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120

#195.
Little Rock Ark.
Dec. 2. 1868.
Hughes Rev. Thomas
Camden, Ark.
Dear Sir,
Your favor of the 28" ult. is just at hand. I herewith enclose an order on Mr. E. R. Vickers the builder of the School house for the keys to the Same. I also forward by mail to your address a Daily School Register & blanks for monthly School reports to this office.
It is expected that teachers will as soon as practicable conform to the requirements of of the School law of the state and thus become entitled to a pro rata of the public school fund which is soon to be apportioned. Consult with the School Trustee (if an organization has been perfected) and also with the freedmen trustees (Walker Hodges chairman) who own the ground on which the house is built.
I hope a fee of not less than 50c a month for each pupil, to be paid strictly in advance, for purchase of fuel and for other incidental expenses connected with the school.
I recommend that you place yourself in correspondence with the Circuit Supt. of Schools whose address I enclose. The success of the school work in Camden will depend mainly upon yourself- I trust you will lay your plans wisely and then push them through. Your field is the best in the State.
Hoping you may have abundant success, I am
Very truly Yours,
Wm. M. Colby,
Supt. Edn.

121

#196.
Little Rock, Ark.
Dec. 2. 1868.
Smith Bt. Maj. Gen. C.H.
Asst Commissioner,
Little Rock, Ark.
General:
I have the honor respectfully to return herewith the Second communication of Mr. F.E. Wright asking a reconsideration regarding the furnishing of and for the support of the Wesley Chapel School.
Three Squares from the Said Wesley Chapel School is a government School house with ample accommodations for one hundred more pupils than are now in attendance. The attendance as reported to me by the teachers is 150-while the building has accommodations for 250.
To be obliges to occupy meeting houses for School purposes in places where there are no school houses is quite bad enough; but to aid in building up a "church School" by the side of a public school having the necessary accommodations and appliances, when the certain effect would be to deplete the latter and encourage partizan animosity among the people would simply be building with one hand and pulling down with the other. 
The statement of H. Brady that more than a thousand dollar have been expended on the Baptist and A.M.E. churches is erroneous, but if it were true it would have no bearing upon the present case. Not one dollar has ever been expended by the Bureau upon the Baptist church. The records show that three hundred dollars, more or less, were expended (without my recommendation) upon one of the colored meeting houses in this city a year before the school house was built. Up to the time the School house was completed the Wesley Chapel management uniformly refused to