The Education of Freedmen, part 2 Read online

  The object of Hampton is to raise up a class of intelligent, cultivated workingmen, to produce thoughtful, intelligent farmers, mechanics, and teachers.

  The plan of the Hampton School was suggested by the educational system of the Sandwich Islands, introduced by American missionaries and built up chiefly by the labors of the Rev. Richard Armstrong, D. D., Minister of Public Instruction.

  His son, General Armstrong, the Principal of Hampton, inherits and uses to the very best advantage the stores of his father's practical experience.

  The following is a list of school industries:

  The farm, with bone-grinding, grist-mill, soap-making, blacksmith's shop, butcher's shop, and milk-dairy.

  The Engineer's Department, with knitting-machines, broomshop, shop for iron-work, rag-carpet weaving, and carpenter-shop.

  Girls' Industrial Department, for making and mending garments, and learning to sew by hand and machine.

  Household work, including washing, ironing, table duty, and cooking-lessons for the girls.

  The details for work this year have been as follows:

  Girls. -- Housework, 98; industrial room, 52; knitting-machine, 21; laundry, 24; weaving rag-carpet, 1; cooking, 20; No work has yet been found for day scholars, 32.

  Boys. -- Farm, 91; painter, 1; carpenters, 5; broom-making, 2; steam-engine, 1; bone-mill, 2; shoemakers, 4; janitors, 8; knitting-room, 6; blacksmith, 1; office duty, 3; mail-carrier, 1; greenhouse, 1; waiters, 16; laundry, 5; general duty, 5; employed by teachers, 2; day-scholars on orderly duty, 33.

  Students' earnings have been as follows:

  1875-'76. 101 boys, $5,982.04; 59 girls, $1,647.93; total, $7,629.97.

  1876-'77. 125 boys, $7,440.97; 73 girls, $2,139.56; total, $9,580.53.

  1877-'78. 138 boys, $11,384.97; 87 girls, $3,046.04; total, $14,431.01.

  Average earnings in 1875-'76, boys $59.23 each; girls, $27.92 each.

  Average earnings in 1876-'77, boys, $59.23 each; girls, $29.00 each.

  Average earnings in 1877-'78, boys, $82.50 each; girls, $35.00 each.

  The problem of the school, industrially, is --

  1. To make labor as instructive as possible.

  2. To turn it to the best account.

  By giving each student one and a half or two days of work each week, and four whole days for study (by having a detail of one fifty out each school day, and all or one half on Saturdays), his mental interests do not suffer materially; he is physically better off, is able to pay about one half -- in some cases the whole -- of his personal expenses, is better fitted to take care of himself, and be- comes more of a man.

  Of the results of this school so far, General Armstrong thus speaks in his last report:

  "To the question, 'What becomes of your graduates?' we answer: Not less than ninety per cent. have taught school. We are satisfied that eighty per cent. were teaching last winter, and that the large majority will devote themselves to the good of their people. Those who do not teach are generally working for themselves or others. I know of but few worthless ones. There seems to be no general tendency to relapse from the tone given to their lives at the school. I have observed in many a moral growth after graduation, the reaction of right life upon character. That some will degenerate there can be no doubt; but, after leaving here, the general movement is upward.

  "The little army of Hampton's graduates is becoming a power. For the first time in the school's history they have, this year, an alumni meeting. Their union and mutual sympathy, and their relations with the school, are of great importance. To many, the school is their only home. It is the birthplace of their better life; and they give to it an affection and confidence that create an obligation on our part.

  "This year the newspapers of the school reading-room have, after lying a week on the table, been distributed among graduates in every direction, also quantities of illustrated papers; many have been given by friends of the school for this purpose. They have received much benefit from the State 'Educational Journal' which is sent to them. Next year we intend to have a graduate department; making as complete a record of them as possible, corresponding with each one, supplying good reading matter, of which they are often destitute, thus keeping them in pleasant and close relations with us, and encouraging and cheering them in every possible way. By such moral support they will be stronger, better, safer. Thus will the result of our labor be preserved, and a guild of earnest, high-minded, united, and powerful workers be formed as a nucleus of civilization, a barrier to the mischievous element among their people, and, in connection with a similar class from other institutions, become a basis of hope for the race; they will be civilizers rather than mere pedagogues; the future leaders of their race, and occupy a place not yet taken."

  The institution publishes a paper called "The Southern Workman," which has a large circulation and is a most valuable and efficient means of continuing its good influences over those who have left. Its practical essays on the subject of health, cleanliness, ventilation, drainage, and general hygiene, have been so valuable that a series of them called "Hampton Tracts" have been extensively circulated and recommended in Northern States.

  The printing and press-work is entirely done in the institution, and furnishes one more useful trade for those who are employed in it.

  A similar work to that of Hampton is being done at Claflin University, Orangeburg, South Carolina, and at Talladega College, Alabama, and at Tongaloo University, Mississippi. There is also the beginning of an agricultural department announced in connection with Atlanta University, Georgia, to which the Legislature of the State has made an appropriation of $8,000 per annum.

  The last and most significant item in our review of the tableau of educational effort among the freedmen is the increasingly friendly attitude of most of the Southern States toward this enterprise.

  We have purposely omitted to dwell on those exhibitions of bitterness and violence which often marked the commencement of these educational enterprises at the South. It is due to the intelligent Southerners to admit that such violence proceeded mostly from the uncultivated classes, and that everywhere through the South educated men have been prompt to feel the imperative need of culture for the enfranchised slaves.

