i ■» AN ADDRESS 
OX THE 
NEEDS OF EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH 
BY 
HON. GUSTAYUS J. OIIR. LL. I)., 
- WtH Bll.! 
State School Commissioner of Georgia. 
DELIVERED BEFORE TIIE DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE 
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, 
AT 
THE MEETING OF 1879. 
[Reprinted from Circulars of Information, Xo. 2, 1879.] 
WASHINGTON: 
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1879. THE NEEDS OF EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH. 
Hon. Gustavus J. Orr, ll.d., State school commissioner of Georgia, 
then read the following paper: 
Mr. President and gentlemen of the Department: The subject as- 
signed me, viz, u The needs of education in the South,” is a large one, 
and I fear that I shall not be able to do it justice. To acquire the in- 
formation necessary to a thorough discussion of it, demanded far more 
time than that left me by the official duties pressing upon me. I have 
given it, however, such thought as I could, and I shall endeavor to make 
the best presentation of it possible under the circumstances. In what I 
have to say I shall speak with entire candor, and the views presented 
shall have at least one merit, that of sincerity and honesty. The two 
sections of our common country never will be able to understand each 
other properly until their representative men, upon all occasions which 
may bring them together, shall learn to deal with one another in a spirit 
of frankness. Liberality is of the essence of learning, and true culture 
has no more distinctive mark than large heartedness and breadth of 
views. I found this general statement illustrated in the reception given 
me by this body twelve months ago, and the manner of my reception 
then emboldens me to open my heart fully to you now. 
EARLY PROVISIONS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION. 
Iii order to understand the educational needs of the South, it will be 
necessary to have some understanding of the educational condition of 
that section, and in order to take this latter fully into the mind it will 
be necessary to take a rapid review of the history of educational effort 
in the Southern States from the earliest times down to the late unhappy 
war. This is the more necessary as the two civilizations (the ante-bellum 
and post-bellum) are distinct, and to understand the one requires some 
previous knowledge of the other. The opinion has had wide currency 
that in educational achievement the South has always been very far be- 
hind other sections of the Union. If what I have to say shall have the 
effect of modifying this opinion I feel that I shall thereby have rendered 
some service to the cause of truth. At the time the present General 
Government was formed, five of the original thirteen States forming it 
were Southern States, viz, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina. South 
Carolina, and Georgia. All of the other Southern States were offshoots 
from these, and were, in the main, peopled by emigrants from the five 4 
original Southern States. In most of these States provision was early 
made, either by the State itself, by private individuals incorporated in 
companies, or by the different religious denominations, and, in some 
cases, by all of these different agencies, for the higher education, includ- 
ing under that phrase the instruction usually given in academies, high 
schools, and colleges. I am fully conversant with educational effort in 
my own State, and as what was done educationally in Georgia in ante- 
bellum times was almost identical with the educational achievement of 
every other Southern State, I feel that I cannot better represent the 
ante-bellum educational work of the South than by going a little into 
the details of Georgia educational history. Permit me, then, to give a 
brief educational sketch of my own State. To do this, let me first pre- 
sent succinctly our educational legislation; and first as to the funda- 
mental law: Georgia had before the war three constitutions. The first 
was adopted in the midst of civil commotion in the year 1777. This 
made it the duty of the legislature to provide schools for the education 
of the people. The second, adopted in 1789, contained few specific 
grants of power and none in respect to education. I find in it, however, 
this general provision: “ The general assembly shall have power to make 
all laws and ordinances which they shall deem necessary and proper for 
the good of the State;” and surely this grant is broad enough to cover 
the most liberal things a legislature could have devised for the promo- 
tion of education. The third, adopted in 1798, remained in force till 1801. 
It contained a grant in respect to education which I shall not quote, but 
which was always held to be of sufficient amplitude by the friends of 
liberal educational progress. 
Thus much as to the educational provisions of the different constitu- 
tions in force during the ante-bellum period. Let us now look hastily into 
the statutes. Two of these relate to the establishment of a State college 
or university. One of them, enacted in 1784, donates a large tract of 
land as an endowment. I have never been able to learn the exact num- 
ber of acres. Of one thing, however, I am sure: the form of the endow- 
ment was early so changed as to make it pay annually the handsome 
sum of $8,000 to the support of the college, an annuity which it still 
enjoys notwithstanding the general destruction of values wrought by the 
war. The second, enacted in 1785, provided for the organization of the 
college by creating a board of trustees and a board of visitors, which 
two boards were to sit together under the title of the senatus academi- 
cus. This joint board was clothed with large powers and was charged 
with important duties in respect to general education, the scheme of the 
act contemplating the establishment of one or more academies in every 
county in the State, which were to be constituent parts of the college 
and were to be under the supervision of this senatus academicus. The 
college was not put in operation till about the beginning of the present 
century, and the grand conception in respect to the county academies 
never was carried fully into effect. It evidently continued long to be 5 
cherished, however, for an act was passed in 1821 appropriating $250,000 
to be invested permanently, the annual proceeds of which were to be 
applied to the support of these county academies. 
