26 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



swer turneth away wrath. What is most needed, then, is not an aggres- 

 sive 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 bo 

 brought to the enlargement of the means of educating the negro, giv- 

 ing him a practical training that will lit him for daily practical life, 

 and enable him to compete successfully with his white brother in use- 

 ful vocations. Elevation of character comes with education, pride 

 with elevation of character, and uprightness, integrity, thrift, and de- 

 cency are the sure products of pride. The homes of the educated and 

 skilled labor of our country tell the whole story of the difference be- 

 tween 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 

 80 much has been accomplished — the civil w^ar ; the period of po- 

 litical 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 mas- 

 tery 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 through- 

 out 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 indiflference of a major- 

 ity 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, disap- 

 pointment and despair prevailed in all the Southern States, and all 

 classes were unsettled. It v.as no wonder, then, that with this at- 



