[329] efforts in behalf of education carried on by the general Government. My Bureau, though engaged specifically in a work of relief; though it is the means of feeding the hungry, caring for the orphans and widows, protecting and promoting education, and working to secure justice to the weak and oppressed, nevertheless, partakes of the hatred everywhere meted out to all who are caring for the negro. Its friends are sometimes doubtful about its expediency; many think the universal franchise will dispense with it; so that it is not safe to count upon it or its measures as of long continuance. Work then, my friends, while the sun shines. Do what the Government cannot do, send Christian men and women who are not afraid of outrage, even such as that noble girl suffered at Warrenton, Va.; who are not afraid to die; send such as teachers and almoners of your contributions and as Christian missionaries.The only way to lift the ponderous load of poverty from the houses of the poor whites and blacks, and keep it lifted, is by instruction. I do not mean simply what is learned from books, but what is gained from example. But I must detain you no longer. The suffering of the poor is a heavy load upon us; the villainies of those who can rob and murder the poor, burn the churches and schoolhouses, try us severely. The twistings and turnings of our great men, who are wedded to politics as a trade, who are too great to own the manhood of the slave, too great to consider important the interests of the lowly, perplex us; but the past cannot be blotted out; our country
A band of white men opposed to all attempts to benefit the blacks had brutally assaulted a teacher, from the North, at Warrenton,Va. Amer-ican Missionary Magazine, June, 1866.