Thus much in reference to the laws providing for higher education by 
the State. About the year 1835 there was a great awakening among 
the religious denominations in Georgia upon the subject of the higher 
education. During that year Oglethorpe University, an institution un- 
der the patronage of the Presbyterians, was incorporated. The next 
year two other colleges came into existence—Mercer University, endowed 
by the Baptists, and Emory College, an institution under the charge of 
the Methodist Church. In order to exhibit the ante-bellum work of 
these institutions, State and denominational, I give the following statis- 
tics, which are taken from their respective catalogues : 
Number of ante-bellum alumni. 
University of Georgia 
928 
Oglethorpe University 
280 
Mercer University — 
229 
Emory College 
. 397 
Total 
1,834 
These four institutions gave a partial education during the same 
period, no doubt, to at least twice the number of alumni enrolled in 
their respective catalogues, the recipients having been compelled, by 
various causes, to relinquish their studies before the completion of the 
college curriculum. They thus gave to their country over 5,500 men, 
more or less fully equipped for the great battle of life. I have looked 
carefully over their lists of alumni; and among them I find men who 
have tilled with honor high places in all the departments—legislative, 
executive, aud judicial—of the national and of their respective State 
governments; men who have shed lustre upon the learned professions 
of law, medicine, and theology; men who have added to the domain 
of science by discovery; men who have been an ornament to authorship 
in the lields both of science and literature; men who have been honored 
and successful teachers of youth, and men who have adorned the walks 
of private life. The numerous county academies, too, though not sup- 
ported by the bounty of the State according to the original design of 
the fathers (receiving, nevertheless, from time to time, small contribu- 
tions in the way of aid from the public fund), were enabled, through the 
proceeds of tuition fees, to contribute to society every year throughout 
the ante-bellum period large numbers of persons of both sexes with 
respectable academic attainments. Who will dare to rise up for the 
purpose of undervaluing this great educational work ? 
Great attention was also given in Georgia, during the same period, to 
the higher education of females. In 1830 endeavor in this direction 
received its first great impulse by the chartering of the Georgia Female 6 
College, now known as the Wesleyan Female College, an institution 
under the control of the Methodist Church. This was the first college 
in the United States, and perhaps in the world, to have the right given 
it of conferring degrees on women. This mother of female colleges sent 
forth, in ante-bellum times, bearing her diploma 450 alumnae to adorn 
and elevate and bless society. The founding of other similar institu- 
tions followed in rapid succession till the number rose to nearly twenty. 
I cannot give the number of alumnae of any of these, as the necessary 
data have not been within my reach. I can, however, make this state- 
ment, that I once had occasion to make some investigations upon this 
subject before the recent war, and I satisfied myself that there were, at 
that time, in actual attendance upon these higher institutions for the 
education of women in Georgia upward of sixteen hundred pupils. 
ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN GEORGIA BEFORE THE WAR. 
What shall I now say of elementary education ? I am well aware 
that I now approach much the weakest point in our system. By ele- 
mentary schools I mean schools in which were taught spelling, reading, 
penmanship, arithmetic, and sometimes English grammar aud geogra- 
phy. Schools of this grade were the sole reliance throughout the rural 
districts in my State for many long years. The men who taught them 
were often incompetent—being sometimes without natural capacity, 
attainments, or aspirations—and now and then even persons of bad 
morals. There were among them no teachers’ institutes or associations, 
no circulating libraries, no educational periodicals—in short, nothing 
approaching the modern appliances provided with a view to professional 
elevation. There was no examination of teachers, no issuing of license 
as a condition precedent to obtaining a school, and no supervision. 
