agents available for this work must be sought for in an army
still busy with war operations,--men in the very nature of the case
ill fitted for delicate social work,--or among the questionable camp
followers of an invading host. Thus, after a year's work, vigorously as
it was pushed, the problem looked even more difficult to grasp and solve
than at the beginning. Nevertheless, three things that year's work did,
well worth the doing: it relieved a vast amount of physical suffering;
it transported 7000 fugitives from congested centres back to the
farm; and, best of all, it inaugurated the crusade of the New England
schoolma'am.

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 100,000 souls, and more.

Evidently, Congress must soon legislate again on the hastily 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 conception 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 the South and pauperize the freedmen, at a
final cost of possibly hundreds of millions. Two of these arguments