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[newspaper clipping:] dead-lock.
THE FREEDMEN'S SCHOOLS.
An ignorant class is a dangerous class in a republic. If the Union is to last, and if popular government is to be successful with us, we must educate all the people. When we help to establish a school, we serve not only those whose children are taught in it, but ourselves and our own posterity.
It is not mere charity, therefore, to give money for the support of schools for the freedmen ; it is rather money lent out at interest— money for which we and our children may expect a return, in peace, liberty, security, good government. Elsewhere we give some space to a most interesting account of the schools for freedmen in the southern states, a large proportion of which are supported by the Freedmen's and Union Commission. The New York branch of this society is just now asking money of our citizens, and we recommend it to the readers of the EVENING POST as the most important and the most worthy charity--if it is a charity--likely to appeal to them.
The number of schools included in the inspection and report of Mr. Alvord is 975, contained in fifteen states [illegible] umbia. These schools have 90,998 [illegible] structed by 1,405 teachers. For so large a field the force is small ; it might be doubled, and yet would be incapable of doing all the work required. But we learn that even to continue the schools now in operation, large contributions are immediately required by the Commission. We trust all to whom their agent, Rev. W. E. Hawkins, makes application, will help on the good cause of educating the men, women and children so lately slaves.
To maintain the schools in South Carolina during the year, has cost eight dollars for each pupil. We suppose the cost is about the same elsewhere. That is to say, the sum of eight dollars will secure a year's schooling to a child in one of the southern states, under the auspices of the Freedmen's and Union Commission. Here is an opportunity for churches, Sunday schools, and other societies and orgainzations to work in a definite and satisfactory manner. The children of a Sunday school in the North may support a teacher, maintain a Freedmen's school, or supply several teachers for a district, in the South. For every eight dollars subscribed, a boy or girl in some southern state will have the benefit of a year's schooling.
That the freedmen feel the advantages of education, is shown in many parts of Mr. Alvord's report. In all the states the colored people support schools of their own ; and only their poverty prevents them from more generally doing this. In Georgia, during six months, the number of pupils in the schools has doubled ; and three thousand now read who six months ago scarcely knew the alphabet. In Mobile there is an excellent graded school for the freedmen. In South Carolina twelve thousand colored children are now receiving a thorough common school education. The percentage of attendance in the freedmen's schools is large, and shows how eager these people are for education—a fact not surprising, for to them the knowledge of reading and writing is the mark of a superior condition, of a rise in life. According to Mr. Alvord, " in the District of Columbia the daily attendance at the white schools is forty-one per cent., but in the colored schools seventy-five per cent. In the state of New York the daily attendance on the public schools averages forty-three per cent., and reaches its maximum in Boston at ninetythree per cent. ; in the colored schools in the city of Memphis it is seventy-two per cent. ; in Alabama, seventy-nine per cent. ; in Virginia, eighty-two per cent. The schools are rapidly improving in character as well as increasing in number."
All this is very encouraging ; nor is it less so to read that public opinion in the southern states is steadily growing more favorable to negro schools, and the education of the freedmen ; so that southern born men and women are found teaching in the schools, and in some of the states the churches are undertaking the care of Sunday and day schools for the freedmen.
