284 



EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. 



and high schools, to the State University, is 

 coming to be established, wherever the popu- 

 lation is sufficiently dense to warrant it, and 

 every appliance which can aid teachers or 

 scholars in the work of instruction is brought 

 into requisition. There are yet too many un- 

 sightly, inconvenient, and dilapidated school- 

 houses in all our States, but the number of 

 good, well-constructed, and pleasantly-situated, 

 school edifices is rapidly on the increase. The 

 qualifications required of a teacher are much 

 higher than a few years ago, and the incompe- 

 tent, lazy, ignorant, and careless teachers have 

 been very generally weeded out. 



On the 2d of March, 1867, Congress estab- 

 lished by law a " Department of Education," 

 and, on the 16th of the same month, Henry 

 Barnard, LL. D., then president of St. John's 

 College, Annapolis, was confirmed by the 

 Senate as Commissioner of Education and 

 head of the department. The work of the 

 commissioner, during the remainder of 1867, 

 was mainly confined ^to the collection of facts 

 and statistics relative to the condition of edu- 

 cation, special and general, throughout the 

 United States, and the embodiment of the facts 

 so far as ascertained in a report to Congress. 



The condition of the public schools in the 

 Southern States has never been other than de- 

 fective, owing in a great measure to causes hith- 

 erto beyond control, but which are now, to some 

 extent, removed. The number of academies, 

 seminaries, and colleges, though not relatively 

 large, as compared with the population, was 

 greater than in those States where their place 

 was supplied by high schools and grammar 

 schools, on the public-school system. These 

 were attended almost exclusively by the chil- 

 dren of the planting and wealthy classes. Very 

 few of these schools ranked high in the charac- 

 ter or thoroughness of their institution; but 

 whether good or bad, they were the principal 

 dependence of the people of the South, except 

 in the larger towns and cities, for education. 

 The sparse and scattered population of the 

 country, an inevitable result of the plantation 

 system, rendered the establishment of district 

 schools, as they exist in the Northern States, 

 impossible. 



But the change in the condition of the South, 

 though it has many sad and painful aspects, is, 

 on the whole, exceedingly favorable to the dif- 

 fusion of education in the future, The former 

 slaves, now freedmen, are eager to acquire 

 knowledge; and though the adults generally 

 tnaynot attain to anything beyond reading im- 

 perfectly, and perhaps learning to write their 

 names, they are determined that their children 

 shall have a better education. The poor whites, 

 who have hitherto cared little for education, 

 have been stimulated by the competition of the 

 freedmen, and by their observation of the advan- 

 tages of education among the private soldiers 

 of the Union army, and are equally desirous of 

 having their children educated. There is, in- 

 deed, one difficulty in the way of this more 



general diffusion of education, at least for the 

 present, viz., the deep poverty of the peopled 

 The school-funds arising from the sale of public 

 lands, with which most of those States (all the 

 newer ones) were endowed, have been, in a 

 great measure, perverted from their purpose, 

 and in some of the States were invested in 

 Confederate bonds. These are not, therefore, 

 to any great extent, available ; and the amount 

 raised by tax, in the present depressed condition 

 of those States, will hardly be more than suf- 

 ficient to defray the current expenses of the 

 State governments. There is, therefore, a 

 necessity for the present for help from abroad, 

 for the maintenance or partial maintenance of 

 public schools, for the education of the masses. 

 The people, and especially the freedmen, are 

 doing all that they can. More than a thousand 

 of the schools for the children of freedmen, the 

 past year, were sustained wholly or in great 

 part by the freedmen themselves; and in many 

 sections of the South the^oor whites are doing 

 all that they are able, to maintain the schools 

 which have been established for their children. 

 These efforts on their part have been supple- 

 mented hitherto from two sources: the Freed- 

 men's Bureau, which has aided, with Govern- 

 ment appropriations and supplies, in sustaining 

 teachers, erecting and furnishing school-houses, 

 etc., for both freedmen and whites, to a limited 

 extent; and the benevolent associations, the 

 Frecdmen's and Union Commissions, the Ameri- 

 can Missionary Association, the Free Mission 

 Society, and the Home Mission Societies of the 

 different denominations. But none of these 

 sources have sufficed for so vast a work as is 

 needed to be done at once. To transform the 

 millions of ignorant children into intelligent 

 youths, to whom in a few years will be com- 

 mitted the interests of those States, is a work 

 requiring a vast expenditure, and one which 

 would better repay such expenditure than any 

 other conceivable. 



It was doubtless from this view of the matter 

 that that noble philanthropist, George Peabody, 

 was led to make that magnificent donation, the 

 largest ever bestowed by a private individual 

 for the promotion of general education; He 

 appropriated $2,100,000, of which $1,000,000 

 was in funds immediately available, for the aid 

 of common-school education in the Southern 

 States, and placed this amount in the hands of 

 the following board of trustees : Hon. Robert 

 C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts ; Hon. Hamilton 

 Fish, of New York; Right Rev. Charles P. 

 Mcllvaine, of Ohio ; General U. S. Grant, of 

 the United States Army ; Admiral D. G. Farra- 

 gut, of the United States Navy; Hon. "William 

 C. Rives, of Virginia; Hon. John Clifford, of 

 Massachusetts; Hon. William Aiken, of South 

 Carolina; William M. Evarts, Esq., of New 

 York; Hon. William A. Graham, of North 

 Carolina; Charles Macalister, Esq., of Penn- 

 sylvania ; George W. Riggs, Esq., of Washing- 

 ton ; Samuel Wetmore, Esq., of New York ; 

 George N. Eaton, Esq., of Maryland, and George 



