Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1866-02-22

The delegates then bowed and withdrew
from tho Richmond Dispatch.l
Our Young Men.
It is stated by DeBow that at least fifty thousand
Southern men have been added to the population
of New York city since the close of the war :
We regret that many of our young should
deem it necessary to leave their native section,
which stands much in need of all her
children. We have no doubt that the desire of
employment, the necessity of it in many cases. has
compelled this large emigration from the South
But where it is not essential to life itself that is the
duty of all who love their native soil to stand by
it in its adversely in its prosperity The pride
which they feel in the spot of their birth, the OBJ
legations of gratitude and affection, sympathy with
it's sorrows, and aspirations for its future happi
ness unite to invoke them not to desert their old
mother in the hour of adversely.
The young men of the South its iewels-all
of it's treasure that desolating war has left
Much of this treasure has gone forever, buried be-
meath the soil which it once adorned, and making
that soil dearer than before to its possessors
Hundreds of thousands of these young men have
gone to land from which there is no return. Will
those who remain leave the family hearthstohe,
shrouded it is ID the weeds of mourning,
utterly solitary and desoate ? They would have
deemed it an ignominious thing to desert their
colors in the hour of battle and would have pre-
ferred death to such 81 deed of shame. Il it less
ruinOus to fOrsake now the land for which they
have made such struggles 4? Can they not exer-
else, in the peaceful efforts she is making for
restoration of her former prosperity, the self
denial, patience, perseverance, and energy, which
they exhibit in war At time when are
dnavoring to invite immigration from all the world
and when great necessity is labor, shall the
emf grafton from the South far surpass that which
is entering her borders .? Is the land that was
once the garden of the earth to become solitary
and desolate place, abandoned by the flower of
its enterprise and energy, and left to relapse into
q wilderness
As southern men, we care not so much for the
decline in material greatness which must be i'll
volved in the abandonment of the South by any
considerable number of its young men. OurPeo-
pie have never been ambitious of great wealth.
They have borne with heroic fortitude the loss OF
their worldly possessions They look without
tear upon the havoc which the war has made in
their personal fortunes. The natural emotions
which such losses might arouse are swallowed up
in the deeper grief over the loss of their best and
bravest in the battle But if to these is to be adj
ded the loss by emigration of those who survive,
the South may we'll be inconsolable. Then, in
deed, may she take up the plaintive lamentation
of the patriarch Jacob when, in the famine of Ca
naan, he refused to permit his youngest son to go
down to Egypt Me have We bereaved of my
&c children ; Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and
'' We will take Benjamin away all these things
'against me. If be bereayed Of my children, I
g am bereaved."
If, indeed, the Southern people, like the Jewish
patriarch, could move the whole Southern house.
hold with their women AMI little ones, to a land
OF peace and plenty, we might look with more COM
posture upon such exodus But these must re-
main. The old men and the children, the mothers
and sisters of the South must be left behind to
share its fortunes for veal woe. Every gener-
Gus, chivalric, and manly sentiment demands that
those who are their protectors, and the main stay
of the future of Southern society, should remain.
IT, indeed, this grand old fabric of Southern So
cal life is threatened with dissolution, if the ship
that has sailed so proudly on the seas is going
down. if the storm that bowls through the rigging
and the waves that camor for her destruction must
prove victorious, let the crew still remember that
there women and children on board, and that
it is nober and more honorable to go down with
the sinking wreck than to crowd into launches and
life-boats and abandon the helpless ones to hor-
rible fate
But the southern vessel is not going down. The
tempest is sent hot for our ruin but to. try our
manhood. The land that gave birth to Washinton,
that displays in its brief annals galaxy of genius
and public virtue such the world has rarely seen
that is SO evidently marked by the hand of nature
for sublime destiny, is not to be given over to
anarchy and barbarism. We boast in the south
of the number of our churches and of the pervad-
ing influence of religion the mass of our popll-
lation. What is our religion worth if it does not
teach the virtues of faith and hope; if it gives
way before the blasts of misfortune, and leaves us
to set practically if there were behind the storm
Divine Intelligence and Benignity directing the
affairs of men? It does not follow because we have
lost the cause in which we lately embarked that
we are forsaken of Heaven. If it had not been
best for us that such should be the result we
would have triumphed. We have lost our slaves,
but we are still left equality with the rest of
mankind; we have our strong right arm; we have
energy and will of orr own, or ought to have; the
same genial heavens smile upon US from above,
and the productive earth pours forth its treasures
at our feet. Here are the graves of our fathers
and of our friends, and here an atmosphere IRA
dated by the halo of their illustrious example If
we will only stand to posts, and have faith in
Heaven, and show faith by works of every
kind, and, chief of all, by sef-denying, patient,
and hopeful industry, the south has yet before it
future brighter and more glorious than it has ever
seen
Nothing, in our mind, is more certain than that
this southern land, producing the great staples
upon which the commerce and manufactures of the
world are dependent, embracing the productions
OF both the tropic and the temperate zones, having
mild and healthful climate, great rivers and han
bors and incalculable mineral wealth, will not be
LETT to turn to wilderness but will, on the con.
trary, become one day the chief seat Of American
population and power. If her own sons abandon
her, their places will ere long be filed by men of
another race. The crowded population Of Europe