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this Society comes before our Churches as an agency under Methodistic control, designed to receive the gifts of our people and to apply them where they will successfully promote the education of the Freedmen, and at the same time supplement the missionary work of our Church.
This Society, having been approved by the Western Conferences, began its educational work in October last, without funds in the treasury, but with a firm conviction that it would be maintained by the Church.  Most of the teachers have been sent in response to appeals from our missionaries who had applied to other associations without success.  During the school year, fifty-two Teachers have been employed, and nearly four thousand scholars enrolled in our day schools-the most of them children and youth who hitherto have had no opportunity to attend school, and would not have been reached by any other educational agency.  In the night schools are pupils from twenty to sixty years of age-laboring men and women, who, after the day's toil, attend the evening sessions of the schools, stimulated by the hope of learning to read and write.
Our teachers take an active part in the Sunday Schools of our Missions.  In many places, but for them the missionaries could not have competent and faithful co-laborers.  In no other field is the Sunday School so important to the Church in its work of evangelization as in the South and among the Freedmen.  The results of Slavery upon the adult population are such that the early Christian culture of the children must be chiefly accomplished through the Sunday Schools, and hence every intelligent and earnest teacher in them is a power for good.  In view of this, our Society exercises great care as to the religious, as well as the intellectual qualifications of teachers.  In the Sunday Schools in which our teachers now labor, about two thousand children are enrolled.
Our schools are in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Georgia, and located at places in these States where, in co-operation with our missions, it was thought the most could be done for the mental and moral improvement of the children and youth.  There being no opportunity for concert of action by the Eastern Conferences till this Spring, a majority of our teachers, for the present school year, have labored in the Mississippi Valley-the Society having means to plant schools in only a part of the Atlantic States.  But the Eastern Conferences have now approved of the Society and its mission; the sea-board Southern States have been explored and arrangements made to send thither all the teachers that the contributions of our people in the East will maintain, if needed there.
Schools would be of great advantage at many places in Delaware and Maryland, and they are specially needed in connection with our missionary work in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.  One hundred teachers is the least number our Society should employ in these States, and an equal number will be required in the States bordering on the Mississippi and the Gulf.  Schools or departments of schools, in which the most promising and advanced scholars may be trained to teach, are greatly needed in our work.  These schools will incur an increased expenditure, but in preparing native teachers they will promote the best interests of society and make the results of our efforts more permanent and far-reaching.
The Government encourages this educational work.  Major-General