Free 
 
 Schools—Are they in Danger ? 
 If so, from what Sources ? 
 
 -*- 
 
 SPEECH OF HON. HENRY W. BLAIR 
 
 OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, 
 
 In the House of Representatives, Saturday, July 29, 1876. 
 
 iw^- i m i fpn - 
 
 The House having under consideration the 
 bill (H. R. No. 748) introduced by Hon. Gil¬ 
 bert C. Walker, of Virginia, to apply the pro¬ 
 ceeds of public lands to the education of the 
 people— 
 
 Mr. BLAIR said: 
 
 Mr. Speaker : This bill, lacking some useful 
 safeguards, is substantially a measure prepared 
 by Hon. George F. Hoar and passed by the 
 House of Representatives of the Forty-second 
 Congress on the 8th day of February, 1873, by 
 •a nearly solid republican majority, against the 
 bitter and almost unanimous opposition of the 
 democratic members of the House. The cus¬ 
 tomary arguments' employed by that party 
 against the power of the nation, as such, to as¬ 
 sert its sovereignty and its right to live and to 
 be and to exercise the necessary functions of 
 growth and self-defense whenever the interests 
 of the nation in their massiveness and grandeur 
 seem as a mighty whole to preponderate over 
 the authority and supremacy of its subdivisions, 
 known as the States, were urged with great 
 vehemence to defeat this most emphatically 
 beneficent measure and to protect the consoli¬ 
 dated ignorance and prejudice of the country, 
 which are the basic elements of the falsely 
 styled democratic party of our times, in their 
 secure position as the enemies of popular educa¬ 
 tion and the destroyers of free schools. 
 
 In this Congress an honorable democratic 
 carpet-bagger, now from Virginia, has had the 
 temerity, and I may be allowed to add, if he 
 will consent to receive the homage of an hum¬ 
 ble member from his own native North, the in¬ 
 telligent and manly and patriotic independence 
 to introduce and, with the co-operation of his 
 republican associates upon the committee, to 
 advocate upon the floor of this House the cause 
 of the common school. It is a hopeful sign ; 
 yet the gentleman well knows that he is iden¬ 
 tified in political action, with that great party 
 which, in the section of our country to which lie 
 has transported the elevated and inextinguisha¬ 
 ble impulses of the early home of the town 
 meeting and of the common school, has from 
 
 time whereof the memory of man runneth not 
 to the contrary, acquired and maintained its 
 power by suppressing freedom of speech and of 
 the press, and by prohibiting under penalties, 
 proscription, mob violence, and death the edu¬ 
 cation and consequent general diffusion of in¬ 
 telligence, happiness, prosperity, and power 
 among the‘whole people of the land. 
 
 But, sir, I welcome the fact that even a dem¬ 
 ocratic carpet-bagger (note that he was a carpet¬ 
 bagger, however—the South is under great 
 obligations to carpet-baggers) has dared to make 
 his record in favor of free schools, and the en¬ 
 actment of a law which will have some tendency 
 to promote their prosperity, (although as the 
 bill gives, and I am glad of it, most of the pro¬ 
 ceeds of the lands to the South,) there is method 
 in this idiosyncrasy, as a most hopeful omen, 
 and ardently pray for the day when the native 
 and ruling public men of the South, whose 
 desperate warfare upon this primal institution 
 of the Republic, during all the vicissitudes of 
 the century, has been her chief curse, shall 
 recognize the great truth that liberty is bom 
 only in the mangers of God’s poor, cradled in 
 the common school, and made mighty and per¬ 
 petual by the exercise of a suffrage unrestricted 
 by color, race, and condition in life, and uni¬ 
 versal as the impress of His image who hath 
 made of one blood all the nations of the earth. 
 And although the passage of this bill can cost 
 the Southern leaders no sacrifice of principle or 
 policy, and therefore involves them in no em¬ 
 barrassment in waging their home warfare upon 
 schools, yet I shall be heartily glad if the hope 
 of political capital, or any other motive shall 
 compel the passage of this bill at the present 
 session. 
 
 I am one of those who have no faith, no hope 
 in the future of this country only so long, and 
 so far as the people are both intelligent and 
 upright; nor is it possible to preserve the hon- 
 .esty and simple virtues of republicanism with¬ 
 out the means of early mental discipline are 
 provided for all; and if necessary their use 
 must be made compulsory by the successive 
 
2 
 
 generations, during tlie tender and impressible 
 years of childhood and youth. Honesty and 
 sincerity are consistent with the most danger¬ 
 ous prejudices and the most cruel and nefarious 
 purposes, in public and private life. No man 
 is fit to be a sovereign—as sovereigns we all are 
 in theory—unless he has the power to think 
 continuously and to reason consecutively, and 
 is able to acquire and has acquired the common 
 knowledge which surrounds him pertaining to 
 economic and political affairs. If his powers 
 are disciplined, and he knows the facts he will 
 reason from correct premises, and his moral 
 sense or conscience will obey the dictates of 
 reason. And thus a sound morality must and 
 will exist as the offspring and inseparable con¬ 
 sequence and companion of intelligence and 
 disciplined mental powers. This is primary 
 truth so universally conceded that I shall be 
 accused of wasting time in its statement. Yet 
 I believe that wise statesmanship often recurs 
 to general principles, and that there is no bet¬ 
 ter reading for a legislator, and for the people 
 themselves, who are the primary law-givers of 
 the land, than the eloquent and elevated senti¬ 
 ments of the fathers, as they are embodied in 
 the grand though simple bills of rights and ear¬ 
 lier constitutions and declarations, which have 
 come down to us from the resplendent lumina¬ 
 ries who live eternal in the horizon of our 
 history. # 
 
 Our system of government is based upon the 
 necessary position that knowledge is power. 
 Government itself is only another name for 
 power; it is the supreme power in the State. 
 That power which controls nations must be 
 either brute power or intelligent power. We 
 are compelled to choose between these forms, 
 or rather principles of control. We have learned 
 through the sad records of six thousand years 
 of almost universal tyranny and misery, that no 
 free government is long perpetuated, unless its 
 force is distributed among all individuals, or 
 unless their essential rights are preserved and 
 protected in constitutions or customs, which 
 constitute iron restrictions upon the encroach¬ 
 ments of the executive power of the State. We 
 have learned that the tyranny of a mob or of 
 an ignorant multitude is far worse than all the 
 possible excesses of a single despot. We are 
 thus driven to the absolute necessity of making 
 the controling element of our Government uni¬ 
 versal intelligence and morality which results 
 from it, or of ultimately yielding up our system 
 of universal suffrage—that is, the distribution 
 of sovereignty to all—and the adoption of the 
 despotic theory of government. I do not mean 
 that there is not more or less of freedom and 
 security to the rights of men in forms of gov¬ 
 ernment where the ballot is either unknown or 
 is rarely exercised by the people.- 
 
 Arbitrary power is oftentimes partially de¬ 
 throned and placed in subjection to some great, 
 broad limitation, in accordance with which 
 alone will the people consent that the reigning 
 power exist at all. Such was the grand achieve¬ 
 ment which wrench' d the great charter from 
 the unwilling hands of King John at Runny - 
 mede, and other similar victories of popular 
 over regal authority, which are embodied and 
 
 are perpetually active in the constitution of 
 England, and other limited monarchies of the 
 world. But what I mean is this, that our sys¬ 
 tem, being based upon the universal distribu¬ 
 tion of the sovereignty among all the individual 
 men of the nation, and that power once distrib¬ 
 uted necessarily remaining so, until revolution 
 collects it again and vests sovereignty in an 
 aristocracy or in a single despot, each man must 
 be qualified by disciplined reason, virtue, and 
 knowledge for the correct exercise of the power 
 which is vested in him, or he is unfit to possess 
 it; and it must logically follow either that he 
 and such as he must surrender it or that by the 
 gradual spread of ignorance and incompetency 
 to govern universal sovereignty will surrender 
 to the control of the few who do possess that 
 knowledge, which, directed for selfish and des¬ 
 potic ends, enables them to triumph and riot 
 in the enslavement and miseries of mankind. 
 
 Sir, the one first indispensable thing is the power 
 to think , and whatever people has that power, 
 and most of it, will be most free. Virtue re¬ 
 sults from it, because virtue is the child of con¬ 
 science, and a safe conscience must be instructed 
 by intelligence. The common school, then, is 
 the basis of freedom, and the system is an ab¬ 
 solute condition precedent, to the spread and 
 perpetuity of republican institutions through¬ 
 out the country and the world. Ignorance is 
 slavery. No matter what are the existing forms 
 of a government, ignorance will reduce them to 
 the one form of despotism as surely as gravity 
 will bring the stone to the earth and keep it 
 there. Knowledge is liberty, and no matter 
 what the forms of government, knowledge gen¬ 
 erally diffused will carry liberty, life, and 
 power to all men, and establish universal free¬ 
 dom so long, and only so long, as the people 
 are universally made capable of its exercise by 
 universal intelligence. It is a fundamental 
 error to think that freedom is simply the exer¬ 
 cise of one’s rights. Freedom is the poioer to 
 exercise them. Freedom is sovereignty. It is 
 not mere happiness; it is the power to com¬ 
 mand the conditions of happiness. The veriest 
 tyrant might permit his slaves to possess more 
 of the actual material comforts and fruitions of 
 life, than could be com'manded by the free 
 spirit of an unconquerable people; but it is 
 only a universally intelligent people who can 
 know its rights, and knowing dare to maintain 
 them. 
 
 The centennial year of the Eepublic is a fit¬ 
 ting time to examine our actual condition. The 
 process is necessary. It is of an importance 
 transcending all questions which relate to finance 
 and internal and foreign or party policy. It is 
 an examination of the heart of the Republic, of 
 the sources of its life. 
 
 Of what use is it to raise, discipline, and em¬ 
 battle armies, if the blood of the Republic it¬ 
 self is corrupted and she must ultimately fall, 
 perhaps under the blows of her own military 
 enginery, controlled by an ambitious and con¬ 
 quering usurper ? Why vex the seas with our 
 navies, gallant and invincible, if they are’only 
 to spread the fame of Ms power, where the en¬ 
 sign of the Republic once typified and vindi¬ 
 cated the universal rights of man ? Why bur- 
 
3 
 
 den a people with taxation, why extort revenues 
 from prostrate industries to eke out the life of 
 the institutions of America, if they are already 
 struck with the palsy of increasing and remedi¬ 
 less decay ? 
 
 Questions of taxation and of the appropria¬ 
 tion of revenues in the administration of the 
 Government are highly important, and th% peo¬ 
 ple do well to examine closely the conduct of 
 their servants, both as to the purposes for which 
 their money is used and the fidelity of its ex¬ 
 penditure. A pure and upright civil service, 
 the contrivance and introduction of a system 
 which shall by its power of selection of the best 
 men for office, and by its stability as an insti¬ 
 tution of the country, resist and survive the as¬ 
 saults and fluctuations of party greed and ag¬ 
 grandizement, is a -matter of great concern to 
 the American people. Whatever relates to the 
 financial interests of the Government and of 
 the people imperatively challenges our atten¬ 
 tion. 
 
 The question of immigration from the Orient, 
 over the Pacific, to the young Commonwealths 
 of the West, and the indefinite increase and 
 possible numerical supremacy of a people who 
 may either absorb our domain without assimi¬ 
 lation with our body-politic, or by their ignor¬ 
 ance and vice debauch and degrade our country¬ 
 men and our institutions, is a mighty problem, 
 looming upon us like a portentous cloud and 
 demanding solution. 
 
 Shall our commercial relations with the coun¬ 
 tries north and south of us be enlarged, and 
 shall the channels of internal transportation be 
 multiplied aud improved; shall our foreign pol¬ 
 icy be timid and retiring, like a bashful boy, or 
 firm and just, and if necessary aggressive ? All 
 these and many other great questions press con¬ 
 stantly upon us for that intelligent consideration 
 which alone can result in right action; and the 
 like of these are ordinarily the absorbing issues 
 before the people. But such questions are all 
 of secondary importance, and depend upon 
 others, the answer to which is fundamental 
 whenever and however they are raised. 
 
 This generation has solved one such funda¬ 
 mental question. The principle asserted itself, 
 as a principle always will assert itself, that this 
 country could not exist permanently “half free 
 and half slaveand the irrepressible conflict 
 went on until negro slavery, the joint sinful cre¬ 
 ation of the North and of the South, was abol¬ 
 ished in the tremendous struggle of arms and 
 its crimes were expiated in the blood of a million 
 of our precious sons. 
 
 But, sir, the principle involved in that con¬ 
 test was the same which we have already con¬ 
 sidered : shall freedom be universal, or in other 
 words, shall the sovereignty be vested in all men 
 who live under its flag ? The ignorance of vast 
 masses had made them weak. Cupidity and the 
 love of ease and power had enslaved them, be¬ 
 cause they were weak. It will always be thus. 
 It is human nature. But human nature, as it 
 becomes intelligent, will know its rights; it will 
 resist oppression, and as God is just, the aven¬ 
 ger cometh. 
 
 I believe, sir, that we are approaching another 
 crisis 'which involves the existence of the Be- 
 
 public. It is in itself capable, but not sure, of 
 peaceful solution. I believe that now we are 
 rapidly nearing the time when the American 
 people will vote directly upon the question, Shall 
 the common-school system, which is under God 
 the source and defense of American liberty, con¬ 
 tinue to exist ? I believe it to be the great un¬ 
 derlying question which is involved in the pend¬ 
 ing presidential election. I do not refer to the 
 sectarian aspect of the subject at all. This coun¬ 
 try may be only too thankful for any influence 
 which will educate , by increasing the power to 
 think and get knowledge, whether it comes from 
 priest or infidel or saint. A blow struck at the 
 unity, and independence, and complete, unsec¬ 
 tarian impartiality of the public-school system, 
 by any man or sect or party, is a blow at our 
 freedom, but not necessarily fatal; and wherever 
 there is nothing better, in the name of liberty, 
 let all those who will, build up any institutions, 
 which make war upon ignorance and develop, 
 however imperfectly, the souls of men. 
 
 I would gladly see the Constitution of the 
 country, and of every State, so amended that 
 the common school shall be forever cleansed 
 and protected from all sectarian bias and influ¬ 
 ence, but I believe that we are now menaced by 
 a more serious danger to our free schools than 
 any which arises from the efforts of a religious 
 sect, however threatening such efforts may be; 
 and further, that all necessity for such an 
 amendment to our Constitution, which I admit 
 to be great, arises from the alliance of effort, 
 between sectarianism and one of our great poli¬ 
 tical parties. That party embodies and organ¬ 
 izes all the elements of war upon our common- 
 school system, and the spirit of sectarianism is 
 only one of the influences which it absorbs. 
 Sectarianism is the Hessian, but the real war is 
 between the malign forces of arbitrary power 
 and tendency, which are native to the demo¬ 
 cratic party as it is controlled to-day, and the 
 spirit of universal liberty, as developed and 
 fostered by the common school. I do not mean 
 to be understood that the democratic party 
 does not contain vast numbers of men who are 
 as patriotic and intelligent, and as strong 
 friends to universal education as any American 
 citizen can or need to be, or that in many 
 States and localities its action as a party is not 
 friendly to the education of the people ; but I 
 do mean to say that everywhere it is behind its 
 great opponent, the republican party, in its de¬ 
 votion to the interests of education, and that as 
 a national party, compared with that opponent, 
 and as now controlled, and sure to be controlled 
 in the near, and probably in the remote future, 
 it is the foe of the common school; that its 
 triumph at the polls is the chief danger which 
 now threatens American liberty; and that it is 
 so, because its ti'iumph is the temporary, if not 
 permanent, victory of caste power, which will 
 improve its renewed opportunity everywhere in 
 the country, and especially in the South, which 
 is still the great battle-ground of political ideas, 
 to strengthen and perpetuate itself, in its only 
 possible way, which is by maintaining and in¬ 
 creasing the political weakness of the great 
 body of the people, upon whose ignorance its 
 own supremacy is impregnably built. Is it not 
 
4 
 
 a matter of history that the democratic party 
 has been the machine of slavery for at least a 
 generation ? In what other political party are 
 now to be found the ever-living influences 
 which degrade and enslave mankind? Tnese 
 influences have in the republican party their 
 natural foe. Its birth was rebellion against 
 them. Its career has been one stern battle, 
 even unto blood, against the spirit and institu¬ 
 tions of arbitrary power. That pai-ty is the 
 only effectual champion of freedom in this 
 country to-day. If defeated and deprived per¬ 
 manently of power, the days of the Republic 
 are numbered. 
 
