As the purpose of the following paper, read before the Historical Society of South Carolina, and now published by that body, is to refute the charge made by Mr. McMaster, in his History of the People of the United States, of the neglect of education in South Carolina prior to and during the Revolution, I have given exact quotations from the authors and Acts I have cited rather than my understanding of what they wrote or contained, thus avoiding any misunderstanding of the texts, on my part. I have also restricted myself to the period of which Mr. McMaster treats in the volume of his work now before the public. There is much in the subsequent history of education in the State which is interesting, but as this paper is a refutation, and a refutation only, I have not stepped beyond the period of which he has so far written. Charleston, S. C., October 22d, 1883. EDWARD MCCRADY, JUN'r. COLONIAL EDUCATION IN SOUTH CAROLINA. In "A View of South Carolina," by John Drayton, published in 1802, we find the author good humoredly ridiculing a learned professor of Princeton for his assertion in a work on the human species, that the poor and laboring classes in South Carolina are deformed and misshapen, and "degenerated to a complexion that is but a few shades lighter than that of the Iroquois." Mr. Drayton observes: "The doctor has never been in this State; how then has he been able to give this unpleasant and degrading account of some of her inhabitants. It could only have been by information, not from Carolinians, for they are better informed, but by strangers who, to use the doctor's own words,' judge of things, of men and manners under the influence of habits and ideas framed in a different climate, and a different state of society.'" Mr. Drayton quotes the learned professor as saying: "It is a shame for philosophy, at this day, to be swallowing the falsehoods, and accounting for the absurdities of sailors." "He would have done well, also," Mr. Drayton goes on to say, "in keeping clear of an error into which philosophers are apt to fall; which is to reason from assumed facts in order to support favorite principles.' This was written in the commencement of the century, and now at the near end of it, we of the South, and of South Carolina particularly, have the same complaint to make. He who would mention us must needs, it would seem, to obtain readers, still insist that we Southerners are all "but a few shades lighter than that of the Iroquois," are monsters in appearance; and the writer must now surely add-have no education and are steeped in ignorance. Matters indeed have grown worse. The historian of to-day, if he desires |