- tions, the Arsenal and Citadel Academies [military schools], form almost
the only exception to the truth of this remark. Ten years ago, twenty thousand adults, besides children, were unable to read or write, in South Carolina. Has our free-school system dispelled any of this ignorance? Are there not any reasonable fears to be entertained that the number has increased since that period?"
Since then, Governor Adams, in another message to the
South Carolina Legislature, vainly urging the appointment of
a superintendent of popular education, said:—
"Make, at least, this effort, and if it results in nothing—if, in consequence
of insurmountable difficulties in our condition, no improvement
can be made on the present system, and the poor of the land are hopelessly
doomed to ignorance, poverty, and crime—you will, at least, feel
conscious of having done your duty, and the public anxiety on the subject
will be quieted."
It is not unnatural that there should he some anxiety with
at least that portion of the public not accustomed to look at
public affairs in the large way of South Carolina legislators,
when the travelling agent of a religious tract society can read
from his diary in a church in Charleston, such a record as
this:—
"Visited sixty families, numbering two hundred and twenty-one souls
over ten years of age; only twenty-three could read, and seventeen write.
Forty-one families destitute of the Bible. Average of their going to
church, once in seven years. Several, between thirty and forty-five years
old, had heard but one or two sermons in their lives. Some grown-up
youths had never heard a sermon or prayer, until my visit, and did not
know of such a being as the Saviour; and boys and girls, from ten to fifteen
years old, did not know who made them. All of one family rushed away
when I knelt to pray, to a neighbour's, begging them to tell what I meant
by it. Other families fell on their faces, instead of kneeling."[1]
The following is written by a gentleman, "whose name,"
says the editor of De Bow's "Review," "has long been illustrious
for the services he has rendered to the South."
"All of you must be aware of the condition of the class of people I
allude to. What progress have they made in the last hundred years, and
- ↑ De Bow's "Review," vol. xviii. p. 790.
