Page:Annual report of the superintendent of Negro Affairs in North Carolina, 1864.djvu/39

Rh of home, to go they knew not where, or whether ever to return. It is one of the sad things in the current history of these people, that every change in the posture of public affairs, every movement of an army, every raid, advance or retreat, whether of our troops or of the other, is to them a new distress. They are ground between the upper and the nether mill-stones, and whoever has success the negro has sorrow and suffering. It is the terrible discipline through which the race will be brought into a higher social state. These are the pangs of the nation's new birth, and they have their counterpart and complement in the mourning which fills our northern homes. The wail of grief is mingled with the shouts of victory every time the wires flash out some new success. But, with the Anglo-Saxon and the African alike, these great tribulations, so sure as God reigns, must work out a common advantage, and bear for centuries to come the peaceable fruits of righteousness.

Among the disappointments attending the evacuation of Washington was the relinquishment of the land we had already put under cultivation, and of the comfortable dwellings which had been erected under the direction of Mr. Samuel M. Leathers, my assistant and superintendent there. Educational matters were also in an excellent state. The pioneer teachers, Miss Fanny Graves, Miss Sarah T. Dickinson, and Miss Anna M. Seavey, with those afterward associated with them, Miss Mary E. Jones, and Miss Annie P Merriam, deserve great praise for the prudence, tact, and cheerful energy which they brought to their work, in a community greatly prejudiced against the movement, because made up so largely of persons born in North Carolina. A prosperous school of white children was here taught by Miss Seavey, until her health failed. It was not reopened before the town was given up, and our forces withdrawn.

As an illustration of the benevolent spirit of our female teachers, and of the whole movement as well, it is proper that mention should be made of the assistance rendered by these ladies in the care of the sick white refugees at Beaufort and Morehead. It was here that most of the ladies were sent for a time, when hostile incursions were so prevalent in the District as to interrupt their peaceful avocations. The same disturbances had filled