This gives colored troops enlisted in the States in Rebellion; besides this, there were 92,576 colored troops (included with the white soldiers) in the quotas of the several States.
CHAPTER V
Illiteracy—Its Causes
At the close of the rebellion there were in the Union (according to the census of 1860) 4,441,830 people of African origin; in 1880 they had increased to 6,580,793. Of this vast multitude in 1860, it is safe to say, not so many as one in every ten thousand could read or write. They had been doomed by the most stringent laws to a long night of mental darkness. It was a crime to teach a black man how to read even the Bible, the sacred repository of the laws that must light the pathway of man from death unto life eternal. For to teach a slave was to make a firebrand—to arouse that love of freedom which stops at nothing short of absolute freedom. It is not, therefore, surprising that every southern state should have passed the most odious inhibitary laws, with severe fines and penalties for their infraction, upon the question of informing the stunted intelligence of the slave population. The following table [on page 29] will show the condition of education in the South in 1880:
COMPARATIVE STATISTICS OF EDUCATION AT THE SOUTH
------------------------------------------------------------------------
White Colored
-------------------------- ------------------------
States School Enroll- [A] School Enroll- [A] [B]
population ment population ment
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alabama 217,590 107,483 49 170,413 72,007 42 $375,465
Arkansas 181,799 [c]53,229 29 54,332 [c]17,743 33 238,056
Delaware 31,505 25,053 80 3,954 2,770 70 207,281
Florida 46,410 [c]18,871 41 42,099 [c]20,444 49 114,895
Georgia [d]236,319 150,134 64 [d]197,125 86,399 45 471,029
Kentucky [e]478,597 [c]241,679 50 [e]66,564 [c]23,902 36 803,490
Louisiana [c]139,661 [d]44,052 32 [c]134,184 [d]34,476 26 480,320
Maryland [f]213,669 134,210 63 [f]63,591 28,221 44 1,544,367
Mississippi 175,251 112,994 64 251,438 123,710 49 850,704
Missouri 681,995 454,218 67 41,489 22,158 53 3,152,178
N.Carolina 291,770 136,481 47 167,554 89,125 53 352,882
S.Carolina [g]83,813 61,219 73 [g]144,315 72,853 50 324,629
Tennessee 403,353 229,290 57 141,509 60,851 43 724,862
Texas [h]171,426 138,912 81 [h]62,015 47,874 77 753,346
Virginia 314,827 152,136 48 240,980 68,600 28 946,109
W.Virginia 202,364 138,799 68 7,749 4,071 53 716,864
District of
Columbia 29,612 16,934 57 13,946 9,505 68 438,567
--------- --------- -- --------- ------- ----------
Total 3,899,961 2,215,674 1,803,257 784,709 12,475,044
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Table Header A: Percentage of the school population enrolled]
[Table Header B: Total Expenditure for both races[a][a] In Delaware the colored public schools have been supported by the school tax collected from colored citizens only; recently, however, they have received an appropriation of $2,400 from the State; in Kentucky the school-tax collected from colored citizens is the only State appropriation for the support of colored schools; in Maryland there is a biennial appropriation by the Legislature; in the District of Columbia one-third of the school moneys is set apart for colored public schools, and in the other States mentioned above the school moneys are divided in proportion to the school population without regard to race.
Several counties failed to make race distinctions.
[c] Estimated.
[d] In 1879.
[e] For whites the school age is 6 to 20, for colored 6 to 16.
[f] Census of 1870.
[g] In 1877.
[h] These numbers include some duplicates; the actual school population is 230,527.
Speaking in the Senate of the United States June 13, 1882, the bill for National "Aid to Common Schools" being under consideration, Senator Henry W. Blair, of New Hampshire, said: