this be a correct statement of the
case, and I assume that it is, the _Union_ (and not the _States_,
severally) is responsible for the ignorance of the black people of the
South. Slavery could not have existed and grown in the Union save by
permission of all the States of the Union. It is therefore obvious
that the agency which created and fostered a great crime is obligated,
not only by the laws of God but of man as well, to assume the
responsibility of its creation and to remedy, as far as possible, the
evil results of that crime. The issue cannot be evaded. The
obligation rests upon the Union, not upon the several States, to
assume the direction of methods by which the appalling illiteracy of
the South is to be diminished.

2. There have not been wanting men and newspapers to urge that the
United States should reimburse the slave-holders of the South for the
wholesale confiscation, so to speak, of their property. True, these
men and newspapers belong to that class of unrepentants who believed
that slavery was a _Divine institution_ and that the slave-holder was
a sort of vicegerent of heaven, a holy Moses, as it were. But when we
leave the absurdity of this claim, which lies upon the surface, there
is much apparent reason in their representations. It was the _Union_
which legalized the sale and purchase of slave property, thereby
inviting capitalists to invest in it; and it was the _Union_ which
declared such contracts null and void by the abolition of slavery, or
confiscation of slave property. As I said before, I have no sympathy
with those who invested their money in slave property. They not only
received their just deserts in having their property confiscated, but
they should have been compelled to make restitution to the last penny
to the poor slaves whom they had systematically robbed. But perhaps
this would have been carrying justice too near the ideal. For the
great debt to the slave, who was robbed of his honest wage, we go
behind the slave-holder, who had been invited by the government to
invest his money in blood; we go to the head of the firm for the
payment of debts contracted by the firm, for each member of the
government is, measurably, an agent of the government, contracting and
paying debts by its delegated authority. Thus the law holds him guilty
who willfully breaks a contract entered into in good faith by all the
parties to it. Instead of holding the slave-holder responsible for the
robbery of t