 Let us examine this matter more closely, for 
 if these assertions are untrue they are terribly 
 unjust. No other charge can be made against 
 any party so serious and, if false, so calumnious 
 as th- .t it is the foe of liberty, or even that it is 
 not her best friend. And here and now I de¬ 
 nounce the charge, sometimes made against 
 noi'thera men, that in the examination of this 
 subject any spirit but one of the most catholic 
 good-will toward all individuals and sections of 
 the country, consciously influences my head or 
 my heart. I believe in the honesty, integrity, 
 and patriotism, blinded though in many respects 
 I think they be, of the representatives of south¬ 
 ern sentiment upon this floor. I believe in the 
 honesty and patriotism of all large masses of 
 men. They always design to do right. There 
 has been no great war, either of ideas, or of 
 arms, or of both, in which the combatants par¬ 
 ticipated by their own consent, unless each side 
 believed itself to be right; and by their motives 
 must all individuals be judged and rewarded or 
 condemned. I believe that many an honest 
 and chivalrous soul has laid down his life in 
 the cause of oppression and outrage to whom 
 the infinite God of justice and love has extended 
 the welcome, “ "Well done, thou good and faith¬ 
 ful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy 
 Lord. ” But no such toleration can be extended 
 to wrong principles. Upon them the largest 
 philanthropy and the broadest comprehensive¬ 
 ness of view will wage the most implacable war. 
 Only the the man who, watching through the 
 retributions of history, has been taught the in¬ 
 flexible nature of the pi-inciples which God has 
 made, but whose operation He never suspends 
 nor turns aside, can fully separate the cause from 
 its supporter and destroy the one while he pi*e- 
 serves the other. It is in this spirit that I 
 would consider my main proposition, namely: 
 the national democratic party, as now con¬ 
 trolled and likely to be in the near and proba¬ 
 bly in the remote future, is the enemy of the 
 common-school system of Amei'ica. 
 
 The first question, then, which arises is, how is 
 the democratic party now controlled, and how is it 
 likely to be controlled, in the near and probably 
 in the remote future ? To this question an answer 
 is patent to every man who can call the roll of 
 States. The great mass of the party, nearly its 
 entire organized strength, as far as control of 
 the Government is concerned, is now and must 
 remain in the Southern States, and in that ele¬ 
 ment of southern society which was the confed¬ 
 eracy, and in which the tendencies, prejudices, 
 and principles that created the confederacy, are 
 
 still the vehement motive power. At the Noidh 
 the democratic power is suboi'dinate. When¬ 
 ever it carries an election it is not from its own 
 strength, but thi'ough the weakness or crimes of 
 its antagonists. Whenever public conscience is 
 aroused by an appeal to the underlying princi¬ 
 ples which control the public judgment and sway 
 the popular heart, the democratic party is as a 
 l’eed shaken in the wind, and it falls prostrate 
 before the indignant wrath of a free and virtu¬ 
 ous people, as did the Dagon Tweed, upon the 
 dishonest threshold of Tammany Hall. Here 
 and there is a great and justly honored name 
 which remains in the organization to caxry on 
 the work of purification within the party; bixt 
 with all their great powei*s and indefatigable ef¬ 
 forts to make brick without straw, they are pow¬ 
 erless to cure the deep-seated leprosy of the 
 organization to which they belong, and from 
 which the masses of the North are emancipated. 
 But they cany occasionally a northern State; 
 and with the South reclaimed by the agency of 
 violence and fraud to its ancient allegiance and 
 substantially a unit, these fifteen States do and 
 will enable the democracy to renew its war upon 
 the age in which we live and the libei’ties of man¬ 
 kind. What would this great party be without 
 the South united upon the issues of the war ? * 
 It could not live thi*ough one session of Congress 
 nor survive another general election. And why 
 is the South united? Why does she not divide 
 upon industi’ial, economic, and local issues as do 
 the Northern States ? She has the same diver¬ 
 sity of interests as they. The growing of cot¬ 
 ton at the South, is no more an exclusive indus¬ 
 try than that of grain at the West. New domes¬ 
 tic policies are pressed upon her attention, and 
 she has no l’eason for combination as a section 
 but the promptings of the old spirit and affini¬ 
 ties which produced the war. Tilden captures 
 the convention and the nomination and the mass 
 of the democratic electoral vote, if not its en¬ 
 tirety, when he has received the endorsement of 
 the ex-confederate power of the South. 
 
 What is there to the majority of this House 
 of Representatives, if you exclude the leading 
 spirits of the confederacy from the capitol? 
 They could not even adjoux*n. Who constitute 
 the never-failing element of the democracy in 
 the Senate? But it is idle to waste time in 
 proving that the South is the backbone of the 
 democratic part}-. Should these southern lead¬ 
 ers, in good faith, accept the principles which 
 conquered at Appomattox, what would be left 
 of the democratic party ? To ask this question 
 is to answer it: nothing. It could not even 
 die, with a respectable demonstration. If this 
 is so, and if the democratic party must con¬ 
 quer, if at all, by the restoration of southern 
 supremacy in this country, it becomes at once 
 the vital question to the American people, 
 whether that party is still controlled by the 
 spix*it of caste—that spii-it which warn upon 
 freedom from necessity, since one of them must 
 die. Upon this point the evidence is over¬ 
 whelming. 
 
 First, she sends the same men to the national 
 councils who represented, and because they 
 represented, and were in their own persons, the 
 southern cause in the legislative hall, the cabi- 
 
5 
 
 net, the forum, and the bloody field. Coke has 
 just been elected to the Senate from Texas, be¬ 
 cause he was a violent foe to the Government 
 and people of the United States, while Hancock, 
 the pacific native southerner, his able and 
 statesmanlike competitor, was defeated because 
 he refused to swear allegiance to the confeder¬ 
 acy, and rend the flag of his country. In pub¬ 
 lic speech General Hancock claimed the elec¬ 
 tion, because he was true to his country: and 
 as a public reproof he was defeated by the sworn 
 electors of Texas upon the very ground that 
 neither in time of war nor in this time of false 
 peace was nor is he the true representative of 
 his people and State. The brilliant and philo¬ 
 sophical Representative from Mississippi, [Mr. 
 Lamar,] elected as a true representative of 
 ultra, though more politic, southern opinion, 
 ventures in his place on this floor to denounce 
 the crime of murder in appropriate terms, and 
 although he tempers his disclaimer with coun¬ 
 ter-charges against the North, yet because this 
 Hamburgh massacre was committed to promote 
 southern success at the polls, and in pursuance 
 of the policy, by and through which, power has 
 been recovered in every southern State but one, 
 judging from the tone of the Mississippi press, 
 even Lamar is already almost an alien in the 
 house of his friends, and only the success of 
 the republican party at the North can save to 
 the country the possibilities of good which lie 
 in this man, so misunderstood alike by political 
 friend and foe. There is to-day from the late 
 confederate army military ability enough in the 
 House of Representatives of this country to 
 give competent leadership to ,500,000 men; and 
 there are in the State of Mississippi alone 
 75,000 men who openly drill'as in time of war 
 in every county and almost every town all over 
 the State, skilled soldiery armed with the latest 
 pattern of the most deadly rifles of modern 
 times, and officered by men who know war, and 
 how to make it. Thus is the peace preserved 
 and elections carried in Mississippi and in other 
 States. Order reigns in Warsaw", and, except 
 where electioneering murder is required to con¬ 
 quer another republican State, “they make a 
 desert and call it peace.” 
 
 We have no reason to wonder at these things; 
 they are to be expected; yet they are none the 
 less deplorable in their causes and consequen¬ 
 ces. Why should it not be so ? Why will it 
 not continue to be so, unless the strong arm of 
 power, wielded by the gigantic force of the public 
 opinion of the country, and voiced in the next 
 * election, prevents ? The nature of southern 
 society cannot be broken up in four years’ war. 
 It is not in human nature to change so sudden¬ 
 ly. The constitution of the soul does not thus 
 readily yield. The men who are what they are, 
 because nature and circumstances have made 
 them such, cannot be thus easily reconstructed 
 even if they would. It is impossible. I had 
 almost said it is unmanly that their hearts 
 should suddenly gush with tenderness toward 
 the men and influences which have, in the 
 hands of God, destroyed their power and crush¬ 
 ed their half-barbaric form of civilization. I 
 tell you that those hearts do not gush any. It 
 is folly for the northern mind to befool itself 
 
 with the hope that this generation, or their 
 children, and it may be even their children’s 
 children, will ever kiss the hand that smote 
 them. I am not sure that I could, were I one 
 of them; and one cannot help respecting, even 
 when most determined to crush, that stubborn 
 devotion of the soul which still prays and works 
 for the success of the lost cause, by restoring 
 the old supremacy of class and capital over the 
 labor, both white and colored, which lies help¬ 
 less, under guard of the serried ranks of the 
 white-liners of these Southern States. Consider 
 for a moment how this must be if the demo¬ 
 cratic party—that is, if the ex-confederate ele¬ 
 ment of the South—succeeds at the next elec¬ 
 tion. 
 
 The essence of the institution of slavery was 
 ignorance; therefore, laws were enacted and 
 enforced and customs established in conformity 
 with the spirit of the institution. 
 
 The education of the black, even when a 
 freedman, was prohibited by law and the inflic¬ 
 tion of severe pains and sometimes of even 
 savage cruelties. Religious assemblies could be 
 held only under the surveilance of the whites. 
 The great mass of the whites, not belonging to 
 the landed aristocracy, were coupled with the 
 slaves and were merely a substratum or lower 
 order, almost like the Helots of Sparta, upon 
 which the dignity, fortune, and supremacy of 
 the ruling class were supported and perpetuated. 
 Political power was wholly in the hands of 
 three hundred thousand men, who owned and 
 controlled the soil and the labor of the South, 
 and from their own ranks, or by the designa¬ 
 tion of their class, all the incumbents, emolu¬ 
 ments, and positions of power were selected 
 and filled. Speech and the press were dumb, 
 unless subservient. The confidential intercourse 
 of the mails of the General Government, was 
 violated under the forms of legal usurpation. 
 Religion came to the rescue and proved the 
 divinity of the accursed institution; and thus 
 all the elements of aristocratic tyranny, even to 
 chains upon the soul, were combined to pre¬ 
 serve and intensify that ignorance, without 
 w'hich the fabric of their oppressed power 
 would have fallen in a day. The common 
 school would have peaceably destroyed the in¬ 
 stitution of slavery in five years at any time 
 since its introduction upon our soil. These 
 false ideas were universally taught, and this 
 policy cherished and enforced, for two genera¬ 
 tions. There could be but one result. The 
 mental and moral constitution of both races and 
 all conditions was deeply affected. The low-er 
 orders felt and believed in their inferiority, 
 while the dominant class, in all sincerity, as¬ 
 sumed superiority as an axiom, and its exercise 
 as an inalienable right. Conscientiously be¬ 
 lieving in their divine right to control, as they 
 did control with despotic sway, the whole 
 structure and all the interests of society, how 
 could these kings become suddenly converted 
 into lambs of republicanism, by the harsh 
 agency of war ? Their mental and moral con¬ 
 stitution could not be thus sxiddenly and vio¬ 
 lently reconstructed. The spirit might be over¬ 
 whelmed, but no Anglo-Saxon having inherited 
 and tasted the delights of dominion could ever 
 
6 
 
 truthfully claim that force had converted him 
 into a genuine republican. It is idle to expect 
 that the old instinct for power can be instantly 
 suppressed by the voluntary effort of the men 
 who were first the slave-holding oligarchy, then 
 the fighting confederacy, and now are the body, 
 and brains, and leadership, of the democratic 
 party. The faintest degree of political phil¬ 
 osophy will convince any man that this must be 
 true. It is no disparagement, but rather is it 
 honorable to the stamina of our southern 
 brethren, that this is so. No men ever fight 
 with such desperation and resource for the pre¬ 
 servation and, when lost, for the recovery of 
 power as an aristocracy. I think that is a les¬ 
 son of history. It cannot be then, in the na¬ 
 ture of things, that the leopard has changed his 
 spots any more than the Ethiopian his skin, in 
 consequence of the war. 
 
 It would be reasonable then to conclude that 
 these southern democrats are plotting the re¬ 
 covery within the Union—where they mean, 
 not merely “to stay,” but to rule—of the essen¬ 
 tial elements of that superiority which they lost 
 by forcibly withdrawing from it. I do not 
 mean that they will seek to restore the form 
 of slavery, certainly not for many years, but 
 its substance they may and mean to seize 
 by preserving the intellectual degradation and 
 consequent subjection of the ignorant mass be¬ 
 low them, while they are freed from the burdens 
 which a due regard to the preservation of their 
 property compelled them to bear, when slavery 
 was established or recognized, as one of the in¬ 
 stitutions of the State. And if they have this 
 purpose, there is only one w r ay in which they 
 can possibly accomplish it, and that is by the 
 destruction or the enfeeblement of the common 
 school. Knowledge will destroy their suprem¬ 
 acy and therefore they must destroy knowledge. 
 Now it must be remembered, that I am not 
 claiming that they have or can fully accom¬ 
 plish this end. Counteracting influences of in¬ 
 vincible power are in operation, and whatever 
 may become of the negro, the southern white 
 yeomanry will some time be republican. I only 
 assert, and it is a statement of direful gravity, 
 that the energies of these men are desperately 
 enlisted to destroy, or at least retard the devel¬ 
 opment of, the common-school system, which 
 alone can confer capacity upon citizenship. 
 And it is the solemn interrogatory of this cam¬ 
 paign, Shall the Republic transfer the tremen¬ 
 dous power of the national administration into 
 the hands of those, who, by the destruction of 
 the common schools, would in twenty years 
 make a republican form of government impos¬ 
 sible ? 
 
 I ask attention, first, to the evidence which 
 follows in regard to the great mass of ignorance 
 and absence of the means of popular education 
 in this country, and particularly in the South, 
 where the caste power is predominant, and, 
 second, to the evidence demonstrating the set¬ 
 tled purpose of that power to substantially de¬ 
 stroy the common schools. 
 
 The results of the census of 1870 in regard to 
 the condition of popular education in the whole 
 country are full of warning and demonstrate 
 the necessity of the greatest vigilance and effort, 
 
 in the North «s well as m the South, in order to 
 preserve the schools and even the present ratio 
 of intelligence to ignorance; and I wish first 
 to invite the earnest attention of the House and 
 of the country to statistics of a more general 
 nature, compiled from the census returns, and 
 which, in my judgment, demonstrate the truth 
 that the greatest dangers environ the future of 
 this Republic; dangers, all the more formidable, 
 because of our centennial complacency, result¬ 
 ing, it may be, from our pleasant habit of using 
 the American eagle only for screaming pur¬ 
 poses, and of comparing ourselves with our¬ 
 selves, which good authority declares to be' not 
 wise. 
 
 These tables I have taken in part from the 
 census report, and in part have myself carefully 
 compiled, from data therein given. 
 
 THE ACTUAL ILLITERACY OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 There are in the States of Maine, New Hamp¬ 
 shire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 
 Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsyl¬ 
 vania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, Il¬ 
 linois, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas 
 an aggregate of 1,354,205 illiterate persons over 
 ten years of age. In the Pacific- States and in 
 the Territories there are 102,594.' > In the South¬ 
 ern States there are 4,187,735, distributed as 
 follows : 
 
 
 Census re¬ 
 turns. 
 
 Thirty-three 
 per cent, 
 increase. 
 
 Total popu¬ 
 
 lation. 
 
 Delaware .. 
 
 23,100 
 
 30,800 
 
 125,015 
 
 Maryland. 
 
 185,495 
 
 180,660 
 
 788,894 
 
 District of Columbia. 
 
 28,719 
 
 38,292 
 
 131,700 
 
 Virginia. 
 
 445,774 
 
 594,698 
 
 1,225; 163 
 
 West Virginia. 
 
 81,490 
 
 108,653 
 
 442,014 
 
 Kentucky. 
 
 332,127 
 
 442,826 
 
 1,321,011 
 
 North Carolina. 
 
 396,993 
 
 529,332 
 
 1,071,361 
 
 Tennessee. 
 
 364,668 
 
 486,224 
 
 1,258,520 
 
 South Carolina. 
 
 290,331 
 
 387,108 
 
 705,606 
 
 Georgia. 
 
 468,576 
 
 624,768 
 
 1,184,109 
 
 Alabama. 
 
 382,957 
 
 510,609 
 
 996,992 
 
 Florida. 
 
 71,798 
 
 95,730 
 
 187,748 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 312,751 
 
 417,001 
 
 827,922 
 
 Missouri. 
 
 222,385 
 
 296,513 
 
 1,721,295 
 
 Arkansas. 
 
 133,317 
 
 177,756 
 
 484,471 
 
 Louisiana. 
 
 275,742 
 
 367,652 
 
 726,915 
 
 Texas... 
 
