These reactionary results were not obtained without some opposition.  The governing element of some States divided on the question.  The opinions of this class were well expressed in the discussion between Chancellor Harper and J.B.  O’Neal of the South Carolina bar.  The former said that of the many Negroes whom he had known to be capable of reading, he had never seen one read anything but the Bible.  He thought that they imposed this task upon themselves as a matter of duty.  Because of the Negroes’ “defective comprehension and the laborious nature of this employment to them"[1] he considered such reading an inefficient method of religious instruction.  He, therefore, supported the oppressive measures of the South.  The other member of the bar maintained that men could not reflect as Christians and justify the position that slaves should not be permitted to read the Bible.  “It is in vain,” added he, “to say there is danger in it.  The best slaves of the State are those who can and do read the Scriptures.  Again, who is it that teaches your slaves to read?  It is generally done by the children of the owners.  Who would tolerate an indictment against his son or daughter for teaching a slave to read?  Such laws look to me as rather cowardly."[2] This attorney was almost of the opinion of many others who believed that the argument that to Christianize and educate the colored people of a slave commonwealth had a tendency to elevate them above their masters and to destroy the “legitimate distinctions” of the community, could be admitted only where the people themselves were degraded.

[Footnote 1:  DeBow, The Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States, vol. ii., p. 269.]

[Footnote 2:  DeBow, The Industrial Resources of the Southern and Western States, vol. ii., p. 279.]

After these laws had been passed, American slavery extended not as that of the ancients, only to the body, but also to the mind.  Education was thereafter regarded as positively inconsistent with the institution.  The precaution taken to prevent the dissemination of information was declared indispensable to the system.  The situation in many parts of the South was just as Berry portrayed it in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1832.  He said:  “We have as far as possible closed every avenue by which light may enter their [the slaves’] minds.  If we could extinguish the capacity to see the light, our work would be completed; they would then be on a level with the beasts of the field and we should be safe!  I am not certain that we would not do it, if we could find out the process, and that on the plea of necessity."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Coffin, Slave Insurrections, p. 23; and Goodell, Slave Code, p. 323.]

It had then come to pass that in the South, where once were found a considerable number of intelligent Negroes, they had become exceedingly scarce or disappeared from certain sections altogether.  On plantations of hundreds of slaves it was common to discover that not one of them had the mere rudiments of education.  In some large districts it was considered almost a phenomenon to find a Negro who could read the Bible or sign his name.[1]