On the staircase of the Berlin Museum, the great artist Kaulbach
has represented the intensity of the battle of the Huns by
picturing the spirits of the dead warriors rising up in a cloud
above that battle-field and prolonging the contest in a spiritual
war. It seems to me a type of all great moral strifes. After the
roar of the cannon has died away, and the dead have been laid in
their graves, the spirits and the principles involved in the battle
grapple with one another for victory.
For four long years North and South met in the crash of material
strife, and now, for sixteen years, Northern principles and
Southern principles have been meeting in a death grapple, and the
victory will not be won until Northern principles conquer. For four
years North and South met in the crash of battle, setting four
million slaves free from chattel bondage, and for sixteen years
North and South have met in the silent strife of spiritual warfare,
to set what are now over six millions free from the grosser bondage
of ignorance. When, in 1865, four and a half million Freedmen
knocked at the school-house of the South for admittance, you are
most of you aware of the prejudice and opposition that met them;
but are you aware what the school-house was at which they knocked?
The South never had provided an education for the masses. Its
theory was to educate the higher classes and leave the masses
alone, even those of the whites. It never had an adequate school
system before the war. North Carolina was the only state in the
Confederacy that kept up anything like public schools during
the war, and at its close her permanent school fund of nearly
$3,000,000 was lost.
After sixteen years’ replenishment, the entire school property
of the eight Southern States, reported by the Commissioner of
Education in his last report in 1879—the value of the sites,
buildings and all other school property—does not amount to much
over seven millions, or, leaving Kentucky out, much over five
millions. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia, which
do not report, are poor in school property. Leaving Kentucky and
West Virginia out, with their four millions, in all the States
south of them there are probably not to-day $7,000,000 of school
property. New York, with her $30,000,000, has four times as much
as all this South. Your Massachusetts, although it does not fully
report, has doubtless the same multiple; and eight states of the
North have each more school property to-day than all the school
property of this South.
Moreover, these poorly equipped states, indifferent to the
education of the poor whites, and prejudiced against the education
of the poor blacks, were awfully, bitterly poor. In 1870, after
recovering from the worst shock of the war, there was nearly $1,500
in Massachusetts for every man, but there was in Alabama, Georgia
and North Carolina only a little over $200 for every man. Do you
realize that $2,000,000,000 had been put into Confederate bonds to
support that war, and that it was all gone? What would have been
the state of the North if our public debt had been repudiated?
And besides that, everything was in ruin, industries prostrated,
society convulsed, and this poor stricken country had to lift
up the debt of the Union as well as the North itself. We said
bitterly, “They do not educate.” We said angrily, “They _won’t_
educate;” and, brethren, we ought to have said charitably, “Alas,
O God, they _can’t_ educate!” Such, briefly, was the condition
sixteen years ago. Now what has been done? Northern aid leaped
to the rescue, as you well know. Millions have been given. That
black form, lying blinded by ignorance at our feet, was bent over
by patient, tender Christian sympathy, and the cataract lifted
from his eyes with a golden, jeweled knife. Why, I look at the car
of educational progress in the South, and under it I see 50,000
glittering wheels, on which it is rolling on, and those wheels
are each one of them a ten dollar gold piece given last year by
the North. There was, in the last report of the Commissioner of
Education, 129 schools of higher education for colored youth and
over 14,000 scholars in them; and almost without exception each of
these schools has against it a name indicative that it sprung up
out of Northern Christian benevolence. This is only a part of what
the North has done.
But, friends, we hear a great deal about this and we hear very
little of what the South has done. Twenty years ago it was the law
of the land that the negro should not be educated; and now in every
state in the South it is the constitutional law that he shall be
educated; and furthermore, the commissioners of these states say
they will devote every energy within them to carry out this law.
Kentucky (shame on her!) and Delaware (shame on her!) give to the
negro what he pays in taxes, and they are pretty far North; all the
rest of the South give of the school fund _per capita_ to the negro
and to the white; and the constitutions of the states which enjoin
this have been endorsed since the war by conventions in which
the majority were white and originally secessionists. Oh yes! we
Northerners gave, I know, $500,000 last year to educate the negro;
Southern tax payers gave over $4,000,000 to educate him. I am
comparing not the spirit in giving, but the amounts actually given.
In our 129 schools we have 14,000 scholars. In the 14,000 colored
public schools of the South there are nearly 700,000 scholars.
