The Portland daily press., 1866-12-29
itAILY PRESS.
ND.
Saturday Morning, December 20, 1865.
Southern Education.
PORTLAND

The Freedmen's Aid Associations have
done well in beginning the work of educating
the race of grown up children who have sud
denly become their own masters. The in
auence OF their teachers is so powerfully and
uniformly on the right side, that it should be
continued and strengthened as long as posi-
bic, and we regret to notice that the New
York Association has been compelled to con-
tract its operations for want of funds. Never
theless, the work is sure to continue. No one
doubts that equal political as well as civil
rights will at no distant day be conferred up
on the entire population of the South as well
as the North. The resistance of the Southern
whites only increases the living energy of the
movement toward the realization of the idea
of republican equality. It is in vain that
Maryland tiles to revive slavery under the
clause of the constitutional amendment which
admits involuntary servitude as punishment
for crime. That clause permits only the re-
straint Of Imprisonment at hard labor, and
the first case which is carried up to the Su-
preme Court Of the United States will so settle
it. It is in vain that in North Carolina, they
are trying to cut down the voting list under
their law excluding fom the polls men who
have been disgraced by public whipping. They
are inficting that punishment upon negroes
for all imaginable and imaginary offences, I'm
der the protection of President Johnson's
special edict suspending the operation of Gen.
Sickles's order prohibiting such exhibitions;
but the end which they propose will not be
reached in that way The negroes will W -
II, they are to vote they must not ro,,o =,
children. Ex-Gov. Vance Of North ,srol,n.
made some statements in ~.o.nt ,ootnro
which indicate that the ne .orooo no .,roo A.,
eeasing to be children. "The invigorating
sound of the old banjoA said tbe mol.ncho,1
Governor, "is no ls,1,noer heard and the old
u'usie slu"e y last fading away and will soon
NC so'e' ioss to the present and unknown to
.ons sIerations;" Very likely. Free men
.. nase % .nething to think OF besides the BAN
10 and doupie shuffie. Such bodies as the
Georgia Equal Rights Association are already
thinking about matters political. Everywhere
these black citizens are thinking, thinking,
and seeking with hungry eagerness after the
heretofore forbidden fruit of knowledge They
will read.
Seeing that the work OF education Is sure
to continue, the late rebels are beginning to
turn their attention to the subject. Their
motives are apparently none of the best, but
God works with strange instruments. "Con-
federate primers" and spelling books are adj
vertised in Southern newspapers "School
books adapted to the South" are highly COM
mended by Southern critics. A North Caro-
lima reading book has been recently published,
which mentions no country except North
Carolina, unless incidentally. Educational
influences will undoubtedly be invoked to
create a Southern unanimity including the
blacks Confederate histories, biographies
and novels will celebrate the "Lost Cause"
Every effort will be made to keep alive the
old sectional feeling, and it will all fail We
have lived to see Boston Democrats voting for
black councilman, and we shall live to see
Southern Secessionists at least soliciting the
votes of able-bodied field ha.lds.
Will they always get them? Ii they do
they will have to respect their rights. They
will have to stop whipping and shooting and
selling them. They will have to respect
their political opinions too, and in spite of all
the Confederate primers, readers, histories
and novels, men who can read and write will
gradually find out that there are other than
Southern States and other than South
ern notions in the American Union
There is no occasion to fear for the result of
ad1 n will Uh
that boon is offered. 1t will be salutary. The
common-school system, even under the SUI
pervision of Secessionist committees, will civ
ihze the South, and civilization is what that
benighted region needs. t.e