That remarkable progress has been made under their influence is true, and that the common school is fast becoming as dear to the masses of the people at the South as elsewhere is also evident.
The Nation, through the Freedmen's Bureau, and perhaps to a limited extent in other ways, has expended five millions of dollars for the education of negroes and refugees in the earlier days of reconstruction, while religious charities have founded many special schools which have thus far cost some ten millions more.

The Peabody fund has distilled the dews of heaven all over the South; but heavy rains are needed; without them every green thing must wither away.
This work belongs to the Nation.

It is a part of the war.
We have the Southern people as patriotic allies now.

We are one; so shall we be forever.

But both North and South have a fiercer and more doubtful fight with the forces of ignorance than they waged with each other during the bloody years which chastened the opening life of this generation.
The South lost in the destruction of property about two billion dollars and in prosecuting the war two billion more.