During my stay in Charleston, I became acquainted with a gentleman of
colour, who followed a lucrative business as a dealer of some kind, and
who had formerly been a slave. The introduction arose in rather a
singular way, it being through a proposition made to open a school for
the education of coloured children, in which I took an interest.
Great opposition was offered to the scheme by the white rulers of the
place, who declared the project illegal, the enactments passed
subsequent and prior to the insurrection stringently forbidding it, or
any attempt to impart secular knowledge to the slaves. Notwithstanding
the violent threats used to prevent it, a meeting was however convened
to be held at the house of the gentleman referred to, and which I
resolved, though not unaccompanied with danger to my person, to take an
active part in. I accordingly went to his home on the evening appointed;
this was a spacious house, furnished in sumptuous style, with extensive
premises adjoining, contiguous to the north end of the levee.
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