"With spelling-books!" answered Hesden sententiously.
"There we are," laughed the other, "at the very point we started from. Like the poet of the Western bar-room, you may well say, my friend, 'And so I end as I did begin.'"
"Yes," said Le Moyne, "we have considered the desirability of education, and you have continually cried, with good-natured incredulity, 'How shall it be done?' Are you not making that inquiry too soon?"
"Not at all," said the Congressman earnestly; "I see how desirable is the result, and I am willing to do anything in my power to attain it, if there is any means by which it can be accomplished."
"That is it," said Le Moyne; "you are willing; you recognize that it would be a good thing; you wish it might be done; you have no desire to stand in the way of its accomplishment. That is not the spirit which achieves results. Nothing is accomplished by mere assent. The American people must first be thoroughly satisfied that it is a necessity. The French may shout over a red cap, and overturn existing systems for a vague idea; but American conservatism consists in doing nothing until it is absolutely necessary. We never move until the fifty-ninth minute of the eleventh hour.
"Only think of it! You fought a rebellion, based professedly upon slavery as a corner-stone, for almost two years before you could bring yourselves to disturb that corner-stone. You knew the structure would fall if that were done; but the American people waited and waited until every man was fully satisfied that there was no other possible road to success. It is just so in this matter. I feel its necessity. You do not.'
"There I think you do me injustice," said Goodspeed, "I feel the necessity of educating every citizen of the Republic, as well as you."
"No doubt, in a certain vague way," was the reply; "but you do not feel it as the only safety to the Republic to-day; and I do."
"I confess I do not see, as you seem to, the immediate advantage, or the immediate danger, more than that which has always threatened us," answered the Congressman.
"This, after all, is the real danger, I think," said Le Moyne. "The states containing only one third of the population of this Union contain also more than two thirds of its entire illiteracy. Twenty-five out of every hundred—one out of every four—of the white voters of the former slave states cannot read the ballots which they cast; forty-five per cent of the entire voting strength of those sixteen states are unable to read or write."