II.

THE SOUTH, THE NORTH, AND THE NATION KEEPING SCHOOL.

An address delivered before the National Education Assembly held at Ocean Grove, N. J., August 9-12, 1883.

I suppose myself invited to address this assembly of eminent school men and friends of education because of some unusual opportunities for observation of Southern affairs as related to the rising school life of this portion of our country during the past three years. Without enlarging on the details of this interesting experience, or even quoting authorities for my conclusions, I will confine myself to a plain statement of some opinions that have been forced upon me through the entire period of my investigations, and which have now assumed, in my mind, the form of established convictions.

I shall speak of what has been done in the sixteen States, which include our former slave territory, since 1860; endeavor to show how this marvelous work has been accomplished, in the only way it could have been, by the combined effort of the South, the North, and the Nation keeping school for the children; and from this estimate of these several educational forces, and the prodigious work that still remains to be done, I shall try to outline the true method of success in the future.

If I were required to present to a European audience the most forcible illustration of the working of republican institutions in our country, I should certainly select the history of the development of what we may call the New Education in our Southern States, from the breaking out of the civil war in 1861 to the present date.

I speak of the New Education in this connection. Up to 1860 the slave States had a system of education well adapted to perpetuate the dominant form of Southern society. It consisted of a reasonably thorough and extended system of collegiate, academical, and military schools for the sons of the superior class and such recruits from the lower orders of the white people as gave promise of unusual ability, with a large development of the ordinary female seminary of a generation ago for the corresponding class of girls. A considerable number of the sons and daughters of wealthy people were also expensively educated by private tuition at home, attendance on northern schools, or at institutions abroad. There was also a good deal of the sort of family and church instruction in political, religious, and social ideas that is always going on in a concentrated and aristocratic order of society. The result, as we all know, was the training of perhaps the most intelligent and forcible aristocratic class in Christendom, which displayed an energy in revolutionary politics and on the battlefield, which, for four years, held the fate of the Union in suspense, and arrested the attention of the civilized world.

But, of course, in this scheme of education, all but 2,000,000 or 3,000,000 of the 12,000,000 of the Southern people were left with no systematic or persistent attempt at schooling.

The 4,000,000 of slaves were almost completely shut out from every sort of school; although American slavery itself was perhaps the most effective university through which any race of savages was ever introduced to civilization. In that severe training school the African Negro learned to work, acquired the language of a civilized people, and took on at least some apprehension of the only religion that ever proposed to break every yoke and proclaim all men the children of God.

The several millions of nonslaveholding white people were not left entirely destitute. Many of the better sort were partially educated with their superiors. Almost every Southern State had a periodical experience of waking up to the importance of a system of common schooling for all white children. And especially in Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Alabama, and Louisiana, this was attempted, though, outside a few cities, always with imperfect success. But the Southern nonslaveholding white people, outside the rim of "poor white trash," corresponding to our Northern tramp, had the schooling which comes from discipline implied by the settlement of a new country and the enjoyment of citizenship in a republican State. It was a training that brought the Southern masses up to the point of that astonishing military efficiency which, along a line of battle of a thousand miles, held this mighty Union at arm's length through four terrible years.

I linger over this picture of the old Southern education because ignorance of it has created many false notions of the educational problem among our Northern people. In 1861 the South was not that abode of mental imbecility and dismal ignorance which many an enthusiastic teacher going down there has imagined. On the contrary, it was a country where, perhaps, one-fourth the white people were thoroughly trained for leadership in the aristocratic form of society, and where the Negro and the poor white man had received a discipline in the university of American life which was the best possible preparation for the new era of education, through schools, teachers, and books, upon which the South entered the very year of the outbreak of the civil war.

History will record that never before was such a spectacle witnessed as the sudd n waking up of Christian and patriotic zeal for the education of a people in a state of revolt against national power. It is true that the missionary of religion has often followed an army of subjugation to change the faith of nations of savages and barbarians. But, in our case, the Northern people displayed at once their immovable faith in the Union for which they were fighting, and their confidence and radical respect for their Southern brethren in revolt, by taking the schoolhouse as the most prominent article in the baggage train, and leaving the teacher to build up the waste places in the track of desolating war. The most thoughtful of our Northern people, from the first, believed that a good system of popular education of the Southern masses would have prevented the war and opened a way for the peaceful abolition of slavery. But, since that was not permitted, they believed that the only security for the restored Union would be that general enlightenment of both races which would bring the vast majority of the Southern people to a condition of intelligent citizenship. And, having no doubt of the success of the war, the same class "took time by the forelock," and within a year from the firing on Sumter had established the school for the "Contraband" along the Atlantic coast, from Washington to Beaufort, down the Mississippi, through the inland southwest, and at the city of New Orleans. In short, the schoolmaster and mistress followed the army during the progress of the war; instructing thousands of the Negroes of every age; expending large sums contributed by the benevolence of the Christian people of the North; every where supported by the military power and, to a considerable extent, aided indirectly by the Government.

