Sunday, April 24, 2016

Reverend Horace James, June 6, 1863

Office Of Superintendent Of Blacks,
Newbern, N. C., June 6th, 1863.

Respecting Teachers, I am ready to assure you, from General Foster himself, that he will afford them military protection, government rations, and as good a dwelling place as the circumstances will allow. We have but one Newbern in the department. Here they will have a good house to live in. At Beaufort it would be much the same. But on Roanoke Island, and perhaps at Plymouth and Washington, certainly at Hatteras, we could not supply them so comfortably. I am confident there will be no trouble on this point. Still I wish that those who are sent may share largely in a missionary spirit, and come out here expecting to teach and to live in a log shanty, or even in a tent, if we can do no better for them. Let them aspire to emulate their brothers in self-denial, who have preceded them here in the regiments, and with the sword have cut a passage for the army of Educators' to follow on.

Horace James.

SOURCE: New-England Educational Commission for Freedmen, Extracts from Letters of Teachers and Superintendents of the New-England Educational Commission for Freedmen, Fourth Series, January 1, 1864, p. 7

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