tion of Indians and free
Negroes, conducted by Dr. Bray's Associates. The example of these men
appealing to him as a wise policy, he directed to it the attention of
the clergy at home.[4]
[Footnote 1: _Ibid_., p. 252; Smyth, _Works of Franklin_, vol. iv., p.
23; and vol. v., p. 431.]
[Footnote 2: Smyth, _Works of Franklin_, vol. v., p. 431.]
[Footnote 3: Wickersham, _History of Education in Pennsylvania_, p.
249.]
[Footnote 4: Bassett, _Slavery and Servitude in North Carolina_, Johns
Hopkins University Studies, vol. xv., p. 226.]
Not many slaves were found among the Puritans, but the number sufficed
to bring the question of their instruction before these colonists
almost as prominently as we have observed it was brought in the case
of the members of the Established Church of England. Despite the fact
that the Puritans developed from the Calvinists, believers in the
doctrine of election which swept away all class distinction, this sect
did not, like the Quakers, attack slavery as an institution. Yet if
the Quakers were the first of the Protestants to protest against the
buying and selling of souls, New England divines were among the first
to devote attention to the mental, moral, and spiritual development of
Negroes.[1] In 1675 John Eliot objected to the Indian slave trade, not
because of the social degradation, but for the reason that he desired
that his countrymen "should follow Christ his Designe in this matter
to promote the free passage of Religion" among them. He further
said: "For to sell Souls for Money seemeth to me to be dangerous
Merchandise, to sell away from all Means of Grace whom Christ hath
provided Means of Grace for you is the Way for us to be active in
destroying their Souls when they are highly obliged to seek their
Conversion and Salvation." Eliot bore it grievously that the souls of
the slaves were "exposed by their Masters to a destroying Ignorance
meerly for the Fear of thereby losing the Benefit of their
Vassalage."[2]
[Footnote 1: _Pennsylvania Magazine of History_, vol. xiii., p. 265.]
[Footnote 2: Locke, _Anti-slavery Before 1808_, p. 15; Mather, _Life
of John Eliot_, p. 14; _New Plymouth Colony Records_, vol. x., p.
452.]
Further interest in the work was manifested by Cotton Mather. He
showed his liberality in his professions published in 1693 in a set of
_Rules for the Society of Negroes_, intended to present the claims of
the despised race to the benefits of religious ins
|