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comparatively educated. A Paymaster in Louisiana made the public statement that "a far greater proportion of the colored troops which he paid off at the close of the war signed their names than of the white troops raised in the south." The interests which the colored regiments have taken in learning to read is well illustrated by the following statement made by an army surgeon in New Orleans: "About a year ago he was stationed at Fort Livingston with colored troops, and soon after his arrival, finding that his time was very little employed professionally, he began to look around to see what he could do.- Finally, the thought occurred that he might be useful in teaching the soldiers to read. He proposed the subject to the officers, and they laughed and sneered. Concluding that their advice was not needed, he called the soldiers, and talked with them, and finding that they largely accepted the proposition, he made the following arrangement: He agreed to pick out a class of ten of the brightest and smartest soldiers in the fort. and spend two hours a day in teaching them how to read, provided each of this ten would take a class of four and spend the same amount of time with them. Books were soon procured, and a little school started on this method. The soldiers kept their agreement. While being taught by him, they taught one another, and in a few days many of them could begin to read. When the experiment proved an undoubted success, the soldiers procured a competent teacher from the board of education, and had a regular school established under its auspices. A short time since the commanding officer of the fort told the doctor that the soldiers who were his A, B, C pupils one year ago now took over forty copies of Harper's and Frank Leslie's Weeklies, besides other papers.

2. THE GOOD INFLUENCE OF THE SCHOOLS UPON ALL THE HABITS OF THE FREEDMEN IS APPARENT.- As the children repeat their lessons at home, parents become interested and thoughtful, acquire many new ideas. and are led to prize their families, who are thus increasing in knowledge, They at once make new exertion for self-support, especially for these schools, insuring both industry and economy.

At little Rock, Arkansas, after paying tuition some months, the colored people formed a school society for the city, and made their schools free for the rest of the year, (the first free schools in Arkansas,) paying in full the compensation of all the teachers. Besides elementary instruction, our schools teach morality and Christianity, and thus, through the children, are waking up a general conscience, and guiding the entire population in the ways of virtue. That class of older persons having now a little learning are stimulated to increase it by study. A group of elderly preachers in Savannah said to me, with much emphasis, "We must now go to studying ourselves, or these young folks will all be ahead of us." They begged me earnestly to adopt a plan by which they might be brought into a class for mutual improvement.

3. THE WHITE POPULATION OF THE SOUTH FEELS THE POWER OF THESE SCHOOLS.-Assent, if not the favor, of the better men is being gradually obtained. Popular education cannot well be opposed; free labor is found to be far more contented with its privileges. The major part may be indignant that negroes should have learning. All sorts of evil is predicted as the consequence; and yet a portion of this enmity is provoked by the rivalry which their own children must now struggle with, The "poor whites" are provoked by hearing negroes read, while they are ignorant; and it is my belief that they will now receive schools if furnished them, as never before. The educated class are not slow to perceive schools must be re-opened, or fall behind humiliated, and that new schools must now be organized on a more popular plan than heretofore. Poverty, and perhaps pride, with the want of teachers are the present difficulties in carrying out these convictions.

Some of the religious denominations in the south, seeing there will be schools for the freedmen, are saying, "We may as well undertake the work ourselves," and have already passed resolutions adopting the education of the negroes as one of their missionary enterprises.

4. A CLASS OF SCHOOLS IS CALLED FOR IN WHICH COLORED TEACHERS CAN BE TAUGHT.- If dignified by the name of "normal schools," they should commence with training in the simplest elements of art. Education for the freedmen, as a whole, must be at first very rudimental, in which the text will be found mainly in the spelling book, but which can become, as soon as possible, universal. They all want learning at once. This people are not like pagans in ancient countries, who a thousand years hence will be mainly as they are to-day. Slaves, in a country like this, could not be kept from many noble impulses. The war has been to them a wonderful school of knowledge, thought, and purposes; and now suddenly emancipated, these 4,000,000 are as "a nation born in a day."

Transcription Notes:
Do not indicate font style, italicized, bolded, or underlined words. There is also no need to indicate the difference between handwritten and pre-printed or typed text on a document. https://transcription.si.edu/instructions-freedmens-bureau