It was a moment of inspiration. The man to appreciate the hour and give utterance to its meaning, was there. He had hardly surrendered his commission as chaplain in the army. He had fought to win the freedom of a race. To make that race true free men was a task much more vast than to emancipate them. The parting of the ways had come. An illiterate people must be taught. No longer should it be a crime to instruct them. The rather was he the criminal who should deny them an education. It was an hour for the voice of a prophet. With the ken of a seer, Chaplain Cravath, representing the American Missionary Association, Jan. 9th, 1866, made the proclamation, that the founding of the school inaugurated that day was the beginning of a great educational institution, that should give to the emancipated race the opportunities and advantages of education which had so long been furnished to the white race in their colleges and universities. [Illustration: THE RAW MATERIAL.] Gen. Fisk, the brilliant soldier and ardent philanthropist, lent invaluable aid and consented to have the institution, so problematical in its existence, bear his name. Governor Brownlow and the pioneer educator of colored youth, Professor John Ogden, added the weight of their words and helpful deeds, and Fisk had come into being. [Illustration: FISK'S FINISHED PRODUCT.] ROMANCE ATTENDED THE EARLY LIFE OF THE UNIVERSITY.--Nearly four years had passed, when the Professor of music started out with a band of colored youth, who had been named the Jubilee Singers. That they could sing with incomparable sweetness he knew. That the songs they were to sing had incomparable pathos no one who heard them doubted. But nothing short of sublimest faith could have sent forth this band of friendless youth on their mission. They often were penniless as they went from town to town. They arrived at Oberlin and were permitted to sing before the National Council, then in session at that stronghold of the colored man. The tide turned. It rose with rapidity. Plymouth, Brooklyn, and other churches were opened to them. The entire North gave them welcome. They crossed the Atlantic; that gracious friend of humanity Queen Victoria, gave them audience. Her incomparable prime minister, Gladstone, made them his guests at Hawarden. Germany and France heard them. At the end of seven years they returned to Nashville and laid at the feet of the University the munificent sum of $150,000, a large part of which was devoted to the erection of Jubilee Hall and the remainder to the paying for the campus of thirty-five acres, once a slave plantation, now the most commanding location in the Athens of the South, as Nashville, the seat of four universities, is justly called. [Illustration: A BAND OF KING'S DAUGHTERS.] [Illustration: LIVINGSTONE HALL. A gift mainly from Mrs. Valeria G. Stone.]