USA > North Carolina > History of North Carolina: North Carolina since 1860, Volume III > Part 29
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In 1912 the party was split into two factions and President Taft in his search for delegates withdrew ten nominations for federal office from the Senate in order to force agree- ment. A conference was held in Washington in March in which the leaders agreed to support Taft. But the party had no love for him remembering his Greensboro speech and cherishing a bitter grudge against him for the appointment of a democrat, Judge H. G. Connor, to the district judgeship, an appointment, by the way, that has begun to destroy the distrust and even hatred of the Federal courts generally, and with just cause, prevalent in the state since Reconstruction. So when the state convention met, the Roosevelt delegates captured it and passed resolutions which bitterly condemned Taft. The party then divided for the campaign.
These are the things which have militated against a more equal division of parties in the state. The republican party has still, however, a great opportunity and in the course of time may grasp it.
The absence of the negro from politics has had many good results in North Carolina. Not the least of these was thus described by Aycock :
I declared in my speech of acceptance that with the adoption of the Constitutional Amendment, "We will have peace in the land." "There
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will be rest," I said, "from political bitterness and race antagonism. Industry will have a great outburst. We shall have intellectual free- dom. Public questions will stand or fall in the court of reason and not of passion. We shall forget the asperities of those years and shall go forward into the twentieth century a united people, striving in zeal and in generous rivalry for the material, intellectual and moral upbuilding of the State. May an era of good feeling among us be the outcome of this contest."
There are those among us who fear that these predictions have not been fulfilled. These doubters are looking upon the surface of things. They do not look at the great underlying truth. They declare that bitterness is more rife than ever before; that the era of good feeling has not come; that criticism is more severe than ever; that freedom of speech is not permissible. They have mistaken appearance for fact. There is bitterness between individuals. There is strife and enmity between some people. There is, of course, a reckless criticism. Our people had been so long restrained by the necessity of staying united in order to face the danger of negro control of the state, that when they first gained their freedom under the Constitutional Amendment they naturally felt called upon to exhibit their freedom from restraint by frequent and often undue criticism. Speeches and pub- lications which heretofore would have attracted universal approval or universal condemnation, according to the side which they were on, have met with a divided support and a divided criticism. Controversies have grown large about small things. Personalities have frequently taken the place of the discussion of great problems. All of these things have been done in assertion of our new-born freedom. They are ever the first fruits of liberty of speech. They mark the beginning of real liberty, which will hereafter be restrained by judgment. They show that the minds of our people are active; that they are alert even in fault-finding. They can be destructionists, but this is the beginning of the constructive power as well. If we pull down now, we shall build hereafter. If we criticise now, we shall in the future learn that effective criticism is that only which is based on fact, and then only to be indulged in for the correction of evil and for the purpose of turning men toward better things. This bitterness and this strife las not reached the great body of the people. They have gone about their work undisturbed by fault-finding and the asperities of discussion. They have found in industry the best outlet for their superabundance of energy and they are bringing to pass a wonderful day in this state.
CHAPTER XVI
EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
When the civil war broke out the school system had been firmly established by Calvin H. Wiley. It compared favor- ably with the systems of the other states and was infinitely better than any other in the Southern states. Already the influence of the schools was beginning to be felt in the state, and one of the most hopeful things in connection with them was the widespread public sentiment in their favor, which was a fact clearly apparent. The state was committed at last to public education, and the promise of the system was very bright when war upset the calculations of every one who had dared to plan for the future.
The war was, of course, a disaster which did irreparable damage not only to the whole existing system of schools, but also to the whole future of public education in North Caro- lina. It stripped the schools of male teachers and started a process of feminizing education. It led to the release of the counties from the obligation to levy local taxes for school support. It diverted public interest from education. It swept away the major part of the literary fund, which at that time amounted to nearly $2,000,000. And, finally, through its out- come, it left as a legacy to the South the negro problem, which was to prove one of the most persistent and embarrassing obstacles to the re-awakening of public interest in universal education.
Of course, all of these things did not happen at once. At- tendance dropped in the first year of the war, and the amount spent on schools was far less; but 65,000 children were in school and more than $100,000 was expended. Wiley, with all his strength, urged the maintenance of the fundamentals of the system, and the press insisted that the schools must
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be kept in operation, the Standard phrasing it, "In the name of the good people, and especially the children of the state, let none of the schools be abandoned," while the Charlotte Democrat tersely said: "The children of the state must be taught to read, war or no war." Governor Vance, in his message of November, 1864, said:
The subject of our common schools is one which I beg you will not forget amid the great concerns of war. * * * I earnestly recommend to your consideration the whole subject. * * *
I also suggest that regular teachers be exempted from state military duty whilst engaged in teaching. *
* The common schools should surely be kept going at any cost; and if sufficient inducements cannot be offered to disabled soldiers and educated women to take hold of them, the necessary males should be exempted. * * Our great system of common schools is, after all, our only true and solid foundation for public education and demands your constant and fostering care.
