superior to any other such persons in the United States.  A large portion of the leading mechanics, fashionable tailors, shoe manufacturers, and mantua-makers were free blacks, who enjoyed “a consideration in the community far more than that enjoyed by any of the colored population in the Northern cities."[2] As such positions required considerable skill and intelligence, these laborers had of necessity acquired a large share of useful knowledge.  The favorable circumstances of the Negroes in certain liberal southern cities like Charleston were the cause of their return from the North to the South, where they often had a better opportunity for mental as well as economic improvement.[3] The return of certain Negroes from Philadelphia to Petersburg, Virginia, during the first decade of the nineteenth century, is a case in evidence.[4]

[Footnote 1:  Simmons, Men of Mark, p. 1078.]

[Footnote 2:  Niles Register, vol. xlix., p. 40.]

[Footnote 3:  Notions of the Americans, p. 26.]

[Footnote 4:  Wright, Views of Society and Manners in America, p. 73.]

The successful strivings of the race in the District of Columbia furnish us with striking examples of Negroes making educational progress.  When two white teachers, Henry Potter and Mrs. Haley, invited black children to study with their white pupils, the colored people gladly availed themselves of this opportunity.[1] Mrs. Maria Billings, the first to establish a real school for Negroes in Georgetown, soon discovered that she had their hearty support.  She had pupils from all parts of the District of Columbia, and from as far as Bladensburg, Maryland.  The tuition fee in some of these schools was a little high, but many free blacks of the District of Columbia were sufficiently well established to meet these demands.  The rapid progress made by the Bell and Browning families during this period was of much encouragement to the ambitious colored people, who were laboring to educate their children.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, pp. 195 et seq.]

[Footnote 2:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 195.]

The city Negroes, however, were learning to do more than merely attend accessible elementary schools.  In 1807 George Bell, Nicholas Franklin, and Moses Liverpool, former slaves, built the first colored schoolhouse in the District of Columbia.  Just emerging from bondage, these men could not teach themselves, but employed a white man to take charge of the school.[1] It was not a success.  Pupils of color thereafter attended the school of Anne Maria Hall, a teacher from Prince George County, Maryland, and those of teachers who instructed white children.[2] The ambitious Negroes of the District of Columbia, however, were not discouraged by the first failure to provide their own educational facilities.  The Bell School which had been closed