[Footnote 1: According to the report of the Freedmen's Inquiry Commission published by S.G. Howe, an unusually large proportion of the colored population believed in education. He says: "Those from the free States had very little schooling in youth; those from the slave States, none at all. Considering these things it is rather remarkable that so many can now read and write. Moreover, they show their esteem for instruction by their desire to obtain it for their children. They all wish to have their children go to school, and they send them all the time that they can be spared.
"Canada West has adopted a good system of public instruction, which is well administered. The common schools, though inferior to those of several of the States of the United States, are good. Colored children are admitted to them in most places; and where a separate school is open for them, it is as well provided by the government with teachers and apparatus as the other schools are. Notwithstanding the growing prejudice against blacks, the authorities evidently mean to deal justly by them in regard to instruction; and even those who advocate separate schools, promise that they shall be equal to white schools.
"The colored children in the mixed schools do not differ in their general appearance and behavior from their white comrades. They are usually clean and decently clad. They look quite as the whites; and are perhaps a little more mirthful and roguish. The association is manifestly beneficial to the colored children." See Howe, _The Refugees_, etc., p. 77.]
[Footnote 2: Siebert, _The Underground Railroad_, p. 226.]
The development of the schools and churches established for these transplanted freedmen made more necessary than ever a higher education to develop in them the power to work out their own salvation. It was again the day of thorough training for the Negroes. Their opportunities for better instruction were offered mainly by the colonizationists and abolitionists.[1] Although these workers had radically different views as to the manner of elevating the colored people, they contributed much to their mental development. The more liberal colonizationists endeavored to furnish free persons of color the facilities for higher education with the hope that their enlightenment would make them so discontented with this country that they would emigrate to Liberia. Most southern colonizationists accepted this plan but felt that those permanently attached to this country should be kept in ignorance; for if they were enlightened, they would either be freed or exterminated. During the period of reaction, when the elevation of the race was discouraged in the North and prohibited in most parts of the South, the colonizationists continued to secure to Negroes, desiring to expatriate themselves, opportunities for education which never would have been given those expecting to remain in the United States.[2]