Thanks to this sort of spirit and the courage and labors of Wiley, the system did not die until the war was over. Wiley's faith never faltered, and he redoubled his efforts, ignoring the fact that his small salary, considering its pur- chasing power, had practically vanished, firm in his conviction that there would be greater need than ever after the war for the educated man and for the continued education of the youth of the state.
At the beginning of the war he was fearful that the school fund would be used for military purposes, either directly or by investment in doubtful securities. He carried the matter to the governor, stating his fears, and the latter, along with the council of state, entered into an agreement with him to assist in keeping the fund intact. Accordingly when propo- sitions were made in the legislature at its first session to take it for war purposes, executive influence was added to the oppo- sition in the legislature. A rather heated contest followed which terminated favorably to the preservation of the literary fund, and, except in 1863, when $128,000 was borrowed by the state from it, the safety of its securities were not later in doubt. Nor were the securities changed, for, in spite of the pressure to invest in Confederate bonds, the fund remained invested mainly in bank stock which seemed more secure.
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But the banks were ruined at the close of the war by the loss of Confederate securities and the repudiation of the state war debt, so the result was much the same. The other invest- ments were more secure and had a par value of about $1,000,- 000, but the sum finally saved from the wreck amounted to scarcely more than a third of this.
Wiley still gave all his thought to plans for the improve- ment of the system and secured in December, 1864, the passage of a law providing for graded schools. He was literally a man of one idea, and even in the midst of a devastating war thought only of what had ever been North Carolina's supreme need -the education of all the people. It was only this single- mindedness of his which saved the schools. Their continued existence was little short of a miracle, when one considers the condition of the state. Nothing better indicates the hold which public education had secured upon the minds and hearts of the people than this war record, which Wiley thus briefly described .in his last report :
To the lasting honor of North Carolina her public schools sur- vived the terrible shock of cruel war and state which furnished the greatest number and the bravest troops to the war did more than all the others for the cause of popular education. The common schools lived and discharged their useful mission through all the gloom and trials of the conflict, and when the last gun was fired, and veteran armies once hostile were meeting and embracing in peace upon our soil, the doors were still open and they numbered their pupils by the scores of thousands.
Dr. Joyner aptly adds :
He did not say, but he might have said with truth, that to the eloquence, the zeal, the vigilance, the courage, the devotion, the wisdom, the tact, the power, the energy and the influence of the great superintendent of her public schools was mainly due the credit of this honorable record.
When the end of the war came with economic and financial prostration, under the pressure of the most absorbing polit- ical problems and grave doubts of the future, public attention was turned elsewhere. Provisional Governor Holden, when he appointed provisional state officials, for some reason un- known, unless because of Wiley's opposition to his candidacy for governor in 1864, ignored him and did not appoint a suc-
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cessor. When the convention of 1865 was about to meet Wiley submitted his report, which Holden declined to receive. Wiley asked that it be transmitted to the convention and the gov- ernor again refused to recognize him. Wiley protested with- out avail. He and Worth were great friends, and the latter sought to get the report before the convention.
On October 19 the convention, by ordinance, declared va- cant all state offices in existence April 26, 1865, whose incum- bents had taken the oath of allegiance to the Confederate States. As it happened, Wiley had never taken the oath, and he, therefore, claimed the office and submitted his report to the legislature in 1866 which received and printed it. But on March 9 a law was passed abolishing the offices of super- intendent of common schools and treasurer of the literary fund. The same law allowed the county courts to lay and collect taxes for school support, but it was not likely that this permission would continue the school system. Towards Wiley there was manifested some bitterness of feeling, which un- doubtedly to some extent influenced the legislature. But the lack of sufficient funds to carry on the system in any adequate way, the poverty of the people, and the uncertainty prevailing as to the future would of themselves serve to explain the action of the legislature. At the same session the House passed a bill, which the Senate killed, appropriating $70,000 to assist the schools.
At the last meeting of the legislature before the passage of the reconstruction acts a law was passed allowing towns and cities to establish public schools. Another law, passed at the same time, required the county courts to appoint county superintendents and local trustees. These acts indicate that in the minds of the legislators the suspension of the schools was but a temporary matter, and that in time the system would be restored.
