This dissertation has been 61— 5130 microfilmed exactly as received

V A U G H N , William Preston, 1933- THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT IN SOUTHERN PUBLIC EDUCATION: 1865-1876.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1961 History, mo d e r n

University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by

William Preston Vaughn

1962 THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT IN

SOUTHERN PUBLIC EDUCATION

1865-1876

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Qraduate School of The Ohio State University

B y

WILLIAM PRESTON VAUGHN, A. B., M. A.

The Ohio State University 1961

Approved by

V Adviser Department of History PREFACE

The educational problems of the Southern States in the 1960*8, centering around a series of crises over integration, unfortunately have well-established historical precedents in the Reconstruction

Era. In that period, certain Northern groups regarded education, particularly that of the newly emancipated Negro, as the keystone to a reconstructed South that was to be rebuilt along New England lines. Waves of missionary teachers descended upon the Southern

States and founded thousands of schools for Negroes. Their often- unconpromising attitude toward well-established Southern social patterns, combined with the fact that they were engaged in teaching a race which certain Southerners did not want to be educated — least of all, by Yankees, created a furor in the late 1860‘s and early 1870*s and resulted in a hostile antagonism toward Northern “missionaries" which persists even today. The public school systems that were founded or re-established after the Civil War existed on foundations of quicksand until the turn of the century, as far as public favor and support were concerned. That these school systems survived the mal­ administration, corruption, lack of financial and moral support of the substantial white citizens and outlived crises over such controversial questions as mixed schools seems a miracle.

ii ill

This study is concerned with topics which produced a sectional conflict in the field of Southern public education after the Civil War: the agitation caused by the presence of Northern teachers and the differences of opinion among the Southern whites as to the idea and practice of educating the Negro, Four chapters deal with the most burning educational problem of the reconstructed South — that of mixed schools, and how this question assumed national prominence in the struggle over the Civil Rights Bill introduced by Charles Sumner in 1870, and involved the administration of the Feabody Fund, Southern state universities were not without their problems and a chapter i concerning this phase is included to complete the picture of conflict.

The Reconstruction Bra in the South is one“of the most complex phases of American History and this writer believes that, too often, historians of the period have confined themselves too largely to political and economic subjects. As this research will endeavor to prove, a "social" question, such as public school education, often developed into as controversial and important a matter to contemporaries as the more infamous and better remembered political struggles of the period. This study, for the sake of brevity and cohesion, has been confined to the eleven Southern States that seceded, with the addition of the District of Columbia, which forms an interesting and vital comparison to the states. The years 1875-1876 have been set as chronological limits, for with the return of the Southern States to white conservative control in 1877 most of these educational problems were resolved. This dissertation does not pretend to be a history of public school systems in the South during the ten years after the War, their corruption and lack of efficiency, a story ably recorded by

Edgar W. Knight, Stephen B. Weeks and others, but it is an account of those problems in the area of public education which intensified the bitterness and acrimony of Reconstruction.

The writer wishes to express his appreciation to the staffs of the Library of Congress, the National Archives, The Ohio State Museum

Library, and the Main Library of The Ohio State University Libraries for assistance accorded him while doing research. Special thanks is given to Miss Jane W. Gatliff and her staff of the Interlibrary Loan

Division of The Ohio State University Libraries for the numerous materials obtained from other institutions. Especially am I grateful to Dr. Henry H. Simms, who aided me in the selection of this topic and has given me constant and invaluable assistance during its evolution. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page

1. The Etaotional Basis for the Sectional Conflict ...... 1

2• Agitation Occasioned by the Presence of Northern Teachers and Missionary Societies in the South ...... 21

3. The Southern Reaction to the Education of the N e g r o ...... 87

ii* The Controversy over Mixed Schools...... 127

5. The Mixed School Problem in L o u i s i a n a ...... 170

6. The Relationship of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to the Conflict in Education...... 202

7. The Peabody Fund Administration as a Conservative Force in the Educational Problems of the S o u t h ...... 2lj.O

8. The Crisis in Public Higher E d u c a t i o n ...... 263

9* Conclusions...... 291

Bibliography ...... 297

Autobiography...... 309

v CHAPTER I

THE EMOTIONAL BASIS OF THE SECTIONAL CONFLICT

Northern contemporaries in the period following the Civil War were prone to blame the causes of the recent conflict on many factors - slavery and its expansion into the territories, the declining political importance of the South and its attempt to retain an economic "stranglehold" on the American economy. These reasons, and others generally related to political and economic matters, often overshadowed equally prejudiced views on the subject of public education - or the lack of it - in the ante-bellum South, and how this was involved in producing an armed sectional conflict. Certain Northern groups and leaders seemed to believe that the Southern affection for private school training and the lukewarm support given to existing public school systems, combined with the legal proscriptions against educating the slaves, were primary causes for leading the South to war in 1861, In 1870, the New York Times commented upon the paucity of public school systems in the South before i860 and the prevalence of academies and private tutors, and said that:

It was this which checked labor emigration ••• and turned it into the free West, where the descendants of New England had carried the school house. The result was, that the South became an oligarchy in which political power was wielded by the few, while the North became the prosperous home of free labor and of educated political ideas. These ideas finally prevailed at the polls, and led to that sectional political ascendency which the South pretended drove it into rebellion. Two years after the war ended, Reuben Tomlinson, an Assistant

Freedman's Bureau Cbmmissioner in South Carolina, bluntly stated in the publication of the American Missionary Society that, "It was the ignorance of the great mass of the Southern whites, produced by the existence of a privileged class of slaveholders, which enabled the 2 leaders to carry the South into rebellion in behalf of slavery."

Another "benevolent society"3 publication asserted that it was the ignorance of the masses of the South, and the "consequent disproportion of authority in the hands of ambitious men" that brought on the rebellion.^

At teachers1 conventions and in the education journals, extreme sentiments were uttered concerning the great ignorance of the mass of the Southern population, and how the uneducated poor whites had been forced into a war by a tyrannical slaveholding oligarchy. Francis

Wayland, former President of Brown University, in 1865 wrote to

Samuel S. Greene, President of the National Teachers' Association, that the war had tested the value of education for it had been "a war of education and patriotism against ignorance and barbarism.""’ In the

1865 edition of the Journal of Proceedings and Lectures published by

^The American Missionary, XI, 9 (Sept., 1867), 209. 3Vide, Ch. 2. j*The Freedman's Record, II, 5 (May, 1866), 81** ^National Teachers' Association, Journal of Proceedings and Lectures (Washington: National Teachers' Association, 1865),15. Hereafter, this will be cited as National Teachers' Association, Proceedings. the National Teachers1 Association, it was stated that one class in the South, because of the dominance of its slaveholding members, was secure only in the ignorance of the poor whites, who were too down­ trodden to improve themselves, and in the ignorance of the slaves, who were prohibited from learning to read.6

In the years after the war, certain Northern historians and educators continued to insist that virtually no public schools had ever existed in the Southern States prior to i860. General 0, 0# Howard,

Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, incorrectly stated in his autobiography that before the war, North Carolina had never had a free-school system, "even for white pupils," and that "the death of slavery unfolded the wings of knowledge for both black and white to 7 brighten all the future of the 'old North State,"' He remarked

(erroneously) that in South Carolina, as in her sister-state to the

North, there was no state system of schools before i860, and that beyond the limits of Charleston "there was not a single free school g in that state," In 1865, the President of the National Teachers'

Association patronizingly said that there had been no common school 9 systems in the states where slavery prevailed. As late as 1912

^Andrew J, Rickoff, "A National Bureau of Education," National Teachers' Association, Proceedings, 302, ^Oliver 0, Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, II (N,Y«, 1908), 338, Hereafter, this work will be cited as Howard, Autobio

^Samuel S. Greene, "The Educational Duties of the Hour," National Teachers' Association, Proceedings (1865), 232, Hereafter, this will be cited as Greene, "Educational Duties of the Hour," the eminent historian, Albert Bushnell Hart, wrote in The Southern

South that "... as for free rural schools, not a single Southern State had organized and set in operation a system before the Civil War."1®

Those persons in the North who were inspired with missionary zeal looked upon the conquered Southern States as fertile fields for their endeavours. Although they compared the educational progress of the South to that of "darkest Africa," they believed that only the principles and practices of the New England education system were needed to transform the region into a happy and intelligent land.

Pennsylvanians were urged to spread knowledge and intellectual culture over "the regions that sat in darkness," where ignorance had served as a "veil of concealment from the power of evil that was concentrated for four years in Richmond."11 Mr. J. P. Wicker sham, principal of the Pennsylvania State Normal School at Millersville, in a speech before the National Teachers' Association in 1865, showed deep concern for the non-slaveholding whites, who were "extremely ignorant," and, he feared, ready again to become the "tools of those cunning enough 12 to deceive them He asserted that they must be educated, and felt that no state that had passed an act of secession should be allowed

^Albert B. Hart, The Southern South (D. Appleton and Co., N.Y., 1912), 289-90. ^National Teachers* Association, Proceedings, 15. 12 j. p. Wicker sham, "Education as an Element in Reconstruction," The National Teachers' Association, Proceedings (1865), 289. 5 to take its former place in the Union without incorporating a free- 1"? school clause into its constitution. In his opinion, the former slaveowners were beyond help, for they had already been sadly mis- educated and they would scornfully reject all proffers of education from Northern sources. The best thing this class could do would be to leave the country - "the more the better." Wicker sham believed that they should be treated as "Western farmers do the stumps in the clearings: work around them, and let them rot out."^ However, the great area of interest and endeavour was to be the freedmen, who must be educated or they would perish. Their education was not to be merely 15 academic, but to fit them for their new condition as citizens.

Other educators who might concede that free public school systems did exist in the South before the Civil War were, however, extremely critical of the curriculum of Southern primary and secondary

schools. John Eaton, United States Commissioner of Education

(1870-1886), remarked in 1870 that "It should not be forgotten ... that the sentiments which struggled for the overthrow of the Union had been the subjects of misguided instruction, poisoning specially for a generation the channels of thought among the people of a large section of the country." However, Eaton believed that the sentiments which sustained the Union existed, "nay were strong, clear and active only to the extent that patriotic teachers and educational instrumentalities

jylbid., 291. , 290-91. , 29k. had made them so.” The Commissioner agreed with the person who had observed that, with the advent of the war in 1861, the plantation and the school district system had come to a crisis,^

As a well-known Southern historian concluded, the general consensus of opinion in the North regarding pre-war Southern school systems was that the South had no public education, was opposed to it, and "such education as had been given was based on wrong principles and resulted in secession, rebellion, etc;" the poor whites were very ignorant, and this condition was exploited by the leaders of the

Confederacy and made its basis; Southern leaders were opposed to educating the white masses, and all classes of whites were opposed to educating the slaves,^

While it is true that in none of the Southern States was the public school system as highly developed as in Massachusetts or

Pennsylvania, it certainly cannot be stated dogmatically that there were no free public schools in the South before i860, By that year, all of the Southern States except South Carolina had constitutional provisions for public education, and in all of them some effort was made toward educating at least a portion of the children at public

^ J o h n Eaton, "The Relation of the National Government to Public Education," Hie American Normal School and the National Teachers' Association, Addresses and Journal of Proceedings (Washington, 1871),

^Walter L. Fleming, A Documentary History of Reconstruction, Political, Military, Social, Religious, Educational and Industrial, 1865 to the Present Time, II (Cleveland, 1906-07)» 16f?, Hereafter, this work will be cited as Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, 7

-i Q expense. Probably the most comprehensive systems of schools were organized in North Carolina and Louisiana* but these fell apart during the War.^ Alabama’s public school system was first organized in

185k, and was essentially an expansion of the system already established in Mobile. The schools were not entirely free, for parents who could afford to do so paid part of the tuition. By 1858, almost 100,000 white children were attending Alabama's semi-public schools, but this number only constituted approximately one-fourth of the school 20 population, i.e., children of school age.

The school system of Arkansas grew out of an act passed by the legislature in February, I8I4.3, which provided for a school fund to be derived from the sale of "sixteenth section" lands, and for county school coranissioners, who were to secure four month's schooling, together with the necessary textbooks, for each indigent child in every township. In 1850, 8,U93 white pupils were being educated in 353 public schools.^ Ten years later, 727 schools were serving 19,2U2 pupils, but these schools were not free in the modern sense, for only 25 per cent of them were sustained entirely from the common school fund.

1 O xoEdgar W, Knight, The Influence of Reconstruction on Education in the South (New York, 19i3), 5o. Hereafter, this will be cited as Slight,"‘influence of Reconstruction. 19Hoy Taylor, An Interpretation of the Early Administration of the Peabody Education~fund (Nashville, 1933), 3h» Hereafter, this will be cited as Taylor, Interpre tat ion of the Peabody Fund. ^ S t e p h e n b. Weeks, History of Public School Education in Alabama (Washington, 1915), 606. ^Report of the Commissioner of Education for the Year 1876 (Washington, 18757, l5. Hereafter, this will be cited as Report for [ye a r indicated/. Endowments and some income from taxation formed the other means of 22 support* Florida, like Arkansas, was a fairly recent addition

(18U5) to the role of the states by the time the Civil War began*

As in Arkansas, frontier conditions prevailed even beyond i860 and population was sparse and widely distributed. Territorial Acts of 1839 and 181*3 provided that proceeds from land sales in Florida were to be used to support public schools, and these laws were reinforced by legislation of l8ij5 and 181*9. Altogether, over 908,000 acres were granted to the state for public schools, but the interest derived from the school fund financed by the land sales never amounted to over

$.50 per pupil per year. In i860, Florida could claim only ninety- seven public schools that provided instruction to 2,032 pupils, but even 23 these ninety-seven schools were financed chiefly through tuition*

Georgia, like her neighbor to the South, could not proclaim the existence of an effective school system before i860, although attempts were made to establish one in 181*5, 1856, and 1858* The legislature made provision for paying the tuition of all white children 25 whose parents were not otherwise able to send them to school, and thus Georgia's public schools became tainted with the odium of

"pauper schools," a feature which plagued the schools of other

22 Thomas S. Staples, Reconstruction in Arkansas, 1862-1871* (New York, 1923), 313* Hereafter, this work will be cited as Staples. Reconstruction in Arkansas* ^3Report for 1876, 62-63* “ ^Charles E. Jones, Education in Georgia (Washington, 1889),

2^Ibid., 68. Southern States as well. Louisiana did somewhat better in the realm of public education for, in 1839, special authority was given to the city of New Orleans to establish a system of public schools, to be supported by a property tax - an unusual provision in those days. The

New Orleans schools were organized on a plan submitted by Henry Barnard of Connecticut, and he became the first city superintendent. A new constitution in 181*5 gave the General Assembly the power to establish public schools throughout Louisiana, and two years later it passed an education law which provided for the instruction of all white youths between the ages of six and sixteen. To finance these schools, a property tax of one mill on the dollar was to be levied on all taxable property in each parish, and this income was to be supplemented by a one dollar capitation tax on each free white male inhabitant over twenty-one years of age, by funds resulting from sales of land grants and from tuition fees. The Office of State Superintendent of Education was created in 181*7, and the major job of this official was to apportion the school fund to the parishes in proportion to the number of white children of school age residing in each parish. In 18^0, this system consisted of 661* schools, 822 teachers and 2^,01*6 pupils. Tuition fees accounted for one-sixth of the #31*9,679 school income. Ten years later, on the eve of the Jar, the system had expanded to 713 schools,

856 teachers and 31,813 pupils. Only one-eighth of the income was derived from tuition,

Mississippi's school system was actually established in 1833,

26Report for 1876. 11*6-1*7. 10 when an act was passed by the legislature to provide for distribution

among the counties of the capital in the literary fund, which amounted

to #50,000. The capital was to remain invested in "productive stock," 27 and the resulting dividends were to be used for educating the poor,

thus, essentially, the ante-bellum schools of Mississippi were "pauper

schools." By i860, there were 1,116 of these schools in existence, pQ serving 30,970 white pupils* Ihe state of North Carolina undoubtedly

had the most flourishing public school system among all of the Southern

States in i860. This system had been created in January, 1839, when

the state legislature passed a law enabling the establishment of public

schools. The state was divided into districts of six square miles, but

each county possessed a local option with regard to establishing

schools.2^ All but seven of the counties adopted the plan, and those

that did were supposed to levy a tax amounting to twenty dollars for

each school district, to be increased by twice that amount from the

proceeds of the literary fund. Calvin H. Wiley became the first state

superintendent in 1853, and was largely responsible for the strengthening

of the system. He served in that position through the war years, until

1866. At the beginning of his tenure, there were approximately 2,500 com­

mon schools in North Carolina, with an enrollment of almost 95,000,

2Jlbid., 222. James W. Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi (New York, 1901), 35U. Hereafter, this will be cited as Gamer, Reconstruction in Mississippi. 29'idgar W. Knight, Public Education in North Carolina (Boston, 1916), 1U0. Hereafter, this will be cited as Knight7~^ublic Education in North Carolina. 11 out of a school population of 195*000 white children# By i860,

150,000 children were receiving instruction (out of a school population of 221,000), the number of schools exceeded 3,000, and over $100,000 of local taxes and $280,000 of state funds were expended for public education# The average salary of teachers was $28.00 a month, $5#50 higher than the corresponding figure forty years later, in 1900J3®

South Carolina was unique among the Southern States in that she had no constitutional provision for education until adoption of the ’’reconstruction constitution" in 1868, In 1811, an act was passed by the general assembly which established free schools to which any white child might be sent, but if more children applied than could be accepted, preference was always to be given to poor orphans and children of indigent parents. This well-meaning provision had an unhealthy effect, however, for the schools acquired the reputation of

"pauper schools" and were consequently ignored by white parents of ■ai property and social standing* There was no state superintendent or any form of supervision for these schools, and they existed on a legislative appropriation of $300 per year for each representative the 32 school district or county had in the legislature# In 1856, some progress was made when an improved system of public schools for both

3QIbid.. 16U-186. 33-Report for 1876# 362-63# 3 2Knight, The Influence of Reconstruction, 61# 12 rich and poor White children was established in the city of Charleston, followed by a secondary school and a normal school for female teachers,-^

Tennessee's school system was created by a legislative act of

January, 1830, which placed the organization of these schools into the hands of county commissioners. The schools were financed by interest realized from a school fund and from a tax levied on any school lands that might be sold. Private donations were also gladly accepted. The system prospered between 181*0 and i860, the number of schools increasing from 938 to 2,965, and the number of popils expanding from 25,090 to almost 139,000, It must be admitted, however, that a minority of the students were attending at public expense,^ Texas was hindered by a sparse population and disorders growing out of the

Mexican War in the establishment of a school system, which was not started until 185U. In that year, $2,000,000 in the form of 5 per cent bonds was set aside as a school fund, the interest to be distributed 35 annually among the counties for the support of schools, A law passed two years later, in 1856, permitted the abolition of the recently established school districts and allowed parents anywhere in the state to establish a school and receive state funds. This was such a concession to the private school forces that it resulted, in reality, in the abandonment of the state system,^

•^Report for 1876, 363, 3hlbid., 370-71. 35Ibid., 381*. 3oCharles W, Dabney, Universal Education in the South, I (Chapel Hill, 1936), 1*15-16. Hereafter, this will be cited as Dabney, Universal Education, In Virginia, the origins of the public school system can be traced to the creation of a literary fund in 1810, and a law of 1818 which established a "pauper" school system which provided for sixty

days' tuition to indigent children every year. A permanent system was not established until 181*6, when a law of that year created boards of school commissioners, appointed by the county courts, who were to define district boundaries and establish a common school in

each district. Free tuition was to be available to all white children

over six years of age. This law was not a success because the several

counties had the option to accept or reject the proposition, and

because the schools which were created also accepted tuition scholars,

and were, in essence, private schools in which some "public fund pupils*

were taught. By i860, there were 3,778 of these schools, and 85,1*1*3 pupils, of which only two-fifths attended at public expense.^ A few

Virginia cities established their own systems which proved to be more

favorable, notably Norfolk and Petersburg.^

As this brief summation has attempted to show, public school

systems did exist in some form in all of the Southern States by i860,

and a few, as in North Carolina and Louisiana, gave promise of developing into worthy institutions. Southern advocates of common

schools met bitter opposition from groups favoring private schools,

and often the "public schools" were really private schools partially

^ Report for 1876, 1*00-01. 3®ftichard L. Morton, History of Virginia, III (Chicago, 1921*), 229-30. I k supported by state funds. The explanation for this general reluctance of Southerners to support public school systems before 186© was well summarized by DeBpw1 s Review, which gave as reasons s that no agricultural day laborers were ever highly educated; the South did not deem it desirable to improve the learning of the slaves; the cost of common schools rested upon slave property owned only by some whites, and this was an expensive and unequal form of taxation; the irregular density of population made the establishment of common schools impracticable in many areas.^ To these might be added the fact that those whites usually interested in education were able to afford tutors or private academies and seminaries, and thus felt little concern for public schooling.

Between 1861 and 1865 the South was embroiled in a bitter and bloody war with the Union, and the feeble public school systems that had existed in i860 were gradually snuffed out as the war progressed.

School buildings were destroyed or put to other uses, such as hospitals; male teachers entered the array; and public funds were diverted to other purposes. When the war was over, practically nothing remained of these systems.

The "Johnson Constitutions," i.e., those ratified by the former

Confederate States in the period 1865-66, paid little attention to the problem of public education for the youth of their states. Alabama's constitution of 1865 contained a vague statement about the encouragement

39peBow's Review, V (December, 1868), 1107-08. of schools and education by the general assembly, with no reference as to whether both races or only whites were to be educated.^ Some school officers were aopointed, and a few schools were organized before the Constitutional Convention of 1868.^ In 1861*, before the end of the

War, Arkansas ratified a constitution which merely incorporated the educational provision of the previous constitution of 1836. Nothing was accomplished in the realm of public education in this state until

1 8 6 8 - 6 9 . Florida's constitution of 186$ was extremely indefinite on this subject^ and the section on education that was included did not lead to the creation of a new school system. The General Assembly of the State of Georgia was given the authority by the Constitution of

1865 to provide for the education of "the people,"^ but the legislature remained unresponsive in regard to public schools.

Of all of the constitutions passed by the Southern States in the period l861*-66, Louisiana's, which was ratified in 1861*, had the most concrete provision concerning public schools. It declared* "The legislature shall provide for the education of all children between the ages of six and eighteen years, by maintenance of free public schools by taxation or otherwise."^ It is to be noted that there was no specific

^Benjamin Perley Poore, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the United States (Washington, 1878), I, 5Iu Hereafter, this will be cited as Poore, Federal and State Constitutions-

1 h uxu* * A» JtfSid., I, 753. mention of mixed schools, but that implication could be gained from the phrase "education of all children,* However, this policy was not begun until a new constitution and school law were passed, and a new state superintendent took office, in the period after 1868.^® Mississippi never ratified a constitution in this interim period, but simply passed a few amendments to the Constitution of 1832, none of which dealt with education.^ North Carolina's constitution of 1866 was rejected by the people, and another was not prepared until the advent of Radical Reconstruction, Tennessee, likewise, continued to operate under her pre-war constitution. South Carolina ratified a new constitution in 1865, but there was no reference to public education or the establishment of a public school system.^® In the wartime constitution drawn up by the Pierpont government in Virginia, no mention was made of public schools,^ and no other constitution was ratified until 1870.

Texas emerges as the one Southern State which made a real provision at this time, at least in theory, for Negro education. Its

Constitution of 1866 authorized the legislature to establish a system of schools, and any taxes that were collected from "Africans" were to be used for their education alone. The pre-war procedure of selecting private schools for use in the instruction of public-fund pupils was

'■■■ ■■■■ .

^See Chapter Five. Poore, Federal and State Constitutions, II, 1079-80. !*gIbid., 1637-45. J^Ibid., 1937-52. 17

to be continued.Unfortunately, before any action could be taken, the federal government nullified the constitution and all the piano ^1 for reorganization were made inoperative *^

The Radical forces that gained political control after 1867 were usually emphatic on the necessity of educating the freedmen and the poor whites, and, therefore, new school systems began to

arise after 1868. They usually appeared to be better on paper than

in actual operation, were often milked dry of funds by unscrupulous

politicians, and provided sinecures for the politically faithful, but

they did give a small measure of basic primary education to Negroes

and whites who had previously received none. As has been pointed out,

the systems themselves were not the innovations of Reconstruction, but

their reestablishment, revitalization and enlargement are remembered

as some of the lasting accomplishments of this tragic period of

history. As a well-known educational historian has shown, these

accomplishments were in three main areas: specific and mandatory provisions for education which were included in the reconstruction

constitutions of the Southern States; the establishment of school

systems for both races; and creation of uniform systems of taxation

for school supportBishop Atticus G. Haygood of the Methodist

Episcopal Church, South, referred to these revamped school systems

5°lbid., 1799-1800. 51^rederick Eby, The Development of Education in Texas (New York, 1925), 156. 52Knight, The Influence of Reconstructlca, 99* 18 as "one of the best Issues of the revolution •••• So much the South

owes to the carpetbag governmentsj they did not give to the Southern 53 people common schools, but they began them."

In the face of rabid opposition to public schools as a Yankee

institution, fears of a new and heavy burden of taxation, and

apprehension over the possible establishment of mixed schools,^

school systems were commenced in the former Confederate States after

1868. In Alabama, a system based on a provision of the constitution

of 1868 went into operation the following year; Arkansas established

her new schools in 1868-69, and over 67,000 children were enrolled.

Although Florida passed an education law in January, 1869, her schools

did not go into operation until the fall of 1870. Georgia was even

more prone to procrastinate - the constitution of 1868 required the

establishment of a free school system, but it was not until 1870 that

an education law was enacted, and the schools were not in operation I until 1871. Louisiana’s school system was reorganized by the

constitution of 1868 which contained a strong mixed school provision,

reaffirmed in a law of March 1869 which also revamped the system

under a new state board of education. Schools were re-established

in Mississippi in 1870 under a constitutional law of 1869 which

specified equal educational advantages to all children between five

^Atticus G. Haygood, "The South and the School Problem," Harper's Monthly. LXXIX (July, 1889), 225. ^Edward King, The Southern States of North America (London, 1875), 601. Hereafter, this will be cited as King, the Southern States. 19 and twenty-one years* North Carolina reorganized its schools in l869j and South Carolina did so in 1870, according to a provision in the constitution of 1868 which provided public schools for all children without regard to race or color* Tennessee's new system was one of

the first to get started (1867), but due to prolonged and bitter opposition to an essential property tax of two mills on the dollar,

the state system was abolished in 1870 and education became a

responsibility of the counties. Texas' constitutions of 1866 and

1869 provided for free public schools, but it was a law of August,

1870, that established the office of State Superintendent of Education and set up the system which did not become effective until several years after the Reconstruction period* Virginia's constitution of /* 1870 contained a section which laid the foundations for a uniform

system of public schools and for its gradual introduction in all counties by 1876* By the end of the spring term in 1871, over 130,000 pupils CtL were enrolled in the reorganized schools*^

Thus, ten short years after the outbreak of the Civil War, the

South was able to claim a public school system which served both the white and Negro races in every one of the states that had seceded from the Union. These ten years, however, were filled with rancorous

strife and conflict in the field of education, none perhaps more intense than that which ensued over the educational activities of the Freedmen's

Bureau and the presence of the Yankee missionary teachers whose actions

^ Report for 1876, 6 et passim. led to a wave of public opposition which nearly prevented the establish­ ment of.the public schools. Whatever objectivity these teachers might have possessed in viewing the task before them was precluded by the rash and vindictive statements which they constantly heard from their leaders or read in Association Periodicals, and therefore believed, that the South was an educational desert, parched by the dry winds of ignorance and depravity and which only they could transform into an oasis, fed by the springs of Yankee superiority, ingenuity and ability. CHAPTER II

AGITATION OCCASIONED BY THE PRESENCE OF NORTHERN TEACHERS AND MISSIONARY SOCIETIES IN THE SOUTH

Even before the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in January, 1863, numbers of Northerners with strong anti-slavery opinions who were also imbued with a missionary spirit began to see before them a vast new field of endeavour, that of educating the millions of illiterate Negroes in the South. It was extremely important that this task he carried out under Northern supervision, for dire consequences were foretold if native Southern whites should be allowed to inculcate their subversive ideas into the minds of the freedmen. The publication of the New England Freedmen's Aid Society warned that unless vigilant control was maintained over the white "Southron's0 educative powers regarding the freedmen, the North would "waste the present golden opportunities of securing the implanting of the seed thoughts of liberty in their minds ••• (For, the Southern whiteneed a certain amount of culture in Americanism before they assume the office of teacher to their colored brethren. If certain groups had their way, not only was there to be Northern supervision of the freedmen's schooling, but it would be New England inspired, for through the freedmen "the New

England leaven, i.e. intelligence and principle ••• (was to leaverJ 2 the whole lump of Southern ignorance and prejudice."

^The Freedman's Record, III, 10 (Oct., 1867), 160. Quoted from the National Anti-Slavery Standard. 2Ibid.. IV (April, l b 6 l ) 7 ~ 5 u 21 22

Between 1862 and 1872, untold amounts of time, money and energy were spent by the Northern religious groups, non-denominational aid

societies, and the Federal Government's agency of relief, The Freedmen's

Bureau, on school buildings, books and teachers for the Negroes. One historian has estimated that in this ten year period, between 3 #5,000,000 and #6,000,000 was spent on Negro schools in the South.

Contributions to this cause were looked upon by many in the North as a continuation of the war effort, even after April, 1865, for they envisioned the ever-increasing numbers of teachers going South to

instruct the freedmen as a great army, and saw the business of educating

the Negroes as a prolongation of hostilities against the vanquished

South.k That this attitude was quite pronounced among the teachers

themselves was evidenced by the remarks of a Yankee teacher in Virginia

who wrote;

The army of blue-coated heroes who had marched down to battle was succeeded by the army of 'Yankee Schoolmarms,' armed with the Bible and spelling book, who invaded the South in as genuine a spirit of heroism, for as patriotic and deserving a cause, and with as triumphant results, as the grand army of pioneers who had led the way and broken down the barriers of caste.^

Beginning in the early months of the war, teachers began to

leave for states partially occupied by Union troops, and there they

3 Henry L. Swint, The Northern Teacher in the South, 1862-1870 (Nashville, 19hl), 3. Hereafter, this will be cited as SWint, Northern Teacher. ^Knight, Public School Education in North Carolina, 215. 5Linda W. Slaughter, The Freedmen of the South (Cincinnati, 1869), 110. Hereafter, this will be cited as Slaughter, Freedmen of the South. established schools for the Negroes who had infiltrated through the

lines* These teachers did not usually go on their own initiative nor

did they finance their own work, but generally they were sponsored by

some church missionary society especially organized for the purpose,

or by a non-denominational aid society* In 1862, public meetings were held in Boston, New York City and Philadelphia to promote the

cause of Negro education, and these gatherings led to the establishment

of "The Association for the Aid of Freedmen” and the ”Missionary

Association” in New York, the "Committee of Education” in Boston, and

similar bodies in Philadelphia, Chicago and Cincinnati. These groups

collected money and soon began to open schools for the Negroes.^ About

eighty such societies were formed after 1862, but their exact number

has been difficult to determine because of the short life of many

of the groups, their tendency to unite and separate, and the frequency 7 with which they changed their title, officers, and area of interest*

One historian has divided them into three categories: non-sectarian,

denominational and semi-denominational. The most prominent of the

non-sectarian societies were the New York National Freedmen1s Relief

Association, the New England Freedmen1s Aid Society, and the

Pennsylvania Freedmen's Relief Association. The denominational

organizations included The American Baptist Home Mission Society, the

^U.S., Congress, House, Charges Against General 0.0. Howard, l*lst Cong., 2nd Sess. (1870), House Rep't. No. 121, 21. ^Swint, Northern Teacher, 10. Freedmen's Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the

Presbyterian Committee of Missions for Freedmen, the Friends Association

of Philadelphia for the Aid and ELevation of the Freedmen, and the

Protestant Episcopal Freedmen's Commission. A very important group which must be classified as "semi-denominational" was the American

Missionary Association, which indirectly represented several denominations

The American Missionary Association is deserving of special

notice, because it was the first group to enter the field of Negro

education and remained active in the work for many years. It was

founded in l8ii6 to do missionary work in the United States and abroad.

The organization had a strong anti-slavery flavor from its inception

and directed much of its energy to abolition of the institution.

Although technically non-sectarian, the A.M.A. had so many leading

members who were Congregationalists that it often was regarded by

outsiders as the Congregational missionary organization. In 186$,

that denomination selected the A.M.A. as its agent for work among the

freedmen, work which was to be of a religious as well as of an

educational nature. The Free-Will Baptists, Wesleyan Methodists and

Dutch Reformed Churches also picked the A.M.A. to carry out their

relief efforts among the freedmen. By 1866, the A.M.A. had 35>3 teachers

working in the South*^ Four years later, in 1870, when most of the aid

A Luther P. Jackson, "The Educational Efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau and Freedmen's Aid Societies in South Carolina, 1862-72." Journal of Negro History. VIII (1922), 1$. Hsreafter, this will be as Jackson, ^Educational Efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau." °Swint, Northern Teacher, 12, societies had disbanded or discontinued their work, the A.M.A. was furnishing instruction to over 21,000 pupils.

The Western Freedmen’s Aid Commission, established in Cincinnati in January, 1863, represented the principal religious denominations in carrying on educational work among the freedmen of Tennessee, Georgia,

Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, Most of its instructional activities took place in Tennessee and, by 1865, 123 teachers were employed by this group in the central and western sections of the state to give manual and domestic training in addition to academic wor k , ^ As the various aid societies began to realize that such a multiplicity of organizations did not produce an efficient educational system, and as funds became more difficult to obtain, the groups, by

1866, coalesced into two principal bodies, the American Missionary

Association and the American Freedmen's Union Commission, which included 12 most of the non-sectarian groups.

These aid societies preceded the Federal Government in establishing schools for the Negroes in the South, and the American

Missionary Association is credited with opening the first school at

Fortress Monroe, Virginia, in September of 1861.^ It provided

^Amory D. Mayo, "The Work of Certain Northern Churches in the Education of the Freedmen, 1861-1900," Report of the Commission of Education, 1901-02, I, 290. 1^-Alrutheus A, Taylor, The Negro in Tennessee, 1865-1880 (Washington, 19141)* 168-69* i2e . Merton Coulter, The South During Reconstruetion, 1865-77 (Baton Rouge, 19ii7), 81. Hereafter, this will be cited as Coulter, The South During Reconstruction. ^Booker T. Washington, Education of the Negro (New York, 1910), 23. Hereafter, this will be cited as Washington, Education of the Negro. 26 instruction for Negro refugees from the neighboring plantations, and the first teacher was Miss Mary L. Peake, a free Negro educated in

England.^ However, the most concentrated early efforts to educate the Negroes were made in the Sea Islands off the coast of South

Carolina, an area generally known as "Port Royal." Secretary of the

Treasury Salmon P. Chase was responsible for sending an agent to the captured Sea Islands (taken in November, l86l) in January, 1862, to see what could be done to organize a labor force and promote the general well being of the approximately 9,000 destitute Negroes who had been deserted by their masters. The agent recommended that superintendents and a corps of teachers be appointed to aid the Negroes, and President

Lincoln gave his approval to this plan on February l£, 1862.^ The first school to be opened at Port Royal actually preceded "official" efforts by about a month, and its founder was the Reverend Solomon

Peck. This school was started on January 8, 1862 and on the first day sixteen pupils ranging in age from five to thirty-five years attended. The plan was that every pupil who was able should pay five cents a week, the proceeds to be given to the colored assistant, but

■^Horace M. Bond, The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order (New York, 193l*)J""2lI* Hereafter, this will be cited as Bond, The Education of the Negro. It is interesting to note that out of the origins of this school arose Hampton Institute. Edward L. Pierce, "The freedmen at Port Royal," Atlantic Monthly, X H (September, 1863), 296. Hereafter, this will be cited as Pierce, "The Freedmen at Port Royal."

s 27 after the first sizable grout> of teachers arrived in March, 1862, the

schools were made entirely free,"^

The Committee of Education organized in Boston on February 7,

1862, and the Association for Aid of the Freedmen, established two weeks later in New York City, volunteered to finance two superintendents and a corps of teachers at Port Royal, These two groups, subsequently joined by a third that was started in Philadelphia on March 3d, formed

"the Port Royal Committee," and sent two superintendents and fifty-three teachers (twelve of whom were women) to Beaufort, South Carolina, 17 where they arrived on March 8th, By May of 1863, over thirty schools had been established on the Sea Islands by the Port Royal Committee and the American Missionary Association, and between forty and forty-five *L0 teachers were giving instruction to an average of 2,000 pupils, 'What appears to be the first compulsory school law in South Carolina originated in 1863 in the all Negro village of Mitchelville on Hilton Head Island when the common council of the village required all children between

the ages of six and fifteen to attend school regularly, except in P cases where their help was necessary for the support of their parents.

Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, Manuscripts of the Educational Division, The National Archives, Washington, Miss E. H, Peck to J. W. Alvord, Feb, 6, 1868, Miss Peck quotes material from a letter from Solomon Peck dated January 15, 1862, Hereafter, this manuscript collection will be cited as BRFAL Mss, ■J-IPierce, loc. cit., 297-98, ~~Ibid,, 303. Laura J. Webster, "The Operation of the Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina," The Smith College Studies in History, I (Oct., 1915 - July, 1916), 28

An extension of the schools at Port Royal was made into the captured

areas of Florida around Fernandina and St. Augustine, where about 20 U00 Negro children were attending school as of December, 1862.

Early educational activity was not confined to the Southeast,

for schools for Negroes were opened at Corinth, Mississippi, shortly 21 after the occupation of the town in 1862. A predecessor of the

Education Division of the Freedmen's Bureau was the Department of

Negro Affairs under the Union Army's "Department of the Tennessee"

(including Arkansas), headed by Colonel (Chaplain) John Eaton. Colonel

Eaton consolidated the various missionary enterprises into something

that approached a school system, and by the end of the war had 105 22 teachers under his supervision. A similar system was established in

Louisiana by General Nathaniel P. Banks, and was based upon General

Orders #23, issued by Banks from New Orleans in March, 186U, This

order stated that:

Provision will be made for the establishment of a sufficient number of schools, one for at least each of the police and school districts, for the instruction of colored children under twelve years of age, which, when established, will be-placed under the direction of the Superintendent of Public Education.

A Board of Education was established by Banks consisting of

^®Laura M. Towne, Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne (Cambridge, 1912), 97* Hereafter, this will be cited as Letters and Diary of Laura M. Ibwne. ^Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 35U* 22f}ond, op. cit., 26; George R. Bentley, A History of the Freedmen's B u r e a u (Philadelphia, 1955), 170. Hereafter, this will be cited as feentley, Freedmen's Bureau, 23peBow' s Review, I (April, l866), 1j36. three persons, who were to have the power to organize at least one school in every district defined by the Provost Marshal, to acquire land and build schools, and to hire teachers "as far as practicable from the loyal inhabitants of Louisiana. By May, 1861*, ninety men and women were teaching over 5,000 Negro children in forty-nine schools in Louisiana. At the beginning of 1865, it has been estimated that

some 750 persons were teaching approximately 75,000 Negroes in all 25 of the areas occupied by Northern troops. One additional effort in

education that transpired before the war ended might be mentioned* on

March li, 1865, schools for freedmen were opened in Charleston, South

Carolina, under the direction of James Redpath, a journalist who later founded the Lyceum Movement in the United States. The schools were

opened under the control of the Federal Government and were attended by students of both races, taught in separate classrooms, but the 26 percentage of white pupils was very small. The buildings thus used were those confiscated from the City of Charleston. Employment was offered to resident teachers who would take the oath of loyalty,

and it is interesting to note that seventy-four of the eighty-three teachers were native whites. The benevolent societies agreed to pay

the teachers1 salaries and furnish the necessary textbooks. By May, 186^

^jjjBond, o]3. cit., 26. ^Bentley, Efreedmen's Bureau, 170. 26Jackson, "Educational Efforts of the Freedmen’s Bureau," 18-19. 30

Superintendent Redpath could report over 3,000 students attending day- 27 schools, while another 5,000 went at night*

The attempts of the Federal Government to organize and supervise

the efforts of the aid societies with regard to the education of the freedmen in Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina were finally crystallized under one superior organization when the Bureau of Refugees,

Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as the Freedmen's Bureau, 28 was established on March 3, 1865* This original Freedmen's Bureau

Act made no provision for Negro education; therefore, the activities of 29 the Bureau in that field were "relatively unimportant" in 1865-66.

However, the Bureau did help the aid societies with their schools in a

sub-rosa fashion, taking funds derived from the rental of abandoned property and using them to convert into schoolhouses government buildings no longer needed for military purposes. The Bureau also provided money for the transportation of teachers, and the purchasing of books and

school furniture. An indirect but important form of assistance was rendered in the supplying of military protection for schools and 30 teachers. Demands for a government appropriation for Negro

^Francis B. Simkins and Robert H. Woody, South Carolina During Reconstruction (Chapel Hill, 1932), 427. Hereafter, this will be cited as Simkins, South Carolina During Reconstruction. 2»U. S., Statutes at Large, XlII, $07-09. °Paul S.Peirce, W e Freedmen's Bureau (Iowa City, 1904), 75* Hereafter, this will be cited as Peirce,"freedmen*3 Bureau. 30u.s. Congress, House, Report of the Commission of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 41st Cong., 2nd Sess. T1869-70),House Ex.Doc. No. 142,11. Hereafter, this will be cited as Report of the Commission of the BRFAL, 1869-70. 31 education increased by 1866, when numbers of the buildings previously confiscated for school purposes were being restored to their original j owners. Many of the schools of the benevolent associations were now without facilities, and appeals were sent to Washington pleading for assistance, or "this immense system of education must fail or be greatly crippled unless permanent real estate ... can be in some way 31 secured." These appeals for help were finally answered by Congress on July 16, 1866, when, in an act to continue the life of the Bureau for two more years, provisions were included for education. The

Commissioner of the Bureau (General Oliver 0. Howard) was given the power to seize, hold, use, lease, or sell all the buildings formerly held by the Confederate states, "and to use the same or appropriate 32 the proceeds derived therefrom to the education of the freed people."

Co-operation with private benevolent associations and with agents and teach­ ers accredited by them was sanctioned, and the commissioner was directed to "hire or provide by lease" buildings for purposes of education, whenever teachers and the means of instruction should be supplied by the associations "without cost to the government." The Commissioner was also instructed to furnish protection for the safe conduct of these

3^U.S. Congress, Sen., Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the freedmen's Bureau, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1865-66), Sen. Ex. Doc. No7TFTlO&7 Secretary of War Stanton authorized General Howard to convert the unused military buildings into school houses. Bentley. 0£. cit., 171. 32U.S., Statutes at Large, XIV, 176. 32 33 schools* The government appropriation to finance this legislation included 421,000 to pay the salaries of the school superintendents, who were to be Bureau employees, and 4500,000 "for repairs and rent of ■5J school-houses and asylums." As one historian points out, although the wording of the appropriation limited its use to rent or repair, the Bureau leaders soon contrived to spend much of the money for other school purposes*^

On March 2, 1867, Congress voted an additional 4500,000 for

Bureau schools and asylums.^ During June of the following year, an act which prolonged the life of the Bureau for one more year provided that all unspent balances in the hands of the Bureau's Commissioner might be applied to the education of the freedmen, at the Commissioner's 37 discretion.

The only commissioner that the Freedmen's Bureau ever had was

General Oliver Otis Howard, a native of Maine and a graduate of

Bowdoin College and West Point, who had a rather questionable military record during the Civil War, but did become commander of the Army of the Tennessee. General Howard was a very religious person, and had long been interested in alleviating the condition of the Negroes in the

3.3Ibld. 3^Ibid., 92. ^Bentley, Freedmen's Bureau, 172. 3®U.S., Statutes at Large, XIV, 586. 37ibid :,-TSf: -837 ----- ^ 33 nO South.-3 The Reverend John W. Alvord was made General Superintendent of the Education Division, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. His duties were to collect information, encourage the organization of new 39 schools, find homes for teachers, and supervise the whole operation, which was, in essence, co-ordinating the teachers and funds supplied by the associations into the organizational framework of the Bureau's school system. Alvord was assisted by a Superintendent in each state, who was to harmonize the work of the societies with that of the Bureau, secure the proper protection for schools and teachers, collect information, encourage the organization of new schools, find homes for teachers and "supervise the whole work."^® Evidently the efforts expounded by the state superintendents often left something to be desired, for in 1869 Howard wrote to Alvord:

Stir up your supt's of schools to reoort every school in the States. Tell them to work. Work. Work or let somebody take their places who will. The schools are not all reported — ■. It is not enough to compile reports.^

The amount of money spent by the Freedmen's Bureau on education during its five year history is still a matter of controversy among historians. The most recent work about the Bureau estimates these

^Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1932), IX, 279-80. Jackson, "Educational Efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau-". Hi. ~*^Report of the Commissioner of the BRFAL, 1869-70, 11* W.BRFAL Mss,, 0. 0. Howard to J. W. Alvord, July 31, 1869* expenses at about $3*700,000, whereas the original historian of the

Bureau, Paul S. Peirce, concluded that between June 1, 1365, and

September 1, 1871, $5,262,511 was soent by the Bureau for school purposes, a sum which "represented considerably more than half the total expense of schools under bureau supervision," benevolent associations and the freedmen supplying the remainder of the funds.^

General John Eaton, U.S. Commissioner of Education, stated in 1876 that he estimated that the Freedmen's Bureau had spent $3,711,225 on the education of the Negroes, but this figure did not include the thousands of dollars paid out for the transportation of teachers and

"for other expenses connected with the schools ^whichj cannot be separated from other items with which they are charged."^ One factor that certainly comes to mind in this area is the expense of the troops used to protect the schools, but whose cost was not included on the educational accounting sheet. The largest computation in respect to the money spent on the freedmen's education was made by the periodical, The Freedman's

Record, which estimated that the societies spent about ^13,000,000 toward the cause, and the Bureau about the same amount, the grand total US therefore being around $26,000,000. It is worth noting that not all the Bureau schools were established in the South, for, in 1870, Harriet

Beecher Stowe, the novelist, wrote to Superintendent Alvord concerning

^Bentley, Freedmen's Bureau, 173. ^Peirce, op. cit., 82. ^Report for 1876, XVI. ^ihe Freedman's Record, V, 7 (Jan., 1870), 9u. the school erected for freedmen by the Bureau in Hartford, Connecticut.

wfhen one speaks or writes about a "Freedmen's Bureau School," he is in reality discussing a school that could have been called an

"association school" with equal accuracy. The Bureau and the benevolent societies worked together so closely in this project that it is almost impossible to delineate where, in the running of these schools, Bureau funds and efforts ceased, and the associations' work began. It will be recalled that one section of the Freedmen's Bureau

Act of July 16, 1866, specified:

That the commissioners of this Bureau shall at all times co-operate with private benevolent associations of citizens in aid of freedmen, and, with agents and teachers, duly accredited and appointed by them, and shall hire and provide by lease buildings for purposes of education whenever such association shall, without cost to the government, provide suitable teachers and means of instruction; and he shall furnish such protection as may be required for the safe conduct of such schools*^'

Therefore, the main work of the Bureau in regard to education was not to establish schools of its own, but to provide military protection where needed, supply school buildings, give free transportation to teachers, provide the organizational structure

^ BRFAL Mss., Harriet B. Stowe to J. W. Alvord, Aug. 9, 1870. Both races were taught in this school, but not at the same time, the white pupils having a term of five months, the Negroes one of three months. ^'U.S., Statutes at Large, XIV, 176. 36 1*8 for an inter-state school system, and meet many of the expenses*

The aid societies would furnish the teachers, books and maps and charts.^*? In his autobiography General Howard admits that so close was the co-operation between the associations and the Bureau that it was often difficult to separate the activities of the two* He stated that, in the field of education, it was not his purpose to

Bsupersede the benevolent agencies already engaged, but to systematize and facilitate them."'’®

The methods used by the Bureau officials to circumvent congressional restriction on expenditures for education were ingenious. During the first year of the Bureau'at existence (1865-66), when Congress had not appropriated any funds for education of the freedmen, Howard was able to help the associations, nevertheless, "by using funds derived from the rent of abandoned property, by fitting up for school houses such government buildings as were no longer needed for military purposes, by giving transportation fbr teachers, books and school furniture, and by granting subsistence .

