g influence.

This sudden transition and shifting of power was resented at the South,
resisted at first, and finally it has generally been evaded. This was due
to a variety of reasons or prejudices, not all of them creditable to a
generous desire for the universal elevation of mankind, but one of them
the historian will judge adequate to produce the result. Indeed, it might
have been foreseen from the beginning. This reconstruction measure was an
attempt to put the superior part of the community under the control of
the inferior, these parts separated by all the prejudices of race, and by
traditions of mastership on the one side and of servitude on the other. I
venture to say that it was an experiment that would have failed in any
community in the United States, whether it was presented as a piece of
philanthropy or of punishment.

A necessary sequence to the enfranchisement of the negro was his
education. However limited our idea of a proper common education may be,
it is a fundamental requisite in our form of government that every voter
should be able to read and write. A recognition of this truth led to the
establishment in the South of public schools for the whites and blacks,
in short, of a public school system. We are not to question the sincerity
and generousness of this movement, however it may have halted and lost
enthusiasm in many localities.

This opportunity of education (found also in private schools) was hailed
by the negroes, certainly, with enthusiasm. It cannot be doubted that at
the close of the war there was a general desire among the freedmen to be
instructed in the rudiments of knowledge at least. Many parents,
especially women, made great sacrifices to obtain for their children this
advantage which had been denied to themselves. Many youths, both boys and
girls, entered into it with a genuine thirst for knowledge which it was
pathetic to see.

But it may be questioned, from developments that speedily followed,
whether the mass of negroes did not really desire this advantage as a
sign of freedom, rather than from a wish for knowledge, and covet it
because it had formerly been the privilege of their masters, and marked a
broad distinction between the races. It was natural that this should be
so, when they had been excluded from this privilege by pains and
penalties, when in some States it was one of the gravest offenses to
teach a negro to read and write. This prohibition was accounted for by
th