 221,512 
 
 298,682 
 
 818,579 
 
 These census returns are made up from the 
 admissions of the persons themselves, and care¬ 
 ful examination leads Horace Mann to estimate 
 the real number to be at least 33 per cent, 
 greater than the figures of any given census 
 enumeration; and the experience of educators 
 has led to the universal adoption of the same 
 rule. Even then the figures, however black, 
 are too flattering, for very many have such tri¬ 
 fling ability to read and w r rite as to be practi¬ 
 cally incapable of the acquisition of knowledge 
 from books. 
 
7 
 
 There is thus a total of actual illiterates over ten 
 
 years of age in this country ctf.... 7,524,712 
 
 In the Northern and Northwestern 
 States, (of whom a large percentage 
 
 are of foreign birth). 1,804,273 
 
 In the Pacific States and in the Ter¬ 
 ritories . 136,772 
 
 In the Southern States and District 
 of Columbia, (nearly all natives).. 5,573,046 
 
 By the same census the total population of 
 these divisions was— 
 
 Northern States. 23,541,977 
 
 Pacific States and Territories. 1,004,601 
 
 Southern States. 14,009,315 
 
 number of children growing up without a knowledge 
 of the rudiments of learning. 
 
 “ Were an invading hostile army to threaten our 
 frontiers the whole people would rise in arms to repel 
 them ; but there tables show the mustering of the 
 hosts of a deadlier foe, a more relentless enemy, al¬ 
 ready‘within our own borders and by our very fire¬ 
 sides 5 a great army of ignorance growing ever stronger, 
 denser, and more invincible. 
 
 “ Ten years without schools for children will insure 
 an adult generation of ignorant citizens, who in losing 
 the knowledge of will have lost the desire for letters. 
 Athens sank rapidly till its transcendent fame became 
 only a tradition. Hostile barbarians plunged Rome 
 into a long night of ignorance.” 
 
 Total population United States.... 38,555,983 
 
 Percentage of illiterates ten years of age and over 
 to total population of same age, both sexes and 
 all classes. 
 
 Alabama.54.19 
 
 Arkansas.39.02 
 
 Delaware.24.95 
 
 Florida......54.76 
 
 Georgia.56.06 
 
 Kentucky.35.71 
 
 Louisiana.52.46 
 
 Maryland.23.55 
 
 Mississippi.53.91 
 
 North Carolina ...51.67 
 South Carolina. ...57.64 
 
 Tennessee.40.94 
 
 Texas.38.82 
 
 Virginia.50.10 
 
 Average.45.27 
 
 California. 7.37 
 
 Connecticut. 6.95 
 
 Illinois. 7.38 
 
 Iowa. 5.45 
 
 Maine. b.86 
 
 Minnesota. 7 99 
 
 New Hampshire.. 3.81 
 
 New Jersey. 8.03 
 
 New York. 7.08 
 
 Ohio. 8.86 
 
 Oregon. 6.84 
 
 Pennsylvania. 8.56 
 
 Vermont. 6.84 
 
 Wisconsin. 7.38 
 
 Average. 6.98 
 
 There are in the whole country 2,052,000 ig¬ 
 norant women, most of whom are or may become 
 mothers of children and trainers of families. 
 
 Of the 2,000,000 illiterate voters in the United 
 States 1,700,000 are in the Southern States. 
 These States elect thirty-two of the seventy- 
 four Senators and one hundred and nine of the 
 two hundred and ninety-two Representatives in 
 Congress. 
 
 In Alabama 53 per cent, of the voters are il¬ 
 literate. Ignorance controls the election of the 
 Legislature, members of Congress, the execu¬ 
 tive, the judiciary, and composes more than 
 half of every jury ; but who controls ignorance ? 
 The old slave caste of the South. The same is 
 true in Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida. In 
 Kentucky 28 per cent, is illiterate; in Maryland 
 22: in Delaware 24, or one-fourth of all power 
 is in these ignorant masses, and they are in the 
 hands of the political Jesuits of the South. 
 
 It is a deadly fact that the ignorance of the 
 southern masses wielded by an educated caste, 
 if they once get possession of the Government, 
 can govern and enslave the whole country, 
 
 Commenting upon these startling revelations, 
 the able and indefatigable Commissioner of Ed¬ 
 ucation says in his annual report for the year 
 1871 : 
 
 “ But these tremendous figures do not show the ex¬ 
 tent of this threatening evil, for the measure of future 
 adult illiteracy is found in the present record of the 
 
 Here I would gladly stop ; but it is better to 
 know the worst and to provide for it. The 
 index-finger of reason points to the rising gen¬ 
 eration for the fate of the Republic. A people 
 once degenerating from a condition of refined 
 civilization may be destroyed , but will never 
 reform. Duty, then, compels us to study the 
 following statistics, because they involve the 
 problem of national life. They are the cold 
 mathematical statement of the future which we 
 transmit to those who will kiss our lips when 
 cold in death and decorate our graves. The 
 children of the Republic have a right to receive 
 from us the elements and possibilities of a 
 happy existence, since we have compelled them 
 to live. Examine these figures, and tell me if in 
 one-half century of time, unless new agencies 
 are created and old ones quickened for the edu¬ 
 cation of this' people, existence in America is 
 likely to be a blessing or a curse ? 
 
 Latest returns for year 1875 are as follows, 
 from a personal examination of the records of 
 the Bureau of Education : 
 
 Statement showing the number of children between 
 the ages of 5 and 21 in . the Southern States, 
 the average attendance and the number of 
 school days in the year. 
 
 States. 
 
 Ages five to 
 twenty-one; 
 total. 
 
 Average at¬ 
 tendance. 
 
 Whole number 
 days of 
 
 school,whole 
 year. 
 
 Alabama.. 
 
 406,270 
 
 110,253 
 
 864 
 
 Arkansas. 
 
 184,692 
 
 42,080 
 
 
 Delaware. 
 
 140 
 
 Florida. 
 
 94,522 
 
 28,306 
 
 132 
 
 Georgia. 
 
 394,037 
 
 96,680 
 
 
 
 
 Kentucky... 
 
 437,100 
 
 159,000 
 
 100 
 
 Louisiana. 
 
 274,688 
 
 
 
 Maryland. 
 
 276,120 
 
 69,259 
 
 187 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 318,450 
 
 106,894 
 
 140 
 
 Missouri. 
 
 738,431 
 
 192,904 
 
 99 
 
 North Carolina. 
 
 348,603 
 
 97,830 
 
 50 
 
 South Carolina. 
 
 239,264 
 
 
 100 
 
 Tennessee. 
 
 426,612 
 
 136,185 
 
 100 
 
 Texas. 
 
 313,061 
 
 *125,224 
 
 78 
 
 Virginia. 
 
 482,789 
 
 103,927 
 
 112 
 
 West Virginia. 
 
 179,387 
 
 79,002 
 
 92£ 
 
 * Estimated. 
 
8 
 
 Arkansas raised peer capita by taxation... .$0 62 
 
 Georgia raised per capita by taxation. 1 10 
 
 Tennessee raised per capita by taxation.... 1 64 
 South Carolina raised per capita by taxa¬ 
 tion. 1 70 
 
 Virginia raised per capita by taxation. 1 93 
 
 Maryland (more than any other of the 
 
 Southern States)..* 5 01 
 
 Montana Territory. 8 42 
 
 Massachusetts'..22 00 
 
 This table includes all between the age of 
 
 five and twenty-one years, while those of 1870 
 
 include those between five and eighteen years. 
 It is difficult to see, considering this circum¬ 
 stance and the quite considerable increase of 
 population in some of the States since 1870, (be¬ 
 ing in Texas from 818,599 to more than 1,200,- 
 000, or 50 per cent, increase,) whether the schools 
 have lost or gained during the last six years; but 
 local legislation has recently become very hostile 
 to them. It is a pertinent question how long 
 they could live with the southern democracy 
 dominant in all departments of the National 
 Government. 
 
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 CO 
 
 GO 
 
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 CO 
 
 CO* 
 
 CO 
 
 hH 
 
 CO 
 
 eo” 
 
 CM 
 
 00 
 
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 CO 
 
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 CO* 
 
 l— 
 
 »» 
 
 QO 
 
 CO 
 
 CO 
 
 r\ 
 
 20 
 
 V) 
 
 V 
 
 c /3 
 
 05 
 
 C3 
 
 <D 
 
 <x> 
 
 •a 
 
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 Ci 
 
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 hH 
 
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 Colored. 
 
 814,576 
 
 806,402 
 
 1,620,978 
 
 
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Table, showing condition of children in the Southern States. 
 
 Alabama 
 
 Arkansas 
 
 Delaware 
 
 Florida 
 
 Georgia, 
 
 Kentucky 
 
 Louisiana 
 
 Maryland 
 
 Mississippi 
 
 Missouri 
 
 North Carolina. 
 
 South Carolina 
 
 Tennessee 
 
 Texas. 
 
 Virginia 
 
 West Virginia 
 
 
 School population. 
 
 Attending school, all 
 classes. 
 
 Not attending school, 
 all classes. 
 
 Percentage 
 not attending 
 school. 
 
 
 </> 
 
 o 
 
 6 
 
 IS 
 
 £ 
 
 "O 
 
 V 
 
 u 
 
 c> 
 
 '0 
 
 0 
 
 ' 
 
 <D 
 
 • 
 
 X. 
 
 £ 
 
 <D 
 
 U 
 
 JO 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 13 
 
 4-J 
 
 O 
 
 H 
 
 6 
 
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 IS 
 
 £ 
 
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 u 
 
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 Tj 
 
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 IS 
 
 £ 
 
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 ( Male. 
 
 173,273 
 
 169,703 
 
 91,989 
 
 89,798 
 
 81,274 
 
 79,882 
 
 31,098 
 
 30,226 
 
 7,502 
 
 8,3*3 
 
 
 77,139 
 
 120,463 
 
 *44,34* 
 
 265,837 
 
 77 
 
 66 
 
 9*> 
 
 (_ Total... 
 
 342,976 
 
 181,787 
 
 161,156 
 
 61,324 
 
 *5,8*5 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 /•Male. 
 
 1 Female. 
 
 *S 
 
 84,645 
 
 80,847 
 
 64,515 
 
 61,350 
 
 20,118 
 
 19,482 
 
 30,138 
 
 26,650 
 
 2,930 
 
 2,854 
 
 
 62,573 
 
 69,077 
 
 33,8i6 
 
 102,920 
 
 62 
 
 54 
 
 82 
 
 ( Total... 
 
 165,492 
 
 125,865 
 
 39,600 
 
 56,788 
 
 • ■ — - 
 
 5,784 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ( Male. 
 
 ' Female. 
 
 20,185 
 
 19,622 
 
 16,376 
 
 16,017 
 
 3,809 
 
 3,605 
 
 9,862 
 
 8,908 
 
 6631 
 532 t 
 
 19,965 
 
 13,623 
 
 6,219 
 
 19,842 
 
 49 
 
 42 
 
 83 
 
 ( ■ Total... 
 
 39,807 
 
 32.393 
 
 7,4*4 
 
 18,770 
 
 *,*95 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 / Male. 
 
 ' Female. 
 
 32,873 
 
 31,024 
 
 16,985 
 
 *5,92* 
 
 *5,888 
 
 15,102 
 
 4A95 
 
 4,059 
 
 2,241 
 
 2,283 
 
 » 
 
 12,778 
 
 24,652 
 
 24,466 
 
 5*,i*9 
 
 80 
 
 74 
 
 85 
 
 (. Total... 
 
 63,897 
 
 32,906 
 
 30,990 
 
 8,254 
 
 4,524 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f Male. 
 
 ' Female. 
 
 206,026 
 
 201,490 
 
 110,345 
 
 108,014 
 
 95,676 
 
 93,470 
 
 33,796 
 
 33,346 
 
 4,898] 
 5,453 [ 
 
 77,493 
 
 *51,217 
 
 178,795 
 
 33°,023 
 
 81 
 
 69 
 
 95 
 
 ( Total... 
 
 407,516 
 
 2*8,359 
 
 189,146 
 
 67,142 
 
 i 
 
 *o,35* J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ( Male. 
 
 ■ Female. 
 
 *\ 
 
 230,491 
 
 224,048 
 
 190,737 
 
 185,031 
 
 39,736 
 
 38,984 
 
 91,225 
 
 82,278 
 
 3,52o' 
 
 4,182 
 
 
 181,225 
 
 202,265 
 
 71,018 
 
 270,3*4 
 
 59 
 
 53 
 
 89 
 
 ( Total... 
 
 454,539 
 
 375,768 
 
 78,720 
 
 *73,503 
 
 7,702 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f Male. 
 
 ■ Female. 
 
 112,520 
 
 H3,594 
 
 59,036 
 
 59,182 
 
 53,395 
 
 54,304 
 
 20,542 
 
 19,641 
 
 5,467" 
 
 5,609 
 
 ► 
 
 51,259 
 
 i 
 
 78,035 
 
 96,662 
 
 *74,955 
 
 70 
 
 66 
 
 90 
 
 (. Total... 
 
 226,214 
 
 1x8,218 
 
 107,698 
 
 40,183 
 
 11,076 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ( Male. 
 
 ' Female. 
 
 *s 
 
 122,932 
 
 121,522 
 
 94,795 
 
 93,439 
 
 28,137 
 28,082 
 
 51,668 
 
 46,093 
 
 3,808' 
 3,866 
 
 
 105,435 
 
 90,473 
 
 48,545 
 
 139,019 
 
 56 
 
 48 
 
 86 
 
 ( Total... 
 
 244,454 
 
 188,234 
 
 56,219 
 
 97,76* 
 
 1 
 
 7,674 J 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 x Male. 
 
 ' Female. 
 
 “S 
 
 141,412 
 
 *37,587 
 
 66,248 
 
 63,027 
 
 75,084 
 
 74,475 
 
 17,139 
 
 16,264 
 
 2,768] 
 2,970 j. 
 
 39,*4* 
 
 95,872 
 
 143,821 
 
 239,859 
 
 85 
 
 73 
 
 96 
 
 ( Total... 
 
 278,999 
 
 129,275 
 
 *49,559 
 
 33,403 
 
 5,733. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 (Male. 
 
 ' Female. 
 
 294,316 
 
 283,487 
 
 273,204 
 
 262,344 
 
 2I,102 
 21,125 
 
 165,792 
 
 149,468 
 
 4,557 
 
 4,523 
 
 - 
 
 324,348 
 
 220,288 
 
 33A47 
 
 253,455 
 
 43 
 
 4* 
 
 78 
 
 C Total... 
 
 577,803 
 
 535,548 
 
 42,227 
 
 315,260 
 
 9,080 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Male. 
 
 182,421 
 
 177,509 
 
 H3t4I3 
 
 110,224 
 
 68,800 
 
 67,045 
 
 28,357 
 
 25,5*1 
 
 5s49* 
 
 5,9.28 
 
 
 65,301 
 
 169,716 
 
 124,426 
 
 294,629 
 
 84 
 
 76 
 
 9* 
 
 ( Total..., 
 
 359,930 
 
 223,637 
 
 *35,845 
 
 53,868 
 
 n,4*9 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Male. 
 
 ' Female. 
 
 118,500 
 115,406 
 
 47,734 
 
 46,430 
 
 70,557 
 
 63,957 
 
 *2,73* 
 
 11,961 
 
 8,339' 
 
 8,534 
 
 
 41,569 
 
 69,472 
 
 122,641 
 
 192,346 
 
 82 
 
 73 
 
 87 
 
 ( Total... 
 
 233,915 
 
 94,164 
 
 *39,5*4 
 
 24,692 
 
 16,873 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 /'Male. 
 
 * Female. 
 
 217,922 
 
 211,670 
 
 161,721 
 
 156,061 
 
 .56,185 
 
 55,6o2 
 
 58,524 
 5*,79° 
 
 4,9381 
 5,453 !, 
 
 120,710 
 
 207,468 
 
 101,396 
 
 309,023 
 
 7* 
 
 65 
 
 90 
 
 (. Total... 
 
 429,592 
 
 3*7,782 
 
 111,787 
 
 **0,314 
 
 *0,39* j 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ( Male. 
 
 145,184 
 
 139,667 
 
 100,363 
 
 95,740 
 
 44,76* 
 
 43,877 
 
 3*,598 
 
 29,412 
 
 2,045' 
 
 2,144 
 
 
 65,205 
 
 135,093 
 
 84,449 
 
 218,646 
 
 76 
 
 68 
 
 96 
 
 ( Total... 
 
 284,851 
 
 196,103 
 
 88,638 
 
 61,010 
 
 4,189 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Male. 
 
 200,193 
 
 196,709 
 
 114,561 
 111,026 
 
 85,5*0 
 
 85,644 
 
 31,873 
 
 28,009 
 
 5,105' 
 
 5,943 
 
 
 70,871 
 
 165,705 
 
 160,106 
 
 325,941 
 
 82 
 
 73 
 
 93 
 
 ( Total... 
 
