[5] In 1835 there were six high schools, or schools for higher
education, in the United States that admitted colored students on
equal footing with others. These were: Oneida Institute, New York;
Mount Pleasant, Amherst, Mass.; Canaan, N.H.; Western Reserve, Ohio;
Gettysburg, Pa.; and "one in the city of Philadelphia of which Miss
Buffam" was "principal." There was also one manual labor school in
Madison County, N.Y., capable of accommodating eighteen students. It
was founded by Gerrit Smith.
NOTES.
A.
THE FIRST COLORED CONVENTION.
On the fifteenth day of September, 1830, there was held at Bethel
Church, in the city of Philadelphia, the first convention of the
colored people of these United States. It was an event of historical
importance; and, whether we regard the times or the men of whom this
assemblage was composed, we find matter for interesting and profitable
consideration.
Emancipation had just taken place in New York, and had just been
arrested in Virginia by the Nat Turner rebellion and Walker's
pamphlet. Secret sessions of the legislatures of the several Southern
States had been held to deliberate upon the production of a colored
man who had coolly recommended to his fellow blacks the only solution
to the slave question, which, after twenty-five years of arduous labor
of the most hopeful and noble-hearted of the abolitionists, seems the
forlorn hope of freedom to-day--insurrection and bloodshed.
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