er to occupy a house in the central
part of this city, he was afforded hourly opportunities for the
exercise of his skill on those who were attracted to his shop by
business or favor." "Materials were abundantly furnished in the
seditious pamphlets brought into the State by equally culpable
incendiaries, while the speeches of the oppositionists in Congress to
the admission of Missouri gave a serious and imposing effect to his
machinations."[1] It was thus brought home to the South that the
enlightened Negro was having his heart fired with the spirit of
liberty by his perusal of the accounts of servile insurrections and
the congressional debate on slavery.

[Footnote 1: _The Norfolk and Portsmouth Herald_, Aug. 30, 1822.]

Southerners of all types thereafter attacked the policy of educating
Negroes.[1] Men who had expressed themselves neither one way nor the
other changed their attitude when it became evident that abolition
literature in the hands of slaves would not only make them
dissatisfied, but cause them to take drastic measures to secure
liberty. Those who had emphasized the education of the Negroes to
increase their economic efficiency were largely converted. The
clergy who had insisted that the bondmen were entitled to, at least,
sufficient training to enable them to understand the principles of the
Christian religion, were thereafter willing to forego the benefits
of their salvation rather than see them destroy the institution of
slavery.

[Footnote 1: Hodgson, _Whitney's Remarks during a Journey through
North America_, p. 184.]

In consequence of this tendency, State after State enacted more
stringent laws to control the situation. Missouri passed in 1817 an
act so to regulate the traveling and assembly of slaves as to make
them ineffective in making headway against the white people by
insurrection. Of course, in so doing the reactionaries deprived
them of the opportunities of helpful associations and of attending
schools.[1] By 1819 much dissatisfaction had arisen from the seeming
danger of the various colored schools in Virginia. The General
Assembly, therefore, passed a law providing that there should be no
more assemblages of slaves, or free Negroes, or mulattoes, mixing or
associating with such slaves for teaching them reading and writing.[2]
The opposition here seemed to be for the reasons that Negroes were
being generally enlightened in the towns of the State and that white
persons as teachers in