The first school for the Freedmen was established by the American Missionary Association. On the 17th of September, 1861, only five months after the beginning of the war, that school was opened at Hampton, Va., where many fugitive slaves had congregated under the protection of the guns of Fortress Monroe. The spot overlooked the waters on which the first slave ship entered the American Continent. The Association steadily extended its work, until it had founded chartered institutions in every large Southern State;—Berea College, Berea, Ky.; Hampton Institute, Hampton, Va.; Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga.; Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn.; Talladega College, Talladega, Ala.; Tougaloo University, Tougaloo, Miss.; Straight University, New Orleans, La.; Tillotson Collegiate and Normal Institute, Austin, Texas. Land has also been purchased for the Edward Smith College, in Little Rock, Arkansas. It has 49 other schools of different grades. Connected with some of its chartered institutions are Theological, Law and Industrial Departments. Those at Hampton, Talladega and Tougaloo, have large farms. Chartered Institutions, 8; Normal and High Schools, 11; Common Schools, 38; Total, 57; Teachers, 241; Students, 9,608. Howard University, Washington, D.C., established by the Freedmen’s Bureau, in 1882 had 29 teachers and 349 students. The theological department is sustained mainly by the A. M. A. FREEDMEN’S AID SOCIETIES. The “Freedmen’s Aid Societies” were early organized. The first was formed in Boston, Feb. 7th, a second in New York, Feb. 23d, 1863. Others followed rapidly—in Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, and elsewhere throughout the North, and in 1865 the teachers employed by all the societies numbered 634. With a view to economy and efficiency they were consolidated in 1866, in the “American Freedmen’s Union Commission.” These societies devoted themselves in large part at first to physical relief and the organization of labor. But ere long, the education of the Freedmen became their chief endeavor and they accomplished much good in the line of secular education. But the several branches were at length abandoned or became absorbed in the societies of the religious organizations. The Commission itself closed in 1869. THE BAPTISTS.