p. 391.]

[Footnote 2: Brevard, _Digest of the Public Statute Law of S.C._, vol.
ii., p.243.]

[Footnote 3: Marbury and Crawford, _Digest of Laws of the State of
Georgia_, p. 438.]

[Footnote 4: _Laws of North Carolina_, vol. i., pp. 126, 563, and
741.]

[Footnote 5: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed._, 1871, p. 335.]

[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, p. 352.]

The actual opposition of the masters to the mental improvement of
Negroes, however, did not assume sufficiently large proportions to
prevent the intellectual progress of that race, until two forces then
at work had had time to become effective in arousing southern planters
to the realization of what a danger enlightened colored men would
be to the institution of slavery. These forces were the industrial
revolution and the development of an insurrectionary spirit among
slaves, accelerated by the rapid spreading of the abolition agitation.
The industrial revolution was effected by the multiplication of
mechanical appliances for spinning and weaving which so influenced the
institution of slavery as seemingly to doom the Negroes to heathenism.
These inventions were the spinning jenny, the steam engine, the power
loom, the wool-combing machine, and the cotton gin. They augmented
the output of spinning mills, and in cheapening cloth, increased the
demand by bringing it within the reach of the poor. The result was
that a revolution was brought about not only in Europe, but also in
the United States to which the world looked for this larger supply of
cotton fiber.[1] This demand led to the extension of the plantation
system on a larger scale. It was unfortunate, however, that many of
the planters thus enriched, believed that the slightest amount of
education, merely teaching slaves to read, impaired their value
because it instantly destroyed their contentedness. Since they did not
contemplate changing their condition, it was surely doing them an ill
service to destroy their acquiescence in it. This revolution then had
brought it to pass that slaves who were, during the eighteenth century
advertised as valuable on account of having been enlightened, were in
the nineteenth century considered more dangerous than useful.

[Footnote 1: Turner, _The Rise of the New West_, pp. 45, 46, 47, 48,
and 49; and Hammond, _Cotton Industry_, chaps. i. and ii.]

With the rise of this system, and the attendant increased importation
of slaves, came the end of the helpful contact of ser