Encouraging as was the aspect of things after these early efforts, the contemporary complaints about the neglect to instruct the slaves show that the cause lacked something to make the movement general.  Then came the days when the struggle for the rights of man was arousing the civilized world.  After 1760 the nascent social doctrine found response among the American colonists.  They looked with opened eyes at the Negroes.  A new day then dawned for the dark-skinned race.  Men like Patrick Henry and James Otis, who demanded liberty for themselves, could not but concede that slaves were entitled at least to freedom of body.  The frequent acts of manumission and emancipation which followed upon this change in attitude toward persons of color, turned loose upon society a large number of men whose chief needs were education and training in the duties of citizenship.  To enlighten these freedmen schools, missions, and churches were established by benevolent and religious workers.  These colaborers included at this time the Baptists and Methodists who, thanks to the spirit of toleration incident to the Revolution, were allowed access to Negroes bond and free.

With all of these new opportunities Negroes exhibited a rapid mental development.  Intelligent colored men proved to be useful and trustworthy servants; they became much better laborers and artisans, and many of them showed administrative ability adequate to the management of business establishments and large plantations.  Moreover, better rudimentary education served many ambitious persons of color as a stepping-stone to higher attainments.  Negroes learned to appreciate and write poetry and contributed something to mathematics, science, and philosophy.  Furthermore, having disproved the theories of their mental inferiority, some of the race, in conformity with the suggestion of Cotton Mather, were employed to teach white children.

Observing these evidences of a general uplift of the Negroes, certain educators advocated the establishment of special colored schools.  The founding of these institutions, however, must not be understood as a movement to separate the children of the races on account of caste prejudice.  The dual system resulted from an effort to meet the needs peculiar to a people just emerging from bondage.  It was easily seen that their education should no longer be dominated by religion.  Keeping the past of the Negroes in mind, their friends tried to unite the benefits of practical and cultural education.  The teachers of colored schools offered courses in the industries along with advanced work in literature, mathematics, and science.  Girls who specialized in sewing took lessons in French.

So startling were the rapid strides made by the colored people in their mental development after the revolutionary era that certain southerners who had not seriously objected to the enlightenment of the Negroes began to favor the half reactionary policy of educating them only on the condition that they should be colonized.  The colonization movement, however, was supported also by some white men who, seeing the educational progress of the colored people during the period of better beginnings, felt that they should be given an opportunity to be transplanted to a free country where they might develop without restriction.