The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1868-10-28
Young Men of the South.

There are now opening to the young men
of the South possibilities Of an enviable and
illustrious success. The Inauguration of a
new era, in which the Institutions customs
and prejudices Of the past are displaced by
the larger views and grander duties of the
stirring present, forms an occasion which can
and will be improved by the more sagacious
of the Southern youth.
1t is general law of human life, that those
prominent as public men under one regime,
are unable to adapt themselves to changed
social and civil state. Hence, by wise ar
rangement, Providence has shortened human
life, that men who have performed their al
lotted work shall not remain as hindrances
to the completion of great designs in which
they have borne their part. Not seldom is
the prolonged life of great man who, in
his time, has been as a strong tower to u
worthy cause the greatest obstacle to the
success of measures he had once assisted to
inaugurate. 1t is the mark of an uncommon
mind and an elevation which few can reach,
for a public man, at an advanced age, to
march fully abreast with the spirit OF the
time. Ordinarily men who have risen to
high position are only fitted for one phase of
national development. As in the vast coral
reefs, on whose rising columns future con-
tinent may possibly rest, each layer is upon
the fossilized dead of u preceding period, so
in the great ordinances of humanity each era
must have its own makers
The South is now entering new era.
Surely and steadily, amid fearfully convul-
sive throes, it is pressing on to higher po-
litical, religious and social life new de-
velopment, based upon changed system of
labor, upon quickened industries, awakened
enterprise and better ideas ofprogress, would
soon clothe her in garb of fresh and glori-
Gus beauty. She is entering great forma-
ton period, whose mighty processes are
breaking with resistless power the old strata
of society, of morals, of government, and
re-casting them upon more liberal views and
higher principles. Instead, of the old, effete
dead South, whose exhausted lands and OBJ
solete cultivation symbolic a past stage of
human life, we shall soon have 1.-THE and
vigorous South, which, starting in the new,
and to her, untrodden path Of freedom, shall
bound forward to compete with the swift
and marvellous civilization which has made
the mighty North and West the marvel of
the world. .. D.. ..
But for these new and vast steps OF
progress for which the South is now pre-
pairing, her former statesmen, jurists, minis
ters and journalists seem utterly inadequate.
Her great men of thep past are but as children
in the present. Madly plunging into the
dark sea of rebellion, that great blunder has
been followed by egregious mistakes in eff
forts at reconstruction. Senseless efforts to
prolong a miserable prejudice and bitter
SPITE and desire to battle the loyal efforts
Of the nation, have well nigh transformed a
land rich as the garden of Nile into Acelde-
ma.
New leaders are demanded. Only here
and there can be found one of the old order
wise enough to comprehend the situation
and conform to it; and few indeed can keep
pace with the spirit of the times. When
such are found, let double honor be meted
out to them, for they are worthy. But the
men for the future, in the main, must be the
present young men ofthe South 1t is hap
py for the nation, but especially happy is it
for the South, that some of the former prom
inent leaders of public sentiment are disfran-
chised. 1t is better for themselves, and much
more so for the South, that it should be So
They are strangers to the good impulses
which so peacefully stir the free blood of
this patriotic nation.
Not understanding and incapable now
oflearning the demands ofthe changed times,