THE DUTY
OF
AMERICAN WOMEN
TO THEIR
COUNTRY.

NEW-YORK:
Harper & Brothers, 82 Cliff-St.
1845.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, by
Harper & Brothers,
In the Clerk’s Office of the Southern District of New-York.

THE DUTY OF
AMERICAN WOMEN
TO THEIR COUNTRY.

My countrywomen, you often hear it said that intelligence and virtue are indispensable to the safety of a democratic government like ours, where the people hold all the power. You hear it said, too, that our country is in great peril from the want of this intelligence and virtue. But these words make a faint impression, and it is the object of what follows to convey these truths more vividly to your minds.

This will be attempted, by presenting some recent events, in a country where a government similar to our own was undertaken, by a people destitute of that intelligence and virtue so indispensable; and then it will be shown that similar dangers are impending over our own country. The grand point to be illustrated is, that a people without education have not intelligence enough to know what measures will secure safety and prosperity, nor virtue enough to pursue even what they know to be right, so that, when possessed of power, they will adopt ruinous measures, be excited by base passions, and be governed by wicked and cruel men.

Look, then, at France during that awful period called the Reign of Terror. First, observe the process by which the power passed into the hands of the people. An extravagant king, a selfish aristocracy, an exacting priesthood, had absorbed all the wealth, honour, and power, until the people were ground to the dust. All offices of trust and emolument were in the hands of the privileged few, all laws made for their benefit, all monopolies held for their profit, while the common people were condemned to heavy toils, with returns not sufficient to supply the necessities of life, so that, in some districts, famine began to stalk through the land.

Speedily the press began to unfold these wrongs, and at the same time, Lafayette and his brave associates returned from our shores, and spread all over the nation enthusiastic accounts of happy America, where the people govern themselves, unoppressed by monopoly, or king, or noble, or priest. The press teems with exciting pages, and orators inflame the public mind to a tempest of enthusiasm. The court and the aristocratic party cower before the storm; and ere long, the eleven hundred representatives of the people are seen marching, in solemn pomp, through the streets of the capital, while the whole land rings with acclamations of joy. They take their seats, on an equality with nobles and king, and proceed to form a constitution, securing the rights of the people. It is adopted, and sworn to, by the whole nation, with transports and songs, while they vainly imagine that all their troubles are at an end. But the representatives, chosen by the people, had not the wisdom requisite for such arduous duties as were committed to them, nor had the people themselves the intelligence and virtue indispensable for such a change. Men of integrity and ability were not selected for the new offices created. Fraud, peculation, rapine, and profusion abounded. Everything went wrong, and soon the country was more distressed than ever. “What is the cause of this?” the people demand of their representatives. “It is the aristocrats,” is the reply; “it is the king; it is the nobles; it is the clergy. They oppose and thwart all our measures; they will not allow our new Constitution to work, and therefore it is that you suffer.” And so the people are filled with rage at those whom they suppose to be the cause of their disappointment and sufferings. The clergy first met the storm. “These bishops and priests, with their vast estates, and splendid mansions, and rich incomes—they beggar the people, that they may riot on the spoil.” And so the populace rage and thunder around the national Hall of Legislation till they carry their point, and laws are passed confiscating the property of the clergy, and driving them to exile or death. Their vast estates pass into the control of the National Legislature, and for a time, abundance and profusion reign. The people have bread, and the office-seekers gain immense spoils. But no wisdom or honesty is found to administer these millions for the good of the people. In a short time, all is gone; distress again lashes the people to madness, and again they demand why they do not gain the promised plenty and prosperity. “It is the aristocrats,” is the reply; “it is the king; it is the nobles; it is the rich men. They oppose all our measures, therefore nothing succeeds, and the people are distressed.”

Next, the nobles meet the storm. “They are traitors; they are enemies of the people; they are plotting against our liberties; they are living in palaces, and rolling in splendid carriages from the hard earnings of the poor.” The populace rage against them all over the land. They besiege the House of Representatives; they beseech—they threaten. At last they carry their point; the estates of the nobles are seized; they are declared traitors, and doomed to banishment or death. Again millions are placed at the control of the people’s agents. It is calculated that by this and former confiscations, more than a thousand millions of dollars were seized for the use of the people. Again fraud, peculation, profusion, and mismanagement abound, till all this incomprehensible treasure vanishes away.

Meantime, all the laws have been altered; all the property has passed from its wonted owners to new hands; the wealthy, educated, and noble are down; the poor, the ignorant, the base hold the offices, wealth, and power. Everything is mismanaged. Everything goes wrong. The people grow distracted with their sufferings, and again demand the cause. “It is the king; it is his extravagant Austrian queen, who rules him and his court. They thwart all our measures. They are sending to brother kings for soldiers to crush our liberties. They are gathering armies on our borders to overwhelm us.”

Next, the helpless king and his family become the mark for popular rage. Every indignity and insult was inflicted and borne with a patient fortitude that extorted admiration, till finally the king is first led forth to a bloody death; next the queen is sacrificed; next the virtuous sister of the king; and, last, the little dauphin is barbarously murdered.

Still misery rules through the nation. The friends of the king and former government, and all the peaceable citizens and supporters of order, are called aristocrats, and every art devised to render them objects of fear, suspicion, and hatred, especially such of them as hold property to tempt the cupidity of the people. Through the whole land two parties exist; one the distressed, bewildered, exasperated people, raging for their rights, and driven to madness by the fancied opposition of aristocrats; the other a trembling, cowering minority, suffering insult, and fear, and robbery, and often a cruel death.

And now priests and nobles and king and queen are all gone, and yet the people are more distressed than ever before. Amid these scenes of violence, confusion, and misrule, confidence has ceased, commerce has furled the sail, trade has closed the door, manufactures ceased their din, and agriculture forsaken the plough.

There is no money, no credit, no confidence, no employment, no bread. Famine, and pestilence, and grief, and rage, and despair brood over the land. Again the people cry to their representatives, “Why do you not give us the promised prosperity and plenty? We have nothing to eat, nothing to wear; our business and trades are at an end. The nations around us are gathering to devour us, and what is the cause of all these woes?”

“It is the Girondists,” is the reply; “it is this party among the people’s representatives. They are traitors; they have been bribed; they have joined with foreign aristocrats and kings. They interrupt all our measures, and they are the cause of all your sufferings.”

