class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 9]"/>All of these springs which started in Virginia tinged, entered into, and gave color to society throughout the South. There were great estates, privileged classes, a few rich and many poor men. There were planters, poor white men, and slaves.

In those old times pirates sailed the seas, plundering and destroying ships. They swarmed around the West India Islands, and sold their spoils to the people of Charleston, South Carolina. There, for several years, the freebooters refitted their ships, and had a hearty welcome. But the King’s ships of war broke up the business, and commerce again had peaceful possession of the ocean.

These things gave direction to the stream, influencing the development and growth of the colonies, which became States in the Union, and which seceded in 1861.

While the Dutch captain was bargaining off his negroes to the planters in 1620 at Jamestown, another vessel was sailing from Plymouth harbor, in England, for a voyage across the Atlantic. Years before, in the little town of Scrooby, a man with a long white beard, by the name of Clifton, had preached what he called a pure religious doctrine. Those who went to hear him, and who believed what he preached, soon came to be called Puritans. Most of them were poor, hard-working English farmers and villagers. There was much discussion, controversy, bigotry, and bitterness in religion at that time, and these poor men were driven from county to county, till finally they were obliged to flee to Holland to escape persecution and save their lives. King James himself was one of their most bitter persecutors. He declared that he would “harry every one of them out of England.” After remaining in Holland several years, they obtained permission of the King to sail for North America.

On a December morning the vessel, after five months’ tossing upon the ocean, lay at anchor in the harbor of Cape Cod. Those on board had no charter of government. They were not men who had had midnight revels in London, but men who had prayers in their families night and morning, and who met for religious worship on the Sabbath. They respected law, loved order, and knew that it would be necessary to have a form of government in the colony. They assembled in the cabin of the ship, and, after prayer, signed their names to an agreement to obey all the rules, regulations, and laws which might be enacted by the majority. Then they elected a governor, each man having a voice in the election. It was what might be called the first town-meeting in America. Thus democratic liberty and Christian worship, independent of forms established by kings and bishops, had a beginning in this country.

The climate was cold, the seasons short, the soil sterile, and so the settlers of Cape Cod were obliged to work hard to obtain a living. In consequence, they and their descendants became active, industrious, and energetic. Thus they laid the foundations for thrift and enterprise. They did not look upon labor as degrading, but as ennobling. They passed laws, that men able to work should not be idle. They were not rich enough to own great estates, but each man had his own little farm. There was, therefore, no landed aristocracy, such as was growing into power in Virginia. They were not able to own labor to any great extent. There were a few apprenticed men, and some negro slaves, but the social and political influences were all different from those in the Southern colonies. The time came when apprenticed men were released from service, and the slaves set free.

These hard-working men did not wish to have their children grow up in ignorance. In order, therefore, that every child might become an intelligent citizen and member of society, they established common schools and founded colleges. In 1640, just twenty years after the landing at Plymouth, they had a printing-press at Cambridge.

The cavaliers of Virginia, instead of establishing schools, sent their sons to England to be educated, leaving the children of the poor men to grow up in ignorance. They did not want them to obtain an education. In 1670, fifty years after the Dutch captain had bartered off his negroes for tobacco,—fifty years from the election of the first governor by the people in the cabin of the Mayflower,—the King appointed Commissioners of Education, who addressed letters to the governors of the colonies upon the subject. The Governor of Connecticut replied, that one fourth of the entire income of the colony was laid out in maintaining public schools. Governor Berkeley, of Virginia, who owned a great plantation and many slaves, and who wanted to keep the government in the hands of the few privileged families, answered,—

All the Northern colonies established common schools, and liberally supported them, that every child might obtain an education. The Southern colonies, even when they became States, gave but little attention to education, and consequently the children became more ignorant than their fathers. Thus it has come to pass, that in the Northern States nearly all can read and write, while in the Southern States there are hundreds of thousands who do not know the alphabet.

In 1850 the State of Maine had 518,000 inhabitants; of these 2,134 could not read nor write, while the State of North Carolina, with a white population of 553,000, had eighty thousand native whites, over twenty years of age, who had never attended school!

The six New England States, with a population of 2,705,000, had in 1850 but eight thousand unable to read and write, while Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama—five States, with a population of 2,670,000 whites—had two hundred and sixty-two thousand, over twenty years of age, unable to read a word! In the Northern States educational facilities are rapidly increasing, while in the South they are fast diminishing. In 1857 there were 96,000 school-children in Vermont, and all but six thousand attended school. South Carolina the same year had 114,000 school-children; of these ninety-five thousand had no school privileges. Virginia had 414,000 school-children; three hundred and seventy-two thousand of them had no means of learning the alphabet!

In Missouri, in some of the counties, the school lands given by Congress have been sold, and the money distributed among the people, instead of being invested for the benefit of schools. With each generation ignorance has increased in the Southern States. It has been the design of the slaveholders to keep the poor white men in ignorance. There, neighbors are miles apart. There are vast tracts of land where the solitude is unbroken by the sounds of labor. Schools and newspapers cannot flourish. Information is given by word of mouth. Men are influenced to political action by the arguments and stories of stump-speakers, and not by reading newspapers. They vote as they are told, or as they are influenced by the stories they hear. So, when the leading conspirators were ready to bring about the rebellion, being in possession of the State governments, holding official positions, by misrepresentation, cunning, and wickedness, they were able to delude the ignorant poor men, and induce them to vote to secede from the Union.

Two thousand years ago the natives of India manufactured cloth from the fibres of the cotton-plant, which grew wild in the woods. The old historian, Herodotus, says that the trees bore fleeces as white as snow. A planter of South Carolina obtained some of the seeds, and began to cultivate the plant. In 1748 ten bags of