public efforts in furnishing educational facilities for the colored people, especially in preparing pupils for the field that was now widening every day as a result of its early missionary efforts. The Peabody fund was also being distributed in a discriminating and effective way, and the friends of education were greatly encouraged. The tide had turned. Public sentiment had at last come up almost unto the strength of unanimity for public education, and it was being generally conceded that the most pressing duty was the breaking up of the great mass of illiteracy, and that the negro must be educated to be fitted for the duties of citizenship.

The outlook in 1875 was still more encouraging, Delaware had organized a thorough school system under a new law, the colored children being provided for by a special tax levied on the colored population. West Virginia reported five normal schools, having 557 students and 85 graduates; North Carolina, 600 teachers in training in teachers' institutes and normal schools "for a demand that could not be supplied"; South Carolina, 39 pupils in the State Normal School; Alabama, three State Normal Schools and five similiar institutions supported by societies, all having 659 students, of whom 533 were believed to be colored; Mississippi, two State Normal Schools for colored pupils, with 351 students. Arkansas had taken a fresh start under the provisions of its newly adopted constitution. In the State Industrial University 58 white students were being trained as teachers, and in another institution sustained by a society, 156 were in training for colored schools. In Tennessee, a normal school had been established. Kentucky for the first time included the colored children in the enrollment of school-children. There was no State Normal School as yet, but 140 normal pupils were reported in two institutions, and 29 graduates from the Louisville Normal School. Missouri returned three State Normal Schools, with 644 pupils.

The year 1876 was a presidential year, and was not favorable, on the whole, to the interests of education. Nevertheless, Commissioner Eaton, in summing up the results of all the reports from the South, was able to say that "after a careful review of these facts, and an attentive consideration of them in their several relations, and with full recognition of the same backward tendency in certain other localities, I am increasingly convinced that their local public sentiment will not tolerate any further retrogression in these States; and that the friends of education may, on the whole, anticipate for their efforts increasing public favor."

In 1877 the reports from the South were gratifying and encouraging. The reconstruction period was ended, and we found ourselves getting on rising ground. The total number of negro children of school age in the late slave States was 1,513,065, and those enrolled, 571,506. There were for these 10,792 schools; besides which there were twenty-seven normal schools, with 3,785 pupils; twenty-three

institutions for secondary instruction, with 2,807 pupils; thirteen universities and colleges, with 1,270 pupils; seventeen schools of theology, with 462 pupils; two schools of law, with 14 pupils; three schools of medicine, with 74 pupils; and two schools for the deaf and dumb and the blind, with 99 pupils; making a grand total of 10,879 schools, colleges, etc., and 580,017 pupils enrolled.

The reports for 1878, notwithstanding the yellow - fever epidemic that prevailed throughout the whole of the lower valley of the Mississippi, were extremely encouraging. All the States did well.

The years 1879, 1880, and 1881 were years of general progress. The former year witnessed the fair inauguration of normal instruction in Texas for both white and colored. In Kentucky nine private normal schools and institutes held in fourteen counties, and a summer normal school, were doing good work for teachers. The report for 1880 was, taking in the whole field, more encouraging than any of the preceding ones. The Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississipi was opened with two hundred students. In 1881, Delaware for the first time recognized its obligations to the colored children and appropriated $2,400 from the State Treasury for these schools. West Virginia made provision for the free education of eighteen colored pupils at Storer College. In 1882-'83 the whiteschool population of the sixteen once slave States and the District of Columbia was 4,046,956, and the enrollment in public schools 2,249,263. The colored-school population was 1,944,572; enrollment, 802,982. Compared with the figures of 1877 there was clear evidence of the remarkable work that had been accomplished in the Southern States. The white-school population showed an increase of 13 per cent; enrollment, 23 per cent; the colored-school population showed an increase of 28 per cent; enrollment increase, 40 per cent. The expenditures during that time had steadily increased as follows: In 1878 they were $11,760,251; in 1879, $12,181,602; in 1880, $12,475,044; in 1881, $13,359,784; and in 1882, $14,820,972. And this, notwithstanding there had been a decrease in the value of the taxable wealth of ten of the Southern States amounting to $411,475,000. Notwithstanding which, these States now appropriated 201 per cent of their total levy of taxes for school purposes, New England at the same time paying 20-2; the Middle States, 19.5; the Western States, 26-2; and the Territories, 224; the average of the whole country being 22.6 per cent. This increase in funds corresponded with a radical change in public sentiment. Louisiana was the only State in which the prospect was in the main discouraging. Both races shared alike in the school fund in all the States except in Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, in which special provision was made for the colored race, and in South Carolina, where the basis of apportionment was the same for each race, but the amounts realized depended upon the extent to