One of the chief purposes of the northern settlers in North Carolina, if their words can be taken as evidence, was to estab- lish an effective system of common schools based upon the New England plan. They ignored entirely the system which had already been established and which was temporarily in- active, and made their demand for the creation of schools for
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all one of the main defenses of the policy of Reconstruction. There is little doubt that much of this sentiment was real, but, obscured by the greed which characterized the activities of the aliens, it did little for the cause of education in the state. From the beginning, their plans were threatened by the hos- tility which was aroused by the determination of many of them to prevent the separation of the races, their ignorance of the people of North Carolina and of the conditions existent in the state, and the economic and financial prostration which prevented the expenditure of the necessary funds to maintain the system.
When the convention of 1868 assembled there was much interest in its probable action in relation to education. The committee on education was composed of eleven republicans and two conservatives. Seven of the former were carpet- baggers and two were negroes. The section on education re- ported by the committee made no provision for separate schools for the two races, and twice the convention voted down amendments offered to secure separation. The carpet- baggers were planning mixed schools and the decision of the question was, under the constitution, a matter for each county.
The new constitution provided that the legislature should provide by taxation or otherwise for a general and uniform system of public schools, and it further provided that a four months' school should be maintained in every district. The legislature was given power to compel the attendance of all children for a period of sixteen months. Three-fourths of the poll tax was assigned to the school fund. The superin- tendent of public instruction was made a constitutional officer and was associated with the other state officers in a board of education which replaced the literary board. The composi- tion of this board put the control of the schools into political hands and it has remained there ever since-not the least of the evils inherited from the carpet-baggers
No action in connection with the schools was taken until the regular session of the legislature in 1868, further than the appointment of committees in each house. The Senate committee consisted of seven republicans, one of them a negro,
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and the House committee of ten republicans, one a negro, and one conservative.
Governor Holden in his message urged the establishment of a general and uniform system of schools with separation of the races but with no difference in the schools. In Jan- uary a bill providing for the establishment of a school system was introduced into the Senate and sometime later into the House. In the Senate it was the subject of much debate but was amended very little except that a provision for separate schools was adopted. Finally, in April it became law. Under it, the income from the old literary fund, now the public school fund, was to be apportioned among the counties according to school population. The commissioners of each county were to levy taxes for sites and for building or rent- ing schoolhouses and township school committees were to maintain a sufficient number of schools for at least four months in the year. The duties of the school boards and of the county examiners were defined and a course of study outlined. It was provided that three-fourths of the money received from the poll tax should be spent on the schools and the further sum of one hundred thousand dollars was appro- priated by the legislature for their assistance. Could this law have been actually put into operation by an honest and good-intentioned state government the story of public educa- tion in North Carolina after the war would have been very different. But the obstacles were almost insuperable. The state and the people were almost bankrupt, the new status of the negro and the general knowledge that the more radical elements of the republican party were seeking to establish mixed schools made the matter of the schools a serious prob- lem, and for the next two years the state was administered by a shamelessly corrupt government. It is easy to see today that there was really no hope in the situation.
The new superintendent of public instruction, Rev. S. S. Ashley, was a carpet-bagger from Massachusetts who was probably himself of mixed blood, He was an earnest fanatic of doubtful honesty who was bent, to the exclusion of other matters, on the establishment of mixed schools. He had some ability but was utterly unable to gain public confidence. He
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devoted most of his official attention to the preparation of elaborate reports which were notable for their large plans for the future and their small record of things already accomplished.
In November, 1868, he reported the beginnings of organi- zation; in August, 1869, he believed that something would be begun in the following October and that by 1870 many schools would be in operation. He calculated that the school fund would be three hundred thousand dollars and that the Pea- body Fund would help the cities and towns. But, as events soon showed, no taxes were forthcoming for the year ending September, 1869, nor did the legislative appropriation of one hundred thousand dollars ever materialize. The poll tax produced very little. For the year ending September, 1870, more than one hundred and thirty-six thousand dollars was collected for schools but only about thirty-nine thousand was spent upon them. Still, according to Ashley's report, by the same time about fourteen hundred schools were in operation with close to fifty thousand pupils, nearly half of whom were colored.
Assisting Ashley in the work of superintendence was J. W. Hood, a negro carpet-bagger, who had been a member of the convention of 1868. Without any warrant of law the board of education had appointed him assistant superintend- ent of public instruction for the colored schools, and with far more energy and ability than was shown by Ashley, he en- tered upon the work of organizing schools for the negroes. These schools were the beneficiaries of considerable assistance from numerous societies and religious organizations in the North and also from the Freedmen's Bureau. The latter had begun the establishment of negro schools in 1865 and when its existence was terminated in 1869 it was supporting wholly or in part more than four hundred schools with more than twenty thousand pupils. No figures can be obtained as to the expenditure of the bureau but it could scarcely have been less than two hundred thousand dollars. Both white and colored schools received assistance from the Peabody Fund.
