nt abides in the intelligence and virtue of the
people, it can very readily be seen how much safety there is in the
South at present. If it be true that an ulcer will vitiate the entire
body, and endanger the life of the patient, we can see very plainly to
what possible danger the spread of illiteracy may lead us.

Illiteracy in the South is one of the worst legacies which the
rebellion bequeathed to the nation. It has been the prime cause of
more misgovernment in the South than any other one cause, not even the
insatiable rapacity of the carpet-bag adventurers taking precedence of
it. It has not only served as a provocation to peculation and
chicanery, but it has nerved the courage of the assassin and made
merry the midnight ride of armed mobs bent upon righting wrongs by
committing crimes before which the atrocities of savage warfare pale.
Wholesale murders have been committed and sovereign majorities awed
into silence and inaction by reason of the widespread illiteracy of
the masses. The very first principles of republican government have
been ruthlessly trampled under foot because the people were ignorant
of their sovereign rights, and had not, therefore, courage to maintain
them.

That there should be in sixteen States and the District of Columbia a
population of 5,703,218 people to be educated out of $12,475,044 is
sufficient to arouse the apprehension of the most indifferent friend
of good government. The State of New York alone, with a school
population of only 1,641,173 spent, in 1880, $9,675,922.

But I base my argument for the establishment and maintenance of a
comprehensive system of National education upon other grounds than the
"safety of the Union," which is the same argument used by Mr. Lincoln
when he emancipated the slaves. This argument is strong, and will
always greatly influence a certain class of people. And, naturally, it
should, for the perpetuation of the Union is simply the perpetuation
of a republican form of government. But there are stronger grounds to
be considered.

1. The United States government is directly responsible for the
illiteracy and the widespread poverty which obtain in the South. Under
its sanction and by its connivance the institution of slavery
flourished and prospered, until it had taken such deep root as to be
almost impossible of extirpation. It was the _Union_, and not the
_States_, severally, which made slavery part and parcel of the
fundamental law of the land. If