Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South by Timothy Thomas Fortune
page 36 of 280 (12%)
page 36 of 280 (12%)
![]() | ![]() |
|
At Large 733
Not accounted for 5,083 Officers 7,122 ------- Grand total 156,242 This gives colored troops enlisted in the States in Rebellion; besides this, there were 92,576 colored troops (included with the white soldiers) in the quotas of the several States. CHAPTER V _Illiteracy--Its Causes_ At the close of the rebellion there were in the Union (according to the census of 1860) 4,441,830 people of African origin; in 1880 they had increased to 6,580,793. Of this vast multitude in 1860, it is safe to say, not so many as one in every ten thousand could read or write. They had been doomed by the most stringent laws to a long night of mental darkness. It was a crime to teach a black man how to read even the Bible, the sacred repository of the laws that must light the pathway of man from death unto life eternal. For to teach a slave was to make a firebrand--to arouse that love of freedom which stops at nothing short of absolute freedom. It is not, therefore, surprising that every southern state should have passed the most odious inhibitary laws, with severe fines and penalties for their infraction, |
|