And now the people turn their rage upon the most intelligent and well-meaning portion of their representatives, who have been striving to stem the worst excesses of those who yield entirely to the dictation of the mob. After a period of storms and threats and violence, at length a majority is gained against them, and a decree is passed condemning a large portion of the National Legislature as traitors, while their leaders are borne forth by the exulting mob to a bloody death. Still the distress of the people is unrelieved, and again they clamour for the cause. “It is the party opposed to us,” say the Jacobins, with Robespierre at their head; “they are the traitors; they will not adopt the measures which will save the people from these ills.”

“Cut them down!” cries the populace; and again another portion of the people’s representatives are led forth to death.

And now Robespierre, the leader of the lowest mob of all, is supreme dictator, and all power is lodged with this coldest-blooded ruffian that ever doomed his fellow-beings to a violent death. This was the Reign of Terror, when the mob had gained complete mastery, and this man, its advocate and organ, administered its awful energies. Look, then, for a moment, at the picture.

But the horrors of this period are so incredible, the atrocities so monstrous, that the tale will be regarded with distrust, without some previous indication of the causes which led to such results.

Let it be remembered, then, that this whole revolutionary movement was, in fact, a war of the common people upon the classes above them. Let it be remembered, too, that the French people, by the press, and by emissaries all over Europe, had invoked the lower classes of all nations to make common cause with them. “War to the palace, and peace to the cottage,” was their watchword. Every throne began to shake, and every person of rank, talents, and wealth felt his own safety involved in the contest. It was thus that the revolutionary leaders felt that they were contending for their lives, against the whole wealth, aristocracy, and monarchical power of Europe.

In France itself, individual ambition, hate, envy, or vengeance added fearful power to this war of contending classes. Not only every leader, but every individual, found in the opposing party some rival to displace, or some private grudge to revenge, while ten thousand aspirants for office demanded sacrifices, in order to secure vacated places. At last the struggle became so imbittered and desperate, that each man looked out only for himself. Friend gave up friend to save his own life, or to secure political advancement, till confidence between man and man perished, and society became a mass of warring elements, excited by every dreadful passion.

Few men are deliberately cruel from the mere love of cruelty. Thousands, under the influence of fear, revenge, ambition, or hate, become selfish, reckless, and cruel. When, too, in conflicts where men feel that by the hands of opponents they have lost property, home, honour, and country; when they have seen their dearest friends slaughtered or starved, then, when the hour of retaliation arrives, pity and sympathy are dead, and every baleful passion rages. Thus almost every man in the conflict had suffered: if a democrat, from those above him; if an aristocrat, from those below him.

Meantime, religion, that powerful principle in humanizing and restraining bad passions, had well-nigh taken her flight. The war upon the clergy at length turned to a war upon the religion they represented, till atheism became the prevailing principle of the nation.

By a public act, the leaders of the people declared their determination “to dethrone the King of Heaven, as well as the monarchs of the earth.” For this end, the apostate clergy, put in the places of those exiled, were induced to come before the bar of the National Legislature and publicly abjure Christianity, and declare that “no other national religion was now required but liberty, equality, and morality.”

On this occasion, crowds of drunken artisans appeared before the bar of the house, trampling under foot the cross, the sacramental vases, and other emblems of religious faith. A vile woman, dressed as the Goddess of Reason, was publicly embraced by the presiding officer of the National Legislature, and conducted by him to a magnificent car, and followed by immense crowds to the grand Cathedral of Nôtre Dame, where she was seated on an altar, and there received the worship of the multitudes. The Sabbath, by a national decree, was abolished; the Bible was burned publicly by the executioner; and on the graveyards was inscribed, “Death is an eternal sleep!”

At Lyons, a similar scene was enacted, where a fête in honour of Liberty was celebrated. The churches were all closed, the Decade, or Sabbath of Reason, proclaimed, and an image of a vile character was carried in procession, followed by vast crowds, shouting, “Down with the aristocrats! Long life to the guillotine!” After the image came an ass, bearing the Cross, the Bible, and the communion service; and these were led to an altar, where a fire was lighted, the Cross and Bible burned, the communion bread trampled under foot, and the ass made to drink out of the communion cup. Wherever democracy reigned, the services of religion were interrupted, the burial service vanished, baptisms ceased, the sick and dying were unconsoled by religion, while every species of vice, obscenity, and licentiousness were practised without concealment or control. The establishments for charity, the hospitals, and all humane institutions were swept away, and their funds seized by the agents of the people. Even the sepulchres of the dead were upturned. The noble, the wise, and the ancient, the barons of feudal ages, the heroes of the Crusades, the military chieftains, the ancient kings, resting in long-hallowed tombs, the mightiest monarchs of the nation, the “chief ones of the earth,” were moved from their rest, and rose to meet the coming of this awful day, while the treasures of their tombs were rifled by vulgar hands, and their very sculls kicked around as footballs for sport.

Meantime the sovereigns of Europe were making preparations to meet this flood of democratic lava, which threatened to overflow every surrounding land. Vast armies began to gather on every side, and avenging navies hovered along the shores. This added the fervour of patriotic devotion to the mania of democracy.

These inspiring sentiments, sung in the thrilling notes of the Marseilles Hymn, were echoed from one end of the land to the other, awakening a whirlwind of enthusiasm. The wants of thousands thrown out of employ, joined with the excitement of patriotism, raised an army unparalleled in numbers. It is calculated that, at one time, one million two hundred thousand Frenchmen were thus enrolled, and at the command of the National Legislature, while the millions of property, not otherwise squandered, were employed to clothe, feed, and equip this incomprehensible multitude. All France was bristling like an armed field; while every mandate of government, backed as it was by such a military force, was utterly resistless. Thus it was that the Reign of Terror was so silent, awful, and hopeless.

Behold, then, through the terror-stricken and miserable land, the national troops employed in arresting every person suspected of favouring aristocracy, or conspicuous as the holder of wealth, or object of hate, envy, or suspicion to all in the possession of power. Behold the prisons of the capital, of the provincial cities, and of the country villages, crammed to overflowing with the rich, the noble, and the learned. No regard was paid to station, age, or sex. Gray hairs and blooming childhood, stern warriors and beautiful maidens, coarse labourers and noble matrons, were huddled together into the damps, and filth, and darkness of a common dungeon, while the guillotine daily toiled in its bloody work of death.

