Note 65 — Chapter VIII · THE CONDITION AND CHARACTER OF THE PRIVILEGED CLASSES OF THE SOUTH. (continued 2)
Reading edition
The ratio of white illiterate to white population, per cent., as returned, is,
{Free States, 3.36
{Slave States 8.27
of the native population, over twenty years old, it is,
{Free States, 4.12 (Census Compendium, pp. 152, 153).
{Slave States 17.23
The ability to merely read and write may itself be of little value, but the fact of a child’s having had the painstaking necessary to so far instruct him is in some degree a means of measuring his other inherited wealth, and thus his breeding.