The years of the Civil War in America were especially trying, since revenues from the Mother Church were much decreased. Work had to be curtailed. Yet, through all the trials, the laborers in the field, missionaries, catechists and teachers, remained steadfast under the leadership of Bishop Payne who saw clearly that the hope of the Liberian Church lay in the gradual development of the will and ability to become self-supporting, and the arousing of missionary zeal toward the unevangelized tribes from the coast inland. In 1862, the Bishop wrote, “We endeavor always to impress upon our native converts that the lesson God means to teach them, by the troubles in America, is to exert themselves for their own support and that of the Gospel in their midst. And they feel and acknowledge the situation.” In that year, the organization of the Church was strengthened, and the widely scattered missions brought into more compact oneness, by the formation of a General Missionary Convocation to bring the whole Church together in conference and mutual communion at stated times. A full account of this appears in _The Spirit of Missions_ for August, 1862. Later in this year, Mr. Samuel D. Ferguson, a negro colonist, was appointed Principal of the Mount Vaughan High School, and thus began his training for the later leadership of the Liberian Mission. Before the close of the trying War period, the Mission sustained the loss of one of its oldest (in point of service) and one of its most efficient teachers, Mrs. Elizabeth M. Thompson, who, for twenty-eight years, taught in our Mission schools. She was a native of Connecticut, of negro blood, born in 1807. In 1831, she emigrated to Liberia where she began work as a teacher in an infant-school in Monrovia. She later moved with her husband to Cape Palmas, and was associated with his work there and at Mount Vaughan, where, in 1833, he was appointed as lay-reader in charge of our budding work. Her husband died early, and she continued her work as teacher with great devotion until within a short time of her death, when ill-health obliged her to resign. She continued lighter labors in St. Mark’s Hospital almost to the end, which came in April, 1864. Mrs. Thompson was an excellent Christian character, faithful and zealous and greatly beloved by all, an example to her race, and her death caused great sorrow in the entire community. In 1871, after thirty-one years of devoted labor in foundation-building, Bishop Payne found himself obliged, by ill-health, to give up his work. Simply and modestly he gives the following account of his stewardship.