Whenever a fresh supply of funds was demanded for the national service, a new alarm of invasion or of counter-revolution was spread, and then followed new arrests of those suspected, or of those who held any species of wealth. In disposing of captives to make room for new supplies, some were poniarded in prison, some shot, and some guillotined. At last, it was found needful to adopt a more summary method, and the National Legislature decreed that the land must be cleared of traitors and aristocrats, not by trial and single execution, but by a slaughter of masses. A corps was formed of the most determined and bloodthirsty, and sent all over the land to execute this mandate. In carrying out this unparalleled system of cold-blooded murder, various modes were adopted. One was called the Republican Baptism, by which men, women, and children were placed in a vessel with a trap-door in the bottom, and carried out into the midst of the waves; then the trap-door was opened, and the crew, getting into a boat, left their victims to perish. Another method was called the Republican Marriage. By this, two of the opposite sex, generally an old person and a young one, were bereft of all clothing, then tied together, and, after being tortured a while, thrown into the waves. Another mode was called the mitrillade or fusillade. Sixty, or more, captives were bound, and ranged in two files along a deep ditch dug for the purpose. At the two extremities of each file, were placed cannons loaded with grapeshot, and, at a given signal, these were discharged on this mass of human beings. But a few were entirely killed at the first discharge. Wounded and mutilated, they fell in heaps, or crawled forth, and, with piercing shrieks, entreated the soldiers to end their sufferings with death. Three successive discharges did not accomplish the work, which was finally ended by the swords of the soldiery. Next day, the same scene was renewed on a larger scale, more than two hundred prisoners being thus destroyed. This was repeated day after day; while, on one occasion, the commanding officer rose from a carouse, and with thirty Jacobins and twenty courtesans, went out to enjoy a view of the horrid scene.

At Toulon the mitrillades were repeated, till at least eight hundred were thus slaughtered in a population of less than ten thousand. In Lyons, during only five months, six thousand persons suffered death, and among these were a great portion of the noblest and most virtuous citizens. At Toulon, one of the victims was an old man of eighty-four, and his only crime was the possession of eighty thousand pounds, of which he offered all but a mere trifle to escape so shocking a death, but in vain. Bonaparte, who saw these horrors, says, “When I beheld this poor old man executed, I felt as if the end of the world was at hand.”

At Nantz, five hundred children, of both sexes, the oldest not fourteen, were led out to be shot. Never before was beheld so piteous a sight! The stature of the little ones was so low that the balls passed over their heads, and, shrieking with terror, they burst their bonds, and, rushing to their murderers, they implored for pity and life. But in vain; the sabre finished the dreadful work, and these babes were slaughtered at their feet.

At another time, a large body of women, most of them with young children, were carried out into the Loire, and while the unconscious little ones were smiling and caressing their distressed mothers, these mothers were bereft of all clothing, and thrown with their infants into the waves.

At another time, three hundred young girls were drowned in one night at Nantz, where, for some months, every night, hundreds of persons were carried forth and thrown into the river, while their shrieks awoke the inhabitants, and froze every heart with terror. In this city, in a single month, either by hunger, the diseases of prison, or violence, fifteen thousand persons perished, and more than double that number during the Reign of Terror.

In the prisons not less dreadful sufferings were endured. In these foul and gloomy abodes, the cells were dark, humid, and filthy; the straw, their only beds, became so putrid that the stench was horrible, while enormous rats and every species of vermin preyed on the wretched inmates. In such dens as these were gathered the rank, the beauty, the talents, and the wealth of Paris, and the chief cities of the land. Here, too, degraded turn-keys, attended by fierce dogs, domineered over their victims, while on one side were threats, oaths, obscenity, and insult, and on the other were vain arguments, useless supplications, and bitter tears.

Every night the wheels of the rolling car were heard, coming to carry another band of victims to their doom. Then the bars of the windows and wickets of the doors were crowded by anxious listeners, to learn whether their own names were called, or to see their friends led out to death. Those summoned bade a hasty farewell to their friends. The husband left the arms of his frantic wife, the father was torn from his weeping children, the brother and sister, the neighbour and friend, parted and went forth to die, while survivers, picturing the last agonies of those they loved, or waiting their own fate, suffered a living death, till again the roll of the approaching car renewed the universal agony.

To such a degree did this protracted torture prey upon the mind, that many became reckless of life, and many longed for death as a relief.

In many cases, women died of terror when their cell door was opened, supposing their hour of doom was come.

The prison floors were often covered with infants, distressed by hunger, or in the agonies of death. One evening, three hundred infants were in one prison; the next morning all were drowned! When the citizens once remonstrated at this useless cruelty, the reply was, “They are all young aristocratic vipers—let them be stifled!”

Such accumulated horrors annihilated the sympathies and charities of life. Calamity rendered every man suspicious. Those passing in the streets feared to address their nearest friends. As wealth was a mark for ruin, all put on coarse, or squalid raiment. Abroad, no symptom of animation was seen, except when prisoners were led forth to slaughter, and then the humane fled, and the hard-hearted rushed forward to look upon the agonies of death. In the family circle, all was fear and distrust. The sound of a footstep, a voice in the street, a knock at the door, sent paleness to the cheek. Night brought little repose, and in the morning all eyed each other distrustfully, as if traitors were lurking there.

But there is a limit to the power of mental suffering; and one of the saddest features of this awful period was the torpid apathy, which settled on the public mind, so that, eventually, the theatres, which had been forsaken, began to be thronged, and the multitude relieved themselves by farces and jokes, unconcerned whether it was twenty, or a hundred of their fellow-citizens, who were led forth to die.

Learning and talent were as fatal to their possessors as rank and wealth. The son of Buffon the naturalist, the daughter of the eloquent Vernay, Roucher the poet, and even the illustrious Lavoisier, in the midst of his philosophical experiments, were cut down. A few more weeks of slaughter would have swept off all the literary talent of France.

During the revolutionary period, it is calculated that not less than two hundred thousand persons suffered imprisonment, besides those who were put to death, of whom the following list is furnished by the Republicans themselves:

Twelve hundred and seventy-eight nobles, seven hundred and fifty women of rank, fourteen hundred of the clergy, and thirteen thousand persons not noble, perished by the guillotine under decrees of the tribunals of the people.

To this, add the victims at Nantz, which are arranged in this mournful catalogue:

The whole number destroyed at Nantz, of which the above is a portion only, was thirty-two thousand.

