al
Armstrong that an institute, similar to the one which had proved so
successful at Hampton, might be founded in the little town of Tuskegee,
which stood aside from the main railway line, but had a branch for its
accommodation. It had not entered into anybody's day-dreams to suppose
that anyone, save an accomplished white man, would be competent to
undertake so arduous an enterprise; but when the General received the
application, and had thought about it, he clearly saw, to his own
satisfaction, that Booker Washington was the man most likely to make
such a school as the one suggested a success. The following passage from
an open letter in the _Century Magazine_ for September 1895, by Mr G. T.
Speed, affords some notion of what the general outlook was in Alabama
at the date in question:--

"When the attention of philanthropists was first directed to the
ignorant condition of the freedmen in the South, in nine cases out of
ten the practical effort to do something for their improvement was
controlled by clergymen, and was largely influenced by sentimental
considerations. The chief object seemed to be to grow a great crop of
negro preachers, lawyers and doctors. The result was so disheartening
that, fifteen years after the war was over, there were grave doubts
whether the coloured race in the South was not lapsing into a barbarism
worse than that of slavery. Fortunately, among those educators and
philanthropists there was at least one sane man, the late General S. C.
Armstrong, of Hampton. His main idea was to train workmen and teachers.
Mr Washington was one of these teachers. Of him and his work General
Armstrong, shortly before his death, said:--'It is, I think, the noblest
and grandest work by any coloured man in the land. What compares with it
in general value and power for good? It is on the Hampton plan,
combining labour and study, commands high respect from both races, flies
no denominational flag, but is earnestly and thoroughly Christian, is
out of debt, well managed and organised.'"

Concerning the opinions, the aims and aspirations of General Armstrong's
disciple, the same friend says:--

"Mr Booker T. Washington had become persuaded that most of the efforts
at training his people in purely academic directions were almost
entirely thrown away. He held that the time was not ripe, and his people
were not prepared for the higher scholastic training of which the Greek
and Latin classics are the basis, but that t