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Sherman, there were five hundred children under organized instruction in that city  This effort. in teaching and expense, was undertaken wholly by the colored people themselves. They received from white friends only advice and encouragement. These schools still continue, and with improvement quite creditable to the agency by which they are carried on. There are in the State sixty-nine schools and three thousand six hundred and three pupils, with sixty-nine teachers, forty-three of whom are colored persons. The Associations of the north are doing well here, as in other States, but their efforts are crippled by want of buildings. It is also true that schools are prevented from going into the interior through fear of violence to unprotected teachers. A military police is everywhere needed. 
At Athens, in this State, the Union Commission has a school of refugee white children with ninety-five pupils.- At Chattanooga there is an advanced school of this kind recently started.

FLORIDA.

This State is not so far advanced in education as some others, most of it being more sparsely populated, and the organization more recent. Notwithstanding, there are good schools in ten of the larger towns, with the same general results as above.
In Tallahassee I found five schools gathered and taught by the colored preachers of the place. Also a school of interesting girls instructed by a mulatto woman of education, and who said, "I intend to make ladies of these girls." They will undoubtedly become teachers. At Fernindina an orphan school of forty (40) little parentless children occupies the mansion formerly owned by General Finnigan.- It is a lovely specimen of genuine philanthropy, and the lady principal deserves great credit for her self-denying labors.
The total in Florida is thirty schools, nineteen (19) teachers, and nineteen hundred (1,900) pupils.

ALABAMA.

As far as I could learn there have been but two schools in the State under the care of the Assistant Commissioner. These are large, having eight hundred and seventeen (817) pupils enrolled, with fifteen (15) teachers. That at Mobile bears a most rigid examination in all respects. It is well graded, its teachers thorough, and its discipline excellent. The progress made by the majority of the scholars is truly surprising. The school opened in May, 1865, and now there are classes in all different Readers, from the Pictorial

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Primer to the Rhetorical Fifth Reader. One class is now in fractions, of Robinson's Arithmetic; one class in Intellectual Arithmetic, reciting in reduction; other classes are well advanced in English grammar and geography. The teachers publish a monthly paper called "The Acorn." This school receives help from the north, but each pupil, if able, is required to pay a small tuition fee of from 25 cents to $1,25 per month - no child being excluded on account of poverty. The whole amount received from this tuition has been $1,875,18. The other school is at Montgomery, and is in a very good condition, with 325 pupils, who pay, in aggregate, $118 per month tuition. Arrangements are in progress to have a general system of schools throughout the State. Governor Parsons favors the work, and some white native teachers are willing to engage in it. But in the interior, as is true of all these States, much opposition is manifested, and military protection will be needed, for the present, especially if the instructors are to be females.
There are eleven schools in the northern part of this State, in the division known as the "Department of the Tennessee," which have been superintended hitherto by the Commissioner of Kentucky and Tennessee. These are about to be transferred to the care of the Commissioner of Alabama. They are at Huntsville, Athens, and Stevenson, and are good schools.

MISSISSIPPI.

There is a mixture of good and evil to report from this State. Your officers are indefatigable in their efforts.- There are many good schools among the thirty-four in operation. Some of these have made admirable progress, and a number not included have started under various auspices in different parts of the State. There is everywhere the usual eagerness to learn; but in some sections inveterate opposition among the whites is manifested towards these schools. Two teachers, at the time I was there, were sent to one of the large towns, twenty-five miles into the country where there was no military, and the next morning they were ordered off, and threatened if they did not go. This opposition is often openly avowed, but more generally is tacit and concealed, making itself felt everywhere in a  sort of combination not to allow the freedmen any place in which a school may be taught. A superintendent in an interior town says: "The opposition to negro education is very great in my town and neighborhood." Colored men in some instances have paid their own money to prepare