To these add those slaughtered in the wars of La Vendée, viz., nine hundred thousand men, fifteen thousand women, and twenty-two thousand children. To this add the victims at Lyons, numbering thirty-one thousand. To this, add those who are recorded thus: “women who died of grief, or premature childbirth, three thousand seven hundred;” and we have a sum-total of one million twenty-two thousand human beings destroyed by violence. How many should be added, as those who died of prison sufferings, or from the pangs and privations of exile, or from famine and from pestilence consequent on this state of anarchy and violence, who can enumerate?

At some periods, such was the awful slaughter, that the rivers were discoloured with blood. In Paris, a vast aqueduct was dug to carry off the gore to the Seine, and four men employed in conducting it to this reservoir. In the river Loire, the corpses accumulated so that birds of prey hovered all along its banks, the waters became infected, and the fishes so poisonous that the magistrates of Nantz forbade the fishermen to take them.

Thus, in the language of another, “France became a kind of suburb of the world of perdition. Surrounding nations were lost in amazement as they beheld the scene. It seemed a prelude to the funeral of this great world, a stall of death, a den into which thousands daily entered and none were seen to return. Between ninety and a hundred of the leaders in this mighty work of death, fell by the hand of violence. Enemies to all men, they were of course enemies to each other. Butchers of the human race, they soon whetted the knife for each other’s throats; and the same Almighty Being who rules the universe, whose existence they had denied by a solemn act of legislation, whose perfections they had made the butt of public scorn, whose Son they had crucified afresh, and whose Word they had burned by the hands of a common hangman, swept them all, by the hand of violence, into an untimely grave. The tale made every ear that heard it tingle, and every heart chill with horror. It was, in the language of Ossian, ‘the song of death.’ It was like the reign of the plague in a populous city. Knell tolled upon knell, hearse followed hearse, coffin rumbled after coffin, without a mourner to shed a tear, or a solitary attendant to mark the place of the grave. ‘From one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, the world went forth and looked upon the carcasses of the men who transgressed against God, and they were an abhorring unto all flesh.’”

Such, my countrywomen, are the scenes which have been enacted in this very age, in a land calling itself Christian, and boasting itself as at the head of civilization and refinement. Do you say that such cruelty and bloodthirsty rage can never appear among us; that our countrymen can never be so deluded by falsehood and blinded by passion?

Look, then, at scenes which have already occurred in our land. Look at Baltimore: it is night, and within one of its prisons are shut up some of its most excellent and respected citizens. They dared to use the rights of free-men, and express their opinions, and oppose the measures of the majority; and for this, a fierce multitude is raging around those walls, demanding their blood. They force the doors, and, with murderous weapons, reach the room containing their victims. Some friendly hand extinguishes the lights, and in the protecting darkness they seek to escape. Some succeed; others are recognised, and seized, and stabbed, and trampled on, and dragged around in murderous fury. One of the noblest of these victims, apparently dead, is seized by some pitying neighbour, under the pretence of cruelty, and thrown into the river and carried over a fall. There he is drawn forth and restored to consciousness; and there, too, it is discovered, that by Americans, by the hands of his fellow-citizens, his body has been stuck with scores of pins, deep plunged into his flesh!

Look, again, at the Southwest, and see gamblers swinging uncondemned from a gallows, and among them a harmless man, whom the fury of the mob hung up without time for judge or jury to detect his innocence.

See, on the banks of the Mississippi, fires blazing, and American citizens roasted alive by their fellow-citizens! See, even in New-England, the boasted land of law and steady habits, a raging mob besets a house filled with women and young children. They set fire to it, and the helpless inmates are driven forth by the flames to the sole protection of darkness and the pitiless ruffians. See, in Cincinnati, the poor blacks driven from their homes, insulted, beaten, pillaged, seeking refuge in prisons and private houses, and for days kept in constant terror and peril.

See, in Philadelphia, one class of citizens arrayed in arms against another, both excited to the highest pitch of rage, both thirsting for each other’s blood, while the civil authority can prevent universal pillage, misrule, and murder, only by volleys that shoot down neighbours, brothers, and friends.

See, too, how the rage of political strife has threatened the whole nation with a civil war. South Carolina declares that she will not submit to certain laws, which she claims are unconstitutional. Her own citizens are divided into fierce parties, so exasperated that each is preparing to shoot down the other. Even the women are contributing their ornaments to meet the expenses of the murderous strife. From neighbouring states, the troops are advancing, the ships of war are nearing their harbours. One single act of resistance, and the state had been the battle-field of that most bitter, most cruel, most awful of all conflicts, a civil and a servile war.

And all these materials of combustion are now slumbering in our bosom, pent up a while, but ready to burst forth, like imprisoned lava, and deluge the land. How easy it would be to bring the nation into fierce contest on the subject of slavery, that internal cancer which inflames the whole body politic! How easy to array native citizens against foreign immigrants, who at once oppose the prejudices and diminish the wages of those around them! How easy to make one section believe that tariff, or tax, is sacrificing the prosperity of one portion to gratify the envy, or increase the luxuries of another!

How easy to make one class of humbler means, believe that bank, or monopoly, is destroying the fruit of their toil, to increase the overgrown wealth of a class above them!

And here is no standing army, such as is wielded by all other governments in sustaining law. When our communities are divided by interest or passion, the lawmakers, the judges, the jury, and the military are all partisans in the strife.

Nor can one part of the Union suffer, and the other escape unharmed, as might be supposed, amid this reckless talk about the dissolution of the Union. An overt attempt to dissolve the Union is treason; and it can never be carried out without fierce parties in every state, ready to fight to the last gasp against such a suicidal act. Such a national dislocation would send a groan of agony through every city, town, and hamlet in our land; civil war would blow her trump, citizen would be arrayed against citizen, and state against state, and the whole arch of heaven would be inscribed with “mourning, and lamentation, and wo.”

What, then, has saved our country from those wide-sweeping horrors that desolated France? Why is it that, in the excitements of embargoes, and banks, and slavery, and abolition, and foreign immigration, the besom of destruction has not swept over the land? It is because there has been such a large body of educated citizens, who have had intelligence enough to understand how to administer the affairs of state, and a proper sense of the necessity of sustaining law and order; who have had moral principle enough to subdue their own passions, and to use their influence to control the excited minds of others. Change our large body of moral, intelligent, and religious people to the ignorant, impulsive, excitable population of France, and in one month the horrors of the Reign of Terror would be before our eyes. Nothing can preserve this nation from such scenes but perpetuating this preponderance of intelligence and virtue. This is our only safeguard.

