34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



which the people availed themselves of the provision by attendance 

 upon the schools. 



The total number of colored children of school age in the late 

 slave States was in 1882, 1,944,572, an increase of 15,385 ; and of those 

 enrolled, 802,982, an increase of 610. There were for these 15,972 

 schools a decrease of 1,081. Besides which there were fifty-six normal 

 schools, an increase of nine, with 8,509 pupils, an increase of 888 ; 

 forty-three institutions for secondary instruction, an increase of nine, 

 with 6,632 pupils, an increase of 1,348 ; eighteen universities and col- 

 leges, an increase of one, with 2,298 pupils, an increase of 95 ; twenty- 

 four schools of theology, an increase of two, with 605 pupils, an in- 

 crease of 61 ; four schools of law, an increase of one, with 53 pupils, 

 an increase of 8 ; three schools of medicine, an increase of one, with 

 125 pupils, an increase of 9 ; six schools for the deaf and dumb and 

 the blind, an increase of four, with 116 pupils, a decrease of 4 ; mak- 

 ing a grand total of 16,086 schools, colleges, etc., a decrease of 1,289, 

 with 821,380 pupils, an increase of 3,015 over those reported in 1881. 



Nothing in the progress of the South since the close of the civil 

 war is so gratifying as these exhibits of growth in educational facili- 

 ties and this steady increase in the number of scholars of both races. 

 The people of the Northern States will never be able to understand or 

 comprehend all that it is to us of the South. All the expenses and 

 money losses of these States during the war were represented in bonds 

 and other forms of Government indebtedness, which were so much 

 of addition to the property values of that section. But the Southern 

 States lost everything — their slaves, their crops, and all the profits of 

 their industrial efforts for five years, their public (Confederate) debt, 

 nearly all of their railroad and steamboat property, fifty per cent of 

 their homesteads, their farm-fences, mills, and gins, the whole repre- 

 senting a total value variously estimated at from $9,000,000,000 to 

 $11,000,000,000. It was a clean sweep — so clean that both Generals 

 Grant and Sherman found it necessary to permit the officers and pri- 

 vates of the Confederate armies to retain their horses and mules to 

 make crops ; and Governor Brownlow's Legislature in Tennessee passed 

 an act making the stealing of a mule or a horse punishable by death, 

 on the expressed ground that the mule and the horse were essential 

 to the life of the people — without them bread could not be made. 

 Following upon the heels of this utter destitution and the consequent 

 prostration and despondency, came the period of reconstruction, which 

 increased the confusion that prevailed, re-excited the passions of the 

 war, and added to it all a race-feeling that for a time was at a white 

 heat — a feeling that was a new experience to the people of the South. 

 Out of this extreme of general poverty, out of this race-feeling and 

 political passion and prejudice, order was slowly evoked, and with 

 it came the steady growth of a healthy public sentiment favorable 

 first to public education and then to the education of the negro. 



