“But wherever upon God’s earth was such an unheard-of revolution in the state of human society accomplished with so little that was to be deprecated?
“For in this year, 1878, certain propositions of very great significance bear assertion, and can be maintained by ample proof:
“1. The cotton crop raised by free labor is the largest by some millions that ever has been raised in the United States. That settles the question as to the free-labor system.
“2. The legal status of the negro is universally conceded as a finality by the leading minds of the South.
“3. The common-school system has been established throughout the Southern States, and recognized in theory by the wisest Southern men as to be applied impartially to whites and blacks.
“4. All of the large religious denominations are conducting educational movements among the Freedmen on a large scale. There are scattered through the Southern States, under the patronage of different denominations, thirty-nine chartered and endowed institutions for the higher education of colored people as teachers, ministers, physicians, farmers and mechanics. Besides these, there are sixty-nine schools of a lower grade. It is calculated that in the last sixteen years twenty million dollars has been contributed and invested in the work of educating the Freedmen.
“5. Leading and influential men at the South are in many cases openly patrons of these educational efforts. Several of these institutions have been generously assisted by the States in which they are founded. The last reports of all these institutions represent them as in a successful and flourishing condition.
“6. The colored race is advancing in material wealth and prosperity.”