prevent you from making a full and candid examination of its
merits, and, above all, the temper of the public mind is
inauspicious, even for its consideration. If your humanity
demands this particular sphere for its action, and if, to use
your own language, prejudice would brand them at your northern
schools, establish institutions in the free States, dispense your
money there abundantly as your charity will supply, draw to them
the unfortunate at your own door, or from abroad, and in all
respects gratify the largest impulses of your philanthropy; but
do not seek to impose upon us a system contrary to our wishes and
interests, and for the further reason that by so doing you injure
the cause of those whom you express a wish to serve."--_National
Intelligencer_, May 6, 1857.

[6] _Special Report_, Commissioner of Education, Washington, D. C.,
1868, p. 207.

[7] This statement is based on information obtained from Mrs. John F.
N. Wilkinson and Mrs. Amelia E. Wormley, who were pupils of Myrtilla
Miner.

[8] _Report of Board of Education_, Dr. John Smith, Statistician.

COMMUNICATIONS

During the last five years a number of valuable facts have come to the
office of the editor in various communications from persons interested
in the work which the Association has been promoting. While these
communications do not as a whole bear upon any particular phase of
Negro history, they will certainly be valuable to one making
researches in the general field. Some of these follow.

A SUGGESTION

WASHINGTON, D. C., Dec. 23, 1916.

CARTER G. WOODSON,

_My Dear Sir:_ I notice by the press your Connection with the
"Douglass" celebration. It might interest you to receive the
enclosed from a rank abolitionist of the John Brown School. After
service in Kansas with the Brown element, then in open rebellion
against the United States, as typified in men like Judge Taney,
who decided that the black man had no rights the white man was
bound to respect, I entered the Union army and served in it as a
private in the 5th Wis. Infy and as Adjt. of the 7th Eastern
Shore Md. Infy--3 years and 6 mos.... I wish some of your
influential men would start a movement to erect a monument here
for old John Brown, who gave his life to free the country from