 396,812 
 
 225,587 
 
 *7i,i54 
 
 59,882 
 
 11,048 
 
 
 
 
 
 ’ 
 
 
 
 
 (Male. 
 
 76,879 
 
 73,965 
 
 73,9*5 
 7*,107 
 
 2,964 
 
 2,857 
 
 43,278 
 
 37,703 
 
 6341 
 578 [ 
 
 82,193 
 
 64,041 
 
 4,609 
 
 68,651 
 
 45 
 
 44 
 
 79 
 
 ( Total... 
 
 150,844 
 
 145,022 
 
 5,821 
 
 80,981 
 
 1,212 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
10 
 
 Having shown the alarming condition of edu¬ 
 cation, or rather of compulsory ignorance, in 
 the country generally, and especially in the 
 Southern States, I invite the attention of the 
 House to evidence tending to prove that the 
 governing white class at the South—who were 
 the slaveholders and rebels, and since then have 
 been and now are the real leaders of the demo¬ 
 cratic party of the country, dictating its policy 
 in peace and in war, both foreign and domestic, 
 for sixty years, until to-day, and sure so to do 
 for years to come, if that party should unfor¬ 
 tunately continue to live—have always been 
 hostile to popular education, as the one deadly 
 enemy to the institution of slavery while it 
 lasted, and as the great and, in fact, only real 
 obstacle to the restoration of their old suprem¬ 
 acy over labor, black and white, at home, and 
 their political ascendency in the nation at large; 
 and that the triumph of the democratic party 
 will endanger, if not destroy, the free schools 
 at the South, restore the domination of the 
 privileged land-owning class or caste, and re¬ 
 duce all labor of whatever race to a practical 
 servitude more advantageous to the old masters 
 than slavery itself, restore the policy which 
 produced the rebellion, and which must, if 
 pursued, ultimately divide and destroy the 
 country. 
 
 I assume, because no one is ignorant of the 
 fact, that previous to the war there was no com¬ 
 mon public school system in the Southern 
 States. There was some legislation upon the 
 subject, but no adequate provision was made 
 for the children of the whites, and it was a 
 crime even secretly to teach a black child to 
 read. The northern soldiers were the first 
 common school teachers who could claim that 
 they were doing a legitimate business in the 
 Southern States. Multitudes of the freedmen 
 learn to read in their contact with the Army; 
 and wherever the Army held quiet occupation 
 for any considerable time the spelling-book was 
 as common as the book of tactics. Schools 
 sprang up spontaneously. Benevolence sent 
 teachers from the North in large numbers. 
 The Freedmen’s Bureau, the discontinuance of 
 which by the Government, in consequence of 
 her own clamor and that of her northern allies 
 will, in history, appear to have been a direct blow 
 at the salvation of the South, met, so far as possi¬ 
 ble, the pressing wants of eager youth and age 
 for knowledge, which to the poor untutored 
 minds of the liberated freedmen was the badge 
 of liberty. General Banks established the first 
 colored school at New Orleans; although pre¬ 
 viously General Butler had enabled Mrs. Brice 
 to re-open her lone private school, which in 
 obedience to direct intimation from Heaven, as 
 it seemed to her mind, she had opened, at the 
 risk of her life, in September, 1860, but almost 
 immediately closed in obedience to the outcry 
 of the mob. And so it was everywhere all over 
 the South that the Union forces got permanent 
 foot-hold. There is nothing like it in the his¬ 
 tory of war. It abolished the proverb that the 
 pen is mightier than the sword, for every true 
 northern sword w r as a pen and every bayonet a 
 blackboard pointer. The religious and other 
 benevolent associations, also concentrated their I 
 
 influence chiefly upon the establishment of 
 schools. The military State governments, the 
 early abolition of which was such a disaster to 
 the South, fostered and encouraged the schools, 
 which had become numerous and well system¬ 
 atized. 
 
 When the military governments were dis¬ 
 continued and the southern people were left to 
 themselves, with full power to build for them¬ 
 selves, with the ballot in their own hands, and 
 not in the hands of the colored men at all, then 
 the fruits of the simple-hearted northern trust 
 in the good faith and good sense of the defeated 
 slave power of the South appeared at once, and 
 the real calamities of this country began. Until 
 then the war had been a bloody blessing. The 
 foolish over-confidence of the North, ignoring 
 all the lessons of history and the principles of 
 human nature, pressed too by the clamor of the 
 northern democracy against interference with 
 the sovereign rights of States, led the republi¬ 
 can party to commit a clemency which was a 
 crime. Such a mistake will never be repeated 
 in the history of this country. From that day 
 the war upon the common school, as the very 
 citadel of free institutions, has been violently 
 waged. Still the institution has lived, and will 
 live, unless the people of the whole country 
 abandon the South to her fate by restoring the 
 democratic party to power in the General Gov¬ 
 ernment. 
 
 With this preliminary general outline I ask 
 attention to the following extracts, which I have 
 selected wholly, as I believe, from the most re¬ 
 liable authorities, mostly official, purposely ex¬ 
 cluding details of violence and crime, because 
 I do not wish to excite the feelings, but appeal¬ 
 ing only to facts, figures, and results, which are 
 the cold steel of argument, to attract attention 
 to the course and tendency of events in the 
 mass, and exhibit, not the animus of individ¬ 
 uals, but the settled policy of southern demo¬ 
 cratic thought. If one-half the colored popu¬ 
 lation had been murdered by the Ku-Klux, 
 stimulated by aimless violence, or if the slaugh¬ 
 ter at Hamburgh was the ebullition of sporadic 
 crime, and not of the madness which has method, 
 and is based upon cool calculation of a vast and 
 profound political policy, no patriotic American 
 need despair of the Republic. The common 
 school would cure it all, and the next genera¬ 
 tion would be a prosperous, peaceful, and happy 
 people. But the case is otherwise. 
 
 Senator Pease, of Mississippi, delivered a 
 speech in the United States Senate, January 26, 
 1875, from which I make the following extract. 
 Senator Pease was also State superintendent of 
 public instruction for Mississippi: 
 
 “ I desire to refer the Senate to the condition of 
 education in the Southern States, and I take this oc¬ 
 casion to say that in almost every instance (and I 
 know whereof I affirm, because I have had the honor 
 to be connected with the educational interests of the 
 South) when those States were reconstructed there was 
 no such thing as an efficient school system in the 
 South, and in many southern States there was no 
 such thing known. These States had, with scarcely 
 an exception, no school laws, and when they had 
 I they were practically inoperative, but immediately af- 
 
11 
 
 ter reconstruction, in those States which were under 
 republican administration, school-houses were built, 
 educational facilities were provided for the blacks and 
 whites alike. 
 
 “ When the State of Mississippi was reconstructed 
 there was not a single free school in the State. Un¬ 
 der republican administration, in three years over two 
 thousand school-houses were built and over three 
 thousand schools were organized. Nearly one hun¬ 
 dred thousand children were receiving tuition in the 
 schools under the patronage of a republican adminis¬ 
 tration. The same was true of Tennessee in 1868 } 
 but when the power passed from the republican party 
 into the hands of the democracy one of their first acts 
 was to close the schools. The schools were broken 
 up, and not until quite recently have the people of 
 Tennessee paid any attention to the revival of their 
 school system. This was true also of Georgia. Un¬ 
 der republican rule schools were established. As soon 
 as the State passed into the hands of the democrats 
 the schools were practically abolished j and they have 
 to-day a merely nominal school system. I undertake 
 to say that the different benevolent and educational 
 associations in the North have contributed more 
 money to support the education of the colored children 
 and the white children in the State of Georgia than 
 the democratic party has ever contributed during the 
 whole history of that State. The same is true of 
 Texas. The amount of the Peabody fund distributed 
 in the South since the war is $ 3 , 500 , 000 . The con¬ 
 tributions for educational purposes at the South by the 
 American Missionary Association of the North since 
 the war have amounted to $ 1 , 663 , 000 . The Gen¬ 
 eral Government expended through the Freedmen’s 
 Bureau nearly $ 6 , 000,000 for educational purposes in 
 the South During the last ten years the same be¬ 
 nevolence has contributed, aside from the Peabody 
 gift, over $ 8 , 000,000 for southern education ; and 
 nearly all these contributions have come from repub¬ 
 lican sources. In the State of Mississippi, when the 
 democratic party began to feel that they were coming 
 again into power and the ku-klux organizations were 
 being formed, instead as the honorable Senator would 
 have us believe that the southern people were anxious 
 to educate the negro and the masses of the people, the 
 ku-klux democracy burned our school-houses. Over 
 fifty school-houses, including church buildings used 
 for schools by the negroes, were burned in Mississippi 
 by these lawless bands j and it is the same class of 
 men who are foremost in the white-ieague movement 
 to-day.” 
 
 I would add to tlxe above that from the best 
 data which I have been able to get the aggre¬ 
 gate sum expended by the General Government 
 and by northern benevolence to support free 
 white and colored schools at the South since the 
 war is not less than $15,000,000. The record 
 of the Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, and 
 other religious denominations in the great ef¬ 
 fort to save southern society exhibits all the 
 zeal of the early martyrs, combined with the 
 largest wisdom which patriotism, piety, and 
 statesmanship could devise. The report of the 
 Committee upon Affairs in the late Insurrec¬ 
 tionary States, which is a document of the 
 highest historic value, on page 279 states that 
 on the 31st day of October, 1865, in the various 
 southern States live hundred and sixty schools 
 
 had been already established among the freed- 
 men, and quoting from a report of General Al- 
 vord, gives his conclusion as follows: ‘ ‘ That 
 the experiment of educating the freedmen proves 
 to be successful and the ignorant whites may be 
 greatly benefited.” The committee then pro¬ 
 poses the following question : 
 
 “ Were the old leaders who were forming State 
 constitutions ignorant of this great movement ?” 
 
 Which they answer thus: 
 
 “ No ; but they feared its effects. Having pre¬ 
 vented the slave and the free negroes from coming to 
 the light of knowledge by penal statutes, and having 
 seen many learning to read and write in spite of their 
 prohibitions, sometimes at the risk of life and limb, 
 for in some States persistence in learning to read and 
 write has cost the slave his thumb, while in others he 
 has pursued knowledge even unto death ; and seeing 
 this great movement of thousands of freedmen,women, 
 and children alarmed them and shocked their preju¬ 
 dices, they found it would destroy the value of negro 
 labor. From Georgia it was reported in 1865 that 
 most of the white residents of this section took ground 
 against schools for the education of the freed people, 
 not only as labor lost, but some held that it was inju¬ 
 rious to all working classes to be taught from books. 
 In many places the education of the freedmen was 
 forcibly resisted even to burning school-houses and 
 killing teachers.” 
 
 On page 83 the committee says : } 
 
 “ The adoption of the fifteenth amendment, having 
 made the ballot secure against the spirit which opposed 
 the thirteenth and rejected as far as it could the four¬ 
 teenth amendment, presented the colored man clothed 
 with freedom, citizenship, and the ballot. The or¬ 
 ganization of 1866 , animated by the spirit and com¬ 
 posed of the material already mentioned, had devel¬ 
 oped in the opposite direction ; and in 1870 and 1871 
 it rode into Eutaw, Alabama, and murdered Boyd for 
 seeking to punish by law the crime of colored men. 
 It pursued the ministers of the Methodist Episcopal 
 Church in that State because of their loyalty. In 
 North Carolina it hung Wyatt Outlow for no other 
 offense than opposition to the Ku-Klux and barba- 
 riously whipped Mr. Justice for exercising his political 
 rights. In South Carolina it tortured Elias Hill for 
 preaching the Gospel to his race, for educating their 
 children, for leading them in their political interests 
 and business. It assembled in force, armed and dis¬ 
 guised, to prevent the execution of a writ of habeas 
 corpus in Union County issued to secure ten negroes 
 charged with murder for lawful trial, and hanged 
 them without trial. In Mississippi it destroyed school- 
 houses and drove away school-teachers. In Georgia, 
 and indeed in all the States examined into, it com¬ 
 mitted murders, whippings, and outrages so numerous 
 and so horrible, that one of the retained defenders of 
 the perpetrators (Hon. Reverdy Johnson) has honored 
 his own nature and denounced the existence of these 
 enormities by declaring that in South Carolina ‘ they 
 are shocking to humanity 5 they admit neither of 
 justification nor excuse j they violate every obligation 
 which law and nature impose upon men.’ ” 
 
 And tlie policy thus portrayed has continued 
 
12 
 
 actively in force ever since, and has within a few 
 days been most bloodily illustrated, reinforced, 
 and clinched by the dastardly and wholesale 
 murder on the unholy soil of Hamburgh, of 
 regular soldiers of the State of South Carolina, 
 by the assignees of the Ku-Klux, because they 
 paraded to celebrate our centennial Fourth of 
 July. 
 
 I now ask attention to the Condition of sev¬ 
 eral of the States, from which the general con¬ 
 dition of education at the South may be in¬ 
 ferred. 
 
 GEORGIA. 
 
 The following extract from the correspond¬ 
 ence of the New York Times is the result of the 
 observation of a gentleman of very high charac¬ 
 ter. He writes from Savannah, Georgia, under 
 date of October 26, 1873 • 
 
 “ Instead of extending assistance to the weak and 
 lowly, a system of rigorous repression in all forms and 
 everywhere is operated and more or less rigidly en¬ 
 forced by the lovers of the ‘lost cause.’ They cut 
 off the poor white and black alike from the benefit of 
 schools, yet were their professions of appreciation of 
 the necessity of education listened to one would sup¬ 
 pose that no expense would be spared to educate all 
 classes, for they base all their violent opposition to 
 negro suffrage upon the grounds of negro ignorance. 
 But they have not shown themselves content to with¬ 
 hold assistance and encouragement to the needy. In 
 case of the negroes they caused their school-houses to 
 be burned and their teachers to be driven off until 
 Congress made that too dangerous a business, In this 
 State the laws imposing poll-taxes, sacredly set apart 
 by our constitution for school purposes, are executed 
 with harshness against the negroes, but it is done sim¬ 
 ply because the payment of that tax is a prerequisite 
 for voting ; for the enforcement is only attempted at 
 elections in the infliction of the penalty of disfran¬ 
 chisement upon colored voters, while non-taxpaying 
 whites vote unquestioned. Often with all this fierce 
 zeal to collect the school-tax no public schools exist, 
 and the poor of all classes are left to grow up in igno¬ 
 rance, notwithstanding the price paid to defray the ex¬ 
 pense of their education is made instrumental in dis¬ 
 franchising their fathers. 
 
 “A word might not be amiss as to the extent of this 
 enforced ignorance. Statistics cannot tell the whole 
 truth, but they disclose enough to alarm philanthropists 
 and patriots. They inform us that during the year 
 1870 , in Georgia, only 67,000 white and 10,000 
 colored children— 77,000 of both races—between the 
 ages of five and eighteen years, saw the inside of 
 school-houses out of the whole number of 407,000 
 children in the State. During the next year, 1871 , 
 the whole number of children reported is 425,0005 
 only 53,551 of all sorts pretended to go to school, and 
 these averaged only two and a half months for each 
 child during the entire year. This ignorance is not 
 only winked at by leading southerners , it is enforced by 
 them and their followers. 
 
 ****** 
 
 “ Outside a few cities no pretense of schooling 
 children is made at all. 
 
 “ It may be asked what advantage do the dominant 
 race expect to derive from the ignorance thus supplied ? 
 It may as well be asked how could ignorance on the 
 
 part of the slaves be beneficial to the masters in the 
 days of slavery ? It enables the old master class to 
 secure to themselves the benefit of the proceeds of 
 the negro’s labor with almost as little compensation as 
 in ante helium times ; to bind them hand and foot un¬ 
 der the appearance of law, and still to exclude the ne¬ 
 groes from the privilege, to any beneficial extent, of 
 the elective franchise, while admitting them to that 
 privilege to a degree, as the leaders fondly suppose, suf¬ 
 ficient to quiet the apprehension of the nation on this 
 all-important subject, and finally to control at once 
 the labor and political power of the South. 
 
 “ That the old leaders of the South have a deep- 
 seated purpose to control labor by a system of laws no 
 one who has pretended to watch their conduct can 
 for a moment doubt. They talk it everywhere and 
 write it in all their papers. 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 “ The governor of the State declared a short time 
 ago in a public address that ‘ labor must be controlled 
 by law. We may hold inviolate every law of the 
 United States and still so legislate upon our labor sys¬ 
 tem as to retain our old plantation system or in lieu 
 of that establish a baronial one.’” 
 
 [Extract from the letter of a prominent educator 
 living in Georgia .] 
 
 -•, April 10, 1876. 
 