VOL. XXVIII.-8

which the people availed themselves of the provision by attendance upon the schools.

The total number of colored children of school age in the late slave States was in 1882, 1,944,572, an increase of 15,385; and of those enrolled, 802,982, an increase of 610. There were for these 15,972 schools a decrease of 1,681. Besides which there were fifty-six normal schools, an increase of nine, with 8,509 pupils, an increase of 888; forty-three institutions for secondary instruction, an increase of nine, with 6,632 pupils, an increase of 1,348; eighteen universities and colleges, an increase of one, with 2,298 pupils, an increase of 95; twentyfour schools of theology, an increase of two, with 665 pupils, an increase of 61; four schools of law, an increase of one, with 53 pupils, an increase of 8; three schools of medicine, an increase of one, with 125 pupils, an increase of 9; six schools for the deaf and dumb and the blind, an increase of four, with 116 pupils, a decrease of 4; making a grand total of 16,086 schools, colleges, etc., a decrease of 1,289, with 821,380 pupils, an increase of 3,015 over those reported in 1881.

Nothing in the progress of the South since the close of the civil war is so gratifying as these exhibits of growth in educational facilities and this steady increase in the number of scholars of both races. The people of the Northern States will never be able to understand or comprehend all that it is to us of the South. All the expenses and money losses of these States during the war were represented in bonds and other forms of Government indebtedness, which were so much of addition to the property values of that section. But the Southern States lost everything-their slaves, their crops, and all the profits of their industrial efforts for five years, their public (Confederate) debt, nearly all of their railroad and steamboat property, fifty per cent of their homesteads, their farm-fences, mills, and gins, the whole representing a total value variously estimated at from $9,000,000,000 to $11,000,000,000. It was a clean sweep-so clean that both Generals Grant and Sherman found it necessary to permit the officers and privates of the Confederate armies to retain their horses and mules to make crops; and Governor Brownlow's Legislature in Tennessee passed an act making the stealing of a mule or a horse punishable by death, on the expressed ground that the mule and the horse were essential to the life of the people-without them bread could not be made. Following upon the heels of this utter destitution and the consequent prostration and despondency, came the period of reconstruction, which increased the confusion that prevailed, re-excited the passions of the war, and added to it all a race-feeling that for a time was at a white heat a feeling that was a new experience to the people of the South. Out of this extreme of general poverty, out of this race-feeling and political passion and prejudice, order was slowly evoked, and with it came the steady growth of a healthy public sentiment favorable first to public education and then to the education of the negro.

As fast as they have been able, the Southern States have increased their taxes for school purposes and their facilities for the education of teachers until they have reached a point as high as that of New England—that is, they appropriate twenty per cent of the whole amount of taxes levied and collected for school purposes, just as Massachusetts does. Beyond this they can not go any faster than their growth in taxable wealth will permit, and unless they have an even greater amount of help than has been given by the American Missionary Association, the Sears and the Peabody Funds, educational progress must be very slow-too slow to meet the demands of the people. It would take three times the amount now annually appropriated by the Southern States ($15,000,000) to satisfy the demands. of the six million black and white children for education. With anything like an adequate sum, and compulsory laws to overcome the lethargy and indifference of the negroes, an inroad so broad might be made in a few years in the illiteracy that is now a positive menace and danger to these States as to encourage the friends of education in the belief of a possible millennium, when every human being would be able to stand an examination in at least the three R's. And this, however chimerical it may seem, contrasted with existing facts, is what must be kept steadily in view. The State owes it to every child to make it intellectually strong enough to understand the necessity for law, to submit to the restraints of law, and obey law. This can only be done by education.