By the middle of 1867, many of the benevolent associations were beginning to suffer from a lack of funds resulting from decreased contributions from their philanthropic-minded supporters. They were

^Coulter, The South During Reconstruction, 81, y T h e American iftreeclinan, I, 9 (Dec., 1866), 135. ^Howard, Autobiography, 221. 5-*-Report of the Commissioner of the BRFAL, 1869-70, 11. 37 faced with two alternatives, either discharge many of their teachers or look to aid from the government. The Freedmen's Bureau, according to the act of July, 1866, was not authorized to pay teachers' salaries. rthat General Howard did to by-pass this restriction was to transfer a number of Bureau-owned school buildings to the benevolent societies, and turn around and have the Bureau rent the buildings from the societies, the rental money then being applied to the teachers' salaries.

In November, 1868, Howard authorized those schools conducted in buildings owned or rented by the societies to send the Bureau a monthly bill t?o for rent to amount to ten dollars for each teacher employed. To qualify for "rental" to the Bureau, the buildings had to be located on sites secured by deed to be used only for Negro education, and each school collecting rent was required to have at least thirty pupils per 53 teacher. Today, scattered among the records of the Education Division of the Freedmen's Bureau can be found numerous examples of the "rental accounts," A typical one was that made out to the Presbyterian

Committee of Home Missions for the three months period ending June 30,

1869, for schools in Alabama. It stated that sixty dollars were paid to a school at Stevenson that had two teachers, thirty dollars to a one-teacher school at Florence and thirty dollars to a similar school at Haynesville,^

Bentley, Freedmen's Bureau, 173, Ibid., 1 7 d Mss. 38

As with so many of the statistics relative to the work of the benevolent societies, the Bureau, and the Northern Teachers in the

South, it is hard to determine the correct number of instructors that were involved in teaching the freedmen and whether they were from the

North or South. According to a report of General Howard made in

July, 1870, the number of teachers doing such work increased from

972 in January, 1867, to 2,948 in January, 1868, to 7,840 in January,

1869, to a peak of 9,5>03 in July, 1870,^ Concerning this latter figure, it must be pointed out that a fair percentage were native

Southern Negroes and Southern whites, and that no more than 5,000 were natives of the North,^ In the reports and records of the

Bureau can be found many requests from native white citizens, usually in an impoverished situation, applying for teaching positions.

In 1867 the Bureau Superintendent of Education in Alabama, C. W, Buckley, reported to Superintendent Alvord:

No difficulty is now experienced in getting competent Southern persons who are willing to teach colored schools. Among those already employed are graduates of the State University, and men who have been county superintendents of education, 57

Occasional letters were received by Alvord's office from distraught men and women in the South who claimed to have remained

PC ^Swint, Northern Teacher, 6, 56coulter, llhe South During Reconstruction, 82, Coulter contends that in some areas the entire staff of Bureau schools consisted of native whites, and at one time almost one-half of the teachers employed by the Bureau were native whites. Ibid,, 81u 57J, W. Alvord, Semi-annual Reports In Schools ffor Freedmen, July, 1867, 41 • Hereafter, this will be cited as Alvord, fteoorts. 39 loyal to the Union during the late war, had suffered for their opinions, and now were in dire need of a teaching oosition to suooly a means of livelihood. Typical was a request from a Mrs. Fannie Anderson of

Culpepper County, Virginia, who asked for teaching jobs both for herself and her sister, and stated that her "Union sentiments have never been shaken,” and that she had helped to feed wounded Union soldiers after a skirmish near her home.'*® A letter was received from a man claiming to represent the "loyal men" of Woodstock, Virginia who desired to employ a male teacher for their children "who would act with the Radical

Republicans and one who could aid them in the good work of organizing <9 and redeeming their county from the rule of the rebels."

Another factor which must be considered when examining statistics on the teachers of freedmen is the teachers who were freedmen them­ selves and were educated in normal schools such as Hampton Institute, which received Bureau support. The original historian of the Bureau estimates that by 1869, about one-half of these teachers were of 60 African descent. The New York Branch of the American Freedmen's

Union Commission reported in July, 1870 that forty-two of its fifty-five teachers in the South were colored, fourteen being native Southern Negroes.^1 It must be remembered, however, that the

58 BRFAL Mss., Mrs. Fannie Anderson to J. If. Alvord, Feb. 11, l867'* <9 Ibid., L. Edwin Dudley to 0. 0. Howard, Sept. 6, 1867. oOpeirce, Freedmen's Bureau, 79. A Report of the Continuing Committee For the Year Ending July 1, 1870," 1, in The American Freedman for l870o liO percentage of Negro teachers could not have been appreciable until

1868, when they began to emerge from the normal schools in numbers.

So much has been written about the joyous and enthusiastic reaction of the freedmen to education that it seems necessary only to comment upon it here. Many of them regarded "learning" as having a miraculous power which would open wide the doors of social and political equality with the whites. Young and old flocked to the schools, often expecting with a pathetic eagerness that they would 62 become satiated with knowledge in a few brief weeks. As a well-known chronicler of the Negro has written*

At no time or place in America has there been exemplified so pathetic a faith in education as the leveler of racial progress. Grown men studied their alphabets in the fields holding the blue back speller with one hand while they guided the plow with the other. Mothers tramped scores of miles to towns where they could place their children in school. Pine torches illuminated the dirt-floored cabins where men, women and children studied until far into the night. ^

J. W. Alvord remarked in 1866 that love of their books was

”universally apparent" among the freedmen students, and that a common punishment for misdemeanors was the threat of being kept home for a day. The threat, in most cases, was sufficient.^ Not always,

^Coulter, op. cit., 86. ^pBond, The Education of the Negro, 23. ®hu.S. Congress, Senate, Reports of Assistant Commissioners of Freedmans Bureau, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. TT865-66), Sen. E5c. Doc. No. 27, 107* Hereafter, this will be cited as Reports of the Assistant Commissioners for 1865-66. however, did the freedmen flock to the Bureau and association schools*

Lt. Colonel J. R. Lewis, Bureau Superintendent of Education in Georgia, complained in 1870 that the freedmen preferred to attend private schools conducted by "incompetent colored teachers" in uncomfortable and inconvenient school rooms and pay tuition of one dollar a month than to go to the Bureau schools where the instructors were qualified and the tuition only twenty-five to fifty cents a month* Lewis blamed the influence of the colored churches and soliciting by Negro teachers for this situation,^

The letters from the Northern teachers in the South to their sponsoring societies were usually glowing reports of constant progress and unflagging zeal for education among the freedmen, at least as they appeared (carefully edited, no doubt) in the periodicals of the associations. Few teachers seemed willing to remark upon a lessening of interest among their pupils, but it must be taken into consideration that many of these people pictured themselves as missionaries, and the true missionary soirit dies hard* If one reads between the lines of the letters, the Impression is received that some of the freedmen lost interest when the work became too advanced, or came only when food and clothing were to be distributed. A teacher at Port Royal had an interesting insight into this lessening of concern for education: she believed that much of the loss of enthusiasm by 186? was related

65 BRFAL Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports" (unpublished), II, 168. U2 to the fact that the men were eager for political office, and

••• positions of trust were frequently given to those who could neither read nor write, while those who were studying were set aside. In time they decided that for all practical purposes the ignorant got along as.well as ’those that have book learning,,66

■* * * *

The motives of the teachers who went into the Southern States varied a good deal, but the one that most of them shared in common was the religious, humanitarian ideal of uplifting a downtrodden race. The American Missionary Association required that its teachers 67 be imbued with a missionary zeal, and be persons of ’’fervent piety.”

One of these missionary teachers described their more pious reasons for going South in the following terms:

They came to bring relief to humble homes, to read the blessed pages of the Bible to their ignorant but gladdened inmates, to breathe gentle prayers beside the bedside of the sick and dying, to teach daily lessons of meekness, of charity, and of self-denial, to brighten the lot of the poor and lowly by their quiet presence, and above all to tell them of that Savior who had loved, and, in loving had died for them.68

In addition to religious-humanitarian motives was the desire of

Elizabeth Botume, First Days Among the Contrabands (Boston, 1893), 27lu ^Swint, Northern Teacher, 35# 68Slaughter, Freedmen of the South, 110. U3 many teachers from the North to implant the culture, philosophy and learning of that section in the benighted South. The outgoing

it. president of the National Teachers' Association, speaking at the annual convention in 1865, remarked that the

old Slave states are to be new missionary ground for the national schoolmaster, where without regard to rank, age or color, he will teach all his pupils that learning are the first natural

£'XgIlbO UJL m eui,

Some of the teachers went South with the attitude of transforming what they believed to be a land of barbarism into one of civilization, an area M... free for the travel and settlement of the reddest Republican ,70 or the blackest abolitionist." Some went with the avowed intent of inculcating political ideas into the minds of the freedmen, making them aware of their rights and duties and how to perform them, and of 71 their new relationships to the white race.

Many of the Yankee teachers were sincere, kindly persons who left their homes in the North determined to do only good works, but, unfortunately, professed such a deep sympathy for the Negro and an abiding hatred for slavery and its former adherents that they disregarded even the most basic rights of the Southern white people.

Generally speaking, however, they were people of good character with

^Samuel S. Greene, "The Educational Duties of the Hour," National Teachers1 Association, Journal of Proceedings and Lectures (1865), 232. 'Oswint, Northern Teacher, 58, cited from the Independent, Oct..22. 1868. 71Ibid., 88. few "rotten apples" among them. Some of the allegations of bad character imputed to the teachers by native Southern whites had their roots in the practice of social equality by the teachers, which involved living and eating with the Negroes, for this greatly upset the Southerner's sense of propriety and seemed to imply misconduct.^2

Occasionally teachers did get "out of line," as in Charleston,

South Carolina, where the government requisitioned fine houses and furniture for use by the teachers, some of whom "degraded the cause by conducting themselves as if they had been sent there to entertain themselves in a way harmful to their reputation." Certain teachers were accused of being mercenary in regard to their conduct with the freedmen. Land We Love, published by General D. H. Kill in North

Carolina, sarcastically spoke of the extraordinary aptitude shown by the teachers in

squeezing money out of this sorely harried and bummarized region •••• |they established} little schools for the dear little piccaninnies, and when the funds of said schools were about exhausted, ... jkheyfl bid their precious charges a tearful farewell leaving behind as treasured momentos their saintly Dhotograms at a dollar a piece.7**

Dissipation was rare among the white teachers ftom the North, but

^Horace M. Bond, Negro Education in Alabama (Washington, 1939), 117. Hereafter, this will be cited as Bond, Negro Education in Alabama. 73The Freedman's Record, II, 1 (Jan., 1866), 8-9. 7^Eand1?e~Love, IV.l [Nov., 1867), 92. evidently some of the native Negro teachers hired by the associations were not immune to drinking and other bad habits*

Unfortunately, some of the teachers hired by the associations regarded the education of the freedmen as simply another business venture and used their schools to obtain association and Bureau funds under false pretenses. In 1868, the Bureau Superintendent in

Mississippi, H. R. Pease, comDlained of teachers who presented

fraudulent accounts and of others who were not qualified to teach because they were almost illiterate but who started schools with hopes of receiving pay and obtained it through the connivance of 7 6 Bureau agents.

The teachers who came South in many cases endured hardships

in their living and teaching conditions and faced some unpleasant problems in their classrooms with which the average teacher did not have

to contend. Miss Mary Ames from Springfield, Massachusetts, who taught

on Edisto Island, South Carolina, admitted that often the big boys

were so unruly that the only way to calm them down was to 3tart the whole class singing. There was also the problem of the children who came and demanded clothing as a right. One little girl brought back a dress,

referring to it as a "scant," and clamored for a fuller skirt and a

^BRFAL Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," I, 188, 7»BRFAL M s s ., H. R. Pease to J. W . Alvord, April 2k, 1868 46 77 hoop-skirt* An A . M. A. teacher at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, had an acute problem in the case of a half grown boy, George, who insisted on bringing a bottle of whiskey to school. The teacher thought on

several occasions that she had convinced George of the evils of drink, "but to her chagrin the bottle reappeared and the lessons were repeated with additions and emphasis*11 However, George refused to play games with the other boys, solemnly giving as his reason the V 8 fact that he had joined the church*

Living and teaching conditions in the physical sense were often terribly crude. Teachers at Wilmington, North Carolina, used an army goods box as a washstand, wardrobe and table. Their bed consisted of 79 pine straw, and chairs were non-existent. Miss Susan Walker at

Beaufort, South Carolina, commented in her diary about the abandoned mansion that she shared with eleven other teachers. The house had been stripped of furniture, so her bed was a straw-stuffed mattress laid upon a rough board floor, her table was a packing box, a potato jr sufficed for a candlestick, and a marble top mohogany washstand was the only piece of furniture. When linens proved to be non-existent,

Miss Walker showed her ingenuity. She wrote concerning this* "Having

77 'Mary Ames, From a New England Womans Diary in Dixie in 1865 (Springfield, Mass., 1 9 0 6 j , " 3 9 . 7°BRFAL Mss., William M. Colby to J. W. Alvord, July 15, 1869. ‘°Swint, op. cit., 77* neither pillow case nor sheet, I split open a white petticoat and slipped myself between. Friends have called me fastidious, am I so?"80

The types of schoolhouses varied considerably, from confiscated mansions to barracks, barns, basements, court-houses, churches, old slave quarters, and sometimes, the great outdoors. An A. M. A. teacher in Savannah, Georgia, conducted school under an awning stretched upon a framework of pine poles, which she described as a "very rude, though cool and pleasant arrangement*" In Richmond, the American Freedmen’s

Union Commission met in the former Confederate naval arsenal, where shell 82 boxes were used for seats and ammunition cases for study tables*

Aside from occasional threats to burn schools and residences and the whipping of male teachers by disgruntled whites, the most serious danger that the Northern teachers had to face was disease. It is true that some came South honing that the balmy climate, as was commonly believed at that time, would cure consumption. The reverse proved true, however. Many of the teachers were accustomed to the brisk weather of New England, and proved ready victims for tropical diseases like malaria, especially in such areas as the Sea Islands of

South Carolina.8^ Malaria was also a serious problem in parts of Texas*

8oSusan Walker, "Journal of Miss Susan Walker," ed. Henry M* Sherwood, Quarterly Publication of the Historical and Philisophical Society of Ohio, VII, 1 (January3?arch, 1912), 15* 2^Swint, Northern Teacher, 79* °Slbid. ^ Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, 11*-13>, 117. In 1867, the Bureau Superintendent in Texas, Lt. Charles Garretson, wrote to J, W. Alvord that with the exception of Austin and San Antoniq, every large town in the state has been ravaged by the fever, and almost all of the teachers who had remained were sick, and "quite a number have died."®^

Although the environmental and climatic hardships were often difficult to overcome, they could not equal the most serious problem which faced the Yankee schoolmarms - that of the bitter and determined opposition of the Southern whites. Mich of this antagonism was a direct result of the attitudes held by the teachers themselves toward the

"South," the native whites of the region and their way of life. On rare occasions, the prospective teachers were warned by their sponsors about what to do and what not to do to achieve co-operation with the

Southern whites. The American Freedman, published by the New York

Branch of the American Freedman's Union Commission, admonished that, on the one hand, a teacher might enter a city, secure his location without consulting the authorities, make his acquaintances and friends solely among the Negroes, ignore the whites, and disregard local customs and lifelong prejudices and opinions. If a teacher did this, stated the article, he could be certain to expect no co-operation from the Southern whites. Instead, the teacher should seek advice from the leading local politicians and clergy and conform to their suggestions

®^BRFAL Mss., Lt. Charles Garretson to J. W. Alvord, Sept. 30, 1867. as much as possible. The teacher should also be "courteous, frank and 8£ kind to all." Unfortunately, few of the teachers followed this

thoughtful advice.

An obsession with certain of the Northern teachers (and one which made them thoroughly hated wherever they went) was the idea that

the South must be reconstructed on the model of New England. A writer

in the Freedman* s Journal of January 1, 1865 published by the American

Tract Society, asserted*

New England can furnish teachers enough to make a New England out of the whole South, and, God helping, we will not pause in our work until the free school system ... has been established from Maryland to Florida g, and all along the shores of the Gulf.

A Bureau official and teacher wrote from North Carolina that the New

England free school had commenced its march through the South, and ft7 "Its progress will be irresistible."

Some of the teachers also "endeared" themselves to the Southern whites by expressing vituperative abolition sentiments. Miss Laura M.

Towne, teaching on St. Helena's Island, South Carolina, complained in

1862 about a "too cautious" spirit prevailing among the other teachers

with regard to expressing opinions on the abolition of slavery, and

felt since they already had acquired the "odium" of out-and-out

®*The American Freedman, I, 8 (Nov., 1866), 115. ®As quoted in Jackson, "Educational Efforts of the Freedman's Bureau," 28, ®'The American Missionary, XI, 3 (March, 1867), 5l. abolitionists in the minds of the conservative Union Army personnel,

"Why not take the credit? Why not be so confident and freely daring 88 as to secure respect?" The ire of the whites was also aroused by the wide use of an extreme anti-slavery reader in the American Missionary

Association schools. This volume, entitled The Freedmen's Book. compiled by Mrs. Lydia M. Child, was dedicated to Captain Robert Small, a free Negro engineer on the Confederate steamer "Planter" who had

taken the ship out of Charleston harbor during the Civil War and 89 delivered it to the Federal Navy that was blockading the harbor*

The title page had a verse by John Greenleaf Whittier which referred

to the hour of freedom having arrived for dark millions waiting

"patiently and dumb." The readings included a poem by William Lloyd

Garrison called "The Hour of Freedom," an essay on Toussaint L'Ouverture,

the Haitian revolutionary, and a poem by Mrs. Child on John Brown, in 90 which she referred to him as "that kind old man."

Most of the teachers' knowledge regarding Southern social customs was derived from abolitionist literature, from which they affirmed the belief that the Southerners had sinned because they had 91 owned slaves and had rebelled against the Union* A Port Royal

teacher, Mrs. A. M. French, asserted that there was one thing that

^Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, 8* °°Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, 116* ^Olydia M. Child, The Freedmen's Book, 2i*2 et passim. °^Swint, Northern Teacher, 56-57> doomed the slaveholder, that made him a traitor and "a presumptive

heir of perdition," and that was slavery. By being a slaveholder she

felt that the Southerner gained "certain condemnation in the

millenium ••• /for one could hear] sighs around his habitation and

grave, which sadly say, 'he's in perdition ••••' He gains disquiet, 92 terror, death of soul*" Mrs. French was one of the first teachers

to arrive on the Sea Islands in March, 1862, an area which she described

as "this land of horrid visions of cruelty and sin."^ A teacher

in Georgia was certain that it would not be many years before "all

intelligent Southerners will bless those who have thus endeavoured to

remove from their midst these heavy burdens of crime and woe."^

H. R. Pease, the Freedmen's Bureau Superintendent of Education in

Mississippi, stated that Christianity in the South under the rule of

slavery was a "misnomer," and the more he witnessed the effects of

slavery, "the more wonderful and unaccountable it is that all classes at were not sunk to the lowest plane of moral being."

Having accepted without any reservations the criterion that all

slaveholders were vile sinners, the teachers were eager to accept as

92 Mrs. A. M. French, Slavery in South Carolina and the Ex-slaves, or The Port Royal Mission (New York, 1862), 172-73. Hereafter, this will be cited as French, The Port Royal Mission, 9-3Ibid., 32-33. “hCharle s Stearns, The Black Man of the South and the Rebels (New York, 1872), 133* Hereafter, this will be cited as Stearns, The Black Man of the South* 9^BRFAL Ms s . , H. R. Pease to J. W. Alvord, July 20, 1869* "Gospel truth" any stories the freedmen told them about their recent life in captivity. A Sea Island Negress named Susannah told Miss Laura

Towne that her former roaster whipped his slaves terribly, kept his hands in the fields from morning to night and "lashed them every day."

However, this woman admitted that she had never been whipped because 96 she was sickly and made all the women’s dresses* Such tales, and others that were more lurid, motivated teachers like Miss Julia Sherman of Lexington, Virginia, to write to The American Missionary that she believed the South needed a genuine religious revival, for she wondered as she looked at the "poor despised, oppressed Negroes, how God could possibly hear the prayers of people whose hands were so full of blood.

Perhaps even more upsetting to the Southern whites than violent anti-slavery remarks were the patronizing comments which the women teachers loved to make, comments which revealed an utter disgust and disdain for everything that they felt was a part of Southern customs and ways of life. They constantly remarked about the dirt and grime which they found in houses requisitioned for their use. One teacher sarcastically wrote in her diary*

We found a splendid house near the water and therefore pronounced healthful. It must be thoroughly cleaned for the ’chivalry' look not to corners and cupboards. They leave p this to the poor despised 'mudsie* of the North.°

^ Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, 28. °].The American Missionary, X,~J (March, 1866), f>0. ^“Walker, o£. cit., lit* Southern whites who taught the freedmen were as much despised as those who fought the practice of Negro education at every turn#

One teacher wrote of meeting two such women teachers, described them as "tawdrily dressed" and repeated a rumor which purported that the teachers whipped the children in school and made them call them

'Missus.'^9 Certain teachers and school officials could find nothing favorable about the region in which they taught. A Bureau Superintendent in Louisiana, Capt. H. H. Pierce/ described the whites of that state as possessing no law, order, or intelligence and being at least 200 years behind "in all things temporal, moral, social and political." The captain promised to use "every endeavor to throw a ray of light here and there, among this benighted race of ruffians, rebels by nature. "100

A few teachers tried to break down racial barriers in the "Bureau schools," by admitting a few children of poor white parents, but this was rarely successful and was even objected to by the Negroes, who called it "spotting the school.Naturally, such interference with long established social customs did little to perpetuate good relations between the teachers and the Southern whites#

When the Yankee teachers did reach the South and began their work, they often had practically no contacts whatsoever with the

Southerners, and thus retained their preconceived notions about the

^Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, 178# IOObrJ’AL Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," I, 2U8# The American Missionary, XI, 9 (Sept., 1867), 195# sinful ex-slaveholders. The teachers were urged by their snonsoring organizations to conduct extra-curricular activities for the freedmen after school was over. The Pennsylvania Freedman's Relief Association sent a letter of instruction to its teachers, asking them to visit the

Negroes in their homes, instruct the women and girls in sewing and domestic economy and take part in their religious meetings and Sunday schools.These activities, plus the regular classroom work, gave the average teacher little time to socialize with her white neighbors, even if they would have allowed her to do so* A few teachers refused to associate with any white persons, but lived and boarded with Negroes 103 and made no calls on persons of their own race.

The use of very patriotic and anti-Southern songs in the classroom was always a point' of contention. In New Orleans, pro-union teachers who had entered the school system during the occupation were dismissed in September, 1865 (during the interim between Federal occupation and reconstruction^ for leading pupils in such songs as "Hail Columbia,"

"The Star Spangled Banner," and "John Brown's Body. These, in addition to the song "We are Free," which began "FreeJ We are freej 105 tfith a wild and joyous cry ..." were the favorites of the Negro

102 Quoted from the Pennsylvania Freedmen's Bureau, Oct,, 1866, 1, in Jackson, "Educational Efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau," 29. 103Laura S. Haviland, A Woman's Life Work, Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland (Cincinnati, lfl8l), 381;. WJff.8., Congress, House, The New Orleans Riots, 39th Cong., 2nd Sessj. (1866-67), House Rep't. No."T5, 239-399. 1 0 5 Slaughter, Freedmen of the South, 131;• 55 children, and white persons passing by the Bureau schools could often hear the songs being sung as loudly as possible, a fact which perhaps misled

some Southerners as to what was actually being accomplished in the

classroom. Although, in the minds of the Southern whites, the singing

of these songs was a contentious act, even worse was the use of such a hated publication as Harper * s Weekly in teaching the freedmen to read, 106 as was done at Fort Livingston, Louisiana,

In the classroom of the Bureau schools, most of the day was spent on the "3 R's" and practical skills, but some time was also devoted to

"Citizenship," i.e., making the freedman aware of his "friends" and how to support the political party of his friends so that he might assume his place as the social and political equal of the white man. General

J. H. Clanton of Alabama, Chairman of the Democratic State Executive

Committee, testified before a Congressional investigating committee that it was understood in Alabama that the teachers had come as political emissaries, "that they were teaching the Negro children to 107 look with distrust upon the white people of the South." The

Freedman's Record frankly stated:

In the coming struggle with the spirit of rebellion and slavery ,,, we must have the freedmen on our side. As we stand by him, so may we expect him to stand by us. Every teacher you send to the field is a

^■^Howard, Autobiography, II, 275, ^O'U.S. Congress, House, Report of the Joint Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States ...., l*2nd Cong.,~§d Sess. (1571-72), Rep't No. 22, Alabama, I, 252. Hereafter, this will becited as KKK Report. 56

pledge to the freedmen of your determination to see Justice done himj it is a oledge to the disloyal rebel that you will not yield to him in the future, A teacher costs less than a soldier ,.,.l0°

A prominent historian of the Negro says that the "political tenor" of the instruction in the Bureau schools was very noticeable, with many allusions made to "Old Jeff Davis" and the "Rebels," and the lith of July aid the 1st of January (Emancipation Day) were Joyously 109 observed as holidays. An examole of this politically-oriented instruction was a catechism used in a Port Royal school by a young female teacher from Kingston, Massachusetts, She would ask the questions, and the class would reply en masse to the following:

Q- "Where were slaves first brought to this country?" A- "Virginia" Q- "When?" A- "1620" Q- "Who brought them?" A- "Dutchmen" Q- "Who came the same year to Plymouth, Ma s sachu 3e tt s ?" A- "Pilgrims" Q- "Did they bring slaves?" A- "Mo."110

A class of Negro children in South Carolina was used to sing at a Republican Party rally, but the teacher admitted in her diary

The Freedman's Record, II,; 6 (Sept., 1866), l£8, 10 9jackson, loc. cit., 36. HOpierce, "The Freedmen at Port Royal," 306, that two or three of the white men present at the meeting felt it would have been better to have kept the children at home on such an occasion. 111 An amusing "feud" occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia, between a teacher and a local newspaper editor when Miss Anna Gardner wrote to Mr. J. C. Southall, editor of the Charlottesville Chronicle, and asked him as a friend of Negro education to make a donation to the Jefferson School in the form of printed diplomas. Three days later, Mr. Southall replied to her note, saying that he took a deep interest in the welfare of the Negro race, and was anxious to see them elevated and educated, but,

The impression among the white residents of Charlottesville is, that your instruction of the colored people who attend your school contemplates something more than the communication of the ordinary knowledge implied in teaching them to read, write, cypher etc. The idea prevails that you instruct them in politics and sociology; that you come among us not only as an ordinary school teacher, but as a political missionary; that you communicate to the colored people ideas of social equality with the whites. With your first object we sympathize; the second, we regard as mischievous, and as only tending to disturb the good feeling between the two races.

Mr. Southall’s flinal comment was that if he were mistaken about

111-Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, 183. ^•^The f^eedman’s Record, Ul/li (April. 1867), 5U. the subject matter taught in Miss Gardner's class, he would be glad to print the diplomas. Miss Gardner answered him a few days later*

I teach in school and out, so far as my influence extends, the fundamental principles of 'politics' and 'sociology,' viz* — •Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so unto them.' Yours in behalf of truth and justice, Anna Gardner

A number of the male teachers and Bureau officials became

directly involved in politics and some had no qualms about dismissing

school for a day to conduct such activities as poll-watching,"*"^ In

North Carolina, two Bureau officials, one an Assistant Superintendent

of Education, got into a terrific argument over who was going to enjoy

the political plums, and one refused to do any school work at all,

saying that his job was to look after the congressional district

in the interests of Representative Oliver H. Dockery, of North

Carolina's Third District.Perhaps one of the most candid examples

of dual interests was the Bureau Superintendent in Mississippi, H. R.

Pease. In October, 1867, Pease protested to his superior, J. W. Alvord,

about a military order issued by the commandant in Vicksburg which

forbade any official or employee of the Freedmen's Bureau to take an

active part in political affairs. Pease felt this attitude was wrong

^ Ibid. ffilbid., IV, 9 (May, 1868), 82. 115BRFAL Mss., H. C. Vogell to J. W. Alvord, July 10, 1869. because Bureau employees should not have to follow "Regular Army Dogma" which he believed to be 11 pro-slavery*" He boasted of his having attended the State Republican Party Convention, and of obtaining a leave of absence to do so. He also remarked that he had organized over one hundred Union Leagues and Renublican Clubs, and had done so

"on the sly." Pease told Alvord that, in addition to these activities, he was president of a council of Union League clubs numbering over

1000 members, and was a member of the League’s State Executive

Committee. He had not run for any office, although he had been urged to run for Congress in the Vicksburg district. Pease insisted that he had never neglected any of his official duties, and if he were to be "tied hand and foot," he would resign.'^ Alvord quickly replied to Pease to pursue "a wise and steady course, much like that indicated in your letter," and he would have nothing to fear, Alvord believed that the officer who had issued the restrictive order only wished to 117 silence the radicals, and thus give conservatism "a chance."

Some Bureau and association officers did become officials in carpetbag governments, especially in South Carolina where Reuben

Tomlinson, of the Pennsylvania Branch of the American Freedman's Union

Commission and Bureau Superintendent of Education, represented Charleston in the General Assembly of July, 1868 and was chosen State Auditor in

•^BRFAL Mss., H. R. Pease to J. wf. Alvord, October 22, 1867. 13-7Ibid., J. W. Alvord to H. R. Pease, November 2, 1867. 60 the first session. He was defeated in the Republican primary race T1 fl for Governor in 1872. B. F. Whittemore, Assistant Freedmen's Bureau

Superintendent, represented the State in the United States House of

Representatives until he was expelled in June, 1870, for the alleged 119 sale of appointments to West Point and Annapolis. F. H. Frost, a

Negro teacher at Kingstree, was elected Reading Clerk of the General 120 Assembly in 1868. A teacher of freedmen at Camden, South Carolina

(who was a native of Massachusetts), Justus K. Jillson, was elected

State Superintendent of Education in 1868 and re-elected in 1872.^^-

In Nashville, Tennessee, the Superintendent of the Bureau Schools became superintendent of the city schools, while in Memphis the A.M.A.

Superintendent became head of the city schools.

The reaction of the Southern whites to the presence of the Yankee teachers in their midst was usually one of unyielding opposition which manifested itself in a number of ways. This opposition did not apply to Northerners per se, but to the hated missionary teachers. The attitude of the whites toward the schoolmarms was sadly misjudged by

^^Swint, Northern Teacher, 90-91* Ibid., 91-92. IZOThe Freedman's Record, IV, 12 (Dec., 1868), 19U. JfJSwint, op. cit., 91. 122Ibid., 92. some of their contemporaries. Booker T. Washington spoke of the

"evangels" who went into a hostile country and "by singleness of purpose 123 and gentleness of character disarmed the prejudice of the whites

The publication of the New York Branch of the American Freedmen's Union

Commission stated in 1867 that where their teachers had been the longest,

"there prejudice is the least. When the teachers associated only with freedmen, urged the Negro to assert his individuality and helped

to organize him politically, they identified themselves in the eyes

of the Southern whites with their worst enemies, the Radical Republicans, 125 and thus became an everpresent symbol of the South's defeat. DeBow's

Review expressed the opinion of many Southerners when it quoted the

remarks of C. K. Marshall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, who conrolained

that the Northern teachers were bringing with them "the most embittered

feelings of hate and aversion for everything of their own color," and 1 pZ were fostering breaches between the white and black races. General

Clanton of Alabama attended a program at a freedmen's school which he

described as being under a radical regime, taught by strangers, and a n 97 "political nursery to prejudice the jNegroJ race against us."

123 i Washington, Education of the Negro, j-^jjThe American Freedman, II, 1 (April, 1867), 19U* rrfSwint, 0£. cit., 9k. 12 °DeBow's Review, III (March, 1867), 310. 1 2 7 m Reports, VlII, Ala., I, 236. 62

It is important to note that the opposition of the Southern whites 128 was not usually directed against the education of the Negro, but

at the Northern missionary teachers. The carpetbag publisher (originally

from New York) of the Wilmington, North Carolina, Herald, Mr. Thomas

M. Cook, summed up this antagonism in the following manner to a

Congressional investigating committees

They fancy that these missionaries interfere with other matters, in the relations between the servant and the employer. They express, in this connexion, a willingness to undertake the education of the blacks themselves if they are only left alone, ^9

The teachers usually found more animosity generated by the

Southern women than the Southern men. A teacher at Milledgeville,

Georgia said that she wished the ladies had treated her and her

fellow teachers with as much respect as had the men, but this was untrue, for:

They shrink from contact with us in the streets, ooint us out, and stare at us in church, evidently desiring to annoy, and make us uncomfortable. It is obvious to us that the women of the South are greater rebels than the m e n . ^0

In Alabama, so much opposition was manifested to the Northern

128 -^Discussed in detail in Chapter Three. U.S. Congress, House, Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 39th Cbng., 1st Sees. (lB&I>-66), House Rep't No. 30, Part II, 278. Hereafter, this will be cited as Reconstruction Committee. TJOa s quoted in Slaughter, Freedmen of the South, 119. teachers during 1865 that Superintendent Alvord wrote General Howard that military protection would have to be furnished if any more female 131 instructors were to be sent to that state* Superintendent H. H*

Moore of Florida wrote on January 1, 1866 that in no case had the people shown a willingness to render the educators any assistance 132 and had refused to board the Northern teachers. The Florida legislature passed a law in January, 1866 which directly aimed at

driving the Northern teachers from the state. It did provide for the education of Negroes on a tuition basis of one dollar per month per child, but the most imoortant provision was that which stated that

no person could teach a Negro school without a license which cost five dollars a year, and this might be given or withheld at the pleasure of the State Superintendent. A violation of this law could

have led to a fine of between #100 and $500, or imprisonment of thirty

to sixty days; however, military forces in Florida prevented the 133 enforcement of the statute. The reaction to the teachers in Georgia was so strong that Alvord admitted in his report of January 1, 1866,

that the Bureau and associations were not able to establish schools in the interior because of a fear of violence to unprotected teachers, and

•* a ] that a military police force was "everywhere needed®1*

•^Reports of the Assistant Commissioners for 1865-66, 110. 132|The National Freedman, II, 1 (Jan. 15, 1866), 35. 133noward, Autobiography, II, 337* 134Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen’s Bureau, 110. At least one American Missionary Association teacher was aware of the fact that most of the opposition he had encountered was not directed against the education of the Negroes, but against the Yankee teachers. He wrote to his association that the Southern "friends" of the freedmen had begun to agitate the subject of Negro schooling in their public assemblies, "but the question with them is not so much how they shall secure the education of the Negroes, as how they can get rid of the Yankee teacher s. 11 Miss Louise Fisher, a teacher at

Orangeburg, South Carolina, stated that it would not be safe for teachers to remain in that community if the people were not held in 136 check by the presence of United States troops.

In Virginia, a state renowned for its conservative attitudes on controversial subjects, the Yankee schoolmarm was as cordially despised as anywhere else in the South. R. M. Manly, the Bureau Superintendent, remarked in February, 1866, that the Northern teacher was "intensely hated," his work was "despised and derided," and that only the presence of federal troops made it possible for the educational work 137 to be prosecuted. The Virginia press at this time printed undoubtedly

^•^The American Missionary, X, 10 (Oct., 1866), 218. 136 The Freedman's Record, II, 2 (Feb., 1866), 30. 3-37The New York Daily Tribune, February 3, 1866. what were among the most caustic and satirical comments ever made about the teachers. In January, 1866, the Richmond Times editorialized:

White cravatted gentlemen from Andover, with a nasal twang, and pretty Yankee girls, with the smallest of hands and feet, have flocked to the South as missionary ground and are communicating a healthy moral tone to the 'colored folks' besides instructing them in chemistry, botany and natural philosophy, teaching them to speak Rrench, sing Italian, and walk Spanish. So that in time we are bound to have intelligent and probably intellectual labor.13°

Five months later, the same paper reported a "terrible calamity"

which had fallen upon Petersburg — the Yankee teachers had gone home.

The Times ironically commented that "we feel assured that the people

of Petersburg are bearing the loss of these attractive and interesting 139 females with philosophic if not with Christian resignation." The paper hoped that the teachers' sense of duty would not induce them to

remain a moment longer than would be required for them to complete

their "magnificent mission," for there was a splendid mission field

of usefulness available to the young ladies of New England in Africa.

It concluded:

We really stand in no need of Northern school-marms at the South, either for white or black pupils, but the 'first families' in Africa all desire to procure fresh, plump and tender teachers and

^®Richmond Times, Jan. 16, 1866. 139tbidV, May 10, 1866. 66

missionaries. The invasion of the Confederate States by an army of 'school-marms' after the collapse of the Confederacy was a mistake. We fear their anxiety to teach the Southern pickaninnies /sicj made them forget the necessities - moral, educational and religious - of the unfortunate Northern negroes

When the Yankee teachers left Norfolk, Virginia, in July, 1866, to return home for a summer vacation, the Virginian of that city indulged in a stinging blast against the hated schoolmarms. It

sarcastically lamented that the "only joy of our existence" had deserted

the city but that the grief of the white populace was somewhat

lightened by the recollection that they were now rid of an "abominable

nuisance." The paper's only worry was that their departure would

not be "eternal," and that, "like other birds of prey," the teachers would return under the protecting wings of that "well-known buzzard,"

the Freedmen’s Bureau. Of all the indignities to which the Southern people had been subjected since the end of the war, this was

the heaviest to bear. It was -the refine­ ment of torture ... to have sent among us a lot of ignorant, narrow-minded, bigoted fanatics ... whose real object was to disorganize and demoralize still more our peasantry and laboring population .... Would the citizens of any of the Northern states ... have allowed themselves to be so foully insulted?^-

^ °Ibid. i^T h e American Missionary, X, 7 (Aug., 1866), 17U and Slaughter, flreedmen of the South, quoted from the Norfolk Virginian, July 2, l8?>6. The acrimonious attitude of white Virginians had not lessened very much by the summer of 1868, when one of the most respected newspapers in the state, the Richmond Enquirer and Examiner, referred

to the school teachers as the most harmful of a^-l the Yankees who had

come South through the years. These teachers, said the newspaper, had imbibed all the "bigotry and intolerance, and craft and double- dealing transmitted through the 'Pilgrim Fathers' and their Puritan descendants by the Father of Evil himself.*^^ It accused the teachers of instructing the freedmen, in addition to their A B C'^ to hate their former masters as deadly enemies, to neglect their work and attend political meetings, to always vote the Radical ticket and elect

"carpetbaggers and the meanest specimens of scalawags" to office, and to use their schoolhouses at night for nefarious political purposes.

This editorial concluded by referring to the teachers as the "direst enemies" of the Southern people, who really did not care for the Negro

but only for the money they could get out of him, and who were

completely ungrateful to any kindnesses shown them by Southern whites, but instead would return to the North and fill "two columnes and a half

of ... ^theirjlocal paper with misrepresentation, perversions and 1 I e abusej" The feeling that the coming of the Yankee schoolmarms was the crowning indignity of Reconstruction was reiterated by the

3j^The Daily Enquirer and Examiner, July 21, 1868. x^^Tbid# 68

Wilmington, North Carolina, Dispatch, which spoke of the teachers as "the worfet of all the curses which we have been called upon to submit to and said that when the benevolent societies of Boston sent out emissaries, "we felt that we should sink under this, the last, the worst of all our punishments for a criminal failure to accomplish our own political salvation when the means were at hand.""^

By 1868, the antagonism of the white population of the South toward the Yankee teachers had begun to lessen a little. A change of demeanor among the "rebels" was noticed, but it was believed to be a change of manner rather than of spirit, and still gave no indication of any willingness to co-operate. At a convention of the New England Branch of the American Freedmen's Union Commission, returning teachers agreed that cold politeness and avoidance had been substituted for the open insult with which they were formerly greeted. l i i 5 General Howard also was aware of this change for he told the National Education Convention in August, 1869, that at one time in Virginia, mobs would surround the house of a teacher and throw rocks through the windows, but this was no longer done, and although the teachers were not yet received into good society, he had not heard of the abuse of a teacher in that state for a long time.^^ A similar situation was found to exist in Texas

^^The Freedman's Record, III, 2 (Feb., 1867), 21, Quoted from the Wilmjpgton, N.C. Dispatch, n.d. ^eedman’s Record, IV, 8 (Aug., 1868), 123. J-^QThe New York Daily Tribune, Aug. 21, 1869. 69

*i j n by the Bureau Superintendent of that state, the Reverend Josenh Welch.

In Western and Central Tennessee the head of the Bureau schools, Lt. Col.

C. S. Compton, reported that by mid-1869, recent public condemnation had served to prevent any more abuse of teachers, and in places where they had been insulted, they were simoly "let alone," and were allowed

-i J Q no social relations with the community. On January 11*, 1870,

Superintendent Alvard wrote to General Howard that the climate of opinion in Savannah, Georgia had improved to the extent where the old families still excluded the teachers from all society, yet no longer lli9 dared denounce "their Christian work.*

The sometimes passive and sometimes violent opposition to the

Northern teachers found a number of means of expression among the white peoole. Probably their most common form of showing displeasure, especially on the part of the Southern women, was the practice of social ostracism which was usually disregarded by the male teachers but bothered most of the female instructors more than they cared to admit. The Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in North

Carolina, Colonel Whittlesey, reported that he had never known of an instance of a teacher being invited into a respectable white person's home.^® In Georgia, teachers were excluded from "society" even by

^ B R F A L Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," II, 105. 77_Alvord, Reports, Jan., 1870, 5>0. ^ B R F A L Mss. • ^ Reconstruction Committee, II, 183. 70

Republican families, who feared ostracism themselves if they entertained 1^1 the schoolmarms. ^ A teacher outside of Augusta said that he knew of

no social intercourse between the female teachers and the ladies of

Augusta, and one teacher had told him of being spat upon in the 152 streets by a man, DeBow's Review remarked that in some Southern

communities the only ones to speak to the teachers were small boys who told them "to go to the Devil," and that they were more ignored 1 £-3 by the local whites than the Federal officers, ^

An American Missionary Association teacher at Bainbridge, Georgia,

wrote that in the four months that he and two other teachers had been

keeping house, they received no calls except from a Baptist minister 15U who had been a Union man all through the war. The publication

of the A.M.A, bewailed the cold treatment that its teachers were

receiving, who encountered, instead of a friendly call at home or

recognition in the streets,

at best the averted eye and silent contempt, if they are spared the words of blackguardism, or that feminine accomplishment, peculiar to Southern gentility, of 'gathering up their skirts, ' that, in passing, their ^ dresses shall escape the hated contact*

How complete this exclusion could be carried out was illustrated by a

X^ K K K Report, Georgia, II, 1133. lpZgt'earns, The Black Man of the South, 132, ^ DeBow1 s Review, II (July, l866), 9U-95>. ^"*The American Missionary, XII, 6 (June, 1868), 126. ^Slbid.Tx/' inAug.,18^), 173. 71 teacher in North Carolina who wrote that she had not been in the house of a white person for two months, nor been spoken to except by four or five white women during the same period. Only one white lady had 156 entered her house in seventeen months.

The reaction of the teachers to this type of treatment was usually one of quiet resignation. As Miss Fanny Neucomb of Elizabeth

City, North Carolina wrote:

The whites here treat us so-so; the men now and then lift their hats, while the ladies for variety lift their noses. But we pay little or no attention to either, 'and work goes marching on.'157

The Bureau Superintendent in that state, Dr. H. C. 7ogell, remarked that because of the opposition surrounding the teachers, isolation was a necessity, and "the walls of a cabin become a shelter from observation where the burdened heart seeks relief at that source 158 ever open for comfort and consolation."

Numerous accounts are preserved which tell of teachers being insulted or completely ignored whenever they attended services at the white churches. Miss Julia Sherman visited a Presbyterian church at

Lexington, Virginia where she and a friend occupied an empty pew indicated to them by the sexton. After they returned home, a message was delivered by the sexton from the owners of the pew, requesting

^■^Alvord, Reports, July 1 , 1869, 28. 1 57The National Freedman, I, 11 (Dec., 1865), 3h7» IbOBRpAii Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," I, k3h 72 159 that the two women never again occupy their seat. An A.M.A. teacher.,

Miss May Close, at Brandon, Mississippi was warned by a local newspaper

editor that if she attended church, the white children in the vicinity

of her pew would get up and leave. Miss Close told the editor that

’’children of well-bred Christian parents never left the pew when I

entered, in this or any other town."^®

One of the most pressing problems of the Northern teachers, and

especially those who went into the rural deep South, was that of

securing room and Board. Most Southern whites were very reluctant

to rent the teachers a house or a room or provide them with meals.

J. W. Alvord remarked that if it had not been for the "loyal Germans"

in Texas, there would have been few places for the teacher to board.

One method of preventing the teachers from securing a roof over their

heads was to increase rents to ridiculous amounts, as was done in

Raleigh, North Carolina, where houses which rented for $3S>0 a year in 162 1861 rented for $1,900 a year in gold, or $3,000 in currency.

Miss Fannie Wood, teaching at Warrenton, Virginia, recommended to the

American Freedmen's Union Commission that they buy a home for the

teachers, as boarding houses were difficult to obtain and extremely

high rents would render such a course "objectionable" if the accommodations

1^9 „ . The American Missionary, X, 3 (March, 1866), $0. y.°IEId.. X. 9 (3ept7V 18661. 200. “ ^Alvord, Reports, July, 1867, 53. ^ The Nation, I '('Nov. 30, 186$), 67^. 73 could be procured. Miss May Close, the teacher who had encountered problems about attending a white church, was forced to shut down her school and leave Brandon, Mississippi* because she could not find any room or board with local whites, who also refused to allow the Negroes to rent a room to her or let her lease a building for school purposes.^*

The Southerners who might have been willing to rent and board teachers were prevented from doing so by pressures from their neighbors. An association superintendent in Florida wrote that "Not one in a thousand has the moral courage to brook the odium which would be visited upon them by their neighbors in such a case."^-’ A Georgia teacher remarked that he knew a Southern white woman in Augusta who had to go North because her friends had abandoned her "for the simple reason that she had rented part of her house to the lady teachers, and had boarded them for her pay.

