The committee on so much of the Annual Report as relates to mountain work, particularly in Tennessee and Kentucky, respectfully reports as follows:
The few details given in the report are of such an interesting character as to suggest the earnest wish that far more extended accounts of facts and incidents had been spread before the Association.
Want of space in the narration of the vast work of this body was of course the constraining reason for brevity in the report. But the comprehensive statement which is made exhibits conclusively the opportunity for a new and peculiar work, namely, that of giving the Gospel, its character and its schools, to a class hitherto scarcely touched by beneficent Christian agencies.
This is a class of white population, a class which felt of course in some degree the blighting influence of slavery, which contaminated everything within the reach of its malaria; but this class, from its circumstances, was not a slave-holding class. It is a class of sturdy blood and mountain habits, and is capable of great development. Two considerations urge the necessity of covering this field.
One is, the ordinary obligation to preach the gospel to those who do not have the gospel.
The other is, the evident capacity of this peculiar people to become a power in the development of that section of our land.
While the field and the number of persons are both limited in comparison with the great work among the freedmen, their importance appeals to this Association with steadily increasing force.
The opportunity is at hand, and it is in a line which old friends of our regenerating work could scarcely have hoped for. Devout praise is due to Almighty God for this open door to a vast success.
It is worthy of notice in this respect how, in the history of this Association, God has steadily placed before it successive duties and successive privileges. From the first dawning of its Foreign and Home work, freed from complicity with the great sin of our country, new specialties have been added as fast as older ones were ripened into practical efficacy. This comparatively new work seems to be in a direct line of Divine development. Your Committee feels that the sanction of this Association should be emphatically given to the work of its administration in this department, a work in which no spirit of caste shall be in any way tolerated, and that the call for a large increase of laborers to be located at all suitable points, should be met as rapidly as possible.
The Committee has no doubt of the wisdom and judicious care which characterizes your Executive Committee, and believes that that committee needs only the hearty approval of this body to encourage it to go on in this direction.