son and Nat Turner learned
to read and write in Sabbath-schools. White men who diffused such
information ran the gauntlet of mobs, but like a Baptist preacher of
South Carolina who was threatened with expulsion from his church, if
he did not desist, they worked on and overcame the local prejudice.
When preachers themselves dared not undertake this task it was often
done by their children, whose benevolent work was winked at as an
indulgence to the clerical profession. This charity, however, was
not restricted to the narrow circle of the clergy. Believing with
churchmen that the Bible is the revelation of God, many laymen
contended that no man should be restrained from knowing his Maker
directly.[1] Negroes, therefore, almost worshiped the Bible, and
their anxiety to read it was their greatest incentive to learn. Many
southerners braved the terrors of public opinion and taught their
Negroes to read the Scriptures. To this extent General Coxe of
Fluvanna County, Virginia, taught about one hundred of his adult
slaves.[2] While serving as a professor of the Military Institute
at Lexington, Stonewall Jackson taught a class of Negroes in a
Sunday-school.[3]

[Footnote 1: Orr, "An Address on the Need of Education in the South,
1879."]

[Footnote 2: This statement is made by several of General Coxe's
slaves who are still living.]

[Footnote 3: _School Journal_, vol. lxxx., p. 332.]

Further interest in the cause was shown by the Evangelical Society
of the Synods of North Carolina and Virginia in 1834.[1] Later
Presbyterians of Alabama and Georgia urged masters to enlighten their
slaves.[2] The attitude of many mountaineers of Kentucky was well set
forth in the address of the Synod of 1836, proposing a plan for the
instruction and emancipation of the slaves.[3] They complained that
throughout the land, so far as they could learn, there was but one
school in which slaves could be taught during the week. The light
of three or four Sabbath-schools was seen "glittering through the
darkness" of the black population of the whole State. Here and there
one found a family where humanity impelled the master, mistress, or
children, to the laborious task of private instruction. In consequence
of these undesirable conditions the Synod recommended that "slaves be
instructed in the common elementary branches of education."[4]

[Footnote 1: _African Repository_, vol. x., pp. 174, 205, and 245.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, vol. xi., pp. 140 a