Looking back through the years the educational work of which has thus been traced in the foregoing pages, we find that several good results have been accomplished: 1. The prejudices of the Southern people against the education of the negro have been utterly and entirely dispelled; 2. The people of the South have become willing, in most cases enthusiastic supporters and helpers in the education of the negro; 3. Thirty per cent of the illiteracy of the negro has been wiped out; and, 4. The negro has steadily, though gradually, been brought to realize that in education he is to find perfect freedom, the soul and heart freedom of which no man may rob him; that by education he is to be elevated, lifted up above the chaos and confusion of ignorance, and prepared for whatever of destiny lies before him in the United States. With these results before us, to raise any side or outside issues that would tend to re-excite the prejudices of the whites against the blacks, to raise the social question, even in the least degree, is to be at enmity with the peace and prosperity of the negro, to hurt and injure the cause of his education, to retard his growth mentally and morally, and postpone the time when he might claim equality in both senses.

In the face of such progress, to advocate the deportation of such a race, or any scheme of separate colonization, is nothing less than a crime. It has the effect to disturb and check the flow of this steady

tendency toward the average of civilization reached by the white race; it has the tendency to excite fear and to paralyze the race that still looks to the white man to continue to guarantee to it its political rights, and for the recognition of the full equality before the law that assures him the peaceful pursuit of happiness and the possession of property. By education a great gap has been made in the mountain of illiteracy that was first assailed in 1862 with many forebodings and much doubt. The philanthropic men and women who first undertook the task have many of them passed to their reward; but their works do follow them. The better outlook that enabled them to see away beyond the stormy years to come and predict this better day has been fully justified, and none more eagerly bear testimony, and willing testimony, to the beneficence and blessings of that work than the white men and women who were born again to their better natures out of and away beyond the prejudices of centuries, and to-day rejoice in the living light that shines from books on the negro's intellect and heart, enabling him to grasp hitherto hidden meanings and comprehend some of the treasures of our literature and make himself strong for the battle of life. The man who survives by his own strength and will excites admiration; the man who has to be helped becomes a burden, and a wearisome burden, to all about him. Educate, educate the negro. Make the ways of light broader; make the avenues to better life and living plainer. Illuminate him with the intelligence of the ages and the light of reason, and the negro will see his own way and walk without help. He will become a stronger, a more self-reliant man, and by that strength and self-reliance will beat down all the barriers and shake off all the make-weights that impede his progress and stand in his way. He will be a citizen, indeed, and not a halting, wailing child. He will be a man full of man's ways and purposes, with a comprehensive grasp of his duties and a sound, sensibly guided determination to be in every case a citizen equal to the maintenance of his own rights under the law, a strength and not a weakness to the republic. Education, and not agitation, is what the negro needs. He needs repose and rest, time to think of himself and for himself, to realize what he has accomplished in a few years, how closely he stands to his white neighbors, and how intimately his destiny is linked with theirs. Hitherto he has been constantly in a very sea of turmoil, tossed about, anxious, and confused. Under these circumstances, his own natural disinclination, the poverty of the Southern States, and the political bedevilments that made at the South confusion worse confounded until 1876, the advance he has made in education and in the acquisition of property is like the work of magic. In peace, in freedom from political agitation, with increased facilities for education, sustained by the good-will and the voluntary taxation of the white people, what may he not be expected to accomplish in the future? When seventy per cent of his illiteracy has been swept away, what a self-respecting man he will