Education was an important factor in deciding the issues of our Civil War. Thoroughly trained and disciplined men filled the chief places in command in the Federal Army. The Northern soldiers were better educated than those of the South. It has been said that "in the German Army that fought the battles of the Franco-Prussian war, those who could neither read nor write amounted to only 3.8 per cent., while in the French Army the number amounted to 30.4 per cent." According to the admission of the defeated, the universities conquered at Sedan. Perhaps it is not too much to say that the great number of colleges in the Northern States conquered at Appomattox.
A large per cent. of the leaders in the American Congress, during the trying period of our country's history from 1860 to 1870, were either college graduates or had taken a partial course in college and gained its inspiration.
The college graduates have furnished 33 per cent. of the Congressmen, 46 per cent. of the Senators, 50 per cent. of the Vice Presidents, 65 per cent. of the Presidents, 73 per cent. of the Associate Judges, and 83 per cent. of the Chief Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Again, we are especially indebted to the colleges for encouraging private and public schools, through which we have become an enlightened people. It is impossible to estimate the indebtedness of popular to collegiate education. There is an intimate and vital relation between the college and the public schools, which differ not in kind, but only in the degree of instruction. "The success and usefulness of common schools," says Professor W. S. Tyler, "is exactly proportioned to the popularity and prosperity of the colleges, and whatever is done for or against the one is sure to react, with equal force and similar results, upon the other."
The colleges have been foremost in advocating that the education of the youth should not be left to those of meager attainments and narrow sympathies. They have maintained that, in order to reap the best advantages of our public schools, it is important to have wise, competent, Christian men and women to give instruction, as well as to prepare text-books, and to increase the appliances employed in teaching.