The annals of this Ninth Crusade are yet to be written,
--the tale of a mission that seemed to our age far more
quixotic than the quest of St. Louis seemed to his. Behind the
mists of ruin and rapine waved the calico dresses of women
who dared, and after the hoarse mouthings of the field guns
rang the rhythm of the alphabet. Rich and poor they were,
serious and curious. Bereaved now of a father, now of a
brother, now of more than these, they came seeking a life
work in planting New England schoolhouses among the white
and black of the South. They did their work well. In that first
year they taught one hundred thousand souls, and more.

Evidently, Congress must soon legislate again on the hast-
ily organized Bureau, which had so quickly grown into wide
significance and vast possibilities. An institution such as that
was well-nigh as difficult to end as to begin. Early in 1866
Congress took up the matter, when Senator Trumbull, of
Illinois, introduced a bill to extend the Bureau and enlarge its
powers. This measure received, at the hands of Congress, far
more thorough discussion and attention than its predecessor.
The war cloud had thinned enough to allow a clearer concep-
tion of the work of Emancipation. The champions of the bill
argued that the strengthening of the Freedmen's Bureau was
still a military necessity; that it was needed for the proper
carrying out of the Thirteenth Amendment, and was a work
of sheer justice to the ex-slave, at a trifling cost to the
government. The opponents of the measure declared that the
war was over, and the necessity for war measures past; that
the Bureau, by reason of its extraordinary powers, was clearly
unconstitutional in time of peace, and was destined to irritate