The tactics aimed at denying the teachers room and board even reached the point of refusal to sell them food. A teacher in Lexington,

Virginia reported that she was unable to buy milk, one woman sending word that she would not sell milk to Yankees "to save her life."^^

Another teacher in Virginia was unable to buy meat for his family for

^?^The Freedman's Record, II, 6 (June, 1866), 121. Io USRfAL Mss., John M. Langston to J. W. Alvord, July 10, 1867. -g- ■.jTThe National Freedman, II, 1 (Jan. 15, 1866), 3. flStearns, The Black Man of the South, 132. 'The American Missionary, X, 3 (March, 1866), I4I;. weeks because the Negroes could not fhmish it and the whites had no

1 Aft meat for "nigger teachers."

After Congressional Reconstruction was established in 1867, tensions increased a great deal in the South and the teachers who heretofore had been ignored and denounced were subjected to physical violence to force them to leave. As one historian has shown, although rumors of brutality, murder and incendiarism were widespread, no accurate statement can be made concerning the amount of violence which was actually directed at the teachers during this period. Usually threats by the Ku Klux KLan were sufficient to drive a teacher away, as in the case of an A.M.A. teacher at Lewisburg, Arkansas, who had taught one week in a Negro school when he was notified to quit teaching 170 "niggers" and leave, or be killed, A typical examole of a Ku Klux

KLan warning to Yankee teachers was this one, sent to a teacher in

Georgia: r You are a dern aberlition /sioj puppy and scoundrel if life hear of your name in the papers again we will b u m your hellish house over your head cut your entrals fs^ c "J out. The K Ks are on your track and you will be in hell in four days if you don't mind yourself mind that you don't go the same way that G.W.A, ' went some night. Yours inhell KKK172

l68Ibid., X, $ (Aug., 1866), 173. 16 Q Swint, Northern Teacher, 99. 170Alvord, Reports, July 1, 1870, 1*1. ' ^}. W. Ashburn, prominent Radical politician murdered at Jonesboro. Georgia. ^ Ihe American Freedman, III, 3 (June, 1868), 1*27, Outrages against teachers were probably most common in the frontier areas of the South, such as Northern Texas and Louisiana or the remote i*ural regions of Georgia and Arkansas. In October, 1868, the

Assistant Freedmen's Bureau Commissioner in Texas, General J. J.

Reynolds, wrote to General Howard that it would not be advisable for any young female teachers to apply for jobs in Texas because it would be impossible to assure then of safety from "outrage or insult." He concluded: "I shall be unwilling to assume the responsibility of placing them in a position of so much exposure, thus tempting what we 173 most dread." Numbers of teachers who did not heed the warnings of the KLan and other groups with similar objectives discovered, much to their sorrow, that the threats were not idle, but others did not wait to find out. A teacher in a small plantation school in Georgia was severely whipped and hanged by the neck until almost dead and told to get out in five days, which he did.^7^ Occasionally a teacher did lose his life to marauders, as did William Luke, an A.M.A. teacher near Talladega,

Alabama, who was hanged in 1869 by persons reputed to be KLansmen. In this case, the leading white citizens of the area did attend the funeral and expressed their regrets that such an act had ever been perpetrated.

In rare instances the punishment given to a teacher was the result of

"J^BRFAL Mss., J. J. Reynolds to 0. 0. Howard, Oct. 23, 1868. j-jfflhe American Missionary, XIV, 1 (Jan., 1870), 12. 175Ibid., XIV, 10 (Oct., 1870), 235-37. 76 that individual's bad conduct. Mr. Few, a teacher of freedmen in

Russell County, Alabama, was attacked at night by a group of white boys. Few was notorious for his drinking, mistreatment of his wife, a recent knife and pistol fight with his brother-in-law, and for his 176 favorite pastime of insulting local Democrats*

Not all of the treatment of the Northern teachers by the Southern whites consisted of insults, ostracism and outrages, however, for there were a few instances of cordiality which are worth noticing. The Bureau

Superintendent of Education in Louisiana wrote in 1867 that numbers of planters were offering hospitalities to the white teachers, such as

"seats at the family table, and treating them with that kindness which teachers receive at the South, even employing them to give private lessons to their own children."1^ L. E. Bemis, a teacher in Johnson

County, North Carolina reported that by the summer of 1867 the best of feeling existed on the part of the whites to the teachers of their 1 7P former slaves* The people of the town of Camden, South Carolina, apparently were pleasant to the Yankee schoolmarms, for a teacher in that city wrote that the white people seemed very well disposed to them, 179 and that she had met with nothing but courtesy on their part, v/hen

Mrs. A. B. Winsor, a teacher of freedmen at Oxford, North Carolina,

] l6 KKX Report, Alabama, II, 111*7. *77brfal Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," II, lit, iin^h6 American Missionary, XI, 8 (Aug., 1867), 185* ■^■'PiPhe Freedman's Record, III, 1 (Jan., 1867), 8. 77 passed away, the local minister and several white ladies showed much

kindness to the other teachers, and about thirty of the most prominent t An men in town (but no women) attended Mrs. Winsor’s funeral*

* * « *

Heading the state educational systems that were re-established

after the Civil War were many carpetbaggers from the North, whose

ubiety must have been just as annoying to the Southern whites as was

that of the Yankee teachers. After all, these men were state officials

and headed agencies financed through tax levies which were largely paid

by the whites. Dr. Thomas Smith, M. D., was the first Reconstruction

Superintendent of Education in Arkansas (1868-73)* He had come to Little

Rock in 1861*. as a surgeon for the Union Army. His successor was J. C, 1 Al Corbin (1873), a Negro and a graduate of Oberlin College, On

October 13, 1870, a new school law was approved by the legislature of

Georgia and John R. Lewis was appointed by Governor Rufus Bullock as

State School Commissioner. Lewis was a native of Erie County,

Pennsylvania, a dentist by profession who had served with the Vermont

Volunteer Infantry during the war, and eventually came to Georgia as

an Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. He had no prior

training for his school job, and was forced to resign after a year

^ ^The American Freedman, II, 10 (Jan., 1868), 3k9. !8lJosiah H. Shinn, History of Education in Arkansas (Washington, 1900), £L. 78 T ft9 in office as a result of controversy over missing school funds*

Louisiana had more than its share of carpetbag administrators, including* I63 the notorious State Superintendent, Thomas W. Conway, the

Superintendent of the Sixth Division, C. W. Boothby, a tailor from

Maine who became captain of a Negro regiment during the rfar;1^

George B. Loud, Superintendent of the Third Division, who came to

Louisiana in 1862 as a private with the 4lst Massachusetts Infantry

fclunteers and settled in Iberville Parish where he became postmaster, deputy collector and chief constable and in 18?3 was appointed Division

Superintendent j M. P. Williams, Superintendent of the First Division, who arrived in the state in 1862 as a benevolent society teacher and 18< later taught mathematics at Straight University for Negroes.

The first post-war Superintendent of Education in Mississippi was Henry R. Pease, ex-Union soldier, Freedmen's Bureau agent, and 186 Bureau Superintendent of Education, S. S. Ashley was the first reconstruction superintendent of schools in North Carolina, elected

^ Dorothy Orr, A History of Education in Georgia (Chapel Hill, 1950), 206, 399-400* Hereafter this will be cited as Orr, History of Education in Georgia. I®3See Chapter Four. °^T. H. Hhrris, The Story of Public Education in Louisiana (New Orleans, 1924), 39* Hereafter, this will be cited as Harris, Public Education in Louisiana. • ^ Annual Report of the State Superintendent of Public Education . . . to the General Assembly of Louisiana~Tfor 1875). 32-3^. Hereafter, the general title of this report will be cited as Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, (year). 1 Garner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 366, under the Holden regime. He was a minister, originally from Massachusetts, and an ardent advocate of mixed schools.1®^ Texas had its problems in the youthful Jacob G. DeGress, an ex-military officer, born in Prussia, a Union Army veteran who was appointed Superintendent of Education in

May, 1871 by the Radical Governor, E. J. Davis. DeGress tried to run the school system along military lines and without taking into consideration the poverty of the people, and brought about the downfall X08 of himself and the public schools* The mere presence of these afore­ mentioned carpetbag officials in top positions of the state school systems, although not technically related to the situation of the missionary teachers, was an important factor in undermining the confidence of the white people in these new systems, for the whites were likely to have had the feeling that education was becoming the prerogative of the

Yankee invaders, since they controlled the Bureau schools for freedmen and the most of the state systems which provided education to both races.

The principal efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau and the benevolent societies in the field of education were expended by 1869. A shortage of funds was the primary reason for the leveling off of activity, for in 1869-70, only 3mall sums could be expended by the Bureau for building schoolhouses. General Hcward authorized the now-combined Assistant

Commissioners and Superintendents to travel through their states and

■^Knight, Public School Education in North Carolina, 239. ^ “Frederick Eby, The Development of Education in Texas (New York, 192$), 161. advise the freedmen on how to organize their own schools. By July,

1869, the Bureau had adopted a policy of helping only primary schools in rural areas. Bureau superintendents were urged to try to secure the co-operation of state authorities and public school officials and help 189 make the public school systems effective agencies of education, 7 Due to a lack of money, the Bureau ceased its educational work in April,

1870,^0 Superintendent Alvord was forced to resign in October of that year, and his superintendents in the various states sold the Bureau’s properties and closed their offices,'^’

The benevolent societies ran into financial difficulties even before the Bureau, By June of 1867, the New England Branch of the

American Freedman's Union Commission was encountering great problems in the raising of funds. Among the reasons given were that many persons thought the time had come for the South to support its own schools, others believed that the Freedmen's Bureau or the Peabody Trustees would do the financing, while "many are worn out by the claims continually made upon t h e m . "-^2 By the end of the school year 1868-69, most of the societies had ceased their educational work, except in the case of certain normal schools. The New York Branch of the American Freedman's

Union Commission gave as its explanation for doing so the fact that it

^^Bentley, Freedman's Bureau, 210, ^-^Paul S, Peirce says the last Congressional appropriation was expended in July, 1870, Peirce, Efreedman's Bureau, 82, ° B entley, o£. cit,, 210, 1-9^The Freedman's Record, III, 6 (June, 1867), 101# 81 had laid sufficient groundwork which could be taken over by the Southern

States, using teachers trained in its normal schools, and it also admitted 193 the ever-present problem of dwindling funds.

The question at once arises of what became of the Bureau and association schools after those organizations ceased supplying the money and staffs necessary to run them. Some passed into the hands of the various states and were incorporated into the state school systems3 others became private institutions with new means of 19li Northern support; and many simply passed out of existence* In

Richmond, Virginia,in 1869, the schools of the aid societies were adopted into the city school system, but for a time f>0 per cent of the 195 teachers' salaries were paid by the societies. The city of Charleston,

South Carolina,took over several well-known freedmen's schools, including

Shaw Memorial School and Reverend A. Toomer Porter's School, sponsored 196 . by the Protestant Episcopal Church.

In April, 1871, Mrs. Ednah D. Cheyney, Secretary of the Teachers

Committee of the New England Branch, American Preedmen's Union Commission, remarked concerning the transfer of the freedmen*s schools from her association to the states:

We feel bound to give up the schools to the control of the Southern governments as soon as they are ready to receive them,

^ ^ The American Freedman, II (n.d., 1868), 1*10. l?k«Jackson, "Educational Efforts of the Freedmen's Bureau," 23. ~^*The Freedman's Record, V, 1 (Nov., 1869), 1*1. ^oA. Toomer Porter, Led O n .1 Step by Step (New York, 1899), 223-21*. because we believe that no system can be far-reaching and permanent enough for the needs of the people that is not rooted in their own soil, but we foresee, with great pain and anxiety, the inevitable _ deterioration of the schools for a time.

In Arkansas, the Freedmen’s Bureau turned over all of its schools

to the state authorities in March, 1869, and the whole corps of 198 teachers in these schools became affiliated with the state system. '

The Bureau transferred many of its schools to the state of Louisiana

in the fall of 1867, after the cities began to appropriate funds for

Negro education. New Orleans acquired twelve colored schools in this

manner.This pattern of transfer was repeated in much the same

manner in all of the Southern States, and the schools thus acquired were valuable additions to the new and struggling state systems.

A question that has long puzzled students of the Freedmen'a

Bureau and the benevolent societies is, just how many freedmen actually

received instruction in their schools and how effective was this

training. The enrollment statistics given by the Bureau Superintendent,

J. W. Alvord, are not reliable because they include many persons

counted twice, e.g., a person who attended both a day school and a 200 Sabbath school was recorded two different times. Paul Peirce

TonTh6 Freedman’s Record, V, 8 (April, 1871), 108-09# f-'~Stalpes, Reconstruction in Arkansas, 321-22, 372. °°Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 1567-65, 10, 1 S7 2uGgwint, Northern Teacher, 6-7* estimates that, in 1869, about 170,000 of the 1,700,000 Negro children 201 of school age were attending school. The official organ of the

New England Branch, American Freedman's Union Commission, believed that of the total number of school age Negroes in January, 1870, only one-thirteenth were being educated, and this figure was just one-third 202 larger than that of 1866, Certain teachers occasionally commented upon the prevalence of freedmen's schools in the larger towns, but pointed out that they were unknown in many rural areas. No day school for Negroes was established in Columbia County, Georgia, until 1871, and the county had a Negro poDulation twice as large as the nearby 203 city of Augusta, which was well supplied with schools and teachers.

One of the benevolent societies admitted in 1871, that "what has been done, and is doing, is but one drop in the bucket to the immense 20li numbers of men, women and children needing instruction."

Evaluations of the work done by the Yankee schoolmarms vary considerably with the evaluator and with the amount of time that had transpired since the schools closed, about 1869-1870, In 1880, the former Bureau Superintendent in Virginia, R. M. Manly, wrote that poor or indifferent teachers were in a very small proportion to the total

^Peirce, Freedmen1s Bureau, 83. 02The Freedman's Record, V, 7 (Jan., 1871), 92, 'Stearns, The Black Man of the South, lj.77-78, 20uThe Freedman's Record, V, 7 "(Jan., 1871), 10, 8U number, that many of the ladies were from homes of affluence and refinement, were persons of the highest Christian principle, and did 2Q< some of the best work that he had ever seen anywhere, ^ Other contemporaries were not so lavish in their praise. Dr, J, L, M, Curry, second administrator of the Peabody Fund, remarked at the Montgomery

Conference on Race Problems in 1900:

The education was unsettling, demoralizing, pandered to a wild frenzy for schooling as a quick method of reversing social and political conditions. Nothing could have been better devised for deluding the poor Negro and making him the tool, the slave of corrupt taskmasters •••• But with deliberate purpose to subject the Southern States to Negro domination and secure the States permanently for partisan ends, the education adopted was contrary to all common sense, to human experience, to all noble purposes! The curriculum was for a people in the highest degree of civilization, the aptitude and capabilities Negro were wholly disregarded

Charles W. Dabney in his comprehensive Universal Education in the South admits that the Bureau and the aid societies did some good work among the Negroes, but these groups could not reach all the freedmen, and although many of the teachers were devoted missionaries, they confused the needs of the Negroes with the ideals and feelings of their own race, and drove a wedge between the races which made

205>WiHiani h . Brown, The Education and Economic Development of the Negro in Virginia (Charlottesville, 19^5), 1*5>, Quoted from the Virginia Sjchool Report for 1880, p, 129-31. 2ooFleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, II, 208-09, co-operation in education and racial adjustment impossible for generations*^^ The first historian of the Freedmen's Bureau, Paul

S. Peirce, in pointing out some of the beneficial results of the

Bureau's work in education, says that it inaugurated a system of instruction, although it did not perfect the system or assure its continuance. The Bureau also gave a central organization, protection and financial support to the efforts of the societies and the 208 freedmen. But the most beneficial service of the Bureau and the associations to education was the establishment and encouragement of institutions of higher learning, such as Hampton Institute and Howard

University.*^ The Bureau had a part in organizing the National

Theological Institute, St. Martins School and Howard University, all in Washington, D. C. They also were involved in the support of the 210 Richmond Normal and High School, Hampton Institute (Virginia);

St. Augustine's Normal School and the Biddle Memorial Institute

(North Carolina); Atlanta University (Georgia); and Wesleyan College,

Fisk University, Roberts College and Maysville College (Tennessee).*^

This chapter has attempted to illustrate one of the most pressing problems of education in the South after the Civil War, i.e., the

Originally started by the American Missionary Association* Ibid., 78* E. Merton Coulter agrees that the only lasting accomplishment of the Bureau in regard to education was the establishment of normal schools or institutes* Coulter, The South During Rec on struction, 87. furor created by the presence and efforts of the Yankee teachers, administrators, the benevolent societies and the Freedmen's Bureau.

After examining the recriminations of both sides, the attempts to convert, New Englandize and reform, or to ostracize, insult and abuse, one may conclude that much of the trouble was caused by a mutual misunderstanding which neither camp was willing to attempt to remove.

The teachers arrived in the South convinced of their martyr's role, and surrounded by a formidable barrier of preconceived ideas and theories. Most of the Southern whites looked upon these men and women as devilish fiends, bent on destroying their social order and way of life, whose ultimate goal was racial mixing and perhaps, miscegenation.

Some, however, were able to overlook their hatred of the teachers and appreciate some of the good work that was being done. The conflicting attitudes and reactions of the Southern population toward the education of the Negro is to be the next subject of discussion. CHAPTER THREE

THE SOUTHERN REACTION TO THE EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO

The Southern reaction to the idea and practice of educating the

Negro wa3 far from uniform and actually included all shades of opinion, from violent and persisting opposition to a most favorable attitude that was implemented by moral and material aid to the freedmen1s schools. Ihese attitudes differed noticeably according to the class of whites whose opinions were being sampled. J. W. Alvord, General

Superintendent of Education for the Freedmen's Bureau, reported in

1866 an improvement among the better classes of the South in their ideas to freedmen's schools and he believed that many planters were convinced that such schools would give them more valuable and contented labor, but,

We cannot conceal the fact that multitudes usually of the lower and baser classes, still bitterly oppose our schools •••• Nothing, therefore, but military force for sometime to come, ever on the alert and instantly available, will prevent the outbreak of every form of violence. 1

In Alabama's "Black Belt" counties, many ex-slaveholders conceded that education of the Negro was necessary, but in the Northern and South­ eastern parts of the state, in the so-called "white counties," there

^Alvord, Reports, July 7, 1866, 2. 88 was decided opposition against such a course among the poor whites who were really in economic competition with the Negro and disliked the 2 thought of paying taxes that would be used to support colored schools*

General James H. Clanton, Chairman of the Democratic Executive Committee of Alabama, and other party leaders favored Negro education. Clanton and General John B. Gordon attended a public meeting in Montgomery and declared that it was the duty of the whites to educate the freedman, 3 whose good behavior during the War had entitled him to it*

There were numerous reasons advanced by the more prosperous classes of Southern whites as to why they approved of schools for the freedmen* One of the most commonly advanced motives was that such instruction would promote the citizenship of the Negro and make him a better member of society. At a public meeting in Oxford, Mississippi, in June, 1866, views were expressed to the effect that it was a bad policy to keep the freedmen ignorant, because the right of suffrage would be given to these people some day and "If we do not teach them someone else will, and whoever thus benefits them will win an influence over them which will control their votes.The Savannah (Georgia)

Republican stated similar opinions, when it remarked that the safeguard

2 Walter L. Fleming, Ihe Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York, 190£)» 621;. Hereafter, this will be cited as Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. "Tibid.,^2^ %teBow*s Review, II (Sept., 1866), 310* of Southern society lay in the instruction of the Negro, and that the quickest way to render him a useful member of society was to educate him to a standard where he would appreciate his newly acquired blessings of freedom*”*

At the annual Mississippi Methodist Conference in 1865, the subject of Negro education was discussed at great length and those attending concluded that the blacks needed far more knowledge than previously, for they now had to be able to read laws passed for their regulation and had to learn to read the Bible. The Methodist delegates believed that if left without any "mental culture," the freedmen would sink deeper into ignorance, superstition and fanaticism, and thus be. easily led into careers of crime.^ The former Secretary of the

Confederate Navy, Stephen R. Mallory, spoke to a mixed audience in

Pensacola, Florida in 1867 and told the people that since the Negro was entitled to vote, he must be "educated and enlightened," and that it would be to the best interests of the state of Florida to aid in the freedmen's "education, elevation and enjoyment of all the rights which

follow their new condition. " 1 James DeBow, editor of the periodical bearing his name, testified before a Congressional Committee that the

**Ibid., I (May, 1866), 560. Quoted from the Savannah Republican, n.d. , Hunter D. Farish, The Circuit Rider Dismounts, a Social History of Southern Methodism, 1865-1900 (Richmond, 193&), 177-78. Hereafter, this will be cited as Farish, The Circuit Rider Dismounts. 7The American Freedman, "Fifth Annual Report" (1867), 23. 90 better informed people of the South were interested in Negro education from the standpoint of its proving advantageous to the best interests g of the region as a whole.

Considerations of humanity and kind feeling were also prominent o among the reasons that Southerners gave for favoring Negro schooling.

The citizens of Oxford, Mississippi, viewed their suoport of such education as payment of a debt of gratitude:

We remember how they, for our sakes, endured heat and cold, wet and dry, summer and winter, cultivating our fields, minister­ ing to our comforts .... Can it be that all this is forgotten? And is it not a small return for all this that we are asked to move, when it is proposed that we shall give them that modicum of instruction which will enable them to read, or at least to know the way of the eternal ....

The Macon (Georgia) Daily Telegraph reminded its readers that the

Southern people were eminently a missionary people, and therefore should not hinder the education of the freedmen which was essentially a missionary effort.^

In contrast to humanitarian motives were those of an economic nature, which were most pronounced among some of the planting class who realized that a literate and informed group of laborers would do

D ^Reconstruction Committee, II, 135, °The American Missionary, XI, 11 (Nov., 1867), 21$. lOfleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, II, 179. Quoted in The American Missionary, X, 3 (March, 1866), 62-63. better work than those who were completely ignorant. They saw the plantation school as a real asset, for it was an inducement for the colored people to remain on one plantation and get down to work rather than roam aimlessly through the countryside. A typical example of this situation was Mr. Saunders of Perry County, Alabama, who hired a gentle­ man to teach the school on his plantation, and, in addition to salary, paid all of the teacher's rent and boarding expenses. Mr. Saunders expected to be the gainer, however, in the form of plenty of good, steady laborers, well satisfied with their situation, for "the mere prospect of being able to learn something is regarded as a temptation likely to be more powerful than any other on the minds of the freedmen."

At times, the profit motive may have gone a little far, as in the case of the Alabama legislator who advocated an apprentice bill applying only to young Negroes. The freedmen would be apprenticed to a master for a specified number of years, and the master would, in turn, agree to have them instructed in reading and writing, and whan they became of age, would give them a suit of clothes, a horse and saddle, or

$100 # ^ In South Carolina, General Wade Hampton spoke at the State j?air and advocated educating the Negro who as he became more intelligent

12Bond, Negro Education in Alabama, Hi*, quoting the Alabama State Journal Montgomery, Ala.j, May 1, lb6y. ■^Reconstruction Committee, ill, 17-18# 92 would become more productive. Hampton told how he had helped his

former slaves in this respect by promising to erect a echoolhouse for i them and pay a portion of their teachers* salaries.^* The bureau

Superintendent in Arkansas, William M. Colby, m March, 1067, wrote

that he noticed a much better feeling among the higher classes of

planters toward wegro education, but he felt that economic motives were all important - that "Their opinions seem to be derived mainly 15 from motives of self-interest,"

Jtost of the Southerners who believed themselves to be in agree­ ment with the notion of educating the rreedmen usually prefaced their

sentiments with a very important restriction, e.g. the conception that

this instruction must be carried on by native whites who would teach

only the "three R*s" without attempting to remake the social order or

encourage racial antagonisms. Well-Known Southerners who took this

position included Governor James L. Orr of south Carolina, ex-Governor

Andrew B. Moore of Alabama, J. L. M. Curry, and Bishop Holland N.

McTyeire of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.^ A group of

Negroes in Selma, Alabama, in December, 1865, appealed to the white

people of that community, requesting that natives of Selma, principally

^DeBow's Review, VIII (April-May, 1870), 338-39. 15b!£iP*AL "Mss., William M. Colby to Bvt. Maj. Gen'l E. 0. Orde, March 1. 18® 7, ^Coulter, The South Daring Reconstruction, 83. 93 well-educated widows and cripples, be hired to teach their children.

They warned that,

If you stand back, strangers will come in and take the money from under your hands and carry it away to build up their own country ,,,, '

The Southern clergy were active in campaigning for native

instruction of the freedmen. A Northern teacher in Columbus, Georgia,

was upset by the news that a local clergyman had recently gathered

the Negro ministers of the area into his study and told them that they

must see to it that Southern teachers were employed, because hiring l8 Yankees "would tend to keep up prejudice between the races." The

Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee, Charles T. Quintard, appealed in 1867

for Southern direction of the freedmen's schooling. He pleaded:

We must do all in our power to elevate and instruct them, and thus secure to the country an intelligent class of laborers. To hasten and extend schools is one of our clearest duties Shall they have such teachers as will impart sound instruction, and be under our direction, or shall they be such as chance or fanaticism may send? °

Bishop Stephen Elliott, the first Episcopal Bishop of Georgia,remarked

shortly before his death in December, 1866, that it was his sincere

17 'Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, II, 83, ~~The Freedman's Record, II, 7 "(July, 1866), 132, ^°ihe Republican Banner (Nashville, Tennessee), Jan. 27, 1867. 9U

conviction that if any future good or blessing was to come to the

freedmen, "it must be of home growth," because every person imported

to teach these people "is an influence, unintentionally perhaps, but

really, widening the breach between the races. The work must be done by ourselves .... «2°

At a citizens' meeting held in Montgomery, Alabama in July,

1867, requests were made for money to purchase a lot on which to build

a Negro schoolhouse. One of the men present responded favorably to the request, saying that the people of Montgomery had not been as prompt

to tecch the colored people as they should have been, but instead

trusted to those "who do not have very kind feelings for the South."

He believed that it would be of positive benefit to all concerned for

the young men and women of the South to teach their former slaves,

and perhaps if this were done, the freedmen would not have to study from

textbooks embellished with stories of cruelties and persecutions of PT slaves by the white people. The Augusta (Georgia) Press advocated the

education of freedmen by native Southern whites because it reasoned that

having them instructed by "enemies" was an "unwise policy," for it

taught the Negroes to look upon the whites as their adversaries

instead of "their only true and sincere friends." The paper decided

that if Southerners would establish schools for the freedmen, racial

.~PeBow1s Review. II (Sept., 1866), 313. Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, II, 181, Quoted from the Montgomery Advertiser, July 2U, 1867. harmony would result, producing a "general good," Besides this, it would enable the "patriotic self-sacrificing females of New England to remain at home, and make 'apple sass, 1 and abuse the wicked 'South' at their 22 little convivial back-biting tea parties."

The Nashville Republican Banner declared in June, 1867, that the

Negro was to remain with the South for a long time, therefore it was imperative that his education be taken out of the hands of political enemies.

It is in no sectional spirit we say that the Southern negro should be trained and educated by those among whom he has been born and bred - by those who understand him best, and with whom he must rise or fall* The sooner we begin the better, ^

The cries of the conservative Southern press for local control of

Negro education were repudiated by the editor of the Aid to Progress, a radical paper printed in Wilmington, Ohio. It seems as though this editor had come across an article in the Vicksburg (Mississippi) Times which said that "a comoetent Democratic teacher" was wanted to teach the colored schools at Yazoo, Mississippi. He believed that the motive behind this advertisement was the desire " ... to use the vote and action of a human being as a means by which to enslave him. The

22 Quoted in The American Missionary, X, 10 (Oct., 1866), 2 3 5 . 23 ^The Republican Banner (Nashville, Tennessee), June 1, 1867. 96 treachery and villainy of these rebels stands without parallel in the 2k history of man."

The climate of opinion in the South that was propitious to the education of the freedman varied in its consistency and intensity from year to year, and was more agreeable in certain areas than in others*

W.sits by newspaper editors and other leading citizens often resulted in favorable descriptions of the activities that were carried on within the walls of the freedmen's schools, but it must be taken into consideration that the number of Southern white visitors to these schools was very small in proportion to the total white population, and that their sentiments were those of an enlightened, but nevertheless, outnumbered minority. At the end of the spring semester of 1866, the editor of the Savannah (Georgia) Republican visited the final recitation examination at the Bryan Free School in Savannah, in which 350 children participated. The editor thought the examination went very well and commented upon the quiet and orderly behavior of the pupils. Hfe con­ cluded his remarks by entreating*

We earnestly hope the Government will continue to sustain these schools, now that they have proved so complete a success. The salvation of both races £in thej South depend altogether upon their rapid intellectual advancement, and the humane policy will sanction free schools everywhere, ^

^Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, II, 197. Quoted from the Yazoo (Miss.) Banner of Oct. l8, 1868, 5The National Freedman, II, 6 (July, 1866), 197-8. Quoted from the Savannah Republican, July 12, 1866. 97

In 1866, public opinion in Alabama became much more inclined to the idea of Negro education, both in the plantation areas and 26 manufacturing districts* The Methodist Conference of Alabama, meeting at Montgomery in January, 1866, recommended to fellow church­ men that they "countenance and encourage day schools for the education 27 of colored children, under proper regulations and trustworthy teachers."

According to the Chairman of the State Democratic Executive Committee,

General. James H. Clanton, the Democratic Party in Alabama was decidedly in favor of Negro education, and the superintendent of schools, Cblonel

Hodgson, a Democrat, was working for both races with a great deal of 28 zeal. Clanton's remarks did not coincide, however, with the testimony of a former Freedmen's Bureau employee who had settled in Demopolis and who insisted that the Democrats were unfriendly to Negro education and did not believe the Negro to be caoable of being educated, but considered 29 his instruction to be "money and time wasted.” 7 Georgia's white citizens also became more favorably impressed with Negro education in 30 1866, admitting that the Bureau schools had made much progress, and

one employer in Atlanta even went so far as to buy his servant, who was attendinj 31 night school, a textbook* A reoorter for the Republican in Savannah

^The New York Daily Tribune, Feb. 3, 1866. rlFarish, The Circuit Rider Dismounts, 177* 28KKK Reports, Ala., i7“235. m , Ala., Ill, 15U8. 3QThe Freedman's Record, II, 7 (July, 1866), 135. 31'Ihe American Missionary, X, $ (May, 1866), 111;. visited a final examination at Bethlehem High School and in writing his story about the event spoke of the " ... universal astonishment ... experienced by all present at the extraordinary intelligence revealed 32 by the scholars."

Public opinion in North Carolina regarding instruction for freedmen appeared to be rather indifferent in 1866, according to the Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, Colonel Whittlesejj

who believed that in some instances, the citizens of that state would have no objection to the idea of establishing schools on their farms, if teachers could be found and the routine work on the farm would not be interrupted, ^ In South Carolina, a marked change in attitude in favor of Negro education was noticed by benevolent association and Bureau personnel,^ A teacher at Marion wrote in the summer of 1866 that

several of the former slaveholders in his area were becoming strong 35 advocates of the schools, and were "materially" encouraging them.

In contrast to the drubbing that the Yankee teachers were receiving at

the hands of the Virginia newspapers, the Richmond Whig gave a very

favorable account of a visit to an examination at a Bureau school in Richmond, and the paper commented upon the prompt answers given

■^Quoted in DeBow's Review, I (May, 1366), lib, ^ Reconstruction Committee, II, 183, jffiThe National Freedman, II, 2 (Feb. 15, 1866), i;3. •^fhe Freedman's Record, II, 8 (Aug., 1866), li;8. 9 9

to questions in geography and arithmetic and "the general character of

the reading.

Many of the promises that were made by white citizens in 1866

to give substantial assistance to the freedmen's schools were carried

out during the following year. In Dallas county (Selma), Alabama,

forty Negro schoolhouses were built with the aid of the whites, and in

Montgomery, the whites donated money to a Negro college and paid the 07 tuition of numbers of students at private colored schools* A

superintendent on an Arkansas plantation belonging to former Confederate

General Gideon J. Pillow told of establishing a school on the grounds

for the Negroes and employing a teacher from Keokuk, Iowa, who taught

seven hours a day - morning and evening. This school provided

instruction to over one hundred freedmen from his and a neighboring

plantation, A country doctor at Barton, Georgia, named William

Houser wrote to General Howard requesting aid from the Bureau to

establish a Negro school on his place. He promised to get the school

together if the Bureau would supply the teachers, and hopefully remarked

that H . . . w e have hundreds - hundreds of smart little colored children 39 and youths, who are burning with anxiety to learn."'" \

^Ibid., II, 12 (Dec., 1866), 208-09* ^Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 626, 3°BRFAL M s s ., F. E. Wright to 0. 0. Howard, March 13, 1867. Ibid., William Houser to 0. 0. Howard, April 30, 1867*

I Mississippi whites did a great deal in 186? to further the cause of Negro education, considering the impoverished condition of the state. The State Teachers' Association, meeting at Jackson, advised that public school facilities be provided for the Negroes.^® John

M. Langston, a Negro inspector of schools for the Freedmen's Bureau, reported to General Howard that he was treated with great civility everywhere in Mississippi, and he had many good things to say concerning both races in the state*^ & t Columbus, Mississipd, the whites gave

the Negroes about $1,000 to build a schoolhouse to ret) lace one that had recently burned. Langston remarked that he believed the former slave­ holders were adjusting themselves to the belief that the education of 1.2 the freedmen was inevitable* In the East Central part of the state,

at Meridian, Langston learned of a local resident who had donated two

churches and another site worth over $500 for a s c h o o l . ^3 At Canton,

Corinth, Jackson and Artesia, whites also helped the Negroes by

contributing money to purchase school sites*^4. Material aid to the

Negro schools was also forthcoming in the Piedmont section of Virginia.

In this area, Inspector Langston spoke of the feeling of the whites as

k^Edgar W. Knight, Public Education in the South (Boston, 1922), 315. Hereafter, this will be cited as Knight,Tublic Education in the South. ^Howard, Autobiography, II, 3Ul* j^BRFAL Mss., John M. Langston to 0, 0. Howard, July 25, 1867* 11 Ibid., John M. Langston to J. W. Alvord, July 10, 1867* W*The American Missionary, XI, 9 (Sept., 1867), 201. 101 not being especially hostile, and in the Pamunkey community, the sentiment was quite favorable. There, a local physician, Uriel

Terrill, formerly a large slaveholder, had given the freedmen land on which to build a church and schoolhouse, fbur and a half miles from the county seat at Orange. In some areas of Virginia, planters built Negro schoolhouses on their property, and "white ladies of k6 refinement" gave free lessons during the week.

Though Reuben Tomlinson, Bureau Superintendent in South Carolina, admitted in 1867 that he thought that only half a dozen men of intelligence in any of the major upcountry towns of the state would deem it in the public interest to have the Negro schools discontinued, he cautioned:

I do not mean to assert that any active sympathy is shown toward the schools or teachers, or that the white people in any of these localities are ready to co­ operate with us in the support of the .7 schools. The time has yet not come for this.

Tomlinson's remarks probably give a clearer picture of Southern public opinion at this time than some of the more isolated reports of actual moral and financial support by the whites. He was Bureau Superintendent in the state which had the largest Negro population and was the first

to have freedmen's schools on a large scale, and, therefore, his

*

J^BRFAL Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," I, 116-117. f*~The American Missionary, XI, 11 (Nov., 1867), 2li5. 47brfAL Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," I, 13. 102 perspective was somewhat more realistic than that of his co-workers in

other states.

Throughout the years 1868, 1869, and 1870, a gradual decrease

in opposition to the freedmen1s schools was noted in many sections

of the South, but the reports of the Bureau

only six months apart, are so contradictory that it is very difficult

to obtain a general concensus of opinion. Superintendent Alvord reported

on July 1, 1869, that the situation in Alabama was one of "general

tranquility, and in one county, where a year before no school could be 1 ft erected, over a dozen flourished without interruption."^ The Bureau

Superintendent in Arkansas, William M. Colby, believed there was little

open opposition but, nevertheless, a repressed feeling against the

schools still existed, and prejudice against the teachers was very

strong.^ By August of that year (1869), a general indifference to

Negro education which had prevailed in North Carolina was giving way

to new interest, at least among the influential citizens.^ The Bureau

agent at Charlotte reported a $500 contribution by local merchants

to the Biddle Institute, but for the most part the whites "sullenly

assent to what they see no means of avoiding."^ The Bureau officials,

in judging public sentiment in South Carolina, proclaimed early in

j^Alvord, Reports, July 1, 1869, 38. ^'BRFAL Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," II, 3. ^National Teachers' Association, Journal of Proceedings and Lectures (Washington, 1869), 13. 5 1 brfal Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," II, 122. 103

1868 a marked transition in favor of Negro education and the establish­ ment of schools,'’2 but by the end of 1869 they announced that there was

"no change" in sentiment in the state, where "the masses are opposed to any movement that would tend to elevate the freed people."

In Texas, "continued improvement in public sentiment in regard to our schools," with only one teacher being attacked during the

Fall term of 1869was recorded by Joseph Welch, Bureau Superintendent in that state.^ J. W. Alvord, on a trip to Savannah, Georgia, wrote to

General Howard on January 11*, 1870, that citizens of all classes in

that city told him how much the Bureau's work was benefiting the freedmen.By mid-summer, 1869, Superintendent Manly of Virginia

stated that opposition which formerly had existed and found expression in "violence to schoolhouses, insults to teachers, and ribald jests 56 from the press" had entirely disappeared, yet six months later he had to confess that petty prejudices against the Negro's capacity to learn, Yankee teachers, and white Virginians teaching in colored 57 schools were passing away very slowly,. Some bitter prejudices against Negro education seemed to be fading away in Mississippi by

^Alvord, Reports, Jan. 1, 1869, 26. g ibid., Jan. 7, 1870, 26. ||JBRFAL Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," II, 206. BRFAL Mss., J. W. Alvord to 0. 0. Howard, Jan. 11*, 1870. 2^Alvord, Reports, July 1, 1869, 22, ^'Ibid., Jan. 1, 1870, 15. ioU

1873* In Chickasaw County, where seven Negro schools had been burned, the spirit of lawlessness appeared to have yielded, and in Claiborne,

Lauderdale, and Marion counties, resistance to Negro schools was HQ reported to be "fast disappearing•"

As can be concluded from the preceding remarks, the sentiments favoring schools for the freedmen varied from county to county and from month to month within a given state. The same situation prevailed in regard to the bitter opposition that was often manifested against these schools, which frequently took the form of premeditated violence.

There was a group of Southern whites that seemed to feel that it was morally wrong to educate the Negro race. The Reverend Robert

L. Dabney, Professor at the Union Theological Seminary in VLrginia, stated in a debate in 1876 (with the State Superintendent of Education,

William H. Ruffner) that in every civilized country there must be at the bottom of the social structure a class "who must work and not read." According to Dabney, if the schools were to elevate the Negro out of this class, the only result would be that white people must descend and occupy that level. His final argument was that if the

Negro race were to succeed, "they only prepare the way for that abhorred fate, amalgamation." Other whites, such as Dr. J. C, Nott of Mobile, Alabama, believed the Negro physically incapable of

^Reports for 1873. 2lU. 5'Dabney, Universal Education, I, 15)8. 1 0 $ benefiting from academic instruction. Dr. Nott declared that a

Negro's brain was nine cubic inches smaller than that of a white man, and,

The idea that the brain of the negro of any other race can be enlarged and the intellect developed by education has no foundation of truth, or any- semblance of support from history.60

Pseudo-psychological and economic theories were prominent for opposing Negro education. At Doctortown, Georgia, General Charles H.

Howard^ found that most of the local whites bd. ieved that instructing the blacks would result in a loss of labor output, and some believed 62 that book learning was injurious to all working classes. The Bureau agent in Lauderdale County, Tennessee reported similar sentiments, i.e., "the more ignorant they /the freedmen/ are the better they work; that in proportion as they increase in intelligence the more insolent, go lazy and worthless they become."

Lurking behind more obtuse barriers was the ever-present fear of many Southerners that any education of the Negro, even if carried on by private associations in segregated schools, would eventually lead to mixed schools. E. A. Ware, Bureau superintendent in Georgia,

^DeBow's Review, II (March, 1866), 282. 61Brother of 0. 0. Howard and a Bureau Inspector in South Carolina. Florida and Georgia at this time. 6 ye co n struct ion Committee, III, U3* 63Alvord, Reports, July 1, 1868, li6-if7» 106 attended the first meeting of the Georgia Education Association in

October, 1867, and there learned that the delegates felt that the Negroes must be educated "now," but that there was great uneasiness on two points: the fact that the freedmen were being taught by Yankees and

"the fear lest at some time there should be an attempt to put colored and white children into the same schools."^*

When the public school systems began to be reorganized after

1867 with provisions for the education of both races, a hue and cry went up from great numbers of whites about the onerous burden of taxation they would have to bear to support Negro schools. It is true that in the "Black Belt Counties" of the Deep South, where a small percentage of the men owned most of the land, the school tax (which was usually part of a property tax) would be paid by a few persons.^

Mr. Dale Carter, a citigen of Russell County, Virginia, told a

Congressional committee that in his county there was no repugnance to the education of the freedmen, if the latter would pay the expenses.

The whites were unwilling to finance this schooling "because they do 66 not consider themselves able to do it." Another Virginian, John M.

Botts of Culpepper County, in testifying before the same committee stated that most of the whites in his county were opposed to contributing for

^jtfiRFAL Mss.,"Sjynopsis of School Reports," I, 121, ^Bond, The Education of the Negro, 58-59. ^Reconstruction Committee, II, 99. 107

such education, and that it would be a difficult matter to get up a 67 very large subscription for that purpose.

A few Northerners contended that the reticence of Southern whites

to advocate Negro education was based upon their fear that in the

next generation the Negroes would be more intelligent and better educated 68 than the great mass of whites. A reporter for the Norfolk Journal,

impressed by the performance he witnessed at a local freedmen's school, warned that "more encouragement must be given by our councils to

our public schools, to prevent our white children from being out­

stripped in the race for intelligence by their sable competitors.*^

A more pressing worry among the whites than being surpassed intellectually

by the freedman was their fear that the education he was receiving would

intensify his demands for social and political privileges. General

Howard stated that opoosition to the freedmen's schools arose largely 70 from the belief that the teachers were fostering social equality.

In addition to being institutions where the instruction often had

strong political overtones, the freedmen*s schools often served as

nighttime centers of political activity, being used as headquarters

for the local Union League and the radical politicians of the district.^

The Negroes of Macon County, Alabama, realizing that the whites were

*'Ibid., II, 122. See also Ibid., 137. ^ T h e National Freedman, I, 8 (Sept. 15, l865)i 269. °°Slaughter, frreedmen of the South, lli7» Quoted from the Norfolk Journal. June 1, 1867. '®U.S. Congress, Hous9, Report of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (I865-65T, House Exec. Doc. No. 11, 13. flFleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 628. 108 strenuously opposed to their political organizations, requested that the radical leaders of the county not hold their meetings in churches or schools* Their plea went unheeded, and several political gatherings were held in the schools before the election of November, 1870, with 72 the result that three schools were burned. The schools were also viewed as bastions of political emnity by whites who realized that many of the educated Negroes were voting against the white man's interests,73 To transpose this political factor to the state and national level, it must be granted that the general and very bitter opposition of the whites to the reconstructed state governmaits

intensified their hatred of the Negro schools, which they viewed as another oppressive element of the radical program. J. W. Alvord wrote in January, 1868, that one of his state superintendents had reported that "the rebel party, since reconstruction commenced, had broken up a large number of school societies formed among the colored people,"^

The opposition to Negro education fluctuated with the individual, the locality, and the circumstances. According to one historian, this defiance was "tacit and suppressed" along the seacoast, where teachers and schools for freedmen were ignored. But, in the interiors of Alabama, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and

Tennessee, the opposition was given "full and free expression."^

7^Swint, Northern Teacher, 86. 73coulter, The South During Reconstruction, 85, 7jfAlvord, Reports, Jan. 1, 1868, 10, 75peirce, Freedmen's Bureau, 80, 109

W. E. B. DuBoi3 insists that the picture painted by most historians which implies that the attitude of the Southern whites to Negro education was fairly favorable after the War, is erroneous and a 76 "flat contradiction of plain historical evidence,As is usually the case, a middle ground between Dr. DuBois and his unnamed historical adversaries gives a clearer impression of public opinion in the period

1865-76.

Numerous citations of approval and endorsement of Negro education have previously been given, and it is equally important that examples from the other side be presented. What is vital to the understanding of this whole problem, however, is the recognition that there were great differences of opinion regarding the question of instructing the freedmen, and that there was no general consensus of feeling which may be attributed to the "South" in toto. An investigator for the

National Preedmen's Relief Association disclosed that in Richmond, Virginia, by mid-summer, 1865, he found a general feeling of repulsion to the 77 idea of Negro education. Early opposition was also reported from

Mississippi, where the Bureau Superintendent, Chaplain Joseph Warren, outlined a course of action to change the attitudes of the whites. He suggested that the whites be told that the freedmen must be educated to take care of themselves, that it would benefit the whole community

E. Burghardt DuBois, Black Reconstruction (New York, 1935). 6U5. 77 ' The National Freedman, I, 7 (Aug. 15, 1865)> 22k• 110 to have an educated laboring population and that the Negores would consider the whites enemies if they deprived them of an education.

Warren believed that to refuse the freedmen educational rights would lead to vagrancy, robbery and violence.^® Carl Schurz made a trip to the South from July to September, 1865, with the purpose of investigating conditions in five Southern States and calculating the attitudes of the people toward the Union. Schurz questioned a number of persons on the subject of Negro education, and reported that some gentlemen of "thought and liberal ideas" agreed to the necessity of schools for the freedmen, and were willing to co-operate to the end of their influence. The picture changed when Schurz inquired about the possibility of Southern legislatures making provision for Negro education.

I never received an affirmative, and only in two or three instances, feebly encouraging answers. At last I was forced to the conclusion that, aside from a small number of honorable exceptions, the popular prejudice is almost as bitterly set against the negroes having the advantage of education as it was when the negro was a slave.

By 1866, a variety of Federal and private agencies had become involved in the Reconstruction process: the Freedmen's Bureau, the

Union Leagues, the Union Army and a multiplicity of benevolent and

^ U.S. Congress, House, Freedmen*s Bureau, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1865-66), House Exec. Doc. No. 70, l6o. 79u.S. Congress, Senate$ Report of Carl Schurz on the States of South Carolina. Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, 38th (Jong., 1st Sess. (1865-66), i>en. Exec. Doc. no. 2, 25. missionary societies. As the activities of these groups began to affect every aspect of Southern life, from restrictions on voting to the superseding of civil courts by military tribunals and Bureau courts, the schools for freedmen more and more began to be looked upon by the

Southern whites as symbols of Yankee meddling and interference. Any effort made to educate the Negro was another source of irritation, and one at which the whites did not hesitate to vent their wrath and indignation. Frequently, their anger was directed as much against the presence of Federal troops, the Bureau, or the carpetbag politicians holding forth at the local courthouses, as at the Negro schools, but the burning of a school or harassment of a teacher often symbolized their resentment against the whole process of Reconstruction. In the preceding chapter, numerous examples were given of insults and violence directed at the Yankee teachers. This opposition was not aimed at the teachers alone, but also at the institutions in which they taught, and it is evident that many Southerners viewed the destruction of a

Negro school or the forced cessation of educational activities of the freedmen as a victory over the hated oppressors from the North. Although it is impossible to determine whether these emotional outbursts were aimed at the Negro schools or the Reconstruction in toto, the outrages against the schools and teachers can be used as a barometer in judging public opinion in its reaction toward Negro education.

