Ohio History Journal

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Book Reviews

Book Reviews

 

 

 

Teach the Freeman: The Correspondence of Rutherford B. Hayes and

the Slater Fund for Negro Education, 1881-1887. Edited by Louis

D. Rubin, Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959.

Two volumes. lv??236??302p.; index. $10.00.)

Through the philanthropy of a textile manufacturer of Norwich,

Connecticut, the John F. Slater Fund for the Education of Freedmen

was established for the purpose of "uplifting the lately emancipated

population of the Southern States, and their posterity, by conferring

upon them the blessings of Christian education." Incorporated in 1882,

the fund carried on its work until 1937, when it was merged with the

Southern Education Foundation.

From the establishment of the fund until his death in 1893, Ruther-

ford B. Hayes served as president of its board of trustees. Other dis-

tinguished persons from both North and South served on the board in

this period, including Morison R. Waite, who served as vice president,

and Daniel Coit Gilman, who served as secretary and later as president

after the death of Hayes. From papers in the Rutherford B. Hayes

Library at Fremont, Ohio, Louis D. Rubin, Jr., has selected and edited

correspondence pertaining to the Slater Fund now published in these two

volumes.

A large part of this correspondence consists of letters written to

Hayes by Atticus G. Haygood, the first general agent of the fund. A

southerner and a Methodist minister, Haygood had resigned from the

presidency of Emory College to work for the fund because of his intense

interest in Negro education. He determined in large measure where

and for what purposes income from the fund was to be spent. The

letters show that Hayes loyally supported Haygood and protected him

from intervention by other trustees who disagreed with his methods.

Haygood was a supporter of the vogue for "industrial" or manual

training in institutions of higher learning for Negroes, and in order to

qualify for aid from the Slater Fund a school had at least to give the

appearance of offering such training. Haygood also believed that the

greatest good could be accomplished by making small grants to a large