This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
Chapter
47
: freedmen's aid societies and an act of congress creating a Bureau of refugees, freedmen and abandoned lands
Chapter
55
:
first
appropriation by congress for the bureau; the reconstruction Act,
March
2
,
1867
; increase of educational work
Chapter
60
: opposition to Bureau and reconstruction work became personal; the
Congregational Church of
Washington
Chapter
62
: life in
Washington, D. C.
,
1866
to
1874
; assigned to duty in regular army as commander,
Department of the Columbia
Chapter
63
: in the
Northwest
, among the
Indians
; trip to
Alaska
; life in
Portland, Ore.
;
1874
to
1881
Chapter
64
: superintendent of the
United States military Academy
; commanding
Department of the Platte
,
Omaha, Neb.
Chapter
68
:
French
army maneuvers,
1884
; promotion to
Major General
,
United States army
,
San Francisco
1886
-
88
“ [338] and the educational results achieved give favorable promise.” General N. A. Miles took great interest in the freedmen's schools of North Carolina during this year, and under the management of his assistants and himself they were exceedingly prosperous. He built on the good foundations that his predecessor, General E. Whittlesey, had laid, while the latter came to my headquarters to perform a most important duty. The pupils in North Carolina were greatly increased in numbers, and the hard-working, self-denying teachers were much encouraged. Upward of 10,000 colored children were enrolled in our schools in the State, and three or four thousand more could have been added if teachers could have been provided for them. The rental of school buildings by the Bureau had secured the continuance of many schools which having been started during the war would otherwise have been obliged to disband. Occasional adversities had appeared, as the burning of schoolhouses in Green and Chatham counties and the violent assault upon a teacher in New Hanover county. But on the whole the prejudices were far less pronounced. In fact, in many places former opposers had become friends and were encouraging this educational campaign. It is a wonderful thing to recall that North Carolina had never had before that time a free school system even for white pupils, and there were then no publications in the State devoted to popular education. The death of slavery unfolded the wings of knowledge for both white and black to brighten all the future of the “Old North State.” In South Carolina General R. K. Scott was the Bureau representative. He reported that there was a
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.