"
"Yes?" said the other inquiringly. "What may that have been?"
"In one word," said Le Moyne--"the 'township' system."
"Oh, yes," laughed the Congressman lightly; "the Yankee town-meeting."
"Exactly," responded Le Moyne; "yet I venture to say that the
presence and absence of the town-meeting--the township system or its
equivalent--in the North and in the South, constituted a difference
not less vital and important than that of slavery itself. In fact,
sir, I sincerely believe that it is to the township system that the
North owes the fact that it is not to-day as much slave territory
as the South was before the war."
"What!" said the Northerner, with surprise, "you do not mean
to say that the North owes its freedom, its prosperity, and its
intelligence--the three things in which it differs from the South
most materially--entirely to the Yankee town-meeting?"
"Perhaps not entirely," said Le Moyne; "but in the main I think
it does. And there are certain facts connected with our history
which I think, when you consider them carefully, will incline you
to the same belief."
"Indeed; I should be glad to know them."
"The first of these," continued Le Moyne, "is the fact that in
every state in which the township system really prevailed, slavery
was abolished without recourse to arms, without civil discord or
perceptible evil results. The next is that in the states in which
the township system did not prevail in fact as well as name, the
public school system did not exist, or had only a nominal existence;
and the proportion of illiteracy in those states as a consequence
was, _among the whites alone_, something like four times as
great as in those states in which the township system flourished.
Pages:
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588