New National Era

The growth and prosperity of the Southern States are at this time largely dependent upon a speedy supply of the demand for skilled, intelligent labor, and the material from which such supply is to be created must be drawn from the ranks of the ex-slaves.

South of Mason and Dixon's line there are to-day few men who are not ready to assent to such a proposition as this, and who, furthermore, are not so rapidly outgrowing their old prejudices as to desire to see the education of the freedmen advanced by every reasonable means. As a matter of fact, the large majority of the better class of Southern whites are so entirely converted to these views as to make unnecessary the fear of any permanent organized opposition on their part, and to give fair opportunity for testing the capacity of the negro to receive such mental training as is needed to fit him for citizenship in its best and broadest sense.

Undeniably it is this last-named aspect of the question which presents most difficulty and is calling most loudly for attention of Northern economists and philanthropists. That the average negro is capable of receiving an average education is to many minds very far from an ascertained fact; and, even granting such capacity, the problem remains of how such education may be given, in the present chaotic state of Southern society.

Now there is but one source from which we can draw authentic information and trustworthy opinion upon this matter; and that source is the testimony given by those pioneers who, from one motive or another, have since the emancipation of the blacks devoted themselves to obtaining a practical solution of this complicated question. The men and women who went down from the North, and through the trying years following upon the war made common cause with the freedmen, have surely earned a hearing from their fellowmen and women, and may offer their witness without fear of being called fanatical or unbalanced. The romance of slavery died out long ago. The negro whom we meet to-day is not idealized by the glamour of any sentiment, but must stand to be judged, even by his best friends, with an equal judgment to that which is meted to other men; and the reports of the various schools for colored people which have been established in the Southern States offer to the Northern public as fair a statement of the needs and possibilities of the African race as it is in the power of facts and figures to give.

One of the largest and most thorough of these schools—that established at Hampton, Virginia, in 1868—has published this year two official reports, presented respectively to the Legislatures of North Carolina and Virginia, which cover very satisfactorily the ground under discussion. Gen. Armstrong, the Principal of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, has had a valuable experience among the freedmen; and the school, which owed its existence in the first instance to Northern energy and philanthropy, shows a remarkably successful record.

Its officers have adopted a manual labor system, which has so far worked admirably; for the students go out from their many-sided training ready for the varied work which lies before them. The labor which they perform is paid for by the institution, and they are thus to some extent assisted in defraying their own expenses; but it is not intended that the school should be self-supporting, for education is rightly considered of more importance than production, and the best education of the present day is confessedly not that which directly pays for itself. The system seems to be peculiarly advantageous for the race; for, while the vanity which is one of their prominent weaknesses is fostered by a showy education, their best and truest interests are forwarded only by a training which takes into account the fact that they are in the main to form the working class of the South.

The eagerness of the younger freedmen to take advantage of the opportunity offered them is demonstrated by the rapid increase in the applications for admission, the thirty students who began with the first year having multiplied themselves into two hundred and thirteen for the present term, a number which, according to the report from which we quote, "could easily have been raised to two hundred and seventy-five had the dormitories afforded sufficient accommodation for such rapid growth." The teachers in the school have no hesitation in saying that they consider the ability of the average negro to learn, under the usual conditions, all that is set before him, to be indisputable. "Where he does not learn," says the Principal, "it is simply because he will not;" and such indisposition is apparently very rare, for most of the graduates of Hampton are able to exhibit an immediate return for the education they have received, and on leaving the school utilize their attainments in a practical and satisfactory manner. The State of Virginia has bestowed one-third of the land scrip at her disposal upon Hampton, in its capacity as an agricultural college, and this public acknowledgment of the usefulness of the school ought to stand it in good stead with its Northern friends, to whom it is still obliged to look for the funds necessary to complete a system of buildings destined to be the finest south of Washington.

The value of such an institution as this to the whole Southern people seems to be beyond a doubt; for it is practically settling, in the person of every graduate it sends forth, the two vexed questions of the ability of the negro to receive education and the possibility of supplying the Southern market with skilled labor from native sources. The history of the school from its establishment is worthy of careful examination; for it represents not alone the success of individual effort, but, what is of far greater importance, the success of a principle, and the benefits which will arise from the following up of such effort as is here indicated are likely to affect the life of the whole nation.

It seems like beginning at the top, as Herodotus says the Egyptians did in building their pyramids, to establish a complete system of normal schools and colleges, like those at Hampton, Nashville, Atlanta, Macon, Mobile, and New Orleans, before perfecting a primary system; but the first necessity of education is teachers. Congress will do well to provide for public schools in the South by the sale of public lands; but the teachers of the negro everywhere must first receive their education in these higher institutions, and except as they are thus provided, it will be hard to secure them. These colleges must be sustained by Northern aid, and we feel no little pride in one which, like this at Hampton, teaches its pupils that the negro, when he learns to read and cipher, is not too much like a white man to work with his hands.—N. Y. Independent.