This is the work we propose to do in the South, and wise and candid men both North and South are beginning to realize that the education of the negro race is the paramount duty of the nation to it. Presidents Hayes and Garfield have voiced the feelings of the North on this subject, while Col. Preston and Dr. Ruffner of Virginia, Sen. Brown and Pres. Haygood of Georgia, have nobly re-echoed the sentiment from the South. This Association goes farther than mere intellectual education. It believes that the Christian element lies at the foundation of all true character, and that character is the basis of all true manhood and citizenship. It has been the aim of this Association not merely to lift up the individual, but to apply the levers to the elevation of the mass, and hence it has founded in every large Southern State, schools fitted for the training of teachers, preachers and missionaries of the colored race. At Hampton, where the first slave-ship entered the continent, in the same year in which the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, the Association opened the first Freedman’s school in these United States. Under the energetic administration of Gen. Armstrong, Hampton Institute, with its broad lands, its large and commodious buildings, its steam-engine and multiplied mechanical employments, gives educational and industrial training to its large company of students, graduating about fifty pupils each year, ninety per cent. of whom go into the State as teachers, carrying with them, into the school, the Sunday-school, the prayer-meeting and the church a healthful Christian influence; while the noble old state of Virginia responds to the effort by a gift of $10,000 a year for the support of the school. Atlanta University, with its two commodious buildings, and another soon to be added, imparts a higher range of teaching, including classic instruction to its pupils, and the state of Georgia responds with its gift of $8,000 a year. If you would see what is done at Fisk University, look around you and examine the classes under instruction in Jubilee Hall. But time would fail me to speak of Talladega, Ala.; Tougaloo, Miss.; Straight University, New Orleans; Tillotson Institute, Austin, Texas; and of the other schools, normal, grammar and primary, which the Association sustains. From all these institutions we believe there are pupils now engaged in teaching, who have under their care 200,000 children, and that there are pastors in churches that we have founded, and in others not under our care, whom we have prepared to be intelligent and faithful preachers of the Gospel in this land and in Africa. We believe that the providence of God is bringing to pass a wonderful combination of discovery in Africa and of Christian education among the Freedmen, that is to have an immeasurable influence on the long neglected races of the Dark Continent.