Their gratitude for instruction was as fervent as their desire for it was ravenous, and their attachment to their teachers was most devoted.
The first school for the freedmen was started by teachers sent out for that purpose by the American Missionary Association. This society was formed in 1846, because of the acquiescent attitude towards slavery of most of the older missionary organisations. It had sustained missions among the negroes of Jamaica and West Africa. Its home missionaries in the slave-holding States, while striving to reach both white and black with schools and the preaching of the Gospel, had always faithfully borne testimony against the great sin of slavery. It had the confidence and support of the friends of freedom. And when this great task of giving more than four millions of freedmen a Christian education was suddenly laid upon the nation, its origin, its associations and its past labours, all pointed to it as providentially trained up for the occasion. And upon it most of the work has rested.
In 1863 it had 83 ministers and teachers in this field; in 1864, 250; in 1868, 532. Since the work began it has expended nearly $3,000,000 in it. As public schools came to be opened, to some extent, for the coloured people, and as the importance of permanent institutions for the training of teachers and ministers from among the freedmen themselves became more apparent, and the necessity for them more imperative, the Association withdrew for the most part from this temporary primary work, and concentrated its efforts upon a system of training-schools.