But that is not all. In sixteen years, Northern principle has
conquered this and it has conquered Southern approval as well. I
know the great bulk do not feel as Orr feels, the Commissioner of
Georgia; as Brown feels, Senator and ex-Governor of Georgia; as
Curry feels, administrator of the Peabody fund and ex-Senator of
the Confederate Congress; as, above all, Haygood feels. I wish
every man in this house would read “Our Brother in Black,” by
President Haygood, of Emory College, Oxford, Ga., and so learn the
true situation. I have been told, since that book was written,
that that man went into a colored school in his native place,
and leaning on his cane, wept tears during all the examinations,
and, rising up, in a trembling voice begged pardon of the colored
teacher and the colored scholars because he had misunderstood and
opposed a movement so Christian. Ah, friends, let us recognize it
to-day. The South is waking up. These are exceptions; they are
leaders. But the great masses follow on. There are hundreds of
thousands of white Christians in the South who love Christ as you
and I do. They have the Bible; they have the Holy Spirit; they
have missionary societies. President Haygood says it is absurd,
and I say it is impossible, that a man who believes in sending
missionaries to Africa should prolong opposition to missionaries
for the Freedmen. He says truly that the battle never will be won
until Southern white women sit before dusky faces and teach such
scholars how to read. A school surrounded by a hostile community is
a fortress and not a school, and crippled in all its usefulness.
Under the crape-hung flag of the Union, mourning the loss of a
Northern President who set slaves free before the Emancipation
Proclamation declared them free, and with his sword helped cut
down the Southern cause, ex-Confederate generals have cried out of
the South to the North, “He is _our_ President!” O, let us cease
the old war cry of ’65; let us wipe out of all our reports and
papers, as an Association, everything calculated to excite the old
animosities, and cry back in a spirit of full fraternal charity,
“Our brethren, by that sign of sorrow.”
Now in view of this work and spirit of the South, what must be
done? We, as an Association, must redouble our efforts. There is
every reason to help the South trying to help itself. There is
only one scholar, in every colored school, supported by the North,
and suppose every single one graduates, to supply one teacher
for every public colored school in the South. Think of it! And
that leaves out of calculation one and one half million of church
members pleading for preachers. According to the last report of the
Commissioner of Education, the North gave to the higher schools
of education at the South in 1879 less than $500,000. It gave to
the same schools in the North, benevolently, charitably, about
$5,000,000. We hear much about $50,000 given to Berea College.
We hear little about $500,000 to the college in Cleveland.
One-fortieth of all negroes in the world are in the United States;
one-fifteenth are in North and South America.
But I will leave others to speak of that, and pass in closing to
speak of what our National Government must do now. Millions of
dollars are needed to do it. No agency but the central Government
can or should meet this need. It cannot be done by Northern
benevolence; that is inadequate, utterly inadequate. The North
would only pauperize the South, if it could and did do it. It
cannot be done by the Southern states. These Southern states
(leaving out Maryland, Missouri, Delaware and District of Columbia)
contributed in 1879 to public school education only eight and a
half millions. Of the North, Illinois gave eight, Ohio seven,
Pennsylvania eight, New York ten millions to their public schools.
This contribution of the South seems and is very niggardly, but it
is a question how much increase we can expect. The South is loaded
down with poverty, debts and heavy taxes. The other day a prominent
platform speaker made a comparison between Arkansas and Kansas
in order to illustrate the inferiority of Southern education. He
said that in 1877 Kansas sent 87 per cent of her children to the
schools, and Arkansas 8 per cent. Kansas raised $5.65 for each
scholar, and Arkansas raised 50 cents. Then he went on to say that
Kansas and Arkansas were in about the same financial condition.
I looked that up this morning, and I found that Arkansas had a
debt of five millions, and Kansas had a debt of one million; that
Arkansas had $87,000,000 taxable property with which to pay her
debt of five millions, while Kansas had $160,000,000 to pay her
debt of one million; and that Arkansas was paying a state tax of 65
cents on every hundred, and Kansas was paying 55 cents.
Now we must remember that the South is bitterly taxed, awfully
in debt, and very poor. I will read one more statistic and stop.
Louisiana has 330,930 school children (those who ought to be);
Massachusetts, 303,836. The school income in Louisiana is $613,453;
in Massachusetts, $4,399,801. The value of school property in
Louisiana is $700,000; in Massachusetts you cannot estimate it;
it is not estimated. You say Louisiana is not doing anything for
her children as compared with Massachusetts. True; but carry the
comparison farther. The whole taxable property of Louisiana is not
$150,000,000; and the whole taxable property of Massachusetts is
$1,500,000,000. The debt of Louisiana is about $16,000,000; your
debt, deducting the sinking fund, is $21,000,000. The amount raised
by taxes in Louisiana is half that raised in Massachusetts. You pay
3½ cents state tax on every $100, and Louisiana pays 60 cents.
Have you, paying 3½ cents, the face to ask her to increase her 60
cents, when this evil at the South springs out of a national sin
and involves a national peril? Not one million of the Southern
population are in cities. The problem is one of educational
facilities in poor sparsely settled agricultural districts. The
South unquestionably needs a different spirit in educational
matters; but even with the best spirit, it needs national aid.
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