The year 1866 was one in which the opposition to the Bureau schools began to take a more aggressive form. At Columbus, Georgia, several school sessions were interrupted by outsiders throwing rocks through the windows and hitting the pupils* In Mississippi, J. W,

Alvord reported "inveterate opposition" to Negro schools. He heard

of two teachers who were sent into a town that was without Federal

troops and the next morning they were ordered off and threatened if 81 they did not go. The reaction of the populace in North Carolina was

less violent than in some of the other states, but just as determined.

The Assistant Bureau Commissioner, Colonel Whittlesey, wrote that he

knew of only one school burning, and that was of a church at Elizabeth

City that was being converted into a school. However, Whittlesey stated

that when he tried to rent or purchase buildings for school purposes,

he found it very difficult to get possession of the proper places when ftP it became known that they would be used as freedmen's schools. In

Tennessee, the most bitter opponents of Negro education were the poor white people of the mountain areas, many of whom had been Union

loyalists,®^ Norfolk, Virginia, was the scene of violence in January,

1866, when the Concert Hall which was used to accommodate the Negro

schools was burned and pillaged. Stoves were broken up, blackboards

knocked to pieces, and maps were torn up. The teachers had no doubt

that the fire was set by white people "for the express purpose of

breaking up the 'nigger schools'."®^

fio Stearns, The Black Man of the South, 132, jpAlvord, Reports (Jan. 1, l866), 7, ^Reconstruction Committee, II, 183, ^Peirce, Freedmen' s Bureau, 80, ^The Freedman's Record, II, 1 (Jan., 1866), 25, 113

The assistant commissioners of the Freedmen*s Bureau felt that the reaction of the whites to the Bureau schools was so strong that military protection was required in all areas of the Southern states, and shhuld be strengthened in many places where it existed. The

Assistant Commissioner in Louisiana remarked that if the military power were withdrawn, the schools would cease to exist. J. W. Alvord reiterated the remarks of the assistant commissioners by emphasizing the need for military protection to save the schools from destruction.

He declared*

I need not repeat what appears all through this report, military force alone can save many of our schools from being broken up, or enable us to organize new schools. Such is the improper spirit in many parts of the south, that where, as yet there have been no atrocities attempted against the schools, protecting power is called for to give that sense of quiet and consciousness of security which the calm duties of both teacher and pupil always require. °

The pendulum of opposition swdng back again in the year 1867, when it appeared that the bitterness was decreasing and the majority of white people were accepting the schools as an accomplished fact.

The cases of violence against teachers and schools for a time diminished; nevertheless, the New England Branch of the American

Freedmen*s Union Commission was forced to report that in the first five months of that year, one of its schoolhouses at Warrenton, Virginia

^Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen* s Bureau, 112. °6Ibid., 120. i m had been attacked by a mob, another schoolhouse at Smithfield, North

Carolina, had been burned, and a colored teacher in Savannah had been murdered.®^ Alvord stated in July, 1867^ that contrary to accounts from other states, Louisiana showed a marked hostility to

Negro education,, with even a large majority of the planters being opposed. He noted that "Hostility to the schools increases with certain classes, as the colored people are 'getting too smart,' and cannot be 88 entirely controlled, especially in their political relations." In retrospect, it may be seen that 1867 was merely the "calm which preceded the storm," for by mid-1868, opposition to Negro education had become almost universal and bitterness increased toward the teachers to such an extent that they were afraid to do their work. In Alabama, a state formerly considered to be fairly friendly, "determined hostility" was reported, schoolhouses were put to the torch, teachers were refused board and lodging and were threatened with physical harm. The

Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau, Brevet Brigadier General 0. S.

Shephard declared:

Never was the spirit of opposition more bitter and defiant than at the present time ... The truth is, we are in the midst of a reign of terror, and unless something is done speedily for the relief of the persecuted Union people in this State, our educational interests must seriously suffer. °

On -.The Freedman1s Record, III, $ (May, 1867), 72. Alvord, Reports, July 1, 1867. ii9. 89Ibid., 31. It should be recalled that 1868 was the first year for the full force of radical reconstruction to be felt in the Southern States, for, by then, the new constitutions had gone into effect, the legislatures elected by new suffrage laws sat in the state capitals, and the governments were controlled by a peculiar assortment of Negroes, scalawags and "outlanders" from the North. The brief "honeymoon" with the Johnson administration had come to an end when Congress reassembled in December, 1865, and by 1866 the new order was taking shape, much to the great resentment of most of the Southern whites.

This resentment was expressed in many ways, including violence directed against the colored schools and teachers. It was easier to burn down a school and send a Yankee teacher hurrying home to New Hampshire or

Massachusetts than to overthrow a state government protected by Federal troopsj

Although the situation in the South as a whole was much more critical than during the previous year, it still varied considerably within a given state. On one page of a monthly report the Bureau

Superintendent in Arkansas, William M, Cblby, could describe public sentiment toward the Negro schools as "dormant, against, less opposition, favorable, improving, and bitter opposition."^® The New England Branch of the American Freedmen's Union Commission considered itself fortunate to report only four outrages against schools in January, 1868, but

90 BRFAL Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," I, 277# 116 admitted that "as we have kept mostly under the shadow of the Bureau, 91 they had not been very numerous." An A.M.A. teacher in Athens,

Georgia, wrote of the unconcealed hatred generated at the Negro schools there, intensified by the fear that soon the freedmen would be "thundering at the gates" of the University of Georgia. He also \— told of Uncle Sam, one of his night pupils, who had his book taken from him and was severely whipped by one of the university professors#^

Major Frank R. Chase, the Bureau Superintendent in Louisiana, in attempting to explain the increased hostility in that state, quoted a

Bureau official in Claiborne Parish who said that he could organize schools there only with the help of troops because the white people used every means possible to retard his efforts, including threatening his life and intimidating the freedmen with promises of violent death 93 if they should attend a school meeting# Major Chase concluded his section in the General Superintendent's Reports by conceding!

In fact, after two years experience, I believe that if the matter of establishing schools for the freedmen were left to the vote of the white residents of each of the forty-three parishes in the state of Louisiana, not five parishes would give a favorable majority, and many parishes.would give an almost unanimous negative#^

In? 16 Freedman's Record, IV, 1 (Jan., 1868), 5. 9*T5e %merIcan~Missionary, XII, 7 (July, 1868), 150. 3bRFAL Ms s ., Frank R. Chase to Capt. Lucius H. Warren, May 11, !868# yuAlvord, Reports, July 1, 1868, 38# 117

J. W. Alvord reported that in some parishes of Louisiana, the feelings of the whites were so agitated that colored schools couH not be 95 established "unless directly under the protection of military force."

The presidential contest between Seymour and Grant in 1868 and the accompanying campaign which found the Radicals determined to deliver the South to Grant greatly increased tensions throughout the region and resulted in more resentment and violence being directed against the freedmen's schools. After the election was over,

Superintendent Alvord remarked that "bitter opposition and frequent violence were manifested up to the eve of the late presidential election.

For a time it became doubtful whether schools in such localities could 96 go on at all." In his previous renort of July, 1868, he had alluded

to the political canvass which distracted the Negroes' interest away

from education, and enticed them to qjend their money on political 97 meetings instead of schools. General Howard remarked in his report

of October li*, 1868, that, since August, public feeling had become much

more bitter against the freedmen's schools and all teachers of Negroes,

and that the duties of the Bureau agents were rendered more difficult

"in consequence of the animosities developed in the recent political

contests."^8 H. H. Pierce, the Bureau Superintendent in Louisiana,

wrote on November lit, 1868, that during the campaign, "downright anarchy"

glbid.. 37. °°Alvord, Reports. Jan. 1, 1869, U. ^ l868> 1- -^Slaughter, The Freedmen of the South, 181-83. 118 had prevailed in many localities, "The past month, with its horrors and excitements, has been a season of terror to the freedmen - he has been driven from the schoolhouse, the church, the fireside, and the

Ballot-box,"^ A co-worker of Mr, Pierce, Brevet Major General

Edward Hatch, who was Assistant Bureau Commissioner for Louisiana, stated after the election was over that the recent political excitement 100 had made the maintenance of schools an "absolute impossibility,"

Political unrest also proved detrimental to the schools in Mississippi, particularly from the aspect of demoralizing the freedmen to such an extent that they lost most of their interest in education, for the time being,

After the smoke of the election cleared away, the situation temporarily improved, until the activities of the Ku KLux Klan began to strike terror into the hearts of the teachers and pupils of the freedmen's schools, J, W. Alvord described this false period of calm in hopeful terms*

Subsequently, however, to that election £of 1868J » asperity and bitter­ ness ••• gradually subsided, open violence mainly ceased, and now £jan, 1, 186^, with very few exceptions, organized opposition no longer exists. Still, old prejudices remain, equality of rights is, more or less, resisted and the education of the freedmen throughout most of the Southern States receives as y®t too little practical encouragement.

^BRFAL Mss,, "Synopsis of School Reports," I, 267, j~?Alvord, Reports, Jan, 1, 1869, 3k» Alvord, leports, Jan, 1, 1870, 35? BRFAL Mss,, "Synopsis of School Reports," I, 221*, Alvord, Reports, Jan, 1, 1869, iu 119

Accounts by the Bureau Superintendents for the first six months of 1869 differed considerably in content. In Arkansas, little open opposition to Negro schools was reported, but Edwin Beecher of

Alabama wrote in September, 1869, after visiting several parts of the state, that he found the attitude of the whites toward the Negroes worse than before.

In one place where three months ago the feeling seemed friendly they assured me now a white teacher could not possibly find a place to board* The feeling appears to have grown out of the Congressional election.

A Freedmen' s Bureau Inspector at Gardner, Tennessee noted a great deal of Klan activity in that area by January, 1869, and fear was so great among the populace that "no loyal white voter" would dare act as a director of a school, and the colored men were in such terror that they could not act. He remarked that it was "impossible to sustain a colored school without the immediate presence of United

States troops at any point in this county /Weakley/ except Dresden.

In July of 1869, sixty-three counties reported that thirty-seven schoolhouses had been burned since the first of the year, teachers had been mobbed and whipped, and "ropes were out around their necks accompanied with threats of hanging."-10^ Five months later, H. C. Vogel],

iniIbid** July 1* 1869, 59, .rJJBRFAL Mss., "Synopsis of School Reports," II, llj6. JUvord, Reports, Jan. 1, 1869, U2-i*3, 10°Taylor, fhe Negro in Tennessee, 180. 120 the Bureau Superintendent in North Carolina, wrote that in many sections of that state teachers were frightened and schools were "nearly" broken up by threats of violence. Assaults upon the teachers were frequent, and Negro parents were afraid to send their children to school, Vogell sadly concluded: "I have found greater opposition to our work in some 107 sections than at any period since my connection with the Bureau,"

The climate of opinion in Northwestern Louisiana and Northern Texas was so hostile in 1869 that the Bureau Superintendent for that district,

Captain James McCleery, wrote that he was often driven out of communities when it was learned that he had come to organize a Negro school, and consequently he had to do much of his business in secret and travel in disguise. An attempt was made to assassinate McCleery's clerk, his messenger was assaulted several times, he received threatening letters and was pelted with bricks, and dead cats were dropped into his cistern]

The impression has been given by several historians that after the election of 1868 the spirit of opposition toward Negro education declined, until, by 1870, there was little outward manifestation of antagonism, Even General Howard liked to present this picture, although in doing so he must either have overlooked certain information in reports of the Bureau's Education Division and other readily available materials, or purposely tried to create an impression that was not

^9Jb r FAL M s s ,, "Synopsis of School Reoorts, II, n.p. f^Ibid., 178-79* l°“See Swint, Northern Teacher, 132-33* 121 entirely based on facts. A former superintendent of schools in

Green County, Alabama, testified before the Congressional Cbmmittee that was investigating Ku Klux Klan activities in the South that in his county during the school year of 1869-70, five Negro schoolhouses were burned and two male teachers were driven away,^" The Bureau Superintendent in Alabama, Colonel Edward Beecher, remarked in July, 1870, that prejudice in some places was still bitter, and time alone could remove 112 it. The Superintendent in Georgia reported that in many counties of that state bands of KLansmen were committing the "most atrocious outrages," An A.M,A. teacher was driven away in late November, 1869, and the white man he boarded with was removed from his house at night 113 and "unmercifully whipped,"

In a speech given before the National Education Association in August, 1869, Howard stated that opposition to the Bureau's educational work had almost ceased, that teachers were no longer mobbed, and that "for a long time" he had not heard of "an instance of abuse of a teacher Oliver 0, Howard, "Education in the South," The National Educational Associations, Proceedings of the National Educational Associations (1869), 9, •EU-KKK Report, Ala,, I, $2, The accounts that were presented as testimony before this committee (which was appointed in April, 1871) are not reliable because the committee chose to accept hearsay as evidence. According to a leading authority on the Klan, the investigation degenerated into "a clearinghouse for the threshing over of any and all rumors concerning any disorder which may have been attributed to the Ku Klux since the end of the War ,,,," Although some valuable information was obtained, there was also a lot of idle gossip, and "more than a little plain old fashioned lying" included in the testimony, Stanley F. Horn, The Invisible Etopire, The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-71 (Boston, 1939), 29&-93TT ll^Aivord, Reports, July 1, 1870, 28. 113Ibid., Jan. 1, 1870, 28. The "Gulf States" continued to seeth with unrest as far as

Negro education was concerned, for in Louisiana, Superintendent

McCleery wrote in April of 1870 that a schoolhouse was burned in

Bossier Parish, textbooks were stolen and thrown in the bayou, and a Negro teacher was flogged. In DeSoto Parish, a representative of

McCleery who went there to establish a school, was seized by local whites and told to leave or be lynchedj He fled to another village, where his saddle was stolen from his horse and destroyed, and he was threatened with hanging* A Negro helped this agent to escape, and he rode bareback through the wilderness to Bureau Headquarters in Shreveport, a distance of sixty miles, arriving three days later, suffering from "hunger, exposure and anxety /sicj At about this same time, McCleery sent letters to 1000 white ministers with the hope of reducing opposition by working through them. A large number of the letters were never answered. Some gave assurances of sympathy and assistance, but others warned him and his group to stay away, if they valued their live s.

Parts of Mississippi were also centers of determined resistance to Negro education during the years 1870-71* At Columbus, a teacher of freedmen was threatened with hanging or given the alternative of leaving the area. He departed, "perfectly demoralized." The Klan

^■^BRFAL Mss., Capt. James McCleery to J. W. Alvord, April 25,

187°* 115—f^Alvord, Reports, July 1, 1870, 33* 116KKK Report. Miss*, I, U16-20* 123 notified all the teachers of Negro schools in Pontatoc County to close 117 their schools, or be visited a second time and "be dealt with,"

In the spring of 1871, Miss Sarah Allen, a teacher at Cotton Gin Port in Monroe County, was visited by a group of men at two o'clock in the morning and told to leave Mississippi. The intruders complained bitterly about the radicals, the heavy taxes, but hatred of the school tax was their principal subject of conversation. They wished Miss

Allen to leave because she was a white person teaching a Negro school.^® Two school commissioners in Monroe County who were prominent in determining the tax estimates were ordered to resign or 119 "take the consequences," and they hurriedly resigned. 7 Ridgely C.

Powers, Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi, testified before a

Congressional Committee that the Ku Klux Klan had prevented both white and Negro schools from being taught in Winston County for seven or eight months, and he thought they burned all the schoolhouses there but 120 one.

Teachers were whipped nearly to death in Bastrop County, Texas 121 in 1871, and a teacher in Georgia could write as late as 1872 that

"It is well known, that the sight of a Negro-schoolhouse stirs up the

^Jlbid., 82-95. ■^■“Miss Allen testified that nearly all the Negro schools in Monroe County were broken up at that time. Ibid., Miss., II, 777-79* _ °Ibid., Miss., I, 281. 1 2 0 E H . , 587-88. 1 1 1teport for 1870-71. 350. 12U feelings of a Ku Klux gang, as the sight of water is said to disturb a mad dog.""^ Strong opposition persisted in Ouachita Parish,

Louisiana, in 1872, where some of the older white residents declared that a Negro school would never be established in their parish and 123 attempted to damage a schoolhouse when one was erected. In May of

187U» a Negro school in Winn Parish in Northern Louisiana was ignited by an "unknown incendiary," but public opinion was such by that time that some of the parish citizens condemned the burning and gave money 12ii for a new school which was constructed by "men of all parties."

One month later, a one-armed Confederate veteran who taught a Negro school at Sparta, Louisiana, was told to leave or be assassinated; he also received a threatening letter, and finally was visited by a committee of five men who ordered him to leave or die. He remained, 125 however, until his school closed at the end of August. As can be concluded from these last examples, incendiarism, violence and abuse of teachers were prevalent in some parts of the South until the closing days of Reconstruction, and it is inaccurate to state that they virtually came to an end in 1870.

The presence of Negro teachers in the freedmen's schools came to be a common occurrence by 1870-71, as more and more students

^^Stearns, The Black Man of the South, 1*82, •^Annual Report, Superintendent Public Education, Louisiana, 1873, 209. Igglbid., 1871*, 223. ^^D.S. Congress, House, Condition of the South, i*3d Cong., 2d Sess. (L87i*-75), House Rep't. No. 261, 3? cF?L. 125 completed their training courses in the Bureau's normal schools.

Generally speaking, their employment aroused less hostility among the 126 Southern whites than did that of the hated Yankee schoolmarms.

The Bureau Superintendent in North Carolina, when asked as to whether the colored teachers were treated respectfully by the Southern whites, replied: "They are not very often insulted in any way, but they are entirely passed by and looked upon with contempt, that is certain,

Native white teachers of the freedmen received some of the treatment that their Yankee counterparts did, but is usually took the form of social ostracism rather than physical violence, J, W. Alvord spoke in 1866 of his admiration of these Southern teachers who were willing to endure jeers, the contempt of friends and practical 12d exclusion from social circles in order to carry on their work.

The prevailing attitudes of the Southern whites toward Negro education show in retrospect little unanimity of opinion, as in the case of the universally despised Northern teachers. Many of the upper-class whites, either motivated by economic or humanitarian reasons, favored schools for the freedmen, but most of them definitely preferred that these schools be taught by native Southerners, Strong opposition to the schools was manifested by many of the poorer classes,

*1 p / x‘:DPeirce, Freedmen13 Bureau, 79. l27fleconstruction Committee, II, 183» 12QReports of the Assistant Commissioners for 1865-66, 112, and as their hatred of the Reconstruction regimes increased, so did

their defiance of the "nigger schools," This led to violence against

schools and teachers which reached a climax during the political

campaign of 1868, especially in the remote and sparsely settled areas

of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana, By 187U, most of the Negro schools were part of the state education systems and were becoming more heavily staffed with colored teachers with each passing month. The fact that the schools were now financed by hard-

earned tax money and were taught by local Negroes undoubtedly had much

to do with the virtual disappearance of opposition by 1876, By this date, many Southern whites were willing to assume the more realistic

outlook to the problem that The Richmond Times had advocated back in

1867* At that time, the paper condemned two prevailing attitudes

to Negro education as preposterous: one - that a "nigger is a

nigger, and you can’t make anything out of him," and the other being

"the doctrine that he is a Christian, a scholar, a gentleman and a philosopher by intuition," Both ideas, stated the Times, were

"equally false and ridiculous," because "The Negro is but an ignorant

laborer, who undoubtedly can be improved and rendered more serviceable oo and valuable by education. '

129The Richmond Tjm.es, Jan. 16, 1867, CHAPTER FOUR

THE CONTROVERSY OVER MIXED SCHOOLS

Without a doubt, the most burning and controversial school problem of the entire Reconstruction Era was that which ensued over integration, or, as it was always referred to in the 1860's and

1870's , "mixed schools," Two Southern States, Louisiana and South

Carolina, inserted strongly phrased provisions for mixed schools in their constitutions; Mississippi's constitution was so vague on this subject that it could be interpreted in a number of ways? Florida and

Arkansas included mixed school clauses in their Civil Rights Bills of

1873• Although there was no legal provision for school integration in the constitutions or laws of any of the other Southern States, the problem was argued in all of them, exciting at times passions more violent than any other topic since secession and the abolition of slavery.

This problem was not unique to the South, however, for several

Northern States provided only for separate schools, others allowed both mixed and separate institutions, while still others, like Iowa*, denied the legality of separate schools altogether,^ Indiana's school law of this period required trustees only to supply sufficient schools for white

^Francis E, Bonar, "The Civil Rights Act of 1875” (unpublished master's thesis, Dep't. of History, The Ohio State University, 19U0), 13, Hereafter, this will be cited as Bonar, "Civil Rights Act,"

127 128 children, 2 and, by 1873, Negroes were educated in ninety out of

8,918 school districts, and then in separate schools. In 187U, thirty-five pupils were expelled from the public schools of Brazil,

Indiana, because of their race. Until 1870, Illinois law did not provide for Negro education, and in Kansas, a law of 1871 gave legal voters at school meetings the right to choose separate or mixed school^, on the condition that equal educational facilities be provided to pupils of both races. The state of Michigan had segregated schools until

1871, when the Legislature made them illegal on the basis of an 1869 decision by the Michigan Supreme Court in the case of "Workman vs the 3 U Detroit Board of Education." Ohio’s school law of this period stated that separate schools for Negroes might be established when the number of colored pupils in any given district exceeded twenty. A New York law of 1872 provided that separate schools for Negroes might be established in the cities and villages if they contained the same cj facilities as were afforded the white schools. Thus, it is obvious that Northern reformers, instead of expending all their energies upon a campaign to secure mixed schools in the Southern States, could have directed their talents to many of their own states lying north of the

j-Reoort for 1870. 127. ■'The Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), Jan* 23, 1875. 3^s amended in l86l*, and left intact in the codified law of 1873. ^The Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), Jan. 23, 1875. 129

Ohio River, which were instituting separate school laws at the very time that integration was being forced upon some states in the South,

Principal advocates of mixed schools for the South included certain carpetbag politicians, who thought this would improve their standing with the Negro voters, impractical but well meaning reformers, * such as many of the Bureau and association teachers and officials, and well-known crusaders like William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner,

Whether or not the Negroes themselves generally desired to attend the same schools with the whites is open to question,^ and examples of both shades of opinion will be cited in this chapter. Certain of the benevolent societies were strongly in favor of mixed schools, Lyman

Abbott, General Secretary of the American Freedmen*s Union Commission, wrote in 1866 to an agent in North Carolina who had suggested a policy of school segregation that this subject had been fully discussed by the members of the Commission, who realized that mixed schools would produce an unfavorable reaction in the South. Abbott declared, however, that integration must be instituted, for,

We hope to stimulate all North Carolina, if from no other motive, in very self-defense, to provide for the education of her own children. If we set the example of no distinction, she may not follow itj but she can do no worse than reject it. If we set her the example of separate schools, we make ourselves responsible for the perpetuation of the system.

^See Fleming, Documentary History of Reconstruction, II, 167, for the opinion of a true Southern conservative. 130

I at first /wasj inclined to think gradually in this matter, and come to mixed schools by and by; but further reflection has convinced me, that if we begin by putting the children in separate schools we shall find it more difficult afterward to unite them*'

The New England Branch of the American Freedmen's Union Commission frankly stated in its publication of January, 1868, that the establish­ ment of mixed schools in the South was their ultimate goali "The aim of the Society is to pave the way for a good free school system at the South, open alike to all races and colors, and supported by all Q for the good of all." This society staunchly declared that its constitution forbade all distinction of color in the schools, and that all shades might be fourri in their schools, "from the blackest negro to pure Anglo Saxon." The Freedman's Record had to admit that the white children enrolled in their institutions were not very numerous, but

"every one is a real gain, for he comes into perfectly equal relations with his black schoolmates. The point of a wedge is more effective than 9 the pressure of a beam." An agent of the Commission's New York Branch in North Carolina, the Reverend F. P. Brewer, believed that the poor whites in the rural areas would soon be willing to see the "reasonableness and kindness" of inviting them to the Association's schools in conpany 10 with the whites. The New Yoirk Branch of the American Freedmen's

fohe American Freedman, I, 1 (April, 1866), 5-6. ®TKe Freedman's Record, IV, 1 (Jan., 1868), U. ?TEId:",“ m , '■ 1 ■( J5H7T1867), II. 10 the American Freedman, I, 3 (June, 1866), 1|3. Union Commission asserted in August, 1866, that its experiment of mixed schools had succeeded, when fairly tried, in all but on© instance, but it conceded that in the large towns, it was very doubtful as to whether either the poor whites or Negroes would consent to attend school with each other. In the rural areas, where one school was sufficient to meet the needs of the entire population, there was good reason to believe that "prejudice of caste can by patience be overcome, and both classes united in a common school

A number of the Bureau and association teachers and officials did not concur with their soonsoring organizations on this subject. The

Bureau Superintendent in Virginia, R. M. Manly, wrote to Lyman Abbott from Richmond that the white people there would not attend mixed schools and that "your association would lose rather than gain by any 12 proposition to mingle whites and blacks in the same school." A

Union Commission Superintendent in Georgia told Secretary Abbott that there was no probability of the poor whites ever consenting to attend school with the freedmen, and that such an experiment would prove both "impolitic and inexpedient," for it would raise the "frightful bugbear of social equality" against the schools, which would impair or 13 entirely destroy their usefulness. 132

At Shelbyville, Tennessee, the Superintendent of the western

Freedmen's Aid Commission schools declared that he believed that there was no probability of the whites agreeing to attend Negro schools, and he advised that separate schools for poor whites be established by the associations with the purpose of harmonizing relations between the two races,An Ohioan who came to North Carolina to teach the freedmen wrote to a former teacher, James A. Garfield,^ protesting attempts to force the whites and Negroes to mingle, and said that she would not allow her own children to attend a mixed school, for the society of the 16 blacks would be "degrading," Some of the Yankee teachers admitted that it was completely futile to try to persuade the whites to attend the freedmen's schools, and that most of them would rather do without schooling than bear up against the ridicule that they encountered for 17 going to a "nigger school."

There was, of course, a certain amount of racial mixing in the

Bureau and Association schools, although the number of whites actually in attendance seems to have been a very small proportion of the total student population. The New England Branch of the American Freedmen's

Union Commission occasionally reported cases of whites attending their schools. In May of 1866, twenty white children were enrolled in the

% b i d . , 72. 'Later, President James A. Garfield. ■^Coulter, The South During Reconstruction, 32lu 17The American Missionary, XI, 3 (March, 1867), 5l-3>2. 133

*1 ft Commission’s school at Summersville, South Carolina, ° and in August of that year, the New York Branch of the Commission stated that in a dozen of its schools in North Carolina, there was a ratio of one white child to fifty colored children, the whites being admitted at the request of their mothers, who said they were too poor to give them an 19 education. The reports issued by the office of J. W, Alvord, General

Superintendent of Education for the Freedmen1s Bureau, give suggestive,

if not accurate, statistics on the number of whites enrolled in the 20 ’’Bureau Schools.n

Month and Reported Number of Reported Total Number Year White Pupils Enrolled of Pupils Enrolled

Jan., 1867 1*70 77,998 July, 1867 1,31*8 111 ,141*2 Jan., 1868 ,1*138 81,878 July, 1868 1,151 89,1466 Jan., 1869 581* 61,785 July, 1869 953 89,731 Jan., 1870 962 90,6l6 July, 1870 3,169 111*, 516

The greatest percentage of white attendance was during the final days of the Bureau’s existence, when it reached a high of 2.8# of the total enrollment# Until January of 1870, Virginia was always first in the number of white pupils attending the freedmen's schools, which reached a peak of 655 (out of a total white enrollment in all Southern

States of 1,138) in January of 1868.^ Then, suddenly, by January of

j-^The Freedman's Record, II, 5 (May, 1866), 90, American Freedman, I, 5 (August, 1866), 79* f-yAlvord, Reports. Jan., 1867 through July, 1870. 21Ibid., Jan. 1, 1868, 12-13. 131*

1870, Virginia's figure shrank to sixty-four, from a total of 1*06 during the previous six months period, and Florida assumed the lead with 6 2 k out of a total of 962,^ and 2,108 out of a total of 3,169, by

July 1, 1870,^ Nevertheless, at its greatest extent, the number of white pupils attending the freedmen's schools was under three per cent of the total enrollment, a figure which can hardly be considered to show that racial mixing existed on any large scale, even in schools that were taught and promoted by determined crusaders for integration*

The reaction to the idea of mixed schools on the part of the vast majority of the Southern whites can be generalized as one of disgust, horror and fear of eventual racial amalgamation. The New Orleans

Picayune defined "mixed schools" in this manners

This term 'mixed schools' is a fine sounding phrase invented to conceal by a verbal trick the repulsiveness of its real meaning. A 'mixed school' is simply a school paid for by the money of white people, but into which colored pupils are forced against the will and in defiance of the protests of those who support it .... The introduction of the colored pupils is equivalent to the exclusion of the whites, and hence the attempt to establish 'mixed schools' must either totally fail or result in the annihilation of our school system .... if the public schools are to exist solely for the benefit of colored pupils, the whites will cease to furnish the means which support them. ^

79 "Ibid., Jan. 1, 1870, 6-7. ;Pl5Id., July 1, 1870, 7. ^frhe Picayune (New Orleans), Dec. 16, 1871*. 135

The state of Alabama was fortunate in that it did not play an extensive part in the controversy over mixed schools. At the constitutional convention of 1867* Negro delegates demanded mixed public schools and special advantages for their race, but some of their "scalawag” friends did not concur, and asked for separate schools. When these were not provided, sixteen native whites refused 25 to sign the constitution in protest against this lack of action.

There was an attempt made by Mr. Semple to amend the Education Article

(XI) and provide for the education of colored and white persons in separate schools, but the motion was killed by laying it on the table, forty-seven to twenty-six. On the same day (December U, 1867), a

Mr. Carraway offered an amendment which stated that should it prove expedient to have separate schools, the Board of Education would cause an equal division of the school fhnds in districts where such division 27 was demanded. This motion was not even voted upon, and section 6 of article XI was adopted, it being a vague statement which made no reference to either separate or mixed schools.

It shall be the duty of the board to establish, throughout the State in each township or other school-district which it may have created one or more schools, at which all of the children of the State between the ages of five and twenty-one years may attend free of charge.2®

25 ■'Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama, 607. ^ Official Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Alabama ... 1867 (Montgomery, 1868), 237• !Zfbid..~23F. rPoore, Federal and State Constitutions, I, 73* The foes of mixed schools in Alabama gained a victory daring the following year when a law was passed which stated that in no case was it lawful to unite both colored and white children in the same school unless the unanimous consent of the parents or guardians of all the 29 children involved was obtained. This virtually insured a segregated school system. After the conservatives regained political control of the state, a new constitution was framed in 1875, which specifically- stated in Article XII, Section 1, that "separate schools shall be 30 provided for the children of citizens of African descent."

Arkansas made no provision for the instruction of its Negro children in an education law of 1865, but this act had the stipulation 31 that no school tax was to be collected from Negroes* A law passed in

1867 prohibited any Negro or mulatto from attending any public school in the state "except such schools as may be established exclusively 32 for colored persons* Arkansas' constitution of 1868 was silent on the subject of mixed or separate schools, stating only that free public schools would be maintained for all persons between the 33 ages of five and twenty-one years* An act of 1873 provided explicitly for the establishment of separate schools for white and colored

29 Acts of the Sessions of July, September and November, 1868, of the General Assembly of Alabama, li|.8. 30ppore, federal and State Constitutions, I, 93* 3^Taylor, Interpretation of the Peabody Fund, ijlu 3^Qiibert $. Steohenson, Race Distinctions in American Law (New York, 1910), 170. Quoted from Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas, 1866-67, 100. ffereafter, this will be cited as

Poore, federal and State Constitutions, I, 11+6-1*7, 137 children,-^ but in the same year, section 6 of the state Civil Rights

Act made it unlawful for any public school officer or teacher to refuse, fail or neglect to provide “equal and identical educational accomodations to every youth of school age." This clause, which could have led to the agitation of the mixed school question, failed to have an effect upon the creation of separate schools for both races.

Integration of the public schools in Florida was made legal on two different occasions, but there is no evidence that the laws were enforced. Article IX, Section 1 of the Florida Constitution of May,

1868, stated*

It is the paramount duty of the State to make amole provision for the education of all the children residing within its borders without distinction or preference.-*

But a school law of 1869 made no reference to the complexion of the children for whom it was framed, and Florida began a policy of separate educational facilities.-^ Although a Civil Rights Act of 1873 forbade any discrimination on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude in inns, public conveyances, places of amusement, common schools, public institutions of learning, cemeteries and benevolent

•*^Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas, 1873, h23- * gIbid., 17-18. ^i^oore, Federal and State Constitutions, I, 355>-5>6. ■*'George G. Bush, History of Education in Florida (Washington, 1889), 2U-25. 138 n Q institutions supported by general taxation, the implication of mixed schools was never made a reality. In none of the reports of the State Superintendent of Education from 1869 through 1873 are there any references to mixed schools, but there are numerous 39 allusions to "colored” and '•white*' schools in the same county# The brief official history of the public school system that was presented in the Report of the U.S. Commissioner of Education for 1876 does not mention any degree of racial mixing in the Florida schools,^ and

Edward King, in his book on the Southern States (written in 1873),

speaks of the prejudice against common schools in Florida "because of the lurking fear of the whites that someday mixed schools may be insisted upon by the black masters of the situation."^ It was not until 1887 that Florida established a constitutional provision for I p the legal separation of the two races in the public schools#

Georgia, as has been noted, was very slow to get its public school system functioning after the Civil War. The "reconstruction constitution" of 1868 merely provided for a "thorough system of general j ^ education to be forever free to all the children of the State ...,"

Stephenson, Race Distinctions, 115-116. Cited from Laws of Florida. 1873, Ch. 191177“ -^Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Florida, 1869-1&75, Qt passim. jiOReport for 1876, 63# jilting, The Southern States, 1*20. ^Stephenson, op. cit., 170# ^T h e Code of the State of Georgia, 1873, 925. 139 and thus ignored the distinction between separate or mixed schools*

This omission was provided for in the first school law of the state, passed in 1870, which emphatically declared:

That it shall be the duty of the trustees in their respective districts, to make all necessary arrangements for the instruction of the white and colored youth of the district in separate schools* They shall provide the same facilities for each, both as regards school-houses and fixtures, and the attainments and abilities of teachers, length of term-time, etc., but the children of the white and colored races shall not be taught in any sub-district of the State.^W

There was no provision expressed in the Mississippi Constitution of 1868 for either separate or mixed schools,^ a proposition for separate schools having been defeated in the constitutional convention when every Negro delegate voted "no*"^ A leading conservative newspaper of the state, the Jackson Clarion, viewed the fact that separate schools were not legalized by the Constitution with "disgust and loathing," and believed that the authors of the constitution had

"sown the seeds of discord" between the two races by leaving a loophole for the possible creation of mixed schools. Three weeks latei;

^ Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia J^70,T7.------* ------pgLaws of the State of Mississippi, 1870, XLVII. k®6arner, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 363* li*0 the Clarion declared that it would require a standing army to enforce U7 mixed schools in Mississippi#

In the spring of 1870, J. L. Alcorn, a Southern gentleman who had

turned Republican in order to best serve what he believed to be the interests of Mississippi, became Governor, and shortly after his

inauguration, he outlined a plan for the organization of a school system U8 based upon separate schools for the white and Negro races# But

Governor Alcorn's advice was not heeded, at least not by the legislators, who passed a school law in 1870 which, in the eyes of many white

citizens, left the way open for mixed schools. It stated that all the

children in Mississippi between the ages of five and twenty-one years U9 should have "in all respects, equal advantages in the public schools#"

In the opinion of some citizens, "equal advantages" meant identical

advantages, and a few integrated schools were opened in Mississippi, 50 but no real efforts were made to integrate the entire system, Stuart

Noble, the historian of the public schools in the state, after

examining all of the official reports for this period, could find evidence

of only two mixed schools, those being in existence during the year

^-7Ibid., 363. Quoted from the Jackson (Miss#) Clarion, Feb. 21, 1868 and-March 11, 1868# ^ Stuart G. Noble, Forty Years of the Public Schools in Miss is s'1 ’ ' 'T '' iws of the State of Mississippi, 1870, 17 llil

1870-71# A newspaper editor from Pontatoc County pointed out to a

Congressional Committee that the education law of 1870 did not really prohibit separate schools, because of one clause which allowed new schools to be established by the county directors upon the application <2 of the parents or guardians of twenty-five children, thus permitting <3 separate schools when so desired. The colored Superintendent of

Education, T. W. Cardoza, told the Northern journalist, Edward King, that in only one case had he endeavoured to insist upon a mixed school, and that was in a county where the white teachers had refused to instruct

Negro pupils, whereupon Cardoza informed them that if that was the situation, "they must not attempt to keep the black children from the white schools, since he was determined that they should receive instruction."'^ The first legal prohibition of racial mixing in the public schools of Mississippi did not come until after the Reconstruction

Era, in 1878, when a statute forbade the teaching of white and colored pupils in the same school building.*'

The mixed school question was bitterly argued in the constitutional convention of 1868 in North Carolina, but without much success for either side. A Committee on Education was appointed soon after the convention

"Noble, 0£. cit., 39. Laws of the State of Mississippi. 1870, 17 feeports, Miss., I, 89# iKing, The Southern States, 316. 'Stephenson, Race Distinctions, 173. 11*2 was organized in January, and consisted of two conservatives and

eleven radicals, with the Reverend S. S. Ashley, formerly of

Massachusetts, as Chairman. The Committee made its first report on

March 6th, but since it contained no provision for separate schools,

Mr. Plato Durham, a Conservative from Cleveland County, offered an

amendment which stated that the General Assembly should provide distinct schools "for the black children of the State ^[separatej from

those provided for white children."^ Reverend Ashley immediately

amended the amendment with*

It being understood that this section is not offered in sincerity, or because there is any necessity for it, and that it is proposed for the sole purpose of breeding prejudice and bring [sxcj about apolitical enslavement of the colored race.^'

Ashley's amendment was adopted,'’® but Durham's was rejected by tjo a vote of eleven to eighty-six. The Conservatives were not daunted,

however, for John W. Graham proposed an amendment providing for

"separate and distinct" schools and colleges for the white and

colored races, and this was quickly followed by a substitute amendment

from the radical judge, Albion W. Tourgee, which stated that wherever

separate schools were to be established, equal facilities and funds

^ Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of North Carolina at its Session of 1868, 31*2. f f i ^ i d T ------58n o vote is given. 59lbid. 1U3 were to be apportioned to each race. Both amendments were rejected, and the original section of the bill passed. The entire report was approved by a vote of eighty-eight to twelve, and became Section IX 60 of the Constitution# This section was an innocuous statement which merely said that the General Assembly, at its first meeting, should provide a free and uniform system of public schools to all the children of North Carolina between the ages of six and twenty-one years#^ There were no references to either separate or mixed schools#

The North Carolina legislature convened in November, 1868, and one of the most crucial items on its agenda was the passage of an education bill# Governor William Holden, a Radical, called for a general and uniform system of free schools, but surprisingly requested 62 that separate schools be provided for the two races# On March 3,

1868, Senator Love of Jackson County offered an amendment which would have prevented the teaching of certain sentiments in the schools, particularly those embodied in the song "John Brown's Soul is Marching

Along." The amendment was ruled out of order, but Senator Love was not dismayed, for he quickly proposed another amendment which prohibited

Negro teachers from instructing white pupils# Senator Moore, a Radical carpet bagger, amended this by adding a clause forbidding the hiring of any whites to teach in Negro schools* This latter provision was

£?Ibid., 310. £ "'Poore, Federal and State Constitutions, II, lii32-33# Knight, The Influence of Reconstruction, 23# liiU adopted by a vote of nineteen to fifteen, but the original amendment was rejected by the same vote.^ North Carolina's Senate did not prove

to be radically inclined, however, when it agreed to an amendment of

Senator John W. Graham, which established separate schools in the 6U state. This passed by a vote of twenty-four to six. The Education

Bill was approved by the Senate on March 17, 1869, by a vote of thirty

to ten, and it was ratified on the same day after some minor changes

were made in a conference committee with the House of Representatives.

This law stated that,

The school authorities of each and every township shall establish a separate school or separate schools for the instruction of children and youth of each race resident therein, and over six and under twenty-one years of age ....

After the state government of North Carolina had returned to

conservative control, steps were taken in a new constitutional convention

to amend the Constitution to provide for separate schools. Several

proposals were offered to this effect, but the one that was approved

was written by Mr. J. Thomas Moorhead of Rackingham County, which

established the principle of separate schools for both races, "but

glbid., 25. ppKnight, Public School Education in North Carolina, 232. glbid., 23E Public laws of the State of North Carolina, 1868-69, ii71. iii5 there shall be no discrimination made in favor or to the prejudice, cn of either race." This provision was embodied in toto as Article IX,

Section 2, of the Constitution of 1876.

The reconstruction of South Carolina was a terrible experience for most of the white citizens of the state, and the tales of political malfeasance and corruption have been widely recounted by historians such as Francis B. Simkins, Robert H. Woody and John S. Reynolds.

South Carolina was a small state in area, but it contained the largest percentage of Negroes of any Southern State, having a population of

69 il!?,8lii Negroes and 289,667 whites in 1870. Devastated by Sherman's march of 186U-65, the state fell under the political control of a vicious and corrupt alliance of native whites, Negroes and carpet­ baggers in 1867, and this entente ruled South Carolina until the

"Compromise of 1876" Hod to the removal of Federal troops by President

Hayes in 1877* Many of the teachers who had come to Port Royal during the war remained and were joined by others who swarmed over the state establishing schools for freedmen. In looking ahead to the establishment of a oublic school system, some of the teachers and Bureau officials were hopeful that it would be an integrated system. B. F, Whittemore, the Assistant Superintendent of Education for the Bureau, stated in

June, 1867, that the Negroes who were to be members of the forthcoming

6 7 Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of North Caroling Held in l%75a 130. ^®Poore, Federal and State Constitutions. II, 114*7. °The American Annual Cyclopaedia. XI, 1871, 702. Hsreafter, this will be cited as The Annual Cyclopaedia. lij.6 legislature would be pledged to a uniform system of common schools, 70 "without distinction of race, color or previous condition."

When the constitutional convention met in Charleston in January,

1868, one of its primary tasks was to establish a public school system.

After the Committee on Education made its report, there was a heated discussion over that portion which concerned compulsory attendance of both races in the schools between the ages of six and sixteen.

Benjaman Byas, a Negro from Berkeley County, objected to the word

"compulsory" because he considered compulsion alien to a pure republican form of government. Conservatives were upset by the penalty of fine and imprisonment that would result for parents failing to send their children to school, for, to them, this clause implied compulsory attendance at mixed schools. The Chairman of the Education Committee,

F. L. Cardozo, a Negro from Charleston, defended this section by insisting:

We only compel parents to send their children to some school, not that they shall send them with the colored childrens we simply give those colored children, who desire to go to white schools the provision of doing so,'1

Justus K. Jillson, later State Superintendent of Education, favored the compulsory provision as a means of encouraging school

I?The Freedman's Record, III, 7 (July, 1867), 122. 'Proceedings oT the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina, 1868, 691* Hi7 attendance, and Cardozo continued to assert that charges which inferred that this clause meant co-education of the races in the same schools 72 were nungentlemanly" and "untrue.11' In discussing another section of the Education Bill which provided that the public schools would be free and open to all children of the state, Gardozo declared that this did not preclude the establishment of separate schools*

It is simply left so that if any colored child wishes to go to a white school, it shall have /the_7 privilege to do so. I have no doubt, in most localities, colored people would prefer separate schools, particularly until some of the present prejudice against their race is removed.'’

He reconciled the differences over the compulsory education question by proposing an amendment, subsequently adopted, which stated that no law compelling attendance in the public schools should be passed until a system of schools had been "thoroughly and completely organized, and facilities afforded to all inhabitants of the State for free education

n | of their children." The last clause of this amendment provided a loophole in regard to required attendance, this not being legal until "facilities," meaning separate facilities where so desired, were established throughout the state.

An equally bitter conflict was waged in the convention over

72Ibid., 70iu 73lbid 706. 7^Ibid•, 708. that section of the Education Bill (Article X, Section 11) which stated

that all the educational institutions supported by public funds should

be free and open to all the youth of the state "without regard to race,

color or previous condition." Cardozo tried to avoid another collision

by attempting to send the section back to the Committee for further

consideration, but other Negro delegates like B. F. Randolph and

Benjamen By as felt that this would lead to the removal of the words

"race, color and previous condition" and they demanded an immediate

vote. Cardozo1s wishes prevailed, however, and the section went back 7^ to the Committee.' ** tfhen this matter came up for debate a few days

later, B. 0. Duncan, a white "scalawag" from Newberry, asserted that it

was his earnest desire to see that all the children of the state were

educated without distinction of race, but if the public schools were

opened to the Negroes, they would be attended only by the colored

children. "If the attempt is made to enforce a mixture in this way,

I have no idea that fifty white children in the state would attend

the Dublic schools." Duncan pointed out that the Bureau schools were

open to all, yet he did not believe that one white child attended

them, and he warned that this would be the state of affairs if integration

were enforced. The poor whites would be deprived of any chance of

education, and those whites of means would continue to send their

children to private schools, with the net result being that those who

paid nine-tenths of the taxes "would regard themselves as shut 11*9 out from using the schools. He concluded by asserting that integration would bring

trouble, quarreling and wrangling into every neighborhood .... In this way, every neighborhood all over the State would be kept in a continual state of turmoil and strife. In this way passion and prejudice of race will be continually nurtured .... They attempt to force upon South Carolina measures even in advance of Massachusetts, though they know that we are in every respect, at least 100 years behind that favored state .... these extreme measures are fraught with danger to the peace and welfare of our country* agd should be defeated at all hazards.'

To avoid these dangers, Mr. Duncan suggested striking out the integration clause altogether, and leaving the matter to the legislature, which could establish mixed schools, and if it found them unworkable, alter its decision much more easily than a state could change its constitution.77 Mr. J. J. Wright, a mulatto, replied to Mr. Duncan's speech by declaring that the section should be adopted because it did not specifically require forced attendance at mixed schools, and that separate schools would be established anyway. He believed that the colored people did not want to force social equality,

"that is a matter which will regulate itself," but he favored inclusion of the "race, color and previous condition" clause because it allowed

76Ibid., 889-892 77ibid., 892. 150 white and colored children to attend the same school if they wished to do so, although he did not believe that this was the desire of either 78 race*

F. L. Cardozo tried to re-establish his rapport with his fellow

Negroes and Radicals by strongly urging the passage of the disputed

section, and described the opposition to it as a "suicidal act."