What, then, are our prospects in this respect? Look at the monitions recorded in our census. Let it be first conceded, that the fact that a man cannot read and write is not, in itself, proof that he is not intelligent and virtuous. Many, in our country, by intercourse with men and things, by the discussions of religion and politics, and by the care of their affairs, gain much reflection and mental discipline. Still, a person who cannot read a word in a newspaper, nor a line in his Bible, and who has so little value for knowledge as to remain thus incapacitated, as a general fact, is in the lowest grade of stupidity and mental darkness. So that the number who cannot read and write is, perhaps, the surest exponent of the intellectual and moral state of a community. For though this list may embrace many intelligent and virtuous persons, on the other hand, there are probably as many, or more, of those classed as being able to read and write, who never have used this power, and who are among the most stupid and degraded of our race.

Look, then, at the indications in our census. In a population of fourteen millions, we find one million adults who cannot read and write, and two millions of children without schools. In a few years, then, if these children come on to the stage with their present neglect, we shall have three millions of adults managing our state and national affairs, who cannot even read the Constitution they swear to support, nor a word in the Bible, or in any newspaper or book. Look at the West, where our dangers from foreign immigration are the greatest, and which, by its unparalleled increase, is soon to hold the sceptre of power. In Ohio, more than one third of the children attend no school. In Indiana and Illinois scarcely one half of the children have any schools. Missouri and Iowa send a similar, or worse report. In Virginia, one quarter of the white adults cannot even write their names to their applications for marriage license. In North Carolina, more than half the adults cannot read and write. The whole South, in addition to her hordes of ignorant slaves, returns more than half her white children as without schools.

My countrywomen, what is before us? What awful forebodings arise! Intelligence and virtue our only safeguards, and yet all this mass of ignorance among us, and hundreds of thousands of ignorant foreigners being yearly added to augment our danger!

We are not even stationary. We are losing ground every day. Every hour the clouds are gathering blacker around us. Already it is found, that the number of voters who cannot read and write, and who yet decide every question of safety and interest, exceeds the great majority that brought in Harrison. Already the number of criminals and felons, who, on dismission from jails and penitentiaries, are allowed to vote, exceeds the majority that brought in our chief magistrate in 1836![1]

Nor is the picture of our situation less mournful, when we examine into the condition of young children in those states, which have done the most for education. Take New-York, for example, where, for forty years, the education of the people has been provided for by law, and where the very best school system in the world has recently gone into operation. It is the chief business of the Secretary of State, to take care of the common schools of the state, while, in every county, a deputy-superintendent, paid five hundred dollars each year for his services, devotes his whole time to the care of common schools. Every year these county superintendents report to the Secretary of State, in regard to the situation of the schools in the county under their care. It is from these reports of the superintendents of schools in New-York, that we are enabled to draw a picture of the condition of young children in common schools, that should send a chill of fear and alarm through our country. For if this is the condition of young children in that state which has excelled all others in a wise and liberal provision for the care of schools, what must be the condition of things in other states, where still less interest is felt in this great concern!

The Secretary of State, in presenting the reports of the county superintendents to the Legislature of New-York, remarks thus: “The nakedness and deformity of the great majority of schools in this state, the comfortless and dilapidated buildings, the unhung doors, broken sashes, absent panes, stilted benches, gaping walls, yawning roofs, and muddy and mouldering floors, are faithfully portrayed; and many of the self-styled teachers, who lash and dogmatize in these miserable tenements of humanity, are shown to be low, vulgar, obscene, intemperate, and utterly incompetent to teach anything good. Thousands of the young are repelled from improvement, and contract a durable horror for books, by ignorant, injudicious, and cruel modes of instruction. When the piteous moans and tears of the little pupils supplicate for exemption from the cold drudgery, or more pungent suffering of the school, let the humane parent be careful to ascertain the true cause of grief and lamentation.”

To exhibit, more fully, the sufferings of little children at school, the following is abridged from these reports:

Sufferings of Little Children from Bad Schoolhouses.

One of the county superintendents reports of the schoolhouses in his district: “One house in K. is literally unfit for a stable; the sashes of several windows are broken, twenty or thirty panes of glass are out, the door is off, and used for a writing-table. Yet the district is wealthy, but ‘they cannot get a vote to build a new schoolhouse.’” “Another schoolhouse in W. is nearly as bad; the gable ends falling out, the chimney down, and the windows nearly all boarded up.” Many of the schoolhouses are situated in the highway, so that, at play, the children are endangered by the passing horses and vehicles, and the traveller is also endangered by the rushing of boisterous boys, frightening his horses. Instances of this sort have repeatedly occurred.

Another writes, that in one of the largest landed districts, the worst log schoolhouse in the district is still retained, offering no security against winds and storms. One of the window sashes was “laid up overhead because it would not stay in its place.” To keep the door shut against the wind, one end of a bench was put against it, and a boy set to tend it, as one and another went out.

Another writes, that he often finds the schoolhouses situated on some bleak knoll, exposed to the howling blasts of winter and the scorching rays of the summer’s sun, or in some marsh or swamp, surrounded by stagnant pools, rife with miasma, and charged with disease and death. It is not uncommon, in such places, to find large schools almost entirely broken up by sickness, and that, too, when no contagious diseases are prevailing among children.

One of these superintendents says, “A trustee of one school, where the schoolhouse was situated in a goose-pond, the water under the floor being several inches deep, told me his children were almost invariably obliged to leave school on account of sickness, and that the school was often broken up from this cause. Parents pay ten times as much, for physicians to cure diseases contracted at school, as it would cost to build a comfortable schoolhouse and supply it with every accommodation.”

Another says of the schoolhouses in his county, that, in some cases, the latches are broken, so that, however cold the day, the door cannot be shut; sometimes the sills are so rotten that snakes and squirrels can enter; while there are cracks in the floor, one or two inches wide, and holes broken large enough for the children to fall through.

The wretched condition of these houses is not owing to poverty, but to the leaden apathy on the subject of education, and the belief among farmers that their money can be better applied in building barns and stables for their cattle. In one large village, where a great sum has been expended for adorning public grounds, and where is much wealth and style, the two schoolhouses are the meanest-looking buildings in the place.

Another says of the schoolhouses in his county, that, in many cases, they stand on the highway, no cooling shade to protect them from the burning sun, exposed to the full fury of the wintry northwester, clapboards torn off, door just ready to fall, and great caution needed in order to keep from falling through the floor. In one case, an aperture in the roof was of such a size, that the teacher could give quite a lesson on astronomy by looking up at the heavens through the roof of the house. Frequently, to the grief of the teacher, when the parent brings his child the first day, such expressions as these are heard from the clinging and distressed child, “Oh, pa, I don’t want to stay in this ugly, old house! Oh, pa, do take me home!”

