[Footnote 1:  Moore, Notes on Slavery in Massachusetts, p. 91.]

[Footnote 2:  Moore, Notes on Slavery in Massachusetts, p. 92; Locke, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 31.]

[Footnote 3:  Moore, Notes on Slavery, etc., p. 91; The Athenian Oracle, vol. ii., pp. 460 et seq.]

This interest shown in the Negro race was in no sense general among the Puritans of that day.  Many of their sect could not favor such proselyting,[1] which, according to their system of government, would have meant the extension to the slaves of social and political privileges.  It was not until the French provided that masters should take their slaves to church and have them indoctrinated in the Catholic faith, that the proposition was seriously considered by many of the Puritans.  They, like the Anglicans, felt sufficient compunction of conscience to take steps to Christianize the slaves, lest the Catholics, whom they had derided as undesirable churchmen, should put the Protestants to shame.[2] The publication of the Code Noir probably influenced the instructions sent out from England to his Majesty’s governors requiring them “with the assistance of our council to find out the best means to facilitate and encourage the conversion of Negroes and Indians to the Christian Religion.”  Everly subsequently mentions in his diary the passing of a resolution by the Council Board at Windsor or Whitehall, recommending that the blacks in plantations be baptized, and meting out severe censure to those who opposed this policy.[3]

[Footnote 1:  Moore, Notes on Slavery, etc., p. 79.]

[Footnote 2:  This good example of the Catholics was in later years often referred to by Bishop Porteus. Works of Bishop Porteus, vol. vi, pp. 168, 173, 177, 178, 401; Moore, Notes on Slavery, etc., p. 96.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., p. 96.]

More effective than the efforts of other sects in the enlightenment of the Negroes was the work of the Quakers, despite the fact that they were not free to extend their operations throughout the colonies.  Just as the colored people are indebted to the Quakers for registering in 1688 the first protest against slavery in Protestant America, so are they indebted to this denomination for the earliest permanent and well-developed schools devoted to the education of their race.  As the Quakers believed in the freedom of the will, human brotherhood, and equality before God, they did not, like the Puritans, find difficulties in solving the problem of enlightening the Negroes.  While certain Puritans were afraid that conversion might lead to the destruction of caste and the incorporation of undesirable persons into the “Body Politick,” the Quakers proceeded on the principle that all men are brethren and, being equal before God, should be considered equal before the law.  On account of unduly emphasizing the relation of man to God the Puritans “atrophied their social humanitarian instinct” and developed into a race of self-conscious saints.  Believing in human nature and laying stress upon the relation between man and man the Quakers became the friends of all humanity.