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Jacksonport Arkansas
March 10th 1869

Mayor J. Watson
Commissioner of Freedman School
1st Congressional Dist.: Helena. Ark.

Dear Sir

I have just learned through my friend John Creagan Esq. that the Bureau have still retained you in its services, and appointed you as Com. of Freedmen Schools. As I have frequently heard of your very valuable services in behalf of the Freedmen during the past few years of our struggle for the right, you will allow me to congratulate you on your appointment.

True the struggle has been fierce, and long, but "victory is ours," and "the people who have so long sat in darkness, now see a great light," even the light of liberty and political equality. Free schools are beginning to spring up, with all their attendant blessings, and improvement, and many of us who have borne the burden in the heat of the day, and are still toiling to educate our downtrodden sons & daughters of Africa, and raise them from mere chattel and brute to a freemans stadard [[standard]], will have the privilege glorious of seeing our labors crowned with abundant success.

I came to this place last May and opened a school for the colored people under the subscription or promise to pay system. They rallied quite well to my support for two or three months, just as long as they had the means, but during the Presidential canvass, and since times have been so boisterous by Ku Klux and other causes, the school has failed to do scarcely anything. We may safely say nothing. Through the solicitation of many Republican friends and Carson Gillum Circuit Supt. of Schools I have remained until the present.