Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/34

Rh turneth away wrath. What is most needed, then, is not an aggressive agitation for social recognition in public places and conveyances, and in schools and churches, but education. Educate the negro, that he may be really free. The whole power of public opinion should be brought to the enlargement of the means of educating the negro, giving him a practical training that will lit him for daily practical life, and enable him to compete successfully with his white brother in useful vocations. Elevation of character comes with education, pride with elevation of character, and uprightness, integrity, thrift, and decency are the sure products of pride. The homes of the educated and skilled labor of our country tell the whole story of the difference between that and unskilled and ignorant labor. Let us look at what has been accomplished by education. Let us review the past, year by year, as we find the figures and facts in Commissioner Eaton's reports, and see what has been done—see if we are justified in thus insisting that education is the sure hope of the negro; and while we look, let us keep constantly in view all the difficulties through which so much has been accomplished—the civil war; the period of political reconstruction, during which all passions and prejudices were allowed the freest play; the utter dejection and poverty of the white people; the extraordinary social upheaval, unequaled in any period of the world's history save during the French Revolution; the mastery of the negro in the political misrule of the Southern States, and the fears of utter ruin beyond recovery by the white people as a result of that mastery in misrule. Let us keep all this steadily in view, and the work of breaking so great a block of black ignorance will seem like a miracle indeed.

In 1860 there were 244,492 adult free colored people in the whole Union, and of that number 95,265 were illiterate, a fact to be accounted for by the laws in force in the Southern States against the education of the negro. In the same year there were out of 4,000,000 of slaves 1,734,000 adults, all of them of course illiterates. The average increase of this 4,000,000 is given by the census of 1860 as 80,000 per year, so that in 1867, when colored school reports became accessible, the total colored population would be, for the eight years including 1860, 4,640,000. Of this number in 1867, according to the Freedman's Bureau statistics, 111,442 were enrolled in the day and night schools throughout the South, and in 1869 this number had increased to 114,522. Very slow progress, in part due to the indifference and opposition of the whites, who about that time were the victims of the reconstruction system, and in greater part to the reckless indifference of a majority of the negroes, who had been plunged in the excesses of political Saturnalias, and were helping the carpet-baggers to rob the States and burden posterity with bonded debts. Chaos and confusion, disappointment and despair prevailed in all the Southern States, and all classes were unsettled. It was no wonder, then, that with this