In 1862 the National Government voted a munificent donation of public lands for the establishment of agricultural and mechanical education in all the States. Anticipating the immense value of this donation to the South, the lands of these revolting States were religiously held in reserve against the time when they should be claimed in a restored Union. It is impossible to estimate the present and prospective value of this gift to the Southern people at their present crisis of agricultural, manufacturing, and mining industry.

In 1865 Congress took up this educational work, which had already outgrown the resources of private benevolence, and, through annual appropriations continued for six years, the gift of national property, and the diversion of confiscated lands, under

the direction of the Freedmen's Bureau, gave an impetus to the work of Southern education, especially among the freedmen, which it has never lost. In the ten years, from 1860 to 1870, it is probable that not less than $20,000,000 were thus expended by the North and the Nation for education in the South.

Meanwhile, the Peabody Educational Fund of $2,000,000 had been devoted to the building up of the public school through the entire South. And this magnificent benefaction has been followed by many large contributions, like those of the Vanderbilt family, Mr. Corcoran, Seney, and Slater, Mrs. Stone, and Mrs. Hemenway, with great numbers of others, which have poured a constant stream of helpful aid southward for the past fifteen years. Neither should it be forgotten that the great majority of Northern teachers who have wrought in this field have virtually made their work a "labor of love;" the compensation, even of presidents of colleges, being less than the wages of Northern mercantile bookkeepers, and of the majority of subordinate teachers not above that of reliable servants in Northern cities.

For the last ten years, outside a few prominent institutions for the education of the white people, the great effort of the North has been made, through the mission organizations of the several churches, toward the establishment of all grades of schools for the freedmen. When the history of the educational work in the South by the Christian people of the North is fairly written, it will be, in itself, the most conclusive answer to the whole impeachment of our modern Christianity by its enemies of every grade. The history of the world can not produce a more affecting spectacle than the growth of this mighty Christian philanthropy, which, beginning amid the din of battle, has steadily marched on, through all sorts of misunderstanding, neglect, opposition, and disparagement, with amazing patience, forbearance, and wisdom, to its present state. To-day there are probably not less than a hundred important schools, twenty of them bearing the title of college, with ample buildings and excellent facilities for religious, mental, and industrial education, established for the Southern colored people, chiefly taught by Northern men and women, a body of instructors not inferior to any similar class in the country in general capacity for such a difficult work. In these schools not less than 15,000 of the superior young colored people are being prepared, not only as teachers and professional characters, but, what is more significant, trained for leadership of the 7,000,000 of American colored citizens. The whole problem of negro citizenship is involved in the formation of a genuine leading class-an aristocracy of character, skilled industry, and intelligence that shall, at once, give direction to the millions of these people, and become their true representative in all dealings with the white people of the Republic.

And it is not too much to say that the colored people, the South, and the Nation will be indebted to the Christian schooling in these institutions for the beginning of this prodigious undertaking. Perhaps the most gratifying feature in this work is the fact that, at the end of fifteen years, it has conquered all vital opposition among the leading classes of the South. Half a dozen States now make annual appropriations to these collegiate schools. Southern gentlemen are included in their boards of mauagement. The State of South Carolina, first in secession, has been the first to include a colored college in the organization of its State University. Many of these schools of lower grade are now being included in the new system of public schools. The graduates of the higher seminaries are in constant demand as teachers. In short, it seems as if within a generation all these great seminaries will become virtually Southern nniversities, largely controlled by the Southern people of both races, endowed by Northern munificence, the most splendid offering in behalf of "peace on earth and good will to meu" ever made under similar circumstances by the Christian church, in any age and land.

Thus, within the past twenty years, the people of the North, in connection with the Government of the United States, have shown their confidence, respect, and affection for the Southern people by a mighty work of educational beneficence, conducted on lines of operation where it was hardly possible that the South could help itself, in

volving an outlay probably, all things considered, of not less than $50,000,000. And the point we wish to press is, that this has been done in the characteristic American republican way. The Nation has not gone into these States to establish schools, antagonizing their people, and paralyzing home effort, but has simply given twentyfive millions of property to aid in a good work, and established in the Bureau of Education one of the most potent agencies for inspiration, encouragement, and instruction possible under our form of government. The Northern churches and people have not gone down South to build fortresses of propagandism. They have wisely adjusted their educational work to the condition of the freedman, trained him to pay money and labor for good schooling, and sent him forth a superior person for all the uses and duties of Southern citizenship. And, although I have no right to speak for any church engaged in this great work, I believe, after careful observation, that nothing would be more satisfactory to the Northern Christian people than to see this splendid cluster of schools, with their investment of perhaps $20,000,000, past and present, lapse gradually into the hands of the Southern people as a permanent gift to their new educational life.

