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9

and efficient administration of the affairs of the Bureau, important progress has been made in the work undertaken.

The late slaves have been fully protected in their rights as freemen, and the exceptional instances where these rights were, for a time, denied are no longer heard of.  It is believed that there is not within the state a person who does not understand and successfully assert his rights to [[strikethrough]] a freeman[//strikethrough]] freedom.

The extraordinary eagerness of the Freedman for the advantages of schools, has been met, as far as the resources of the Bureau and the charitable zeal of its friends abroad would allow.  There are, at present, about eleven thousand five hundred pupils, receiving instruction from one hundred and ninety five teachers.  Numerous urgent appeals have come from remote and isolated localities for teachers and books, to which it has been impossible to respond, for  want of school rooms and suitable quarters for teachers.  Their progress in learning is such as would warrant