In the attempt to work out the problem of establishing Vol. III-23
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a school system many difficulties appeared. Party strife was rampant and the schools, as has been seen, had been definitely put under political control by the constitution. It thus lost many of the friends it should have made among the class by whose support alone could success be won. Teachers were untrained and incompetent, and, even of this sort, very scarce. Books were difficult to obtain. School officials were uninterested and careless in the majority of cases and there was no public drive behind the schools to make them go. Of course the lack of funds was the greatest weakness. In 1869 the investments of the literary fund which still survived, were sold, part of them with considerable sus- picion of fraud, and invested in special tax bonds which were soon worthless, so this source of income had practically dis- appeared. In 1870 a special tax was levied to pay the special appropriation by the state, but only a small amount was col- lected. The final financial blow came in 1870 when the Su- preme Court held unconstitutional that part of the law of 1869 which provided for local school taxes, because school expenses were not necessary within the meaning of the constitution and because the levy would prevent the preservation of the equa- tion between poll and property taxes required by the consti- tution. This decision put a heavy handicap on the schools for some years to come.
Leaving the public schools for the time being, let us follow the University through the years of Reconstruction.
During the entire period of the war, the University of North Carolina never closed its doors. Year by year its stu- dent body decreased until there remained only a mere handful, all disabled by service or too young to go to the front. With the students went the younger members of the faculty, but the older professors, led by President Swain, continued at their posts, determined that the exercises of the institution, begun in 1795, should not be suspended.
At the close of the war the economic prostration of the state and the financial condition of the institution itself both militated against any rapid return to prosperity. Its debts, not including arrears of salaries, amounted to more than $100,000 while the bulk of its property was invested in bank
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stock which became worthless with the repudiation of the state debt. In 1866 the legislature helped somewhat by the appro- priation of $7,000 and the next year by the transfer of the land scrip granted the state by Congress under the Morrill Act of 1862 for the support of an agricultural college. North Carolina was entitled to 270,000 acres which were sold for 50 cents an acre, $10,000 down and the rest payable when Con- gress should recognize the state.
The attendance was very small and it became evident that failure was near. Two professors resigned in 1867 and Gov- ernor Worth at a special meeting of the trustees urged that some steps be taken to save the institution. President Swain, it was clear, had outgrown his usefulness but was entirely unaware of the fact. Kemp P. Battle in consultation with Dr. Charles Phillips, determined to secure the remodeling of the institution and they secured the resignations of all the faculty including the president. These were presented at the meeting of the trustees and all were asked to hold over until their successors should be chosen which they promised would be done in 1868.
In the meantime, the new constitution had been adopted, and by its provisions the existing board of trustees, which had been elected by the General Assembly, was replaced by one chosen by the board of education, consisting of the state officers, who were ex-officio trustees. In consequence of this . the outgoing board at their last meeting re-elected the presi- dent and faculty and abandoned the new scheme of reorganiza- tion.
The new system of control which went into effect in July, 1868, was purely political and was designed to be so. The governor was chairman of the board of trustees and also of the executive committee, which consisted of the board of edu- cation and three trustees chosen by the trustees. This polit- ical character was apparent when the new board of trustees was finally elected. The constitution required that they should be selected, one from each county, but this was not followed be- cause of the desire of the board of education to place upon the board of trustees certain prominent republicans, chiefly carpet-baggers. Of the new board, eighteen were alumni, but
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only five members had previously served on the board. Al- most every member was a partisan republican, and the ex- ecutive committee was dominated by Governor Holden. It was a matter of common knowledge, long before the meeting of the board, that a clean sweep would be made of the old faculty and that a "loyal," that is to say partisan repub- lican, University would be established. The change was re- ceived with deep anger and distress by the friends of the old University, who were not slow to express their feelings and to contrast the governor of 1868, bent upon making the Univer- sity republican, with the editor of the Standard, who in 1856, led the hue and cry against Professor Hedrick whose only crime had been a quiet desire to vote for Fremont.
The first meeting of the trustees was held in June. The resignations of Swain and the faculty which had been pre- sented to the old board were accepted and a new executive committee of the trustees was given full power to put into operation a "thorough and efficient organization of the Uni- versity upon the proper and liberal basis contemplated by the constitution," to elect a president, and resume exercises. The one limitation placed upon them was that no one should be elected to the faculty who had not "an established national reputation as a scholar and educator." The presidency was then offered to L. P. Olds, Holden's son-in-law. He declined and delay followed. Talk was common that the college was to be opened for negroes as well as whites and the carpet-bag members of the board favored it, but it was never voted or even seriously considered by the native white trustees.
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