t stop the decline of that section,
some slaveholders changed their attitude toward the elevation of
the colored people. Certain others came to think that the policy of
keeping Negroes in ignorance to prevent servile insurrections was
unwise. It was observed that the most loyal and subordinate slaves
were those who could read the Bible and learn the truth for
themselves. Private teachers of colored persons, therefore, were often
left undisturbed, little effort was made to break up the Negroes'
secret schools in different parts, and many influential white men took
it upon themselves to instruct the blacks who were anxious to learn.

Other Negroes who had no such opportunities were then finding a way of
escape through the philanthropy of those abolitionists who colonized
some freedmen and fugitives in the Northwest Territory and promoted
the migration of others to the East. These Negroes were often
fortunate. Many of them settled where they could take up land and had
access to schools and churches conducted by the best white people
of the country. This migration, however, made matters worse for the
Negroes who were left in the South. As only the most enlightened
blacks left the slave States, the bondmen and the indigent free
persons of color were thereby deprived of helpful contact. The
preponderance of intelligent Negroes, therefore, was by 1840 on the
side of the North. Thereafter the actual education of the colored
people was largely confined to eastern cities and northern communities
of transplanted freedmen. The pioneers of these groups organized
churches and established and maintained a number of successful
elementary schools.

In addition to providing for rudimentary instruction, the free Negroes
of the North helped their friends to make possible what we now call
higher education. During the second quarter of the nineteenth century
the advanced training of the colored people was almost prohibited by
the refusals of academies and colleges to admit persons of African
blood. In consequence of these conditions, the long-put-forth efforts
to found Negro colleges began to be crowned with success before the
Civil War. Institutions of the North admitted Negroes later for
various reasons. Some colleges endeavored to prepare them for service
in Liberia, while others, proclaiming their conversion to the doctrine
of democratic education, opened their doors to all.

The advocates of higher education, however, met with no lit