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Howard, Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau, a Christian gentleman who is deeply interested in the welfare of the South, co-operates with all benevolent societies which sustain teachers and schools among the Freedmen.  The Bureau now provides school-houses and furnishes transportation for teachers, and if it should do even more in the future, our Society will, in common with others, participate in the benefits.  The school-houses furnished by the Bureau are, in many localities, the only place of worship for the Freedmen; hence, in this, as in other respects, their intellectual and religious culture are intimately connected.
This is a work in which all Christian philanthropists and patriots must feel an interest.  The Freedmen need assistance in maintaining schools, not for lack of industry, but because they have not had time to recover from the utter destitution to which they were reduced by Slavery.  The education they desire will alone render their enfranchisement a national blessing, and make the ballot to them a means of security and progress.  They have ever been true to the country, and every school among them will be a bulwark of Freedom.  Poor but loyal-to aid them is a duty that strongly commends itself to the philanthropy and patriotism of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
The peculiar character of the claims of the Freedmen have prompted most leading denominations to special efforts in their behalf.  Whether these schools supplement and strengthen missions already established, or prepare for their introduction, they will be a power in molding the character of the present and rising generation.  Here the Methodist Episcopal Church may be honored of God with a great work.  Masses of the Freedmen are hopefully looking to her, the "Old John Wesley Church," as they call her, for the means of their elevation.  Though deprived of her watch-care for more than twenty years, they now, in the dawn of their Freedom, anxiously await her return, and to her preachers and teachers they bid a joyous welcome.  Shall she, in the fullness of her strength, return to them with the school as well as the Gospel?
Our brethren, the missionaries, obedient to the call of God and the voice of the Church, are in the South.  Amid hardships, privations, and dangers, they are laying there again the foundations of our beloved Zion.  They are doing the heroic work of Methodism in our day, and they plead for schools and teachers to aid them in that work.
The Papists are moving with activity and zeal to plant the Romish Church and her parochial schools among this people.  Anxious as the Freedmen are for schools, grateful as they are for aid from whatever source, confiding as they are toward their benefactors, this Papal movement should stimulate our Church to most prompt and earnest efforts.
The Centenary of Methodism with its engrossing interests, in some measure impeded this new cause, but the memorial offerings having now been made, our Society pleads for a liberal contribution.  Two hundred teachers, at least, are needed in schools vital to the success of our missions.  The average annual expenditure per teacher, is about four hundred dollars; any person, or Church, contributing two hundred and fifty dollars, can nominate a qualified teacher.  Two hundred teachers might instruct fifteen thousand pupils per year.  Such a work would reflect great credit upon the Church-would comport with magnitude of every Methodistic movement.