days of reconstruction, while religious charities have founded many special schools which have thus far cost some ten millions more.  The Peabody fund has distilled the dews of heaven all over the South; but heavy rains are needed; without them every green thing must wither away.

This work belongs to the Nation.  It is a part of the war.  We have the Southern people as patriotic allies now.  We are one; so shall we be forever.  But both North and South have a fiercer and more doubtful fight with the forces of ignorance than they waged with each other during the bloody years which chastened the opening life of this generation.

The South lost in the destruction of property about two billion dollars and in prosecuting the war two billion more.  No people can lose so much without seriously disarranging the entire mechanism of their government.  It is for this reason, therefore, that the measure of “National Aid to Education” has so many and so persistent advocates.  I wish to place myself among them.  If the safety of republican government abides in the intelligence and virtue of the people, it can very readily be seen how much safety there is in the South at present.  If it be true that an ulcer will vitiate the entire body, and endanger the life of the patient, we can see very plainly to what possible danger the spread of illiteracy may lead us.

Illiteracy in the South is one of the worst legacies which the rebellion bequeathed to the nation.  It has been the prime cause of more misgovernment in the South than any other one cause, not even the insatiable rapacity of the carpet-bag adventurers taking precedence of it.  It has not only served as a provocation to peculation and chicanery, but it has nerved the courage of the assassin and made merry the midnight ride of armed mobs bent upon righting wrongs by committing crimes before which the atrocities of savage warfare pale.  Wholesale murders have been committed and sovereign majorities awed into silence and inaction by reason of the widespread illiteracy of the masses.  The very first principles of republican government have been ruthlessly trampled under foot because the people were ignorant of their sovereign rights, and had not, therefore, courage to maintain them.

That there should be in sixteen States and the District of Columbia a population of 5,703,218 people to be educated out of $12,475,044 is sufficient to arouse the apprehension of the most indifferent friend of good government.  The State of New York alone, with a school population of only 1,641,173 spent, in 1880, $9,675,922.

But I base my argument for the establishment and maintenance of a comprehensive system of National education upon other grounds than the “safety of the Union,” which is the same argument used by Mr. Lincoln when he emancipated the slaves.  This argument is strong, and will always greatly influence a certain class of people.  And, naturally, it should, for the perpetuation of the Union is simply the perpetuation of a republican form of government.  But there are stronger grounds to be considered.