National Republican. (Washington City (D.C.)) 1872-1888, 1881-01-20
National Education.

! FAUST Vi UNIVERSAL euuCdtlou. IL 10 piCfio-
ant to read and hear the utterances of
Southern men in favor of national appro-
priations for educational purposes. They
surrender an old dogma in yielding ap-
proval to the bill which recently passed
the Senate. Many of them say, with Sen
ator Brown, of Georgia, that it is useless
to suppose the Nation can be restrained
within what the old State Rights alb
stractionists used to define as the limits of
constitutional power. The strict con-
structionists, as they called themselves,
have been overruled by cannon and by
court. They are no longer able to en-
force their view of the Constitution as
it was, or to permanently nullify that in
strument as it is since it was amended.
A new impetus has been given to the
discussion of the subject of free education
throughout the Nation by the able paper
in the North american Reriew from the
pen of Judge Tourgee, the author of that
remarkable book, "a Fools Errand." ."
We desire to present single thought in
! this discussion. We have heard much OF
| the importance of a fair common educa-
ton for all. Nothing that we could say
would add to the force of the arguments
adduced to establish this. An ignorant
suffrage is the thing deplored. We i'm
agine this phrase is intended generally
to mean an illiterate suffrage. 1t is a
! fearful fact that nearly half of the voters
of the South cannot read the tickets they
vote They identify the ballot which
contains the names of their candidates
! by devices Or colors distinguishable at a
glance Yesterday we showed how the
Democracy had in Alabama made it ille-
gal for the Republican party to thus en-
able the unlettered blacks to find their
| own tickets.
But if this is terrible danger, as it is,
what shall be said of that other kind of
| ignorance which takes the form of false
education? A distinguished ex-confed-
crate, who is the real parsonage beneath
one of the characters in the Fools En-
rand" told us several years ago that he
wanted to get his son away from the
! Southern State in which he lived. For"
said he, those infatuated people persist
in examining the young with all the false
| doctrines which led to the war. The
sovereignty of the States and the right of
secession-these are being carefully in
stilled into the minds of young men, and
those who remain there cannot help in
haling this foul political atmosphere"
In endeavoring to eradicate the igno-
rance of illiteracy let us beware how we
SOW the seeds of this other and more dan
gerous ignorance. 1t is well for us to
medicine the mind, but not to furnish it
with poison. In our appropriations of
national funds for Southern States let us
not forget that in many of them the his
| tory used in their present schools is
confederate history, filled with prejudice
against the Nation, and abounding in false
statements concerning the war. We have
seen this book, and know it to contain
some stories as silly as were ever told by
Baron Munchausen, and all told for
truth. If We distribute money in the
South to pay for instruction from books
like that, then indeed shall we be sowing
dragons teeth. The remedy would seem
to lie in imposing as condition to all
donations of money for educational pur
poses in the several States the use of such
school books only as may be approved
by the Bureau of Education at Washing
ton. The exercise of this power would
be as moderate as the public opinion of
the country represented in Congress
would demand.
Unless such proyiso can be attached
to the bill which recently passed the
Senate, why not let the measure fail, and
secure from the next Congress more
liberal as well as a more guarded law?