Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XIV. SOME WORK GOOD PEOPLE ARE DOING. NO honest man who can read and understand statistics will study the United States Census, or the Annual Reports of the Honorable Commissioner of Education, and deny that there is an appalling mass of illiteracy in the Southern States, both among the white people and the negroes. As to the illiteracy of the negroes, (who make the vast majority of untaught people in the South, ) something may be said in extenuation. As to illiteracy among the white people of the South, I do not know any excuse good enough to offer. / wish I did. In the United States Senate, December 15, 1880, the Hon. Joseph E. Brown, one of the senators from Georgia, delivered an able speech on the " Bill to Establish an Educational Fund," etc. A few paragraphs I quote because they state fairly a case not fully understood, it seems. Senator Brown, after describing the processes by which the negro became a freeman and a voter, proceeds to state the attitude of the South toward the question of his education then and now. The senator said: "A grave problem arises here for solution. They must be educated; but we are not able to educate them. Why not? We claimed to be a wealthy people before the war. So we were; but we lost, according to the best estimates, about two billions of dollars in the value of our slaves. It was that much gold value, our own under the Constitution of the United States, which we lost by the war, and it was gone forever. That impoverished us to that extent, and it was a very heavy draft. Then we had to support the Confederate armies for four years, without a dollar of help, out of our substance. True, we issued Confederate bonds and notes; they were paid out of our substance, but at the end of the war they...
