Education of the Freedmen
"The Freedmen,"
said our martyr President, "are the Wards of the Nation." "Yes,"
replied Mr. Stanton, "Ward in Chancery." What is our duty to them as their
guardians? Clearly, to clothe them if they are naked; to teach them if they are ignorant;
to nurse them if they are sick, and to adopt them if they are homeless and motherless.
They have been slaves, war made them freedmen, and peace must make them freemen. They must
be shielded from unjust laws and unkindly prejudices; they must be instructed in the true
principles of social order and democratic government; they must be prepared to take their
place by-and-by in the great army of voters as lately they filled up the ranks in the
great army of fighters. The superstitions, the vices, the unthriftiness, the loitering and
indolent habits which slavery foisted on the whites and blacks alike, who were cursed by
its presence in their midst, must be dispelled and supplanted by all the traits and
virtues of a truly Christian civilization.The North, that liberated the slave, has not been remiss in its
duty to the freedman. The common school has kept step to the music of the advancing army.
Willson’s Readers have followed Grant’s soldiers everywhere. Many of the colored
troops on the march had primers in their boxes and primers in their pockets. They were
namesakes, but not of the same family. Charleston had not been captured more than a week
before the schools for freedmen and poor whites were opened there. It is proposed now to
educate all the negroes and poor whites in the South - as a political necessity; in order
that henceforth there may be no other insurrections, the result of ignorance, either on
the part of the late slave or that late slaveholder. Ignorance has cost us too much to be
suffered to disturb us again. In free countries it is not the intelligent but the ignorant
who rebel. Ambitious men could never induce an enlightened people to overthrow a free
Government. It was because there were over 600,000 white adults in the slave States, and
4,000,000 of slaves who could neither read nor write, that Davis and Toombs and Slidell
had power to raise armies against the nation. Let us prevent all social upheavals in the
future by educating all men now.
The National Freedmen’s Relief
Association of New York - of which Francis George Shaw is President and Joseph B. Collins
Treasurer - has been the most active of the agencies in relieving the wants and dispelling
the ignorance of the freedman. It has expended during the last four years three quarters
of a million of dollars in clothing the naked; in establishing the freedmen on farms; in
supplying them with tools; in founding orphan homes; in distributing school-books and
establishing schools. They have over two hundred teachers in the South at this time. They
support orphan homes in Florida and South Carolina. They teach ten thousand children, and
large numbers of adults. They have instituted industrial schools to educate the negro
women to be thrifty housewives. They are continually laboring, in brief, to make the
negroes self-reliant and self-supporting. They appeal for additional aid. There are but a
thousand teachers for freedmen in all the Southern States; whereas twenty thousand could
find immediate employment. The National Relief Association could find pupils for 5000. It
has but 200. As the work is a good and great one, and as the officers of this Society are
eminent citizens of New York, we heartily commend their appeal to the generosity of our
readers.
Articles Relating to Johnson's First Vetoes:
A Long Step
Forward
January 27, 1866, page 50
Congress
February 10, 1866, page 83
Education of the
Freedmen
February 10, 1866, page 83
The Veto Message
March 3, 1866, page 130
The Freedmen’s
Bureau
March 10, 1866, page 146
The President’s Speech
March 10, 1866, page 147
The Political
Situation
April 14, 1866, page 226
The Civil Rights
Bill
April 14, 1866, page 226
The Civil Rights
Bill
April 21, 1866, page 243
The Congressional
Plan of Reorganization
May 12, 1866, page 290
The Trial of the
Government
May 26, 1866, page 322
Making Treason
Odious
June 2, 1866, page 338
The Final Report of
the Reconstruction Committee
June 23, 1866, page 387
The Report of the
Congressional Committee
June 23, 1866, page 386
The Case Stated
August 4, 1866, page 482
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