Jones[3] believed that only an inconsiderable fraction of the slaves could read.
Witnesses to the contrary, however, are numerous.

Abdy, Smedes, Andrews, Bremer, and Olmsted found during their stay in the South many slaves who had experienced unusual spiritual and mental development.[4] Nehemiah Adams, giving the southern view of slavery in 1854, said that large numbers of the slaves could read and were furnished with the Scriptures.[5] Amos Dresser, who traveled extensively in the Southwest, believed that one out of every fifty could read and write.[6] C.G.Parsons thought that five thousand out of the four hundred thousand slaves of Georgia had these attainments.[7] These figures, of course, would run much higher were the free people of color included in the estimates.

Combining the two it is safe to say that ten per cent.

of the adult Negroes had the rudiments of education in 1860, but the proportion was much less than it was near the close of the era of better beginnings about 1825.
[Footnote 1: Arfwedson, _The United States and Canada_, p.

331.] [Footnote 2: See their pamphlets, addresses, and books referred to elsewhere.] [Footnote 3: Jones, _Religious Instruction of Negroes_, p.