CHAPTER II

RELIGION WITH LETTERS


The first real educators to take up the work of enlightening American
Negroes were clergymen interested in the propagation of the gospel
among the heathen of the new world. Addressing themselves to this
task, the missionaries easily discovered that their first duty was to
educate these crude elements to enable them not only to read the truth
for themselves, but to appreciate the supremacy of the Christian
religion. After some opposition slaves were given the opportunity to
take over the Christian civilization largely because of the adverse
criticism[1] which the apostles to the lowly heaped upon the planters
who neglected the improvement of their Negroes. Made then a device for
bringing the blacks into the Church, their education was at first too
much dominated by the teaching of religion.

[Footnote 1: Bourne, _Spain in America_, p. 241; and _The Penn. Mag.
of History_, xii., 265.]

Many early advocates of slavery favored the enlightenment of the
Africans. That it was an advantage to the Negroes to be brought within
the light of the gospel was a common argument in favor of the slave
trade.[1] When the German Protestants from Salsburg had scruples about
enslaving men, they were assured by a message from home stating that
if they took slaves in faith and with the intention of conducting