[Footnote 1: Catalogue of Berea College, 1896-1897.]
The centers of this interest in the mountains of Tennessee were Maryville and Knoxville. Around these towns were found a goodly number of white persons interested in the elevation of the colored people. There developed such an antislavery sentiment in the former town that half of the students of the Maryville Theological Seminary became abolitionists by 1841.[1] They were then advocating the social uplift of Negroes through the local organ, the _Maryville Intelligencer_. From this nucleus of antislavery men developed a community with ideals not unlike those of Berea.[2]
[Footnote 1: Some of the liberal-mindedness of the people of Kentucky and Tennessee was found in the State of Missouri. The question of slavery there, however, was so ardently discussed and prominently kept before the people that while little was done to help the Negroes, much was done to reduce them to the plane of beasts. There was not so much of the tendency to wink at the violation of the law on the part of masters in teaching their slaves. But little could be accomplished by private teachers in the dissemination of information among Negroes after the free persons of color had been excluded from the State.]
[Footnote 2: _Fourth Annual Report of the American Antislavery Society_, New York, 1837, p. 48; and the _New England Antislavery Almanac_ for 1841, p. 31.]
The Knoxville people who advocated the enlightenment of the Negroes expressed their sentiment through the _Presbyterian Witness_. The editor felt that there was not a solitary argument that might be urged in favor of teaching a white man that might not as properly be urged in favor of enlightening a man of color. "If one has a soul that will never die," said he, "so has the other. Has one susceptibilities of improvement, mentally, socially, and morally? So has the other. Is one bound by the laws of God to improve the talents he has received from the Creator's hands? So is the other. Is one embraced in the command 'Search the Scriptures'? So is the other."[1] He maintained that unless masters could lawfully degrade their slaves to the condition of beasts, they were just as much bound to teach them to read the Bible as to teach any other class of their population.
