Ala., and Columbia, S. C." These early normal schools were as yet rather academies, where the superior young colored people received the schooling necessary for a teacher's work, with but little of what is regarded the professional training now everywhere demanded in the teachers of the people's schools. The necessity of help for teachers and preachers is noted in the report. Arrangements were made for the employment and assistance of Dr. Rust, of Cincinnati, Ohio, as corresponding secretary, whose services during many years were so valuable over the entire field of Southern educational work; also Rev. J. M. Walden, afterwards most widely known as the chief traveling bishop of his church, was assigned to this work.

Another decade passes, and in 1878 the eleventh annual report of the Freedman's Aid Society opens a view over a wider field with greater results. The Methodist Episcopal Church has now 28 conferences in the South, 14 largely of white and 14 principally of colored members.

These 28 conferences already contained 396,000 members, although the Methodist Church South and several great organizations of colored Methodists were working in the same field. In this territory there were 6,320 traveling and local preachers, of whom 3,365 were colored. There were 4,381 Sunday schools, with 240,671 scholars, of which 2,022 schools and 96,474 scholars were colored. The church property developed by this ten years' work was valued at $8,732,716, of which $1,868,503 was in use by the colored members. Already this great school missionary effort by the different churches of the North had borne abundant fruit. The negroes themselves had not been deficient in zeal, and report 448,000 members of the African Zion and Colored Methodist Episcopal churches of America. One of the shadows cast by the denominational "pairing off" of Northern Christians into church missionary associations was the development of the sectarian spirit in the negro race, while the church parochial school, adopted as a necessary expedient in the early stages of educational work, was now, after a generation, found often to be a positive and obstructive hindrance to the building up of the effective system of common-school instruction, which always must be the agency of civilization to the negro race.

The school work of the Freedman's Aid Society had not lingered behind the church enterprise. Five chartered institutions, with three denominational theological schools, two medical colleges, and ten seminaries of the academical grade were reported, with an attendance of 2,040 students, 1,000 of whom were classed as normal, in 11 States. It was estimated that 64 per cent of the colored people of school age were abiding in the darkness of ignorance. "Of the 5,000,000 colored people of the country-one-third, perhaps, seem to have risen to a higher degree of comfort and a higher phase of life-one-third have sunk down to a lower plane, and one-third are left the victims of circumstances." The report brings to notice the vast field of Christian work open to women in the reformation of the family. "The great opportunity for the women of America is presented in this work, which God has placed at our door." In two of the schools a medical education can be obtained. The financial side of the society gives the least favorable account of itself, reporting $63,402.85 expended in 1878-only $3,000 more than ten years before. In the eleven years of its operation the Freedman's Aid Society had disbursed $715,852.40; 100,000 pupils had been taught by teachers educated in the schools of the society. For reasons not explained the public-school attendance had fallen off in 6 of the Southern States during the year. Even in Kentucky not half the school population had ever been enrolled in the common school. There was still a great field of labor awaiting the fit workers in the building for the children of the South.

In 1880 the writer of this essay began the first of a series of annual visitations among the schools of all sorts in all the Southern States that has continued under

the name of "a ministry of education" until the present day. In the Clark University, Atlanta, Ga., founded by Bishop Gilbert Haven, he found the most successful attempt to introduce industrial training in the mechanical and domestic arts outside the Hampton Institute. This feature has since been developed in the schools of the Freedman's Aid Society to a remarkable degree. On the same college campus as Clark University we now find the Gammon Theological Seminary, the most important of this class in the South, endowed and with belongings even superior to the average of divinity schools" in the North.

