And To Drive Yesterday’s Point Home:

[excerpted from THE CHARLESTON OBSERVER, Vol. XII, No. 40 (6 October 1838): 159, column 2]

Educate your Children.—The following elegant extract merits the attention of every teacher, and especially of every parent.

“If the time shall come when this might fabric shall totter—when the beacon which now rises in a pillar of fire, a sign and wonder of the world, shall wax dim—the cause will be found in the ignorance of the people. If our union is still to continue to cheer the hopes, and animate the efforts of the oppressed of every nation; if our fields are to be untrod by the hirelings of despotism; if long days of blessedness are to attend our country in her career of glory; if you would have the sun continue to shed its unclouded rays upon the face of freemen, then educate all the children in the land. This alone startles the tyrant in his dreams of power, and rouses the slumbering energies of oppressed people. It was intelligence that reared up the majestic columns of national glory; and this alone can prevent them from crumbling to ashes.