[Footnote 1:  Fawcett, Compassionate Address, etc., p. 33.]

[Footnote 2:  Fawcett, Compassionate Address, etc., p. 33.]

Still more reliable testimony may be obtained, not from persons particularly interested in the uplift of the blacks, but from slaveholders.  Their advertisements in the colonial newspapers furnish unconscious evidence of the intellectual progress of the Negroes during the eighteenth century.  “He’s an ‘artful,’"[1] “plausible,"[2] “smart,"[3] or “sensible fellow,"[4] “delights much in traffic,"[5] and “plays on the fife extremely well,"[6] are some of the statements found in the descriptions of fugitive slaves.  Other fugitives were speaking “plainly,"[7] “talking indifferent English,"[8] “remarkably good English,"[9] and “exceedingly good English."[10] In some advertisements we observe such expressions as “he speaks a little French,"[11] “Creole French,"[12] “a few words of High-Dutch,"[13] and “tolerable German."[14] Writing about a fugitive a master would often state that “he can read print,"[15] “can read writing,"[16] “can read and also write a little,"[17] “can read and write,"[18] “can write a pretty hand and has probably forged a pass."[19] These conditions obtained especially in Charleston, South Carolina, where were advertised various fugitives, one of whom spoke French and English fluently, and passed for a doctor among his people,[20] another who spoke Spanish and French intelligibly,[21] and a third who could read, write, and speak both French and Spanish very well.[22]

[Footnote 1:  Virginia Herald (Fredericksburg), Jan. 21, 1800; The Maryland Gazette, Feb. 27, 1755; Dunlop’s Maryland Gazette and Baltimore Advertiser, July 23, 1776; The State Gazette of South Carolina, May 18, 1786; The State Gazette of North Carolina, July 2, 1789.]

[Footnote 2:  The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston, S.C.), Sept. 26, 1797, and The Carolina Gazette, June 3, 1802.]

[Footnote 3:  The Charleston Courier, June 1, 1804; The State Gazette of South Carolina, Feb. 20, and 27, 1786; and The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, Feb. 19, 1793.]

[Footnote 4:  South Carolina Weekly Advertiser, Feb. 19 and April 2, 1783; State Gazette of South Carolina, Feb. 20 and May 18, 1786.]

[Footnote 5:  The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advocate, Oct. 17, 1780.]

[Footnote 6:  The Virginia Herald (Fredericksburg), Jan. 21, 1800; and The Norfolk and Portsmouth Chronicle, April 24, 1790.]

[Footnote 7:  The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, Jan. 20 and March 1, 1800; and The South Carolina Weekly Gazette, Oct. 24 to 31, 1759.]

[Footnote 8:  The City Gaz. and Daily Adv., Jan. 20 and March 1, 1800; and S.C.  Weekly Gaz., Oct. 24 to 31, 1759.]