Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 1.djvu/334

300 General Shepley was military governor of Louisiana, under General Butler's régime, a school board was appointed for the purpose of reorganizing the public schools of New Orleans. A corps of loyal teachers was appointed, and the education of the children was conducted with a view to make them loyal citizens. The National airs were frequently sung in the schools, and other exercises introduced, calculated to impregnate the youthful minds of the pupils with affection for their country. It appears that this feature of the public schools was distasteful to that class of people with whose feelings they did not accord.

Mr. H. Kennedy, acting mayor of New Orleans, early in September last, disbanded the school board which so far had conducted the educational affairs of the city, and appointed a new one. The composition of this new school board was such as to induce General Canby to suspend its functions until he could inquire into the loyalty of its members. The report of the officer intrusted with the investigation shows that a large majority of the members had sympathized with the rebellion, and aided the Confederate Government in a variety of ways. But as no evidence was elicited proving the members legally incapable of holding office, General Canby considered himself obliged to remove the prohibition, and the new school board entered upon its functions.

The real substance, stripped of all circumlocutions, of an editorial taken from the New Orleans Times, of September 12, evidently written in defense of the measure, can be expressed in a few words: “The schools of New Orleans have been institutions so intensely and demonstratively loyal as to become unpopular with those of our fellow-citizens to whom such demonstrations are distasteful, and they must be brought back under ‘popular control’ so as to make them cease to be obnoxious in that par-