Special provision is made in the law for its enforcement in behalf of free schools for the colored children. These are managed by the same school board and are supported from the same tax fund. These officers are compelled to provide schools wherever there are fifteen of such scholars in the district. If they fail to do it, it is the duty of the Superintendent to require it to be done. I met one case where the out-districts declined to co-operate with the Board in this matter, when only a threatened appeal to the Superintendent brought them to terms. I have been gratified to see the heartiness with which the five boards I have dealt with are pushing the free school system in behalf of blacks as well as whites. Nor have I been deceived, as some may imagine. The Lincoln Institute at the Capitol, as a Normal School for colored teachers, receives an annual appropriation from the State of $5,000. A democratic editor told me that that was considered as a matter of honor, and that so there was no danger of its being discontinued. This institution of sacred name had also a sacred origin. For its founding, the 62d and 65th Regiments of U. S. colored infantry, when discharged from service in January, 1866, contributed a fund of $6,379. The Freedmen’s Bureau furnished $8,000; the Western Sanitary Commission, $2,000; and agents Beal and Lane raised $2,000. The building is of brick, 60×70 feet, three stories high, a comely structure crowning a hill just out of Jefferson City. Its current catalogue enrolls 123 students. It is controlled by a local board, of which the Governor and State Superintendent are _ex-officio_ members. Revs. R. D. Foster and M. Henry Smith have served as principals the most of the time since it was opened in 1871. The Association has its five school houses at Troy, Fulton, Westport, Warrensburg and Lebanon. These were procured in part by aid from the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1867–9. They were at first run by teachers sent from the North, but were gradually taken up by the local school boards. I find them all in such use now. Three will probably be sold to those boards at their present low valuation. Two will be sold to local colored Methodist churches, as the schools require larger and better houses, which the authorities intend to build. These houses have also been used all the time as places of worship by the colored people. The seven or eight colored teachers in these schools were educated in Lincoln, Fisk, and kindred institutions. I have found them young people of character, and of tact in handling their schools. They have to be examined. They receive from $35 to $45 a month, about the same as white common-school teachers.