ch should
be paid into the treasury of the State for the use of the freedmen, and
should constitute a fund to be denominated "the common-school fund for
the education of freedmen." It was further provided in this law, that
"a tuition-fee shall be collected from each pupil, under such
regulations as the superintendents shall prescribe, and paid into the
treasury as a portion of the common-school fund for freedmen."

The salary of the superintendents of the schools for freedmen was fixed
at a thousand dollars, and of the county superintendents at two
hundred dollars. There were, at that time, about twelve thousand negro
men subject to the capitation tax of three dollars, already referred
to, and under that law they paid thirty-six thousand dollars annually
into the State Treasury of Florida; but the school law forbade that the
salary of superintendents and assistant superintendents should be paid
from the fund derived from the poll-tax. They provided that it should
be chargeable solely to the fund raised for common schools. As there
were thirty-seven counties in Florida at that time, it is a fair
presumption that twenty-five of them had assistant superintendents,
whose aggregate salaries would amount to five thousand dollars. With
the superintendent's salary, which was a thousand dollars, a draft of
six thousand dollars for the salaries of white men was at once made
upon the twelve thousand dollars which were to be collected from
freedmen. Every teacher who was to teach in these schools was required
to pay five dollars for his certificate, which also went into the
school-fund; and the end of the whole matter was, that a bare pittance
was left for the thirty thousand negro children in Florida of the
school age. The whole scheme was a ghastly wrong, one which, if
attempted upon that class of any population in the North which is able
to pay only a poll-tax, would consign the party attempting it to defeat
and disgrace, and, if its enforcement were attempted, would lead to
riot and bloodshed.

These laws, with all their wrong (even a stronger word might be
rightfully employed), were to become, and were, indeed, already an
integral part of the reconstruction scheme which President Johnson had
devised and proclaimed. Whoever assented to the President's plan of
reconstruction assented to these laws, and, beyond that, assented to
the full right of the rebellious States to continue legislation of this
odious type. It was