before the Civil War and mentioned the intelligent and properly speaking colored preachers, who were bought and supported by their congregations.  Charles Dabney, another traveler through this State in 1837, observed that the slaves of this commonwealth were taught to read and believed that they were about as well off as they would have been had they been free.  See Dabney, Journal of a Tour through the U.S. and Canada, p. 185.]

[Footnote 2:  Abdy, Journal of a Tour, etc., 1833-1834, pp. 346-348.]

It was the desire to train up white men to carry on the work of their liberal fathers that led John G. Fee and his colaborers to establish Berea College in Kentucky.  In the charter of this institution was incorporated the declaration that “God has made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth.”  No Negroes were admitted to this institution before the Civil War, but they came in soon thereafter, some being accepted while returning home wearing their uniforms.[1] The State has since prohibited the co-education of the two races.

[Footnote 1:  Catalogue of Berea College, 1896-1897.]

The centers of this interest in the mountains of Tennessee were Maryville and Knoxville.  Around these towns were found a goodly number of white persons interested in the elevation of the colored people.  There developed such an antislavery sentiment in the former town that half of the students of the Maryville Theological Seminary became abolitionists by 1841.[1] They were then advocating the social uplift of Negroes through the local organ, the Maryville Intelligencer.  From this nucleus of antislavery men developed a community with ideals not unlike those of Berea.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Some of the liberal-mindedness of the people of Kentucky and Tennessee was found in the State of Missouri.  The question of slavery there, however, was so ardently discussed and prominently kept before the people that while little was done to help the Negroes, much was done to reduce them to the plane of beasts.  There was not so much of the tendency to wink at the violation of the law on the part of masters in teaching their slaves.  But little could be accomplished by private teachers in the dissemination of information among Negroes after the free persons of color had been excluded from the State.]

[Footnote 2:  Fourth Annual Report of the American Antislavery Society, New York, 1837, p. 48; and the New England Antislavery Almanac for 1841, p. 31.]

The Knoxville people who advocated the enlightenment of the Negroes expressed their sentiment through the Presbyterian Witness.  The editor felt that there was not a solitary argument that might be urged in favor of teaching a white man that might not as properly be urged in favor of enlightening a man of color.  “If one has a soul that will never die,” said he, “so has the other.  Has one susceptibilities of improvement,