[Footnote 2: Benezet was a French Protestant. Persecuted on account of
their religion, his parents moved from France to England and later to
Philadelphia. He became a teacher in that city in 1742. Thirteen years
later he was teaching a school established for the education of the
daughters of the most distinguished families in Philadelphia. He was
then using his own spelling-book, primer, and grammar, some of the
first text-books published in America. Known to persecution himself,
Benezet always sympathized with the oppressed. Accordingly, he
connected himself with the Quakers, who at that time had before
them the double task of fighting for religious equality and the
amelioration of the condition of the Negroes. Becoming interested in
the welfare of the colored race, Benezet first attacked the slave
trade, so exposing it in his speeches and writings that Clarkson
entered the field as an earnest advocate of the suppression of the
iniquitous traffic. See Benezet, _Observations_, p. 30, and the
_African Repository_, vol. iv., p. 61.]

[Footnote 3: Quaker Pamphlet, p. 31.]

What the other sects did for the enlightenment of Negroes during this
period, was not of much importance. As the Presbyterians, Methodists,
and Baptists did not proselyte extensively in this country prior to
the middle of the eighteenth century, these denominations had little
to do with Negro education before the liberalism and spirit of
toleration, developed during the revolutionary era, made it possible
for these sects to reach the people. The Methodists, however, confined
at first largely to the South, where most of the slaves were found,
had to take up this problem earlier. Something looking like an attempt
to elevate the Negroes came from Wesley's contemporary, George