In Indiana the problem of educating Negroes was more difficult. R.G. Boone says that, "nominally for the first few years of the educational experience of the State, black and white children had equal privileges in the few schools that existed."[1] But this could not continue long. Abolitionists were moving the country, and freedmen soon found enemies as well as friends in the Ohio valley. Indiana, which was in 1824 so very "solicitous for a system of education which would guard against caste distinction," provided in 1837 that the white inhabitants alone of each congressional township should constitute the local school corporation.[2] In 1841 a petition was sent to the legislature requesting that a reasonable share of the school fund be appropriated to the education of Negroes, but the committee to which it was referred reported that legislation on that subject was inexpedient.[3] With the exception of prohibiting the immigration of such persons into that State not much account of them was taken until 1853. Then the legislature amended the law authorizing the establishment of schools in townships so as to provide that in all enumerations the children of color should not be taken, that the property of the blacks and mulattoes should not be taxed for school purposes, and that their children should not derive any benefit from the common schools of that State.[4] This provision had really been incorporated into the former law, but was omitted by oversight on the part of the engrossing clerk.[5] [Footnote 1: Boone, _History of Ed. in Indiana_, p. 237.] [Footnote 2: _Laws of a General Nature of the State of Indiana_, 1837, p. 15.] [Footnote 3: Boone, _History of Education in Indiana_, p. 237.] [Footnote 4: _Laws of a General Nature of the State of Indiana_, 1855, p. 161.] [Footnote 5: Boone, _History of Education in Indiana_, p. 237.] A resolution of the House instructing the educational committee to report a bill for the establishment of schools for the education of the colored children of the State was overwhelmingly defeated in 1853. Explaining their position the opponents said that it was held "to be better for the weaker party that no privilege be extended to them," as the tendency to such "might be to induce the vain belief that the prejudice of the dominant race could ever be so mollified as to break down the rugged barriers that must forever exist between their social relations." The friends of the blacks believed that by elevating them the sense of their degradation would be keener, and so the greater would be their anxiety to seek another country, where with the spirit of men they "might breathe fresh air of social as well as political liberty."[1] This argument, however, availed little. Before the Civil War the Negroes of Indiana received help in acquiring knowledge from no source but private and mission schools. [Footnote 1: Boone, _History of Education in Indiana_, p. 237.]