“Religion, and morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and means of education shall forever be encouraged.” As early as 1797, Muskingum Academy was founded in the territory conceded, and in due time came Marietta, Oberlin, Wabash, Illinois, Knox, Beloit, Olivet, and Ripon Colleges, all Christian institutions within the territory originally governed by the Ordinance of 1787. Precisely similar has been the record of New England emigrants beyond the Mississippi. Wherever they have settled and shaped the civic ideals, whether in the Dakotas, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, or in California, there they have laid the foundations of a free public-school system, and of academies and colleges controlled by Christian educators and trustees. Nor do they cease to believe in the academy and the college now that the competition of the State university in the States of the interior and the West is so intense, and the reliance of the treasuries of these Western Christian institutions upon the gifts of their friends in New England increases rather than abates. Impressed with the need, in all sections of the country, of a well-instructed and intelligent electorate, and convinced that the South was too poor to provide for itself the schools that its unfortunate illiterate whites and blacks needed, New Englanders early began to contribute to the support of academies and colleges in the South. Not always welcomed by the ruling class, the pioneers in this work persevered, and many of them have lived long enough to receive the thanks of those who at first despised and scorned them. Millions of dollars have gone from New England for the founding and support of such institutions as Berea College, Kentucky; Atlanta University, Georgia; Hampton Institute, Virginia; Fisk University, Tennessee; and Tuskeegee Institute, Alabama. Three New Englanders, George Peabody of Danvers, Mass., John F. Slater of Norwich, Conn., and Daniel Hand of Guilford, Conn., have given between them $5,100,000 in bequests or donations for the establishment or assistance of schools, colleges, and training schools for teachers in the South. The Peabody Education Fund, from 1868 to 1897, distributed in the South, from its income alone, a sum amounting to $2,478,527.