The Orangeburg news. [volume] (Orangeburg, S.C.) 1867-1875, 1870-01-01
1870.
Ehcu! Jiigaces laJanta,. ami!


eight ofevents in which our thoughts
and habits become imperceptibly mixed
ss4airing the rapidity and hurry of their
! evolution. Times change and we change
with them, and change as rapidly as
they do. The Christmas-tide and the
close of the year suggest retrospectiou
The associations Of the season carry each
heart back in reyerie to the long ago
AE the bright yule-fre, we can recall
and see agsin the fancied castles. the
forms; the faces, that we used to see SC
distinctly in the Goals in childhood
Never mind what has happened since
tse were happy then. Have those bright
scenes, moulded in fancy among the fire
coafs, become realities now in life? Does
chat beautiful countenance, seen then in
boyhood, bond over you now in manhood
and love aud cheer you.
Perhaps SO, and 'tis sadder because
real. Perhaps bright eyes are dim now,
and only angels footsteps linger now,
sent from a spirit land, at this season,
wreathed with its associations and re
trospections, and only spirit forms are
reflected in the bright Goals. How hal
lowed the review of the past Such
thoughts, are the moral value and beauty
sof the season. But to go back to those
sunny times, how many events, how
many changes have we to leap In each
individual life, how great the change!
1870. How old the world is getting
No wonder is it, that the rush of events
is SO dizzy, for rapidly with the gliding
years, all things are hurrying to their
dcaouemcnt.
Over the woild, ideas arc evolving
themselves out of experiment and specu-
llation into the stubborn granite of fact.
War, with it's perfect destruction, is
4hurrying the settlement of opposing in
terests and issues. The conservative
past struggling with its entrenchments,
strengthened by age, aud the force of its
own inertia, is giving way to the splen-
did triumphs of progress. Kins-craft in
the old world, with its might and wealth,
is compelled day BY day. to strip itself of
its superstitions aud attributes. The
logic of events points ,,.....i1...l lls:. ~.
surely, to tho day when the seal Of our
Virginia, willebe the emblem of the last
grand triumph of the freedom, aud
equality of men, and religious and civil
liberty, will have placed her foot upon
the systems aud institutions, that incul-
cate and enforce the dogmas of the "di-
vine right of kings" and the unequal
rights of man.
But nowhere upon the earth have
more stupendous events taken place, nor
o mightier change been acc ccomplishcd
than in our own Southern country
looking upon the rapid developments of
events, and realizing the swift gliding of
che years, can we be astonishod at the
rush and the change?
Slavery, and a landed aristocracy al
ready existed Mt the South, established
ss we thought not-to-b -be-removed, and
already, bulwarked with tradition, and
superstition. These are the bases upon
which. monarchies are super-structed, and
) upen which they rest. These elements
rantagonistic to freedom, existed at the
South, and their natural consequences
already were seen. Wealth, education
refinement, purity of social relations, vir.
tine, and even sense of manhood, were
confined to certain class. They owned
the slaves and the land. Outside OF
this class, there was another. In this
other class, there was squalid degrade
ton, ignorance, want, and debased
sense of inferiority. In numbers, in dc
graduation, in the distance between them
and the wealthy class, there was a con-
slant and rapid increase. They were in
the majority in numbers; in every other
respect they were immeasurably inferior
Any county in South Carolina, will
exhibit this to be the state of things ex-
isting before the war. The proof is
around us, the state of affairs, startling.
Blow after blow had been hurled by
the North, at tie institution of slavery,
the cornerstone of our social fabric
An eril in itself, and tie contagious dis
order, fatal to liberty its propagation and