Sumner and General Grant, that there should
be a provision at the National charge for the education of
all the citizens in the Southern States, black and white,
so far as the States were unable or unwilling to afford it,
such as had been provided for in the States of the North
for all their citizens. It was never contemplated by them
to give the right to vote to a large number of illiterate
citizens, without ample provision for their education at the
public charge. General Grant accompanied his official announcement
to Congress of the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment with
an earnest recommendation of such a provision. Earnest efforts
were made to accomplish this result by liberal grants from
the National treasury. Many liberal and patriotic Southern
Democrats supported it. But it was defeated by the timidity,
or mistaken notions of economy, of Northern statesmen. In
my opinion this defeat accounts for the failure of the policy
of reconstruction so far as it has failed. I do not believe
that self-government with universal suffrage could be maintained
long in any Northern State, or in any country in the world,
without ample provision for public education.
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