was ever opened to any Christian people."

We quote from his address:

The benevolence of Northern men and women, yea, and even of
Northern children, helped to establish in the South these
missionary colleges, these educational missions, wherein not the
black man alone, not the black woman alone, but every one who was
qualified with orderly behavior and a rational intellect might
come, and get, not only an education, but a Christian education,
and not only a Christian education, but a Christian American
education. These institutions, standing out in the darkness when
nothing else stood by them, when the land was racked and torn and
bled afresh under the agonies of reconstruction, these institutions
began and carried on the blessed work of raising up leaders,
intellectual leaders, among the black people, for the guidance and
stimulation of the colored race toward the aspirations of American
citizenship and Christian intelligence.

These institutions, these missionary colleges in the South, have
carried the torch of liberty, these have upheld it, these have
taught American citizenship, these have given to the Southern
States 16,000 colored teachers, when nobody else would teach the
poor black boy--nay, or the poor white boy either. Seven millions
of people concerned in the matter, and the National Bureau of
Public Education reporting year after year that {90} the reason why
there are 600,000 colored youth out of the public schools, is not
because they don't want to go, but because there are not
school-houses and school teachers.