Every teacher was isolated, entirely dependent upon his own ability to 
modify methods or originate better ones, and completely and absolutely 
independent in the little realm over which he held sway. The obtain- 
ing of a school was entirely a matter of contract between the person 
offering himself as teacher and his proposed patrons. The latter were 
often utterly incompetent to judge of the teacher’s qualifications, and 
hinged their acceptance or rejection of him solely upon the rates at 
which he ottered his services. A vivid picture of one of the more harm- 
less of this class of “old field school-masters,” as they were called, is 
drawn in the person of Michael St. John, in the “Georgia Scenes,” a 
book of infinite humor, written by my venerated and revered preceptor, 
Hon. Augustus B. Longstreet; while a type of the more brutal class is 
given us in the character of Israel Meadows, of the celebrated Philemon 
Perch Papers, of which Col. ltichard M. Johnston, now of Pen Lucy 
Academy, near Baltimore, is the author. 
The State did not propose to make even these inferior schools free. 
I have already mentioned the fact that the sum of $250,000 was set 
apart in 1821 as an academic fund. The same amount was appropri- 7 
ateil in the same statute for the education of the poor, which, added to 
a former appropriation of $200,000 for the same purpose, made the sum 
of $450,000. This large fund (large for that period) was invested and 
the annual proceeds, amounting to from $20,000 to $30,000, were devoted 
to the payment of the tuition of poor children. It was not the policy 
to establish separate schools for these indigent children. Such teach- 
ers of the academies and of the inferior schools that I have already 
sketched as were willing to submit to an examination, which was often 
a mere matter of form and conducted by incompetent examiners, were 
entitled, if approved, to receive their pro rata of the public fund for teach- 
ing any children adjudged by certain magistrates as belonging to the 
class known as “ poor scholars,” who may have entered their schools. 
I need not say to this audience that this so-called system had no system 
in it, that it was full of defects, and that it was lacking in a hundred 
of the elements that make up an efficient public school system. Still it 
answered a valuable purpose in its day. It placed the elements of an 
imperfect English education within reach of the entire white popula- 
tion, among whom the means of comfortable support were so general as 
to be well nigh universal. You will better understand this declaration 
when I tell you that I have spent my entire life in Georgia, and up to 
the late war I never met, to the best of my recollection, in city, town, 
village, or country place, a single southern born person asking alms. 
As to the comparatively small indigent class, what the State may have 
failed to do for them, the teachers would most gladly have done gratu- 
itously, for, in whatever else they may have been lacking, t hey generally 
had kindly hearts. 
The colored people, as is well known, we never sought to educate, and 
indeed the education of this class was finally prohibited by statute, 
under what I then believed the mistaken impression that this policy 
was necessary to our domestic security; and viewed from the standpoint 
of statesmanship alone, it cannot be shown that the State ought to have 
provided for the education of this class of the people. Education by the 
State rests upon the sole basis of self-protection. Under the constitu- 
tion and laws as they then stood the colored people constituted no part 
of the body politic, and therefore it was no necessary part of statesman- 
ship to provide for their education. Viewed from a moral and religious 
standpoint, the entire subject is seen in a different light. We are essen- 
tially a Christian people, and the belief that the Bible is a revelation 
from God may be said to be a national belief. Holding this opinion 
individually and believing that book to contain the only rule of faith and 
practice for the moral government of human beings, I always thought 
that no man should be denied intelligent access to it, and large numbers 
of my brethren at the South shared this conviction. 
I have now put plainly before you the whole of educational endeavor 
in Georgia in ante-bellum times, both in its conception, as that concep- 
tion found expression in the different constitutions and the laws, and in 8 
its execution, as that execution is represented in the work actually done 
in the schools of both the higher and lower grades. In doing this I 
have put before you much more vividly than I could have done in any 
other way the ante-bellum educational work of the South; for what was 
done in Georgia is about the same as that which was accomplished in 
every other Southern State. In the name of my southern brethren I am 
willing to admit that our inferior schools were indeed very inferior, and that 
in this grade of work we were far behind the older States of the north- 
ern portion of the Union; and truth requires the further admission that, 
in the higher education, we were not the equals of the States that have 
given us a Harvard, a Yale, and a Princeton. Yet we were not so far 
behind in this higher grade of education as many persons have imagined, 
if we may judge from a single comparison, a comparison of the men in 
public life who were the products of this higher education in the two 
sections; for, as long as the truth of history is written, it will be re- 
corded that the men of the South exerted a controlling influence in the 
national councils for more than half a century of our history. 
EDUCATIONAL CHANGES EFFECTED BY THE WAR. 
