equally capable of improvement with yourselves."[2]

[Footnote 1: Pinkney, _Speech in Maryland House of Delegates_, p. 6.]

[Footnote 2: Buchanan, _An Oration on the Moral and Political Evil of
Slavery_, p. 10.]

Franklin considered the idea of the natural inferiority of the
Negro as a silly excuse. He conceded that most of the blacks were
improvident and poor, but believed that their condition was not due to
deficient understanding but to their lack of education. He was very
much impressed with their achievements in music.[1] So disgusting was
this notion of inferiority to Abbé Grégoire of Paris that he wrote an
interesting essay on "Negro Literature" to prove that people of color
have unusual intellectual power.[2] He sent copies of this pamphlet
to leading men where slavery existed. Another writer discussing
Jefferson's equivocal position on this question said that one would
have thought that "modern philosophy himself" would not have the face
to expect that the wretch, who is driven out to labor at the dawn of
day, and who toils until evening with a whip over his head, ought to
be a poet. Benezet, who had actually taught Negroes, declared "with
truth and sincerity" that he had found among them as great variety of
talents as among a like number of white persons. He boldly asserted
that the notion entertained by some that the blacks were inferior
in their capacities was a vulgar prejudice founded on the pride or
ignorance of their lordly masters who had kept their slaves at such a
distance as to be unable to form a right judgment of them.[3]

[Footnote 1: Smyth, _Works of Franklin_, vol. vi., p. 222.]