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school—his own class and Mrs. Chippenfield’s are composed, I should judge, entirely of freemen’s children, so many of whom owned slaves before the war.” What led to her break with Cardozo, she added, was his insistence that students who failed to pay their monthly tuition fees be sent home, thereby making the school even more exclusive. Still another former teacher charged that in the distribution of clothing gifts from the North, Cardozo had favored the children of “the colored people,” who were best able to purchase such clothing, over “the freed people,” who were by far the most needy. “I wish to do all I can for the suffering of any class,” she wrote in protest; “but I am not willing to labor or beg for the ‘free browns,’ in a manner that will help to make the difference between them & the freed people, even greater than it was in slavery.” Whether these various charges were valid or not may be less important than the characteristic way in which Cardozo dealt with them—he asked for the dismissal of both teachers.90

Like many of the missionary teachers and ministers, Cardozo assumed an active role in the community, aggressively defending the rights of blacks and warning against the “treacherous” class of whites seeking to regain political control of the state. Both his fame as an educator and his vigorous advocacy of civil rights propelled him into the political arena, and in 1867 he agreed to become a candidate for the constitutional convention. The way in which he chose to acknowledge the nomination was also characteristic. “I have no desire for the turbulent political scene,” he wrote a friend in the North, “but being the only educated colored man here my friends thought it my duty to go if elected, and I consented to do so.” That position ultimately launched a political career that culminated in his election as secretary of state of South Carolina.91

Although no doubt appreciating the talents of a Cardozo, the white officers and superintendents of the freedmen’s aid societies might have also taken pains to note how truly exceptional he was compared to other black teachers. That was no less than what Cardozo himself would have conceded. Even if grudgingly, however, school officials came to recognize the strategic value of black teachers, both as examples for their people and because they were considered less likely than northern whites to incur “abuse and insult” in the interior counties. But in hiring black teachers, especially those who were native to the South, school administrators sometimes frankly confessed that they were sacrificing quality for color. The superintendent of the freedmen’s schools in Montgomery, Alabama, defended the employment of three black instructors even though they were “inexperienced and defective in their mode of teaching.” “We use them,” he explained, “because they are of service to our cause. It is our policy to convert colored pupils into teachers as fast as possible. It is cheaper if not so beneficial and it has good effects in many ways.” That explanation would not have impressed G. L. Eberhart, the state superintendent of freedmen’s schools in Georgia. Like Cardozo, he advised “the most exacting care” in selecting black teachers. Unlike Cardozo, he expressed little confidence in their potential. “I am becoming daily more impressed with their total unfitness to assist in the moral and mental elevation of their own race. It appears as if Slavery had completely divested them of every moral attribute—every idea that leads to true moral rectitude.”92

When the freedmen’s aid societies and their educational representatives in the South scrutinized black candidates for teaching positions, their concern was not limited to questions of educational background and preparation. The experience with some black teachers made it incumbent upon the supervisors to avoid hiring anyone who might cause divisiveness within the harmonious “family” of teachers by agitating questions of social equality and fraternization. No matter how well qualified, a teacher who might be a source of controversy and