red
his commission as chaplain in the army. He had fought to win the
freedom of a race. To make that race true free men was a task much
more vast than to emancipate them. The parting of the ways had come.
An illiterate people must be taught. No longer should it be a crime
to instruct them. The rather was he the criminal who should deny
them an education. It was an hour for the voice of a prophet. With
the ken of a seer, Chaplain Cravath, representing the American
Missionary Association, Jan. 9th, 1866, made the proclamation, that
the founding of the school inaugurated that day was the beginning of
a great educational institution, that should give to the emancipated
race the opportunities and advantages of education which had so long
been furnished to the white race in their colleges and universities.

[Illustration: THE RAW MATERIAL.]

Gen. Fisk, the brilliant soldier and ardent philanthropist, lent
invaluable aid and consented to have the institution, so
problematical in its existence, bear his name. Governor Brownlow and
the pioneer educator of colored youth, Professor John Ogden, added
the weight of their words and helpful deeds, and Fisk had come into
being.

[Illustration: FISK'S FINISHED PRODUCT.]

ROMANCE ATTENDED THE EARLY LIFE OF THE UNIVERSITY.--Nearly four
years had passed, when the Professor of music started out with a
band of colored youth, who had been named the Jubilee Singers. That
they could sing with incomparable sweetness he knew. That the songs
they were to sing had incomparable pathos no one who heard them
doubted. But nothing short of sublimest faith could have sent forth
this band of friendless youth on their mission. They often were
penniless as they went from town to town. They arrived at Oberlin
and were permitted to sing before the National Council, then in
session at that stronghold of the colored man. The tide turned. It
rose with rapidity. Plymouth, Brooklyn, and other churches were
opened to them. The entire North gave them welcome. They crossed the
Atlantic; that gracious friend of humanity Queen Victoria, gave them
audience. Her incomparable prime minister, Gladstone, made them his
guests at Hawarden. Germany and France heard them. At the end of
seven years they returned to Nashville and laid at the feet of the
University the munificent sum of $150,000, a large part of which was
devoted to the erection of Jubilee Hall and the remainder to the
paying for the campus of thirty-five ac