way for universal freedom.[1] Large as the number of abolitionists became and bright as the future of their cause seemed, the more the antislavery men saw of the freedmen in congested districts, the more inclined the reformers were to think that instant abolition was an event which they “could not reasonably expect, and perhaps could not desire.”  Being in a state of deplorable ignorance, the slaves did not possess sufficient information “to render their immediate emancipation a blessing either to themselves or to society."[2]

[Footnote 1:  As some masters regarded the ignorance of the slaves as an argument against their emancipation, the antislavery men’s problem became the education of the master as well as that of the slave.  Believing that intellectual and moral improvement is a “safe and permanent basis on which the arch of freedom could be erected,” Jesse Torrey, harking back to Jefferson’s proposition, recommended that it begin by instructing the slaveholders, overseers, their sons and daughters, hitherto deprived of the blessing of education.  Then he thought that such enlightened masters should see to it that every slave less than thirty years of age should be taught the art of reading sufficiently for receiving moral and religious instruction from books in the English language.  In presenting this scheme Torrey had the idea of most of the antislavery men of that day, who advocated the education of slaves because they believed that, whenever the slaves should become qualified by intelligence and moral cultivation for the rational enjoyment of liberty and the performance of the various social duties, enlightened legislators would listen to the voice of reason and justice and the spirit of the social organization, and permit the release of the slave without banishing him as a traitor from his native land.  See Torrey’s Portraiture of Domestic Slavery, p. 21.]

[Footnote 2:  Sidney, An Oration Commemorative of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the United States, p. 5; and Adams, Anti-slavery, etc., pp. 40, 43, 65, and 66.]

Yet in the same proportion that antislavery men convinced masters of the wisdom of the policy of gradual emancipation, they increased their own burden of providing extra facilities of education, for liberated Negroes generally made their way from the South to urban communities of the Northern and Middle States.  The friends of the colored people, however, met this exigency by establishing additional schools and repeatedly entreating these migrating freedmen to avail themselves of their opportunities.  The address of the American Convention of Abolition Societies in 1819 is typical of these appeals.[1] They requested free persons of color to endeavor as much as possible to use economy in their expenses, to save something from their earnings for the education of their children ... and “let all those who by attending to this admonition have acquired means, send their children to school as soon