The records in the Department of Education, in Washington City, show that
in the recent slave States of the Union the total school population was,
in 1881, 5,814,261. Of these, 3,973,676 were white; 1,840,585 colored
children. Counting both races the total school enrollment for 1881 was
3,034,896; of these 2,232,337 were white, 802,559 colored children.
Nearly half the white, and more than half the colored school population
was, in 1881, out of school. In some of these States the school term is
from three to five months; in the cotton States not more than three.
Perhaps five months each year is as long a school term as the conditions
and needs of the laboring classes in these States will allow.
In 1881 these States expended upon their public schools $13,359,784;
except perhaps in one state this money was expended without distinction
of race. The races have schools of their own; doctrinaires would mix them
by force of law; those who are actually doing the work of education in
these States know that this can not be done, and that only harm would
come of it, if the experiment were attempted. For neither race would do
so well if taught together; the colored children do not desire mixed
schools, and the white children will not attend them. In such conditions
law is helpless, and force is folly; also ruin.