common profession of the more vigorous white men. This calling demanded certain material opportunities, and certain masterful traits of character that were cultivated and transmitted from father to son. When the lands in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia became exhausted, as soon they did under severe and uneconomical methods, the more vigorous planters, with their negro laborers, sought fresh and fertile lands newly vacated by the Indians in the states south and west. Negro labor then as now was concentrated on the best agricultural lands in these states. The poorer whites were largely left in the worn out sections of the Atlantic slope, or were stranded in the coves of the Appalachian Mountains, or settled on the more undesirable and cheaper lands in the regions further south. This distribution and segregation of population, due mainly to economic causes, left certain classes of whites at a disadvantage as to schools and educational opportunity in the Southern states as in other states. In towns, in rural communities which were prosperous, children of the poor, under the provisions existing, shared in the school privileges which were maintained by those who had means. Out of the diverse and varied opportunities and means for the training of the youth of the Southern states before the war were developed a people who were foremost in the American Revolution, who were pioneers in seizing the opportunities for the enlargement of the nation in the west and southwest, who subdued the wilderness from the Atlantic to the Ohio and Mississippi and beyond, who were leaders in the councils of the nation, and who, in the defense of their rights under the constitution, showed in the conflict of 1861-65 a heroism, endurance and military skill that remains the wonder of the ages, and is an exhibition of the character and achievement of a people only rivalled by the fortitude and heroic endeavor with which the survivors and their descendants undertook to repair the ravages and consequences of that conflict. These results were potential in, and were made possible by, the education and the intellectual and religious life of the Southern people before the war. BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Adams, Herbert B. (ed.): Contributions to American Educational History, published by the United States Bureau of Education in the form of monographs, No. I on the "College of William and Mary," No. II, "Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia," and others of the series on the history of education in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and the other Southern states. Reference to authorities in these cover all sources of in formation. ROBERT BURWELL FULTON, Superintendent The Miller School, Virginia; formerly CHAPTER III. EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH SINCE THE WAR. T is impossible to understand economic and social movements in the South since the War between the States, and especially the spirit informing educational progress, unless we recall the dominant forces in the Nineteenth century and the South's relation to them. A brief historical retrospect becomes therefore necessary in order to appreciate the serious task which the school in the South is set to do. In the Atlantic Ocean yonder there is only one Gulf current, but in the Nineteenth century there were three such currents. These streams of tend ency are as traceable, as measurable, and as potent in their influence as that resistless river in the sea. What, now, were these three tendencies in the Nineteenth century? I. The Liberal Tendency. The liberal tendency of that age was both the strongest and the most easily discernible. The French Revolution, which ushered in our age, was a frenzy for freedom. Before the onrush of its emancipating spirit there went down in irretrievable ruin the absolutist governments which had so long held in bondage the continent of Europe. Stein's memorable edict of Oct. 9, 1807, abolishing serfdom in Prussia, is not so much an achievement of individual genius as the concrete expression of the difference between the old and new social order. Other countries followed perforce, Mexico liberating her slaves in 1827, England in 1833, and even Russia freeing her serfs in 1861. The odious distinctions of feudalism, with the obsolete privileges of the aristocrat, were one after another swept away; equality for all before the law was established; liberal constitutions were wrested from autocratic rulers; the press was unmuzzled; labor was unshackled; in a word, democracy replaced despotism. It is pleasing to recall that it was our fathers of 1776 who intoned the dominant note of that creative century. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence was the prelude to the French Revolution with all of its liberalizing influences. II. The National Tendency. The national tendency in that period was hardly less insistent than the liberal. The two forces, the liberal and the national, though separable, were usually found working in unison. Nationality is to a people what personality is to a man. The desire of each race to set up housekeeping for itself, to live Vol. 10-14 under its own vine and fig tree, to feel the full force of the spirit of kinship in its unifying effect, to attain to conscious racial solidarity-this intense and spontaneous yearning for nationality was to transform the map of Europe within a brief time. We can note only the results. Heroic Greece led off in 1829; Belgium succeeded the following year, Holland being individualized at the same time; Italy and Germany achieved their nationality in 1870; eight years thereafter Roumania, Servia and Montenegro reached the same goal, while only yesterday Norway and Bulgaria were nationalized. Even the failures of Poland, Ireland, Hungary and Bohemia, despite heroic struggles to form nations, go to show the drift of events. The stars in their courses fight for progress. Nationality has shown itself an electric spirit. III. The Industrial Tendency. The industrial tendency of that era was also marked. Invention kept pace with liberty and nationality. On Jan. 5, 1769, James Watt announced his patent "for a method of lessening the consumption of steam and fuel in fire engines"; and this fact may be regarded as the natal day of the Industrial Revolution. England leaped to the fore in manufacturing enterprise, starting the transition in all progressive countries from the exclusively agricultural to the industrial status. That same year, 1769, Arkwright's "frame" superseded the spinning-jenny. In 1787 a Kentish clergyman devised the powerloom. Six years later Eli Whitney invented the cotton-gin. What changes followed may be faintly suggested by recalling the fact that in 1784 an American ship landed eight bales of cotton at Liverpool, and the custom-house officers seized them, on the score that cotton was not a product of the United States. Coal, steam, steel, cotton, electricity-these made a new earth, giving magic wealth and power to nations in the van, such as England, Germany and France Society became dominantly industrial. The Isolation of the South. Circumstances-cruel circumstances which bring tears at the thought-had shut the South out of a share in these three mighty influences of that century. Destiny seemed to have arrayed her against them, in spite of the fact that during the American Revolution the South's own sons were pioneers in the advocacy of national and liberal measures. Such is the pathos and irony of our civil tragedy. Madison, writing the word National nineteen times in his first draft of the constitution; Washington, putting the stamp of his personality upon the Federal executive; Marshall, giving effect to the Federal judiciary, and Jefferson, drafting the ordinance of 1784, excluding slavery from the western territory-these men and measures appeared prophetic of a rôle for the South the reverse of what ensued. The shift in the scenes was made by Whitney's cotton-gin, rendering slavery profitable in the planting of cotton. As a result, the South found itself at variance with the rapid changes which were sweeping over the world about the middle of the Nineteenth century. By this train of circumstances the South was led (1) To hold on to slavery in opposition to the liberal tendency of the age; (2) To resort to secession in opposition to nationality; (3) To be content with agriculture alone, instead of embracing the rising industrialism. It was an instance of arrested development. The facts do not permit us to escape this conclusion, notwithstanding the nobility, chivalry, and gracious charm in the life of the old South which all must love and admire. It was these historic forces-the lib |