Another decade has passed and the report of 1888 reveals a steady progress. "One theological school, 12 institutions of college grade, 2 medical, 6 normal, 3 legal, and 12 with industrial departments, with 28 academies, have been supported and aided. In these 41 centers of intellectual and moral power 328 teachers have faithfully done their work and 7,682 different students have been instructed, an increase of 10 institutions, 40 teachers, and 715 students over the preceding year." The race question is practically settled on the American policy of "local option." (1) "One society and administration for all people and conferences. (2) Schools among colored and white people, to be so located as to best serve the interests of the conferences to be benefited. (3) There is to be no exclusion on account of race, color, or previous condition.' Supervision in schools, as in conferences, is to be by the choice of the people themselves." It is noted that while the attempt to employ the educated class of the colored race as teachers in the mission schools "has resulted only in a partial success in a few fields," the general field open to the colored graduate has been greatly enlarged by the Freedman's Aid Society. During the year a new chapel has been built at Clark, and 8 schools have been designated as centers where college studies could be pursued. The Gammon Theological School has been declared the center of this department, with arrangements for practical theological training, while the 12 academies are restricted to the sections nearest them. Four colored schools, admitting white pupils, were also undertaken. Different courses of study were arranged for every class of schools. In all these institutions there were 4,048 in the collegiate, 269 in the theological, 66 in the medical, 67 in the legal, 1,455 in the industrial, and 3,569 in the academical departments. The teachers in the "collegiate centers" make reports to the superintendents of the pupils pursuing college studies. The society was already in debt $132,619.41, largely due to the purchase of lands and "building." The managers plead for an annual income of $280,000, of which the schools were expected to pay in tuition and rent $48,179. According to an estimate of the society, the population of the 16 slave States was estimated at 12,784,612. Of these 4,715,381, 10 years of age and over, were illiterate, 3,042,435 of the colored race. In the conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the South there were 447,016 members, of whom 226,833 were colored. There were 7,326 preachers, teachers, and workers employed. These people were gathered in 48 conferences, 32 consisting of colored and 16 containing only white people.

In the central mountain regions of the South, where the white people were generally loyal during the war, the Methodist Episcopal Church, in 1890, had 100,000 members, organized in 7 conferences. One hundred and fifty thousand volunteers went into the United States Army from that territory. The negro population in this region was very small. There were then 100 Grand Army posts in this region and the U. S. Grant University at Chattanooga was in effective operation. Largely by donations from the Slater fund, under the management of Dr. Atticus G. Haygood, the industrial work in the schools had greatly increased. The society seemed to be fully alive to this important annex to its educational forces. The Woman's Home Missionary Society was founding schools of domestic economy in five of the larger institutions, and the local missionary work had been greatly aided by the establishment of a missionary home located among the people, to be

the residence of the woman missionary and the model for the imitation of the well-to-do colored people. One of these college centers, Claflin University, at Orangeburg, S. C., one of the largest of the schools for colored youth in the South, was for several years a department of the University of South Carolina, under the direction of the same board of trustees as the old college of South Carolina and the military school at Charleston for white youth.

It is unnecessary to continue the record of the great work of the Freedman's Aid Society, the deeply interesting details of which have been written in the annual reports and a bimonthly publication devoted to this work of the association. The Methodist organization, discipline, and instruction in its mission schools are essentially the same as developed in the American Missionary Association. They do not vary in all these denominational schools, save in the polity, and, in some respects, the type of the membership. Few churches have done more of the proper personal school work than the Methodist Episcopal. During the first thirty years of its existence the Freedman's Aid Society expended more than $6,000,000. Its chief school of the university type continues to be Wilberforce University, in Xenia, Ohio, established in 1857. The 65 institutions supported by all branches of the Methodist Church for colored students, as late as 1895, included 388 teachers, 10,100 students, $1,905,150 property, and $650,500 expended in administration. Dr. Hartzell, one of the ablest and most effective workers in the educational affairs of the society, has recently been elected to the office of bishop, and is now established in Africa.

The great development of the Methodist Episcopal Church in its educational policy is one of the notable features of the history of education in the United States during the past thirty years. The Chautauqua Assembly, established thirty years ago by the present Bishop Vincent, a native of Alabama, is one of the most characteristic and triumphant developments of American genius for all educational work. The new American University at Washington, D. C., will fitly crown this half century of effort.

