This petition and remonstrance had its effect, for mainly through its influence within two years very great improvements were made in the condition of the New York colored schools.

For the especial benefit of those who erroneously think that the purpose of giving industrial education is a new thing in our land, as well as for general historical purposes, I call attention to the establishment of the Institute for Colored Youth in Philadelphia in 1842.  This Institute was founded by the Society of Friends, and was supported in its early days and presumably still “by bequests and donations made by members of that Society.”  The objects of the Institute as set forth by its founders, fifty-seven years ago, are:  “The education and improvement of colored youth of both sexes, to qualify them to act as teachers and instructors to their own people, either in the various branches of school learning or the mechanic arts and agriculture.”  Two years later the African Methodists purchased one hundred and eighty acres of land in eastern Ohio and established what was called the Union Seminary, on the manual labor plan.  It did not succeed, but it lingered along, keeping alive the idea, until it was eclipsed by Wilberforce University, into which it was finally merged.

The anti-slavery fight carried on in the North, into which the colored men entered and became powerful leaders, aroused the race to a deep study of the whole subject of liberty and brought them in sympathy with all people who had either gained or were struggling for their liberties, and prompted them to investigate all countries offering to them freedom.  No country was so well studied by them as Hayti, and from 1824 to 1860 there had been considerable emigration thither.  Liberia, Central and South America and Canada were all considered under the thought of emigration.  Thousands went to Hayti and to Canada, but the bulk preferred to remain here.  They liked America, and had become so thoroughly in love with the doctrines of the Republic, so imbued with the pride of the nation’s history, so inspired with hope in the nation’s future, that they resolved to live and die on her soil.  When the troublous times of 1860 came and white men were fleeing to Canada, colored men remained at their posts.  They were ready to stand by the old flag and to take up arms for the Union, trusting that before the close of the strife the flag might have to them a new meaning.  An impassioned colored orator had said of the flag:  “Its stars were for the white man, and its stripes for the Negro, and it was very appropriate that the stripes should be red.”  The free Negro of the North was prepared in 1861 to support Abraham Lincoln with 40,000 as good American-born champions for universal liberty as the country could present.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Slave Trade—­Carey.

[2] Outlines—­Tanner.

[3] A.M.E.  Magazine, 1843.