e colleges made efforts to open in the fall of 1865. Only one student
presented himself at the University of Alabama for matriculation; but
before June 1866, the stronger colleges were again in operation. The
public or semi-public schools for the whites also opened in the fall.
In the cities where Federal military authorities had brought about
the employment of Northern teachers, there was some friction. In
New Orleans, for example, the teachers required the children to sing
Northern songs and patriotic airs. When the Confederates were restored
to power, these teachers were dismissed.

The movement toward Negro education was general throughout the South.
Among the blacks themselves there was an intense desire to learn. They
wished to read the Bible, to be preachers, to be as the old master and
not have to work. Day and night and Sunday they crowded the schools.
According to an observer,* "not only are individuals seen at study, and
under the most untoward circumstances, but in very many places I have
found what I will call 'native schools,' often rude and very imperfect,
but there they are, a group, perhaps, of all ages, trying to learn. Some
young man, some woman, or old preacher, in cellar, or shed, or corner
of a Negro meeting-house, with the alphabet in hand, or a town
spelling-book, is their teacher. All are full of enthusiasm with the new
knowledge the book is imparting to them."

* J. W. Alvord, Superintendent of Schools for the Freedmen's
Bureau, 1866.

Not only did the Negroes want schooling, but both the North and the
South proposed to give it to them. Neither side was actuated entirely by
altruistic motives. A Hampton Institute teacher in later days remarked:
"When the combat was over and the Yankee school-ma'am followed in the
train of the northern armies, the business of educating the Negroes was
a continuation of hostilities against the vanquished and was so regarded
to a considerable extent on both sides."

The Southern churches, through their bishops and clergy, the newspapers,
and prominent individuals such as J. L. M. Curry, John B. Gordon, J.
L. Orr, Governors Brown, Moore, and Patton, came out in favor of Negro
education. Of this movement General Swayne said: "Quite early.... the
several religious denominations took strong ground in favor of the
education of the freedmen. The principal argument was an appeal to
sectional and sectarian prejudice, lest, the work being inevitable,
the in