I come now to speak of the new era, the post-bellum period. It would 
be very difficult for me to put before you anything like an adequate view 
of the changes wrought by the war. No one, who was not of us, can 
ever be made to realize their magnitude. I think I may safely say that 
the history of civilization furnishes no parallel. Let us glance for a mo- 
ment at some of them. A large portion of the population, in some of 
the States more than one-half, which had beqn held by the other under 
the constitution and laws as property and which made up the bulk of 
the wealth, was set free in a day. Millions of dollars’ worth of other 
property was destroyed; and that which was left, including the real 
estate, had no exchangeable value, from the lack of purchasers. The 
entire currency of the country was blotted out, so that thousands of 
good citizens did not possess so much of current funds as would buy a 
meal’s victuals or even pay the postage on a letter. The business of 
agriculture, always the main reliance of the people, was put in what 
seemed to be a hopeless condition by the derangement of the labor sys- 
tem and by the total inadequacy of the appliances of farming left on 
hand, such as farm animals, farm supplies, and agricultural implements. 
Thousands of persons living upon salaries or by the wages of labor, 
often without a week’s subsistence on hand and having large families 
dependent upon them, were left without employment or the hope of 
obtaining it. 
Great as were these changes in our material condition, they were not 
greater than the political changes to which we were subjected. At first 
we were told that we must make certain alterations in the fundamental 
law of the different States before these States could be restored to their 
former relations to the General Government. We had not been accus- 9 
tomed to make changes in our organic law at the suggestion of an out- 
side power, but we obeyed. We had not been long thus reconstructed 
till reconstruction was itself reconstructed. The new governments set 
up were as speedily pulled down, and we were required to form others. 
The law providing for the forming of these new governments, a law in 
the passage of which the South had no voice, enfranchised the recently 
liberated slaves—who were, as a rule, wholly illiterate—and disfran- 
chised very large numbers of the most intelligent and virtuous of the 
white population, thus practically reversing, to a large extent, the rela- 
tive status of the two races. 
But it is with the effect of the changes of the war upon the progress 
of education in the South that I have to deal in this discussion. Most 
of the States of the South, in adopting new constitutions under the 
reconstruction acts, incorporated into the fundamental law the public 
school policy. I must say of the educational provisions of the constitu- 
tion adopted at that time in my own State, that they were a great move 
forward. Notwithstanding the mass of ignorance which made up the 
great body of the convention, it was our good fortune that a few men of 
great ability and of true statesmanship had found their way into it; to 
these, doubtless, we owe the wise educational policy then adopted. Not 
only were constitutions which provide for public education generally 
adopted, but in every State in the South the attempt has been made to 
inaugurate a school system under laws passed in accordance with the 
new constitutional requirements. I propose now to refer briefly to some 
of the great obstacles that stood in the way of the success of this attempt. 
I have already referred, in a general way, to the utter wreck of material 
resources which the South had suffered. I will now give, not only the 
view of this wreck as presented in reliable statistics, but a further view 
from the same standpoint of the immense increase in the number of 
helpless illiterates to be provided for educationally in the new order of 
things. By the census of 1870, the entire property of the States of 
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mary- 
land, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, 
Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia (Southern States) amounted to 
83,553,757,000; while the census of 1860 shows the same aggregate, at 
that time, to have been $5,426,041,724. It will thus be seen that the 
value of all property in the fifteen States named was in 1870 only about 
three-fifths of such value in 1860. The population of these same fifteen 
States was in 1870 as follows: white, 9,275,856; colored, 4,472,684. It 
will thus be seen that nearly oue-tliird of the people of these States, 
at that time, consisted of recently liberated slaves, owning little, if any, 
t axable property. Add to the number, of freedmen the number of whites 
impoverished by the then recent war, and the number thus found desti- 
tute of material resources would, in all probability, equal one-lialf of the 
entire population. 
By taking an area of less extent, I am enabled to make a much 10 
stronger case. The aggregate value of property in the States of Ala- 
bama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Caro- 
lina, South Carolina, and Texas (cotton States) in 1870 was $1,404,487,408; 
while the same aggregate in 1800 was $3,294,241,400. The population of 
the States just named in 1870 was, white, 3,890,280; colored, 3,103,SG0, 
the colored population being nearly equal to the white. From these 
figures I feel justified in saying that, while the taxable property of these 
States was only about tliree-eigliths of what it had been at the begin- 
ning of the preceding decade, the non-taxpayers must have been very 
nearly two-thirds of the entire pop illation. 
OBSTACLES TO BE OVERCOME IN EXTENDING ELEMENTARY EDUCATION. 
