labor among their own people, with hearts aflame with true missionary
zeal. They have labored among innumerable trials and discouragements, in
leaky, rickety log-cabins, without desks, without blackboards, maps,
charts, or other educational necessities. They have been eager and
zealous workers for Sunday-schools, for temperance and righteous living,
even when oftentimes opposed by the old-time preachers and
church-officers of their own race, and sometimes opposed by the whites.
So the leaven has spread far and wide. A great work has been accomplished
by these schools and churches. These ten years have seen a most decided
uplifting of character and power among the colored race. They are
steadily acquiring property, building homes and improving their
surroundings. There are now over eighty newspapers published by colored
men in the former slave States of the South. Some of these are very
creditable specimens in typography and in ability, and they have great
and increasing influence. The great majority of these editors and
teachers have been educated in the A.M.A. schools. There are also
several colored lawyers, dentists and physicians, who have almost
without exception been educated in our schools. The direct results in
our Congregational church work are not as plainly apparent, because most
of the students when coming under our influence are already connected
with other churches, or else their parents are, which amounts almost to
the same thing. So the Baptists and Methodists have reaped rich harvests
through the training of their sons and daughters in our schools. But
these same denominations have been through this means greatly uplifted
and purified, so that great good has come to all these strong and
numerous churches, besides the steady growth of Congregationalism as
well. Rev. Dr. Curry, one of the leaders of Southern thought, said in a
recent address before the Georgia Legislature, "The Congregationalists
have done more than all other denominations for the education of the
Negro--they have done grandly, patriotically." To my eyes, which have