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to much buisness at Millican to be regular in their attendance. I have Thirty Children and Forty adults signed on my school articles and you see Sir how small is the number that attends. It is very singular to me that men of good sound sense and judgement cannot see that (to use an old adage) they are cutting of their Nose to spite their Face. In the place of their giving the Freed people evry encouragement to stay here and cultivate their farms, they are using the very means to drive them away from them. Nearly evry man who is working for these person's alluded to in this report will leave them this fall and go North or where they can get education. And Sir, is it not plain to any sensible man, that it is not only our Interest but our Duty to make the Freedpeople as good, honest, upright citizens as we can. Most certainly it is. How is this to be done? Why by giving them evry facility to Educate themselves. Then and not till then can we expect them to be any thing more than what they always have been, a mere tool for evil minded men to handle. Why Sir the first week I opened school I had four teen as rough a set of little fellows to deal with as I ever had, But by putting three little children of mine in school with these as a pattern. I now have as well behaved set of scholars as any Teacher could wish not one of them Knew the alphabet when I commenced three weeks ago you will see by the report what progress they have made. And I think by the time my school term expires (which will be on the 1st of Sept for the purpose of picking Cotton) I will show to the White people that the Negroe's skull is not so think but what something can be got into it as some of them has said. I have made rather a lengthy report this time but I sincerely hope I will not have any fault to find in my next, with anybody. 

I am Dear Sir very Respectfully Your Obt Servt
H. B. Longley