Sufferings of Little Children from Want of Accommodations at School.

One superintendent says, “But few of the schoolhouses are furnished with blinds or curtains to exclude the glare of the sun. Thus, children suffer great uneasiness, headaches, and often serious affections of the eyes. I have found many cases of weakness of eyes, approaching almost to blindness, caused by studying in such dazzling light.”

Another states, that in most schoolhouses the desks are so high, as to compel the scholar to write in a half-standing, half-sitting attitude; while the seats for the smallest children are often twice the proper height, sometimes a hemlock slab with legs at one end, and a log at the other. Many of the little ones have to be helped up on them, where they are in peril of life and limb from a fall. Here they are obliged to sit, day after day and week after week, between heaven and earth, “and in a frame of mind unfit for either place,” without anything to support either their backs or their feet. Those who would realize what distress this occasions, let them try sitting only one half hour on a table or sideboard, with back and feet unsupported, and see what suffering ensues.

Another writes thus: “Sitting with the legs hanging over the edge of the seat presses the veins (which lie near the surface, and carry the blood to the heart), and thus retard its return, while the arteries, being deeper, carry the blood with its full force from the heart. Thus the veins become distended, numbness and pain follow, and sometimes permanent weakness is the result. Where children sit a long time without any support to their backs, the muscles that hold up the body become weary and weak, for no muscle can be too long contracted without weakening it. In schools thus badly furnished, it will be seen that the children prefer the northern blasts out of doors to the sufferings they endure within, and come in unwillingly, with chilled bodies and checked perspiration. In some cases, parents provide comfortable chairs for their children, and then it is seen, that such stay but a short time out of doors, while those seated on such comfortless benches stay as long as they can. This shows one predisposing cause of the curvature of the spine, and distortion of the body and limbs. Is it any wonder that so many of our youth have round shoulders, and a stooping of the body through life?”

What would be said of a farmer who made his boy hold a plough as high as his head, or a joiner who made his apprentice plane a board on a bench as high as his shoulders? And yet they expect teachers to make their children study, read and write with just such improper accommodations.

Sufferings of Little Children for Want of Pure Air.

To understand this subject properly, it must be borne in mind, that the body is so constructed as to inhale at every breath about a pint of air. The air is composed of 79 parts nitrogen and 21 parts oxygen. When it is drawn into the lungs, the oxygen is absorbed by the blood, and what we exhale is the nitrogen, mixed with the carbonic acid, formed in the lungs by the union of the oxygen of the air with the carbon of the blood. Now, neither carbonic acid, or nitrogen can support life. Take the oxygen from the air, and then breathe it, and instant death ensues. So, put any animal into carbonic acid alone, and it dies instantly. Thus, every breath of every human being uses up the oxygen in one pint of air, and returns it with only nitrogen and carbonic acid. Let a schoolroom, containing 18,000 gallons of air and twenty scholars, be made perfectly airtight, and in twenty minutes they would all be corpses. The horrible sufferings produced by this process, were once witnessed in Calcutta, where 146 men were driven into a room 18 feet square, with only one small window, and kept there from eight at night till six next morning. Before midnight they all became frantic with agony, fought for the window, choaked each other to death, screamed to the soldiers to shoot them, and thus end their misery; and in the morning only 26 were alive, and these in a putrid fever! Lessening the amount of oxygen in the air by breathing, produces languor, sleepiness, nausea, headache, flushed face, and sometimes palsy and apoplexy.

On this subject, the superintendents of the New-York schools make these statements:

“Confinement in some of our schoolrooms is manslaughter. Our children, shut up in these hot holes, made so by their own breaths, by perspiration, and by a close, overheated stove, lay the foundation for diseases which show no gain except to the physician, and which, in after-life, no riding on horseback, or journeys by sea or land, or southern residence can cure.”

Another states, that the uncomfortable condition of the schoolhouses, in his county, is such as to cause much suffering, both mental and bodily, to the children doomed to inhabit their gloomy walls and breathe the tainted air.

Another writes of the schoolhouses in his district, that they are usually low, and in cold weather so overheated as to be hotbeds of disease, the close atmosphere being actually dangerous. One teacher, in one instance, was struck with palsy from the effects of confinement in such a poisonous atmosphere. At a public meeting, one citizen stated it as his conviction, that one of his children died from disease engendered by breathing the pestilential atmosphere of the schoolroom. Instances are numerous where the children come home dull, listless, and with severe colds and coughs. The teacher, in such situations, often loses ambition, energy, and health, and closes school pale and emaciated, perhaps to sink to an early grave, a victim of the poisonous air in which, for day after day, he has been confined.

Sufferings of Little Children from Cold, Heat, and Filth.

One superintendent says, “Could parents witness, as I have, the sufferings of their children from cold, I am sure no other appeal would be needed. Some of those buildings, I am confident, would be considered by a systematic farmer, who regarded the comfort of his stock, as an unfit shelter for his Berkshires.”

Another states, that in some cases the schoolhouses are small and overheated. Then the teacher throws open the door, and a current of cold air pours on to the children. The reeking perspiration is suddenly stopped, and “a cold” is the result, which is often the precursor of fevers and consumption. When no such results follow, the parents say, “It is only a cold;” when diseases and death follow, it is called a dispensation of Providence! A physician of extensive practice stated to this superintendent, that a large part of his consumptive cases originated from colds taken at school.

Another describes one of the schoolhouses in his county as too small, too low, the seats too high, half the plastering fallen off and piled in one corner, and the house warmed by a cook-stove unfit for use. Six sevenths of the panes of glass were gone, and two windows boarded up. Going to attend the annual school meeting at this house, he met two citizens coming with a candle and firebrands, and picking up sticks along the road for a fire, because there was no wood provided at the schoolhouse.

Another thus describes some of the schoolhouses in his county. It is very common to see cracked and broken stoves, the door without hinges or latch, and a rusty pipe of various sizes. Green wood, and that which is old and partially decayed, either drenched with rain, or covered with snow, is much more frequently used than sound, seasoned wood. Thus it is difficult to kindle a fire, and the room is filled with smoke much of the time, especially in stormy weather. Sometimes the school is interrupted two or three times a day to fasten up the stovepipe.