 “ Dear Sir : * * * I have had charge of 
 
 the principal male school in this place since 
 1855, but am not now teaching on account of 
 the failure of my sight. * * * From a fa¬ 
 
 miliarity with the standard and progress of ed¬ 
 ucation in Middle Georgia for thirty years, 
 twenty-five of which I have spent in laborious 
 teaching, I ought to have a correct opinion of 
 the present status as compared with the past. 
 I regret the necessity of reporting to you , after a 
 life nearly spent in earnest labor opening views 
 to the young on the fields of science , that the 
 standard of education in all our common schools 
 is lowering. * * * The next census will show 
 more ivhite adults in Georgia unable to read and 
 ivrite than did that of the last decade. * * * 
 The colored people as a whole are more igno¬ 
 rant and superstitious than they were the day 
 of their emancipation, because less in contact 
 with the educated whites, and though a few of 
 them have surprisingly improved their oppor¬ 
 tunities, the mass of them must of necessity 
 ever be the wards of the nation.” 
 
 ARKANSAS. 
 
 Hon. Thomas Smith, superintendent of pub¬ 
 lic instruction, in his report for 1871 and 1872 
 to the governor and General Assembly of Ar¬ 
 kansas, says : 
 
 “ At the last session of the General Assembly I 
 submitted a report covering the time from the in¬ 
 auguration of the present free-school system up to the 
 30 th September, 1870 , embracing a period of some¬ 
 thing over two years. During that time the system 
 had been put in successful operation 5 many difficul¬ 
 ties had been surmounted * * * and schools 
 
 had been established in nearly every county in the 
 State. The work of organizing school districts had 
 progressed until most of the townships contained one 
 
13 
 
 or more, and many rude but comfortable school- 
 houses had already been built for the accommodation 
 of the several neighborhoods, * * * and many 
 
 teachers had been attracted hither from the older States 
 by the new and interesting field opened up to educa¬ 
 tional effort by the inauguration of the free-school 
 system in our State.” 
 
 He then explains a recent law of the General 
 Assembly, the passage of which was procured 
 by the “enemies of free schools,” which re¬ 
 duced taxation for the support of schools and 
 authorized its payment in a depreciated in¬ 
 terest-bearing scrip, and adds: 
 
 “ The consequence was the school fund, both State 
 and district, was paid into the State and county treas¬ 
 ury, mostly in this kind of depreciated paper, worth 
 but little more during the year past than half its par 
 value. This, of course, reduced the school fund to 
 about half what it would have been in currency 
 * * * which so crippled a large portion of the 
 
 districts that it was impossible to support even a three 
 months’ school. Teachers * * * became dis¬ 
 
 heartened and disgusted and have left the State, and 
 our schools have been deprived of many of our most 
 valuable teachers. The object in thus dwelling upon 
 the mistaken policy of the Legislature is to show how 
 the course pursued has served to embarrass and well- 
 nigh destroy our free-school system of education, 
 which had been so auspiciously inaugurated and so 
 successfully carried forward during the first two years 
 of its history.” 
 
 LOUISIANA. 
 
 Referring to the democratic party, Hon. T. 
 W. Conway, State superintendent of education 
 of Louisiana, says in his report of 1871, page 
 45: 
 
 “ The antagonism of a portion of the press and of 
 a powerful class of the people to the constitutional 
 provisions which control this work (that of education) 
 is too well known to require more than a passing allu¬ 
 sion. The opposition thus inspired has come from a 
 class of men who prefer that the blight of ignorance 
 should wither the strength of the State rather than 
 the benefits of education should be extended under 
 the law and constitution as they now exist. Unable 
 to emancipate themselves from irrational prejudice, by 
 which both intellect and conscience have been mas¬ 
 tered, and haunted by the phantoms of a regime 
 which has forever passed away, they have maintained 
 an opposition , actinic or passive , as circumstances wauld 
 allow , to every advancing step which has been taken .” 
 
 His own italics. 
 
 In his report for 1873, page 50, Hon. William 
 G. Brown, State superintendent, in the spirit 
 of the martyr who dies triumphant in the 
 flames, after enumerating the obstacles to be 
 surmounted, breaks forth in the following elo¬ 
 quent strain : 
 
 “ The crusade against ignorance, bigotry, supersti¬ 
 tion, and caste inaugurated in the South must be car¬ 
 ried forward. No one that reads the signs of the 
 times or that surveys the work of the forces of educa¬ 
 tion and estimates the value of the citadels taken 
 and territory occupied can doubt for one moment the 
 
 result. It were better for the enemies of education 
 in the South that millstones were hanged about their 
 necks and they cast into the depths of the sea, be¬ 
 cause the awakening from the delusion which prompts 
 their opposition will be almost as fearful as that which 
 tormented Dives.” 
 
 In August, 1875, the honorable superintend¬ 
 ent, the same Professor W. G. Brown, in a 
 public lecture upon education in the South in 
 general, and especially in Louisiana, remarked 
 that— 
 
 “ Previous to the war there was no established sys¬ 
 tem of instruction in nine or ten ef the Southern 
 States. What schools there were were conducted ex¬ 
 clusively for white children. It was only after re¬ 
 construction, when the republican party had assumed 
 control, that there was such a thing as general schools. 
 This consummation was the effect of republican rule. 
 The democratic party, there as elsewhere, were against 
 the spread of intelligence through the colored race. The 
 schools of the South had been opened with but scanty 
 means for their support, and under the most tremen¬ 
 dous opposition. A large portion of the tax-payers 
 would have nothing to do with mixed schools. The 
 native whites in many sections were bitterly opposed 
 to them. In several of the Southern States the con¬ 
 stitutions prohibited the establishment of separate 
 schools. In Texas the public-school system was abol¬ 
 ished immediately upon the accession of the demo¬ 
 cratic party to power. In Alabama and Arkansas we 
 find substantially the same thing. In Louisiana, Mis¬ 
 sissippi, Florida, and South Carolina, where educa¬ 
 tional interests were under the control of the repub¬ 
 lican party, progress was being made notwithstanding 
 all discouragements. In North Carolina, Virginia, 
 and Kentucky, on the other hand, where the schools 
 were made separate by the law and constitution, there 
 was but little progress made.” 
 
 And again Mr. Conway states, in report of 
 1871, page 123 : 
 
 “ In my last inspection tour to which I have re¬ 
 ferred I visited a community of over twelve hundred 
 inhabitants where I was informed a Christian minister 
 had never been except a Catholic priest, and he had 
 been there but once for over a year. I further assert 
 that I do not believe six persons could be found there, 
 excepting three teachers who had been sent there in 
 charge of schools, who could read and write in any 
 language, or that a particle of printed matter, not even 
 the Bible, could be found in one of their houses, ex¬ 
 cept the school-books that had been recently sent 
 there for the use of pupils.” 
 
 TENNESSEE. 
 
 Upon authority of Hon. John M. Fleming, 
 State superintendent of public instruction, and 
 Hon. J. B. Killebrew, January, 1873, report of 
 1873, page 371, they say : 
 
 “ In the public mind, respectability docs not attach 
 to public schools, and, except in those cities which 
 have established schools of such transcendent merit as 
 to compel the discontinuance of private schools, no 
 correct idea of a well-founded system prevails in the 
 State.” 
 
14 
 
 The report of the commissioner of education 
 who organized the common schools of Tennes¬ 
 see prior to 1870 with great efficiency and suc¬ 
 cess, and in the face of all obstacles which igno¬ 
 rance, prejudice, and caste power could present, 
 shows that when the schools were becoming 
 highly prosperous and 185,000 children were 
 already receiving instruction in them, having 
 recovered power in the State the democratic 
 party abolished the whole system and substan¬ 
 tially destroyed the schools. But the seed 
 sown had taken root, and an awakened public 
 sentiment among the people has compelled the 
 restoration of the leading features of the system. 
 
 SOUTH CAROLINA. 
 
 In his report for the year 1873, Hon. J. K. 
 Jillson, superintendent of public instruction, 
 referring to the attitude of the press, observes: 
 
 u In many instances the public press of this State has 
 treated our free common school-system with contempt, 
 injustice, ridicule, and unfairness. Every public en¬ 
 terprise and interest ought always to be open to the 
 fair and just criticisms of a fearless, independent, and 
 incorruptible public press. Abuse and misrepresenta¬ 
 tion cannot, however, be palmed off as criticism upon 
 an intelligent community. There are within our bor¬ 
 ders a few bright and shining examples of a hireling 
 and partisan press which in the good times to come 
 * * * will only be remembered and regarded as 
 
 relics of a past era of journalistic barbarism.” 
 
 In passing, I propose to the House and to 
 the American people this question.: Who ever 
 heard of a republican newspaper or of a repub¬ 
 lican citizen .North or South that was opposed 
 to the cause of popular education ? 
 
 MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 Hon. H. K. Pease, superintendent of public 
 instruction, in his report of 1873, and page 214 
 of report of Commissioner of Education, says: 
 
 “ Alluding to the mismanagement for forty years of 
 the school lands bequeathed to the State for educational 
 purposes by the General Government, to the unlawful 
 diversion of the school funds to other than school pur¬ 
 poses, and the irretrievable loss of millions of this sa¬ 
 cred endowment to the people’s schools on account of 
 improper legislation and supervision, I wish to say that 
 had a proper financial policy been pursued the school 
 land fund alone would now afford revenue sufficient 
 to support a system of free schools with ample facili¬ 
 ties for the instruction of all the youth of the State.” 
 
 In his report for 1874 Hon. T. W. Cardozo 
 remarks: 
 
 “ Considering the great opposition which the sys¬ 
 tem has had to encounter from a vast majority 
 of the intelligent portion of our inhabitants and the 
 great breadth of its operations, we have every reason 
 to congratulate ourselves that the public schools of 
 Mississippi are now rapidly growing into popular favor 
 and are among the established branches of our govern¬ 
 ment.” 
 
 It seems that they were growing too rapidly 
 
 to suit the “intelligent portion” of the com* 
 mnnity, and since the white-line democracy re¬ 
 conquered the State there is a different report 
 from the free schools of Mississippi. 
 
 The following letter is from the pen of a gen¬ 
 tleman of high character who has been closely 
 allied with the government and educational in¬ 
 terests of Mississippi since 1865. He was chair¬ 
 man of the house committee on education in 
 that State for several years : 
 
 “Washington, D. C., July 29, 1876. 
 
 “ Dear Sir : In reply to your inquiries about 
 the public schools of Mississippi under the 
 present democratic government, I answer as 
 follows: The republicans organized the first 
 general free-school system in 1870. The law 
 was amended and improved in 1873. The 
 average amount expended annually was about 
 $600,000, or in 1872, $683,784, and in 1874, 
 $602,481. This sum furnished schools only about 
 five months in the year to not exceeding three- 
 fourths of the children of school age, and was 
 obtained by a general tax levied for that pur¬ 
 pose on the taxable property of the State, in¬ 
 cluding the poll-tax. The system was made 
 efficient by thorough supervision, and probably 
 no State in the Union ever witnessed better re¬ 
 sults from the expenditure of the same amount 
 of money. ••• m ■ 
 
 “By an amendment to the Constitution 
 adopted by the republicans, the proceeds of 
 liquor licenses, fines &c., amounting to about 
 $150,000 annually, becomes available this year 
 for immediate use, instead of going into a 
 permanent fund as heretofore, allowing only 
 the interest thereon to be expended. The 
 democratic Legislature has abolished the gen¬ 
 eral tax of two mills, and has provided for 
 no certain fund but the amount last stated. 
 The law, however, provides that the counties 
 may levy a tax to make up the deficit in 
 the teachers’ fund, but as the law also limits 
 the aggregate State and county taxes to $16.50 
 in the thousand dollars in valuation, the taxes 
 for State and county general purposes will, in 
 most instances, come up to this figure, which 
 will leave the schools without money. The 
 fund provided by the Legislature will not main¬ 
 tain schools exceeding a month and a half du¬ 
 ring the year. The law also says that ‘if the 
 proceeds of fines, licenses, &c., do not equal 
 the two-mill tax formerly levied, the deficit 
 shall be supplied by transferring a sufficient 
 amount from the general fund to the school 
 fund,’ but this is only a blind, inasmuch as the 
 ‘general fund’ is scarcely adequate to meet 
 the running expenses of the government, and 
 it must have been known when the law was en¬ 
 acted that there would be no surplus. The 
 next damaging blow to the system is the virtual 
 abolishment of the office of county superintend¬ 
 ent. The republicans regarded efficient super¬ 
 vision of the schools as of the first importance, 
 and exacted much patient service of their su¬ 
 perintendents. They were paid an average 
 salary of $800 per annum. The late (demo¬ 
 cratic) act cuts down the salaries to just one- 
 fifth of what was formerly paid, fixing the max¬ 
 imum at $270 per annum and the minimum at 
 
15 
 
 $60 per annum. When it is remembered that 
 some counties are thirty by forty miles square 
 and have as many as one hundred and twenty- 
 five schools, it will be seen that the pay pro¬ 
 posed amounts to nothing. No capable man 
 can afford to accept the office and take its re¬ 
 sponsibilities. The provision to pay teachers 
 is as follows: 
 
 “ ‘ The county superintendent and board of su¬ 
 pervisors shall, at the beginning of each school 
 year, fix a maximum salary for teachers which 
 shall not be more than $40 for each school with 
 an average daily attendance of twenty-five or 
 more pupils, and in schools where the average 
 daily attendance is less than twenty-five the 
 amount paid shall not exceed eight cents per 
 day for the actual attendance of each pupil. ’ 
 
 “This paltry compensation, with the almost 
 absolute certainty that the pay warrant, when 
 drawn, will be against an empty treasury, and 
 the consequent sacrifice of the protested paper 
 at some broker’s office at 25 per cent, discount, 
 will drive all the really competent teachers back 
 into private schools, and the public school sys¬ 
 tem will come generally into disrepute and 
 worthlessness. 
 
 “In conclusion, the democrats have commit¬ 
 ted the fraud of preserving the appearance of a 
 free-school system on paper, while practically 
 it is lifeless, and will about as completely leave 
 the people without schools as if they had re¬ 
 pealed and abolished all laws on the subject. 
 
 “ Truly yours, 
 
 “H. T. FISHER. 
 
 “Hon. H. W. Blair, 
 
 “ House of Representatives.” 
 
 The following letter is from Ex-Governor 
 Powers, of Mississippi: 
 
 “Washington, 1). 0., July 29, 1876. 
 
 “ Sir : In reply to your note received to-day, 
 
 I have to say that I was the presiding officer of 
 the senate during the first and second sessions 
 of the Legislature of Mississippi held after re¬ 
 construction in 1870,1871, and 1872. In carry¬ 
 ing into effect the provisions of our State con¬ 
 stitution, which required the establishing of a 
 system of free public schools, a just and fair 
 bill was, after much deliberation and care, ma¬ 
 tured, the democrats participating, and the bill 
 was in many instances amended to suit their 
 views; but when it came to final passage every 
 member of that party in both branches of the 
 Legislature voted against it. At that time the 
 entire democratic press of the State, with per¬ 
 haps one or two exceptions, bitterly opposed 
 the establishment of the common-school sys¬ 
 tem, and declared it wrong in principle to tax 
 the property of the white man to educate the 
 children of the colored man. Subsequent to 
 this, during the summer of 1871, democratic 
 conventions in several counties of the State, 
 namely, Newton, Choctaw, Winston, and oth¬ 
 ers, passed resolutions denouncing free schools. 
 In those counties where the opposition to the 
 system was the bitterest, school-houses, con¬ 
 structed in accordance with law, w r ere burned. 
 In Winston, not only were school-houses burned, 
 but churches also, for the avowed reason that 
 they were used for the purposes of free schools. 
 
 This opposition on the part of the democracy of 
 Mississippi to the freerschool system, while it 
 has in some measure modified, has not ceased, 
 as is proven by the fact that the present Legis¬ 
 lature, at its last session, failed to levy a direct 
 tax, as had been previously done by republican 
 Legislatures, for the support and maintenance 
 of common schools, leaving therefor only such 
 sums as accrue from sale of lands, liquor licen¬ 
 ses, and fines; an amount in the aggregate to¬ 
 tally inadequate to the purpose. There was also 
 left on hand by the republicans about $66,000 
 in the treasury. 
 
 “The law was in other respects materially 
 changed, the result of which, if persisted in, 
 must be to destroy the entire free-school system 
 of the State. 
 
 “I am, sir, yours respectfully, 
 
 “R. G. POWERS, 
 
 “ Ex- Governor of Mississippi. 
 “Hon. H. W. Blair, 
 
 ‘ ‘ New Hampshire 
 
 TEXAS. 
 
