s the germ thought: Character is to get its direction and energy
in the day's work. Just as man's physical needs drive him to toil, his
spiritual necessities find their best field and cultivation in the same
toil. The freedmen's first need is to earn a living; then to acquire
such a margin as will allow some little ease and comfort and refinement;
and along with these goes the need of good habits, high aims,
disciplined character. Teach the industrial lesson and the moral lesson
together. Train them to work intelligently and cheerfully; teach them at
the same time whatever of book knowledge best fits their need; and
constantly inspire them with the spirit of service to their kind.
Provide in this way for some hundreds of young men and women, who shall
go out as teachers to educate and train their people along these lines.

That was the ideal,--the germ of Hampton, of Tuskegee, of the new
education of the negro; the suggestion and stimulant of the new
education as it is coming to be for the white.

CHAPTER XXXVII

ARMSTRONG

Armstrong was a man of action, and of words only as far as they helped
action. He reached the starting of his school in 1868, within two years
after he was assigned to duty at Hampton. For external help he had first
the countenance and support of the Freedmen's Bureau. He was in its
service and pay until 1872. He had the warm and practical friendship of
General Howard, who, after inviting him to take charge of the new
university in Washington bearing his own name, skilfully gained for his
Hampton enterprise a moderate appropriation from Congress. If the
Freedmen's Bureau had accomplished nothing else,--and it did accomplish
much, especially in education--it would have been justified merely by
giving Armstrong his opportunity. Next he turned to private benevolence.
Of the various organizations, church and secular, that were devising and
doing for the freedmen, perhaps the most efficient was the American
Missionary Association. From its officers Armstrong won response,
sympathy, contributions. He had to face the difficulties of a pioneer.
There were precedents against him. Experiments somewhat similar had been
tried and failed. At Mount Holyoke seminary for women, created by the
genius and devotion of Mary Lyon, and at Oberlin college, where the best
New England tradition had been transplanted--there had been long and
earnest trial of giving the students work by which to partially pay
their