18.]

[Footnote 4: Washington, _Works of Jefferson_, vol. iii., p. 296; vol.
iv., p. 291 and vol. viii., p. 380.]

Without resorting to the subterfuge of colonization, not a few
slaveholders were still wise enough to show why the improvement of the
Negroes should be neglected altogether. Vanquished by the logic of
Daniel Davis[1] and Benjamin Rush,[2] those who had theretofore
justified slavery on the ground that it gave the bondmen a chance to
be enlightened, fell back on the theory of African racial inferiority.
This they said was so well exhibited by the Negroes' lack of
wisdom and of goodness that continued heathenism of the race was
justifiable.[3] Answering these inconsistent persons, John Wesley
inquired: "Allowing them to be as stupid as you say, to whom is that
stupidity owing? Without doubt it lies altogether at the door of the
inhuman masters who give them no opportunity for improving their
understanding and indeed leave them no motive, either from hope or
fear to attempt any such thing." Wesley asserted, too, that the
Africans were in no way remarkable for their stupidity while they
remained in their own country, and that where they had equal motives
and equal means of improvement, the Negroes were not only not inferior
to the better inhabitants of Europe, but superior to some of them.[4]

[Footnote 1: Davis was a logical antislavery agitator. He believed
that if the slaves had had the means of education, if they had been
treated with humanity, making slaves of them had been no more than
doing evil that good might come. He thought that Christianity and
humanity would have rather dictated the sending of books and teachers
into Africa and endeavors for their salvation.]