 Hon. J. 0. De Gress, State superintendent of 
 public instruction, in his report to the Commis¬ 
 sioner of Education, says: 
 
 “ In May, 1873 , the State Legislature abolished 
 the school law which had been in operation since 
 1871 , and passed another, of which the governor of 
 the State says, in declining to approve the act, page 
 
 3 8 3- 
 
 “ ‘ The constitution (article 9 , section 4 ) directs 
 the Legislature to establish a uniform system of free 
 schools throughout the State ; but this act, chough in 
 its title it proposes to establish such a system, in reality 
 does away with all systems.’ ” 
 
 It, however, became a law notwithstanding 
 the opposition of the governor. And William 
 Alexander, attorney-general of the State, says, 
 
 page 384 
 
 “After careful study of the school law of May 22 , 
 1873 , I am forced to conclude that so many of its 
 provisions are unconstitutional, while others are im¬ 
 practicable, that it cannot be put into operation.” 
 
 And of its practical effect the State superin¬ 
 tendent says : 
 
 “ The last Legislature enacted a new school law, 
 repealing the old one, and in effect, abolishing our rap¬ 
 idly growing system of common schools. Under this 
 law no uniform system of public free schools as re¬ 
 quired by the State constitution can be established ; in 
 fact the poor, to whom alone the free schools are to 
 be opened, can never under it be educated. * * * 
 
 In short, the old pauper law of the State is being sub¬ 
 stantially re-enacted. The school fund is hence 
 likely to be given away to private institutions of 
 learning, while those who are unable to pay for the 
 tuition of their children and who are too proud to 
 acknowledge themselves paupers will be deprived of 
 an education solemnly guaranteed to them by the 
 constitution of the State and indorsed by the Congress 
 of the United States. 
 
 “ The public domain (of thq State) on the 31 st 
 day of August, 1872 , consisted of 88 , 842 . 704 .} acres 
 
16 
 
 of land, the proceeds of which were, by section 6 , 
 article 9 , of the State constitution, to become a part 
 of the common-school fund, but the last Legislature 
 gave away one-half of such lands to corporations.” 
 
 And the Attorney-General further says in his 
 official opinion : 
 
 “ Besides, the constitution enacts that no law shall 
 ever be made appropriating such (school) fund for any 
 other use or purpose whatever, and the Congress of 
 the United States guaranteed this enactment by pro¬ 
 viding that the constitution of Texas shall never be 
 so amended or changed as to deprive any citizen or 
 class of citizens of the United States of the school 
 rights and privileges secured by the constitution of said 
 State.” 
 
 This was a fundamental condition upon which 
 the State was restored “to its practical rela¬ 
 tions ” with the Union. I also quote the fol¬ 
 lowing from the Waco Register, showing how 
 the Texas democracy has destroyed the public 
 schools by attempted constitutional enactment 
 in violation of the fundamental conditions of 
 her restoration to the Union : 
 
 “ Our Texas democratic governor, Coke, who has 
 been elected by the Legislature to the United States 
 Senate, may not be able to get into that body. He 
 has been elected under a constitution in violation of 
 the act of Congress admitting the State to representa¬ 
 tion in Congress. The act of Congress of which we 
 speak (act of 30 th of March, 1870 , United States 
 Statutes, volume 16 , page 80 ) says, ‘ The perform¬ 
 ance of these several acts in good faith is a con¬ 
 dition precedent to the representation of the State (of 
 Texas) in Congress.’ It also says, ‘ That the State of 
 Texas is admitted to representation in Congress as one 
 of the States of the Union upon the following funda¬ 
 mental conditions,’ namely, * * * * Third, that 
 
 the constitution of Texas shall never be so amended 
 or changed as to deprive any citizen or class of citizens 
 of the United States of the school rights and privileges 
 secured by the constitution of said State.’ Now the 
 constitution has been so changed as to deprive citizens 
 of the school rights enumerated. 
 
 “ The late constitution provided for public schools 
 for at least four months in the year, and also that 
 ‘ one-fourth of the annual revenue derivable from 
 taxation shall be levied and collected for the benefit 
 of public schools.’ 
 
 “ The new constitution (under which Coke has 
 been elected to the Senate) does not make it obliga¬ 
 tory upon the State government to levy, collect, or set 
 apart one cent of the revenue derivable from taxation 
 to schools. 
 
 “ The constitution under which Coke has been 
 elected is right in the face of the act of Congress un¬ 
 der which all our Texas Senators and Representatives 
 have been admitted up to this time since the war, in¬ 
 cluding Senators Hamilton, Flanagan, Maxey, and 
 all the Representatives.” 
 
 The following is taken from the leading re¬ 
 publican paper in Texas. Mr. Chase, the ed¬ 
 itor, is a native of New Hampshire, and a 
 gentleman of high character and thoroughly 
 acquainted with that of which he affirms : 
 
 ANSWER TO INQUIRIES. 
 
 “ Washington, D. C., July 10, 1876. 
 
 “ Dear Sir : Will you please inform me what 
 the exact status is of your free-school system 
 under democratic management? What does 
 the present law r provide for ? What amount of 
 money or taxes, and what is the educational 
 condition under the democratic administration ? 
 I see you have or are to have a new law on this 
 subject. Did not the democrats abolish free 
 schools when they came into power ? What is 
 the character of the school trust fund ? What 
 have they done with it ? I should also like to 
 know what your rate of taxation is and the con¬ 
 dition of your State finances. 
 
 U _ 
 
 “W. R. Chase, 
 
 “ Waco, Texas. 
 
 “We have concluded to publish our reply to 
 
 the above : 
 
 “1. There are no free schools in the State ; at 
 least, we are aware of none either in this section 
 or elsewhere in this State. 
 
 “2 ‘The present law’ provides for nothing 
 which supports schools. The present law sets 
 apart alternate sections of State public lands to 
 schools, but money is not realized from these 
 nor expected to be realized sufficient to support 
 a system of public schools. 
 
 “3. No money derived from taxation is set 
 apart for schools under the democratic admin¬ 
 istration. 
 
 “4. Yes, the democrats abolished free schools 
 when they came into power. We had a good 
 free-schooi system and in excellent operation 
 under our republican administration, and under 
 which the children of the State were being edu¬ 
 cated. Under our constitution (republican) all 
 the public lands and one-fourth of the revenue 
 of the State derived from taxation were set 
 apart to schools and the constitution made it 
 obligatory upon the Legislature to provide free 
 schools for not less than four months in the 
 year. When the democrats came in they abol¬ 
 ished this constitution and have put one in its 
 place which sets apart only one-half the public 
 lands to schools and does not make it obligatory 
 upon the State government to set apart a cent 
 of the money derived from taxes to schools. 
 Under this (democratic) constitution the schools 
 have gone down. 
 
 “T>. The school trust funds were in United 
 States bonds; but the democratic Legislature 
 has just ordered these bonds to be sold for the 
 money, with which they will pay themselves for 
 their services and issue their own (State) depre¬ 
 ciated bonds to be put in the place of the United 
 States bonds. The transaction is simply a rob¬ 
 bery from the school fund. 
 
 “ 6. Taxes have been heavier every year un¬ 
 der democratic administration than they were 
 any year under republican administration and 
 have increased from year to year. The rate 
 may be no higher but more things are taxed. 
 
 “ 7. The condition of our State finances is 
 that the legislative finance committee has just 
 reported a deficiency of the rise of $300,000 of 
 taxes to meet current expenses of the State gov¬ 
 ernment. The comptroller asserts this deli- 
 
17 
 
 ciency to be $500,000. The State has been 
 steadily run in debt at the rate of about a mil¬ 
 lion of dollars a year since the present adminis¬ 
 tration came into power.” 
 
 DEL A WAKE AND KENTUCKY. 
 
 The animus of the original slave democracy 
 toward free schools is clearly seen in Delaware 
 and Kentucky, where they have constantly been 
 in power before, during, and since the war. In 
 neither of these States does the law permit any 
 portion of the tax levied upon property of the 
 whites to be appropriated to the education of 
 colored children, and as the colored people have 
 very little property the enforced ignorance of 
 their children may be imagined possibly but 
 not described. 
 
 North Carolina raises less than $1, and I am 
 informed only fifty cents each to educate her 
 children, while Massachusetts, not educating 
 hers as well by any means as she ought, expends 
 $22 annually. 
 
 It is no excuse that a State is poor. There is 
 no industry so productive as the cultivation of 
 the mind, and there is no way to material 
 wealth so sure and rapid. 
 
 PROGRESS OF PAPAL INFLUENCE AT THE SOUTH. 
 
 There is still another powerful source of 
 danger to the schools, and that is the undoubted 
 alliance between the policy of southern politic 
 cians, and that of the Romish propagandists in 
 this country. It will be remembered that the 
 only foreign potentate who recognized the con¬ 
 federacy was the Pope. Both seek a common 
 end, power; the one temporal, the other both 
 temporal and spiritual. And even if there is 
 no formal secret alliance between the caste and 
 the hierarchy there is the same tendency to 
 practical subordination of the people; the one 
 leading to an ignorant subserviency and the 
 other to an educated subserviency, if I may so 
 express myself. The papal church is alert to 
 the fact that nowhere else on earth is there 
 such a field for the cultivation of power as in 
 the Southern States. Whoever holds them in a 
 body, by dividing the North and West, can rule 
 the country. Whoever rules the country will 
 control this hemisphere, and in one century 
 hence will govern the globe. Indications are 
 not wanting that, alarmed by the aroused indig¬ 
 nation of the North at the effort to divide the 
 school money there for sectarian uses, the wily 
 Jesuits are changing the ground of their attack 
 to the defenseless ignorance of the South, 
 where, with no obstacles*and slight competition, 
 they may build broad and deep the foundations 
 of spiritual and temporal power. 
 
 A recent issue of the Montgomery (Alabama) 
 Advertiser remarks: 
 
 ** The Catholic Church is making a determined ef¬ 
 fort to extend their educational work at the South. 
 The headquarters of this work are in Baltimore, where 
 the priests, nuns, and sisters from abroad report, and 
 are detailed to various parts of the South. New schools 
 for colored children are to be immediately opened, as 
 follows: ten in Georgia, fifteen in Alabama, fifteen in 
 Mississippi, and twenty-five in Louisiana. These 
 
 schools will offer board and tuition free to colored young 
 men and women.” 
 
 While nothing is more common than hostility, 
 and even violence, to the free Protestant or pub¬ 
 lic schools and their teachers, who ever has 
 known of any systematic or even casual violence 
 or opposition to a Catholic school at the South ? 
 But I can only suggest this topic; and I desire 
 most emphatically to say that if the country will 
 not supply him with anything better, then, by 
 all means, let the Southern child seek knowledge 
 and discipline in the schools provided for him 
 by the Catholic church. Better anything than 
 the savage state ; and what lover of his country 
 can neglect his duty to vote for free schools, and 
 then condemn the magnificent charity of the 
 Catholic church, whether her motive be benev¬ 
 olence or power, or both. 
 
 I have thus, sir, at great length but without 
 producing a tithe of the immense mass of evi¬ 
 dence, which exists and rises from thirteen 
 States of this Union in the face of Heaven, like 
 the poisoned exhalations of the dismal swamp, 
 endeavored to arrest the attention of the House, 
 and fix it upon the danger to the Republic and 
 to humanity, which arises from the great and 
 growing predominance of the ignorant, and 
 consequently weak and vicious elements, in the 
 land. And, sir, I protest here and now, that 
 the issue upon the schools involves their exist¬ 
 ence as a system, and that the schools are the 
 only sure bulwarks of our liberties. I protest 
 that neither false issues, nor secondary issues, 
 shall be elevated into absorbing importance in 
 this campaign. The school question in the 
 South is comparatively the only question in¬ 
 volved in this presidential election. It leaps 
 over all the interests of this generation and 
 grasps the fate of millions yet to be. 
 
 There has been no crisis like this in our po¬ 
 litical affairs since Gettysburgh. Never since 
 then, has there been a season of more doubt 
 and danger of the loss of the control of the 
 country, by the republican party. Not because 
 the party is corrupt or weak, or has failed in its 
 mission; but because the grinding burdens of 
 the rebellion and the incessant hostility of the 
 democratic party, both North and South, to 
 peaceable acquiescence in the logical results of 
 the war, and the incessant reiteration of false 
 and defamatory charges of personal and official 
 corruption, everywhere, and especially against 
 upright and patriotic representative men of the 
 republican party, which republicans have failed 
 properly to resent, forgetting, that in defending 
 the men who are assailed only because they 
 represent our cause, we defend the cause itself, 
 together with all the bickerings, jealousies, and 
 unpatriotic rivalries, which to some extent have 
 necessarily arisen during sixteen years of tre¬ 
 mendous power and responsibility, with some 
 actual malfeasance among the trusted officials 
 of the country, although there never has been 
 so little official corruption and dishonor, or so 
 much of strict integrity and high purpose in 
 the administration of any other government, 
 nor of this Government, as since the republican 
 party has controlled it. These, with other 
 causes, have conspired to create among the 
 
18 
 
 people a feeling of unrest and disquiet, which 
 may obscure the startling consequences in¬ 
 volved. A pestiferous demagogery, a false pre¬ 
 tense to personal and political virtue and capa¬ 
 city, and deafening shouts for “peace, peace,” 
 at the South, when there is no peace but in the 
 grave; for Tammany and reform, for Hendricks 
 and hard money, for Til den, resumption, and 
 repeal, ring throughout the country and split 
 the ears of the people. Thus it is hoped to di¬ 
 vert public attention from the nature of this 
 contest and to wheedle the American people 
 out of the only guarantee of its liberties—the 
 common school. This is not the purpose of 
 the mass of the democratic party either North 
 or South; for at the South with increasing in¬ 
 telligence there will develop a great white re¬ 
 publican party from that splendid yeomanry 
 which furnished the blood, as the slave power 
 did the policy and disciplined intellect of the 
 war. These people, now so ignorant of their 
 interests and of their rights, will, if once the 
 common school breaks through the obstacles 
 which supervene between them, become the 
 stanchest friends of both the schools and of the 
 great northern republican party which they now 
 so ignorantly defame, being exceeding mad 
 against us and verily believing that they are 
 doing God’s service; and in these men is the 
 hope of the South. At the North a democrat 
 has the same interest for his child as a republi¬ 
 can, though blindly he gropes after the light 
 which the republican has long since found. 
 But however honest may be the masses of the 
 democratic party everywhere—for masses of 
 men are always honest—the policy of the party 
 leaders will conduct both it and the country to 
 ruin. 
 
 To be forewarned is to be forearmed. If it is 
 true that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, 
 there was never a time when its exercise was 
 more important. A false step now, when there 
 is so much to concentrate attention upon our¬ 
 selves, and the distresses, partly real and partly 
 fancied, of to-day, will be calamitous and per¬ 
 haps without remedy. 
 
 The democratic party has been an agency of 
 fraud and destruction for thirty years. Out of 
 the national ruin and dishonor, with which it 
 piled the land, has grown up the republican 
 party, under the inspiration of Heaven, to re¬ 
 create and restore. The one represents the af¬ 
 firmative of every evil, and the negative of every 
 good proposition, in our politics: State-rights, 
 discredit to our national promises, which its own 
 treason compelled us to pledge by billions in the 
 markets of the world, the insidious destruction 
 or the emasculation of the free schools, and the 
 restoration of the caste power of the South, to 
 curse all sections once more, and enthrone upon 
 the backs of freemen a landed aristocracy bloated 
 with bonds written in their blood. The other 
 is the party of progress, reform, freedom. It 
 has youth, inspiration, destiny. It has already 
 a history in whose brief record of twenty years 
 is written the drama of ten common centuries of 
 illustrious deeds. Hand in hand the patriarch 
 of the Revolution and the martyr of the rebel¬ 
 lion, shall march through the halls of the ages 
 until time shall be no more. 
 
 The same thunderbolt of liberty which struck 
 the earth at Marathon and Salamis, at Bannock¬ 
 burn and Bunker Hill, fell again at Yicksburgh 
 and Appomattox; and the inspiration which 
 has kindled the souls of patriots and freemen in 
 all decisive epochs of time, and prompted great 
 sacrifices and heroic deeds for the universal 
 rights of man, dwells as a living fire in the 
 hearts and the history of the republican party. 
 To what great interest of this country, of this 
 whole country, is it not true ? What right of 
 the weak and lowly does it not vindicate ? What 
 just privilege of the great does it not secure ? 
 When and where has the policy of the republi¬ 
 can party swerved from the principles of uni¬ 
 versal liberty protected by law ? Where are 
 concentrated the redemptory influences of the 
 nation ? Where is the religious and reforma¬ 
 tory press ? Where is the active leadership of 
 aggressive piety ? Where is the control and the 
 chief pecuniary support of the missionary, and 
 higher educational institutions of the land ? 
 Let our enemies consider and let them judge 
 how many centuries of progress would be anni¬ 
 hilated were the men and influences which are 
 knit together in the republican party eliminated 
 from society and replaced with an equal mass 
 of the democracy, which howls and hiccoughs 
 for Tilden and reform. The two great parties 
 are now in the ralley of decision. In three 
 months it will all be over. The time is short 
 and the stake tremendous. It concerns not this 
 nation alone. It involves vast consequences to 
 the race. But to no part of mankind is it so im¬ 
 peratively necessary that republicanism should 
 triumph as to our blind brethren of the South. 
 They may and perhaps they must hate us. 
 Human nature will not always budge ; and how 
 can the proud, imperious slave-power of the 
 South whisper accents of love from the dust of 
 defeat ? 
 