He disagreed with Mr. Duncan that passage of this section would increase

racial prejudice; on the contrary, he contended, it would lessen it.

He explained:

The most natural method to effect this object would be to allow children, when five or six years of age, to mingle in schools together, and associate generally. Under such training, prejudice must eventually die out.7°

Although J. M, Runion (a white) of Greenville, claiming to be

a "true Republican" member, warned that voting for this measure would

be detrimental to the best interests of the Republican party, Section

10 passed by a vote of ninety-eight to four, with fourteen delegates 80 absent. This controversial passage, as it appeared in the ratified

Constitution of 1868, stated (Article X, Section 10):

All the public schools, colleges and universities of this State, supported in whole or in part by the public funds, shall be free and open to all the children and youths of the State, with­ out regard to race and color. 81

bid., 891* £$32-* 900. ffibid., 901-02. Poore, Federal and State Constitutions, II, 1661. 151

Shortly before his removal in June, 1868, Governor James L.

Orr recommended to the newly elected assembly that they establish separate schools for white and Negro pupils. He pronounced Article X,

Section 10 of the new constitution "an authority for making a most reckless experiment” that was demanded by neither race, and, if enforced, would only further bickering and controversy between the 82 two races* Qrr's successor, appointed in June, 1868, by General

E. R. Chnby, was R. K. Scott, a former Assistant Commissioner of the

Freedman's Bureau. Although fully allied with the "radical ring,”

Governor Scott requested the legislature, on July 9, 1868, to create a public school system which would include the establishment of at least two schools in every district, one for each race. He deemed the separation of the two races in the public schools to be a matter of great importance to all classes of the people, and warned that mixed schools would repel the masses of whites from securing the education they so desperately needed, and would virtually "give to our colored population the exclusive benefit of our public schools." He urged the assembly to rely upon time and the "elevating influence of popular go education" to dispel racial prejudices.

As the state system of education began to be developed, numbers of reports were made to Superintendent J. K. Jillson by county commissioners urging that separate schools be created throughout South Carolina.

82 Knight, The Influence of Reconstruction, 71* °^As quoted from Ibid., 72. Lewis Benbow of Clarendon County wrote that both races in his county were opposed to mixed schools, and consequently, the whites refused to

register their children. The Negroes were equally against interracial

schooling, but would submit "if required to do so" in order to educate

their children,^ The commissioner of Edgefield County recommended

separate schools to insure the success of the educational enterprise,

and said that the colored people were "universally" in favor of this

policy.Similar sentiments were reported from Phirfield County, where

Commissioner William B. Peake gave as the Negroes' reasons for opposing

mixed schools, first the fact that the two races were distinct and

should be kept separate, and second, the fear that "the natural

antagonism resulting from birth and caste, on the one hand, and a sense

of equality, on the other, will produce discord and strife in such a 86 school," A commissioner of Kershaw County, Frank Carter, wrote that

fear of mixed schools was the greatest obstacle to the progress of

free public schools there, and that the Negroes did not desire the

explicit equality of a mixed school, "but claim a fair and equal share 87 of the public fund for the education of their children," Mr, Carter's

words were echoed by Commissioners in Marlboro, Pickens, Union and 88 Spartanburg Counties, R, H, Reid of Spartanburg County was pleased

^Reports and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, 1859 ^containing ttie reports of the State Superintendent o? Bduc ------506. Ibid., 1+67-68. Ibid,, 1+69. Ibid., 1+76. Ibid., 1+80-86. with the education bill currently before the legislature, which was 89 silent on the subject of mixed and separate schools* Only one commissioner, according to Superintendent Jillson's report of 1869, actually favored mixed schools* He was James A. Bowley of Georgetown

Cbunty, who believed that mixed schools would promote racial harmony* 90 He admitted, however, that none had been established in his county*

With the exception of the Unitersity of South Carolina,^ there were apparently no mixed schools in the state. An earnest attempt was made in 1873 to integrate the State School for the Deaf, Dumb aixi

Blind, located at Cedar Spring in Spartenburg County. In that year, the governing board of the institution directed that a building on the grounds of the school be opened as a separate department for colored students. On September 17, 1873, Justus K. Jillson, State Superintendent 92 of Education and a member of the school's board of directors, wrote to the Superintendent of the Deaf, Dumb and Blind School and ordered that Negroes must not only be admitted into the institution upon application, but an earnest and faithful effort must be made to encourage them to apply for admission. Jillson firmly asserted that such pupils, when admitted, must be domiciled, fed and taught in the

89 Ibid., 1*83. This bill, passed in February, 1870, set up the public school system but ignored the race question completely in regard to mixed or separate schools. Acts of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina. 1869-70, 339-3P7 ^ibid.,~i7i; y See chapter eight. ^The others were Soloraan L. Hoge and the notorious Frank J* Moses, Jr. same dormitories and classrooms, ani receive the same care and 93 consideration as the white pupils. After the superintendent trans­ mitted this message to the faculty, they all resigned, with two exceptions, effective September 30, 1873• This resulted in the closing of the school to all the children, and the former pupils were returned to their homes, if they had any# In his annual report for 1873,

Jillson tersely remarked, "The Institution is now without officers, and its exercises have been, for the present, suspended#"^ The political leaders of the state seemed to be at a loss over what to do about the school, therefore, they did nothing. Efforts to recruit a new faculty proved futile. Governor Daniel H. Chamberlain, in his message to the legislature in 1875, merely recommended the reopening of the Deaf,

Dumb and Blind School, but made no suggestion as to the status of future white and Negro inmates. The school was not reopened until

September, 1876, when separate departments for white and Negro students were instituted, and the former superintendent and most of the former 95 teachers returned to the faculty.

There were evidently no mixed schools on the primary or secondary levels in South Carolina. In 1875* Representative Richard Cain, a Negro from Columbia, told the United States House of Representatives that in

his home state, "where we control the whole school system," there was not

93 John S. Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865-1877 (Columbia, 1905), 237# Hereafter, this will be cited as Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina# 9Ufteports and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of South .Carolina, 1873, 399. ^Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, 237-38. 155

a mixed school except for the State University,^ This statement is

corroborated by Simkins and Woody in their impressive work on South 97 Carolina during the Reconstruction Period, There were a few isolated

cases in Charleston and Columbia where white and Negro children attended

classes in the same school building, but not in the same room; however,

these were exceptions and not the rule,^® In 1876, the United States

Commissioner of Education, John Eaton, wrote of the apparent failure to

establish mixed schools in the Palmetto State:

Separate schools for white and colored children, though not apparently made obligatory by law, have yet been the rule, under the influence of a general public sentiment, since the institution of the new system thus provided far,??

Tennessee was the scene of some bitter attacks against Negro

schools and teachers, but it does not figure prominently in the mixed

school controversy. The legislature passed an act in February, 1867,

establishing separate schools for children of both races between the 100 ages of six and twenty. Although denounced by a Fisk professor

as "an attempt to pander wicked prejudices,"^-^ the forces desiring

96 U.S., Congressional Record, U3d Cong,, 2d Sess., February h , 1875, 991. '/Simkins, South Carolina During Reconstruction, 1*39, Bond, The Education of the Negro, 51; Truman Pierce and others White and Negro Schools in the South, AnAnalysis of Bi-Racial Education TIEprood Cliffs, N. J., 195^7,“T ^ T ^Report for 1876, 36U. l°^Report for 1876, 286, James W. Patton, Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, 1860- 69 (Chapel Hill, 193U), 101, quoting from the (Nashville) Daily Press and Times, Nov, 15, 1867, 156 integration were not strong enough to secure their objective, for the law of 1867 was reinforced by a provision in the new constitution of

1870 which stated that "No school established or aided under this section shall allow white and negro children to be received as 102 scholars together in the same school*" The state of Texas was late in establishing its school systems, and when it did so, provided separate schools for the freedmen. The Texas constitution of 1868 103 was silent on this subject, but in 1873, Edward King could report that 10 U mixed schools did not seem to be insisted upon anywhere in the state.

The post-Reconstruction constitution of 1876 did, however, stipulate that "Separate schools shall be provided for the white and colored children, and impartial provision made for both.

The convention which met at Richmond, Virginia in December,

1867, to frame a new constitution was composed of thirty-three Conservatives and seventy-two Radicals, twenty-four of whom were Negroes, The

Committee on Education was organized in similar proportions to the 107 convention, i,e,, three Conservatives and eight Radicals* A fight over separate versus mixed schools began in the convention in January,

3°?Poore, Federal and State Constitutions, II, 1709* IB5ET" f'r^King, The Southern States, 135* 106Poore, 2E* clt»» II, lfiitl* Cornelius J, Heatwole, A History of Education in Virginia (New York. 1916), 2lU. ” ---- 10»Edgar W. Knight, "Reconstruction and Education in Virginia," The South Atlantic Quarterly, XV, Nos, 1-2 (January and April, 1916), ' hereafter, this will be cited as Knight, "Reconstruction and Education in Virginia." and lasted until April (1868 )• 'Die proposed article on education was submitted by the committee to the assembled convention on January 28,

In its original form it did not distinguish between separate or mixed schools, but early in the debate, a Conservative delegate,

Mr. French, amended Section 3 to read: “that in no case shall white and colored children be taught at the same time and in the same 108 house." This motion led to some heated discussions, particularly by the Negro delegates who feared that separate schools would restrict their educational rights, and it was defeated by a vote of thirty- seven to twenty-one. Another motion by a Conservative, Mr. Gibson, pro­ vided explicitly for separate schools for whites and Negroes and stated

that the capitation tax derived from white polls was to be used only for the support of white schools, and that from Negro polls for Negro schools alone. This proposition was tabled by a vote of thirty-eight 109 to nineteen. On April 7, Dr. Bayne, a Negro dentist who had lived in Boston, moved that the public schools be opened to all classes and that no pupil should be ejected from the schools on account of rade, color or any other distinction. After a move to table Bayne's motion failed, a white radical named Porter made a similar proposal.

At this point, some of the Negro delegates seemed to fear that their

The Richmond Daily Dispatch, March 31, 1868. It is to be noted that no official journal was kept of this convention, therefore, reliance must be placed on newspapers and secondary accounts, 109Ibid. n o Ibid., April 8, 1808. 158 white Republican comrades were not going to support them to the bitter end on this matter. W. A. Hodges told the white radicals that without

"de bone and de sinews and de muscle, and de skin, which was de colored people, de Reppublican Jsicj party would hardly be a skeleton.

Another colored delegate, Lewis Lindsey, warned the carpetbaggers that

if they deserted the Negroes on this issue, "woe be unto you." He declared that the colored people of Virginia did not intend to be

"hobbyhorses" on which the white radicals were going to ride into office and that if mixed schools were not provided, nineVtenths 112 of the Negroes would vote against the constitution* Mr. Kelso, a

Negro, stated that if the forthcoming legislature were to be composed

of the same Republicans who were voting against mixed schools, he wanted

no part of such company. Kelso said that he believed it to be a very

strange thing that not a single white Republican had spoken in favor of mixed schools. Mr. Gibson, a Conservative, replied that no white man on the Radical side who wished to remain in Virginia wuld willingly 113 send his children to mixed schools. On the following day (April 8,

1868), Captain Parr, a Radical, offered an additional section to the

Education Article which provided for two separate schools in every district inhabited by both races. The children of one school were not

to be admitted to the other school except by the unanimous consent of

^ n i d . 159 the parents involved in both schools* This was tabled, fifty to thirty- one,^”^ The voting eventually returned to Baynes' motion permitting mixed schools, which was killed by a vote of sixty-seven nays to twenty- one yeas#^-* This ended the mixed school controversy in the Virginia

Constitutional Convention of 1868, the proposition being defeated by the lack of support from the white Radicals, who remained silent throughout the debates, much to the distress of the Negro delegates.

The section of the constitution which had provoked all the furor emerged as a most nebulous statanent in respect to racial distinctions in the schools:

The general assembly shall provide by law at its first session under this Constitution, a uniform system of public free schools; and for its gradual, equal and full introduction into all the counties of the State by the year , 1876, or as much earlier as practicable.

In the legislative session of 1869-70, controversy arose over the mixed school question again when the State Superintendent of

Education, William H, Ruffner, prepared an education bill which stipulated that white and colored persons were not to be taught in the same schools, A colored state senator named Mosely moved to delete the separate school clause, and thereby initiated a debate

ffilbid., April 9, 1868. -’Knight, "Reconstruction and Education in Virginia," 12, It is to be recalled that there were twenty-four Negro delegates to the convention, l^Article VIII, Section 3, Poore, Federal and State Constitutions, II, 1868, 16o similar to that which had taken place in the recent Constitutional

Convention in the sense that the Negroes were by themselves in

favoring mixed schools. They were not so eager as two years before, however, and Mosely's motion was defeated by a vote of twenty-three to 117 six (three whites and three Negroes voted "aye” ). On the next day, a white Radical moved to substitute for the separate school clause one of a slightly more compromising attitude which stated that separate schools "may be established" for white and colored persons. This was H 0 defeated, twenty-seven to three. The bill passed the Senate on

June 13, 1870, by a vote of twenty-three to three, and afterwards

Senator Mosely entered a formal protest, declaring that this bill would only continue caste and prejudice, and was subversive of "good order, justice, and harmony.” He later accused the white Radicals of having II9 turned their backs on him. The bill encountered some opposition in the Virginia House of Representatives, where futile attempts were made to strike out the separate school clause and to add a proviso prohibiting any racial distinction in the hiring of school trustees.

The bill passed the House on July 1, 1870, by a vote of seventy-two to thirty-three, after which the Senate made a few changes, and it 120 became law on July 11, 1870. The disputed section stated that the

3^7Knight, "Reconstruction and Education in Virginia," 16, Sybid. S 3 S 5 - * 16-17* 120ibid., 17. schools were to be free and open to all children between the ages of five and twenty-one, whose fathers had paid the capitation tax, but 121 separate schools were to be established for each race#

While recriminations against school segregation poured forth from Northern Senators and Representatives during the long controversy 122 over the mixed school clause in Charles Sumner's Civil Rights Bill, the segregated school system which many of them had helped to create in the District of Columbia went virtually unnoticed. Ten years before (in 1862) Congress had been compelled to act in regard to schools for the 3*000 Negro children living in the District of Columbia 123 who were not permitted to enter the white public schools. These children had not been entirely without the benefit of education, however, for twenty-six benevolent associations had established schools for the freedmen of the District. The first one to do so was the American

Tract Society which opened its school in a Navy Yard Chapel in March,

1862. Between 1862 and 1872, 2$h schools were opened for Negroes of T Pi the District by the philanthropic societies#

By early spring, 1862, Washington, D. C. had become a haven of

191 Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Virginia, 1869-70, ^-3# -p. "“ See chapter six# 3Henry Wilson, Anti-Slavery Measures of the 37th and 38th United States Congress (Boston, 1865)* 18h# l^Lillian 0. Dabney, The History of Schools for Negroes in the District of Columbia, 1807-19U7~(Washington, 19U9), 257 99. Hereafter this will be cited as Dabney, Schools for Negroes in D. C, 162 refuge to "contraband” Negroes from the South, and their increasing numbers tended greatly to swell the colored population of the District.

In April, 1862, Congress emancipated all the slaves in the District of 125> Columbia* On the twenty-ninth day of that month, Senator Grimes of

Iowa (Republican) introduced a bill providing for the education of the colored children of the city of Washington. The Senator pointed out that Negroes in the city paid property taxes amounting to $36,000,

10 per cent of which became a school tax, and was heretofore devoted exclusively to the education of white children. The Grimes Bill stated that 10 per cent of the tax which was levied on the property of colored persons would be used exclusively in the education of their children, ° The Senate considered the bill on May 8, and the amend­ ments suggested by the Committee on the District of Columbia were adopted. The bill, as amended, made it the duty of the municipal authorities of Washington and Georgetown to set apart 10 per cent of the amount received from taxes levied upon the real and personal property of Negroes, to be appropriated for the purpose of initiating a system 127 of primary schools for the colored children. The bill passed the 123 Senate on the next day by a vote of twenty-nine to seven. It was approved with no changes by the House on May 10, and was signed by

President Lincoln on May 21, 1862. On July 11, Congress created a

• S., Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2d Sess., April 29, separate board of trustees to administer the Negro schools of 129 Washington and Georgetown, Congress passed a law establishing

separate schools for all the Negroes living in the "county" of

Washington in 1861*, when such a bill passed the Senate on February 18,

the House on June 8, and was approved by the President on June 25*

1861*, It should be noted that in sections 17, 18 and 19 of this law

(which applied to all the youth of the county) were explicit 130 references to the creation of separate schools for Negroes, This act repealed the 10 per cent clause of the 1862 act, which had not provided sufficient funds to finance the Negro schools, and stated that

the school fund was to be divided in proportion to the number of white 131 and Negro children between the ages of six and seventeen years,

A student of this particular problem has noted that little satisfaction was received from this law by the colored public schools, "for the municipal authorities of Washington were reluctant to turn over to the

trustees of colored schools their due share ^of funds^,"^2

The first public school for Negroes was opened in a colored church

on March 1, 1861*, but it was not until the winter of l861*-65 that the

first public schoolhouse for Negroes was erected on "C" Street, between

129Ibid., July 11, 1862, 2879* Ifflibid., Feb. 18, 1861*, 725; June 8, 1861*, 2813. rfrU. S., Statutes at Large, XIII, 191. Dabney, Schools for Negroes in D. C., 113. 16U i ^3 2d and 3d Streets. The cities of Washington and Georgetown were to pay the Board of Trustees of the colored schools the proportion of school funds due them as a result of the act of June 25, 18614., hit

Congress was forced to pass another act in 1866 which stipulated that if the payments were not up to date by October 1 of each year, the trustees of the Negro schools could demand and collect interest at the rate of 10 per cent a year and could sue for payment. Although in January, 1867, the Washington City Council did appropriate ^9,159.39 in back payments to the Negro schools for the fiscal year ending

January 30, 1866, support was still very inadequate. The Bureau

Superintendent for the District, John Kimball, remarked in July, 1867, that it was "unfortunate" that Congress had adjourned without doing 135 more for Negro education in the capital city. The Superintendent of 136 the Negro schools of Georgetown and Washington, Mr, Alonzo Newton, complained on November Hi, 1867*

that through the perverseness of the corporation authorities, not a single dollar of the amount due these schools for the past or present year has yet been obtained by the trustees. Consequently, their efforts to provide for the education of the colored peculation are very much embarrassed and the thirty or more schools they have undertaken to sustain will have soon to be suspended unless some remedy for this perverseness shall be found.^7

, Ibid., n ) |T Statutes at Large, XIV, 216. f-^Alvord, Reports, July 1, 1867, 7. -■3°His post was created in September, 1867. 3'The American Freedman, II, 9 (Dec., 1867), 332. 165

Funds were still slow to be appropriated, however, for in July of 1868, the New York Branch of the American Freedmen's Union Commission stated that although the municipal authorities in Washington had assumed the support of the Commission's schools, they had failed to pay the salaries of their teachers, toward which the Commission had advanced #25>0,00, and also loans to enable the teachers to return home. As late as the school year of 1866-67, only seven of the eighty-two teachers in the Negro schools were hired and paid by the

school trustees. The rest were employed by the benevolent societies, the last of whom (The New England Society of Friends) withdrew its 139 support in 1872, But by June, 1868, forty of the forty-five teachers in the public schools for Negroes were paid by the trustees. The

schools at this time were able to accomodate only 37 per cent of the

9,000 colored children living in Washington and Georgetown.^® At the beginning of the school year 1867-68, there were forty-seven public

schools and thirty aid society and private schools far Negroes in the

District. By the end of the year, all but ten of the day schools had been transferred to the District system,'^’ and by July 1, 1869, the

Bureau Superintendent, John Kimball, reported that the experiment of incorporating thd "Bureau schools" into the public system had been quite

HSjbdW., HI* k (July-Aug., 1868), lUOn ,r£Dabney, Schools for Negroes in D. C., 115>, f^ribid., 1 1 ^ ■^Alvio'rd, Reports, Jan. 1, 1869, 9-10, 166 successful, and "we consider the work of the Bureau here as substantially

• f | A finished •••• " Progress in the next decade was limited, for in

January, 1875, a Chicago newspaper reported that a "striking disparity" existed between the white and colored school facilities in the District of Columbia. This paper stated that all the colored schools of

Georgetown had been packed into one building, "no better than a barn

^ j ^ and inconveniently located."

Although most of the members of Congress were perfectly content

to allow the segregated school system which they and their predecessors had established to remain unchanged, numbers of the colored residents of the District were not pleased with the existing arrangement. Some

integration had taken place in the Bureau schools of the District, for

John Kimball, the Superintendent, was a strong advocate of this practice.

During the year 1866-67, only seven to nine white children attended the

freedmen's schools each month, and in October, 1867, Mr. Kimball reported that one white child was enrolled in the colored public schools (contrary to law)*^1^

At a meeting of the board of trustees for the white schools in

August, 1869, a petition, signed by thirty whites and thirty-two

Negroes, was presented which requested the establishment of a mixed

school in the Northeast section of the Fourth w/ard. The petition was

^ I b i d ., July 1, 1869, 10. ~~*pThe Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), Jan. 23, 1875. ■“^Dabney, Schools for Negroes in D. C., 86. 167 accompanied by a resolution empowering the city council to amend an ordinance to permit the establishment of such a school* Evidently there was much uneasiness among the local whites over this petition for the Chronicle commented:

There has been much unnecessary apprehension expressed in regard to this matter in the part of those in whom the color prejudice is not yet extinguished, and it would appear that they have been magnifying a mole-hill into a mountain*

In September, 1869, the committee of the Board of Trustees that had been studying the petition (and others like it, for by this time fifty- seven white families and twenty-eight Negro families were requesting an integrated school) reported favorably on the creation of a mixed school in the Fourth Ward, citing the distance to segregated schools as its primary reason, and the committee also requested that the word

"white" be deleted from an 1858 law which stated that "all white children" between the ages of six and seventeen years would be admitted into the public schools* After a good deal of discussion, during which a Negro trustee of the white schools contained that his children could not enter the schools of which he was a trustee, the Board passed a resolution calling for reference of all questions concerning the establishment of mixed schools to the Board of Aldermen and Common

Councils. This striking example of "buck passing" was approved by a

• ^ The Daily Morning Chronicle (Washington, D. C.), Aug. 31, 1869. Hereafter, this will be cited as the Washington Chronicle* 1 6 8 vote of eleven to two,^-^ and the petitions were referred to the

Board of Aldermen on September 27, 1869, where they were promptly

pigeonholed and forgotten* The trustees that drew up this resolution

evidently had an idealistic concept of Congress' reaction to such

matters, for the resolution, drawn up by the Negro Superintendent,

Mr. Newton, stated:

In conclusion, we would urge, as an additional reason for favorable action on this petition, that the denial of so reasonable and commendable a request on the grounds of race ... would indicate an extreme of unreasonableness bordering on fanaticism •** for should we, as directors of instruction at the nation's capital, refuse to permit or encourage the removal of caste distinctions in our schools, when the people themselves call for it •** we may anticipate, from the known temper of Congress in relation to such matters, that it will speedily interfere, and by supreme authority compel.the wiping out of these distinctions.

A further attempt at this time was made to secure the establish­

ment of mixed schools in the District when Senator Charles Sumner, on

January 10, 1870, introduced a bill "to secure equal rights in the

public schools of Washington and George town. This bill reached the

^ M d . , Sept. 15, 1869. 77/Ibid., Sept. 28, 1869. Jjllbid., Sept. 16, 1869. ■^m J. S., Congressional Globe, Ijlst Cong., 2d Sess., Jan. 10. 1870, 323. 169

Senate Calendar, but was left among unfinished business, so Sumner introduced a similar one on December 12, 1871, and declared:

It is practically to strike out the word 'white' in the educational system of the District of Columbia, going on the idea that that is the first thing to be done in order to secure education for the colored race; and the example of the District of Columbia will naturally be followed throughout all of the Stateswhere there are colored persons.

Unfortunately for Mr. Sumner, the example of the District was

not set until 195U, for his measure, like the one of the previous year,

was hidden under the load of Senate business and never voted upon. He

continued to press for mixed schools in the debates over his Civil 1^1 Rights Bill. The mixed school question remained a burning issue

in the South, however, and especially in Louisiana, where it was

attempted on a greater scale than in any of the other Southern States.

ffilbid., U2d Cong., 2d Sess., Dec. 12, 1871, 68. ^ See Chapter Six. CHAPTER FIVE

THE MIXED SCHOOL PRQBLS-l IN LOUISIANA

In the preceding chapter, it was pointed out how the nixed school controversy became a subject of bitter discussion in most of the Southern

States and the District of Columbia, but in all of these areas, actual integration on the secondary and primary levels was insignificant, and the arguments that ensued were visually over what turned out to be theoretical topics and not those of practical concern* This was not the case in Louisiana*

An omen of what was to be expected could be seen in the

Louisiana constitution of 1868, which had the most emphatic mixed school provision of any of the reconstruction constitutions. Article 135 declared:

The General Assembly shall establish at least one free public school in every parish. AIL children of this State between the years of six and twenty-one shall be admitted to the public schools or other institutions of learning sustained or established by the State in common without distinction of race, color or previous condition* There shall be no separate schools or institutions of learning established exclusively for any race by the State of Louisiana*

A policy of mixed schools was inevitable with a constitutional provision such as Article 135 and a State Superintendent of Education

"Spoore, Federal and State Constitutions, I, 768* 170 171 like Thomas W. Conway. Very little is known about Conway's personal 2 or professional life before he became Superintendent# He was a

Baptist minister by profession, and became chaplain to a Massachusetts

Negro regiment during the Civil War* By 1861;, he had become an employee of the Freadmen* s Bureau and was Superintendent of "Free Labor" in the Department of the Gulf, at Mobile* During this period, until

February, 1865* Conway supervised the activities of 90,000 Negroes in

Alabama and Mississippi, £0,000 of whom lived on 1,£00 farms managed 1; by his Bureau of Free Labor# On May 18, 186£, he was appointed an

Assistant Commissioner for Louisiana by General Howard* After he arrived in New Orleans, Conway joined forces with the anti-administration group known as the "Treasury Radicals," and further angered President

Johnson by expounding radical doctrines and advocating Negro suffrage

and equality. The appointed Governor, J. Madison Wells, wrote of

Conway in 186£: "He is a radical negro suffrage man - thinks the black better than the white man and is an active political speaker and agitator for negro suffrage and equality."'* On September 13,

1865, General Howard dismissed Conway under pressure fTcm the 6 President#

The Genealogical Division of the Library of Congress has no information on Mr* Conway# ^Walter L. Heming, Louisiana State University, 1860-1896 (Baton Rouge, 1936), l£lu Hereafter, this wi.ll be cited as Fleming, Louisi PBentley, Freedmen's Bureau, £7 Ibid., 70—71* 1 7 2

After his dismissal, Conway led a political faction composed principally of army officers who published inflammatory addresses to the freedmen, urging them to disregard the New Orleans law providing 7 for segregation on the street cars* By 1867, he was touring the

South at the request of James M* Edmunds, President of the National

Council of the Union League of America, and addressing Bureau agents and officers with the aim of consolidating the work of the Union 8 « League and the Bureau. '-'onvay was elected State Superintendent of

Education in 1868 on the same ticket with his intimate friend,

Governor Henry C. Warmoth, and promptly proceeded to turn bis depart­ ment into a political machine. George Carter, a member of the

Louisiana House of Representatives, testified before a Congressional

Committee in 1872 (at the end of Conway1 s term of office) that the

Superintendent of Education "has made his office a first class political machine; his operations are regularly telegraphed to the

New York Tribune." Carter believed that Conway gave "great dissatisfaction" in the performance of his duties, and reported that even the Negroes of Louisiana believed the school system had been "prostituted for political purposes."'*

As soon as he became Superintendent, Conway told the Louisiana

Legislature that he hoped it would quickly pass education laws which

Zlbid.. 106. 187. ° U.S. Congress, House, Testimony Taken by the Select Committee to Investigate the Condition oil Affairs in theState of1 Louisiana, h5d t!ong., 2d Sess. (l872), HoUse“ Eoc. tfo._ 2 H , “ Ho. 173 would “meet the expectations of the waiting public, ^andj secure free schools to all, regardless of color, condition, or station, and give us light where darkness reigns.n^° Before the legislative session of 1868 convened, Conway drew vp an education bill in which he incorporated most of his radical ideas* It placed under state control all of the institutions established by the state or incorporated by the legislature. The schools were opened to both races, and to insure that white parents would not boycott these schools the bill required all children between eight and fourteen years of age to attend school for at least six months a year, and if the parents or guardians did not cause them to attend, they would be fined by a justice of the peace $25.00 for the first offense, and $50*00 for subsequent violations. After three fines had been imposed, and the children were still not enrolled in school, the State Board of

Education was to take these children and give them instruction for at least five months a year "in such school or place of correction as shall be provided by the board for that purpose, at the expense of the parents, if they are able to bear it.1**^

The Picayune, New Orleans1 most prominent newspaper, and one not usually violent in its opinions, exploded over this bill, particularly over that section which provided for fining the parents and sending the children to special schools if they were not already

•^Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 1867-68. •^•The Picayune (New Orleans), Aug. 11, 1868* enrolled in a school* ^he paper called it "inquisitorial and impertinent, oppressive and full of outrage," and warned that if 12 passed, it would result in Civil War* Two days later, The Picayune was still in a wrathful mood and declared in an editorial that the bill was altogether unsuited to the "genius, instincts, rights, and social and religious needs" of the Southern people, and had been designed by its authors to enable a band of unscrupulous radical politicians to found and keep up "a nursery for the propagation and support of radicalism, with its train of foul and destructive theories and isms*" The paper warned Superintendent Conway that the white people of Louisiana would never submit to the imposition of social equality required by the mixed school clauise, "or at least not until the H ood of the white man turns to water, and he consents to accept what the white race of all countries and all ages has, by common 13 consent, regarded as a social impossibility."

A bloody uprising was predicted by The Picayune if the fine and seizure clauise of Conway* s bill should ever be enforoed , for the free white men of Louisiana would never accept this scheme, although they had acquiesced to much of Radical rule. "But when it is proposed to degrade their mothers, sisters, wives, and dauaghters to the level of the Negro race, they will resist just as certain as God reigns in Heaven.

H l b i d . tflbia.3 Aug. 13, 1868. News of Conway's radical education bill spread as far as New York, where the Herald commented upon it in a burst of outraged indignation, referring to it as "one of the most atrocious measures ever conceived of by any of the Jacobin carpetbag governments of the Southern

States," for not only did it propose to mix the Negroes and whites together without distinction, but it made attendance at these integrated schools compulsory. The Herald did not think the "radical miscegenators" would be able to carry cut this "atrocious and despotic law," for the pride and instincts of the Southern white people would revolt at this proposition, as would the whites of the

North, if confronted with a similar piece of legislation.^

Conway1 s now infamous bill was fiercely debated during August and September,^ but failed to secure approval by the General Assembly, which did not pass any education law during its session of June- l Q December, 1868. Education acts were passed by the Assembly in

1869 and 1870, but they contained clever "loopholes" in regard to mixed schools, fhe white people of Louisiana, by this time, had reacted rather violently to the mixed school provision of the 19 Constitution of 1868, and one person especially opposed to the

ifThe New York Herald. Aug. 17, 1868. --The picayune (New Orleans), Aug. 22, Sept. 3» 1868. Mlqemir^. louisiana State University. l$k« See Acts Passed by ihe General Assembly of the State of Louisiana. 1866. Hereafter, this will be cited as Acts of Louisiana. S^Segort for 1876. Ih6. ------admission of Negroes to white schools was Superintendent D. F. Boyd of the Louisiana State University. Boyd, along with J. C. Egan,

Representative of the Twentieth Senatorial District, persuaded Hugh J.

Campbell, a prominent and accomplished "carpetbag” lawyer and member

of the General Assembly's Education Committee, to draw up a section 20 which he inserted in Act 121 of 1869 and Act 6 of 1870. The Act of

1869 made it a misdemeanor, punishable by a #100 - $500 fine and

imprisonment for any municipal, parish or state school officer or public

school teacher to refuse to receive into a school any child of lawful age. Offenders were also liable to action for damages by the parent or 21 guardian of the child thus refused. But, Campbell's section stated:

"That in each sub-district there shall be taught one or more schools

for the instruction of youths between the ages of six and twenty-one 22 years Thi3 clause was repeated as Section 2$ of the Education

Law of 1870, with two conflicting additions: one, which stated that

scholars residing in one district might attend school in another district, with the consent of the school directors in both districts; the second

supplement provided that scholars might attend any school in the district

in which they resided with the consent of the district board of school 23 directors. Both of the acts of 1869 and 1870 passed with the help of

20 Fleming, Louisiana State University, 155-57. Acts of Louisiana, 1869, 188. ^ r a a - i T C ------d-rtbld., 1870, 21. 177

Negro voters, who were lured by promises of financial aid to a Negro university.

The clause in the acts of 186? and 1870 which allowed "one or more1* schools to be established in each district was a direct concession to the segregationists, for there was a clear understanding at the time these laws were passed that, in a given district, one school would be for whites, the other for Negroes*^ This was reinforced by the clause of the Act of 1870, which was obviously inserted to allow pupils of one race to attend school in another district if no schools were provided for them in their own district. The second addition, however, seemed to circumvent both the dual school and out-of-district provisions, for it allowed the student to attend any school in his district with the permission of the school directors. A more recent Superintendent of

Education in Louisiana, T. H. Harris, who knew many of the men living at this time who were familiar with educational conditions in the state, has related in his informative history of the Louisiana Public School

System how the mixed school provision of the Constitution of 1869 was avoided, while conforming to the laws of 1869 and 1870: in districts where two schools existed, white and Negro parents would often agree among themselves that Negro children would attend one school, and the white children, another. If only one school was provided for in a

^Fleming, Louisiana State University* 156* $35,000 was appropriated in 1870 to support Straight University for Negroes* 25n>id., 157. 178 community, the whites would not patronize it, and those who could afford to do so would send their children to private schools* Occasionally,

"separate rooms were provided in the same school building for the two „26 races."

Superintendent Conway was not to be deterred, however, in his ultimate objective of a completely* integrated education system in

Louisiana. The State Board of Education, at its first meeting in 1870,

adopted a rule by which all the public schools were to be governed.

It stated that every school was open to all children of educable age 27 "without distinction of color or race." During the following year

(1871), a law was passed by the legislature which stated that no citizen

would be denied admission to the school and home for the blind at Baton 28 Rouge because of race or color.

Conway admitted in his annual report for 1869 that there was no

subject connected with the system of public education in Louisiana which

had awakened stronger feelings than the mixed school question. Yet,

he insisted, the Constitution and laws of the State left no discretion

in this matter, for the schools, if they were to exist under the

Constitution "must be open, impartially, to all citizens." Conway

realized that the mixed school requirement of the school law rendered

26 Harris, Public Education in Louisiana. 30-31. 2 »Annaa1 Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 1870-71.-1537” Z0Stephenson, Race Distinctions, 171. 179 it obnoxious to thousands of Louisiana's citizens, but he believed that

"a republican State can {take no distinction between those who are equally citizens, nor can any humiliating conditions be made in the bestowment , 29 of benefits to which all have an equal claim.” In one of his rare moments of candor, the Superintendent conceded that for the present, the mixed school question would, in most localities, adjust itself, "if left to the unconstrained choice of those immediately interested; and it is doubtful that liberty of choice should be interfered with by a forcible attempt to mix the schools in localities where such action is 30 undesired by any." But he paradoxically concluded, the right of any child to admission into any school in his district is a prerogative to which he was entitled by law to exercise, and a law which must be enforced. "The position I have taken, and on which I shall continue to act in administering the law, is, that no public schools must be 31 established from which any children are excluded by reason of color."

Thus, in one breath, Conway said that mixed schools could not really be forced upon people who were unde sir ous of them, while in the next utterance he asserted his intention of enforcing the mixed school requirement of the Constitution of 1868 and the law of 1869. His reports of the period 1869-72 are equally confusing on the actual extent of mixed schools in Louisiana, but do show that a small amount of

29 'Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 180 32 Integration did take place* In 1871* the secretary of the school board in Assumption Parish referred in his report to "certain localities" where children of both colors attended classes together, and he

remarked that in such cases the improvement of the pupils was

astonishing. "This is to be accounted for," he said, "by the constant 33 emulation between the two races." Daring the same year, E. S. Stoddard,

Superintendent of the Second Division (which included the parishes of

Jefferson, St. Charles, St. James, St. John the Baptist, Lafourche,

and Terrebonne), reported that there were not six children of the poor

white class who were attending schools with Negroes in his division,

and "the fact is pertinent that where white children are found attending el with colored, they are universally the children of intelligent parents."

He stated that one-fourth of the children enrolled in his schools were

white Acadians, who generally lived in areas where there were no Negroes.

32 This point is disputed by T. H. Harris in his undocumented History of Public Education in Louisiana. 30-31* Harris boldly claims that the schools were never mixed, and that the law of 1869 was evaded from the first by members of both races* This author bases his thesis on the hearsay testimony of men who "lived through the period and who were thoroughly familiar with conditions in both the city of New Orleans and the country parishes ...." But, Mr. Harris never cites his authorities or describes their qualifications for possessing such knowledge. He also states, without proof, that Conway fabricated the enrollment statistics for his reports of 1870 and 1871, and that the figure of 80,000 for 1871 was "absurd." Ibid.. 3h-35* 33lnnual Report. Superintendent of Public Education. Louisiana, 1871, 199* it is to be noted that all of the reports from 1871 through 1875 a^e careful not to separate the attendance of white and Negro children, nor do they ever indicate the total number of mixed schools* ^ I b l d .. 119* 181

These schools, then, in such localities, by the nature of things, become white schools - white because there are either no colored children in the district, or because they /the Negroes7 choose to send elsewhere. All other schools are colored - colored, because, as before stated, the whites will not send.’5

R. K. Diossy, the Superintendent of the Third Division, wrote that in his district most of the schools were separate by "the choice of both children and the parents of all classes," but in some localities the children of both races attend in common, and "sometimes a colored -36 „ teacher has in his school numbers of white children." Superintendent

T. W. Conway, in his report for 1871, made several claims about the extent of integration in the public schools of Louisiana which simply are not corroborated by the reports of his division superintendents, nor by some of his own indiscreet admissions. For example, he asserted that mixed schools existed in every division of the state, but qualified this remark with a confession that few whites attended these integrated 37 schools. Even in New Orleans, the most "liberal" part of the state, the pupils generally preferred schools where their associates were of their own race, but Conway boasted that in the instances where the schools had, to some extent, become integrated, "no difficulty has been experienced," except in the Bienville School, where all of the white

W , 120. " T b i 3., 189 37T5E., 13k.

r 182 children withdrew unon the admission of Negroes, but all subsequently 3q returned and "the school proceeded harmoniously." He declared that the right of every child in Louisiana to attend oublic school, regardless of race, "has been vindicated with such prudent firmness as to be no 39 longer questioned." Still, he was forced to concede that as a rule, the children had chosen to go to schools composed principally of their own race, but in numbers of classrooms, white and colored pupils might be seen learning together, the Negroes being treated with greater kindness by their fellow puoils than their counterparts in Northern cities,^

One of the rare examples of an exnlicit figure concerning the number of pupils actually enrolled in integrated schools was given by

Mr. Stoddard of the Second Division in his reoort for l87iu In that year, out of a total of 5,695 children attending Dublic school in his division, it,890 were Negroes, and 8o5 were white. Of the 805 whites, only forty-seven went to the same schools with Negroes,^ Edward

King, writing at approximately this period, remarked that he had learned of a few mixed schools in Louisiana, "although the mingling of colors has not been insisted upon." King stated that the teachers in those schools attended exclusively by white children were all white persons,

*®Ibid. PjEbld., U6.

^Tbicf., 1871;, 270, 183 but there were some colored teachers in the small number of mixed

schools,^

The degree to which school integration was practiced in New

Orleans is a subject confused by conflicting evidence and contradictory

statements which cannot be supported or refuted because the statistics which would relate the true story no longer seem to exist. Shortly before his retirement, Superintendent Conway addressed the State

Education Convention in May, 1872, and orated!

The prejudice existing against the ^public schoolj system on account of the right of admission to any of our public schools of any child, regardless of color, has disappeared to a very considerable extent, and to-day, in proof of the truth of this statement, nearly one-half of the free schools of New Orleans contain white and colored pupils, whose kindly treatment of each other would bear a strong contrast to that which would result if the same thing were tested in soma Northern cities#*^

One historian of public education in Louisiana quotes from the

letter of an unnamed teacher who had attended the public schools of

New Orleans at this time. She stated that there were no Negroes in

the elementary school at which she was enrolled from 1865 to 1871,

and doubted whether Negro children were admitted to any of the white

^RLng, Die Southern States, 97-98® ^Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 1872, 18, ----- 18U schools before 1872,^ A writer in the Chicago Daily Inter-Ocean in

1875 reported that coeducation of the races had been introduced into only a few localities outside of New Orleans, but that "Statistics were published some two years ago ^l872—73j^ showing that about one- third of the public schools of New Orleans had become m i x e d . If this were really the case, it seems peculiar that the Superintendent of the

Sixth Division (New Orleans) would not have alluded to this situation in one of his annual reports which were always printed as part of

Conway's general report. The available records, however, are silent on this point.

The general reaction of most of the native whites in Louisiana to the State Board of Education's mixed school policy was one of avoiding and ignoring the public schools, and either remaining uneducated or attending private schools whenever possible. Superintendent

Conway wrote in his report for 1870 that there was probably no other state in the Union where the work of popular education was conducted under so many disadvantages as in Louisiana. Not only did the system have to be rebuilt in the face of a general apathy which at times was transformed into "positive antagonism," but the provision of the

Constitution of 1868 which prohibited racial segregation in the schools had excited a "determined opposition on the part of many who would

^Harris, o£. cit., hSThe Daily Inter-Ocean, Jan. 23, 1875, 18$ otherwise co-operate in the opening of schools, and In the raising 1*6 of funds for their support." He admitted that a majority of the older white citizens, who had the intelligence and time to promote popular education, were "decidedly adverse to a system of instruction which made no distinction of race when admitting students to schools," and in sections of Louisiana where the active, intelligent and courageous

leadership of the native whites could not be enlisted, Conway granted I n that the school system had proved to be a failure.

The State Superintendent's words were reiterated by Mr. Stoddard

of the Second Division, who reported an entire lack of sympathy on the

part of the oldest and most substantial part of the population with

the cause of "universal education." If not directly opposing the

public school system, they did not encourage it, unless motivated by

"some selfish policy." He concluded that it could not be denied, "that U8 had they the power, there would be no public schools." The treasurer

of the Board of Education of Jefferson (left bank) Parish, a Mr. McKay, wrote about the problems of the public schools in his parish (1871); he

stated that five schools were under his jurisdiction, four of which

were exclusively attended by Negroes, the fifth, by whites# McKay

commented that "The whites will not mix with the blacks, and ary

^Report for 1870-71. 19$* {“ Ibid., 195. ^Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 1870, 61# 186 attempt to mix them will prove disastrous to the public school mk9 system."^

Severe criticism was leveled at Oonway and his mixed school policy at the State Education Convention in 1872. After several testimonials had been given praising the great accomplishments of

Louisiana in the field of public education since 1869* Mr. Jasper

Blackburn of Claiborne Parish got up and said that he believed the present school system was a failure, at least as far as the rural parishes were concerned. The education laws of 1869, 1870 and 1871, based upon

"an unfortunate article in the constitution" made the system a failure because they "alluded to and aroused the prejudices of white men."

Blackburn said that he favored Negro education, but was opposed to mixed schools. A delegate from Jefferson Parish told Blackburn that he had always been impressed with the latter's Republican record, but now thought that he was becoming "weak-kneed}" a Negro delegate denounced his (Blackburn's) position, defended the right to have mixed schools and told of their successful operation in his parish,^

A British traveler by the name of Robert Somers, who made a visit to several Southern States in 1870-71, including Louisiana, observed that Conway was enforcing a rule of mixed schools that had received

^9Ibld.. 1871, 132. |05bid., 1872, Itf. Sllbid., 50. 187 some sanction from the legislature, but was not desired by either the colored or white races, and

it is open to the gravest technical difficulty and objection in the mere art of school instruction; and, even though it were sacred in principle and morality, yet it is not within a thousand miles of the legitimate sphere of compulsory legislation. The rule, of course, cannot be enforced practically save as a mere disturbing wedge, but the savour of it destroys confidence ....

The 187U report of the treasurer of the school board of St. James

Parish, Mr. Qeorge Bovee, contained some rather candid remarks concerning the mixed school problem in Louisiana as it affected his parish. There were fifteen public schools in operation in St. James Parish, and none was attended by white children except in one district where few Negroes lived. The result was that the intelligent white people took no

Interest in the schools, and the Negroes, who were struggling for their very livelihood, "pass the subject by as one of but little concern to them and of comparatively little importance." Bovee reported that all attempts to establish mixed schools had proved failures, and would continue so until the existing prejudices against color were removed*

He concluded that the work of public education would be much easier and would advance far more rapidly, without engendering ill-feeling between the races, if all the schools were maintained on a separate basis.^

^Robert Somers, Ihe Southern States Since the War, 1870-71 (London. 1871), 228. “ 53Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education. Louisiana. 1871., 1 3 f W . ------188

Superintendent Conway retired at the end of 1872, after a year of almost constant illness,^ and was replaced by a Negro, William G«

Brown, who had been elected in the general election of 1872 on a ticket headed by the radical candidate, William P. Kellogg* Brown, according to reports of teachers who served under him, never saw his teachers and they knew practically nothing about him. He really had little to do with administering the schools, and employed a

Bdptist minister from the North to write his reports. A New Orleans paper unkindly referred to Brown as a "drunken and incapable Negro" who had worked steadily and consistently to make social equality of the races an accomplished fact*^ Brown became the b£te noir of the conservative press in New Orleans when he dismissed Mrs. Kate R. Shaw, a poDular teacher and principal, for refusing to acknowledge him as

State Superintendent when he paid a visit to her school one day and she insisted upon referring to R. M. Lusher (Superintendent at the time of the radical coup in 1868) as her lawful superior.

It was most unfortunate that an untrained and unqualified Negro had to be at the helm of the tottering state school system at the time that it received a series ofviolent shocks when several attempts were made to integrate the New Orleans high schools. On December 11*,

%bid., 1872, 7. ^Harris, The Story of Public Education in Louisiana, 37* 5°The Picayune (flew Orleans), Dec. 16, lB7U* 57Harris, op. cit., i*6-i*7• 189

18714, approximately eleven colored girls entered the room of Mrs. M. E.

