The Soldiers' journal. (Rendezvous of Distribution, Va.) 1864-1865, 1864-12-21
After the War.


for themselves, like freemen; they will have the
aspirations of freemen, centred in truly free in
stitutions, which are to be found in the Union.-
Their new dignity and their new aspirations will
demand the school-house and the school-house
will make them look back with contempt upon
their former wretchedness, and open the charms
of new prospects and new activity full to their
view. These prospects, this future of indie
pendence, self-reliance and self-respect, will
make them forget the past, in which there was
nothing but degradation. Nor is this all. The
downfall of slavery will open the road to pro-
perty of the poor laboring man. Slavery was a
huge Unsuitable land-eater. Slavery abolished,
The great landed estates, based upon and sup
ported by slave labor, will go to pieces, and the
pieces will fall into the hands Of the poor labor
ing man. Instead of the grand palatial man.
sion, surrounded with miserable negro cabins,
and instead of the wretched howell inhabited by
the poor white, we shall soon the neat white
cottage in the midst of small but fiourishing
fields, and the interior of that cottage will be
adorned, not with the bowie-knife and pistol,
but with the book case and every evidence of
progressive civilization. This will go quick as
thought, for the Southern people will not be left
to work out that development alone. Thousands
and thousands of Northern men, who but recent
ly had been roaming over that country with
sword and bayonet, and on that occasion had
made the discovery of the TRUTH will invade it
again with spade, and plough, and machinery,
and capital, and knowledge, and spirit of pro-
gressve improvement. These invaders will be
the peaceable neighbors of the invaded, and each
one will work for the other in working for him
self; and all will be one people. Thus Southern
people will be reorganized, regenerated by the
emancipation of the large majority also from the
a a nOwarfT11 Then q
the rebellion will be blotted out even to the re-
membrance the people will no longer have time
to think of the difference of an unfortunate past,
for they will have to think of busy present
and hopeful future.
But what of the late slave lord? Will he for
get bis rancor? What if he does not? His class
was always weak in numbers, and the system
which made it powerful in society is gone. Some
of the once mighty cavaliers will sullenly sink
in the flood, and their fossil remains, fattened
and petrfied will be found, like those of the an
tidiluvian mastodon, between the strata of the
new social organization. Curious biologists will
dig them out, and the children of the South will
wonder how such monstrous animals could ever
have existed. But others will save themselves
in the ark of the .free-labor system. They will
in time see the wisdom of accommodating them
selves to the new order of things, and find out
ut last that it is better to be equal among
freemen than to be the master and at the same
time the slave of slaves. And presently the
South will bloom like the bursting bud of a
flower. The immense resources of the soil will,
rs if by enchantment, spring to light under the
magic touch of free labor, and her riches will be
enjoyed by free, happy, and-who doubts it p
loyal people. And then will come the great day
when the people of the regenerated South will
stretch their hand&across the Ohio and the Po