 It is easy for us, who are victors, to forgive; 
 but how if we were fallen V I for one would sub¬ 
 mit, I would be admonished by events, I would 
 repair, I would restore, I would teach my children 
 the new and more excellent way, I would co¬ 
 operate with my conqueror in the restoration of 
 the power and glory of my country, and would try 
 to wear my mask in submission to the laws and 
 in retrieving the consequences of my fault, if 
 not my crime. I would not insult nor deny the 
 clemency and magnanimity of the country which 
 spared me, and which invited me to a higher 
 and more illustrious destiny than ever before 
 lifted itself into the possibilities of my existence ; 
 and I would do justice to my former foes. But 
 that I would ever, in my secret heart, love them, 
 God knows that I doubt it, neither do I expect 
 it from the leaders of the South. But they 
 ought to accept the inevitable. They should 
 find vengeance and revenge in grasping every 
 advantage which has come to them on the wings 
 of war. Did she only know it, the South con¬ 
 quered at Appomattox. She conquered herself. 
 God was on her side. He presided over both 
 combatants, and, in the very valley of the shadow 
 of four years of death He beat.and pounded the 
 North and South in the mortar of His provi¬ 
 dence, until He had broken in pieces the great 
 national crime which provoked His wrath, and 
 
19 
 
 gave us another fair chance in the race of na¬ 
 tional life. 
 
 Sir, it is neither possible nor desirable to for¬ 
 get the past, and with it the lessons which, if 
 remembered, may save us from the return of 
 like calamities. The rebellion was a political 
 cxurne. If any considerable portion of the peo¬ 
 ple of this country believe it to have been 
 otherwise, and shall train up their children in 
 like faith, and consequently to cherish a senti¬ 
 ment that the people who waged war against 
 this Government have been wronged by their 
 defeat, and that justice must yet be done, either 
 by extraordinary pecuniary favors or by future 
 political advantages, to obtain which the bonds 
 of the Union are to be acquiesced in, and not to 
 be loved for themselves, then the future of this 
 nation is bloodier than the past. The talk of a 
 restored Union is mockery. If the South again 
 participates in the affairs of this Government, 
 all the while cherishing a secret sense of burn¬ 
 ing wrong, and is here to clamor for justice , 
 there is no peace. Clemency she has received. 
 She has profited by it. But she is too proud to 
 admit that she is forgiven. She has been saved 
 from herself, from her own madness and fanat¬ 
 icism, however honestly and desperately she may 
 have fought to ruin our common country, and 
 herself most of all; and men who come here to 
 swear to a modified oath of allegiance have no 
 right to taunt those who represent the senti¬ 
 ment which alone has preserved to them, and 
 to us all, a country worth living and dying for 
 with injustice to the South. I fervently believe 
 that the real sentiment and temper of the south¬ 
 ern people, as a whole, does not justify the 
 sentiment that the North has wronged the South. 
 Peace does not lie in that direction. Neither, 
 sir, can I entertain any respect for that other 
 tendency which is sometimes observed, and in 
 accordance with which northern men are en¬ 
 couraged to express themselves, which presents 
 the South to us as our very desolate and sorely- 
 stricken sister, unable to stand without support, 
 a sickly suppliant for crumbs of comfort, with¬ 
 out resources, without fertility, or power of re¬ 
 cuperation. 
 
 There is no southern State to-day which is 
 not stronger, mightier, and more blest, in her 
 actual condition, and infinitely happier in her 
 near future and more illustrious destiny, than 
 before the war. Every one of them is more 
 populous, every one of them is wealthier, more 
 prosperous, better governed, and, in spite of 
 terrible and disgraceful opposition, better edu¬ 
 cated to-day than before the war. She knows 
 it all herself. 
 
 Even the distinguished orator from Georgia, 
 who last winter said that the South, in her exit 
 from this Hall, carried with her the Constitution 
 of the country, and therefore by implication as¬ 
 serted that she left here nothing but a howling 
 mob of fanatical revolutionists, who under the 
 lead of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, 
 and Sumner, Wilson, Fessenden, Chase, and 
 Stanton, and Stevens, and others, whose names 
 are written honorably in history side by side 
 with those of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, 
 Adams, and Hamilton, and the long roll of the 
 conscript fathers of the Kepublic, subjugated a 
 
 wronged and weaker people, and hold them to¬ 
 day in their tyrannical embrace—even he does 
 not wish to restore the States of his section with 
 slavery in its ancient form, which was the 
 primal cause of all our woes. 
 
 And I again say, sir, that the South is 
 stronger and happier for the war. She has 
 gained infinitely more by it than has the North. 
 Considering their relative resources, she is com¬ 
 paratively free from debt. Taxation, compared 
 with the burdens imposed in my own State, is 
 almost unknown. The expenses of her war she 
 has never paid. Thank Providence, old Eng¬ 
 land, who robbed us of our commerce and got 
 clear of us for a paltry fifteen millions, lost a 
 great portion of the confederate debt, and some 
 of the northern democrats contributed their 
 share. The liberation of the slaves, instead of 
 being a loss, was a vast and immeasurable gain 
 to her resources by so much as five millions of 
 free, happy, thinking, active human souls are 
 more valuable than so many dumb driven cattle. 
 
 Look, too, at the resources of the South. Be¬ 
 hold her unlimited territory, almost one million 
 square miles of the best soil created, nearly all 
 of it available and most valuable for the pur¬ 
 poses of civilized man ; larger than the British 
 Isles, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, 
 and Austria combined, comprising all Europe to 
 the vast empire of the Czar ; with a climate that 
 realizes the enchanting reminiscences of the Is¬ 
 land of the Blest, which haunts the soul in the 
 hour of her diviner musings; with rivers for a 
 magnificent commerce and for mechanical power 
 beyond computation, mountains of iron and 
 gold, valleys, plains, and savannahs waiting for 
 the teeming millions yet to be. She is a land, 
 sir, of marvelous prophecy. I have made some 
 effort to know her prospects and capacities, but 
 cannot trespass upon the House with statistical 
 matter upon the subject to-day. But the South 
 will support two hundred millions of people, 
 with no more persons to the square mile than 
 now live in^Western and Central Europe. Even 
 this is not the limit of her wonderful future; 
 for, considering her greater natural fertility, re¬ 
 sources, and advantages, I fully believe that our 
 little sister, which, in the language of the song 
 of songs as sung by the honorable gentleman 
 from Mississippi, of the Committee on Foreign 
 Affairs, and other southern bards of the cypress 
 order, “hath no breasts,” can feed fron the up¬ 
 rising fountains of her blessed bosom three hun¬ 
 dred millions of souls. Sir, I am ashamed to 
 hear the whine of these gentlemen who strive to 
 believe that they are poor. In 1860 the number 
 of hands employed as blacksmiths, coopers, car¬ 
 penters, joiners, painters, varnishers, masons, 
 and stone-cutters, by the census, was in the 
 Southern States 72,046. In 1870 the whole 
 number was 83,237, an increase in these classes 
 of mechanics of 11,466. The State returns show 
 that the increased aggregate value of property 
 from 1868 to 1874 in the State of Georgia was 
 $81,857,772. In Texas, per State reports, it ap¬ 
 pears that the taxable property increased in 
 value from $144,260,244 in 1868 to $223,410,- 
 920 in 1874, or an increase in six years of 54 per 
 cent., which beats the interest of the bloated 
 bondholder of the North. 
 
20 
 
 As there is great complaint of oppressive tax¬ 
 ation at the South, which is wickedly attributed 
 to the republican party, I think the following 
 matter deserves attention in this connection. 
 
 By virtue of the laws of Mississippi in force 
 before the war, and in force until quite recently, 
 which limited taxation upon land to ten cents 
 on every hundred dollars’ worth of the value of 
 the land to be estimated by the owner or per¬ 
 son having possession or in charge thereof, the 
 plantations substantially escaped taxation ; and 
 the consequence was that, the inventories of 
 property taxable being very much smaller in 
 amount than they should have been, the rate of 
 taxation to the valuation of property was very 
 high; the chief burdens of taxation were thrown 
 upon personal property, the receipts of business, 
 and upon individuals. The valuation of land 
 was very seldom indeed as high as $10 per acre, 
 and so down to five cents. In thousands of in¬ 
 stances it was $1 per acre, and in that case it 
 would take one thousand acres of land to yield 
 one single dollar of revenue. 
 
 The Bay Saint Louis (Mississippi) Gazette, 
 a strong democratic paper, I think in the year 
 1869 stated that at that time “not one-half the 
 taxable lands in Hancock County were assessed 
 at all, and that the assessed portion was gener¬ 
 ally rated at five cents per acre. By act of the 
 democratic Legislature of Mississippi in 1865 it 
 was provided that “all blacksmiths, bakers, 
 butchers, brickmakers, carriage-makers, carpen¬ 
 ters, dealers in timber, lumber, or shingles, gas 
 companies, contractors of bridges, printers, gun¬ 
 smiths, saw-mills, shoemakers, tailors, tanners, 
 watchmakers, painters, milliners, &c., shall pay 
 twenty-five cents on every one hundred dollars’ 
 worth of gross receipts, not of capital or profit, 
 but of gross receipts or earnings, which is two 
 and one-half times as much as was required of 
 land-owners upon a basis of fifty times greater 
 hardship; and innkeepers, apothecaries, &c., 
 besides their licenses, paid $1 on each $100 of 
 gross receipts. The county of Warren, includ¬ 
 ing the city of Vicksburgh, is the* wealthiest 
 county in the State, and the tax-rolls show the 
 following extraordinary state of tilings for the 
 year 1869—I may be incorrect as to the year: 
 
 “ Colonel Benson Blake and wife’s total of 
 taxes on 8,506 acres of the best cotton lands in 
 the State, including a magnificent residence and 
 the finest improvements in the county, all told, 
 is only $99.78. 
 
 “Colonel Joseph E. Davis, total taxes on 
 3,793 acres of bottom land, fronting on the 
 Mississippi Diver, including the Hurricane 
 plantation, which he recently sold for $50,000, 
 $141.14. 
 
 “ Heirs of General John A. Quitman, 6,810 
 acres of same sort of land, handsomely im¬ 
 proved, including a plantation which was rented 
 for $30,000 per annum, the same year it was 
 assessed paid tax, in all, $184.64, making 19,- 
 101 acres of best land in the South, worth at the 
 very least $20 per acre, or $382,020, paying a 
 total tax of $439.56.” 
 
 Remember that this is the taxation which the 
 democracy had imposed upon the real wealth of 
 the South. This was the policy of the slave 
 
 power before and after the war. Look now at 
 its policy toward labor and human beings : 
 
 Mr. Charles Peine pays, by the same rec¬ 
 ords, on license and receipts of his liv¬ 
 ery stable, &c., $1 on $100.$671 03 
 
 George & Burchett, on receipts of apoth¬ 
 ecary shop. 502 85 
 
 Herrick & Dirr, photographers. 200 00 
 
 B. Stricken, the butcher. 224 95 
 
 Fred. Loyd, another butcher. 243 70 
 
 Kleinmann & Beck, bricklayers, on their 
 
 own work, pay. 87 76 
 
 Philip Gilbert, shoemaker, pays. 75 28 
 
 Bodenhard, on his soda fountain, pays. 115 88 
 
 W. P. Creecy, on salary of $1,200 per 
 annum as clerk in hardware store, no 
 
 property but that. 33 00 
 
 Mr. Vetch, a barber, no property but his 
 
 soap, shears, and razors, pays. 107 63 
 
 Pompey Higgins, a colored drayman, on 
 
 his dray and two mules, pays. 33 82 
 
 Daily and Weekly Herald pays on re¬ 
 ceipts. 185 20 
 
 Daily and Weekly Times. 164 80 
 
 This glaring and systematic robbery of labor 
 by wealth, by virtue of laws enacted by the lat¬ 
 ter, has been constantly opposed by republi¬ 
 cans, and in their new constitution I am in¬ 
 formed that they have endeavored to remedy it 
 by means of some “ modified” or “ iron-clad ” 
 oath. I now ask attention to the following ta¬ 
 bles. What has been shown in regard to under¬ 
 valuation of property will be borne in mind in 
 connection with the rate of taxation per thous¬ 
 and. That taxation must be very slight in such 
 States as Mississippi if the property was prop¬ 
 erly assessed instead of being exempted in favor 
 of the landed caste is apparent. 
 
 States. 
 
 Ratio of tax¬ 
 ation per 
 $i,ooo. 
 
 Per head. 
 
 Nevada. 
 
 $26 34 
 
 $19 30 
 
 Louisiana. 
 
 21 85 
 
 9 71 
 
 Arkansas. 
 
 18 33 
 
 5 91 
 
 Mississippi. 
 
 17 86 
 
 4 51 
 
 Maine. 
 
 15 36 
 
 8 53 
 
 Nebraska. 
 
 14 83 
 
 8 35 
 
 Alabama. 
 
 14 77 
 
 2 99 
 
 Kansas. 
 
 14 15 
 
 7 33 
 
 South Carolina. 
 
 13 30 
 
 3 92 
 
 New Hampshire. 
 
 12 88 
 
 10 22 
 
 Iowa. 
 
 12 62 
 
 7 58 
 
 California.. 
 
 12 25 
 
 13 95 
 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 11 68 
 
 17 10 
 
 Minnesota. 
 
 11 57 
 
 6 02 
 
 Oregon. 
 
 11 26 
 
 6 39 
 
 Virginia. 
 
 11 26 
 
 3 76 
 
 Florida. 
 
 11 23 
 
 2 64 
 
 Missouri. 
 
 10 88 
 
 8 08 
 
 Ohio. 
 
 10 52 
 
 8 83 
 
 Maryland. 
 
 10 30 
 
 8 49 
 
 Illinois. 
 
 10 28 
 
 8 59 
 
 Georgia. 
 
 9 79 
 
 2 21 
 
 Kentucky. 
 
 9 48 
 
 4 34 
 
21 
 
 States. 
 
 Ratio of tax¬ 
 
 ation per 
 $1,000. 
 
 Per head. 
 
 Vermont. 
 
 $9 07 
 
 $G 46 
 
 West Virginia. 
 
 9 03 
 
 3 89 
 
 North Carolina. 
 
 9 02 
 
 2 20 
 
 Indiana. 
 
 8 51 
 
 6 42 
 
 New Jersey. 
 
 7 88 
 
 8 18 
 
 Connecticut. 
 
 7 83 
 
 11 28 
 
 Wisconsin. 
 
 7 07 
 
 5 10 
 
 Michigan. 
 
 7 52 
 
 4 57 
 
 New York. 
 
 7 47 
 
 11 07 
 
 Rhode Island. 
 
 7 31 
 
 9 98 
 
 Texas. 
 
 7 10 
 
 1 38 
 
 Tennessee. . 
 
 0 79 
 
 2 69 
 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 0 44 
 
 6 96 
 
 Delaware. 
 
 4 30 
 
 3 34 
 
 Sir, tlie South is not^oor, unless it is in the 
 disposition to work and in the blind folly of her 
 leaders. They fight destiny, and beg to be de¬ 
 stroyed. No people ever had such an opportu¬ 
 nity, but they will not see. 
 
 There is no country like this under the sun. 
 Upon their million square miles of the garden 
 of God they have 15,000,000 of their own peo¬ 
 ple. They have the active, anxious, persistent, 
 cherishing policy of the General Government 
 which they spleenfully and stupidly and wick¬ 
 edly defame, deride, oppose, and endeavor to 
 destroy. They have a love for destruction, be¬ 
 cause the gods have made them mad. They 
 persist in a course which, if they could pursue 
 it, would renew the war. Sometimes I think 
 they really desire it as soc^i as rest, growth, and 
 recuperation can fill their fields with armed men 
 under the stars and bars. If such a conflict 
 must come, may God bring it soon or avert it 
 till I am no more. 
 
 Nothing but the defeat of the democratic 
 party in the nation can save the South. If 
 Tilden is elected, her supposed victory will 
 prove her destruction. For a time she will ex¬ 
 ult. Free from restraint to the exercise of her 
 will within her own limits, and largely so in 
 shaping national policy, the strong reactionary 
 tendencies, which may yield to some extent and 
 coalesce with the prevailing forces of northern 
 and western sentiment should the republicans 
 retain the national administration, will in case 
 of democratic success re-assert themselves, and 
 southern statesmen, a few of whom now appear 
 to have a vision of the promised land, will die, 
 and their people will die, without the sight. A 
 few years will consolidate the sections in hostile 
 array of sentiment, for the North will never 
 surrender the fruits of the struggle, and then, 
 when the country is wealthier, more populous, 
 mightier, there must come another war, to 
 which the last would bear the relation of a 
 skirmish to Waterloo. 
 
