But the notion so common at the north that the majority of the slaveholders are persons of education, is entirely erroneous.  A very few slaveholders in each of the slave states have been men of ripe education, to whom our national literature is much indebted.  A larger number may be called well educated—­these reside mostly in the cities and large villages, but a majority of the slaveholders are ignorant men, thousands of them notoriously so, mere boors unable to write their names or to read the alphabet.

No one of the slave states has probably so much general education as Virginia.  It is the oldest of them—­has furnished one half of the presidents of the United States—­has expended more upon her university than any state in the Union has done during the same time upon its colleges—­sent to Europe nearly twenty years since for her most learned professors, and in fine, has far surpassed every other slave state in her efforts to disseminate education among her citizens, and yet, the Governor of Virginia in his message to the legislature (Jan. 7, 1839) says, that of four thousand six hundred and fourteen adult males in that state, who applied to the county clerks for marriage licenses in the year 1837, ’ONE THOUSAND AND FORTY SEVEN were unable to write their names.’  The governor adds, ’These statements, it will be remembered, are confined to one sex:  the education of females it is to be feared, is in a condition of much greater neglect.’

The Editor of the Virginia Times, published at Wheeling, in his paper of Jan. 23, 1839, says,—­

“We have every reason to suppose that one-fourth of the people of the state cannot write their names, and they have not, of course, any other species of education.”

Kentucky is the child of Virginia; her first settlers were some of the most distinguished citizens of the mother state; in the general diffusion of intelligence amongst her citizens Kentucky is probably in advance of all the slave states except Virginia and South Carolina; and yet Governor Clark, in his last message to the Kentucky Legislature, (Dec 5, 1838) makes the following declaration:  “From the computation of those most familiar with the subject, it appears that AT LEAST ONE THIRD OF THE ADULT POPULATION OF THE STATE ARE UNABLE TO WRITE THEIR NAMES.”

The following advertisement in the “Milledgeville (Geo.) Journal,” Dec. 26, 1837, is another specimen from one of the ‘old thirteen.’

“NOTICE.—­I, Pleasant Webb, of the State of Georgia, Oglethorpe county, being an illiterate man, and not able to write my own name, and whereas it hath been represented to me that there is a certain promissory note or notes out against me that I know nothing of, and further that some man in this State holds a bill of sale for a certain negro woman named Ailsey and her increase, a part of which is now in my possession, which I also know nothing