In 1901 the Freedman's Aid Society reports: "From its humble beginning of more than a quarter of a century since, when there was only one teacher, with a borrowed capital of $800, it has to-day 47 institutions of Christian learning, about equally divided between the negroes and the poor whites, in all the former slave States, with lands and buildings worth $2,165,000." It is able to declare: "During all these years not a single student or graduate has ever been charged with crimes against virtue." The reports from the schools were most encouraging. The attendance was the largest since the financial panic of 1892-93 and the number of graduates the largest in the history of the society. It is encouraging to note that special stress is placed on the normal department and English branches. "Our aim has been not only to secure good English scholars, as opposed to Latin and Greek scribblers who can not speak their mother tongue, but especially to prepare well-trained teachers." It boasts that it has more teachers in the public schools of the South than any other benevolent institution doing work in that section. After a temporary interruption, caused by the financial panic, the society had taken up its industrial work with new vigor, and asserts: "We have more industrial students, teach more industrial pursuits, and have more graduates than any institution or set of institutions in the South. The total number of students in all the industrial schools the present year is 2,906." The society appropriates $90,625 annually; $79,975 to colored pupils, for 1 theological school, 2 medical schools, 10 institutions with the title of college or university, and 10 academies, with 3 universities and 22 academies for white students. It expended for colored schools during the year 1900, $171,773.01; for white schools, $47,815.66; total, $219,588.67, besides a miscellaneous expenditure of $136,216.79; its total receipts having been $355,805.46. It still has an indebtedness of $154,891.34. The presi

dent of the society is Bishop J. M. Walden, who, with Vice-President R. M. Rust, D. D., and W. P. Thirkeld, corresponding secretary, have been for many years, with Bishop Hartzell, among the best known and most intelligent workers in the Southern educational field.

THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (NORTH) IN CONNECTION WITH THE SCHOOLING OF THE FREEDMEN.

The northern Christian denominational organizations which, at the close of the civil war, undertook work of education among the freedmen of the South, may be divided into two distinct divisions. The first includes the American Missionary Association, representing the Congregational; the Freedman's Aid Society, established by the Methodist Episcopal, and the educational organization through which the Baptist churches operated. Although these were missionary enterprises largely engaged in denominational propagandism, including the establishment of churches, yet in their educational work, which produced great independent and State institutions, of which Hampton, Va., and Tuskegee, Ala., are conspicuous examples, they put themselves at once into the most vital and sympathetic relations with the new common-school system for the colored race of every Southern State. And although for a period they somewhat failed to appreciate the importance of the normal and industrial training absolutely essential to the success of the colored teacher, yet they did furnish for ten years and more a large majority of the teachers for the more important free colored schools in these States. This tendency, despite a persistent ecclesiastical opposition in the management, is now so confirmed that these three great denominations, beyond comparison, retain their leadership in the Southern educational work and are to-day supplying probably the larger number of competent instructors, not only in the public schools, but in the State normal and industrial colleges throughout the South.

Another division of these religious bodies, like the Presbyterian, Protestant Episcopal, the Friends, and several of the smaller sects, adopted at first the same policy as the Catholic Church, not only making their mission schools for both races thoroughly sectarian, but inclined to favor what is called the parochial system of schooling all the way up from the primary school connected with the church to the university.

It was doubtless from the fact that these churches proposed to themselves this persistence in the old European method of education that their success in collecting funds for establishing schools has never been commensurate with their wealth and general importance as religious bodies in this country. The church school of every degree has its uses everywhere, especially in the secondary academical and higher collegiate and university departments. But the educator or churchman, however zealous and consecrated, who proposes the planting of a little parochialschool annex by the side of every colored church, to the exclusion of public schools, must be prepared for the indefinite postponement of even the elementary instruction and discipline of the vast majority of the more than 2,000,000 negroes under the age of 20 years. After thirty years of prodigious effort by the Southern people themselves, aided by great missionary effort from the North, more than 50 per cent of the colored people of the South to-day above the age of 10 can neither read the Bible nor write their own name in a business transaction. The only way out of the inevitable disturbance from such a condition of affairs is the hearty union of the whole people, even better if aided by some practical scheme of national aid, to lift up at least one-third the population of these 16 States, of both races, into line with the American life of the present.