 The North may possibly endure the calamity 
 of a democratic victory, but it will be certain 
 ruin for this generation to the South. During 
 the last ten years the South has really fought 
 
 by all the agency she could employ for the 
 maintenance of her class-power. Her more ad¬ 
 vanced statesmen are beginning to see their 
 mistake, but not fully; and still she hopes for 
 a success, which if achieved will be destruction. 
 Should she now fail, her leaders will fully realize 
 that in the vain struggle to restore her former 
 supremacy through the democratic party she is 
 losing all the magnificent prospects which spread 
 out before her, if she will only yield to the irre¬ 
 sistible current of events, accept heartily the 
 new order of things, and, by elevating her labor, 
 rise with it to the development of a destiny, 
 which in its grand possibilities surpasses all 
 that poets have dreamed. But “the stars in 
 their courses fought against Sisera,” and he fell 
 at last by a woman’s hand; and why should the 
 South any longer oppose her happier fortune 
 and ruin everything in the vain attempt to roll 
 the universe against the brakes of the Almighty ? 
 
 I live in a smiling valley among my hardy 
 constituents—God bless them—where the bar¬ 
 ren rocks of New England rise high into the 
 free air of heaven, and the dews are kissed from 
 her highest summits by the earliest light which 
 breaks on America from the morning sun. 
 Here generation after generation our people 
 have fought the climate for seven months and a 
 despotic sterility of soil during the remainder of 
 the year. Here, too, they have grown vigorous, 
 intelligent, virtuous, and free. New Hamp¬ 
 shire is, by the census, the best-educated State 
 in this Union, and I have the honor, though 
 most unworthily, to represent the most intelli¬ 
 gent constituency, as a whole, on the face of 
 the globe. She sent two-thirds of the troops 
 into action who fought and won the battle of 
 Bunker Hill. With the co-operation of the 
 brave Green mountaineers her Stark gave to the 
 country the victory of Bennington. She gave 
 you the greatest orator of time, and a monu¬ 
 ment to Washington eternal as the universe or 
 his illustrious fame. She buried her scanty re¬ 
 sources and her dearest sons in the golgothas of 
 the late war as no other northern State has 
 done. She will not see the last of her debt in¬ 
 curred in its prosecution paid until our grand¬ 
 children sleep the sleep that knows no waking. 
 Her rural population is disappearing. The har¬ 
 vest of the war and constant drain of her hard¬ 
 iest sons to the illimitable West has left the 
 summer rose to bloom in beauty and desolation 
 by thousands of forsaken mountain homes 
 where once clustered the tenderest affections of 
 earth. And tears will sometimes come' in the 
 eyes of the Granite State as she looks forth 
 from her sterility and desolation upon the vast 
 plains and valleys of fertility and of boundless 
 resources which lie stretched from ocean to 
 ocean, and from the snows of Canada almost to 
 the tropic regions of the globe, and reflects 
 upon the blood she has shed and the treasure 
 she has poured out and the pledge of her in¬ 
 dustry for a century, that she has signed, sealed, 
 and delivered, and will pay to the last dollar, 
 and yet beholds the blindness that would render 
 the last state of the Union worse than the first. 
 
 It will never be. The country will not lose 
 the fruits of the war. This election, which in¬ 
 volves them all, can never be the means of re- 
 
22 
 
 storing obsolete ideas and the enslaving policies 
 of the past. 
 
 But I feel no hope until the South learns that 
 she must ally herself with the strength and not 
 with the weakness of the North. 
 
 Some time we shall understand each other, 
 
 but not yet. The republican party must again 
 rescue the country by main strength against the 
 combined South, yoked with the corrupt and 
 subservient democracy of the North. If we 
 fail, God help America ! 
 
 Educational Amendment to the Constitution. 
 
 I 
 
 t 
 
 Speech of Hon, F. T. Freunghuysen 
 
 * OF NEW JERSEY, 
 
 In the IT. S. Senate, August — , 1876. 
 
 Amendment as Passed by the House of 
 ■Representatives. 
 
 “ Resolved by the Senate and House of Rep¬ 
 resentatives of the United States of Ametdca in 
 Congress assembled , ( two-thirds of each House 
 concurring therein ,) That the following be pro¬ 
 posed to the several States of the Union as an 
 amendment to the Constitution, namely : 
 
 “ Article XVI. 
 
 “ No State shall make any law respecting an 
 establishment of religion, or prohibiting the 
 free exercise thereof ; and no money raised by 
 taxation in any State for the support of public 
 schools, or derived from any public fund there¬ 
 for, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall 
 ever be under the control of any religious sect 
 or denomination; nor shall any money so raised 
 or lands so devoted be divided between reli¬ 
 gious sects or denominations. This article 
 shall not vest, enlarge, or diminish legislative 
 power in Congress. 
 
 AMENDMENT as passed in the senate. 
 
 “That the following article be proposed to 
 the Legislatures of the several States as an 
 amendment to the Constitution of the United 
 States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of 
 the said Legislatures, shall be valid as a part of 
 the said Constitution, namely: 
 
 “Article XVI. 
 
 “No State shall make any law respecting an 
 establishment of religion or prohibiting the 
 free exercise thereof- and no religious test 
 shall ever be required as a qualification to any 
 office or public trust under any State. No pub¬ 
 
 lic property and no public revenue of, nor any 
 loan of credit by or under the authority of, the 
 United States, or any State, Territory, District, 
 or municipal corporation, shall be appropriated 
 to or made or used for the support of any 
 school, educational or other institution under 
 the control of any religious or anti-religious 
 sect, organization, or denomination, or wherein 
 the particular creed or tenets of any religious 
 or anti-religious sect, organization, or denomi¬ 
 nation shall be taught. And no such pai-ticular 
 creed or tenets shall be read or taught in any 
 school or institution supported in whole or in 
 part by such revenue or loan of credit; and no 
 such appropriation or loan of credit shall be 
 made to any religious or anti-religious sect, or¬ 
 ganization, or denomination, or to promote its 
 interests or tenets. This article shall not be 
 construed to prohibit the reading of the Bible 
 in any school or institution; and it shall not 
 have the effect to impair rights of property al¬ 
 ready vested. 
 
 “Seo. 2. Congress shall have power, by ap¬ 
 propriate legislation, to provide for the preven¬ 
 tion and punishment of violations of this ar¬ 
 ticle.” 
 
 THE SCHOOL AMENDMENT. 
 
 The Senate proceeded to consider the joint 
 resolution (H. It. No. 1) proposing an amend¬ 
 ment to the Constitution of the United States, 
 the pending question being on its passage. 
 
 Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. President, 
 before the vote is taken on this measure, I pro¬ 
 pose to state the principles involved in it, and 
 to do so with great brevity. 
 
 There are only two principles involved in 
 this article for the amendment of the Constitu- 
 
23 
 
 tion, as passed by the House or as now amend¬ 
 ed by the Senate : 
 
 I. That there shall be no establishment of 
 religion or prohibition of the free exercise 
 thereof, and that there shall be no religious 
 test as a qualification to office in the several 
 States of the Union. 
 
 II. That the people shall not be taxed to pro¬ 
 mote the particular creed or tenets of any re¬ 
 ligious or anti-religious sect or denomination. 
 
 Let me remark that it is manifest that the 
 people call for an amendment covering these two 
 principles. This is manifest from the fact that 
 » the Representatives of the people of every relig¬ 
 ious and political persuasion, coming fresh from 
 every section of the country, have by a vote of 
 166 out of 171 (only 5 negatives) declared that 
 to be the will of the people. Further, sir ; on 
 the passage by the House of this amendment, 
 which undertook to affirm and protect these two 
 principles, and which the people and the press, 
 and which I assume the House of Representa¬ 
 tives thought was effective, great gratification 
 was afforded to the whole country, not only be¬ 
 cause of their wish that these principles should 
 be incorporated in our fundamental law, but also 
 because this vexed question was to be removed 
 from the arena of party politics. The great 
 unanimity of the vote in the House shows how 
 strong is the conviction of the Representatives 
 of the people that this article of amendment to 
 the Constitution is within the legitimate prov¬ 
 ince of constitutional amendments, and is also 
 in accord with the best policy and the. soundest 
 interests of the nation. There is, sir, no room 
 for two opinions on the two propositions that 
 religion and conscience should be free, and that 
 the people should not be taxed for sectarian pur¬ 
 poses. The whole history of our country, from 
 its origin to the present day, establishes and 
 fortifies these positions. And nothing can be 
 clearer than that these fundamental rights 
 should be secured in a constitution ordained 
 expressly to “ establish justice” and to “ secure 
 the blessings of liberty.” 
 
 Mr. President, while the two principles of re¬ 
 ligious freedom and exemption from taxation 
 for sectarian purposes are plainly asserted in 
 the articles as it comes to us from the House, 
 there are, unfortunately, in it defects and omis¬ 
 sions, that were it accepted without amend¬ 
 ment by the States would render it nugatory 
 and invalid. And the House should be gratified 
 that a more careful scrutiny has discovered and 
 corrected these defects, and should be ready to 
 concur at once in the amendment of the Senate. 
 I will point out these defects and their correc¬ 
 tions. 
 
 The fifth article of the Constitution requires 
 that Congress when proposing amendments to 
 the Constitution shall state to the people in 
 what manner the amendment shall be ratified ; 
 whether by the Legislatures of the States or by 
 conventions in the States; the fifth article is as 
 follows: 
 
 “ The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both 
 Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose 
 amendments to this Constitution, or on the ap¬ 
 plication of the Legislatures of two-thirds of 
 the several States, shall call a convention for 
 
 proposing" amendments, which, in either case, 
 shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as 
 part of this Constitution, when ratified by the 
 Legislatures of three-fourths of the several 
 States, or by conventions in three-fourths there¬ 
 of, as the one or the other mode of ratification 
 may be proposed by the Congress.” 
 
 This article amending the Constitution as it 
 came from the House failed to propose either 
 mode of ratifying this amendment. It did not 
 propose that it shoim be ratified by the Legis¬ 
 latures or that it should be ratified by conven¬ 
 tions. Had tbe Legislatures ratified it, not be¬ 
 ing in conformity with the requirements of 
 the Constitution, it would have been invalid. 
 
 I called the attention of the Senate to the first 
 alteration the House amendment makes in our 
 Constitution. The first amendment to the Con¬ 
 stitution, enacted shortly after the adoption of 
 the Constitution, provides that— 
 
 “Congress shall make no law respecting an 
 establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free 
 exercise thereof.” 
 
 This is an inhibition on Congress, and not 
 on the States. The House article very properly 
 extends the prohibition of the first amendment 
 of the Constitution to the States. But the sixth 
 article of the old Constitution also provides 
 that— 
 
 “No religious test shall ever be required as 
 a qualification to any office or public trust 
 under the United States.” 
 
 This provision, in such close harmony with 
 the first amendment of the Constitution, the 
 House article entirely omits, and it has very 
 properly been inserted by the Senate and made 
 applicable to the States. Nobody can object to 
 the Senate amendment on account of these two 
 positions contained in it. 
 
 Thus the article as amended by the Senate 
 prohibits the States, for the first time, from the 
 establishment of religion, from prohibiting its 
 free exercise, and from making any religious 
 test a qualification to office. 
 
 II. Now, as to the second division of the pro¬ 
 posed article amending the Constitution relative 
 to the use of the public money for sectarian 
 purposes, let me say that there are six different 
 modes by which the people can be taxed for 
 sectarian purposes. 
 
 1. By appropriating money raised for school 
 purposes to sectarian schools. 
 
 2. By appropriating money from the general 
 Treasury to sectarian schools. 
 
 3. By appropriating public money to sec¬ 
 tarian institutions other than schools, as theo- 
 •logical institutions, sectarian colleges, monas¬ 
 teries, and nunneries. 
 
 4. By devoting schools or other institutions 
 established by public funds, when so estab¬ 
 lished, to sectarian purposes. 
 
 5. By making appropriations of public money 
 to religious denominations, or to promote their 
 interests. 
 
 6. By appropriating public money to an in¬ 
 stitution to promote infidelity or for the benefit 
 of an anti-religious sect. 
 
 The amendment of the Senate guards against 
 
M 
 
 all these abuses, while the article as it came 
 from the House only prohibited the first, to 
 wit, the appropriation of public money, and 
 only public money raised for schools, to sec¬ 
 tarian schools or dividing it among denomina¬ 
 tions. 
 
 The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The ques¬ 
 tion is on the passage of the resolution, on 
 which the yeas and nays have been ordered. 
 
 The Secretary proceedec^to call the roll. 
 
 ****** 
 
 The result was announced—yeas 28, nays 10; 
 as follows : 
 
 “ Yeas— Messrs. Allison, Anthony, Booth, 
 Boutwell, Bruce, Burnside, Cameron of Wis¬ 
 consin, Christiancy, Clayton, Conkling, Cragin, 
 Edmunds, Ferry, Frelinghuysen, Harvey, Jones 
 of Nevada, Logan, McMillan, Mitchell, Morrill, 
 Morton, Oglesby, Paddock, Patterson, Sargent, 
 Spencer, Wadleigh, and West—28. 
 
 “Nays —Messrs. Bogy, Cockrell, Cooper, 
 Davis, Eaton, Gordon, Jones of Florida, Kelly, 
 Kernan, Key, McCreery, McDonald, Maxey, 
 Norwood, Randolph, and Stevenson—16. 
 
 “Absent —Messrs. Alcorn, Barnum, Bayard, 
 Cameron of Pennsylvania, Conover, Dawes, 
 Dennis, Dorsey, Goldthwaite, Hamilton, Ham¬ 
 lin, Hitchcock, Howe, Ingalls, Johnston, Mer- 
 rimon, Ransom, Robertson, Saulsbury, Sharon, 
 Sherman, Thurman, Wallace, Whyte, Windorn, 
 Withers, and Wright—27. ” 
 
 The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Two-thirds 
 of the Senators present not having voted to 
 agree to the resolution, the same is not passed. 
 
 The Senate amendment only carries out the 
 principle and cures the defects of the article as 
 it came from the House, but it does so effectu¬ 
 ally. 
 
 Why, sir, provide that money raised for 
 schools shall not be appropriated to sectarian 
 schools and leave it lawful to appropriate to sec¬ 
 tarian schools from the general Treasury ? 
 
 Why should we prohibit appropriations to 
 sectarian schools, and yet permit schools estab¬ 
 lished by the public money to be made secta¬ 
 rian ? 
 
 Why prohibit appropiations to sectarian 
 schools and permit money to be appropriated 
 to sectarian institutions of another character ? 
 
 Why prohibit appropriations to religious sects 
 and permit them to be made to infidel sects ? 
 
 There is no reason. And any one who could 
 honestly and sincerely vote for the article as it 
 came from the House should rejoice in the op¬ 
 portunity of voting for the Senate amendment. 
 
 Not only does the article as it came from the 
 House merely apply to the appropriation of 
 money raised for schools to sectarian purposes, 
 but it omits to give Congress any power by 
 legislation to prevent or punish the violations of 
 the article. 
 
 The usual section conferring power on Con¬ 
 gress by legislation to enforce an amendment is 
 in these words: 
 
 “ Congress shall have power to enforce this 
 article by appropriate legislation.” 
 
 But as the committee were aware that some 
 might argue that such a section would confer 
 on Congress the power to interfere with public 
 schools of the State's, the committee, to avoid 
 all possible objection, have—though they were 
 satisfied that an article so phrased would not 
 have the effect claimed—reported a section 
 which gives no affirmation power to Congress, 
 but simply provides that— 
 
 “Congress shall have power, by appropriate 
 legislation, to provide for the prevention and 
 punishment of violations of this article.” 
 
 This section takes the place of the strange 
 provision of the article as it came from the 
 House, which is in these words: 
 
 “ This article shall not vest, enlarge, or di¬ 
 minish legislative power in Congress.” 
 
 Some have called this House article the 
 Blaine amendment. No such provision was 
 ever suggested by that distinguished man. He 
 left the article to be enforced under the pro¬ 
 visions of the original Constitution, which (ar¬ 
 ticle 1, section 9, placit 18) provides— 
 
 “ That Congress shall have power to make all 
 laws which shall be necessary and proper to 
 carry into execution the foregoing powers and 
 all other powers vested by this Constitution in 
 the Government of the United States or in any 
 department or office thereof; and this article 
 is to be part of this Constitution.”