This letter from author Harriet Beecher Stowe to Otis O. Howard, who was then the commissioner of the U.S. Freedmen’s Bureau, typifies the discussion of African American education following the Civil War. Written while traveling from Jacksonville, Florida, to New York City, New York, Stowe relates her discussion with the Superintendent of Education in Florida, C. Thurston Chase, about the need for industrial education, “where the pupils can be taught something that will enable them to get a living.”