Instruction of Negroes_.]

In the course of time racial difficulties caused the development of
the colored "Sabbath-school" to be very much like that of the American
Negro Church. It began as an establishment in the white churches,
then moved to the colored chapels, where white persons assisted as
teachers, and finally became an organization composed entirely of
Negroes. But the separation here, as in the case of the church,
was productive of some good. The "Sabbath-schools," which at first
depended on white teachers to direct their work, were thereafter
carried on by Negroes, who studied and prepared themselves to perform
the task given up by their former friends