Soothly we have been told that
first industrial and manual training should have taught the
Negro to work, then simple schools should have taught him
to read and write, and finally, after years, high and normal
schools could have completed the system, as intelligence and
wealth demanded.
That a system logically so complete was historically impos-
sible, it needs but a little thought to prove. Progress in human
affairs is more often a pull than a push, a surging forward of
the exceptional man, and the lifting of his duller brethren
slowly and painfully to his vantage-ground. Thus it was no
accident that gave birth to universities centuries before the
common schools, that made fair Harvard the first flower of
our wilderness. So in the South: the mass of the freedmen at
the end of the war lacked the intelligence so necessary to
modern workingmen. They must first have the common school
to teach them to read, write, and cipher; and they must have
higher schools to teach teachers for the common schools. The
white teachers who flocked South went to establish such a
common-school system. Few held the idea of founding col-
leges; most of them at first would have laughed at the idea.
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