I liave now put before you, in the vast increase in the burden to be 
borne and the great diminution in ability to bear it, the greatest of the 
obstacles to success. There were others, however, to which I must 
briefly refer. From the sketch of educational achievement in the South 
in ante-bellum times given in the first part of this address, it will be seen 
that we had no such thing as public schools among us. Our people had 
a way of their own of accomplishing educational results, and in this way 
they were pretty firmly fixed, and, like all other communities where the 
controlling element is of Anglo-Saxon origin, they are very slow to 
make changes. This slowness to change is at the foundation of the con- 
servatism everywhere prevailing in southern society, and, when not too 
persistent, it is an invaluable element of character. 
But there was not only among the people a simple indisposition to 
change—there was a lack of the knowledge upon which rational change 
is always based. Few intelligent men among us had studied the phi- 
losophy upon which education by the State rests, its absolute necessity 
in order to self-protection, its greater universality, its cheapness, and 
consequent adaptation to an impoverished people, and its superiority as 
a result of intelligent supervision. These thoughts are now taking pos- 
session of the minds of thinking men, but till this result could be brought 
about it is very evident that no real progress could, be made. 
Another hindrance to success was not so much opposition to public 
schools as opposition to the manner in which the public school policy 
had been ingrafted upon the fundamental law. 
I have already sketched the manner in which the new constitutions 
originated in the Southern States at the close of the war. It is only 
necessary to place the facts in this sketch before an audience of fair- 
minded citizens in any portion of the Union in order to enable them to 
understand how intelligent, virtuous, patriotic citizens could feel not 
only opposition but even aversion to a measure, intrinsically good, in 
consequence of the manner of its adoption. That this was the ground 
of much of the opposition, I know from intimate association and con- 
tact with all classes of citizens at the South. 
I now approach another hindrance which has been much misunder- 11 
stood, and which I am happy to have the opportunity of presenting’ in 
a truthful light before an audience like this. The hindrance to which 
I allude was the presence among us of so large an element of persons of 
African descent. It lias been thought by many people at the North that 
the white people of the South entertain feelings of actual hostility toward 
this race of people. You will allow me to say, in all candor, that no 
greater mistake has ever been made. It is true that this feeling has 
prevailed to some extent among the more ignorant and illiberal of our 
white population; but the more intelligent and virtuous, constituting 
the bulk of our white citizens, are strangers to it. We understand this 
people too well and owe them too much to entertain feelings of hostility 
toward them. They nursed us in our infancy, were our playmates in 
childhood, and in manhood they were our domestics and held laborers. 
They watched over us in sickness, closed our eyes in death, and shed 
tears at our burial. During the four years of fratricidal strife, when the 
whole South was a military camp and every able-bodied white man a 
soldier, they cultivated our helds, protected our families, stood faith- 
fully by us in the presence of armed foes, and wept with us over our 
brothers and our sons who fell in the deadly conflict. God forbid that 
we should ever forget the service they rendered us in the hour of 
our greatest trial! You will believe me, then, when I tell you that it 
was not hostility to this people that made their presence among us an 
obstacle to the successful introduction of public schools. I will endeavor 
to state clearly and briefly one or two of the grounds that made them a 
hindrance. I have already spoken of the general destruction of the 
property of the white population. Out of the remnant left them from 
the wreck very few of them were able to make adequate provision for 
the education of their own children. Is it surprising, then, that they 
should feel it a great hardship that they were required also to make 
provision for the education of the children of those who had themselves, 
by the laws of the country, constituted a large portion of their wealth ? 
This feeling of hardship was one of the grounds of hindrance. 
Another ground was a feeling of uncertainty in the minds of many 
intelligent men as to the probability of ever making good citizens out 
of the materials which this race furnishes. Even those among us who 
are now the strongest advocates of universal education understood this 
people too well to say that there was not reasonable ground for this 
doubt. We knew that, in all the history of the past, they had never 
accomplished anything great intellectually. They had never established 
anything like regularly organized governments, or enlarged the bound- 
aries of knowledge by discovery, or made any valuable contributions 
to literature, or increased the productiveness of labor by useful inven- 
tions. In their own country they had always been mere savages; when 
brought here, notwithstanding their bondage, they were greatly raised 
in the scale of being. Contact with civilization and the labors among 
them of the different Christian churches did much for them; their 12 
moral elevation was greatly retarded, however, by a general lack of any- 
thing like true home life among them. God, who made us and knows 
all that is in us, has appointed the family as the great agency for 
the moral and intellectual elevation of the race. While many humane 
masters were always ready voluntarily to make large pecuniary sacrifices 
rather than be guilty of the great wrong of breaking up families, the 
different Southern State governments made the great mistake of failing 
to extend over these home relations the tegis of their protection. These 
causes had made the colored people what they were intellectually and 
morally, and their condition, in these respects, afforded, as I think, 
reasonable ground for the doubt entertained. 
