It might be assumed that, as he was glorifying his race, this is the outside estimate of what they have accomplished, had not other colored leaders and teachers since that time asserted that these figures are far too low. To the writer these estimates would appear grossly exaggerated. Certainly the educational achievement of which they boast cannot justly be attributed, in the main, to the Negro race. The white race furnished 95 per cent. of the money for the schools, and a yet larger proportion for the colleges. It is stated that “before the war the South had a free Negro population in excess of a quarter of a million souls,” and, according to an estimate which has been made by one of the distinguished members of the race, the value of property owned by free Negroes was between $35,000,000 and $40,000,000.[29] Although the exact amount must be based somewhat on conjecture, it is certain that there were a considerable number of free Negroes in the country at that time who owned considerable property. Some of those in the South were land-owners and slave-owners, while of the 226,216 who lived outside of the slave States, a fair proportion were well-to-do. According to the report of a Commission appointed by Mr. Lincoln in 1863 to “examine and report upon the condition of the newly emancipated Freedmen of the United States,” the Commission ascertained that the free colored people of Louisiana in the year 1860 paid taxes on an assessment of thirteen millions.[30] To this sum must be added the amount that was accumulated during the Reconstruction period, by other means than those of honest thrift. The residue marks the advance of the Negro race in material progress. Unhappily for those who claim that the Negro race has shown extraordinary thrift since its emancipation thirty-eight years ago, the records, when examined, fail to bear out the contention.