5, 1799.] [Footnote 22: The City Gazette and Daily Advertiser (Charleston, South Carolina), June 22 and Aug.

8, 1797; April 1 and May 15, 1799.] Equally convincing as to the educational progress of the colored race were the high attainments of those Negroes who, despite the fact that they had little opportunity, surpassed in intellect a large number of white men of their time.

Negroes were serving as salesmen, keeping accounts, managing plantations, teaching and preaching, and had intellectually advanced to the extent that fifteen or twenty per cent.
of their adults could then at least read.

Most of this talented class became preachers, as this was the only calling even conditionally open to persons of African blood.

Among these clergymen was George Leile,[1] who won distinction as a preacher in Georgia in 1782, and then went to Jamaica where he founded the first Baptist church of that colony.