[Footnote 2:  Ibid., 1797, p. 36.]

[Footnote 3:  Proceedings of the Am.  Conv., p. 17; ibid., 1827, p. 53.]

[Footnote 4:  Special Report of U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 198.]

Schools for the education of Negroes were established in Richmond, Petersburg, and Norfolk.  An extensive miscegenation of the races in these cities had given rise to a very intelligent class of slaves and a considerable number of thrifty free persons of color, in whom the best people early learned to show much interest.[1] Of the schools organized for them in the central part of the commonwealth, those about Richmond seemed to be less prosperous.  The abolitionists of Virginia, reporting for that city in 1798, said that considerable progress had been made in the education of the blacks, and that they contemplated the establishment of a school for the instruction of Negroes and other persons.  They were apprehensive, however, that their funds would be scarcely sufficient for this purpose.[2] In 1801, one year after Gabriel’s Insurrection, the abolitionists of Richmond reported that the cause had been hindered by the “rapacious disposition which emboldened many tyrants” among them “to trample upon the rights of colored people even in the violation of the laws of the State.”  For this reason the complainants felt that, although they could not but unite in the opinion with the American Convention of Abolition Societies as to the importance of educating the slaves for living as freedmen, they were compelled on account of a “domineering spirit of power and usurpation"[3] to direct attention to the Negroes’ bodily comfort.

[Footnote 1:  Ibid., p. 393.]

[Footnote 2:  Proceedings of the Am.  Conv., etc., 1798, p. 16.]

[Footnote 3:  Proceedings of the Am.  Conv., 1801, p. 15.]

This situation, however, was not sufficiently alarming to deter all the promoters of Negro education in Virginia.  It is remarkable how Robert Pleasants, a Quaker of that State who emancipated his slaves at his death in 1801, had united with other members of his sect to establish a school for colored people.  In 1782 they circulated a pamphlet entitled “Proposals for Establishing a Free School for the Instruction of Children of Blacks and People of Color."[1] They recommended to the humane and benevolent of all denominations cheerfully to contribute to an institution “calculated to promote the spiritual and temporal interests of that unfortunate part of our fellow creatures in forming their minds in the principles of virtue and religion, and in common or useful literature, writing, ciphering, and mechanic arts, as the most likely means to render so numerous a people fit for freedom, and to become useful citizens.”  Pleasants proposed to establish a school on a three-hundred-and-fifty-acre tract of his own land at Gravelly Hills near Four-Mile Creek, Henrico County.  The whole revenue of the