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LINCOLN UNIVERSITY

An Appeal for a Higher Grade of Education for Freedmen.

The dark children of the Republic appeal to us for help. They have won their liberties with their own blood; they have shed it for us--ours too, has been poured out for them. In this blood-sealed covenant, we are bound to give them something better than emancipation. Their rights and the nation's safety may be sacrificed by refusing them the elective franchise, but we owe them something more than civil privileges--something that will render their freedom available, and a blessing, whereby they may successfully assert and maintain their rights.

In their new relations and condition they need most of all educated men of their own color--scholars, orators, ministers, physicians, merchants and statesmen--in order to demonstrate that they are fit for freedom, and are capable of rising through freedom to perfect manhood; and this is all the more necessary now, that unprecedented efforts are being put forth to make the contrary appear.

Oppression, long and systematic, has degraded the race, but it has not destroyed them. The germ of moral and intellectual life has survived the fiery ordeal to a degree altogether surprising. They can be built up and made a great and prosperous people, but the education of such a race must, necessarily, be a slow process, and ought to be conducted with system and comprehensive views. 

They must have educated men. A thousand schools, such as now exist among them, in the South, are not sufficient. Academical institutions in which the black man, side by side with the white, may be aided in securing thorough education in language, science, and mathematics, are a desideratum.

In view of this, the Lincoln University has been established by a Board erected for this purpose, by the Reformed Presbyterian Synod, last June. The village of Northwood, in Central Ohio, Logan County, has been selected as a suitable location for such an institution.