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The above statistics do not include eight or ten private schools in the District, taught by colored teacher, and in excellent condition; nor twelve night and twenty-two Sabbath-schools, with eight schools of industry, all in charge of this Bureau, having an aggregate of 3,471 pupils.

There are also two schools recently commenced for the poor tenants at Wisewell Barracks, and three or four classes for the various detachments of colored troops on duty within the city, or occupying the defences. All are taught through the summer without vacation.

CONCLUSION.

From the above condensed statements, it is seen that the surprising efforts of our colored population to obtain an education are not spasmodic. They are growing to a habit, crystalizing into a system, and each succeeding school-term shows their organization more and more complete and permanent.

If knowledge elevates, then this people are destined to rise. They have within themselves an instinct which anticipates this; a vitality and hope, coupled with patience and willingness to struggle, which foreshadows with certainty their higher condition as a people in the coming time.

Obstacles are yet to be encountered. Perhaps the most trying period in the freedman's full emancipation has not yet come. But we can distinctly see that the above incipient education universally diffused as it is, has given these four millions an impulse onward never to be lost. They are becoming conscious of what they can do, of what they ultimately can be. They begin to realize the attributes of character. Self-reliance is becoming their pride as it is their responsibility. Even these rudiments of knowledge account for their quick transition to faithful industry, to economy, thrift, self-support, and to almost invariable good behavior.

As one marked result of this advance, their right to a higher status is already being conceded, even at the south. Not a few there are asserting for them an equal capacity; more are advocating continued instruction, and civil rights are being yielded to these freedmen which two years ago would have been mocked at as the morbid fancies only of the fanatic.

As this improvement of the colored race goes on, these concessions will multiply. Southern men, though strangely perverted, are not demented. Their social prejudices, political passions, and caste legislation will all yield, at

length, of this hitherto degraded people continue to rise in an honest, virtuous, and cultivated intelligence.

Even at the north, many are discovering that the negro has endowments which they themselves had never believed in; that he is not merely to be a productive laborer, but an enlightened and valuable citizen; and a place is already assigned him by general consent far above the predictions even of the most sanguine.

We make no invidious comparisons of the ignorant freedman, and the ignorant Anglo-Saxon of the south.- We only say the former has most creditably won his present position; and he has done it by good conduct, and rapid improvement under that instruction we are now reporting. If these thousand colored schools continue and increase, the above initiative results will be sure to grow to a much fuller development.

While,, therefore, deploring what remains of will-will toward our schools in some places still exhibiting violence, we have to congratulate the true friends of the country, in view of the immense results obtained. They indicate the dawn of a brighter day, not only for the negro, but for all at the south. The real interests of the two races there are hereafter to be one. The prosperity of each is that of the other. Capital and labor will find their respective level, worth and merit a fair field of competition, and few, if any, are so base as to deny their fellow-men, however inferior, the right and the opportunity to excel.

We hail, with exceeding pleasure, the better feeling in regard to the education of these freedmen. All advances on the subject should be cordially met. If teachers on the ground are competent and willing to heartily undertake the work, we advise their employment; and if the several States will inaugurate and sustain a system of public instruction for all, though imperfect at first, we should give it warmest encouragement. Some of the states are taking steps greatly to their credit in this direction. At present, however, and probably for some time to come, we must depend on the liberality of both government and charitable Societies, under the fostering care of this Bureau. A more settled condition of security is to be reached by the southern people, before the present great work, as a whole, can be taken up, and by their own efforts, successfully carried on; and military aid should not be withdrawn until reliable guaranties of protection from the civil authorities are obtained.

The more important inferences from the facts of this

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