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In a letter dated Nashville, Tenn., Twelfth-month _ ie 1864,

he says ;
MT

“Never were supplies more needed than now. At least 3000 are
camped within half a mile of our lodge to-night, and many of them are
without bedding of any kind. I have seen to-day 1200 persons living in
five rooms, without a fire in any one of them.

Fires to cook with were built out of doors, and about them were told
groups of women and children, trying to get warm. They had travelled
seventy miles, within a week, to find this kind of refuge, escaping the
bullets of those on their track, to die with exposure here. Every article
that can be sent is needed.

Women stood three hours in the cold, yesterday, waiting their turn to
get warm clothing; the aged, infirm, crippled, mothers with children,
and one insane woman, who had lost her reason because one after another
had been sold from her.’

In contemplating the work before us we are deeply impressed
with its immensity, embracing not only the relief of the pressing
physical wants of vast numbers of our fellow beings, but also their
intellectual and moral culture, that they may be fitted for the new
responsibilities attendant upon their state of freedom; and we
believe that in future labors our best policy lies in Hitting our
sphere to the localities we have named, while any excess of sup-
plies, over those needed by the communities under our care, may
be distributed for the relief of suffering elsewhere.

We thankfully recognize the fact that there are not a few
of every class and sect in the Northern and Western States, who
are zealously laboring to pay the Nation’s debt to these
hitherto oppressed people. Some, to feed the hungry, clothe the
naked, and nourish and comfort those who are ready to perish ;
others to lift them out of the ignorance and thriftlessness
consequent on their long-continued servile condition, and to
illumine their path to’freedom and independence by the light of
civilization.

The duty of this Association, while it seems to include a
participation according to its limited means in every branch of
the work, points especially to the elevation, perhaps of a single
community only, to a position of independence and thrift, and to
the removal of the imputation which has so long operated at