EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS Apologists for Reconstruction have repeatedly asserted that the Reconstruction governments gave to the South a system of public schools unknown up to that time, with the implication that this boon more than compensated for the errors of those years.

The statement has been so often made, and by some who should have known better, that it has generally been accepted at its face value.

The status of public education in the South in 1860, it is true, was not satisfactory, and the percentage of illiteracy was high.

Any attempt to distract attention from these facts by pointing out the great proportion of the Southern white population in colleges and academies is as much to be deprecated as the denial of the existence of public schools at all.[1] [Footnote 1: Some States had done little for public schools before 1860, but others had made more than a respectable beginning.

Delaware established a "literary fund" in 1796, Tennessee in 1806, Virginia in 1810, Maryland in 1813, and Georgia in 1817.