McDonald, Principal of the Upper Girls High School. They were accompanied by a Negro teacher, a Miss Woods, who handed Mrs. McDonald a list of the scholars that were applying for admission. This was in violation of the orders issued by Mr. Boothby, Superintendent of the Sixth Division, ! Who' had specified that the list would be sent to the principal of the high school concerned, and the situation was to have been arranged so as not to disturb the pupils. Mrs. McDonald refused to accept the list, and the Negro teacher made several remarks to the effect that she 58 was as good as anybody and should not be discriminated against. By this time, the high school girls, who had been practicing commencement songs, were in such a furor that they were dismissed from school. They 59 went to a nearby house and formulated a protest. This petition begans

We, the seniors of the Upper Girls High School, having passed creditable examinations in order to graduate, do hereby most emphatically decline to receive our diplomas unless the question brought up this day, the fourteenth of December, 187U, in regard to our school being mixed, is decided before the appointed time for graduation, Dec. 23, 187U.60

58 An article in the New Orleans Bulletin of Dec. 15, I87I4, declared that Miss Woods abused the white pupils and teachers, saying that since these women taught for money, why should they not teach both races? She told Mrs. McDonald she was unable to manage her scholars and that her teachers were unfit for the positions they occupied. Cited in Annual Report, Superintendent of Education, Louisiana, 187U, 6p. g T h e Picayune (New Orleans), Dec. 15, 187U. 60IbidT they did not actually receive them until 1877. Ella Lonn, Reconstruction in Louisiana after 1868 (New York, 1918), 357. 190

The Negresses left the High School when Mrs. McDonald called for

Superintendent Boothby. He cane, and was able to calm the girls, who went back to work. He disclaimed having any prior knowledge of this affair, but the Picayune declared that the Negro members of the New

Orleans School Board had %onnived" at the whole affair.The Bulletin accused State Superintendent Brown of gradually working in numbers of

Negro children into the white primary schoolsj at first, light-skinned mulattoes, and then children of a darker hue, "until he finally succeeded, in a few instances, in placing Negro girls as black as ebony side by 62 side with the fairest Caucasians."

On December 15, 187U, the day after the entry of the Negroes into

the Upper Girls High School, Division Superintendent Boothby (who had 63 been a tailor in Maine before the Civil War) came to the High School

to investigate further the events of the previous day. When he got

off the streetcar near the school, he was attacked by a party of

fifteen white men on the grounds that he had used insulting language

to the girls on the day before. He was taken into the classroom, made to apologize, and then hustled to the principal's desk where he was

forced to sign a pledge that he would exert himself to prevent any

^Ibid. Quoted in Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 56. ^Harris, 0£. cit., 39* 191 event similar to what had happened at the Upper Girls High School from 61t occurring in the other schools*

As Boothby and the City of New Orleans were soon to discover, the trouble had just begun. At noon on December 15, twelve Negro youths, acting independently, arrived at the Boys High School to take an entrance examination for admission into that school. They entered the building, but the white students, by threatening violence, forced them to leave. This was an apparent breach of a compromise that had been agreed to some days before, namely, that the Negroes would be satisfied with taking the examination and the fact that they were (A competent to enter, but would not insist upon admission to the school*

While the Negroes and whites were arguing at the school, a delegation of white students visited Mr. Boothby, and told him that if integration were attempted, they would either leave the school or forcibly eject the Negroes and would prefer to do the latter. Boothby told the boys that the school board would meet in a few days to decide a course of action. He asserted that the Negroes had only demanded the right of taking the entrance examination, not admission, and he did not

Picayune, Dec. 18, l87h; Harris, go. cit., U5-li6. Boothby later denied haying insulted the girls, but the charges of his accusers were supported by the prineiapl and teachers of the school* The New Orleans Bulletin (Dec. 16, 18710 firmly believed that the attempt to integrate the Upper Girls High School was a plot originated in Washington by the advocates of Sumner's Civil Rights Bill. Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 187U, 66. 6?The Picayune, Dec. 17, lfltiu 192 believe that any of them would pass the test and thus be qualified to 66 enter#

The Bulletin expressed the feelings of many of New Orleans* white citizens when It commented*

The best Intellects and best men In both hemispheres are opposed to mixed schools, and the most worthy of the colored people do not desire them* It Is enough that colored children have equal advantages, and that the whites pay for their schooling; to ask that our children must sit side by side with the African is entirely too much, and will not be tolerated.

The young ladies of the Lower Girls High School, feeling a bond of sympathy with their sisters at the Upper Girls High School, also drew up a petition to the School Board, which was printed in the local papers. It declared:

. . . we now enter our solemn protest against mixed schools, and declare our unalterable determination to abstain from school until the race question is finally settled. We are willing that colored children shall have every advantage that we enjoy, but we Will no longer submit to mixed schools#

After deciding that little satisfaction was to be realized from either Superintendent Boothby or the Board of Education, some of the

ffi-bid.. Dec. 16, I87I4. 6 'fae Bulletin (New Orleans), Dec. 16, 187U# Cited from Annual lent of Public Education, Louisiana, 1871:, 63-SIju high school boys organized a "committee" and proceeded to visit a number of the white public grammar schools and eject those students whom they believed to be of African descent. On December 17, three 69 or four pupils were removed from the Keller (co-educational; school.

About thirty minutes after this incident took place, a mob of fifty

Negroes, armed with clubs and brickbats, appeared in front of the school to protest the removal of the pupils. Meanwhile, Negro students of the Central school, hearing a rumor that the white boys were coming over to "clean out" their school, caused so much commotion that they were dismissed from school. On their way home, the Negro boys met the white boys of the "committee." A row ensued and the white boys were driven back by a group of Negroes now numbering from sixty to seventy. The whites returned with reinforcements, and the fight began again, with the result that one Negro died of unknown causes, and a 70 colored policeman was injured. According to one of the more emotional 71 newspapers, when the Negroes learned that one of their number had been "murdered," they surrounded the Keller market, but were subsequently driven off by irate white citizens without the use of firearms.^2

The boys' "coamdttee" was not daunted, however, by the melee of

-fold.. 71-72. lljfhe Picayune, Dec. 18, 187U# ItKoi verified by the Picayune. '^The Bulletin, Dec. 1&, 187U* Cited from Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 187li, &3. 19k the previous day, and on December 18 proceeded to visit several other white schools, searching for pupils they believed to be Negroes.

Finding none at the Webster and Jefferson schools, they went on to the

St. Philip Street School, where several Negroes were forced to "retire."

Similar events took place at the Lower Girls High School and the

Fillmore School. Resistance was encountered at the Beauregard School, where a sizeable mob of Negro men had gathered. The boys1 committee was shot at, but fortunately no injuries resulted. The colored men were forced to disperse by a group of adult white citizens*

By this time, many of the responsible white citizens were aware of the fact that the boys had gone too far in their efforts at resisting integration and were getting out of hand. The Picayune of

December 19, 1871*, commended the boys for what they had done, but suggested they stop and leave the rest to the authorities and the general public. The paper referred to the alleged hooting of Judge

Dibble by the boys, and remarked that this incident "affords sufficient evidence that the boys are no longer a useful or desirable element in the case."^* When State Superintendent Brown learned that the paper had expressed its thanks to the committee for what it had done, he exploded, and warned that such irresponsible journalism

. . . will forever fasten upon the Picayune and the Bulletin the respon­ sibility of the outrages committed by

I?The Picayune, Dec. 19. I87iu "hlbld* 195

the boys and rabble daring December, 1871* • The influence for evil, which the papers named have exerted upon the young of this city can never be effaced} to the third and fourth generations will it extend, warping and cursing their lives*

Brown also accused the conservative New Orleans papers of manifesting "intense caste prejudice, bitter sectional hatred, and

fierce political antagonism" in their editorials which motivated "gangs

of idle and vicious men" to invade the public schools and demand the 76 removal of the Negro students*

Word of the school crisis in New Orleans quickly spread throughout

the nation. The New York Daily Tribune (incorrectly) reported on December

19th that the mixed school excitement in New Orleans had subsided, and that nobody was hurt, except H. E. Adams, a reporter for the radical

Republican, "who was cowhided for insulting some young ladies who 77 called at his office." The Atlanta Constitution did not view the recent events in such a jocular vein, and in a stern editorial declared that no power on earth would ever compel young white ladies to attend mixed schools, in New Orleans or elsewhere, for

Mixed schools are impossible, and we hope every honest man, and especially every honest legislator,

Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana,

'°aid., w . ''The Hen York D e U y Iflbune. Dec. 19, 187U. will study the history of the New Orleans struggle, for it was an exact counterpart of what Sumner's civil rights bill would have produced in every Southern town, if it had became a law.'

The school situation in New Orleans remained quiet for a few months until September 29, 1875, when a mass meeting was held in

Lafayette Square to protest some of the policies of the Board of

Education, such as removing competent teachers to provide jobs for

Dolitical favorites, the appointment of a Negro mathematics teacher at

Boys Central High School, and the forced mixing of races in the 79 schools, which was termed "repugnant to the instinct of both races."

Resolutions were drawn up demanding that the Board, which was 50 per

cent Negro, be reorganized in proportion to the population of the city,

i.e., one third Negro and two thirds white. The current Board was

requested to resign and the cessation of racial mixing in the schools

was demanded:

... we believe it detrimental to them ^the schools^ and to the cause of education, and to the peace and harmony of the races, to force the mixture of the races in schools without the justification of any benefit, advantage or necessity against the sense and feeling of an entire community,00

In a letter dated October 13, 1875, the Board denied the charges

The Atlanta Constitution. Dec. 20, l87ii, ^Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education. Louisiana. 1875, to* ------197 of maladministration, incompetency and corruption, and stated that the meeting of September 29th, which had been attended by only 2,000 to

3,000 people, was hardly representative of the city's population or of public feeling, especially since less than fifty people had a part 81 in preparing charges against the Board. The State Board of Education met on November Ij., 18715, to hear the accusations made against the New

Orleans Board, but a Committee of Five who had presented the charges 82 did not attend, and the matter was dropped.

The policy of racial integration in the public schools, although evidently not adopted on a very extensive scale, had a number of pernicious consequences for the school system as a whole. Barnas

Sears, the first General Agent of the Peabody Fund, wrote to Superintendent

Thomas W. Conway in 1870, after the latter had requested an appropriation from the Fund, that he could not comply with the request because the school system in Louisiana served to benefit only the Negro race. Sears said that because of Conway's mixed school policies, the white people refused to send their children to the public schools, and since the

Peabody Trustees wished to aid whole communities, the public schools in Louisiana could not qualify for assistance. The General Agent admitted that the Fund was aiding private schools for whites in go Louisiana. The refusal of the whites to attend the public schools

8i Ibid., 146. One of the Board members against whom charges were leveled was ex-Confederate General James Longs treat* 8|aid., 51. 83TS33., 1870, U2-U3. 198 can be seen in the enrollment figures for this period. In 1871* the school population amounted to over 21)6 ,000, but the number of children enrolled (according to the State Board of Education's generous computations) was only 91*500. This figure declined to 7ii*81j6 for Q) l87li-75>, while the total school population increased to over 27U,000.

At this same time, Superintendent William 0. Brown estimated the private school enrollment at about 60,000* which, when combined with the public school figure, did not bring the total school enrollment 85 in Louisiana to even one half of the educable population*

The hatred of many whites in Louisiana toward the integrated public schools was manifested in much of the violence perpetrated against the schools in the period 1870-75* In 1871*, the Fourth Division

Superintendent, Charles W. Keeting, reported that in his sector of

Northwestern Louisiana, he was able only to visit one half of his

parishes because so many of the school officials, fearing personal

violence, had been frightened away from their homes. The president

of the DeSoto Parish School Board was murdered, and the treasurer 86 of the Red River Parish Board met a similar fate. By the end of

1875, the schools of Lafayette Parish (South Central Louisiana) were

suspended indefinitely, because of the opposition and interference of

^R e p o r t for 1876. 149. ^ Annual Report. Superintendent of Public Education. Louisiana. 1874* 13. ^ I b i d . , 29. 199 the white population, who did not hesitate to threaten the local 87 school directors with violence* The New Orleans schools remained the only ones in the state which provided any competent instruction and maintained reputable standards of efficiency, in spite of a corrupt and incompetent school board* This was the result mainly of the quality of the New Orleans teaching staff, which had retained many of its best 88 native teachers and was able to attract some good Northern teachers*

After the national election of 1876 resulted in removal of

Federal troops from Louisiana, the conservatives returned to power under Governor Francis T. Nichols and R. M. Lusher, the State Superintendent until 1868 and later principal of the Peabody Normal Seminary in New Orleans, 89 again became State Superintendent of Education* Upon assuming office*,

Lusher requested an amendment to Articles 135 and 136 of the Constitution of 1868, which provided for mixed schools. He stated that their

"senseless inhibitions" had been generally disregarded in the rural parishes, and that the system of public education had gained favor only where separate schools were maintained. He believed that in New Orleans,

. . . nine-tenths of our colored fellow-citizens prefer separate schools for the education of their children, and the desire to enter white schools, in contravention of the natural law, is peculiar to children of mixed white and colored blood, whose parents have always been free*90

87]Ibid.,___ 1875, 139. Harris, op. cit., 33* ^Report for 1575, 11*9 . 90innual fteport, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 1877, Iv-T. 2 0 0

To accommodate these mul&ttoes who had a strong aversion to attending school with dark-skinned Negroes* a special school* "Academy Number

Four*" was established. Lasher declared that problems such as school integration were not "proper subjects for constitutional enactments, but must be controlled and regulated by the enlightened conscience of 91 the communities who are taxed for the support of free education."

Louisiana* where the controversy over mixed schools had raged the most fiercely* was one of the last Southern States to enact a constitutional provision requiring separate schools. The Constitution 92 of 1879 neither prohibited nor required separate schools. The first legislative reference to separate schools was in 1880* when Southern

University was established exclusively for Negroes*^ but there was no constitutional requirement until 1898, when the constitution of that year specified that separate schools were to be established for all 9U colored and white children between the ages of six and eighteen.

The primary consequence of the furor over mixed schools in Louisiana was to deter the poor whites from attending school at all* send the children of the wealthy to private institutions* and alienate the majority of the tax-paying population from the public schools in general. Scenes of the New Orleans school conflict of 187U were revived

•fo b i d ., 7. 'jrActs of Louisiana, 1880* 5U* '^Stephenson, Race Distinctions, 172. ^ Constitution and Revised Laws of Louisiana, 190U, 1981* 201

In I96O-6I, when another battle erupted over school Integration*

In the light of past events* it seems as though the recent reactions of the New Orleans whites to the farced racial integration of their public schools differs little from that of their great-grandparents in the 1670's, for bitter experiences produce memories which entrench

themselves deeply in the minds of men and their descendants, and yield a rich harvest, even after lying fallow for eighty-six years. CHAPTER SIX

THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 187$ TO THE CONFLICT IN EDUCATION

In the decade after the Civil War, the question of Civil Rights

Legislation for the purpose of securing and safeguarding the rights and privileges of the Negro race and other minority groups was as current and controversial a subject as during the twenty years following the

Second World War. By 1871;, only three Northern States, Massachusetts,

New York and Kansas, had passed civil rights laws, and the latter two did not do so until that year.^ In the South, Mississippi, South Carolina,

Louisiana, Alabama and Arkansas enacted various pieces of Civil Rights

Legislation which generally forbade discrimination in common carriers, inns, hotels, restaurants and saloons. None of these laws specifically 2 prohibited discrimination in the public schools, although it will be recalled that Arkansas' Civil Rights Act of 1873 did direct that "equal 3 and like" educational advantages be provided for both races. However, by 1873-7U, most of these acts were considered to be "dead letters" because of the refusal of the state courts to enforce thera.^

One of the early phases of Reconstruction legislation was the

^Bonar,"Civil Rights Act," 11. ‘Ibid., $-10. •*Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas, 1873, 17- 18. . **U.S., Congressional Globe, l£d Cong., 2d Sess., Jan. 17, 1872, too. 202 203

Federal Civil Rights Act, passed on April 9, 1666* This measure, which was also considered ineffective by the early 1870's, gave to all persons born in the United States (excluding Indiana, not taxed) equal rights to

make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom notwith­ standing*^

There were no allusions to or prohibitions of racial discrimination

in the schools in the act of 1866* This omission was corrected by

Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts when he introduced a new and

comprehensive "supplementary" Civil Rights Bill to the Senate on

U.S. Statutes at Large, XIV, 27. Although this act never included any reference to mixed schools, questions concerning this problem were raised on several occasions during the debates over the measure. Lyman Trumbull, who had presented the bill to the Senate, left the queries unanswered, but James F. Wilson of Iowa, who was in charge of the bill in the House, twioe asserted that mixed schools were never contemplated by the bill's sponsors. U. S., Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., March 1, 1866, 1117, and Ibid., March 9, 1866, 129li-95. An amendment of Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio deleted the specific reference to "no discrimination in civil rights" or immunities among the citizens of the states and territories because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude* This omission made Section 1 much more palatable to the moderate Republicans, who feared possible interference with separate school laws in their own states because of "latitudinarian construction." Bingham's language was also adopted in drafting Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which, as originally understood, was not meant to apply to segregation. Alexander M, Bicket, "The Original Understanding and the Segregation Decision," Harvard Law Review, LXIX, 1 (Nov., 1955), 56-58. See also Robert J. Harris, The Quest for Equality (Baton Rouge, I960), 28. 20k

May 13, 1870. Sumner Insisted that this bill, when enacted, would be the "ultimate In legislation of its type," and considered it to 6 be the crowning work of Reconstruction* His bill proposed to secure equal rights on railroad cars, steamboats, public conveyances, hotels, licensed theaters, places of public entertainment, church institutions, cemetery associations incorporated by national or state authority, and 7 "common schools and institutions authorized by law."

’Bfeiy few Southern newspapers seamed to realize the full significance of this proposed legislation, but those which did reacted in frightened and angry tones. The Savannah Morning Mews referred to the introduction of this bill as "the crowning insult made at last," and said that this

"absolute equality bill" would be a climax to Sumner's career of

"fanaticism and infamy." The paper took special notice of. the provision establishing equal rights in the schools, and declared that the white people of the South would never allow their children to attend the same classes with Negroes, and that the contemplation of this thought was

"revolting to every sentiment /andj every instinct of our race ...."

The bill would ruin the Radical party, if passed, it asserted, and, if rejected, would prove to the Negro the "hypocritical insincerity" of 8 _ that group* The Charleston Daily Courier noted that the bill

^Bonar, op. cit*, 15* •U.S., Congressional Globe, J^lst Cong.. 2d Sess.. May 13. 1870. 3U3U. Q The Morning News (Savannah, Ga.), May 17, 1870* 205 comprehended, such provisions for the social advancement of the Negro

"as will satisfy the most enthusiastic stickler for legislative interference in matters heretofore left to the drift and development 9 of ordinary influences•" Nevertheless, the Courier believed that, if the bill became law, it would have little influence upon the future of the United States, for the "eternal principals ^/sic^ of nature are not to be thwarted or changed by a break in legislation.”^

On January 20, 1871, Senator Sumner reintroduced the Civil Rights

Bill to the Senate. On February 15, it was reported out of the

Judiciary Conmittee with a negative vote. Although the bill was placed on the calendar at Sumner's urging, it was not considered at this time

(Forty-First Congress, third session), and was dropped at the end of the session.^ When the first session of the Forty-Second Congress convened, Sumner again presented his measure and immediately moved to table it, because he said that the bill had been reported adversely on two different occasions by the Committee on the Judiciary, and therefore 12 he did not think it advisable to ask for its reference again* Congress refused to discuss it during this session, and even passed a resolution

limiting legislation to certain enumerated subjects, which did not

_^The Charleston Daily Courier, Nay 19, 1870* } ° T b ± d ~ "fHonar, "Civil Rights Act," 16. 12U.S., Congressional Globe, l*2d Cong., 1st Sess., March 9, 1871, 21. 206 13 Include the Supplementary Civil Rights Bill. At the second session of this Congress, Sumner attempted a new 11ns of attack. By attaching his legislation to the Amnesty Bill then before the Senate* he hoped

that a desire to pass the latter would also carry his unpopular measure

to victory,^* or conversely, defeat the amnesty proposal, for which he had little affection.

When Sumner's "amendment" was defeated in December, 1871, Senator

Joshua Hill (Republican) of Georgia expounded on the "separate but equal

theory" insisting that there was nothing offensive about separation as

long as the Negroes were accorded accommodations that were equal in

every respect to those given to the whites. Hill believed that the

Negro himself was an advocate of separation, for did he not generally

establish his own churches after being emancipated?^ Sumner contradicted

Hill by saying that although one could choose his associates as he

pleased, in matters of Dublic concern, such as institutions established

or regulated by law, there must be no distinction between the races

in the use of the facilities of those institutions, and it was the duty

of the federal government to see that discrimination in such areas

did not exist.^ About a month later, Sumner presented a constitutional

■^Bonar, eg. cit., 18. jglbid., 19. ■^U.S., Congressional Globe, l*2d Cong., 2d Sess., Dec. 20. 1871. 21*1. l6Ibid., 21*2-1*3. basis for his Civil Rights Bill, saying that it was a logical enforce- ment of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment which had abolished slavery and had given Congress the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Sumner viewed the denial of equal rights as a manifestation of the existing incidents of slavery, and believed that Congress could abolish these incidents by passing his bill. On

January 17, 1872, Senator Frederick T. Frelinghuysen (Republican) of

New Jersey offered an amendment which proposed to omit schools and churches from the provisions of Sumner*s bill. His reasoning behind this amendment was unique, for the New Jersey Senator believed that if the churches and schools were integrated, mercenary whites would attend the formerly all-Negro churches and schools with the motive of crowding the freedmen out, and then taking control of the property.

His amendment stated:

Provided that churches, schools, cemeteries and institutions of learning established exclusively for either the white or colored race shall not be taken from the control of those who established ,o them but shall remain devoted to their use.

Frelinghuysen*s arguments influenced Sumner to omit the church provision, which was done on February 8, and:it never appeared in any 19 other civil rights legislation submitted by him. But his proposal

^Jlbid., Jan. l£, 1872, 386. Ibid., Jan. 17, 1872, 105-36. As will be shown later, he was actually a firm advocate of the principles involved in the bill, l?Bonar, oj>. cit., 3U. was still a long way from securing the approval of the Senate, and on

February 9, 1872, it was defeated (as an amendment to the Amnesty Bill) by a vote of thirty-three yeas to nineteen noes, a two-thirds vote of 20 approval being necessary to pass any amnesty measure, The Charleston

Daily Courier believed that Sumner had purposely amended the Amnesty

Bill with the idea of killing it, "and thus keep alive, and elevate the 21 heat and passion of a war long since over ••••" The Richmond Enquirer

interpreted the Senate's vote as evidence of a large majority of Senators favoring Sumner's bill, which would require the Southern whites to

send their children to school with the Negro children. The Enquirer

felt that this was intended to "push us to the wall, and to make our

position here intolerable." The immediate effect of the passage of such

a measure would be to break up the common schools in the South, and

Congress would then pass a law making attendance in school compulsory.

But, the paper declared, "Such a law cannot be enforced even by

federal bayonets. It will lead only to the ruin and desertion of the

South by the whites.

Another Southern newspaper believed that Sumner would continue

to bring up his Civil Rights Amendment whenever an amnesty bill came

before the Senate, for he had a double motive in pursuing this course -

20 U.S,, Congressional Globe, U2d Cong,, 2d Sess., Feb, 9, 1872, 929. 2 The Charleston Daily Courier, Feb. 16, 1872, 2T5e Richmond Enquirer, Feb, 13, 1872, 209 wishing to retain his position as champion of the colored race, and defeating amnesty as a means of injuring President Grant, who had

removed him as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee as a result 23 of the San Domingo embroglio.

Sumner never ceased attempting to present Civil Rights Bills to

the Senate. In Hay of 1872, while a new amnesty proposal was under

consideration, he moved to strike out the enacting clause and insert his bill in its place, It was at this time that opposition to the

school provision first began to develop, and not always from Southern

members. Senator Orris S. Ferry, a Republican from Connecticut, wished

to exclude coimnon schools and all public institutions of learning from

Sumner's amendment. He believed that public schools must be kept under

local control to endear them to the people, and declared that integration

would ruin the schools in the District of Columbia because of the

influx of Negro laborers from Maryland and Virginia. Senator Ferry

cited a recent decision of the Ohio Supreme Court regarding the

admission of Negroes into a white school in Norwich Township, Franklin

County, when there was already a Negro school in that district. The

Ohio Supreme Court had decided that the organization of separate schools

was not in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment. Ferry's motion was

defeated by one vote, 26 to 25>.‘*

23 The Atlanta Constitution. Feb. 17, 1872, 2uBonar, o£. cit., 36, z5u.S., Congressional Globe, U2d Cong., 2d Sess., May 9, 1872, 3256-58, 210

Another Senator concerned by the school provision of Sumner's amendment was Francis P. Blair, Jr. (Republican) of Missouri. Blair stated that it was well known that in the South the whites paid practically all of the taxes for the support of the schools and if

Negroes were admitted to white schools, the white children would be withdrawn. He warned that "Every State in the South and many in the

North will withdraw and overthrow entirely the system of common schools if this measure ^Sumner's/ is passed."^

Similar views were expressed by the native Republican Senator from

Mississippi, James L. Alcorn, who remarked that Sumner's amendment, if enacted, would destroy the public schools in Mississippi. He accused

Sumner of having an ivory tower concept about the Southern Negro, and that although the Massachusetts Senator may have fought the Negro's battles from afar, he (Alcorn) had fought them in "hand-to-hand conflict."^

Sumner replied to his opponents by declaring,

You are called to decide whether you will give your sanction to a system of caste which so long as it endured will render your school system a nursery of wrong and injustice, when it ought to be of right. How can you expect the colored child or the white child to grow up to those relations which they are to have together at the ballot box if you begin by degrading the colored child at the school and by exalting the white child at the school*

Ibid., 3259. *71533., 3262. 29T5Id 3259. 211

Sumner suffered another defeat, however, for his amendment (by this time attached to the end of the Amnesty Bill) was defeated by a vote of thirty-two yeas to twenty-two noes, still short of the 2 9 necessary two-thirds approval# Completely undaunted, he introduced the bill again on the next day, May 10, and it was placed on the calendar OQ with no reference to committee. Senator Trumbull (Liberal Republican,

Illinois), furious at the Massachusetts Senator for wrecking the former's previous amnesty proposals, moved that the Civil Rights Bill be added to his amnesty amendment, which had been attached to an 31 Amendatory Enforcement Bill then before the Senate. Trumbull said that this would prove to him whether the Senate really favored the

Civil Rights Bill or was trying to use it to sacrifice all amnesty proposals. Sumner accused Trumbull of making this motion with "evil intent." Evidently most of his colleagues agreed, for the proposition 32 was defeated by a vote of fifty to six#

Further to complicate matters, Sumner immediately offered his bill once more, this time as an amendment to the Amendatory Enforcement Bill

The school question came into prominence at this point when Senator

Arthur Boreman (Republican) of West Virginia moved to strike out the section which referred to schools and cemetery associations. In

fflbid., May 10, 1872, 327U. li was to amend an act of May 30, 1871 which dealt with the enforcement of voting rights# Ibid., May 11*, 1872, 31*18# 32Ibid., May 1)*, 1872, 3Ul5^21# 212 defending his amendment, Boreman said that he did not oppose equal rights for all people in public institutions, but feared that if the school provision became part of a Civil Rights Law, it would nullify all the Southern school laws that provided for separate systems, and would 33 thus destroy the systems* Sumner curtly replied that Boreman1 s amendment would deprive his bill of a large part of its character and usefulness. "It is to despoil it of the clause which is to expel caste from the common schools of the country •••• If there is any 31* place from which it ought to be expelled, it is the school-house•"

Senator Ferry (Republican, Connecticut) announced that he would vote for the Boreman amendment in order to save the public school systems of the South, for if Congress were to force a mixed school system upon that region, it "will be fatal to the best interests of 3«J both races." Allen Q. Thurman (Democrat, Ohio) thought that the mixed school requirement of the Civil Rights Bill was unconstitutional and cited the recent decision of the Ohio Supreme Court which had declared by a unanimous vote that Ohio's law permitting separate schools for whites and Negroes did not violate the United States Constitution 36 or any previous law passed by Congress* Alcorn (Reoublican,

Mississippi) reminded the Senate, again, of the success of Mississippi's

^Ibid*. 31*31-32. % b i d ., 31*22. # I b i d . 3®fbid., 31*23. 213 separate school system, which had been developed through "tacit agreement" and had not been made separate by law, and declared* "Aa a friend of the education of youth, white and colored, I protest in the name of the people of Mississippi against this legislation here today." He concluded by saying that Congress would have to use 37 bayonets to keep a mixed school system in operation in his state*

Francis P. Blair, Jr. entered into the debate again by speaking

in favor of the Boreman Amendment. He agreed with a number of his colleagues that the effect of passing the QLvil Rights Bill with the

school proviso would be "to destroy the public school throughout a large number of the States of this Union." It would, said Blair, deprive hundreds of thousands of white children of an education, principally those whose parents could not afford to send them to private

schools. Since the whites in the South paid most of the taxes which

financed the public schools, any attempt at integration would lead to

the withdrawal of both their children and monetary support. Blair stated

that "... it seems to me it is going a little too far to say to them

in effect that they shall not have the benefit of the schools which 38 they themselves have established and paid for." Sumner, seeing that

the sentiment of his colleagues was not favorable to inclusion of the

mixed school provision, evidently decided that the hour was not

Ibid. , 31*21*. 38fbid. , 31*25. 211* propitious for discussion of any part of the bill for he suddenly 39 withdrew his amendment* i

It was only a matter of a few days before the Senate was forced to return to a discussion of the Civil Rights bill* On the evening of

May 21, 1872, the Upper House was holding an evening session, and Sumner, feeling ill, had left the chamber* At this time, his colleague from

Wisconsin, Senator Matthew H. Carpenter (Republican), resorted to a somewhat underhanded trick* Objecting to what he considered to be unconstitutional features, Carpenter carried a motion to take up

Sumner's bill in his absence and then proceeded to strike out the heart of the original measure and insert his own amendment which made no allusions to schools, institutions of learning, churches, cemeteries, or juries*^® This occasioned an immediate angry response from

Senator Frelinghuysen, who declared that mixed schools had already been adopted in most of the Northern States where they had worked well, and if integration had succeeded in the North, why should it not do so in the South, where the Negroes formed a greater proportion of the population?^- In the face of heavy opposition, Carpenter's amendment passed by a vote of twenty-two to twenty, and the bill, as amended,

(it no longer contained any reference to schools) was approved by a

, IIbid. , 21> 1872, 373b. M T b H * . 3735. 2 1 5 U2 m vote of thirty-eight to fourteen. This was the last ever heard of this particular measure, however, for it was never considered by the I House of Representatives.

On December 1, 1873, Sumner presented another Civil Rights Bill to the Senate, which was identical with one reported on December 18 from the Judiciary Committee to the House of Representatives by U k Benjamin Butler (Republican) of Massachusetts. It became the cause of an acrimonious debate in January, 1874, and the subject of civil rights suddenly began to receive a great deal of attention from the

Southern press, which hitherto had tended to ignore the far-reaching implications of Sumner’s bill. The House Bill (H.R. 796) contained the school provision which was immediately denounced by Southern representatives. Alexander H. Stephens (Democrat) of Georgia asserted that the Negroes of his state did not want mixed schools. "All they want is their right and just participation in schools of their own.

This they now have in Georgia A debate then ensued between

Representatives John T. Harris (Democrat) of Virginia and Alonzo J.

Ransier, a Negro (and Republican) from South Carolina. Harris attacked the bill, saying that its passage would destroy the free school system

k^Ibid., 3736. A recent biographer of Carpenter states that the Senate passed 'the bill in order to play a "joke” on Sumner, who had wearied the chamber with his ceaseless demands for approval of his civil rights measure. E. Bruce Thompson, Matthew Hale Carpenter, Webster of the West (Madison, Wise., 1951*), 165. U3Eonar, **<3ivil Rights Act," 42. 44u.S., Congressional Globe, 43d Cong., 1st Sess., Dec. 18, 1873, 318. 45Ibid.t Jan. 5, 1874, 381. Stephens proceeded to tell of Atlanta University for Negroes, which received financial assistance from the state. 216 k6 in Virginia and the whole social structure* He intemperately remarked that no man could look him in the face and say that a Negro was his equal, whereupon Ransier jumped up and replied that he couldi Harris retorted, "I am speaking to white men and not to you." A few minutes

later, Ransier contradicted a statement made by the Virginian concerning

the prejudice against Negroes in Massachusetts, and Harris shouted at

the Negro member: "you sit down, sir; I am talking to white members."

Henry L« Dawes (Republican, Massachusetts), in the Speaker's Chair, U7 passed over the affair and permitted Harris to complete his remarks*

The New York Times commented that Stephens had presented a fair

case in support of separate school systems, but that the argument seemed a little strained when Harris stated "that the separate colored and white lunatic and blind asylums of his State would be ruined if black and

white lunatics, and black and white blind persons were compelled to live

together."k®

Although the bill was recommitted to the Committee on the

Judiciary on January 7, its Chairman, Benjamin Butler, said that school

k^Here he quoted statements made by the State Superintendent of Education in Virginia, William H. Ruffher. {"The New York Daily Tribune. Jan. 6, l87lu k°New York Times, Jan. 6, 187U* 217

systems would be exempted from the measure before it was returned to li9 the House* The New York Times concluded that,

While it was evident that the bill would have passed by a large majority if the vote had been reached, it was known that a very considerable number, if not in fact the majority of the Republicans were opposed to the school feature of the bill* The fact that in many of the Southern States the system of separate colored schools is well established, and successful, induced many Republicans to seek to prevent any action by Congress which might be the pretext, in the Democratic States, for hostile legislation* The Republicans aimed at this conclusion from motives of expediency, and not as the result of fear occasioned by Democratic threats*^

Prior to the recommitment of the bill, a wave of fear swept

over the South when it was realized that Sumner's "pernicious" proposal

might soon become a law* Barnas Sears, General Agent of the Peabody

Fund, hurried to Washington in early January, 187U» to confer with

leading Republicans and he urged them to delete the school provision

from the bill, warning that it if were passed with this feature, it Cl would kill the public schools in the South. William H. Ruffner,

y i b i d *. Jan. 8, I87lu ffibld* ^■nfhe Curry Manuscripts, Letters from Barnas Sears to Robert C. Winthrop, 1867-76, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington. Barnas Sears to Robert C. Winthrop, Jan. 8, 187U* Here­ after, this collection will be cited as the Curry Papers. The role of Barnas Sears in securing the deletion of the school provision from the Civil Rights Bill is discussed at greater length in Chapter Seven*

-4 218

State Superintendent of Education in Virginia, in his annual report for 1871*, noted that public sentiment in many counties was affected by fear of the Civil Sights Bill. Fifteen Virginia counties reported increased opposition to public schools, and the County Superintendent of

Hanover County stated that the threatened passage of the measure had done more to retard his work and "weaken the hold of the schools upon 52 the popular affection than all of the other causes combined.n The

Superintendent of the Franklin County Schools warned that should integration be required by federal law, "the white people of this county will, with one voice, say 'away, away with the public school system."

The Berryville School Board in Clarke County, Virginia, decided to drop the subject of erecting a new graded school because of the 51. threatened passage of the Civil Rights Bill. Superintendent Ruffner was most adamant concerning the mixed school provision. He flatly stated that the coeducation of the races was "improper, as well as impossible," and that the principles involved in Sumner's proposal were so far-reaching that the life of Southern civilization lay in their "settlement."

If the school systems of the South be overthrown, the last germ of recuperative energy will have been

^Fourth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Pub] ic Instruction /Virginia*/t~~?or the Year Bading August 31. l8tl*,5>2. Hereaftgr, this will be cited as Fourth Annual Report, Virginia. 5?Ibid. ^Richmond Daily Dispatch, Jan. 1871*. 219

destroyed, and if the principal /sic*7 be once established, that the *“ educational commonwealths of America are to be ruled by a central authority, education becomes the tool of power, and the enslavement of the^people must logically follow ....^

Ruffner declared that the races must be taught in separate schools, or the cause of education would have to be abandoned. His primary reason for insisting upon separate schools was that he believed that the Southern Negroes, as a class, were without "moral character,"^ and in case of actual mixture of the schools, "the negro influence would be controlling, and moral degradation would be the inevitable <7 penalty which the whites would pay for yielding to social degradation."

Ihe Virginia legislature reflected the overwhelming sentiment of the white citizens of the state against the Civil Rights Bill. On

January 5, l87h, it passed five resolutions denouncing the bill. It declared that the measure was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; that it was an infringement on the constitutional and legislative powers of the states; that it was sectional in its operation and injurious alike to the white and colored population of the Southern States; and that its enforced application in these states would prove destructive of their systems of education; and it would "produce continual

55 Fourth Annual Report, Virginia, 1^6. S & E I 5 “ ------57TEH., 153. 220 irritation between the races, counteract the pacification and development r n 58 now happily progressing ... £mdy reopen wounds now almost healed."

The Richmond Enquirer bitterly criticized Southerners for accepting "with resignation and folded arms" anything Congress wished to do to them, and said that they s hould demand, through their elected representatives, constitutional liberty and the separate powers of the states, ftie paper called Sumner's bill "revolting" because it intended to put the Negro and the white man on the same social level, and

"alarming" because it abrogated every right left to the states since to the adoption of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Constitutional Amendments. 7

Even the leading Republican paper in Virginia, the State Journal, came out against the bill, saying that its passage would destroy the schools. The Journal urged the Negroes of Virginia to petition Congress at once to desist from any legislation which would enforce mixed schools, and in doing so, the freedmen "will have established a new claim to respect and confidence."^

One of the leading papers of the Deep South, The Atlanta

Constitution, feared that the passage of Sumner's bill would prove a

"most destructive matter" to Southern progress and civilization, and that the "madmen and fanatics" who were trying to force it on the

58 U.S., Congress, House, Resolutions of the legislature of Virginia, 43d Cong., 1st Sess., (l8?3-74), House Misc. Doc. No.~5b, 1-2. An he Richmond Enquirer, Jan. 4, 1 8 7 4 . ^As quoted (n.d.j in ibid., Jan. 7, 1871* 221 country knew little of the detriment it would work,^" Pie Washington

Chronicle took a more moderate approach! it believed that the mixed

school provision in the Civil Rights Bill was a subject of sufficient gravity to require the thoughtful attention of every Congressman*

It felt that to separate school children according to race was a

"silly classification," founded on pure prejudice alone, but, if all

the substantial benefits of a free school system could be secured by

"tolerating a senseless prejudice" and would be greatly endangered by

attempting the removal of segregation, a wise legislator might wall

hesitate before authorizing compulsory interference. The Chronicle

said that to force integration at this time would do more harm than . 62 good*

On January 8, 187U, a petition signed by forty Negroes of the

Washington, D.C., area was submitted to Congress calling for retention

of the school provision in the Civil Rights Bill, The petitioners

stated that separate schools were a violation of constitutional rights,

and heartily disagreed with the oft-repeated statements that Negroes

did not desire mixed schools and that the white population was entitled

to exclusive schools because they paid a greater portion of the

taxes. The latter argument they believed to be untenable, "since it

would involve advantages of education possessed ratably in degree to

Atlanta Constitution. Jan. 6, l87lu The Washington Chronicle, Jan, 6, l87ii. 222 63 the value of property owned by individuals ...." The Chronicle seriously questioned the wisdom of the Negroes' petition, and inquired *

Is it wise for the colored people to insist that their children shall not be educated at all, if not instructed in the same rooms and classes with white children? If such a position should result in breaking up the schools in any community, who will be the greatest sufferers* Clearly, in the first instance, the children of the colored people, and of the more indigent classes of the whites*

Interest in the progress of the Civil Rights Bill was momentarily

transferred to its author in the spring of 1871*, for Charles Sumner

suddenly passed away on March 12, Before he died, Sumner told his close friend, E. Rockwood Hoar,^ "Do not let the Civil Rights Bill fail*"

He requested Hoar to take charge of the measure, and not to allow it 66 to be lost because of his death. Hoar did as he was told, and Senator

Frelinghuysen of New Jersey continued to promote it in the Senate, where he brought it up for consideration on April 29, 1871*. It still

contained the school clause, and Frelinghuysen remarked that the

object of the bill was to destroy and not to recognize racial

distinctions, therefore the school provision must be retained. He

^ I b i d ., Jan. 9, 187U.

^ A t this time, a Representative in Congress, and former U.S. Attorney General (1869-70). New York Daily Tribune, March 12, 1871*. 223 introduced a note of moderation into his discussion by pointing out that the existence of two schools in a single district, each attended by a different race, would not be precluded by adoption of the bill*

He urged that it be passed, but assured his skeptical colleagues that the Negroes and whites of the South would, in most cases, voluntarily 6 7 arrange for separate schools after it became a law*

The fact that not all of the opposition to the school provision came from Southern Congressmen can be seen in an amenctnant made by

Senator Aaron A. Sargent (Republican) of California. During the third week in May (1871*), he proposed that nothing in the Civil Rights Bill should be construed to prohibit any state or school district from establishing separate schools for persons of different sex or color* 68 The amendment was defeated, but by the rather close vote of 2 6 to 21*

Another Western Senator, William N. Stewart (Republican) of Nevada, said that he feared that a mixed school provision in the bill would endanger many public school systems and deprive thousands of children of an education. He did not feel that this proposition was in the interest of the colored people, but if it were, he called upon them to agitate the question*^ Senator Boutwell (Republican, Massachusetts), who had previously introduced an amendment which slightly reworded the school

67, U*S*, Congressional Record, JU3d Cong., 1st Sess., April 29,

69Ibid., 1*167-68, 22k provision to ensure that only schools maintained by private funds were 70 exempt, admitted that many of his colleagues and persons outside the

Senate believed that if similar buildings and appropriations were provided for both races in a given community, and that if the teachers were of equal "capacity," and the same subjects were taught, then equal facilities were furnished and there could be no complaint by any one 71 group as to unfair treatment. Senator Stewart brought up a point which must have occurred to many in the Chamber: he declared that if it were not for the 800,000 Negro votes in the United States, the 72 school clause would not receive over five or ten votes in Congress.

His colleague from New Jersey, John P. Stockton (Democrat), asked both

Senators Boutwell and Frelinghuysen,

... do you mean or do you not mean that you propose by a compulsory system to educate the young people of different colors together, with the wish and the hope that all prejudices shall be eradicated, and that they shall be one. Do you mean practical amalgamation or not. Do you mean to degrade the white race of this country

Frelinghuysen, answering also for Boutwell, replied "in the 7) nagative."

70 'Ibid., 1+167. The amendment did not pass. 1*5 1 3 .. 1068. ' S H d . , 1*169. 3. 7u Ibid. 22$

One of the strong defenders of the Civil Rights Bill was Senator

George F. Edmunds (Republican) of Vermont, who insisted that it merely undertook to enforce the inherent rights secured to every citizen by the Constitution. He quoted statistics to show the low percentage of Southern Negroes enrolled in public schools and declared that if Congress did not act to prevent discrimination in the schools, the Negroes would be denied educational opportunities and the 75 "aristocracy of the races" would once more be restored*

The opposition to the Civil Rights Bill was disorganized, however, and it passed the Senate on May 22, by a vote of 2 9 yeas to 16 noes*

Twenty-eight senators were not present to cast their vote. That portion of the bill pertaining to schools declared:

That all citizens and other persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land and water, theatres and other places of public amusement; and also of common schools and public institutions of learning or benevolence supported, in whole or in part, by general taxation, and of cemeteries so supported, and also the institutions known as agricultural colleges endowed by the United States, subject only to conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude,

77h bid., 1*173. 7 3Hd . , 1*175. 226

The passage of the M i l by the Senate occasioned comments from

only a few of the leading Southern papers. The Atlanta Constitution referred to the Senate's action as

wicked and pernicious as partisan rancor, political greed and malicious persecution can make it •••• The measure, if finally adopted, will work incalculable hardships, but it will never suoceed in its object. The poor negroes themselves will be the greatest sufferers. Our public school systems will be broken up, and the negro race thrown entirely on its own resources.

Although the bill was not discussed in the House of Representatives

until mid-December, the realization that the lower chamber would soon

pass same form of civil rights legislation, which would be co-ordinated

with the Senate bill and become a law, began to be apparent to many

Southerners. The State Superintendent of Education in Georgia,

Gustavus Orr, was despondent in his report of September, 187U, over the

failure to secure the power of local taxation in the counties in order

to provide needed funds for schools. He had hopes of obtaining the

necessary legislation during the winter session of the legislature,

but the agitation in Congress over the Civil Rights Bill had checked

the growth of a favorable public opinion toward the common schools, and

he did not think the legislation would have a chance of being enacted.

Orr stated that if the Civil Rights Bill became a law and was

^ T h e Atlanta Constitution. May 26, 187U* 227 78 enforced, it would be the death of the school system in Georgia*

Superintendent David F, Boyd of Louisiana State University wrote in his ddary on October 4, 187U, that the mere mention of a Civil Rights

Bill had almost destroyed the public schools and colleges in some of the Southern States, and he believed that their demise was ensured 79 by passage of the bill*

Alexander Mclver, Superintendent of Public Instruction in

North Carolina, wrote to Senator Augustus S. Merrlmon concerning the effect of the pending civil rights legislation* Mclver stated that public sentiment on the subject of mixed schools was nall one way,"

i*e*, against them. He declared that opposition was so strong against mixed schools that if the people were free to choose between integrated

schools and no schools at all, they would prefer the latter; the

friends of education, therefore, would "deprecate and most sincerely

deplore any Congressional legislation which might tend to force mixed

schools upon the people," Mclver also believed that public sentiment

in the North, especially among "educational men," would not desire

to see the federal government "do violence to public sentiment, and

interfere in matters which appear to be exclusively within the province

of state legislation, and which cannot materially effect the interests 80 of the General Government."

78 Proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the Peabody Education Fund, I (Cambridge, lBTST,U20. Hereafter, this will be cited as Proceedings, Peabody Fand. frffierclng* Documentary History of Reconstruction, II, 201* aoReport of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (North Carolina), 187i*-7F,"53-SIu As in other Southern States at this time, the fear that Sumner's bill might become law and create havoc in the public schools led to long delays in signing contracts for the construction of new schoolhousesj plans to hire new teachers were suspended, and several school officials

resigned. The reaction among the white citizens of Virginia was

similar to that in North Carolina, The Superintendent of Schools in

Southampton County reported that a teacher's institute was attempted in his county in May of l874> at the same time that Sumner's bill was

being pushed through the Senate, The teachers and local citizens, believing that the school system was "on its last legs," could be

induced to attend only in small numbers, "The meeting was of short 82 duration, therefore, and without interest," The Superintendent in

Mecklenburg County wrote that the School districts under his jurisdiction

positively refused to do any construction work or make any improvements 83 until the Civil Rights Bill was decided. One notable exception to

the wave of opposition emanating from the South to the "Equality Bill"

was a resolution prepared by the predominantly Negro General Assembly

of South Carolina and sent to the United States House of Representatives,

It called for passage of the bill with the mixed school clause, stating

that attendance in the public schools came under the principle that every

right or occupation dependent upon our public laws should be exercised

81i for the benefit of all,

j^Knight, Public Schooi Education in North Carolina, 255, °^Fourth Annual Report, Virginia, 58, 83Ibid., W. °Mj.S., Congress, House, Resolution of the Legislature of South Carolina, i;3d Cong,, 1st Sess. (l873-74)j House Misc. Doc, No, 111, 1- 2, This assembly, elected in November, 1872, was composed of 106 Negroes and fifty-one whites. The Republicans held 130 of the 157 seats, Reynolds, o£. cit., 226, 229

Congress returned to a discussion of the Civil Rights Bill

(including the school provision) on December 16, I87I4, when Butler 85 reported it from the Committee on the Judiciary. Three days later*

Representative Potter (Democrat) of New York moved to delete the lines

"or of any cemetery, or benevolent institution, or any public school."

