fulfilling the divine purpose in the call made to us as a Christian
nation.

The report of the committee also suggests the heroic element in our
work. It brings to mind the obstacles and difficulties which we are
called upon to overcome. The illiteracy of the colored people is a fact
immense in extent and dark in its prophetic significance. Your hearts
were rejoiced, I know, by the statements of the changes going on in the
education of the colored children in several States through free
schools. The need of this movement will be appreciated when we remember
the figures which bring before us the present illiterate condition of
the people. I present the outline of a report made in January, 1885,
based on reports of Albion Tourgee, and on articles in the _North
American Review_. According to that report, seventy-three per cent. of
the colored population of the South cannot read and write. In the eight
Gulf and Atlantic States, seventy-eight per cent. are in the same
condition. Over two millions of colored people in these eight States
cannot read and write. But this is not all. We must take into account
the rapid increase of the negroes. In three States of the South they
already outnumber the whites. In eight States, they are about one-half
the population. In all the Southern States they increase faster than the
white population. From 1870 to 1880, in the eight States mentioned
above, they increased thirty-four per cent., the whites only
twenty-seven per cent. The immigration of foreign-born whites will not
change the proportionate difference of increase, as the foreign-born
white population has decreased 30,000 since the war, and the immigration
of northern-born whites amounts to only a fraction of one per cent.
According to the present rate of increase, the colored race in one
hundred years from now will have a population many millions in excess of
the whites, since, while it will take thirty-five years for the white