The extent of these evils may be perceived from the report, which says of one county about as well supplied as any, out of eighty-seven districts only twenty schoolhouses have provided means for keeping their wood dry.

Another says, “At the commencement of the winter term of our schools, some one of the trustees generally furnishes a load of green wood, perhaps his own proportion. The teacher proceeds till this is exhausted, and he is compelled to notify his patrons of the entire destitution of wood. After meeting his school, and shivering over expiring embers till the hope of a supply is exhausted, he dismisses the school for one, two, or three days, and sometimes for a week, before any inhabitant finds time to get another load of green wood. With such wood it is impossible to keep the schoolroom at a proper temperature. The scholars, at first, crowd around the stove, suffering extremely with cold, and then are driven as far off as they can get, in a high state of perspiration, and almost suffocated with heat. Our schools in this country suffer much from such methods of procuring fuel. The time which is lost in school hours by the use of green wood, I think will include near one fourth of the whole time.”

Another says, “The teacher found abundant employment in stuffing the old stove with green birch and elm, cut as occasion required by the teacher and the boys. A continual coughing was kept up by nearly seven-eighths of the children, and the teacher apologised for want of order by saying, ‘they could not usually do much in stormy weather till afternoon, when the fire would get a going.’ On this occasion, one trustee and two of the inhabitants of the district were present an hour, when, getting frozen out, they asked to be excused, and left the children to suffer, saying, ‘We did not think our house was so uncomfortable. Some glass must be got, and a load of dry wood’” Some of the statements of these superintendents, as to the order and neatness of their schoolhouses, are no less lamentable. One remarks, that “some of them, as to neatness, resemble the domicil for swine.” Another describes one schoolhouse as “having the clapboards torn off, the door just ready to fall, an aperture in the roof where the chimney once was, slabs with a pair of clubs at each end for legs, and so high no child could touch foot to the floor, rickety desks falling to ruin, the plaster torn off, and the whole covered with dirt, and as filthy as the street itself.” But this is not all. “This house is situated in a district of wealthy farmers.”

Another says, “It is a startling truth, that very many of our schoolhouses furnish no private retreat whatever for teacher or scholar. Thus is one side of the schoolhouse, and, in some instances, the doorstep, rendered a scene more disgusting than the filth of a pig-sty.”

Another says, “Schoolhouses, generally, are not furnished with suitable conveniences for disposing the outer garments of the children, their dinner-baskets, and other articles. Sometimes there are a few nails in an outer entry where clothes and dinners may be put, but in such cases the door is left open for rain and snow to beat in; the scholars, in their haste to get their own clothes, pull down many more, which are trampled on. Moreover, the dinners are often frozen, or eaten by dogs, and sometimes even by hogs.”

Sufferings of Little Children from Cruel and Improper Punishments.

In reporting on this subject, the county superintendents mention these as inflictions not uncommon. Standing on one foot for a long time; “sitting on nothing,” that is, obliging the child to hold himself in a sitting posture without any support; holding out the arm horizontally with a weight on it; tying a finger so high as to oblige the child to stand on tiptoe; holding the head downward, sometimes causing dangerous hemorrhages from the nose, or injuring the brain; frightening little children by threats. Many cases are declared to have occurred in which permanent injuries have been inflicted by thus straining the muscles, and torturing the body and mind of little children.

The following is a description of a scene witnessed at school by one of the county superintendents in his periodical visitation: two girls, about twelve years of age, were out of order, and the teacher, without any warning, sprang across the room and severely flogged both. A little boy, tired of sitting on his hard seat, leaned over on his elbow; he was caught by the head, dragged over the desk to the floor, and ordered to study. A little girl of seven, after one or two admonitions to “tend her book,” was caught by the arm, dragged on to the floor, rudely shaken, cuffed on both sides of her head, and then whipped. “I looked around,” says the superintendent, “to learn the effect upon the other scholars. I saw no happy faces. There seemed to settle upon the countenances of nearly all, a cloud of gloom and terror. The school closed soon after, and the teacher remarked to me, that he did not punish near as much now as he formerly did.”

Moral Injuries inflicted on Children at School.

One teacher writes thus: “Where the plastering remains, it is covered with coal marks, and numerous holes are cut through the writing desks, while vulgarities and obscenities are not only written, but deeply cut in the desks and doors.” Of another house he says, “Within and without are manifest evidences of a polluted imagination. Several lewd representations are deep cut in the clapboards in front of the house, in the entry, and even on the girls’ desks, so as to be constantly before their eyes.” “These things,” he adds, “are but specimens selected from scores.”

Another writes thus: “I have alluded to the representations of vulgarity and obscenity that meet the eye in every direction. I am constrained to add that, during intermissions, ‘certain lewd fellows of the baser sort’ sometimes lecture boys and girls, large and small, illustrating their subject by these vile delineations. Many of our schoolhouses are nurseries of disorder, vulgarity, profanity, and obscenity—nay, more, in some cases, they are the very hothouses of licentiousness.”

One single statement, made up from these reports of the county superintendents, and presented by the head superintendent in his report, speaks volumes on the neglect of modesty, decency, neatness, and purity. In the whole state there are six thousand schoolhouses destitute of any kind of woodhouse or privy; and of the whole number, only about one thousand have privies provided with separate accommodations for children of different sexes.

It appears, also, that though the schools and teachers are fast rising in character, and that many now are of uncommon excellence, yet that many of the teachers are notoriously depraved, while intellectual training, in the majority of cases, is deplorably low, and the moral training still more defective.

One superintendent remarks, “Gloomy, indeed, are the impressions made by our schoolhouses. The lessons of immorality and indecency often taught there would cause a shudder to thrill every sensitive mind.” Another says, “There are, I regret to say, many teachers whose morals, manners, and daily example wholly unfit them for their duties.” Another says, “In some instances, moral qualifications have been wholly disregarded, and teachers notoriously intemperate employed.” Says another, “I have found a number whose language was low, obscene, and sensual, still employed in teaching.”

Says another, “If the tastes, associations, and moral sentiments of the teacher lack elevation and dignity, what literary progress will atone for examples so pernicious? And yet such are the moral influences shed about them by many licensed to teach.”