After several other amendments had been added, the measure was 86 returned to the Committee. In order that all shades of opinion might be brought out, the House adopted a rather unusual procedure upon

Butler's recommendation* all other civil rights proposals which varied slightly from that reported by the Committee on the Judiciary were to be 87 presented in the form of amendments to the House Bill. Representative

White (Republican) of Alabama then introduced a measure similar to that originally devised by Sumner with two important exceptions* the cemetery provision was missing, and another proviso had been added*

Provided, that nothing in this act shall be construed to require mixed accomodations (by sitting together), facilities and privileges in the places enumerated for persons .of mixed race or color; nor to prohibit separate accomodations, facilities, and privileges in the places enumerated, such separate accomodations and facilities and privileges being equal in equipment and kind forR persons of every race, or color ....

U.S., Congressional Record. U3d Cong., 2d Sess., Dec. 16, 187U* 116. It is to be noted that of the eleven members on this Comnittee, only one, Alexander White of Alabama, was from a Southern or border state. U. S., Congressional Directory, U3d Cong., 2d Sess. (I87li),fl77. «°Bonar, "Civil Rights Act," 57-58. 87Ibid., 59. 88u.S., Congressional Record, h3d Cong., 2d Sess., Feb. 3, 1875. 939. This proposal, of course, was to be applied to schools, and would have embodied the "separate but equal" theory if it had been adopted. More important, in terms of the final outcome, was the brief amendment made by Representative Stephen W. Kellogg, a Republican from Connecticut, which proposed to delete the following clauset "and also all common schools and public institutions of learning or 89 benevolence supported in whole or in part by general taxation

The heated discussion which was to occur over this amendment did not take place immediately, for various other measures were placed before the House which ranged all the way from the Senate's bill, including schools and cemeteries, to the White amendment, which allowed separate 90 facilities, providing that they were equal in all respects*

The significance of the White and Kellogg amendments was comprehended by the advocates of mixed schools, one of the foremost being the well-known reformer and ex-abolitionist, William Lloyd

Garrison. Sensing that such proposals were imminent, Garrison wrote to C. T. Garland of the Chicago Inter-Ocean, on Ptebruary 1, 1875 (two days before they were presented), that he would prefer to see the bill defeated than be adopted with the "sanction of separate schools

on account of coraplexional distinctions by Congress," and he denied the constitutional right of that body or any state legislature to

89Ibid. 90Bonar, "Civil Rights Act," 60 231 recognize such distinctions. Resorting to his facile use of invectives,

Garrison asserted*

The rebel whites of the South insist on a 'white man's Government* for themselves, and consequently, on caste schools, but it rightfully belongs to the Government of the United States to see that they are not indulged in any such anti-republican heresies. They are animated by a vulgar pride, born of a brutal usurpation of power and by a love of dominion, the foul product of a tyrannical system that culminated as •the sum of all villainies.' This is a curse that cleaves to them when they rise up and when they lie down, and that taints their morals and manners, reducing them in many things to the level of barbarism.^

The introduction of the Kellogg Amendment rekindled the flames of controversy in the House of Representatives over the school clause in the Civil Rights Bill, and the problem of mixed schools, in general.

Representative lynch (Republican) of Mississippi delcared that passage of the bill with the school provision would not break up the public school systems in the South; in fact, he believed that this was the most harmless portion of the bill. lynch thought that if theschool clause were passed and enforced, mixed schools would result only in those areas of the South where one of the two races was in a small minority, but such a provision was necessary to nullify the separate

^ The Washington Chronicle, Peb. 5, 187$. 232 92 school requirements in some Southern laws and constitutions* However, a colored representative from South Carolina (Republican), Richard Cain, thought that Negroes would not lose anything if the school proviso were cut out, but "We could afford, for the sake of peace in the

Republican ranks, if for nothing else - not as a matter of principle - to accept the school clause,"^ Southard (Democrat) of Ohio did not believe integration of schools was within the scope of federal 9li authority, for he considered schools to be a state and local prerogative*

Representative Kellogg defended his amendment by saying that it was made in the interest of education, especially the education of colored children in the Southern States, Kellogg believed that the

Civil Rights Bill proposed to make a distinction of race in the area of education, and he did not wish to see this happen* He emphasized the fact that if the school clause were passed, "You will destroy the work of the last ten years and leave them ^the schoolsj to the mercy of the unfriendly legislation of the states where the party opposed to this bill is in power." Barbour Lewis (Republican) of Tennessee favored the Kellogg Amendment because "legislation cannot always control public sentiment*" He gave as an example the state of Mississippi,

92o.s., Congressional Record, U3d Cong., 2d Sess., Feb. 3, 1875, 9h5. £3Ibid., 951* % b i d .. Feb. k, 1875, 996* 95aid., 997. 233 which, although it possessed a mixed school law,^ had "no mixed schools in consequence" because the people had, of their own choice and without the means of legislation, maintained separate schools dimply as a matter of taste.^ An independent from New Jersey, William W.

Phelps, told his colleagues that if they enacted the school clause, they would shut the door of every public school in the Southt "Let one more autumn come, and there will not be a state in the South whose legislature 98 shall vote one single dollar for their creation and support."

The speeches against the Kellogg proposal were in the minority.

Representative Burrows (Republican, Michigan) opposed it on the grounds that separate schools would be economically difficult to maintain 99 and that it would breed race prejudice. x Representative Williams

(Liberal Republican, Wisconsin) argued that mixed schools would help develop a tolerant spirit between the races, whereas segregated 100 schools would encourage hatred and prejudice among the children.

Phillips (Republican) of Kansas believed that if the Kellogg Amendment were adopted, no provisions for Negro education would be made in districts where there were not enough Negroes to warrant the establish­ ment of separate schools The Chairman of the Committee on the

96 ^See chapter four. 97t *v1«I OOA

xw Ibid., 1002. 101Ibid., 1003. 23U

Judiciary, Benjamin Butler, said that he favored equal privileges for both races in the schools, but felt that the prejudice against mixed

schools was so great in the South that the weak public school systems in those states would be broken up if the school clause were incorporated into the Civil Eights Bill* He concluded that he would rather have the entire section relating to schools struck out than

see his Committee's provision for mixed schools approved*1®^

Butler's pronouncement was an indication of how the powers in the

Republican Party, including President Grant, regarded this controversial matter. Their attitude was reflected in the voting on the Kellogg

Amendment, which took place on February 1+, 1875* The amendment was accepted by a vote of 128 to 1*8*^^ The bill, as amended, and there­ fore without the school clause, passed on the same day, by a vote of

162 to 99.10li

Most of the leading Southern newspapers seemed relieved that

the school proviso was omitted from the bill, but did not comment on

this matter to any great extent* The Charleston News and Courier said

that since mixing in the schools was not to be compulsory, it saw no reason why whites and blacks, with a little tact and forbearance

on each side, could not live harmoniously and prosperously under the

102Ibid., 1005-06. 1031513*, 1010. l<*Tbid., 1011. 235 protection of a just system of laws which gave the same public rights 105 and privileges to all citizens* The Atlanta Constitution was pleased that the school provision had been deleted from the bill, but it described the other sections as "all that the most revolutionary white villain or the densest negro brain could desire" and said that it meant malicious persecutions, unnumbered troubles, and even civil war 106 in the SouthJ An important New York paper, the Tribune, stated that the bill just passed by the House was so changed from the one originally discussed "that the objections to, and the advantages of the measure

seem alike greatly diminished, The New York Times declared that with the passage of the Kellogg Amendment, the Civil Rights Bill had lost its most important feature, and little of importance was left to it**®® The Daily Inter-Ocean in Chicago was disappointed that the

school clause was not retained, but in contrast to some other Northern papers, believed the bill to be an excellent measure, and hoped that its passage by the Senate would not be jeopardized by any additions or

eliminations •

The approval by the Senate of the House Civil Rights Bill was

quickly and easily secured. The Republicans generally felt that to

105 ^The News and Courier (Charleston, S.C.), Feb# 8, 187$* y ~The Atlanta Constitution, Feb. 6, 1875* lOJThe New York Daily Tribune, Feb. 6, 1875* “ "New York Times, Feb, 6, 1&75* 10°The Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago), Feb, 8, 1875* 236 amend the measure was to lose it, and the Senators who had previously

favored mixed schools and declared them to be the foundation of racial

equality remained silent when the bill came up for a vote on

February 27*^”^ Among the most prominent of these men was George

Boutwell, who, on February 18, had proclaimed*

Therefore it is that provision which had been stricken out of the Civil Rights Bill in the other House is of more consequence than all the other provisions of that bill and than all the provisions which all the ingenuity of all the lawyers in both Houses could frame with reference to the future peace and prosperity of the South

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 38 to 26, President

Grant quickly signed the measure and it became law on March 1, 1875*

The Chicago Inter-Ocean viewed this event as a great advance, but it

considered "absurd" the situation that

the child of the black man, who, in the halls of Congress, perchance, vanquishes his white brother in the tilt of argument and eloquence, may not attend the same school with the child of the conquered white Congress-

Many of the Southern papers looked upon the new law as a conglomeration

llOrphej^lbid. New York Daily Tribune, March 1, 1875* ••““ tLS., Congressional Record, ij3d Cong,, 2d Sess,, Feb, 27, 1875, 1870* ll3Bonar, og. clt,, 63. llhPajiy Inter-Ocean (Chicago), March 1 , 1875* 237 of empty legal phrases which would never ba enforced* The Charleston

News and Courier was pleased that the law did not contain the school and cemetery provisions, and stated that "it is not likely to do 115 anybody much good or much harm," These sentiments were echoed by

The Atlanta Constitution which referred to the Civil Rights Law as

a bill as full of false premises to the negro as it is of imaginary terrors to the white. It makes a grand display of high sounding favors, but in reality it means nothing •••• There is not one., practical utility in it •*..1^

The New York Tribune said that it attached far less importance

to the law than the amount of noise made over it would seem to warrant,

for the most objectionable feature, that enforcing mixed schools,

had been left out. The paper believed that the section which provided

for no discrimination in theaters or restaurants was "poor statesmanship,"

and would not amount to much; the clause securing equal rights on

railroad cars and steamboats to the Negro would be more practical, Bu1*

warned the Tribune, the measure was likely to prove more irritating to 117 both races than either beneficial to one or injurious to the other*

The Nation declared the Civil Rights Law to be "harmless," and noticed

that its passage seemed to have little effect on public opinion in

H ?Th. News and Courier (Charleston, S.C.), March 2, 1875* " "The Atlanta Constitution, March 2 , 1875* U -*The~ New York Daily Tribune, March 2, 1875* 238 the South. It felt that the chief objection to the statute was Its xxd unconstitutionality*

What proved to be the greatest threat to the Southern public schools since their creation thus failed to materialize. The school provision was deleted from the Civil Rights law, and insistence by the federal government upon integrated schools was not to come until seventy-nine years later, with the Supreme Court decision of 1951u

It is likely that had the school clause been incorporated into the law, It would have seriously affected, at least for a time, the meager appropriations provided by Southern state and local governments for maintaining the schools. The course of time and the Supreme

Court made the law a dead letter, but this could not be foreseen by the "Reconstruction-weary" superintendents, teachers, and advocates of public education during the difficult years of 1870-75* The Negro

The Nation. XX, 505 (March k, 1875), 11*1. The unconstitution­ ality of the Civil Rights Law was affirmed by the United States Supreme Court in 1883, when the court had to render a decision in five cases involving the civil rights of Negroes in hotels, railroad cars, and theaters. Mr. Justice Bradley, delivering the opinion of the court, stated that the first and second sections (the second section made it a penal offense to deny to any citizen any of the accommodations or privileges mentioned in the first section) of the Law were unconstitutional because they were not authorized by the Thirteenth Amendment for the separation of the races in public places was not a symbol of servitude. Nor was the Civil Rights Law authorized by the Fourteenth Amendment, which referred to action by the States, whereas the Law applied to individual discrimination. Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), pp. 8-25. ------pupils probably benefited the most from the deletion of the school clause, for, had it been enacted, they would have been the first to suffer as the public schools were discontinued, or withered away because of a lack of funds. The schools of the South in the 1960*8 are far more capable of weathering the storms of integration than were their counterparts of the late Reconstruction Era* CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PEABODY FUND ADMINISTRATION AS A CONSERVATIVE FORCE IN THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS OF THE SOUTH

The United States was not really blessed by large gifts of money for educational purposes until the period after the Civil War, when philanthropic-minded citizens* such as Sophia Smith and Matthew

Vassar* began to donate sums for the advancement of education. One of the more perceptive philanthropists of this period was a banker and

financier who had been born in Massachusetts (1795)* but made his

fortune in England - George Peabody. In 1867* Peabody bequeathed one

million dollars to the cause of common-school education in the South*

and the income from this gift was to be used and applied "for the

promotion and encouragement of intellectual* moral or industrial

education among the young of the more destitute portions of the South

and South Western States of our Union." He declared that the benefits

of this fund were to be distributed among the entire population,

"without other distinction than their needs and the opportunities of

usefulness to them."^ This first donation was increased in the same

year by one and a half million dollars' worth of Mississippi state

bonds, which proved to be worthless after being repudiated by the

•^-Proceedings. Peabody Fund* I, 3* quoted from a letter of of George Peabody dated Feb. 7, 1867*

2 h 0 state. In July, 1869, an additional one million dollars was donated fay Peabody far the promotion of Southern education, and he also gave 2 $381;,000 worth of Florida State bonds, which proved to be of no value.

If the amount of the worthless bonds is subtracted from the total contribution, it will be seen that the Fund really equaled two million dollars and not the oft-quoted three and a half million dollars. It also must be remembered that only the income from the Fund could be used for educational purposes, and donations by the Peabody Trustees to public schools in the period 1868-1880 never exceeded $1U3,125 for a given year (that figure was reached in 1871;)* In February, 1867,

Peabody selected fifteen prominent men to serve as a Board in administering the fund. They included Robert C, Winthrop (Massachusetts), Hamilton

Fish (New York), Bishop Charles P, Mcllvaine (Ohio), General U.S,

Grant, Admiral D. G. Farragut, William C. Rives (Virginia), John H,

Clifford (Massachusetts), William Aiken (South Carolina), William M,

Evarts (New York), William A, Graham (North Carolina), Charles

Macalester (Pennsylvania), George W. Riggs (Washington, B.C.), Samuel

Wetmore (New York), Edward A. Bradford (Louisiana), George N, Eaton

(Maryland), and George Peabody Russell (Massachusetts),^ Winthrop, a former prominent Whig politician who had served as Speaker of the

Z Taylor, Interpretation of the Peabody Fund, 6 , 3Ibid., 8T. 12. 2h2

United States House of Representatives and United States Senator from

Massachusetts, and was considered to be of conservative views by his contemporaries in the post-Civil War era,*’ was chosen as Chairman of the Board.

At their first meeting, the Trustees learned that Peabody favored, as the first goal of the Board, the promotion of elementary education

for the greatest possible number of children in the South. The philanthropist was quite adamant on this point, and until his death in

1869 continued to stress the fact that his money was to be used for

the promotion of primary education, and not to be diverted to such

purposes as supplying college educations to the sons of gentlemen.^

The Board immediately adopted, by a unanimous vote, a resolution calling

for the promotion of "Primary or Common School Education by such means 7 or agencies as now exist or may need to be created." It decided

that a General Agent was to be appointed to supervise the administration 8 of the fund. During the last meeting of the Board in 1867, Chairman

Winthrop read a letter from Peabody in which he stated that the

trustees were to tieve absolute discretion as to the localities in the

Southern or Southwestern States where the fUnd was to be spent,

5 .Dabney, Universal Education, I, lOU. ^Curry Papers, Barnas Sears to Robert Wmthrop, July 21, 1869, ^Proceedings, Peabody Fund, I, 16, 8 Ibid, fhe agent's salary was fixed at $5,000 per year, with an additional $1,000 for traveling expenses. 2U3

Peabody hoped that sooner or later all the states suffering from the 9 effects of war might receive some aid.

The trustees selected as their General Agent a man who probably did more to make the Peabody Fund a vital and influential factor in Southern education than any person ever connected with the administration of the Fund. Barnas Sears had been active in the field of education for many yearst born and raised in rural Western Massachusetts, he was educated at Brown University, Newton Theological Seminary and in

Germany. Ha served as a Baptist minister in Hartford, Connecticut, and

then became Professor of Theology at Newton Seminary of which he later

became President. From I8I4.8 to 1855, Sears acted as Secretary of the

Massachusetts Board of Education (succeeding Horace Mann). In 1855

he was called to the Presidency of Brown University at Providence,

Rhode Island. He was serving in this capacity when Winthrop asked him

to draw up a statement as to how the Fund should b 9 administered. His

suggestions so impressed the trustees that they invited him to become

General Ag e n t . ^

Sears' outline to the Board of Trustees contained two possible

courses of action that the Board might adopt: the first procedure

involved the establishment and operation of a system of "Peabody

Schools," not connected with any existing school system; the second

21-22. ^Dictionary of American Biography. XVI, 537-38* Sill*

suggestion was much more simple - disburse funds to aid others who were already in charge of schools* Sears asserted that the first plan

(i.e., the Board creating its own schools) was far too conplicated*

It would require a great amount of supervision and the direction of

the work would fall to the trustees. There would also be the

problem of collecting official reports and complications involving

the ownership of buildings and lots by the trustees, which might

cause the people of the communities thus aided to become jealous or

indifferent. Sears believed that it would be much simpler and wiser

to strengthen and revive existing schools!

Let good schools, springing up on the soil, growing out of the wants of the people, and meeting those wants, be sprinkled all over the South, as examples, and be made the nuclei for others, and let them be established and controlled, as far as possible, by the people them­ selves, and they will in time grow into state systems.

Sears also recommended some indirect methods of aiding Southern

Education, including the establishment of normal schools, the

offering of scholarships to potential teachers who would be required

to teach for a designated period of time, encouragement of teacher's

11 Curry Papers, Barnas Sears to Robert Wmthrop, March 11*, 1867* 2U5 associations by the financing of speakers, and financial assistance l2 to education periodicals*

In his work as General Agent of the Peabody Fund, much of which consisted of extensive tours through the South, Sears usually exercised great caution and tried to avoid arguments as much as possible* He wrote to rfinthrop in 1872 that "Politics I eschew

altogether* I neither vote, nor discuss political questions, even privately*During the fall of 1867, he made his first long trip

into the South to inspect conditions and talk with teachers, school

officials, and ordinary citizens, and in doing so visited parts of

Virginia,^* Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina. After his return,

he recommended to the trustees at their meeting in January, 1868,

certain limitations to regulate the expenditures of the Fund* Hie

believed that financial aid should be confined, as much as possible,

to public schools, especially to those located in large towns and

12 Ibid. Host of these suggestions were eventually adopted* The fund aided a number of normal schools, and eventually established one of its own in Nashville, Tennessee, in September, 1875* Hoy Taylor, oj>* cit*, 137* The cause of popular education in Georgia was furthered in 1875-76, by a lecture trip throughout the state made by the State Superintendent, Qustavis J* Qrr. % gave forty-four addresses, and his expenses were paid by the Peabody Fund (except the transportation, which was furnished by the railroads of Georgia). Report for 1867* XXXIV, The Arkansas Journal of Education, established in 1871, was subsidized by the Peabody Fund, and in 1873 it became the official publication of the State Board of Education* Staples, Reconstruction in Arkansas^ 326* 13Curry Papers, Barnas Sears to Robert Winthrop, Sept* 6, 1872, l^Sears had established his headquarters at Staunton, Virginia* 21*6 cities which might serve as models of progress* Aid should be confined to places that could influence the surrounding area, with the objective being a limited number of efficient schools rather than many ineffective ones. Sears urged that, whenever feasible, the state education systems 15 should be used as agencies to handle the Peabody Fund appropriations*

These suggestions were adopted as a general policy* During the first three years of the Board's operation, Sears had trouble finding enough schools to qualify for assistance. Between 1871 and lQ7b the

supply and demand tended to balance each other, but after 1871*, the General Agent was able to aporove only 50 per cent or less of

the applications he received. As the number of schools pleading for assistance increased, Sears tried to follow a policy (except in

Louisiana) of aiding those which were part of systems that he considered 16 to have a good chance of winning public support. To qualify for

aid, a school had to meet certain requirements* it must be a public

institution; it must have a term of about ten months; it should have

an average attendance of not less than 85 per cent; the local citizens were to pay toward current expenses at least twice or three times as much as they received from the Fund, and they were to bear all the

expense of erecting, repairing and furnishing the schoolhouses; one

^Proceedings, Peabody Fund. I, 56-57. 16Jessie P. Rice, J.L.M7T«urry, Southern Statesman and Educator (New York, 191$), 9l*« Hereafter, this will be cited as Rice, J.L.M* Curry. 21*7 teacher had to be supplied for at least fifty pupils; and the local citizens must agree to "grading1* the school*

Sears decided that annual payments were to be determined by enrollment. If the applying institution had met the aforementioned qualifications, and it had not fewer than 100 pupils, it received

$300; not fewer than 1*>0 pupils, 9U50; not fewer than 200 pupils,

9600; not fewer than 2£0 pupils, $800; and 300 pupils or more, 17 *1,000* There was admitted discrimination, however, in the payments to Negro schools* In September, 1869, Sears wrote to Winthrop that he was inclined to adopt a scale for the Negroes that was two-thirds of that which applied to the whites, because "It costs less to maintain schools for the colored children than the white•* He admitted that

"some will find fault with our making any distinction between the two races*Evidently Winthrop and the other trustees approved of this plan, for in the official proceedings of 1870-71 the scale of payments to white schools was given with the notation: "At present, we pay for 19 colored schools two-thirds of the rates above named*"

Sears plan of appropriations based upon the enrollment of the school, with the local community paying one-half to three-fourths of the expenses, enabled the Peabody Fund Trustees to help educate

^Proceedings, Peabody Pond, I, 236, "'Curry3-°0urry Papers, BaraasBarnas Sears to RobertRobi Winthrop, Sept* 21, 1869* ^ Proceedings, Peabody Fund, I, 236* 21*8 a large number of children, at a low per-capita rate, less than 4 $1.50 per pupil on the basis of a $1,000 contribution to a school with * * .. 20 700 student8* The General Agent was always willing to grant aid to communities that really needed it and were disposed to live up

to the regulations that he stipulated, and he never withdrew money

from the towns that had qualified for aid until they could sustain Ol their own schools* However, his entire theory of assistance was

similar to that of the Hoover administration in its handling of the

Depression in 1930-32, i,e,, a "trickle-down" approach* The Peabody

Fund assisted only the larger towns and cities that were able to meet the requirements of a ten months term, graded schools, and

ability to pay one-half to three-fourths of the expenses* The schools

thus aided were to serve as models to the less fortunate institutions

in the rural areas, but these were often the ones that most

desperately needed the help, but simply could not afford to meet

Sears's standards* Therefore, in the area of Southern rural

education, the real value of the Peabody Fund is to be questioned

seriously*

A n example of how Sears administered the Fund in a specific

community may be seen from his actions in Torkville, South Carolina, in

the spring of 1868* He arrived in Torkville during the second week

^Curry Papers, Barnas Sears to Robert Winthrop, Feb. 8, 1868* zlRice, J.L.M. Curry, 93-94* 2U9

of March, and immediately called a meeting of the city officials and

other leading citizens interested in education* At this meeting,

Sears submitted a proposal by which he, in behalf of the Fund, would

give Yorkville two-fifths of the money necessary to open free schools

for all the children of the town, the remainder to be raised by the

citizens* The town council was to have supervision over the expenditure

of the funds and maintenance of the schools* The schools for the

colored children were to be separate, and "everything controlled as 22 the council deem best*"

Barnas Sears did not intend that the efforts of the Peabody

Fund were to become involved in the cross-currents of political and

social strife that swept through the South during the Reconstruction

Era* He infuriated a Freedmen's Bureau Superintendent in Texas in

January, 1870, by refusing him any aid because his schools were not 23 established or maintained by state authority* Of course, there was

no state supervision of education in Texas at this time, as the

legislature had not yet passed a school law. However, when Sears did

not feel that the government and its educational division were

competent or trusted enough by the people to dispense Peabody Fund

appropriations, he did not hesitate to circumvent their authority*

Ihe General Agent was definitely opposed to mixed schools*

22 The Charleston Daily Courier, March Ik, 1868, citing the Yorkville Enquirer, March 10, 1868* 23b F:Fa l kss., "Synopsis of School Reports," II, 20*>*

* 250

On his tours, whenever he offered aid to a town, it was understood that separate schools were to be established for Negroes* Aa has been shown, he created a scale of payments to Negro schools that was one- third less than that applying to the white schools* Many of his critics did not hesitate to declare that Sears had acquired the

Southern prejudice against the Negro, and one gentleman referred to

him as one of the most prominent ttdough-faces in the whole Southern

region.sears publicly took a moderate stand on this issue, and he made the official position of himself and the Board of Trustees quite

clear when he declared in 1869 that the Board assumed no control

whatever over the "arrangement" of the schools assisted by the Fund,

We have nothing to do with any party questions, or with the policy pursued by municipal or state authorities •*•• If separate schools are provided for the two races, and both of them are pleased with the arrangement, we can have no embarrassment in co-operating with the State Authorities* If the law required mixed schools, and the children, whether white or black, generally attend them, we shall have no difficulty in our work. But if the State supports only mixed schools, and the white children do not attend them, we should naturally aid, not the colored children who enjoy, exclusively, the benefit of public school money, but the white children c who are left to grow up in ignorance, ^

^Jabes L. J. Curry, A Brief Sketch of George Peabody and a History of the Peabody Education Fund Through Thirty Tears I Cambridge * Mass., 1 B9 8), 60* Hereafter, this will be cited as Curry, Peabody Fund. ' ~ Ibid., 61* 2$1 26 Privately, Sears referred to mixed schools as a "curse," and from time to time would write to Winthrop about the difficulty that the mixed school controversy was causing in states like 27 Louisiana and South Carolina* In 1868 the Board officially took the position that because of the furor over integration and the desertion of the public schools by the white pupils, the public

schools of Louisiana no longer served the white citizens, and Sears

directed R. M. Lusher, farmer State Superintendent of Education, to make arrangements for the distribution of $17,000 for the benefit of white children. The money was to be given to the larger towns, 28 excluding New Orleans, on a basis of <$5*00 per pupil* Mr. Lusher

acted as agent for the Fund in Louisiana until 1877, on a voluntary

basis By 1871, twenty-eight localities in the state were being aided

by the Fund, selected according to "importance, influence, and ability

to share expense."-^ With the aid of Peabody money, seven Institutions

in rural Louisiana established free teacher-training departments, and 31 these were supported entirely by the Fund from 1868 to 1881*.

The Superintendent of Education in Louisiana, Thomas W. Conway,

26 Ourrv Paners. Barnas Soars to Robert Winthrop, Sept. 18, 1870*

s, Peabody Fund, I, 91,

^Dabney, Universal Education, I, 371* was naturally incensed that Sears refused to appropriate any money to the schools under his jurisdiction, and Instead, rendered assistance to all-white schools that were, in reality, private institutions. In his report for 1869, Conway wryly remarked that as the application of of the Peabody Fund had not yet been entrusted to the state officers of Louisiana, he was unable to state what benefits had been received, or by whom. Conway concluded that it would contribute to the "simplicity and efficiency" of his educational work if the distribution of the Fund were transferred to the Louisiana State Board of E d u c a t i o n . ^ 2 By 1870, the Superintendent was not so moderate in his choice of phraseology when describing the work of the Peabody Fund. He complained in that year of occasionally encountering in Louisiana a school of "complex character," sustained partly by the Peabody Fund, partly by an organized local society, and also supported through tuition fees, but maintained exclusively for white children. Sometimes the state- supported schools were embarrassed in their organization by the local authorities granting the use of public schoolhouses to the Peabody 33 schools, as happened at Baton Rouge*

Conway wrote to Sears on October 28, 1870, and presented him with a resolution passed by the Louisiana State Board of Education which declared that the Board "would seem to be the proper medium for

32 Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 1869, 20-51; ------33Report for 1870-71. 193-9U. the care and disbursement of the portion of the said endowment to 3U which the State is entitled The Superintendent then listed several reasons why Sears should change his agency in Louisiana to the State Board of Education* Lusher did not co-operate "in any ways" with the state authorities in promoting popular education; it was felt that he was very opposed to the state authorities, and aimed to create a school system "antagonistic to that of the state;" certain teachers, aided by the agent, were doing their utmost to destroy the public schools, and in some cases issued circulars urging the citizens to oppose the establishment of mixed schools; since

Lusher announced that the schools aided by the Fund were for white children only, the Peabody Trustees were placed in the "false position" of establishing a caste system of education, which Conway believed to be contrary to their ('the trustees) official declaration; finally, he accused the Fund and its representative of exciting widespread opposition to the public schools, of "unharmonious" conduct toward public school officers, and of neglecting the educational interests of the Negroes of Louisiana. In conclusion, Conway declared*

We think the fund for this State can be used by the State board of education to far better advantage than if it remains in the hands of Mr. Lusher* Not only would we assist schools attended exclusively or partially by white pupils, without exciting the jealousy of the colored population, but we could render 25U

all proper assistance to the latter class without exciting the opposition of any pf the white citizens of the State.’^

Sears tersely replied to Conway in a letter dated November 8,

1870. He told the Superintendent that, under ordinary circumstances, he would be most happy to co-operate with the state authorities, but

Louisiana's schools were so organized that the greater part of the

white population was unwilling to patronize them, and consequently

4 the benefit 6f the public money went chiefly to the colored schools.

Sears declared that if there were any way of bringing the white people

into co-operation with the public schools, the Peabody Trustees would

no longer feel the necessity of maintaining a local agency (Lusher) in

Louisiana.

We, ourselves, raise no questions about mixed schools. We simply take the fact that the white children do not generally attend them, without passing any judgment on the propriety or impropriety of their course. We wish to promote universal education to aid whole communities, if possible. If that cannot be, on account of peculiar circumstances, we must give preference to those whose education is neglected. It is well known that we are helping the white children in Louisiana, as being the more destitute, from the fact of their unwillingness to attend mixed schools. We should give the preference to colored children, were they in like circumstance s•3®

Haid. ^Tbid., 198-99. This exchange of correspondence only resulted in making

Cbnway more angry at Sears and desirous of seeing the efforts of the

Peabody Fund concluded or turned in the direction of the public schools. 9a commented upon Sears' letter in his annual report for

1870, saying that he doubted whether the unwillingness of the white children to avail themselves of the advantages offered by the public school system constituted "destitution" in any true sense, and he insisted that the number of white children enrolled in the public 37 schools was "threefold that of children of color," He accused the

Peabody Fund of fostering an "evil" on the basis of a supposition, with the result of benefiting those who refused to obtain an education unless it was obtained "in harmony with the spirit of caste," The creation of the Peabody Fund schools for white children enabled the opponents of the public school system to deny school facilities to the colored children without involving the white pupils "in the loss and injury inflicted,"^®

Conway's complaints against the work of lusher and the Peabody

Fund continued until the end of his term of office in 1872, In his report for 1871, he declared that the Fund was used to oppress the poor and to armor the "heel of caste, that it^mayjmore effectually

37This is contrary to most contemporary accounts, Conway never gave statistics on race in citing enrollment figures in his reports, ’^Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 1870, h Z - W . 256

crush those it would make its victims." The direct effect of Sears’ misguided policy, he said, was to keep prejudices alive against the

public schools, which otherwise would be "entirely removed." One

of Conway's henchmen, R. K. Diossy (Superintendent of the Third

Division), claimed that in one Peabody school in his division*, the principal was a "notorious inebriate," while in others, "favorites

are pensioned upon the fhnd*"^

In the general election of 1872, R. M. Lusher had been elected

State Superintendent of Schools, but the Canvassing Board disqualified

him in favor of the Republican candidate William G. Brown, a Negro.

This decision, of course, did not lead to a cordial relationship

between Brown and Lusher, and the feud that had been carried on by

Conway was continued by Brown. On October 31, 1873, Brown wrote to

Lusher demanding a report of his administration of the Peabody Fund

in Louisiana, including such items as the number of teachers employed,

their salaries and the number of scholars enrolled. Lasher angrily

wrote to the Superintendent on November 3, 1873, that after it had been

proved that Brown was the legally elected head of the schools, he

would consider giving him the desired information, but,

As long, however, as you remain a beneficiary of the prtma facie fraud and actual usurpation by which the liberties of the people of Louisiana have been sacrificed and their republican

?%Ibid., 1871, 37-38 U0Ibid., 188. 257

system of government has been suspended, In violation of the Constitution of the United States, no self-respecting citizen of the State can deem it an honor to appear in your 'annual report* as an auxiliary in the compilation of educational statistics.1*1

The Peabody Fond continued to give some aid to the white schools that it had helped to create until the Conservatives returned to power and Lusher became State Superintendent. Money was appropriated to

Louisiana for several years after 1877, although much of the assistance went to support the Normal Seminary in New Orleans.^

Baraas Sears proved to be implacable in his refusal to aid

systems which were inclined toward a policy of integration. In

Louisiana, he allowed the Fund to support all-white schools which were

really private in nature. In the case of South Carolina, during the

crisis surrounding the integration of the State University in 1873-7U,

contributions to that state were cut from #U,000 in 1871, to $500 in

1872, #1,000 in 1873 and #200 in l87li.^3 Sears believed that a policy

of mixed schools would be detrimental to the entire future of Southern

public education, and he had no intention of seeing the Peabody money

used to finance institutions which he did not believe had the support

of the majority of the citizens involved. Thus, Sears emerges as a

real foe of radical social practices in the field of education during

this period.

febid., 1873 , 31-32. ■f^Hoy Taylor, op. cit., 88. Wlbid. 258

In addition to his stand against integrated schools, Barnas

Sears took an active part in influencing certain congressmen to prevent the inclusion of the school proviso in Sumner's Civil Rights

Bill. He believed that if this clause were enacted, it would result in the abolition of the public school system in the South, which would be of most consequence to the Negroes, who in most places would be left without s c h o o l s * ^ He pointed out in an article in The Atlantic

Monthly of September, 187U, that "Southern charity will be dried up if the Negro is made the instrument of breaking up the existing systems of public instruction," and that Northern contributions to Negro education had been dwindling away for some time. The Negro, said

Sears, had neither the "funds nor the intelligence" necessary to carry on the work of education, and nothing but the public schools maintained by the Southern States, could meet their wants. If there were a difference between the educational advantages offered to Negroes from

that given to the whites, it was only in certain localities, and was li5 "purely accidental and temporary .. .. " Sears believed that if the present plan of separate schools which existed in most of the Southern

States was preserved, the education of the "whole colored population

at the expense of others" was secure. "But let them ^the public

schools/ be disturbed by any unhappy excitement, and the disaffected

/Barnas Sears/ "Mixed Schools in the South," The Atlantic Monthly. XXXIV. 203 (Sept., 18710, 382. 23>9 will seize upon the opportunity to abolish the public schools and to return to their favorite plan of private schools

The General Agent was not content merely to write articles in opposition to the Civil Rights Bill. In his report of October,

187U, he stated that he could not remain a passive spectator while men in power were unwittingly urging on a measure which would undo all of the good accomplished by the Peabody Fund.

... I felt constrained to go twice before committees and leading members of Congress and utter a voice of earnest warning against a futile attempt to enforce 'mixed schools,' and to show, as best I might, what would be the necessary operation of such a law - a law that would prove a nullity if not fbllowed by another requiring each state to maintain public schools of a given character, and still another requiring, the attendance of white children*^*

Unfortunately, the available records and manuscripts tell of

only one trip made by Sears to Washington, where he counseled leading

Senators and Representatives against voting for the school proviso. 9 This trip took place at the time when the House version of Sumner's

bill, presented by Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, was being debated

in the lower chamber for the first time and was creating a violent

reaction in the South. Sears wrote to Robert Winthrop on January 8,

j^Ibid. ^'Proceedings, Peabody Fund, I, i±OE>, 260

187U, that he had just returned from Washington, where he had felt obliged to go to secure the omission or modification of the school clause in "General Butler's" Civil Rights Bill, Sears told how he

first saw the friends of the bill - Butler, Hoar, Dawes and others -

and convinced them that if the school proviso were left intact, it would lead to the destruction of the public schools in the South and r~ leave the Negroes and poor whites destitute of schools altogether, and that Congress would then be responsible for forcing "popular

ignorance" upon the South in order to uphold a "shadowy abstraction,"

The General Agent remarked that "everyone admitted the force of the

argument, Butler himself said the bill should be re-committed, and U8 that he was willing to make a reasonable compromise," In the next

phase of his "campaign," Sears called upon several leading Senators,

"not Sumner nor his trained Negroes," but Oliver P, Morton (Indiana)

and William A, Buckingham (Connecticut) and others who would see that

the objectionable clause was omitted or changed, or that the bill was

defeated in the Senate, Lastly, he visited with President Grant at the

White House, where he also talked with Butler, He reported to Winthrop

that Grant viewed the subject of integrated schools "as you and I do,"

Sears told the President and Butler that the bill was wounding the

Southern people in their most sensitive parts, as they cared much

more about their schools than about accommodations in hotels or on

C u r r y Papers, Barnas Sears to Robert Winthrop, Jan, 8, 187U, 261 steamboats* He warned that if the bill were passed in its present form, it would destroy the entire work of the Peabody Fund during the last six years, "and leave us without a promising field of action »li9 by taking away public schools and leaving nothing in their place •

By reiterating to these legislators the theme of "if the bill passes with the school clause, the public schools of the South will be destroyed," Sears was able to convince them, in due time, to omit the school provision* The bill was recommitted to the Committee of the

Judiciary on January 7, I87U5 it emerged on December 16, I87U (after

Sumner's death), and the school proviso was removed by approval of the

Kellogg Amendment on February 5, 1875, which passed with the obvious support of Butler and other leading Republicans*

Thus did Barns Sears, a native of Massachusetts and former

President of Brown University, emerge as one of the key figures in preventing the inclusion of the school clause in the Civil Rights

Bill of 1875* Although Sears wgs not a native Southerner, he was probably more acutely aware of the educational problems of the region than any other man of his time, and worked against the threat of Federally-enforced, integrated schools because he sincerely

^Ibid. 262 believed that such a policy would only bring disaster to the public school systems of the South, In this sense were Sears and the

Peabody Fund Trustees whom he represented truly a conservative force and restraining influence in some of the most pressing educational questions of the post Civil War era* CHAPTER EIGHT

THE CRISIS IN rUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION

In contrast to some of the public school systems* the colleges and universities of the South received little help from the missionary teachers and Radical politicians during the Reconstruction Era. They, of course, did aid in the establishment of institutions of higher learning for Negroes, such as Atlanta and Fisk Universities, but usually took little interest in the well-established white colleges unless these schools could be included in their total scheme of reorganization. Generally speaking, the Radicals ignored the private colleges and allowed the state supported schools gradually to "wither- away1' because of a failure to provide sufficient public funds.

The University of Alabama emerged from the War with most of its buildings destroyed. It tried to reopen in the Fall of 1865, but when only one student appeared, it was not able to resume classes, 1 and remained closed until 1869. There was never any attempt made

by Negroes in this period to enter the University, and, in 1873, "the legislature designated the Lincoln School at Marion as the Negro 2 university and normal school for Alabama. The only controversy at the University of Alabama worth noting was that which centered

^Coulter, pie South During Reconstruction. 319-20# Fleming, Civil War and Re construction in Alabama. 616-17.

263 26k around the selection of a new president* In 1868, the State Board of

Education chose for this position The Reverend A. S. Lakin, a

Northern Methodist preacher who bad been sent to Alabama in 1867 to gather Negroes into the (Northern) Methodist Episcopal Church*

Lakin arrived in Tuscaloosa in September, 1868, accompanied by N. B,

Cloud, the State Superintendent of Education. Professor Wyman, the

Acting President of the University, refused to turn over the keys, and Lakin, in a quandary over what to do, decided that it was unsafe to remain in Tuscaloosa and started back to his home at Huntsville*

At an overnight resting place near the University, he was visited by twenty-five disguised men, who threatened to lynch him if he 3 remained* Lakin proceeded to his heme, but did not immediately resign, and later collected the full year's salary of $800 frcm the

Board of Regents. The University resumed its sessions in 1869, with the professor of Astronomy and Natural Philosophy acting as President.

This school, with a faculty largely from the North, proved unpopular with the people of the state and by October, 1870, the enrollment had declined to ten, four of whom were sons of professors* By June of

18715 no students were left and the University closed its doors*^ It was reorganized and reopened by the Conservatives in the Fall of the same year, and slowly began to prosper*^

^KKK Reports. Ala, I, 112, A few days later, a Klan-inspired cartoon appeared in the Tuscaloosa Monitor depicting this event* ^Fleming, Civil W ar and Reconstruction in Alabama, 613-16. ^Coulter, The SoutTi During Reconstruction, 3?0. 265

Arkansas never had a state university before the Civil War, but one was established at Fayetteville by the Radicals in 1672 and was opened to both races. It was a land grant school, and was called

"Arkansas Industrial University." Although officially conmitted to admit students of both races, the Trustees left the question of enrolling Negroes to the discretion of the executive committee of the 6 University. Only one Negro applied for admission, and was allowed to enter by the president, who instructed him in all his subjects after the regular classes were over. The Negro was not allowed to 7 enter the university bni.ldj.ngs while classes were in session.

The Louisiana State Seminary and Military Academy at Alexandria reopened after the war in 1865 and was moved to Baton Rouge in 186? when fire destroyed the original buildings. After 1870, the school was known as Louisiana State University. Fairly good relations were maintained with the state government until 1873, when President (or

Superintendent) David F. Boyd became involved in a controversy over O the admission of Negroes* Boyd and the former State Superintendent of Education, T. W. Conway, were bitter enemies, having clashed over education bills in the legislature, the attempt by Conway to make the University a part of the public school system, and over Boyd's

It must be recalled that Fayetteville is located in the hill country of Northern Arkansas, a region which has always had a small ccLoredjpopuLation. ‘Staples,fie _ PReconstruction - in Arkansas. 329* °Coulter, op. cit., 320* 266 desire to unite his Institution with the Agricultural and Mechanical

College at New Orleans,^ Before 1872, LSU experienced great financial

difficulties, funds being appropriated in the form of worthless

state bonds, which were exchanged for warrants, Frequently, the professors did not receive their salaries until cash could be

obtained for the warrants, a transaction that was difficult to

accomplish,'*’0 From March, 1872, until January, 1873, two rival govern­ ments, one led by William P. Kellogg, the other by John McEnery,

contested for political control. The Kellogg administration, kept

in power with the help of Federal troops, made no appropriation

for the University, and the school received no aid from the state

until 1 8 7 7 In the annual report of the State Superintendent of

Education for l87i+, LSU was listed under the heading of "Private 12 Institutions,"

President Boyd and the University were caught between opposing

groups of thought on the mixed school controversy. Boyd angered the

State Board of Education and the legislature by refusing to submit

to the official integration policy and admit Negroes to LSU.^ The

school was viewed with disfavor by many of the white people of

Louisiana because they associated it with the despised and disreputable

9 ^FLeming, Louisiana State University, 195-97* --.Ibid., 2 0 % f^IHid., 261;, Annual Report, Superintendent of Public Education, Louisiana, 187ks 861 Ibid., 206, 269. public school system* Boyd canmented upon this dilemma in his diary (July 23, 187b) when he described the University as being in very bad condition and terribly in debt* It was

an institution deserted by the State because we are not presumed to be in accord with the ignorance and villainy of the powers that be, and very little supported by the people of Louisiana because of the general law of the State which makes it obligatory on all the schools, supported in whole or in part by the to receive negroes as students

After the return of the Conservatives to power in 1877* LSU was merged with the Agricultural and Mechanical College and returned to the status of a state-supported institution*

The University of Mississippi escaped most of the problems that affected other state schools in the South* The University was given a new board of trustees by the Radicals, but it was never coerced into admitting Negroes* In 1870, the faculty threatened to resign if integration were ever attempted, and also promised to eject any Negroes that were enrolled. However, no Negroes applied

for admission, and Aicom University was soon established for the freedmen at Rodney, Mississippi* Its first president was the former

Negro Senator, Hiram R. Ravels

eraxng, Documentary History of Reconstruction* II, 200. roer, Reconstruction in Mississippi, 369. 268

In North Carolina, a state which generally did not suffer

from the rigors of Reconstruction as much as did some other Southern

States, the state university at Chapel Hill became the hated symbol

of the old order to the carpetbag politicians at Raleigh who were

determined to bring about its reorganization. The Radical Governor,

William W. Holden, led a faction which denounced the University as

a '‘center of aristocracy and rebellion*""^ pother faction in the

state regarded the school as harboring undue syjnpathies with Yankees 17 and atheists. This latter charge arose out of the marriage of

Eleanor Swain, daughter of President David L. Swain, to the Union

General who had ’’conquered" Chapel Hill, Smith D. Atkins, of Freeport,

Illinois. After the wedding, many citizens of North Carolina chose 1 O to look upon the University as a "Yankee Concern."

William W. Holden was appointed to the post of Governor of

North Carolina by President Johnson in 186$, and in 1868 he was

elected to that office on the Republican ticket. Holden was a poor

Phillips Russell, The Woman Who Rang the Bell, the Story of Cornelia Phillips Spencer (Chapel Hill, 19^9], 83* Hereafter, this will be_ spited as Russell, Cornelia P. Spencer. H l b i d . nemp P. Battle, History of the University of North Carolina, II (Raleigh, N.C., 1912), Hereafter, this will be cited as Battle, University of North Carolina. In a letter written by Cornelia P. SpencerTo Mrs. Uavid !l . Swain (June 26, 1869), Mrs. Spencer remarked that the statewide sentiments about the wedding were very much against President Swain and the college. Louis R. Wilson, Selected Papers of Cornelia P. Spencer (Chapel Hill, 1953), 627-28. Hereafter, this will be cited as Wilson, Papers of Cornelia Spencer. boy from Hillsboro, North Carolina, who had begun his career as a printer* s apprentice and rose to be the editor of the italeigh

Standard and a leading Democrat in the state. During the war, he changed from an ardent defender of secession and slavery to a leader of the "Peace Party." Holden despised the wealthy planters who had controlled his state before 1861, and he looked upon the

University of North Carolina as a citadel of class-consciousness, family connections and a haven for the sons of the wealthy. He resented the fact that he was not a college man,^ and disliked the

Chapel Hill community for their denunciations of him as a "Union 20 co-operator." At the commencement exercises in June, 1869, the

Governor attacked the prewar university, saying that its greatest evil was its tuition fees which excluded a majority of the children from entering. He asserted that the new university must not become a theater of politics, and that the professors must be loyal to the

Union.

According to the North Carolina Constitution of 1868, the election of the Board of Trustees of the University was taken from the legislature and made a function of the State Board of Education.

