431.] [Footnote 2: Smyth, _Works of Franklin_, vol.v., p.

431.] [Footnote 3: Wickersham, _History of Education in Pennsylvania_, p.
249.] [Footnote 4: Bassett, _Slavery and Servitude in North Carolina_, Johns Hopkins University Studies, vol.xv., p.

226.] Not many slaves were found among the Puritans, but the number sufficed to bring the question of their instruction before these colonists almost as prominently as we have observed it was brought in the case of the members of the Established Church of England.

Despite the fact that the Puritans developed from the Calvinists, believers in the doctrine of election which swept away all class distinction, this sect did not, like the Quakers, attack slavery as an institution.

Yet if the Quakers were the first of the Protestants to protest against the buying and selling of souls, New England divines were among the first to devote attention to the mental, moral, and spiritual development of Negroes.[1] In 1675 John Eliot objected to the Indian slave trade, not because of the social degradation, but for the reason that he desired that his countrymen "should follow Christ his Designe in this matter to promote the free passage of Religion" among them.