This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1881 edition. Excerpt: ... A LARGE proportion of the people of the North, including many Democrats whose hearts were better than their heads, always manifested sympathy in behalf of the Southern bondsmen, and as soon as the war opened the way, they were ready to act the part of the Good Samaritan, reaching a helping hand to the millions of freed people, men, women, and children, who were cast out from their old homes without any place whereon to set their feet but the high-road, where they were liable to be taken up as vagrants, and no shelter but the sky. They were fed and clothed, and their spiritual needs ministered unto. Agents were sent out, who, following in the wake of our victorious armies, "set up a school-house behind every cannon," until the entire South was studded with school-houses under the auspices of Northern benevolent societies and churches. As soon as law unloosed its iron clutch from the victim race, and they came forth from the yoke of bondage, beneath the weight of which they had been crushed for centuries, a perfect blaze of enthusiasm for their elevation was kindled in society meetings and vestry gatherings which continued unabated until thousands had been put in a fair way to "help themselves," and scores upon scores so far initiated into the mystic signs of the alphabet as to be fitted to teach the rudiments of an English education to those among their people who had been less favored than themselves. During the early years of this missionary work, when the interest in it was so widespread and universal, the Freedmen's teachers were everywhere met with two questions with a persistency and eagerness reminding one of those propounded to the sphinx. "Can negroes learn?" and "Does the prejudice of Southerners decrease in consequence of your...

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