I am glad to say that these hindrances, so far as they rest upon long 
standing habits of thought, upon lack of information in respect to the 
new educational policy, upon the violent innovations on established 
modes of framing organic law, and upon speculations in reference to 
questions of race, have well nigh disappeared. The people of the South 
have consented to give up the old and try the new; they have studied the 
philosophy of the modern educational system, and many have studied 
with approval; they have dismissed speculative theories and have 
accepted what they now consider accomplished facts. The most con- 
vincing proof of these declarations is found in the fact that constitutions 
conforming to the new ideas are generally being adopted throughout the 
South by conventions in which men of the old school hold absolute sway, 
and an honest effort is being made everywhere throughout that entire 
section to educate all the children, irrespective of race. The greatest 
obstacle of all, that to which I first alluded and to which I now again 
refer, still remains, viz, our poverty and the vast number of the helpless 
thrown upon our hands. Out of this hard, stern fact grows the great, 
the overshadowing need of the South at this time, viz, more means. 
True, there are other needs. We need a deeper and more general public 
interest in education than can be excited among a partially educated 
population. We need a more intelligent comprehension of our educa- 
tional situation than can be found among our rulers. We need a much 
larger and more enterprising body of thoroughly qualified teachers for 
both our white and colored schools, and especially for the latter. We 
need very much an adequate number of well endowed, well manned nor- 
mal schools for keeping up this supply of well trained teachers. To 
these and similar topics the minds of some experienced educators would 
doubtless have turned in presenting my theme. But our need of means, 
the great, the ever present, the all pervading need, which for years past 
has been resting upon my mind, and blocking up the way to success in 
every grade of educational effort, whether in the college, the high school, 
the academy, or the common school, took possession of my mind when 
I entered upon this discussion; and I could not refrain from such a state- 
ment of historic and other facts and such a train of thought and argu- 
ment as might enable me to bring out this one great need in all the 
weight of its overwhelming emphasis. 13 
A few more thoughts now and this hour’s work will be done. I have 
said that the people of the South are making an honest effort to educate 
the children of all classes, irrespective of race. I might have made that 
statement stronger. I might, with truth, have characterized the effort 
as heroic. Solomon says, u He that ruleth his spirit is better than he 
that taketli a city;” if the spectacle of self-conquest in an individual 
is sublime, what shall we say of the spectacle when a whole people 
place themselves in that attitude? And this is the attitiule of the South 
to-day. We have presented our shoulders to the burden placed upon 
them; but while we have been bearing this burden as best we could, 
in silence, we have felt, all the while, that it was not all ours. It was 
put upon us as a result of the war, and we feel that the whole country 
ought to aid us in bearing it. You are ready to ask, why refer to a topic 
like this in the presence of a body with no power to act? The men sit- 
ting here, and the thousands of intelligent men in all parts of the country 
whom they, in some sense, represent, can make themselves felt with a 
body that is potential. It is for this reason that I have touched upon 
this topic. Having now unburdened my heart of what I, in common 
with multitudes of the best men at the South, have long felt, I now leave 
the subject with you. 
At the close of the prepared address, the speaker begged leave to 
make some additional statements. lie said he regretted that he did not 
have the statistics from all the States of the South which verify the 
statement that these States are now making an earnest effort to educate 
the children of all classes. He desired, however, to give the Georgia 
statistics. Public schools were first put in operation, in that State, in 
1871. In 1872 the school work was interrupted in consequence of a 
previous misapplication of the school fund. There have been enrolled 
in the schools in the successive years since the beginning of the work 
as follows: 
Year. 
White pupils. 
Colored pupils. 
Total. 
1871 
42,914 
6, 664 
49,578 
1873 
63, 922 
19,755 
83, 677 
1874 
93,167 
42,374 
135,541 
1875 
105,990 
50,358 
156, 348 
1875 
121,418 
57,987 
179,405 
1877 
128,296 
62,330 
190,626 
1878 
138, 000 
73,000 
211,000 
In the cities, tlie schools are kept in operation for ten months of the 
year. In the rural districts, he regretted to say that they are kept open 
only.for three months; and the school fund is so small as to he inade- 
quate to pay all the expenses of even this short term.