Sparks, Prescott, Bancroft; Jurists—Parsons, Wheaton,
Story, Kent! Whence Irving, Channing, Emerson;—whence all the scientific men, the men of thought, who represent the nation's loftier consciousness? All from the free States; north of Mason and Dixon's line!
Few works of any literary or scientific value have been written in this country in any of the slave States; few even get reprinted there. Compare the works which issue from the press of New Orleans, Savannah, Charleston, Norfolk, Baltimore, with such as come from Philadelphia, New York, and Boston—even from Lowell and Cincinnati; compare but the booksellers' stock in those several cities, and the difference between the cultivation of the more educated classes of the South and North is apparent at a glance.
But leaving general considerations of this sort, let us look at facts. In 1671, Sir William Berkely, Governor of Virginia, said, "I thank God that there are no free schools nor printing-presses [in Virginia], and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years." In 1840, in the fifteen slave States and territories there were at the various primary schools 201,085 scholars ; at the various primary schools of the free States 1,626,028. The State of Ohio alone had 218,609 scholars at her primary schools, 17,524 more than all the fifteen slave States. South Carolina had 12,520 such scholars, and Rhode Island 17,355. New York alone had 502,367.
In the higher schools there were in the South, 35,935 "scholars at the public charge," as they are called in the census; in the North, 432,388 similar scholars. Virginia, the largest of the slave States, had 9791 such scholars; Rhode Island, the smallest of the free States, 10,749. Massachusetts alone had 158,351, more than four times as many as all the slave States.
In the slave States, at academies and grammar schools, there were 52,906 scholars; in the free states, 97,174. But the difference in numbers here does not represent the difference of fact, for most of the academies and grammar schools of the South are inferior to the "schools at public charge" of the North; far inferior to the better portion of the northern "district schools."
In 1840 there were at the various colleges in the South,
