[Sidenote: Awakening felt, but with approach of Civil War,]
[Sidenote: progress stopped, and facilities wrecked at close of the war.]
=Organization of State Systems in the South.=--Thus through the awakening of common schools that occurred throughout the union from 1835 to 1860 was the old-time country and city district school of the North gradually lifted up to the present system of graded free elementary, secondary, and normal schools, together with city and state universities. But these results were not at first as fully realized in the South, because of the approach and precipitation of the dreadful internecine conflict that weighed down and finally prostrated the resources of that section. However, except for this impending calamity, the conditions in the South were not essentially different from those in any other section. During the earlier years of the awakening, and in some states up to the very verge of the Civil War, great progress in public education was noticeable. The attendance in the common schools, established in several states by ‘permissive’ legislation, had been rapidly growing for a score of years, and there was an increasing body of prominent men desirous of enlarging popular education. During the early forties there were many efforts and suggestions for a system of public schools, and several conventions were held in the interest of such institutions. North Carolina actually established a state system in 1839. Tennessee (1838-1843) and Kentucky (1838) made less enduring efforts toward a similar organization, and as late as 1858 Georgia took a distinct step forward in this direction. Moreover, even in their secession conventions some states, like Georgia, adopted resolutions or constitutional amendments looking to the education of the people, and North Carolina in 1863, with the union army actually at its doors, undertook to grade the schools and provide for the training of teachers. But, in general, as the impending conflict drew near, attention to educational progress was forced to give way to the preservation of state and home, and after the war, which crushed and ravaged nearly every portion of the South, educational facilities had for the most part been totally wrecked.