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

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[341] cadet, consulting his hopes, believed that public sentiment in some sections of Mississippi was then undergoing a most favorable change. He found the freedmen usually ardent for education and willing to bear part of the expense of the children's schooling; and also employers who desired the friendship of their laborers who were encouraging schools on plantations, as well as in villages and cities; but the whole number of schools for the large population of Mississippi aggregated only about 66 (day and night) with pupils 4,697. General Gillem reported that while laborers were working well and complying more strictly than heretofore with the terms of their agreements, a number of white citizens were disposed apparently to defraud their laborers of their earnings by quarreling with them upon the slightest pretext, and for trivial reasons would drive them from their homes by threats of actual violence.

The burning of the freedmen's schoolhouse at Columbus unhoused 400 pupils. Teachers took scholars into their quarters, but not half of them could be accommodated. There was little doubt that some evildisposed persons and not accident had done the burning. It was a hopeful sign, hewever, that year in Mississippi that John M. Langston, school inspector, with his color against him, should be everywhere civilly treated. He had many good things to say of both the white people and the negroes of that State. The Society of Friends was supplying the teachers and doing good work at Jackson, the capital of the State. Tuition of fifty cents per month was required and the small tuition was educational in itself, favoring selfsupport. At Meridian, the school, for want of a structure, had to be held in the Methodist Church. Langston