She, like her brother, has been debased by slavery; debased, moreover, in the very citadel of her sacred womanhood, until the very instinct on which the sanctity of the home must rest, if it exist at all, has become almost extirpated. There can be no elevation of the Freedman that does not rest upon the moral restoration of the Freedwoman. The position of woman is everywhere the measure of moral attainment, and here, where she has become the sport and lawful prey of two races, she more than ever holds the key of the situation. The feeling, gaining strength through all the experience of our missionaries and teachers and superintendents, that an effort needs to be made for her benefit distinctly, now demands expression in the councils of this body. Your Committee has no new light upon this subject; it has no specific to offer for the evil which makes so great a demand upon our sympathy. We can only appeal to this body, and to the churches, whether now, in the spectacle of two and a half millions of Freedwomen, of whom only a mere fraction are yet under the influence of schools and pure churches, lifting up their cry, not “from Greenland’s icy mountains, nor India’s coral strand,” nor whence “Afric’s sunny fountains roll down their golden sand,” but from the sunny half of these United States of America, we have not a call of God, which the dullest ear cannot fail to hear. And we, brethren and sisters, are charged with the duty of responding to this cry, with no uncertain sound. The Committee feel the responsibility which rests upon them in undertaking to propose new measures, and hesitate to offer too radical suggestions. Yet, they cannot be deaf to the appeal of this kind of work, or content themselves with vague and general exhortations. We hail as a good omen, and as an indication of Providence as to the course to be taken, the fact that already, through the influence of one Christian lady of the Northwest, a lady missionary, specially instructed to labor among the homes of the Freedmen, by personal contact, for the moral and religious education of the colored woman, is now actually at work. Our recommendation is that, following out this beginning, Christian women of mature experience and wise tact be appointed, to such an extent as funds will permit, who shall labor for the elevation of the Freedwomen, by those methods of personal influence which are, of all, most efficient. We believe that in no other way can we strike so nearly at the root of the ignorance and immorality which, in behalf of the Freedmen, we contend against. But, obviously, it would not be right to take the funds appropriated for education or church extension for this purpose, and thereby curtail a work which needs, on the contrary, to be at once extended. Whence shall the support of these lady workers come, then?