Hope S. Chamberlain, Old Days in Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, 1926), li|8. Hereafter, this will be cited as Chamberlain, Old Days in Chapel Hill. ------Holden controlled this Board, and was therefore able to compel a

reorganization of the Board of Trustees in 1868, Of the seventy-

eight new members, only eighteen were alumni of the University, and

only four had belonged to the old Board, The official historian of

the University, Kemp P, Battle, states that it was clearly under­

stood, in advance of formal action, that the Board was expected to po remove the old facility to make way for new men. At a meeting held

on July 2ii, 1868, the Board declared that the resignations of the

President and faculty, which had been submitted in 1867 prior to a

faculty-approved reorganization, were final. This action ignored

the reappointment of the faculty by the former Board on June kt

1868, President Swain was stunned by the announcement of his

"resignation,n but only lived a month afterwards, dying on August 29 23 as the result of a buggy accident. In August, the Governor sent a

detachment of Negro troops to ^hapel Hill to close the University,

for it was not to be reopened until a new administration and faculty 2k had been appointed.

The University of North Carolina began the Reconstruction phase

of its existence on January 3> 1869. Mrs. Cornelia P. Spencer,

daughter of a former professor of mathematics and an ardent champion

22 gfoid., I, 774-75- 777. missell » Cornielia P. Spencer, 111, 271 of the University, wrote to a friend: "As for poor dear Chapel Hill I

The University opened on the 3d. No students have appeared, or can 25 be detected even with the aid of a magnifying glass.1* The new president was Solomon Fool, a severe critic of the "old1* university, who had charged it with being too much under the influence of certain aristocratic families of pro-Confederate sympathies. On one occasion

« 26 he had advised: "Better close it than have it a nursery of treason."

Pool was an 1853 honor graduate of the University, and had been professor of mathematics at the institution from 1861 until 1866. In

1866, the financial situation of the schodL was desperate, and there was no money for faculty salaries. At that time, Pool went to work 27 for the state as a deputy appraiser and became very friendly with

Governor Holden, whom he joined in demanding a reorganization of the 28 University, In January of 1866, P0dL had accused the school of being governed by aristocracy and family influence, and had urged that it be thoroughly "loyalized." From the reports of unbiased contemporaries, he did have what he considered to be the best interests of the University at heart, and was a man of "decided ability,"^ but his perspective was narrow, and he was unable to realize that his

- ^Wilson, Papers of Cornelia Spencer, 612. ^Russell, o£. citT, 112. ^Battle, o£. oltT, II, 9. 2?Russell, ££. cit., H 3 . Battle, o£. cit., II, 10. 272 desires and plans to improve the institution would become a political pawn in the hands of Governor Holden and his associates, and that the reorganization of the school would become too much associated with the general policy of Reconstruction to succeed*

The new faculty that assembled in the spring of 186? contained some able men, but several had "questionable” backgrounds* Foremost among the latter was F. F* Brewer, professor of Greek, Brewer had been a tutor at Yale, but reached North Carolina via the Freedmen1 s

Bureau and benevolent associations, having been a teacher of 30 freedmen and principal of a Negro high school* A^so on the faculty was Alexander Mclver (later State Superintendent of Education), an honor graduate of the University who had been fired from the staff of Davidson College because he proposed to vote for Grant in 1868*

A H of the five new men were Republicans and the group quickly became known in Chapel Hill as the "radical faculty.

Although the University was ready to receive new students on

January 3* 186?, none were in evidence. Finally, one appeared for a day, but after he learned that he would constitute the entire student 32 body, he disappeared* But by hay of that year, ten students were enrolled, two of whom were relatives of President Fool* Five or six

30. Russell, Cornelia F, Spencer, 114* His brother was David J* “Supreme Court (1889-1910). 273

small boys attended a preparatory day school that was held in a 33 university building*

The university administration could not claim that a policy of

integration, or even a fear of it, deterred students from enrolling

at the school* Although a rumor circulating through Chapel Hill in

April, 1869, quoted President Pool as saying that if no white students

came, he would have Negroes, such action was never contemplated, and 35 no racial mixing took place during the Reconstruction Era, Governor

Holden, though no friend of the University, was an opponent of mixed

schools, and at the commencement of 1869 declared that both races must be educated, but not together at the University of North Carolina, He

stated that provisions had to be made “elsewhere" for higher education

for the freedmen, and that both the Negro and white universities should 36 be part of the same system*

The history of the University of North Carolina during the year

1869-70 was characterized by overwhelming poverty (no income was

received from the state during that year) and by pitiful enrollments*

Ten students were enrolled by the end of the spring term in 1869, and

•?,^Wilson, Papers of Cornelia Spencer, 620-22. 6i£r------— -^Battle, op. cit., II, 8, In 1868, two members of the Board of Trustees proposed that a college for Negroes be established near Raleigh, to be a branch of the University, The trustees agreed to the idea, but it was not carried out at this time* 36Ibid., 35. 27U that year's graduation, at which one B.A. degree was awarded, was 37 attended by only twenty-eight persons, including ten trustees*

Governor Holden used this occasion to warn the alumni and flriends of the University that he intended that it should become a school for the common people:

If parents who possess means will not send their sons because of prejudice or senti­ ment towards those who now control, the people will fill the halls with meritor­ ious young men and maintain and educate them at public c h a r g e * 38

Popular supoort of the reorganized university was discouraged through the journalistic efforts of Mrs. Cornelia Phillips Spencer, daughter of the venerated professor of mathematics, Dr. James Phillips, t ' and a close friend of the deposed President, David L. Swain* Mrs.

Spencer, a widow since 1861, made her heme at Chapel Hill and could 39 regard many of the alumni as close friends* Her objective was to keep students away from the University, as it was then governed, until Uo the Pool administration was forced to resign* Mrs. Spencer wrote a number of articles for various North Carolina papers, especially the Raleigh Sentinel, in which she sought to awaken popular interest in the problems of the University. She made suggestions that the

f e - w . &• ,'Russell, Cornelia P. Spencer, 93 et passim. k°Ibid., 125; 275

Pool faculty bo forced to create room for men of more ability. In

June of 1869, she wrote*

We appeal to the Trustees of the University to interfere for the public good and let us have men there as teachers who shall command confidence and patronage* A President whose reputation as a scholar and teacher is beyond criticism, and a Faculty that a man of reputation will be willing to be associated with* Let something besides the fact that they will sustain this or that political party, be considered in the appointments*^^-

In later "Pen and Ink Sketches," Mrs. Spencer dwelled on the lack of professional ability of the faculty and the fact that several had taught in Negro schools* She attacked the professor of Greek,

F, P. Brewer, as "••• the embodiment of a New England Yankee

He is a Congregationalist in faith and an ardent nigger-worshipped in practice •«.* He is convinced that Homer was a Guinea nigger and

Demosthenes a 3on of Ethiop."^ Mrs. Spencer's attacks were repudiated by the Raleigh Daily Standard, organ of Governor Holden and the

Republican Party in North Carolina* This journal accused the old university of being a "hotbed of aristocracy and secession,"^ and prophesied that under the Pool administration, the new university would have a brilliant future* The Standard was certain that if the school

k^Wilson, Papers of Cornelia Spencer, 623, citing The (Raleigh) Semi-Weekly Sentinel, June 5, 1869* {^Quoted in Russell, Cornelia P* Spencer, 121*« h3ibid., 125. 276 had remained under the control of President Swain for three months U more, it "would have gone to the infernal regions."

By January of 1870, the enrollment at the University of North

Carolina had declined to nine students, seven freshmen and two UK sophomores. Fifteen were enrolled in the preparatory school. Ten months later, the total registration had increased to thirty-six, but a majority of these were school boys in the preparatory division*^

The session which opened on January Ik, 1872, saw four students in attendance. The opening was then nostponed until January 29, by which | n time the figure had declined to two. The total income for the year

1870-71 was $1,607.53* and came from miscellaneous sources, the General

Assembly having refused to appropriate any money or nay interest on U8 bonds whose income was to be used to support the University. On

December 1, 1870, the Board of Trustees decided to suspend classes at

Chapel Hill until further notice, and the professors' salaries were cut

off as of February 1, 1871. The secretary-treasurer of the Board,

Robert W. Lassiter, and the trustees who lived in Chapel Hill were ho instructed to provide for the preservation of the university property.

The venerable University of North Carolina, chartered in 1789 and

j^Battle, op. cit.. II, 31. 7^Ibid., 257 25* f^Wilson, Papers of Cornelia Spencer, 6$k» jl®Battle, 0£. cit., II, 27. Ibid., 1*1. 277 opened in 1795, now remained closed until September, 1875* With the cloeing of the University, the village of Chapel Hill became a near­ ghost town as people moved away* Mrs. 9pencer viewed the grass-grown walks and decaying buildings of the University with dismay, and declared that the people of North Carolina owed this state of affairs to Governor Holden "and his tools," who were responsible for the

"deliberate degradation and ruin" of North Carolina's highest educational institution***®

Soon after the University ceased operation in February, 1871,

Mrs. Spencer began to formulate a plan to reopen it* Basically, this called for the unconditional resignation of the Pool administration and 5l restoration of the school through the alumni* She received the support of one of the "radical faculty," Alexander Mclver, who had become

State Superintendent of Education early in 1872* One of Mclver's first actions as Superintendent was to call a meeting of the alumni to consider means of reviving the University. Contributions were secured from them to help equip the library and laboratories, Mrs. 9pencer wrote numerous letters and articles to newspapers championing the 52 cause* In 1873, the legislature passed an ordinance transferring the election of the Board of Trustees from the State Board of Education back to the General Assembly. A new Board of sixty-four members was

jj®Wilson, Pyers of Cornelia Spencer, 675-76* 5“Russell,52ibid., us Cornelia P. Spencer, liiO-Ul* selected In January, l87h* only two being holdovers from the previous

Board. Former Governor (and Conservative) William A. Graham was elected President of the Board. Governor Tod R. Caldwell did not approve of this change in the method of electing the trustees, and declared that such action fell under his jurisdiction, with the approval of the State Senate. The issue was fought in the courts, and in January, 1875* the North Carolina Supreme Court approved the election 53 of the trustees by the Qeneral Assembly. In I87I1, the debts against the University were fairly adjudicated under the direction of Federal

Circuit Judge Hugh L. Bond and the University was forced to sell some land to pay them. On March 20, 1875* the legislature passed a bill, 5U by a majority of one vote, which insured the University of an annual income of #7*500 as interest on the land script money which it 55 received as a result of the Morrill Act. Solomon Pool, who had remained in Chapel Hill, refused to turn over the keys to the buildings, and was pushed aside by the new trustees.

Mrs. Spencer received a telegram on March 20 from Kemp. P.

Battle, one of the alumni who was fighting to revive the institution, telling of the action by the legislature which would enable it to reopen. Joyous over the news, she ran to the old South Building and

^Battle, op. cit., II, 50-52. ^Chamberlain. 61d Days in Chapel Hill. 221. ^Louis Wilson, oj>. cit.. 678. 279

rang the bell which had not sounded for five years, heralding the rebirth of the school*** It officially opened its doors on September 15>>

1875, with Kemp P, Battle as the new President*

The crisis which occurred at the University of South Carolina

also led to a suspension of classes at that institution, but the

problems at Columbia were of a social nature and consequently more

bitterly contested than those at Chapel Hill* South Carolina has

the distinction of being the only college in the former Confederate

States which was integrated during the Reconstruction Period, and the

consequences of this action tended to retard its progress into the

Twentieth Century*

Ihe University resumed its post war sessions in 1866. It

struggled along, as did most of the state-supported schools at that

time, on a small budget and reduced enrollment. The question of the

admission of Negroes had not became a matter of controversy by 1868,

when retiring Governor Orr recommended that the University be reserved

for whites and the Citadel (not yet reopened) in Charleston be converted c? into a Negro institution*

In the period from 1868 to 1873, when the state was under­

going drastic changes as a result of Reconstruction, the University

-^Russell, Cornelia P* Spencer, 1U9* 5 'Daniel ¥. Hollis, University of South Carolina, College to University, II (Columbia, 195*5), U6* Hereafter, this will be cited as Hollis, University of South Carolina, II. remained unaffected, except that its budget was increased by the

Radical dominated legislature. The mixed school provision was not applied, and moderate elements among the Republicans gained and kept control of the school's affairs. However, the situation was uncertain, particularly as the Radicals began to threaten a "transformation" of the University, and professors resigned their positions and students

transferred to other colleges. On the surface, the school seemed to be progressing in a satisfactory manner as it received a #26,800 appropriation for the fiscal year beginning October 1, 1869, an amount

twice as large as the last appropriation of the Orr regime,Whatever pressure that had existed for the admission of Negroes was somewhat

eased by the establishment of Claflin College located at Orangeburg,

This school was sponsored by the Methodist Episcopal Church, and, by

1870, it had nine instructors and 170 pupils,^0

An ominous sign of impending trouble occurred on March 3, 1869,

when the General Assembly amended the acts incorporating the

University, Section 1 of this act (proposed by W, J, Whipper, a Negro

legislator from Beaufort) stated that the Board of Trustees would

consist of seven members, elected by the General Assembly forfbur year

terms. But, "neither the said Board of Trustees, nor the Faculty of

the University, shall make any distinction in the admission of students

*.8Ibid, fffoid., 149. QOHpward, Autobiography, II, I4.O6. 281 or the management of the University on account of race, color, or creed. On March 9, 1869, four days after Governor Scott had signed the new law, two Negroes, F. L. Cardozo and Benjamin A.

Boseman, were named to the Board of Trustees. The white members included Prank J. Moses, Jr., and Justus K. Jills on, the State 62 Superintendent of Education* When the new Board met in June, 1869, a white Trustee, James L. Neagle, who was also Comptroller-General of

South Carolina, proposed an immediate reorganization of the University by means of electing a new faculty and applying the act forbidding racial discrimination. This plan was opposed by Jillson and Governor 63 R. K. Scott (an ex-officio member), and was defeated* At the meeting of the Trustees in July, William H. Orchard, the bursar and marshal was dismissed and replaced with Jim Davis, "a politically inclined, 6k illiterate Negro.”

The Republican administrations in South Carolina liked to point with pride to their support of the University, but the enrollment was so low that it hardly appeared to be worth the effort and expense to

^Acts of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina. 1868-69. 2 ^ o t 7 ^Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, 123* Reynolds states: ”0f this board, every man except Jillson was later on publicly charged with having been guilty of some corrupt act**.." zj Hollis, cit», II, 51. °**Ibid.. 52* Davis served as a Representative to Congress in 1870-72, while holding his post as bursar and marshal of the University. keep the institution open. The number of students in attendance in

1868-69 was slxty-fivej 1869-70, forty-two; 1870-71, fifty-three;

1871-72, eighty-eight; and 1872-73, sixty-eight. The highest

appropriation far the period was $37,850 in 1871-72, $10,000 of which was earmarked for repairs. ^ Because of the lack of public

support of the University, the executive committee of the Board of

Trustees gave warning in 1871 that unless the institution were better

patronized by South Carolinians, it would be unwise to continue the

current appropriations. In July, the faculty had a circular distributed throughout the state, stressing the advantages of the 66 school, its library, and scholarship program* The net effeot was

an increase in enrollment in the next year, but only from fifty-three

to eighty-eight. This failure of the University to prosper, combined

with the lack of success in establishing a state-supported school

for Negroes01 and a split in Republican ranks during the campaign

of 1872, which caused both factions to woo Negro voters with promises

of admission to the University, created a climate of opinion against the 68 all-white University which resulted in its reorganization in 1873*

g p O . , 59. In 1872, the General Assembly incorporated the Agricultural and Mechanical Institute for Negroes at Orangeburg, but money for the school was used to pay other obligations, and not until 1871; were any funds obtained. Ibid., 61-62. 68ibid. 283

A new Board of Trustees was elected in 1873, consisting of four

Negroes and three whites* Only one of the Negro members, Samuel J*

Lee, was a native of South Carolina, and he and S* A. Swails (from

New York) were both accused a few years later of accepting bribes 69 while serving in official capacities* The campaign of the Board to revamp the University began during the summer of 1873, when three 70 professors of many years tenure were dismissed. The "revolution" officially began, however, on October 7, 1873, when Henry E, Hayne, the Malatto Secretary of State, matriculated at the institution as a medical student* immediately after his admission, throe professors 71 (LaBorde, Gibbes and Tolley) resigned, Hayne's admission gave the 72 "new" University a grand total of seven students. Following the resignation of the professors, the Board of Trustees passed a resolution stating that they deemed it necessary to present to the public their conclusion that the resignations were caused by the admission of Mr. Hayne, "a gentleman of irreproachable character," against whom the faculty members could suggest no objection except that of race. The Board declared that it could not regret "that a spirit so hostile to the welfare of our state, as well as to the

^Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, 261. 'Qibid., 233:

'^Hollis, og* cit., II, 66, 28U dictates of justice and the claims of our common humanity, will no longer be represented in the University, which is the common property 73 of all our citizens without the distinction of race,"

The president pro-tem of the Board of Trustees, Samuel Lee, later wrote that the resignation of the professors upon the application of the first Negro student, "made necessary a change both in the corps of teachers and the University curriculum - a duty 7l which we, as a Board, had no hesitancy in assuming," Lee remarked that the people ought to have been grateful to the Negro-dominated legislature which had for some time supported a university of a dozen bona fide students, from which his race was excluded, and had maintained professors who "reviled them publicly and plotted against them privately - men who used the leisure afforded by the University to stir up the opposition press and belittle every attempt at progress."

Governor Moses deplored the fact that the resignation of the faculty members had been occasioned by racial prejudice and he declared that he was proud to look upon the University as the "healthy child of the present administration," and was certain that the "narrow spirit of bigotry and prejudice" had been banished from its halls for­ ever, Moses was pleased that one of the professorships had been

73 Quoted in Reynolds, oj>. cit,, ?3lu 7hSouth Carolina— Report, State Superintendent of Education, 1875, 7 ------?5lbid. 28$ filled by a Negro (Richard T. Greener) and hailed this event as "the harbinger of the happy day which is cowing when all class distinctions

shall forever be laid in the dust of the past."^

By the end of October, 1873, the enrollment at the University had risen to twenty-two, including a number of state officials, mainly Negroes, who attended to prove the school was really integrated*

Registered in the law school were Niles G. Parker, the former State

Treasurer, C. M. Wilder, Postmaster at Columbia, and Senators H. C,

Corwin and George F. McIntyre— all whites. Also studying law were

Representatives Lawrence Cain, Paris Simkins, and the State Treasurer,

F. L. Cardozo— all Negroes* Few of these men attended regularly*^

The new faculty of seven men included a number of unattractive and incompetent carpetbaggers, including F. P. Brewer, recently of the

University of North Carolina. One of the more able professors was the Reverend B. B. Babbitt, professor of physics, who helped reorganize the University and demonstrated marked ability in dealing 78 with difficulties* Probably the most capable of the group was the

Negro, Richard T. Greener, who taught "Mental and Moral Philosophy."

Greener had been the first Negro to receive a degree from Harvard

^Quoted in Reynolds, Reconstruction in South Carolina, 21*1, ''Hollis, University of South Carolina, II, 70; Reynolds, op* oit.i 231*. 56. 286

(1870), later (1879) became Dean of the law school at Howard 79 University, and served in several diplomatic posts abroad# He has been described as being both "competent and efficient" in his 80 work at the University of South Carolina#

A visitor to the University of South Carolina shortly after the policy of integration had been inaugurated described the campus

0 *1 as shabby and desolate, with only a handful of students in attendance#

The enrollment was so low that in February, l87li, the legislature passed an act providing 121; scholarships of $200 each, to be pro­

portioned among the counties on the basis of the number of representatives ft? of each county in the legislature# After the scholarship program had

been in effect for about a year, it was attacked by the State

Superintendent of Education and University Trustee, Justus K. Jillson,

as being a "miserable farce," and he accused the faculty of

assembling a motley crowd of youngsters, not qualified by virtue of

"poverty, merit, or scholarly attainment" to be recipients of the

grants# The first fourteen scholarships that were awarded in the 8U fall of 187U were given to four white and ten Negro students#

^Dictionary of American Biography, VII, 578-79# "Hollis, op, cit., II. 68# 01 James S. Pike, The Prostrate State, South Carolina Under Negro Government (New York. 187I1 ). 80-8l, WHoiiia, ojj# cit., II, 72# South Carolina - Report, State Superintendent of Education, 1375, 329. “ Wollis, 0£. eit., II, 72. 287

The state legislature continued to provide fairly liberal appropriations to maintain the University, as was shown by its grant of #1*1*750 for the year 1873-74* #6,1*00 of which was to be used for 85 scholarships. By Jane of 1875* the enrollment had increased to gif 166 students, over half of whom were Negroes* In the period

1873-77* the University proved to be a training ground for some future

Negro leaders, including T, Me Cants Stewart, journalist and lawyer, and later Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Liberia, and

William D* Crum, a physician who was later appointed Collector of the 87 Port of Charleston by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Another factor which degraded the University in the eyes of the majority of the white population of South Carolina was the establishment

in February, 1873, of a normal school on its campus at Columbia* The normal school, which was housed in university buildings, was open to boys of fifteen and girls of fourteen "without any distinction as to

race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The university

faculty was to lecture to these students on certain occasions, and 88 they were to have the use of the university library. Ihe normal

71. S°TEld.. 72. 76. °°Acts of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, 1872-73, 3933*00. 288 school was opened in September, 187U, bo seventeen students, and after one year of operation, the enrollment had increased to seventy- 89 eight. There were no reports made concerning the percentage of colored students in this institution, but contemporary accounts have led the historian of the University, Daniel Ttf, Hollis, to 90 remark that "apparently, the entire student body was Negro,"

The inauguration of President Hayes in 1877 and his subsequent removal of troops from South Carolina in April of that year brought about the debacle of the integrated and Radically-controlled

University. A new Board of Trustees was elected, and Robert W.

Barnwell was chosen as librarian, treasurer, and secretary of the school. In June, 1877, the General Assembly repealed the scholarship act of 1872*, and appropriated £1,500 for the fiscal year beginning

November 1, 1876. This meager appropriation meant that the University would have to suspend operations. It closed at the end of the spring semester of 1877 and did not reopen until 1880, when it emerged as the

South Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanics, offering a three 91 year course.

It is evident that in the two cases where the Radicals became

89 Hollis, University of South Carolina, II, 75, The normal school pgspended operations on May 31, 1&77«

^ ~Ibid., 78-82, 94* The University was restored to its former status inl552. 289 involved in the reorganization of institutions of higher learning, the major consequence was the refusal of the people to support the schools and the subsequent cessation of their activities. The

University of North Carolina was closed fleam 1871 to 1875} the

University of South Carolina suspended operations from 1877 until

1880. In both instances, universities which had been held in high regard before the war were undermined by the unsettled conditions resulting from Reconstruction, which prevented them from prospering before they were taken over by new and scmetimes unfriendly forces*

At North Carolina, the factions behind the reorganization of the

University were determined to remove what they considered to be a

center of aristocracy and disloyalty and supplant it with an

institution Which they hoped would provide higher education for all the white men who desired it. The individuals who demanded the reformation of the University of South Carolina were primarily

interested in opening the 3chool to both races, with the result that,

as in all the attempts of racial mixing in the schools at this time, the school was deserted by the white students and it came close to

becoming an all-Negro college. In both situations, the efforts at reorganization proved detrimental to the states and their citizens

and nearly led to the extinction of two noted institutions of

V 290 higher learning. At Louisiana State University, the internecine political feuds within the state and the refusal of the administration to co-operate with the Board of Education’s mixed school policy led to the withdrawal of state funds, and the school barely survived as a private institution until the Conservatives regained power in 1877# CHAPTER NINE

CONCLUSIONS

The complexity of factors involved in the conflict over Southern public education during the years 1865-76 can be resolved into two basic areas - the question of Negro education and its corollary, the problem of racial miJdLng within the schools. The argument as to whether the freedmen should be educated was taken out of the hands of the Southern whites shortly after the Civil War began, as the Northern benevolent societies, both church-affiliated and non-denominational, became vitally interested in improving the condition of the freedmen by means of providing them with fundamental academic and practical training.

Although these groups were active in the occupied areas of the South before 1865, the full force of this movementwas not felt until about a year after the war was over.

After 1865, thousands of self-righteous and ambitious Yankee schoolmarms swarmed into the Southern States under the auspices of the numerous benevolent associations to teach in schools which were financed partly by the associations, and, after 1866, partly by the

Freedman's Bureau. Most of these teachers were competent and well- meaning individuals who were determined that their accomplishments would compare favorably with those of foreign missionaries. Since they usually worked within the framework of the Freedmen* s Bureau, they

291 had the protection of Federal troops* when necessary* and thus were able to continue their work undeterred by the influence of local customs and traditions* and completely oblivious of the attitudes and reactions of the Southern whites. The teachers* having been nourished on a diet of abolitionist propaganda* were prone to accept as the absolute truth the lurid tales of persecution and cruelty related by the former slaves, and therefore looked upon all Southern whites* whether formerly of the slaveholding class or not, as ignorant brutes condemned to eternal perdition. Because of their opinions and intense preoccupation with their work* the teachers rarely made contact* either of a business or social nature, with the Southern whites, and they found themselves cut off from any relations with white people. It was not until about 1867 that a few of the whites were made aware of some of the good work being done in the freedmen's schools by means of accounts in the local newspapers of visits to the schools.

Surrounding themselves with misconceptions as invalid as those held by the Yankee teachers, the Southern whites chose to regard every teacher as a crusader for miscegenation who was determined to destroy

the remnants of the Southern social system by preaching political end

social equality along with lessons in arithmetic and geography. There­

fore, no respectable Southern white would allow himself to have any contact with the hated intruders from the North* and this idea was carried to the point of refraining from veiling them food or renting 293 them lodgings. The refusal of both groups to compromise resulted in an impenetrable wall between them, with neither side being willing to discuss the other's views or admit any validity in his position.

Many Southerners, particularly those of the upper classes, were favorable to the idea of Negro education, especially if directed by

native Southerners, When able to do so, these persona often did a great deal to further the cause by donating land, money and buildings to freedmen*s schools. Most of them, however, did not approve of the

fact that the instruction of the Negroes had been pre-empted by

Northern missionary societies working under the auspices of the

Freedmen's Bureau, for they feared that such teaching would result in racial tensions and the eventual alienation of the Negro from his

former master.

Until 1867, opposition to Negro schools and Northern teachers

generally consisted of social ostracism of the teachers, diatribes in

the local newspapers and occasional minor damage to the schools. But

after 1867, the full impact of Congressional Reconstruction began to

be felt throughout the former Confederate States as the Johnson

Governments were abolished and replaced with military districts and

civil courts were superseded by military or Freedmen *s Bureau tribunals.

The overwhelming revulsion and resentment against all that was connoted

with Radical Reconstruction found expression in violent outbreaks

against the Negro schools and teachers. The harassment of teachers, which sometimes took the form of whippings and occasionally led to loss of life, became a common occurrence, as did the wanton burning and pillaging of Negro schoolhouses. The frequency of such activities increased with the tensions surrounding the election of 1868 and declined following the end of the campaign, but violence became m .« common as the strength of the Ku KLux KLan became noticeable in the period after 1869* Violations against the freedmen's schools and teachers continued into the later years of Reconstruction and were most evident in the frontier areas of the South, such as Northern

Louisiana*

Generally speaking, however, most Southern whites became more passive toward Negro education as the activities of the benevolent societies were taken over by the states and the freedmen's schools were incorporated into the state systems which were reorganized after 1867•

Many Southerners were now ready to admit the necessity of educating the Negro in order to promote the general well being of the region and prepare him for the responsibilities of citizenship, but they were adamant that this education take place in institutions distinct from those attended by the white children. In the controversy which ensued over integration, there was none of the diversity of opinion among the whites that had existed with regard to Negro education. Almost to a man, they insisted upon separate facilities, and their stand on this 295 question was frequently upheld by large segments of the Negro population, who preferred segregated instruction to none at all*

When a policy of integration was enforced, as in the public schools of

Louisiana or at the University of South Carolina, the result was a virtual boycott of the system by the white population of the state, and, in the case of the University, the eventual ruin of the institution*

The feeling of opposition to integration was not confined to

Southern circles alone, as was evidenced by the four-year struggle over Sumner’s Civil Rights Bill* Many Northern and Western congressmen felt just as strongly about the inclusion of a school proviso as did the Southerners, and it was the amendment of a Connecticut representative which resulted in the omission of the clause from the bill* Also active in behalf of the preservation of segregated educational facilities in the South were the Trustees of the Peabody Fund, represented by their

General Agent, Barnas Sears. Sears was instrumental in convincing key

Northern political leaders that if the Civil Rigits Bill passed containing a provision for the enforcement of mixed schools, it would result in the destruction of the Southern public education systems and would be the most detrimental to the group it was intended to aid - the Southern Negroes.

From the bitter and acrimonious controversies that have been discussed in the preceding pages, there emerge two positive factors* the focal point of the conflict, the Southern Negro, did begin to secure the rudiments of an education, first under private auspices, implemented by the efforts of the federal government, and then under state supervision. The public school systems of certain Southern

States, although nearly obliterated by racial tensions and political conflicts, did survive, and by the 1890's were far stronger than their ante-bellum counterparts. The Reconstruction Period is usually regarded as an era of tragedy and retrogression for the South, but public education was one of the few areas in which positive and lasting achievements were made that have endured to this day. BIBLIOGRAPHY

MANUSCRIPTS

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The Curry Manuscripts (Microfilm), Library of Congress

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PRINTED CORRESPONDENCE, DIARIES, MEMOIRS AND CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS

Ames, Mary. From A New England Woman' 3 Diary in Dixie in 1865. SpringfieldJ Mass.,1906.

Botume, Elizabeth. First Days Among the Cbntrabands. Boston, 1893.

Campbell, Sir George. White and Black, The Outcome of a Visit to the United States. London, 1879.

Child, Lydia Maria. The Freedmen's Book. Boston, 1865.

Eaton, John. "The Relation of the National Government to Public Education," The American Normal School and the National Teachers' Associations, Addresses and Journal of Proceedings, (1871), hS-k8.

French, Mrs. A.M. Slavery in South Carolina and the Ex-Slaves, or, The Port Royal Mission. Nfew York, 1(J62.

Green, Samuel S. "The Educational Duties of the Hour," National Teachers' Association, Journal of Proceedings and Lectures (1865), 230-2L3.

Haviland, Laura S. A Woman's Life Work, Labors and Experiences of Laura S. rfaviland. Cincinnati, 1881.

Howard, Oliver Otis. Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, II. New York, 1908.

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Howard, Oliver Otis. "Education in the South," The National Educational Associations, Proceedings of the National Educational Associations (1869), 8-10.

King, Edward. "The Great South," Scribner's Monthly, VIII (June, 187U), 129-160*

King, Edward. The Southern States of North America. London, 1875*

Nordhoff, Charles. 3he Cotton States in the Spring and Sumner of 187$. New York, 1876.

Pearson, Elizabeth Ware, ed. Letters from Port Royal, Written at the Time of the Civil War. Boston, 19 06.

Pierce, Edward L. "The Freedmen at Port Royal," Atlantic Monthly, XII (Sept., 1863), 291-315.

Pike, James L. The Prostate State, South Carolina Under Negro Government. New York, lB7U.

Porter, A. Toomer. Led Oni Step by Step .... New York, 1899.

Rickoff, Andrew J. "A National Bureau of Education," National Teachers' Association, Journal of Proceedings and Lectures. Hartford, 1865.

/sears, BarnagT* "Mixed Schools in the South," The Atlantic Monthly, XXXIV, 203 (Sept., 187U), 379-383.

Slaughter, Linda W. The Freedmen of the South. Cincinnati, 1869.

Somers, Robert. The Southern States Since the War, 1870-71. London, 1871.

Steams, Charles. The Black Man of the South and the Rebels. New York, 1872.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. "The Education of the Freedmen," North American Review. GXXVII (June, 1879), 6o5-6l5.

Sumner, Charles. Charles Sumner, His Complete Works (no editor given), XX. Boston, 1900.

Towne, Laura M. Letters and Diary of Laura M. Towne, Rupert S. Holland, ed. Cambridge, 1912. 299

Walker, Susan# ‘‘Journal of Miss Susan Walker," Henry N, Sherwood, ed., Quarterly Publication o f the Historical and Philisophical Society of Qhioj VII, 1 (Jan*-March, 1912).

Warmoth, Henry C« War, Politics and Stoimy Days in Louisiana# New Y 0rk, 1930.

Wickersham, J. P# "Education as an Element in Reconstruction," National Teachers* Association, Journal of Proceedings and Lectures. Hartford, 186£.

Wilson, Henry# Anti-Slavery Measures of the 37th and 38th United States Congresses'. Boston, lb&j?7

Wilson, Louis R# ed# Selected Papers of Cornelia Phillips Spencer# Chapel Hill, 1 9 % T *

NEWSPAPERS

The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, Ga.)#

Baltimore Gazette (Baltimore, Md.)#

The Charleston Daily Courier (Charleston, S.C.),

Daily Chronicle and Sentinel (Augusta, Ga#)#

The Daily Enquirer and Examiner (Richmond, Va.).

The Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago, 111.).

The Daily Morning Chronicle (Washington, D.C.).

The Morning News (Savannah, Ga.).

The New York Daily Tribune (New York, N.Y.).

New York Tjmes (New York, N.Y#)#

The New York Herald (New York, N.Y.)#

The News and Courier (Charleston, S.C.),

The Picayune (New Orleans, La.).

The Republican (Nashville, Tenn.)#

Richmond Daily Dispatch (Richmond, Va.). 300

The Richmond Enquirer (Richmond, Va.).

The Richmond Times (Richmond, Va.).

The Washington Chronicle (Washington, D.C.)*

CONTEMPORART PERIODICALS

The American Freedman. I-III (1866-68)•

The American Missionary, X-XIV (1866-70)*

De Bow's Review, /hew Series^ I-VII (1866-70)*

The Freedman's Record, II-IV (1866-70)*

Land We Love, A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Literature, Military HistoryT and Agriculture, I-VI (1866-6 9)*

The Nation (1865-77)*

The National Freedman, I-II (1865-66)*

National Teachers1 Association, Journal of Proceedings and Lectures (1865-69)• ' ------

The m Century, I (1869).

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MATERIALS

Alvord, J.W. Semi Annual Report on Schools for Freedmen, 1866-70, Washington, tLfl., 1866-70.

Poore, Benjamin Perley. The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters and Other Organic taws o £ the United 'States* Washington, D,(S., l'BVo*

Report of the Commissioner of Education, Washington, D.C., 1867-98.

U.S., Congress, House, Charges Against General 0 . 0 . Howard, ijlst Cong., 2d Sess. (i860), House Report No. 121* 3ca

U.S., Congress, House, Condition of the Sputh, l*3d Cong,, 2d Sess# (1876-75)* H0use Report No. 26l.

U.S., Congress, H 0use, Freedmen1s Bureau, 39th Cong., 1 s t -Sess. (1865-66), House Exec. Doc. No. 70.

U.S., Congress, House, The New Orleans Rjots, 39th Cong,, 2d Sess. (1866-67), House Iteport No. 16,

U.S., Congress,-House, Report of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and ^andoned Lands, 3^tTT‘C6ng., 1st Sess. (1665-6 6), House Exec. £)oc. !No . 11.

U.S., Congress, House, Report of the Cqnmdssioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and. JEandoiiea Lands, 6lst Cong., 2d Sess. (1869-f0), House Exec. Doc. No. l62*

U.S., Congress, House, Report of the Jpint Select Committee Appointed to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the late Insurrectionary States so far as regards the Execution of the liiaws, and the Safety of the Lives and Property of the Citizens of the United States and Testimony iaken,62d Cong., 2d Sess. 11871-72), Report No.~2?.

U.S., Congress, House, Resolutions of the Legislature of Sputh Carolina, 63d Cong., 1st Sess. (l673-76), House Misc. Doc. N0. 111.

U.S., Congress, House, Resolutions of the Virginia Legislature, 63d Cong., 1st Sess. (1&73-7HJ j House Misc., Doc. No. 6o.

U.S., Congress, Hcuse, Testimony T a k e n by the Select Committee to Investigate the Condition of^Lffairs in the State of Louisiana, 626 Cong., 2d Sess. (1671-75)* House Doc. No. UT,

U.S., Congress, Senate, Reports of the Assistant Commissioners of the Freedmen1s Bureau, 39th Cong., 1st Sess, (1865-66), Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 27.

U.S., Congress, Senate, Report of Carl Schurz on the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, 39th Cong., 1st SessT (1865-66), Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 2.

U.S., Congressional Directory, 1870-75* 302;

U.S., Congressional Globe, 1867-73*

U.S., Congressional Record, 1873-75*

U.S., Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United~5tates, CIX (October, 18837* Washington, 1892*

U.S., Statutes at Large. 1862-75*

STATE GOVERNMENT MATERIALS

Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas, 1873#

Acts and Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of Georgia, 1870, 187£.

Acts of the General Assembly of the State of SQuth Carolina, 1868-73*

Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Virginia, 1869-70*

Apts of the Sessions of July, September and November, 1868, of the General Assembly of Alabama ....

Acts Passed by the General Assembly of the State of Louisiana, I55?-7o.------

Annual Report of the State Superintendent of Public Education ... to the Tieneral AssemEIy of Louisiana, 1 o67-75> f&77.

The Code of the State of Georgia, 1873*

Constitution and Revised Laws of Louisiana, 190li.

Constitution of the State of North Carolina, Together with the Ordinances and Resolutions of the^ 'Constitutional Convention, i b s b ;

A Digest of the Laws of the State of Florida (from 1822 to 11 March, l8HX).

Fourth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, for tne Yearendjng August 31* Ibjk ^Virginiay, 18?!;. 303

Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of N0rth Carolina at its Session"of 1^68 ."

Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of North Carolina""Held in l87j?«

Laws of the State of Mississippi! 1870, 1873*

Official Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Xlabana hel3 in the Cjty of Montgomery, Commencing on Tuesday, NpvemberTth, A.fiT, Id&f1

Proceedings of the Cpnstitutional Convention of Sputh Carolina, 1868,

Public Laws of the State of North Carolina., 1868-69,

Reports and, Resolutions of the General Assembly of the State of S outh~"Carolina, ~l!359-7i? /Containing the Reports of the State Superintendent of RaucationJ',

Report of the Superintendent of iUblic Instruction for the State of ITorjda, 1869-73.

Report IB7U-72T*of the Superintendent of Public Instruction u/^orth Carolina/,

ARTICLES

Bickel, Alexander, M, "The Original Understanding and the Segregation Decision," Harvard Law Review, LXIX, 1 (Nov., 19$$), 1-65.

Boyd, William K, "Some Phases of Educational History in the South Since 1865," Studies in Southern History and Politics, 259-87 (New Y0rk, 19lHJ.

Haygood, Atticus G, "The South and the School Problem," Harper’s Monthly, LXXEX (July, 1889), 225-231.

Jackson, Luther P, "The Educational Efforts of the Freedmen1s Bureau and the Freedmen’s Aid Societies in South Carolina, 1862-72," Journal of Negro History, VIII (1923), 1-1*0.

Knight, Edgar W, "Reconstruction and Education in Virginia," The South Atlantic Quarterly, XV, No. 1-2 (January, April, 19X67T25-dO, 1^7-7ul 30k

Mayo, Amory D, "The Final Establishment of the American Common School System in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, 1863-1900," Report of the Commissioner of Education (1903-Oi*), Part I,T99^1090i

Mayo, Amory D, "The Work of Certain Northern Churches in the Education of the Freedmen, 1861-1900," Report of the Commissioner of Education (1901-02), Part I, 2B5-3llu

Webster, Laura J. "The Operations of the Freedmen's Bureau in South Carolina," The Shiith College Studies in History, I (October, 1915-July, 1916), 67-163.

GENERAL WORKS

Alderman, Edwin A*, and Gordon, Armistead C. J.L.M. Curry, A Biography, New fork, 1911,

Battle, Kemp P, History of the University of North Carolina, I-II. Raleigh, N.C., 1911.

Bentley, George R. A History of the Freedmen's Bureau, Philadelphia, 1 9 5 5 . ------

Bond, Horace M. The Education of the Negro in the American Social Order. New York, 1931+.

______« Negro Education in Alabama, A Study in Cotton and Steel. Washington, 6.C., 1939*

Brown, William H. The Education and Economic Development of the Negro in Virginia! Charlottesville, Va,, 192J.

Buck, Paul H. The Road to Reunion, Boston, 1937.

Bush, George G. History of Education in Florida. Washington, 1889.

Chamberlain, Hope S. Old Days in Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill, 1926.

Clark, Willis G. History of Education in Alabama, 1702-1889. Washington, D. C., lB59.

Coulter, E, Merton. A Short History of Georgia. Chapel Hill, 1933. 30$

Coulter, E. Merton, The South During Reconstruction, l86$-l877» Baton Royge, 1947. — — — —

Curry, Jabez L.M. A Brief Sketch of George Peabody and a History of the Peabody Education Fund Through Thirty Years, Cambridge, m S r r i m : ------

Dabney, Charles W. Universal Education in the South, I-II, Chapel Hill, 1936,

Dabney, Lillian, The History of Schools for Negroes in the District of Columbia, 1807-1947. Washington, D.C., 1949*

Davis, William W, The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, New York, 1913.

Du Bois, W, E. Burghardt. Black Reconstruction. New York, 193$,

Eby, Frederick. The Development of Education in Texas. New York, 192$.

Eckenrode, Hamilton J, The Political History of Virginia During Reconstruction. Baltimore, 190lu

Farish, Hunter D. The Circuit Rider Dismounts, A Social History of Southern Methodism, l86$-190Ch Richmond, 1938.

Fay, Edwin W. History of Education in Louisiana. Washington, D.C., 1898.

Ficklen, John R. History of Reconstruction in Louisiana, Baltimore, 1910.

Fleming, Walter L. The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. New York, 190$.

• Louisiana State University, 1860-1896. Baton Rouge, 1936.

Garner, James W. Reconstruction in Mississippi. New York, 1901.

Hamilton, J.G. de Roulhac. Reconstruction in North Carolina. New York, 1914.

Hanaford, Phebe Ann. Ihe Life of George Peabady. Boston, 1870. 306

Harris, Robert J. The Quest For Equality. Baton Rouge, I960.

Harris, T.H. The Story of Public Education in Louisiana. New Qr l e a n s 7 T 9 5 5 T ^ ------

Hart, Albert B. The Southern South. New York, 1912.

Heatwole, Cornelius J. A History of Education in Virginia. New York, 1916.

Henry, Robert S. The Story of Reconstruction. Indianapolis, 1938.

Hollis, Daniel W. University of South Carolina, II. Columbia, S.C., 1956.

Horn, Stanley F. The Invisible Enpire, The Story of the Ku KLux KLan, 1866-71. Boston, 1939.

Hovey, Alvah. Barnas Sears - A Christian Educator. New York, 1902.

Hyatt, Oscar W, The Development of Secondary Education in Alabama. Nashville, 1933.

Jones, Charles E. Education in Georgia. Washington, D.C., 1889.

Knight, Edgar W. The Influence of Reconstruction on Education in the South. New York, 1913.

_ • Public Education in the South. Boston, 1922.

_ • Public School Education in North Carolina. Boston, 1916.

Lane, John J. History of Education in Texas. Washington, D.C., 1903.

Lonn, Ella. Reconstruction in Louisiana after 1868. New York, 1918.

Mayes, Edward. History of Education in Mississippi. Washington, D.C.,

Mayo, Amory D. Southern Women in the Recent Educational Movement in the South! Washington, D.C., 1892,

Meriweather, Colyer. History of Higher Education in South Carolina, Washington, D.C., 1899.

Merrimam, Lucius S. Higher Education in Tennessee. Washington. D.C. 1893. 307

Morton, Richard L. History of Virginia, III. Chicago, 1921*.

Noble, Marcus C.S. Public Schools of North Carolina. Chapel Hill, 1930.

Noble, Stuart G. Forty Years of the Public Schools in Mississippi. New York, 1918.

Orr, Dorothy. A History of Education in Georgia. Chapel Hill, 19J>0.

Patton, Janes W. Unionism and Reconstruction in Tennessee, 1860-69. Chapel Hill, 1931*.

Peirce, Paul S. The Rreedmen's Bureau. Iowa City, Iowa, 1901*.

Pierce, Truman M. and others. White and Negro Schools in the South, An Analysis of Bi-Racial Elducation. Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 19S£T“^

Ramsdell, Charles W. Reconstruction in Texas. New York, 1910.

Reynolds, John S. Reconstruction in South Carolina, 1865-1877. Columbia, S.C., 1905.

Rice, Jessie P. J.L.M. Curry, Southern Statesman and Educator. New York, 19l$.

Russell, Phillips. The Woman Who Rang the Bell, the Story of Cornelia Phillips Spencer. Chapel Hill, 191*9.

Shinn, Josiah H. History of Education in Arkansas. Washington, D.C., 1900.

Sirakins, Francis B., and Woody, Robert H. South Carolina During Reconstruction. Chapel Hill, 1932.

Staples, Thomas S. Reconstruction in Arkansas, 1862-1871*. New York. 1923.

Stephenson, Gilbert T. Race Distinctions in American Law. New York, 1910.

Swint, Henry L. The Northern Teacher in the South, 1862-1870* Nashville, 191*1.

Taylor, Alrutheus A. The Negro in Tennessee, 1865-1880. Washington. D.C., 1910. ------308

Taylor, Hoy, An Interpre tat Ion of the Early Administration of the Peabody~Fund. Nashville, 19557

Thompson, E. Bruce, Mathew Hale Carpenter, Webater of the West, Madison, Wise,, 1954*

Thornbrough, Emma Lou, The Negro in Indiana, A Study of Minority, Indianapolis, 1957* ~

Washington, Booker T, Education of the Negro, New York, 1910,

Weeks, Stephen B, History of Public School Education in Alabama, Washington, B.C., 19l5*

OTHER WORKS

The American Annual Cyclopaedia.

Bonar, Francis E. "The Civil Rights Act of 1875" (unpublished Master's thesis, Dept, of History, The Ohio State University, 1940),

Dictionary of American Biography, 1932 edition.

Erickson, Leonard P. "The Color Line in Ohio Public Schools, 1829- 1890" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Dept, of History, The Ohio State University, 1959)*

Fleming, Walter L. A Documentary History of Reconstruction, Political Military, Social, Religious, Educational and Industrial, 1&65 to the Present Time, II. Cleveland, 190^-07.

National Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

Proceedings of the Board of Trustees of the Peabody Education Fund, ------rZT85F-73T irZT87H-Fi7r Boston, 18757 81* AUTOBIOGRAPHY

I, William Preston Vaughn, was born in Whiting, Indiana,

May 28, 1933* I received iqy secondary-school education in the public schools of Chicago, Illinois, and ngr undergraduate training at Knox College and the University of Missouri, which granted me the

Bachelor of Arts degree in 1955. I was awarded the degree of

Master of Arts from The Ohio State University in 1956. While in residence there, I was a Graduate Assistant in the Department of

History, During the years 1958-1960, I also held an assistantship in the Department of History at The Ohio State University* In

June, I960, I was appointed a University Fellow and held this position through June, 1961, while completing the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree.

309