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commenced more recently, but with equal promise. By the efforts of your excellent Assistant Commissioner at Richmond, schools, in their first stages, are now instituted in all parts of the State. 

The whole number of colored children under instruction at the present time in Virginia is twelve thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight, in ninety schools, with one hundred and ninety-five teachers, and the reports of the State Superintendent are full and satisfactory.

Aside from these colored schools I found at Richmond a very good school from indigent white children, under the care of the American Union Commission, numbering three hundred and seventy-five pupils with five teachers, and fifty adults in an evening school. In addition to this, the old provost marshal building (General Winder's former head-quarters) is now being fitted up for seven schools for poor white children, an industrial school, and a public reading-room. The lower and middle classes of the white population of the city favor this movement. IN Petersburg and Fredericksburg, each, the commission has a similar school; the former numbering eighty, and the latter one hundred and fifty pupils. 

NORTH CAROLINA.

In this State there are schools well advanced at Newbern and vicinity, having had, for the same reason as above, time for thorough organization and progress. A vigorous system has been more recently arranged throughout the whole State, into which children and even adults are crowding, making a constant demand for the opening of new schools. A general desire for education is everywhere manifested. In some instances, as in Halifax country, very good schools were found taught and paid for by the colored people themselves. Said a gentleman to me, "I constantly see in the streets, and on the door-steps opposite my dwelling, groups of little negroes studying their spelling-books." The aggregate for the whole State is: schools, eighty-six; teachers, one hundred and nineteen; pupils, eight thousand five hundred and six. The increase of scholars during the four weeks previous to this summary was one thousand five hundred and six. The increase of scholars during the four weeks previous to this summary was one thousand four hundred and fifty-three.

We note that gratifying fact, that, while there is this general increase, the attendance in the large towns is decreasing, showing that the tide of colored population is now setting strongly toward the rural districts where labor is called for, and where they will have their permanent settlement in life. 

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An industrial school on Roanoke Island is in successful operation. In Raleigh and Wilmington there are schools for poor white children, numbering in both places two hundred and fifty attendants.

SOUTH CAROLINA AND GEORGIA.

In the city of Charleston the free colored people during the existence of slavery were, under various restrictions, permitted to have schools. The consequence was that some of that class were quite well educated. When the late emancipation came, these schools were at once enlarged, and, by the aid of northern benevolence, became very soon unusually interesting. Opposition of the citizens was rather to the occupying of their public school-houses by the negroes than to their education itself. The whites had seen in former years that free negroes were elevated by character by having learning; and it may be well to state that, of the seventy-six teachers in South Carolina at the present time, twenty-four are colored persons. It will undoubtedly be true, that as prejudice wears away, white persons of the south will be willing to engage in this well-paid and useful service, and, as intelligence increases, colored teachers will also become more numerous. The happy effect of mingling in one common and honorable employment persons from opposite sections of the country, and also of different colors, is apparent.  The accomplished head-master of the largest school in Charleston, numbering eight hundred and fifty in daily attendance, is a colored man. 

In all parts of the State schools are multiplying, the whole number being forty-eight, - some of them very full in attendance. Two in Charleston register over eight hundred pupils each, and fifteen others in the State from one hundred and ten to three hundred and seventy-two each. I visited a number of these schools, and can say that many hundreds of pupils bore excellent examination in reading, writing, geography, and English grammar. - Some of the schools in the interior are in their first rude stage, and many are deficient in making their regular reports. The whole number of teachers is seventy-six, and of pupils ten thousand. 

Georgia, having been under the same Assistant Commissioner, does not differ much, in the work done in progress, from South Carolina. The best schools are in Augusta, Macon, and Savannah. It would be difficult to discriminate, though in the latter place the effort began earlier. In a very few days after the advent of General