  In 1871 the Commissioners appointed by the State of Georgia attended the annual examination at Atlanta University. The report of this Committee, signed by ex-Governor J. E. Brown, thus speaks: "At every step of the examination we were impressed with the fallacy of the popular idea (which, in common with thousands of others, a majority of the undersigned have heretofore entertained) that the members of the African race are not capable of a high grade of intellectual culture. The rigid tests to which the classes in algebra and geometry, and in Latin and Greek, were subjected, unequivocally demonstrated that, under judicious training and with persevering study, there are many members of the African race who can attain a high grade of intellectual culture. They prove that they can master intricate problems in mathematics, and fully comprehend the construction of difficult passages in the classics.

  "Many of the pupils exhibited a degree of mental culture which, considering the length of time their minds have been in training, would do credit to members of any race."

  Dr. Cooke, President of Claflin University, writes us that both Governor Wade Hampton and Mayor H. S. Thomson, State Superintendent of Education in South Carolina, attended their late commencement and addressed words of encouragement to all interested in the advance of the institution. Two appropriations of $7,500 have been made to the institution since Governor Hampton took the chair.

  General Armstrong, of Hampton, remarks on this subject:

  "Our relations with the State of Virginia, as trustee of that part of the land fund devoted to the colored people, have been in all ways satisfactory. Interest has been promptly paid. Throughout the State the feeling is kindly and encouraging to good work for the negro race.

  "During the past ten years there has been a progress in Southern sentiment, in
respect to the negro, readily apparent only to those who can look behind the front presented by politicians and periodicals. Thought, experience, and necessity have pushed out old ideas and pushed up new ones. The change has been, I believe, as great as was possible for human nature under the circumstances, and in time will be so regarded. Other lines than those of race are being drawn. Common sense and common interest are working against deeply seated notions and prejudices that will yield because weak in themselves, and because they do not pay."

  The Hon. Robert M. Lusher, State Superintendent of Education in Louisiana, uses this noble language: "It is with the aid of education alone, finally, that patriots can hope to see the vexed question of the harmonious relation between the two races settled -- with no humiliation to the higher, with no degradation to the humbler. This question is, indeed, one that trenches upon the imminent present. For good or evil, a race equal to the whites -- at least in numbers -- passing suddenly from a condition of slavery to a condition of freedom, continuing and needed to continue in its former home, must assert itself. It should be the duty -- as it is clearly the interest -- of the State to see that that race shall assert itself in knowledge -- not in ignorance; in a loyal understanding of its obligations -- not in a blind disregard of them; in an intelligent participation hereafter in the responsible duties of American citizenship. . . . If the next colored generations, then, are to consist of good citizens, not weak tools for designing politicians, they should be educated. If they are to be conservative American citizens, lending their aid alike to the progress of the State and to the advancement of the public, they should be educated. If they are to make common accord with the whites, only recognizing in the latter the superiority that lies in lineage and in noble memories, indissolubly connected with the history of the world's most exalted civilization; and if they are to work with these, with good heart and earnest endeavor, to a common patriotic end, they must be taught that their State has no preferences, but that, like a kindly mother, she gathers in her tender bosom all the children who owe their existence to her."

  In the State where the author now has a home, Governor Drew, in his first message to the Legislature of Florida, uses this language in relation to the education of the freedmen: "Now that a very large constituent element of our population is released from bondage and intrusted with the power of the ballot, a system of free schools has become a means of self-preservation. To educate the colored race and fit them to exercise the privilege of voting intelligently -- to perform all the sacred duties of freemen, to enjoy their liberty, to become wise and good citizens -- imposes upon us a task to perform, a responsibility from which we can not escape. Then let us set about the work cheerfully."

  The author can bear testimony, so far as personal observation goes, that the government of the State of Florida is administered in this spirit.

  Before coming to the close of this article, one acknowledgment -- one tribute of admiration -- is here due to the agency of a noble man, who, though dead, has been living to a most glorious purpose in this work of Southern reorganization. The Peabody fund, amounting to millions of dollars, has been a constant factor in all the good accomplished. Its agent has administered this delicate and difficult trust with an energy, a wisdom, an impartiality, that lead us to feel that the Father of Lights must have imparted to him divine guidance. In all the reports we have examined we meet everywhere the traces of this noble charity, administered with such timely wisdom as to double the value of every sum contributed. America will long have reason to bless God for the bequest of Peabody, and for the administration of Dr. Sears.

  Thus have we given a very imperfect summary of the lasting results which have followed a great educational enthusiasm -- a great national reconstruction.

  Is not this army of schools and colleges -- this educational impulse pervading society -- a better guarantee for the future than any ignoble party strife?

  And if our national Government should grant to the impoverished Southern States the funds they ask to carry through a universal system of education, would it not be an investment which would yield the nation a thousand-fold in return?

  Class prejudices can not be legislated away, but they can be educated away. This noble system of common schools, colleges, and industrial institutes now rising at the South, if reënforced by national grants, would in a few years regenerate society, and entirely prevent the possibility of such struggles as have lately dishonored the voting-places of the United States.

  Education will bring quiet, refinement, respect for law, respect for the mutual rights of races; and America, where so many races meet and mingle, will be the true millennial ground, where the fatherhood of God is shown in the brotherhood of man.

  H. B. STOWE.

  * These statements are from the report of President Fairchild on Berea College.