and maintain the freedom
of said persons.--Abraham Lincoln's _Emancipation Proclamation_.

[10] From Williams's _History of the Negro Race in America_ I
construct the following table showing the number of colored troops
employed by the Federal Government during the war of the Rebellion:

Colored Troops Furnished 1861-65
Total of New England States 7,916
Total of Middle States 13,922
Total, Western States and Territories 12,711
Total, Border States 45,184
Total, Southern States 63,571
-------
Grand Total States 143,304
At Large 733
Not accounted for 5,083
Officers 7,122
-------
Grand total 156,242

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 will show the condition of education
in the South in 1880:

COMPARATIVE S