Black and White

acy-Its

Table of

a long night of mental darkness. It was a crime to teach a black man how to read even the Bible, the sacred repository of the laws that must light the pathway of man from death unto life eternal. For to teach a slave was to make a firebrand-to arouse that love of freedom which stops at nothing short of absolute freedom. It is n

ISTICS OF EDUCAT

------------------------

e Co

--------- -------

roll- [A] School

ment popu

------------------------

07,483 49 170,413

c]53,229 29 [b]54,332

25,053 80 3,954

]18,871 41 [b]42,099

150,134 64 [d]197,1

c]241,679 50 [e]66,56

[d]44,052 32 [c]134,1

134,210 63 [f]63,591

112,994 64 251,438

54,218 67 41,489 2

136,481 47 167,55

3 61,219 73 [g]144,

229,290 57 141,509

38,912 81 [h]62,01

152,136 48 240,98

4 138,799 68 7,74

tri

16,934 57 13,946

-- -- --------- -

215,674 1,803,257

------------------------

centage of the schoo

Total Expenditure

cky the school-tax collected from colored citizens is the only State appropriation for the support of colored schools; in Maryland there is a biennial appropriation by the Legislature; in the District of Colu

es failed to make

Esti

In 1

chool age is 6 to 20

nsus o

In 1

ome duplicates; the actual

the bill for National "Aid to Common Schools" being under c

632, or a total of $76,922,067, (see tables 2 and 7,) or one-tenth of the whole, while they contain one-fifth of the school-population. The causes which have produced this state of things in the Southern States are far less important than the facts themse

om of ignorance and the tyranny of an irresponsible suffrage. Secession, and a confederacy founded upon slavery as its chief cornerstone, would be better than the future of the Southern States-better for both races, too-if the nation is to permit one-third, and that the fairest portion of its domain, to become the spawning ground

y to use it intelligently is created by universal education. Until the republican constitutions, framed in accordance with the Congressional reconstruction which supplanted the governments initiated by President Johnson, common-school systems, like universal suffrage, were unknown. Hence in a special manner the natio

es and refugees in the earlier days of reconstruction, while religious charities have founded many special schools which have thus far cost some ten milli

e one; so shall we be forever. But both North and South have a fiercer and more doubtful fight with the forces of ig

erefore, that the measure of "National Aid to Education" has so many and so persistent advocates. I wish to place myself among them. If the safety of republican government abides in the intelligence and virtue of the people, it can very readi

ved as a provocation to peculation and chicanery, but it has nerved the courage of the assassin and made merry the midnight ride of armed mobs bent upon righting wrongs by committing crimes before which the atrocities of savage warfare pale. Wholesale murders have been committed and sovereign m

ducated out of $12,475,044 is sufficient to arouse the apprehension of the most indifferent friend of good g

is the same argument used by Mr. Lincoln when he emancipated the slaves. This argument is strong, and will always greatly influence a certain class of people. And,

of the fundamental law of the land. If this be a correct statement of the case, and I assume that it is, the Union (and not the States, severally) is responsible for the ignorance of the black people of the South. Slavery could not have existed and grown in the Union save by permission of all the States of the Union. It is therefore obvious that the agency which created and fostere

rty, thereby inviting capitalists to invest in it; and it was the Union which declared such contracts null and void by the abolition of slavery, or confiscation of slave property. As I said before, I have no sympathy with those who invested their money in slave property. They not only received their just deserts in having their property confiscated, but they should have been compelled to make restitution to the last penny to the poor slaves whom they had systematically robbed. But perhaps this would have been carrying justice too near the ideal. For the great debt to the slave, who was robbed o

illion dollars would have bought every slave in the South in 1860, but fifty billions would not have adequately recompensed the slave for enforced labor and debased manhood. The debt grows in magnitude the closer it is inspected. And yet there are those who will laugh this claim to scorn; who will be unabl

to the man and outrage upon the laws of God, the common Parent of all mankind. There are those in this country-men too of large influence, however small their wit, who, aping miserably the masterly irony of Junius, speak of the black man as the "ward of the nation"-a sort of pauper, dependent upon the charity of a generous and humane people for sustenance, and even tolerance to dwell among them, to enjoy the blessing of a civilization which I pronounce to be reared upon quicksand, a civilization more fruitful of poverty, misery and crime than of competence, happiness and virtue. Those who regard the black man in the light of a "ward of the nation," are too narrow-minded, ignorant or ungenerous to deserve my contempt. The people of this country have been made fabulously affluent by legalized robbery of the black man; the coffers of the National Government have overflowed into the channels of subsidy and peculation, enriching sharpers and thieves, with the earnings of slave labor; while nineteen out of every twenty

pardy by the assaults of an enemy who plans our destruction three thousand miles away than of the enemy within our very bosoms? Was it the puissance of the barbarian arms or the corruption and enervation of the character of her people which worked the downfall of Rome? Was it influences from without or influences from within which corrupted the integrity of the people of Sparta and led to their subjugation by a more sturdy people? Let us learn by the striking examples of history. A people's greatness should be measured, not by its magnificent palaces, decked out in all the gaudy splendors of art and needless luxuries, the price of piracy or direct thievery; not in the number of colossal fortunes accumulated out of the stipend of the orphan and widow and the son of toil; not in the extent and richness of its public buildings and palaces of idle amusement; not in vast aggregations of capital in the coffers of the common treasury-capital unnecessarily diverted from the channels of trade, extorted from the people by the ignorance of their "wise men," who seek in vain for a remedy for the evil, because they do not want to find o

reserve them and reap their fullest benefits, they should be instructed in the

TNO

the evil lies in a protective tariff