Among the Protestant churches that adopted the parochial school system was the Presbyterian Church, North. As early as 1865 this church had put forth “a

declaration in favor of special efforts in behalf of the lately emancipated African race. Six years later (1871), in the first annual report of the "Presbyterian Committee of Missions for Freedmen," we read that the first five years' work in 1870 had resulted in a financial indebtedness of $17,789.15, besides an additional burden of $3,400 for real estate furnished. In preparing the schedule of school work for the year 1871, the committee "reduced it, with but three exceptions, to that which is strictly parochial, dropping with their teachers such schools as had no denominational church connections," with a view to scale the debt. They report $70,934 as the value of church property. There were 67 churches, upon 6 of which there was an incumbrance of $5,933. There were 6,220 scholars in the Sabbath schools.

In the year 1871 the entire number of schools was 45, with 58 teachers and 4,530 pupils. Biddle Memorial Institute, at Charlotte, N. C., a theological and normal school; Wallingford Academy, at Charleston, S. C., with 300 pupils; the Normal School at Winchester, Va., with 95, and Scotia Seminary, for colored girls, at Concord, N. C., with 45 pupils, were all the institutions that were supported outside the parochial schools. Complaint is made that the churches do not come to the help of the association, as was earnestly hoped they would, and the general assembly of the year 1871 at Chicago, "regrets to find that the work among the freedmen has not been sustained in a manner at all commensurate with its importance."

In 1872 the expenditures amounted to $65,802.95. The churches still held back, and the debt was not wholly paid. The number of pupils in the schools had diminished by 1,000 since 1871.

At the Scotia Seminary, for colored girls, at Concord, N. C., industrial training, needlework, and domestic economy were pronounced features. Biddle Institute, at Charlotte, N. C., in 1872 had some 14 Presbyterian churches in charge, was situated amid 8 acres of well-cultivated grounds, the property valued at $13,000, and had an able corps of teachers for its 100 students. In 1872 the Presbyterian General Assembly approved the work done and the call for $90,000.

In 1876 the debt was finally paid. The high schools had been opened, the Chester, S. C., Brainerd School had increased to 231 pupils, and an enterprising colored preacher had collected $4,359 in scattered places for the work. The parochial type of the school keeping was still maintained. The most interesting of the new schools, in 1878, was located at Midway, Liberty County, Ga. Liberty County was first settled by a colony from Dorchester, Mass., which, after a long residence at Summerville, S. C., removed to the seacoast of St. John's Parish, below Savannah, some time before the war of the Revolution. They established there a famous academy and a Congregational church. At the breaking out of the Revolution the county distinguished itself by sending a local delegate, Mr. Lyman Hall, afterwards first governor of Georgia, to the Continental Congress in place of a Territorial delegate, and received its name, on the organization of the State, in honor of its patriotism. For many years it remained one of the foremost of the educational centers of the State and flourished under its religious organization. The close of the civil war found the county almost depopulated of its white people. In 1898 the report of the school authorities informs us that "the freedmen of this county, in mind, manners, and morals, are evidently superior to this race in general," a result attributed largely to their training in the district Sunday schools by their former masters and mistresses.

By 1880 the number of scholars in the Presbyterian schools had somewhat increased, and the expenditure was $72,000. In 1881 it is noted that the negro population had largely increased since the war, the gain being 38 per cent; the white folk increasing only 34 per cent, while 22 per cent had been the average of colored increase during the last two decades of slavery. The colored population