“It is in vain to say there is danger in it. The best slaves of the State are those who can and do read the Scriptures. Again, who is it that teaches your slaves to read? It is generally done by the children of the owners. Who would tolerate an indictment against his son or daughter for teaching a slave to read? Such laws look to me rather cowardly.” Perhaps it is not a bold conclusion that this kindly and reasonable usage in a great many homes was one of the things that bound the slaves so closely to their master’s families as to hold them fast in all the vicissitudes of the war. It may safely be concluded, therefore, that a great many more Negroes were able to read and write in the period just preceding the Civil War than was generally thought to be the case, either in the South or the North. Nor is it unreasonable to suppose that the intellectual enlightenment which was beginning to have so many expressions in the earlier years of the century grew on and steadily became wider in its quiet pervasiveness, notwithstanding the many adverse conditions with which it had to contend. If the estimate is correct that some ten per cent. of the adult Negroes at the time of the war had the rudiments of education, or if even only five per cent. of the Freedmen had this knowledge, the task of the hour for the teachers was quite different from what has usually been supposed. To bring the chance for an education to a people of whom five out of every hundred have the habit of learning is another thing from dealing with those who have none of them taken even the first steps. It is all the difference between taking them at the lowest stage and meeting them after they have mastered the earlier lessons. It must have meant very much to the teachers if there were a few of their pupils who were above the primary grade. This goes far to explain the demand that came so soon for secondary schools and those of a more advanced grade. There were some of the pupils whose education had begun long before these teachers saw them; had begun in their old slave environment and with their own parents or some fellow slave, or perhaps their master’s children, for teachers, and so they were the more ready for new privileges.