The attitude of the southern religious bodies enabled the Bureau to extend its school system in 1866, and to secure native white teachers. Schools taught by native whites, most of whom were of good character, were established at Tuskegee, Auburn, Opelika, Salem, Greenville, Demopolis, Evergreen, Mount Meigs, Tuscaloosa, Gainesville, Marion, Arbahatchee, Prattville, Haynesville, and King’s Station,—in all twenty schools. There were negro teachers in the schools at Troy, Wetumpka, Home Colony (near Montgomery), and Tuscaloosa. The native whites taught at places where no troops were stationed, and General Swayne stated that they were especially willing to do this work after the churches had declared their intention to favor the education of the negro. It was of such schools that he said their presence dispelled prejudice.[1241] The history of one of these schools is typical: In Russell County a school was established by the Bureau, and Buckley, the Superintendent of Schools, who had no available northern teacher, allowed the white people to name a native white teacher. Several prominent men agreed that a Methodist minister of the community was a suitable person. The neighbors assured him that his family should not suffer socially on account of his connection with the school, and that they wanted no northern teacher in the community. The minister accepted the offer, was appointed by the Bureau, and the school was held in his dooryard, out buildings, and verandas, his family assisting him. The negroes were pleased, and big and little came to school. The relations between the whites and blacks were pleasant, and all went well for more than two years, until politics alienated the races, and the negroes demanded a northern teacher or one of their own color.[1242] The schools at Huntsville, Mobile, Montgomery, Selma, Tuscumbia, Stevenson, and Athens, where troops were stationed, were reserved for the northern teachers who were sent by the various aid societies. The disturbing influence of the teachers was thus openly acknowledged. The Bureau coöperated by furnishing buildings, paying rent, and making repairs, and, in some instances, by giving money or supplies.[1243]
The statistics of the Bureau schools are confused and incomplete. In 1866 one report states that there were 8 schools with 31 teachers and 1338 pupils under the control of the Bureau. General Swayne’s list includes the schools at the various places named above, and reports 43 schools in 23 of the 52 counties, with 68 teachers and a maximum enrolment of 3220 pupils—the average being much less.[1244] Buckley’s report for March 15, 1867, gives the number of negro schools of all kinds as 68 day schools and 27 night schools. The total enrolment for the winter months had been 5352; the average attendance, 4217. At this time the Bureau was supporting 38 day schools, 19 night schools, and paying 49 teachers. Benevolent societies under supervision of the Bureau were conducting 21 day schools, 7 night schools, with 36 teachers and a total enrolment of 2157 pupils. Besides these there were 10 private schools with 443 pupils. In all the schools, there were 75 white and 20 negro teachers. There were more than 100,000 negro children of school age in the state who were not reached by these schools.
The following table, compiled from the semiannual reports on Bureau schools in Alabama, will show the slight extent of the educational work of the Bureau. The list includes all the schools in charge of the Bureau, or which received aid from the Bureau.
