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the state legislation is to increase the annual harvest of productive industry, mental ability, and moral and social worth. If this principle be correct and it be true that the state by thus annually receiving an accession into its ranks of well instructed youths of both sexes, mentally and morally fitted for usefulness, is repaid for any pecuniary expenditure it may have received; its importance to a great State like ours composed of representatives of two races, held in ignorance engendered by generations of servitude, must be apparent to every reflecting mind. To work for the establishment of such a principle, surrounded by hinderances of poverty, prejudice and bitter opposition, is a noble undertaking and every approach to it is attended with feelings of gratification.

Much remains to be done. We have hardly reached the threshold, and means to pay them. The future is uncertain, but we enter upon it sustained by the thought that it is a just and triumphant principle for which our labor, and that Alabama will be among the first to reap the precious fruits of its adoption.

I have the honor to be, General,
Very Respectfully.