After presenting all these shocking details, the chief superintendent, in 1844, thus remarks:

“No subject connected with elementary instruction affords a source for such mortifying and humiliating reflection as that of the condition of a large portion of the schoolhouses as presented in the above enumeration. Only one third of the whole number visited were found in good repair; another third in only comfortable condition; while three thousand three hundred and nineteen were unfit for the reception of man or beast. Seven thousand were found destitute of any play-ground, nearly six thousand destitute of convenient seats and desks, nearly eight thousand destitute of any proper facilities for ventilation, and upward of six thousand destitute of a privy of any sort. And it is in these miserable abodes of filth and dirt, deprived of wholesome air, or exposed to the assaults of the elements, with no facilities for exercise or relaxation, with no conveniences for prosecuting their studies, crowded together on benches not admitting of a moment’s rest, and debarred the possibility of yielding to the ordinary calls of nature without violent inroads upon modesty and shame, that upward of two hundred thousand children of this state are compelled to spend an average period of eight months each year of their pupilage. Here the first lessons of human life, the incipient principles of morality, and the rules of social intercourse are to be impressed on the plastic mind. The boy is here to receive the model of his permanent character, and imbibe the elements of his future career. Here the instinctive delicacy of the young female, one of the characteristic ornaments of her sex, is to be expanded into maturity by precept and example. Such are the temples of science, such the ministers under whose care susceptible childhood is to receive its earliest impressions. Great God! shall man dare to charge to thy dispensations the vices, the crimes, the sickness, the sorrows, the miseries, and the brevity of human life, who sends his little children to a pesthouse, fraught with the deadly malaria of both moral and physical disease? Instead of impious murmurs, let him lay his hand on his mouth, and his mouth in the dust, and cry ‘Unclean!’”

Let it not be imagined that this picture is peculiar to New-York. The superintendents of the common schools in Ohio, and even in Massachusetts and Connecticut, have reported similar evils as existing, to a greater or less extent, in the schools in their respective states; and if such things exist in the states where most has been done for education, what can be hoped for the neglected and abused little ones where even less is done by law for their comfort and improvement? In view of such utter destitution of schools in the greater part of our country, and of the sufferings and neglect endured by little children in other portions, the inquiry must be earnestly pressed, “What can be the reason of this deplorable state of things?”

The grand reason is, the selfish apathy of the educated classes, and the stupid apathy of those who are too ignorant to appreciate an education for their children. In those states where no school system is established by law, the intelligent and wealthy content themselves with securing a good education for their own children, and care nothing for the rest. When any project, therefore, is presented for obtaining a good school system, the rich and intelligent do not wish to be taxed for the children of others, and the rest do not care whether their children are educated or not, or else are too poor to pay the expense.

In those states where a school system is established, parents of intelligence and moral worth, seeing the neglected state of the common school, withdraw their children to private schools. And feeling no interest in schools which they do not patronise, they pass them with utter neglect. And thus, neither rich, nor poor care enough to be willing to be taxed for their elevation and improvement.

Thus, too, it has come to pass, that while every intelligent man in the Union is reading, and hearing, and saying, every day of his life, that unless our children are trained to virtue and intelligence, the nation is ruined, yet there is nothing else for which so little interest is felt, or so little done. Look, now, to that great body of intelligent and benevolent persons, who are interesting themselves for patriotic and religious enterprises. We see them sustaining great organizations, and supporting men to devote their whole time to promote these several enterprises, which draw thousands and hundreds of thousands from the public for their support. There is one organization, to send missionaries to the heathen and to educate heathen children, with its six or eight paid officers, devoting their whole time to the object. Then there is another to furnish the Bible, and another to distribute tracts, and another to educate young men to become ministers, and another to send out home missionaries, and another to sustain Western colleges, and another to promote temperance, and another to promote the observance of the Sabbath. Then we have an association to take care of sailors, and another to promote the comfort and improvement of convicts in prisons and penitentiaries, and another to relieve and ransom the slave, and another to colonize the free coloured race. All these objects are promoted by having men sustained by voluntary contributions, who spend their whole time in urging the claims of these various objects on the public mind, while almost all have a regular periodical to advocate their cause. But our two millions of little children, who are growing up in heathenish darkness, enchained in ignorance, and in many cases, where the cold law professes to provide for them, enduring distress of body and mind even greater than is inflicted on criminals in our prisons, where is the benevolent association for their relief? where is there a periodical supported by the charitable to tell the tale of their wrongs? where is there a single man sustained by Christian benevolence to operate for their relief?

Let it not be claimed that Sunday-schools meet this emergency. A Sunday-school cannot, in its one or two short hours, educate a child, or undo all the fatal influences of six days of idle vagrancy, with their pernicious lessons of vice and sin. Besides, the Sabbath-school is of little avail, except where there is a large class of intelligent and benevolent persons to labour, and such are thinly sprinkled in those portions of the land where no schools exist.

The vast proportion of neglected children in our land are never reached, even by the feeble influence of the Sunday-school.

And this fatal neglect cannot be palliated by the plea, that the means employed to sustain other objects cannot be directed to this cause. Why cannot the press be employed for popular education as efficiently as for the promotion of temperance, or the support of the Sabbath? Why cannot men of talents be supported to write and to labour for this cause as well as for any other? The only thing that can save us is, to arouse this people from the fatal apathy which is luring them to destruction. Ministers must preach, agents must lecture, conventions must be called, discussions must be urged, tracts must be written and circulated, the political press must be enlisted, and every possible mode of arousing public attention must be adopted. It must be shown that teachers are needed as much as ministers, that teachers’ institutions are as important as colleges, that it is as necessary to educate and send forth “poor and pious young women” to teach, as it is “poor and pious young men” to preach. And when the same influence and efforts are directed to educate our two millions of American children, as are now directed to establishing missions among the heathen, our country may escape the yawning abyss now gaping to destroy.

The American people are sanguine and hasty, careless of peril, and thoughtless of risk, but, when brought by danger to reflection, they have first-rate common sense, surpassing energy, and endless resources. And if they can but be convinced of their danger in season, all is safe; but the work to be done is prodigious, the time is short, and the question all turns on whether the work will be undertaken soon enough, and with sufficient energy.

Look, then, at the work to be done. Two millions of destitute children to be supplied with schools! To meet this demand, sixty thousand teachers and fifty thousand schoolhouses are required. Or, if we can afford to leave half of them to grow up in ignorance, and aim only to educate the other half, thirty thousand teachers and twenty-five thousand schoolhouses must be provided, and that, too, within twelve years. The census calculates the children between four and sixteen, and in twelve years most of these children will be beyond the reach of school instruction, while other millions, treading on their heels, will demand still greater supplies. Sixty thousand teachers now needed for present wants, and thousands, to be added every year for the increase of population!