| July 1, 1867 | July 1, 1868 | Jan. 1, 1869 | July 1, 1869 | July 1, 1870 | |
| Day schools | 122 | 59 | 33 | 79 | 23 |
| Night schools | 53 | 19 | 2 | 1 | 4 |
| Private schools (negro teachers) | 8 | 22 | 4 | 1 | — |
| Semi-private | 25 | 48 | 25 | 55 | 2 |
| Teachers transported by Bureau | 122 | 22 | 29 | 3 | — |
| School buildings owned by negroes | 27 | 13 | 1 | 4 | 11 |
| School buildings owned by Bureau | 38 | 36 | 29 | 66 | — |
| White teachers | 126 | 67 | 49 | 65? | — |
| Negro teachers | 24 | 28 | 12 | 23? | — |
| White pupils (refugees) | 23 | — | — | — | — |
| Black pupils | 9,799 | 4,040 | 3,330 | 5,131 | 2,110 |
| Tuition paid by negroes | $1,542.00 | $3,206.56 | $1,431.50 | $1,248.95 | $1,446.30 |
| Bureau paid for tuition | 6,693.00 | 2,097.73 | 1,219.75 | 2,938.50 | 22,559.88 |
| Bureau paid for school expenses | 18,685.07 | ——— | ——— | ——— | ——— |
| Total expenditures | 8,235.00 | 6,463.72 | 2,723.25 | 4,187.45 | 240,061.18 |
These statistics showing expenditures are not complete, but they are given as they are in the reports, which are carelessly made from carelessly kept and defective records. There was a disposition on the part of the Bureau to claim all the schools possible in order to show large numbers. Many of these so-called schools were in reality only Sunday-schools,—that is, they were in session only on Sundays,—(and the missionary Sunday-schools were counted), and were not as good as the Sunday-schools which for years before the war had been conducted among the negroes by the different churches. The Bureau did not consider of importance the private plantation and mission schools supported by the native whites, nor the state schools, which largely outnumbered the Bureau schools, but only those aided in some way by itself. The schools entirely under the control of the Bureau had small enrolment. Assistance was given to all the schools taught by northern missionaries, to some taught by native whites, and to some taught by negroes. It was given in the form of buildings, repairs, supplies, and small appropriations of money for salaries. Rent was paid by the Bureau for school buildings not owned by the schools or by the Bureau. Accounts were carelessly kept, and after General Swayne left, if not before, abuses crept in. At least one of the aid societies received money from the Bureau, and its representatives established a reputation for crookedness that was retained after the Bureau was a thing of the past. This society,—The American Missionary Association,—along with other work among the negroes, carried on a crusade against the Catholic Church which was endeavoring to work in the same field. Church work and educational work were not separated. A building in Mobile, valued at $20,000, was given by the Bureau to the association as a training school for negro teachers. The society charged the Bureau rent on this building, and there were other similar cases where the Bureau paid rent on its own buildings which were used by the aid societies.[1245]
As already stated, for two years there was little or no opposition by the whites to the education of the negro, and to some extent they even favored and aided it. The story of southern opposition to the schools originated with the lower class of agents, missionaries, and teachers. Of course, to a person who had taken the abolitionist programme in good faith, it was incomprehensible that the southern whites could entertain any kindly or liberal feelings toward the blacks. But Buckley reported, as late as March 15, 1867, that the native whites favored the undertaking, and that no difficulty was experienced in getting southern whites to teach negro schools. Some of these teachers were graduates of the State University, some had been county superintendents of education. Crippled Confederate soldiers and the widows of soldiers sought for positions in the schools.[1246] There were also some northern whites of common sense and good character engaged in teaching these Bureau schools. But too many of the latter considered themselves missionaries whose duty it was to show the southern people the error of their sinful ways, and who taught the negro the wildest of the social, political, and religious doctrines held at that time by the more sentimental friends of the ex-slaves.
