Stumbled across an odd fact today. I've been reading Roger Lowenstein's "Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War." It's interesting. A main character for most of the book is Sec. of Treasury Chase, who ends up designing the "National Bank System" and also had charge mostly for the Sea Island plantations after the Union Army took the islands. This led to what is called the Port Royal Experiment, giving the government the problem of how to handle the freed slaves and the occupied plantations. It was a forerunner of Reconsttuction's issues.
One problem was teaching adult blacks to read. A teacher was John Zachos, a Greek whose father was killed in the Greek rebellion in 1824, and was brought to the US by an American who supported the rebellion. He wrote a book, the first book the blacks had, entitled: " The Phonic Primer and Reader, A National Method of teaching Reading by the Sounds of the Letters without altering the Orthography. Designed Chiefly for the Use of Night-Schools Where Adults are Taught, and for the Myriads of Freed Men and Women, Whose First Rush from the Prison-House of Slavery is to the Gates of the Temple of Knowledge?"
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