Oliver Otis Howard, Autobiography of Oliver Otis Howard, major general , United States army : volume 2

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[175] South, but that the help of his Association would be most welcome. Obeying his call, the Rev. L. C. Lockwood was sent. He reached Fort Monroe September 3d and immediately called on General John E. Wool, who had, August 7th, superseded General Butler as ,department commander. In the evening, while conversing on the piazza of the hotel, he heard music, and following the sound found a number of colored people assembled for prayer. They hailed his coming as an answer to their prayers and an assurance that the good Lord had opened His arms to bless them.

The first Association day school was opened by this agent September 17th. It was held in a small house near the female seminary building, which, after the war, became the Hampton Home for Volunteer Soldiers. The first teacher was Mrs. Mary S. Peak, a well-educated free woman of color.

With a view to bettering the condition of these people, after a careful investigation by a commission of which Colonel LeGrand B. Cannon was a member, and by whose personal efforts the approval of the Secretary of War was obtained, General Wool issued a general order, March 18, 1862, appointing Mr. Charles B. Wilder Superintendent of Negroes, and providing that all wages earned by persons of African blood be paid to the laborers themselves for their own use and support under such regulations as should be devised by the superintendent. This was an advance from the contraband, fed, clothed, and housed for his labor, to the free wage-earner.

February 8, 1862, in North Carolina the battle of Roanoke Island was fought; immediately after it crowds of fugitives, most of them poor and ignorant negroes, poured into camp. Very soon a prominent