_Illiteracy--Its Causes_ At the close of the rebellion there were in the Union (according to the census of 1860) 4,441,830 people of African origin; in 1880 they had increased to 6,580,793.

Of this vast multitude in 1860, it is safe to say, not so many as one in every ten thousand could read or write.
They had been doomed by the most stringent laws to a long night of mental darkness.

It was a crime to teach a black man how to read even the Bible, the sacred repository of the laws that must light the pathway of man from death unto life eternal.

For to teach a slave was to make a firebrand--to arouse that love of freedom which stops at nothing short of absolute freedom.

It is not, therefore, surprising that every southern state should have passed the most odious inhibitary laws, with severe fines and penalties for their infraction, upon the question of informing the stunted intelligence of the slave population.