But we shall greatly mistake if we suppose the most important work in Southern education, during the first fifteen years, has been this friendly demonstration from the North and the Nation. No people can be educated permanently by another people. As far as concerns its educational life, every State of this Union is practically a separate people. Although much can be done, at certain critical periods, as in our new States of the West, by material aid and the inspiration of superior teachers and advanced methods introduced from abroad, yet each of those great States to-day has built up its own system of education, in some respects better than corresponding systems in older commonwealths. So must it be with the South in the building up of the vast enterprise of the New Education. If these sixteen States, or those of them which were involved in the experiment of the Confederacy, had laid dormant through these fifteen years just outlined, or if they had wrought in an obstinate spirit of opposition to education, the prospect now would indeed be hopeless. For there is not power enough under our system of government, in the Nation, the Church, or the people of the North to force the American type of education even into Delaware against its will, to say nothing of the gigantic folly of attempting to school a region larger than Europe, with eighteen millions of people, at arm's length, across a hostile border-land, in the face of political, social, and ecclesiastical disagreement, intensified by a race problem more complex than was ever presented to any civilized land. Thus we can only understand the real sig. nificance, and predict the outcome of what has already been done by the North and the nation in Southern education when we understand what has been going on through these sixteen States during the time already described.

How should we expect the home educational movement to begin in a country so prostrated, demoralized, and socially turned upside down as the South in 1865? And here I record my opinion that the Northern people have never realized and can not understand the widespread ruin of every vital interest that fell upon the revolting States in 1865.

The Confederate resistance to the overwhelming power of the Union was like the heroic, almost preternatural, attempt of the inhabitants of a new Michigan village to fight off an all-consuming fire that is steadily advancing its awful circuit, only to close in with more fatal destruction at the end. No people in modern history had been left so thoroughly prostrate as every class in these revolting States at the close of the war. And in such wholesale overturn the school always goes first. In 1865 there were probably not a hundred of the old academies and colleges in these States in actual session. Many of their buildings were destroyed and all dilapidated; their endowments had vanished; their teachers were dead or scattered, and their patrons were at work driving the wolf from the home door, with no ability to send their growing children to any school, or to establish any thing to take the place of their

former system. The effort of the provisional governments to place the Northern scheme of free elementary education on the ground, continued in some States for ten years, deserved far more respect than it received and more success than it attained. The radical weakness of this movement was the attempt to establish an expensive system of popular education among a people who had never tried it, had not come to believe in it, were not able to pay for it, and, naturally, looked upon it as a hostile movement of the victorious party in the civil war. Yet the South to-day will agree with us that even this experiment had its uses, and left on the ground a large number of schoolhouses and a growing desire for popular education among the masses of both races which has been a powerful stimulant to the home effort of the past ten years.

But only an educational enthusiast will believe that a permanent educational movement can be inaugurated until the educated and responsible class is convinced of its importance, and prepared to take it up in a practical way.

And, just here the leading class of the Southern States displayed that wonderful common sense and "gumption" which is the rarest outcome of our republican order of human affairs. It is possible that a French populace of a century ago might have been fired up with a prodigious enthusiasm to undertake the schooling of the ignorant masses while the whole upper story of educational life was a hopeless wreck. Fortunately for our country, the superior class of Southern people began their new educational work in the plain common-sense way of first rebuilding the school by which their own children could alone be saved from a lapse into the barbarism of ignorance. The most pitiful spectacle on earth is the reverting of an educated people to ignorance; and that was the most imminent peril that faced the Southern school mau in 1865. The 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 of superior and variously educated white people of the South in that year found themselves in hopeless poverty, scattered over an area as large as Europe, outside Russia; the vast majority sparsely distributed through an open country; their homes swarming with children and youth, and no established system of schools to give them that mental training which would be their only outfit in the struggle for success.

In this emergency it would have been unnatural if the people had proceeded in any other way than they did: to get on the ground, at least, a temporary arrangement for the education of their own children and those of their white neighbors more destitute than themselves. To this work they bent themselves with a singleness of purpose and a pertinacity thoroughly American and deserving of all praise. Whatever they may have thought of the great effort of the North and the Nation in behalf of the Negro, they knew that it would be a questionable gain to give the crude elements of knowledge to the children of the freedmen if the offspring of the only educated class in the country was permitted to lapse into barbarism. I have studied carefully the progress of this prodigious effort of the upper strata of the Southern people within the past fifteen years, to reëstablish the upper side of education. We must remember that, in States where the vast majority of respectable people live in the open country, the establishment of even the secondary public school must be the work of years, and the first generation will be fortunate if it gets an effective elementary education fairly on the ground. For fifty years yet the academy in the county town and the college, as we now find it, will be the chief opportunity of all classes of white people for anything beyond the mere elements of schooling, through at least a dozen of these great States. So, for the past fifteen years, these people have toiled, as nobody can know but themselves, through sacrifices almost incomprehensible to our wealthy Northern communities, to rehabilitate their little colleges and academies, and to furnish the small amount necessary to give their children such education as they might in these schools. I undertake to say that this effort alone entitles the South to the profound interest, even admiration of all thoughtful school men eveywhere. The effort has been a most gratifying success. Leaving out the great drift of worthless and indifferent private schools that have sprung up with a mush