Thus launched, and with this flag at its mast-head, the Association responded to its first call, and sped on its way, till from the terrific storm-cloud of war there sounded forth its second call. That next providential call was to the work among the Freedmen. It was so recent, and the response is so fresh in mind, that a brief rehearsal will suffice. Abraham Lincoln voiced the sentiment of the North when he said that the war was carried on to save the Union. God revealed His own purpose to be not that only, but also to free the slave. It was not two months after the first cannon shot fell on Fort Sumter till the escaping slaves found their way to Fort Monroe, and the force of circumstances, in spite of all reluctance, compelled their recognition as free men. Those escaping fugitives began their march from Egypt to Canaan. A few scattered bands headed the column, but soon its numbers swelled till the proclamation of emancipation, like the words of God to Moses at the banks of the Red Sea, said to four and a half millions of people, “Go forward.” When the sea opened to them and closed upon the armies of their oppressors, they were free; but they were, and are still, in the wilderness. Yet two lines of spontaneous enthusiasm broke forth—that of the ex-slaves for learning, and that of the North to supply it. In that day there was no longer a question as to the need of the American Missionary Association, or of the wisdom of its existence. It was complimented with having “builded wiser than it knew.” Churches and individuals chose it as their channel for reaching this new field of patriotic and Christian labor. The Boston Council of Congregational Churches of 1865 recognized it as having been providentially raised up for the hour, and voted a call to the churches to give it $250,000 for the year. The Association promptly met this new responsibility, and organized the necessary measures for collecting funds at home and abroad, and with so much success that when the year was ended its treasury had received a little more than the great sum named. It has since moved forward with larger resources and a larger work. Its income for the fourteen years from its organization till the war began averaged $40,810.57 per annum; for the fourteen years since the war, $279,269.18 per annum.