Far from the idea of getting rid of an undesirable element by merely destroying the institution which supplied it, the Quakers endeavored to teach the Negro to be a man capable of discharging the duties of citizenship.  As early as 1672 their attention was directed to this important matter by George Fox.[1] In 1679 he spoke out more boldly, entreating his sect to instruct and teach their Indians and Negroes “how that Christ, by the Grace of God, tasted death for every man."[2] Other Quakers of prominence did not fail to drive home this thought.  In 1693 George Keith, a leading Quaker of his day, came forward as a promoter of the religious training of the slaves as a preparation for emancipation.[3] William Penn advocated the emancipation of slaves,[4] that they might have every opportunity for improvement.  In 1696 the Quakers, while protesting against the slave trade, denounced also the policy of neglecting their moral and spiritual welfare.[5] The growing interest of this sect in the Negroes was shown later by the development in 1713 of a definite scheme for freeing and returning them to Africa after having been educated and trained to serve as missionaries on that continent.[6]

[Footnote 1:  Quaker Pamphlet, p. 8; Moore, Anti-slavery, etc., p. 79.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., p. 79.]

[Footnote 3:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., p. 376.]

[Footnote 4:  Rhodes, History of the United States, vol. i., p. 6; Bancroft, History of the United States, vol. ii., p. 401.]

[Footnote 5:  Locke, Anti-slavery, p. 32.]

[Footnote 6:  Ibid., p. 30.]

The inevitable result of this liberal attitude toward the Negroes was that the Quakers of those colonies where other settlers were so neglectful of the enlightenment of the colored race, soon found themselves at war with the leaders of the time.  In slaveholding communities the Quakers were persecuted, not necessarily because they adhered to a peculiar faith, not primarily because they had manners and customs unacceptable to the colonists, but because in answering the call of duty to help all men they incurred the ill will of the masters who denounced them as undesirable persons, bringing into America spurious doctrines subversive of the institutions of the aristocratic settlements.

Their experience in the colony of Virginia is a good example of how this worked out.  Seeing the unchristian attitude of the preachers in most parts of that colony, the Quakers inquired of them, “Who made you ministers of the Gospel to white people only, and not to the tawny and blacks also?"[1] To show the nakedness of the neglectful clergy there some of this faith manifested such zeal in teaching and preaching to the Negroes that their enemies demanded legislation to prevent them from gaining ascendancy over the minds of the slaves.  Accordingly, to make the colored people of that colony inaccessible to these workers