These conditions, however, were so favorable in 1835 that when Professor E.A.  Andrews came to Baltimore to introduce the work of the American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored People,[1] he was informed that the education of the Negroes of that city was fairly well provided for.  Evidently the need was that the “systematic and sustained exertions” of the workers should spring from a more nearly perfect organization “to give efficiency to their philanthropic labors."[2] He was informed that as his society was of New England, it would on account of its origin in the wrong quarter, be productive of mischief.[3] The leading people of Baltimore thought that it would be better to accomplish this task through the Colonization Society, a southern organization carrying out the very policy which the American Union proposed to pursue.[4]

[Footnote 1:  On January 14, 1835, a convention of more than one hundred gentlemen from ten different States assembled in Boston and organized the “American Union for the Relief and Improvement of the Colored Race.”  Among these workers were William Reed, Daniel Noyes, J.W.  Chickering, J.W.  Putnam, Baron Stow, B.B.  Edwards, E.A.  Andrews, Charles Scudder, Joseph Tracy, Samuel Worcester, and Charles Tappan.  The gentlemen were neither antagonistic to the antislavery nor to the colonization societies.  They aimed to do that which had been neglected in giving the Negroes proper preparation for freedom.  Knowing that the actual emancipation of an oppressed race cannot be effected by legislation, they hoped to provide religious and literary instruction for all colored children that they might “ameliorate their economic condition” and prepare themselves for higher usefulness.  See the Exposition of the Object and Plans of the American Union, pp. 11-14.]

[Footnote 2:  Andrews, Slavery and the Domestic Slave Trade, p. 57.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., p. 188.]

[Footnote 4:  Andrews, Slavery, etc., p. 56.]

The instruction of ambitious blacks in this city was not confined to mere rudimentary training.  The opportunity for advanced study was offered colored girls in the Convent of the Oblate Sisters of Providence.  These Negroes, however, early learned to help themselves.  In 1835 considerable assistance came from Nelson Wells, one of their own color.  He left to properly appointed trustees the sum of $10,000, the income of which was to be appropriated to the education of free colored children.[1] With this benefaction the trustees concerned established in 1835 what they called the Wells School.  It offered Negroes free instruction long after the Civil War.

[Footnote 2:  Special Report of the U.S.  Com. of Ed., 1871, p. 353.]