[Footnote 2: Benezet was a French Protestant. Persecuted on account of their religion, his parents moved from France to England and later to Philadelphia. He became a teacher in that city in 1742. Thirteen years later he was teaching a school established for the education of the daughters of the most distinguished families in Philadelphia. He was then using his own spelling-book, primer, and grammar, some of the first text-books published in America. Known to persecution himself, Benezet always sympathized with the oppressed. Accordingly, he connected himself with the Quakers, who at that time had before them the double task of fighting for religious equality and the amelioration of the condition of the Negroes. Becoming interested in the welfare of the colored race, Benezet first attacked the slave trade, so exposing it in his speeches and writings that Clarkson entered the field as an earnest advocate of the suppression of the iniquitous traffic. See Benezet, _Observations_, p. 30, and the _African Repository_, vol. iv., p. 61.] [Footnote 3: Quaker Pamphlet, p. 31.] What the other sects did for the enlightenment of Negroes during this period, was not of much importance. As the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists did not proselyte extensively in this country prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, these denominations had little to do with Negro education before the liberalism and spirit of toleration, developed during the revolutionary era, made it possible for these sects to reach the people. The Methodists, however, confined at first largely to the South, where most of the slaves were found, had to take up this problem earlier. Something looking like an attempt to elevate the Negroes came from Wesley's contemporary, George Whitefield,[1] who, strange to say, was regarded by the Negro race as its enemy for having favored the introduction of slavery. He was primarily interested in the conversion of the colored people. Without denying that "liberty is sweet to those who are born free," he advocated the importation of slaves into Georgia "to bring them within the reach of those means of grace which would make them partake of a liberty far more precious than the freedom of body."[2] While on a visit to this country in 1740 he purchased a large tract of land at Nazareth, Pennsylvania, for the purpose of founding a school for the education of Negroes.[3] Deciding later to go south, he sold the site to the Moravian brethren who had undertaken to establish a mission for Negroes at Bethlehem in 1738.[4] Some writers have accepted the statement that Whitefield commenced the erection of a schoolhouse at Nazareth; others maintain that he failed to accomplish anything.[5] Be that as it may, accessible facts are sufficient to show that, unwise as was his policy of importing slaves, his intention was to improve their condition. It was because of this sentiment in Georgia in 1747,