lately, at Danville--both
acted as assistants to Mr. Manly. A considerable number of
school-houses were built in Virginia by the Bureau, including the
splendid normal and high school building in Richmond, erected and
equipped at a cost of $25,000, and afterward turned over to the city.
After the conclusion of his superintendency, Mr. Manly continued for
several years to do valuable service as principal of this school.

"The Freedmen's Bureau ceased its educational operations in the
summer of 1870, and in the autumn of that year our State public
schools were opened. So that, counting from the beginning of the
mission school at Hampton in 1861, there has been an unbroken
succession of schools for freedmen in one region for nineteen
years; and at a number of leading points in the State--such as
Norfolk, Richmond, Petersburg, Danville, Charlottesville,
Christiansburg, etc.--an unbroken line of schools for fourteen
years and upwards. These efforts, however, of the Federal
Government toward educating the rising generation of Colored
people, could not have been designed as any thing more than an
experiment, intended first to test and then to stimulate the
appetite of those people for learning. And in this view they were
entirely successful in both particulars; for the children flocked
to the schools, attended well, made good progress in knowledge,
and paid a surprising amount of money for tuition.

"But, considered as a serious attempt to educate the children of
the freedmen, the movement was wholly inadequate, even when
contrasted with the operations of our imperfect State system. The
largest number enrolled in the schools supported by the combined
efforts of the Bureau, the charitable societies, and the tuition
fees, was 18,234, in 1870. The next year we had in our public
schools considerably over double this number, and an annual
increase ever since, always excepting those two dark years
(_tenebricosus and tenebricosissimus_), 1878 and 1879."[118]

"Two institutions for the education of the Colored race, founded
before the beginning of our school, system, are still in
successful operation, but remain independent of our school
system. One of them has some connection with the State by reason
of the receipt of one-third of the proceeds of the Congressional
land-grant for