Lula Patterson (once Miss Lula Watkins), the very capable teacher of music in Selma University; Doctors Robert and Felix Tyler, of Lowndesboro; Prof. Samuel Roebuck, of Elyton; Rev. T. W. Robinson, of Gurleys; Rev. H. Zimmerman, the efficient leader of Bibb County Association; Mrs. Nancy Nickerson, the first teacher of colored children in Perry county; Rev. F. L. Jordan, pastor of the Sixteenth Street Church, Birmingham--of all these, with many other worthy persons, our book fails to give any notice. Their absence from the biographic sketches is to be accounted for solely in the reasons mentioned, namely, that means were limited and the author’s time and energy were divided between so many different lines of work as necessitated an imperfect survey of the field. [Illustration] V. SUMMARY. We now turn our pen toward the conclusion, on our way to which we will briefly consider: (1) From whence we have come; (2) How we have come; (3) The point we now occupy. I. FROM WHENCE WE HAVE COME. We have seen the tree--dwarfed and yellow-leafed--in the sterile rock-bound soil of the mountain peak, and we have felt that its life was a mere existence, a mere hair’s-breadth remove from death. The fearful regime of slavery had reduced the mental life of the Negro to the point where its activity was a simple, natural struggle for existence. By the terms mental life are designated especially the knowing faculties and voluntary powers, as well as that part of the emotional nature that has to do with character-making. I mean to say that in his intellect, will, and moral sense, the Negro was, by slavery, reduced to the minimum. It could not be otherwise for these reasons: (_a_) It was unlawful for him to know books; he must know nothing save what his master told him, and must never ask for a reason. (_b_) He was not allowed to have any will of his own except in minor points, with reference to a brute or a fellow slave. His master’s will was substituted for his, and out of his master’s choice his words and deeds must proceed, even as concerned the most sacred relations of life. At his master’s choice he took the wife, and at his choice he gave up the wife. (_c_) He was not allowed to have any conscience, except where his master had no choice. Whatever the master _said_ the slave must do, that he _must do_, conscience or no conscience. Now this state of things had gone on for over 200 years. From this condition we came forth into liberty, and with this eking existence of wilted life we must make a beginning as freemen. With nothing of that sort of manhood which comes only of the well ordered domestic circle, we had to put our shoulders beneath burdens which come of the family institution. The duties of citizenship were imposed upon us, notwithstanding we had never felt or studied anything of the privileges and obligations which center in individual sovereignty. Though we were ignorant of the gospel