RELIGION WITH LETTERS The first real educators to take up the work of enlightening American Negroes were clergymen interested in the propagation of the gospel among the heathen of the new world.

Addressing themselves to this task, the missionaries easily discovered that their first duty was to educate these crude elements to enable them not only to read the truth for themselves, but to appreciate the supremacy of the Christian religion.

After some opposition slaves were given the opportunity to take over the Christian civilization largely because of the adverse criticism[1] which the apostles to the lowly heaped upon the planters who neglected the improvement of their Negroes.

Made then a device for bringing the blacks into the Church, their education was at first too much dominated by the teaching of religion.
[Footnote 1: Bourne, _Spain in America_, p.

241; and _The Penn.