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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
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