To those heroic men and women who represented this idea of education at its best, too much credit can not be given.  Cravath at Fisk, Ware at Atlanta, Armstrong at Hampton, Graves at Morehouse, Tupper at Shaw, and Packard and Giles at Spelman, are names that should ever be recalled with thanksgiving.  These people had no enviable task.  They were ostracized and persecuted, and some of their co-workers even killed.  It is true that their idea of education founded on the New England college was not very elastic; but their theory was that the young men and women whom they taught, before they were Negroes, were human beings.  They had the key to the eternal verities, and time will more and more justify their position.

To the Freedmen’s Bureau the South objected because of the political activity of some of its officials.  To the schools founded by missionary endeavor it objected primarily on the score of social equality.  To both the provisional Southern governments of 1865 replied with the so-called Black Codes.  The theory of these remarkable ordinances—­most harsh in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana—­was that even if the Negro was nominally free he was by no means able to take care of himself and needed the tutelage and oversight of the white man.  Hence developed what was to be known as a system of “apprenticeship.”  South Carolina in her act of December 21, 1865, said, “A child, over the age of two years, born of a colored parent, may be bound by the father if he be living in the district, or in case of his death or absence from the district, by the mother, as an apprentice to any respectable white or colored person who is competent to make a contract; a male until he shall attain the age of twenty-one years, and a female until she shall attain the age of eighteen....  Males of the age of twelve years, and females of the age of ten years, shall sign the indenture of apprenticeship, and be bound thereby....  The master shall receive to his own use the profits of the labor of his apprentice.”  To this Mississippi added:  “If any apprentice shall leave the employment of his or her master or mistress, said master or mistress may pursue and recapture said apprentice, and bring him or her before any justice of peace of the county, whose duty it shall be to remand said apprentice to the service of his or her master or mistress; and in the event of a refusal on the part of said apprentice so to return, then said justice shall commit said apprentice to the jail of said county,” etc., etc.  In general by such legislation the Negro was given the right to sue and be sued, to testify in court concerning Negroes, and to have marriage and the responsibility for children recognized.  On the other hand, he could not serve on juries, could not serve in the militia, and could not vote or hold office.  He was virtually forbidden to assemble, and his freedom of movement was restricted.  Within recent years the Black Codes have been more than once defended as an honest effort to meet a difficult situation, but the old slavery attitude peered through them and gave the impression that those who framed them did not yet know that the old order had passed away.