[Footnote 1: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed_., 1871, p. 374.]
[Footnote 3: Turner, _The Negro in Pennsylvania_, p. 128.]
[Footnote 4: Equally interested in the Negroes were the Moravians who settled in the uplands of Pennsylvania and roamed over the hills of the Appalachian region as far south as Carolina. A painting of a group of their converts prior to 1747 shows among others two Negroes, Johannes of South Carolina and Jupiter of New York. See Hamilton, _History of the Church known as the Moravian_, p. 80; Plumer, _Thoughts on the Religious Instruction of Negroes_, p. 3; Reichel, _The Moravians in North Carolina_, p. 139.]
[Footnote 5: _Special Report of the U.S. Com. of Ed_., 1869, p. 374.]
In addition to the mere diffusion of knowledge as a means to teach religion there was a need of another factor to make the education of the Negroes thorough. This required force was supplied by the response of the colonists to the nascent social doctrine of the eighteenth century. During the French and Indian War there were set to work certain forces which hastened the social and political upheaval called the American Revolution. "Bigoted saints" of the more highly favored sects condescended to grant the rising denominations toleration, the aristocratic elements of colonial society deigned to look more favorably upon those of lower estate, and a large number of leaders began to think that the Negro should be educated and freed. To acquaint themselves with the claims of the underman Americans thereafter prosecuted more seriously the study of Coke, Milton, Locke, and Blackstone. The last of these was then read more extensively in the colonies than in Great Britain. Getting from these writers strange ideas of individual liberty and the social compact theory of man's making in a state of nature government deriving its power from the consent of the governed, the colonists contended more boldly than ever for religious freedom, industrial liberty, and political equality. Given impetus by the diffusion of these ideas, the revolutionary movement became productive of the spirit of universal benevolence. Hearing the contention for natural and inalienable rights, Nathaniel Appleton[1] and John Woolman,[2] were emboldened to carry these theories to their logical conclusion. They attacked not only the oppressors of the colonists but censured also those who denied the Negro race freedom of body and freedom of mind. When John Adams heard James Otis basing his argument against the writs of assistance on the British constitution "founded in the laws of nature," he "shuddered at the doctrine taught and the consequences that might be derived from such premises."[3]