The report opens with brief obituary notices of Rev. Simeon S. Jocelyn, a Secretary of the Society for many years and more lately a member of the Committee; and of Rev. William Patton, D. D., and Rev. George Thacher, D. D., Vice-Presidents; of Miss Laura S. Cary and Mrs. Anna M. Peebles, valued teachers, and Miss Rebecca Tyler Bacon, associated with Hampton in its early days, who have also died during the year. These may be found in full in the forthcoming Annual Report volume. THE FREEDMEN. The varying fortunes of the Freedmen through the year have added another illustration to the many which combine to show that an uneducated mass of men is always an uncertain quantity in the national problem. That these once slaves in the South have been wronged and abused there can be no doubt. Advantage has been taken of their ignorance in contracts for labor, and in the manner of their pay. They have been misled and intimidated in the attempt to exercise their right of franchise. It would be useless to deny the facts. The thousands who have left their homes and associations in Mississippi and Louisiana for the chances of new settlement in Kansas, are witnesses as powerful in their silence as in their speech. They have not gone for nothing. We have no apology to offer for those who have made it impossible for them to remain in peace, and who have sought by force to keep them from departing. But, on the other hand, it becomes us to remember that these evils spring not so much from local as from general causes. The same wrongs are perpetrated and endured, to some extent, wherever there are similar states of society. Ignorance is always at a disadvantage, whether it wants to work or to vote. It is always in bonds to some power and will beyond its own. New York, and perhaps even Chicago, knows something of abused labor and a controlled vote. The local causes which increase the evil may need thorough treatment, but that is not ours either to prescribe or to administer. It is the general cause which we may consider, and to which we are directing all our energies—not to the restraint or punishment of those who do the wrong, but to the removal of the ignorance which gives such large occasion for the wrong. For our work is foundational and steady. Amid all social and political changes the need for it remains unchanged. We are not engaged in pulling up the shallow roots of weeds, nor in planting flower-beds with annuals, but in sub-soiling our Southern fields, and so preparing the ground for crops of better quality from year to year. The only permanent guarantee against the abuse of any race or class, either North or South, is the diffusion of Christian intelligence among the abused, and of the spirit of Christian love among those who abuse them. This is our work.