Restored in a measure to
activity, he is still spared to the generation which fondly cherishes
his old age; and recently, at the organization of the Union Club, he
read to his fellow-citizens, gathering close about him and hanging on
his speech, words of counsel and encouragement.
On the morning of the 3d of March, 1862, the first delegation of
superintendents and teachers, fifty-three in all, of whom twelve were
women, left the harbor of New York, on board the United States
steam-transport Atlantic, arriving at Beaufort on the 9th. It was a
voyage never to be forgotten. The enterprise was new and strange, and it
was not easy to predict its future. Success or defeat might be in store
for us; and we could only trust in God that our strength would be equal
to our responsibilities. As the colonists approached the shores of South
Carolina, they were addressed by the agent in charge, who told them the
little he had learned of their duties, enjoined patience and humanity,
impressed on them the greatness of their work, the results of which were
to cheer or dishearten good men, to settle, perhaps, one way or the
other, the social problem of the age,--assuring them that never did a
vessel bear a colony on a nobler mission, not even the Mayflower, when
she conveyed the Pilgrims to Plymouth, that it would be a poorly written
history which should omit their individual names, and that, if faithful
to their trust, there would come to them the highest of all recognitions
ever accorded to angels or to men, in this life or the next,--"Inasmuch
as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me.
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