money. It forgot the many brave and patriotic men who enlisted because
they held the Union to be one and indissoluble, and were willing to
sacrifice their lives to make it so, and around whom a willing and
grateful government threw its protecting arms. And it confused those
deserving citizens with the unworthy many, whom pension agents and
office seekers had debauched at the expense of the Nation. Then, too,
the South remembered that one of the immediate results of emancipation
was that millions of ignorant and indigent people were thrown upon the
charity and protection of the Southern people, to care for and to
educate. In some states sixty per cent, of the population were negroes,
and they were as helpless as children and proved a heavy burden upon the
forty per cent, of whites.

In rural populations more schoolhouses had to be maintained, and more
teachers employed for the number taught, and the percentage of children
per capita was larger than in cities. Then, of necessity, separate
schools had to be maintained. So, altogether, the load was a heavy one
for an impoverished people to carry.

The humane, the wise, the patriotic thing to have done, was for the
Nation to have assumed the responsibility of the education of the
negroes for at least one generation.

What a contrast we see in England's treatment of the Boers. After a long
and bloody war, which drew heavily upon the lives and treasures of the
Nation, England's first act was to make an enormous grant to the
conquered Boers, that they might have every facility to regain their
shattered fortunes, and bring order and prosperity to their distracted
land.