"The statements furnished by the clerks of five city and borough courts, and ninety-three of the county courts, in reply to the inquiries addressed to them, ascertain that, of all those who applied for marriage licenses, a large number were unable to write their names. The years selected for this inquiry were those of 1817, 1827, and 1837. The statements show that the applicants for marriage licenses for 1817 amounted to 4682, of whom 1127 were unable to write; 5048 in 1827, of whom the number unable to write was 1166; and in 1837 the applicants were 4614, and of these the number of 1047 were unable to write their names. From which it appears there still exists a deplorable extent of ignorance, and that, in truth, it is hardly less than it was twenty years ago, when the school fund was created. The statements, it will be remembered, are partial, not embracing quite all the counties, and are, moreover, confined to one sex. The education of females, it is to be feared, is in a condition of much greater neglect.
"There are now in the state two hundred thousand children between the ages of five and fifteen. Forty thousand of them are reported to be poor children, and of them only one half to be attending schools. It may be safely assumed that, of those possessing property adequate to the expenses of a plain education, a large number are growing up in ignorance, for want of schools within convenient distances. Of those at school, many derive little or no instruction, owing to the incapacity of the teachers, as well as to their culpable negligence and inattention. Thus the number likely to remain uneducated, and to grow up without just perceptions of their duties, religious, social, and political, is really of appalling magnitude, and such as to appeal with affecting earnestness to a parental Legislature."
If there shall appear any want of agreement between these statements and the returns made by the deputy marshals, no one need be in doubt in relation to which has the strongest claims for credence. These statements were communicated by the governor of a proud state to the Legislature in his annual message. Unlike the statistics collected by the marshals, each case was subjected to an infallible test; for no man who could make a scrawl in the similitude of his name would submit to the mortification of making his mark, and leaving it on record in a written application for a marriage license. The requisition was made upon the officers of the courts, and the evidence, which was of a documentary or judicial character, is the highest known to the law. The result was, that almost one fourth of all the men applying for marriage licenses—more than thirty-three hundred in three years—were unable to write their names! And Governor Campbell clearly intimates an opinion that "the education of females is in a condition of much greater neglect!"
In round numbers, the free white population of Virginia over twenty years of age is three hundred and thirty thousand. One fourth of this number is eighty-two and a half thousand, which, according to the evidence presented by Governor Campbell, is the lowest possible limit at which the minimum of adults unable to read and write can be stated. But the census number is less than fifty-nine thousand, making a difference of nearly twenty-four thousand, or more than forty per cent.
There are several states of about the same rank as Virginia in the educational scale. Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina sink even below her. The last-named state, with a free white population over twenty years of age of less than 210,000, has the appalling number, even according to the census, of 56,609 who are unable to read and write. In other words, forty-two hundred more than one fourth of the whole free population over twenty years of age are, in the educational scale, absolutely below zero.
Now if to the five hundred and fifty thousand free white population in the United States over the age of twenty years who are unable to read and write, as shown by the census, we add forty per cent. for its under-estimates, as facts require us to do in the case of Virginia, it would increase the total to seven hundred and seventy thousand. Suppose one fourth of these only are voters—that is, deduct one half for females, and allow that one half of the male moiety is made up of persons either between twenty and twenty-one years of age, or of those who are unnaturalized, which is a most liberal allowance when we consider where the great mass of ignorance belongs, and that the number of ignorant immigrants is much less at the South than at the North—and we have 192,500 voters in the United States who are unable to read and write.
Now, at the presidential election for the same year that the census was taken, when, to use the graphic language of another, "every voter not absolutely in his winding sheet was carried to the polls, when the harvest field was so thoroughly swept that neither stubble nor tares were left for the gleaner," the majority for the successful candidate was 146,081, more than 46,000 less than the estimated number of legal voters at that time in the United States unable to read and write. At this election a larger majority of the electoral votes was given for the successful candidate than was ever given to any other President of the United States, with the exception of Mr. Monroe in 1820, against whom there was but one vote. General Harrison's popular majority, also, was undoubtedly the largest by which any President of the United States has ever been elected, with the exception above mentioned of Mr. Monroe, and perhaps that of General Washington at his second election. And yet this majority, large as it was, was more than 46,000 less than the estimated number of our legal voters who, in the educational scale, are absolutely below zero.
And then it should be borne in mind that hundreds of thousands who are barely able to read and write may never have acquired "a knowledge of the true principles of government," which, in the language of Judge Story, at the head of this chapter, "is not only important and useful to Americans, but is absolutely indispensable to carry on the government of their choice, and to transmit it to posterity." It should also be borne in mind that popular virtue is not less essential to the stability of a free government than is general intelligence. Nay, more; if the liberties of this republic are more endangered by any one class of people than by all others, that class consists of intelligent but unprincipled political aspirants. The connection between ignorance and vice has already been referred to, and is well known among intelligent men; but by none so well, it may be, as by the unprincipled aspirant, who, by pandering to the vicious appetites of the ignorant and the vile, and then by base flattery pronouncing them "highly intelligent, enlightened, and civilized," take advantage of their very want of qualification "to manufacture political capital." These are they to whom Lord Brougham refers when he says, "other men will form opinions for them, not according to truth and the interests of the people, but according to their own individual and selfish interest, which may, and most probably will, be contrary to that of the people at large." We can not, then, avoid coming to the unwelcome and dread conclusion that there is not at present in this country a sufficient degree of intelligence and virtue for the wise, or even the safe administration of its affairs. It remains to consider whether existing provisions for the education of our country's youth are adequate to the wants of the American people.
Existing Provisions for Education.—Of the seventeen millions of persons in the United States, according to the last census, 3,726,080—one in five of the entire population—were free white children between the ages of five and fifteen years. This is the lowest estimate I have ever known made of the ages between which children should regularly attend school. The ages usually stated between which children generally should attend school at least ten months during the year, are from four to sixteen, or from four to eighteen years, and sometimes from four to twenty or twenty-one years.
But what is the actual attendance upon the primary and common schools of the country? It is only 1,845,244, or, to vary the expression and give it more definiteness, the total number of children in attendance upon all our schools, any part of the year, is twenty thousand less than one half of the free-born white children in the United States between the ages of five and fifteen years! And then it should be borne in mind that the same general motives which would lead to an under-statement in regard to the number of persons unable to read and write, would lead to an over-statement in regard to the number of those attending school. The educational statistics of some of the states, made out by competent and faithful school officers, show that the whole number of scholars that attended school any part of the time during the school year 1840-41—the year the census was taken—was several thousand less than the number according to the census.[60]