For four long years North and South met in the crash of material strife, and now, for sixteen years, Northern principles and Southern principles have been meeting in a death grapple, and the victory will not be won until Northern principles conquer. For four years North and South met in the crash of battle, setting four million slaves free from chattel bondage, and for sixteen years North and South have met in the silent strife of spiritual warfare, to set what are now over six millions free from the grosser bondage of ignorance. When, in 1865, four and a half million Freedmen knocked at the school-house of the South for admittance, you are most of you aware of the prejudice and opposition that met them; but are you aware what the school-house was at which they knocked? The South never had provided an education for the masses. Its theory was to educate the higher classes and leave the masses alone, even those of the whites. It never had an adequate school system before the war. North Carolina was the only state in the Confederacy that kept up anything like public schools during the war, and at its close her permanent school fund of nearly $3,000,000 was lost. After sixteen years’ replenishment, the entire school property of the eight Southern States, reported by the Commissioner of Education in his last report in 1879—the value of the sites, buildings and all other school property—does not amount to much over seven millions, or, leaving Kentucky out, much over five millions. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia, which do not report, are poor in school property. Leaving Kentucky and West Virginia out, with their four millions, in all the States south of them there are probably not to-day $7,000,000 of school property. New York, with her $30,000,000, has four times as much as all this South. Your Massachusetts, although it does not fully report, has doubtless the same multiple; and eight states of the North have each more school property to-day than all the school property of this South.