No proposition can be more reasonable than that they who pay taxes for schools and schoolhouses should be provided with schools and schoolhouses. The colored population of this city, in proportion to their numbers, pay their full share of the general and therefore of the school taxes. There are about nine thousand adults of both sexes; of these over three thousand are householders, rent-payers, and therefore tax-payers, in that sense of the word in which owners make tax-payers of their poor tenants. The colored laboring man, with an income of $200 a year, who pays $72 per year for a room and bedroom, is really in proportion to his means a larger tax-payer than the millionaire whose tax rate is thousands of dollars. But directly, also, do the colored people pay taxes. From examinations carefully made, the undersigned affirm that there are in the city at least 1,000 colored persons who own and pay taxes on real estate. Taxed real estate in the city of New York owned by colored persons $1,400,000 Untaxed by colored persons (churches) 250,000 Personal estate 710,000 Money in savings banks 1,121,000 ----------- $3,481,000 These figures indicate that in proportion to their numbers, the colored population of this city pay a fair share of the school taxes, and that they have been most unjustly dealt with. Their money has been used to purchase sites and erect and fit up schoolhouses for white children, whilst their own children are driven into miserable edifices in disgraceful localities. Surely, the white population of the city are too able, too generous, too just, any longer to suffer this miserable robbing of their colored fellow-citizens for the benefit of white children. Praying that your honorable commission will take due notice of these facts, and recommend such remedy as shall seem to you best, We have the honor to be, in behalf of the New York Society for the Promotion of Education among Colored Citizens, Most respectfully yours, CHARLES B. RAY, President. PHILIP A. WHITE, Secretary. New York City, December 28, 1857. CHAPTER II. AMERICAN NEGRO AND THE MILITARY SPIRIT. Early Literature of Negro Soldiers--Negro Soldiers in the War of the Revolution--The War of 1812--Negro Insurrections--Negro Troops in the Civil War--Notes.