The temper and manner and the beliefs in which the northern educator went about the business of educating the negro are shown in the reports and addresses in the proceedings of the National Teachers’ Association from 1865 to 1875. The crusade of the teachers in the South was directed by the people represented in this association, and its members went out as teachers. Some of the sentiments expressed were as follows: Education and Reconstruction were to go hand in hand, for the war had been one of “education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism.”[1247] “The old slave states [were] to be a missionary ground for the national schoolmaster,”[1248] and knowledge and intellectual culture were to be spread over this region that lay hid in darkness.[1249] There was a demand for a national school system to force a proper state of affairs upon the South, for free schools were necessary, they declared, to a republican form of government, and the free school system should be a part of Reconstruction. The education of the whites as well as the blacks should be in the future a matter of national concern, because the “old rebels” had been sadly miseducated, and they had been able to rule only because others were ignorant and had been purposely kept in ignorance. Much commiseration was expressed for “the poor white trash” of the South. The “rebels” were still disloyal, and, as one speaker said, must be treated as a farmer does stumps, that is, they must be “worked around and left to rot out.” The old “slave lords” must be driven out by the education of the people, and no distinction in regard to color should be allowed in the schools. The work of education must be directed by the North, for only the North had correct ideas in regard to education. Nothing good was found in the old southern life; it was bad and must give way to the correct northern civilization. The work of “The Christian Hero” was praised, and it was declared that it ought to inspire an epic even greater than the immortal epic of Homer.[1250]
The missionary teachers who came South were supported by this sentiment in the North, and they could not look with friendly eyes upon anything done by the southern whites for the negroes. Altogether there were not many of these heralds of light, and it was a year before the character of their teaching became generally known to the whites or its results were plainly seen. Their dislike for all things southern was heartily reciprocated by the native whites, who soon acquired a dislike for the northern teacher which became second nature. The negro was taught by the missionary educators that he must distrust the whites and give up all habits and customs that would remind him of his former condition; he must not say master and mistress nor take off his hat when speaking to a white person. In teaching him not to be servile, they taught him to be insolent. The missionary teachers regarded themselves as the advance guard of a new army of invasion against the terrible South. In recent years a Hampton Institute teacher has expressed the situation as follows: “When the combat was over and the Yankee schoolma’ams followed in the train of the northern armies, the business of educating the negroes was a continuation of hostilities against the vanquished, and was so regarded to a considerable extent on both sides.” The North in a few years became disappointed and indifferent, especially after the negro began to turn again to the southern whites.[1251]
The negro schools felt the influence of the politics of the day, besides suffering from the results of the teachings of the northern pedagogues. Buckley made a report early in 1867, stating that conditions were favorable. On July 1, 1868, Rev. R. D. Harper, “Superintendent of Education,” reported that there was a reaction against negro schools; that the whites were now hostile to the negro schools on account of their teachers, who, the whites claimed, upheld the doctrines of social and political equality; the negroes were too much interested in politics in 1867 and 1868, and spent their money in the campaigns; the teachers of the negro schools were intimidated, ostracized from society, and could not find board with the white people. Because of this, he said, some schools had been broken up. The civil authorities, he declared, winked at the intimidation of the teachers.[1252] Beecher, the Assistant Commissioner and “Superintendent of Education,” reported that the schools had been supported on confiscated Confederate property until 1869, and that this source of supply being exhausted, the teachers were returning to the North. He reported that 100,000 children had never been inside a schoolhouse. The night schools were not successful because the negroes were unable to keep awake. A year later, Beecher reported that the schools were recovering from unfavorable conditions, and that some of the teachers who had proven to be immoral and incompetent had been discharged.
The last reports (1870) stated that there was less opposition by the whites to the Bureau schools.[1253] This can be partly accounted for by the fact that the majority of the obnoxious northern teachers had returned to the North or had been discharged. The best ones, who had come with high hopes for the negroes, sure that the blacks needed only education to make them the equal of the whites, were bitterly disappointed, and in the majority of cases they gave up the work and left. Not all of them were of good character and a number were discharged for incompetency or immorality; others were coarse and rude. The respectable southern whites resigned as soon as the results of the teaching of the outsiders began to be realized, and those who remained were beyond the pale of society. The white people came to believe, and too often with good reason, that the alien teachers stood for and taught social and political equality, intermarriage of the races, hatred and distrust of the southern whites, and love and respect for the northern deliverer only. Social ostracism forced the white teachers to be content with negro society. Naturally they became more bitter and incendiary in their utterances and teachings. Some negroes were only too quick to learn such sentiments, and the generally insolent behavior of the negro educated under such conditions was one of the causes of reaction against negro education. The hostility against negro schools was especially strong among the more ignorant whites, and during the Ku Klux movement these people burned a number of schoolhouses and drove the teachers from the country where a few years before they had been welcomed by some and tolerated by all.