[Footnote 3: Brevard, _Digest of the Public Statutes of South
Carolina_, vol. ii., p. 243.]

Those advocating the imposition of restraints upon Negroes acquiring
knowledge were not, however, confined to South Carolina and Georgia
where the malevolent happened to be in the majority. The other States
had not seen the last of the generation of those who doubted that
education would fit the slaves for the exalted position of citizens.
The retrogressives made much of the assertion that adult slaves lately
imported, were, on account of their attachment to heathen practices
and idolatrous rites, loath to take over the Teutonic civilization,
and would at best learn to speak the English language imperfectly
only.[1] The reformers, who at times admitted this, maintained that
the alleged difficulties encountered in teaching the crudest element
of the slaves could not be adduced as an argument against the
religious instruction of free Negroes and the education of the
American born colored children.[2] This problem, however, was not a
serious one in most Northern States, for the reason that the small
number of slaves in that section obviated the necessity for much
apprehension as to what kind of education the blacks should have,
and whether they should be enlightened before or after emancipation.
Although the Northern people believed that the education of the race
should be definitely planned, and had much to say about industrial
education, most of them were of the opinion that ordinary training
in the fundamentals of useful knowledge and in the principles of
Christian religion, was sufficient to meet the needs of those
designated for freedom.

[Footnote 1: Meade, _Sermons of Thomas Bacon_, pp. 81-87.]