It is not too much to say, that, had these States been more enlightened, they would never have rebelled. The barbarism of Slavery would have shrunk into insignificance, without sufficient force to break forth in blood. From the returns before the Rebellion[96] we learn that in the Slave States there were not less than 493,026 native white persons over twenty years of age who could not read and write,--while in the Free States, with double the native white population, there were but 248,725 native whites over twenty years of age thus blighted by ignorance. In the Slave States the proportion was 1 in 5; in the Free States it was 1 in 22. The number in Free Massachusetts, with an adult native white population of 470,375, was 1,055, or 1 in 446; the number in Slave South Carolina, with an adult native white population of only 120,136, was 15,580, or 1 in 8. The number in Free Connecticut was 1 in 256, in Slave Virginia 1 in 5; in Free New Hampshire 1 in 192, and in Slave North Carolina 1 in 3. In this prevailing ignorance we may trace the Rebellion. A population that could not read and write naturally failed to comprehend and appreciate a republican government. This contrast between the Rebel States and the Loyal States appeared early. It was conspicuous in two Colonies, each of which exercised a peculiar influence. Massachusetts began her existence with a system of free schools. The preamble of her venerable statute deserves immortality. “That learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers,” her founders enacted that every township of fifty householders should maintain a school for reading and writing, and every town of a hundred householders a school to fit youths for the University.[97] This statute was copied in other Colonies. It has spread far, like a benediction. At the same time Virginia set herself openly against free schools. Her Governor, Sir William Berkeley, in 1671, in a reply to the Lords Commissioners of Plantations on the condition of the Colony, made this painful record: “I thank God _there are no free schools_, nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them.… God keep us from both!”[98] Thus spoke Massachusetts, and thus spoke Virginia, in that ancient day. The conflict of ideas had already begun. Can you hesitate to adopt the statute so well justified by time? It began in an infant colony. Let it be the law of a mighty republic.