Year: 1865

xr.vrpY AT THE SOUTH To OlfE fiiAOh AZ in-


LABOR OF FREE EMIGRANTs.


The nubIic writers and speakers who, dur
ing the last three years ana nan, nave occu-
n;ed themselves in demonstrating that the
North could never conquer the South, are
now busted with very different and not al
together consistent problem. They esta5
lsbed. to their own momentary satisfaction,
that the South, of fwhose ultimate 'subiuga-
tion'. they scarcely venture to hint doubt.
can never be held and administered as part
of a free republic. 1t will be the Poland or
Huugarv-on the continent they are so un-
kind as to say the Ireland--of America If
the authors of these dolefal presages had
ever been right in any single point arising
out of the rebellion-if they had not blunder-
de from first to last upon the military problem
we should entertain greater confidence
than it is possible for US now to feel in their
political vaccinations On every element
of the great theme they have gone wildly
astray. They understood neither the mate
rial strength nor the moral character of the
Northern and Southern populations, nor the
social organizations which are divided from
each other by Mason and Dixon's line
This ignorance-including total indiffer
ence to the facts of American history and
biography-vitiates their political prognos-
tications as completely as it has reversed
their military prophecies.


Their fundamental error lies in supposing
that the Federal Government will have to
deal in peace, mainly, if not exclusively,
with the people whom they have been CON-
batting in war. This is not the case. Even
if we look solely to the present population of
the South, we must distinguish between the
armies of the Confederacy and the bulk of
its inhabitants.-The great slave owners of
the South-the ten or twelve thousand men
for whose interest and at whose instigation
the war began-wil be impoverished and
di5credited. Their ascendancy will be over
thrown. The class of poor whites" by
whose docile suffrages. aided by the three
fifth vote, they maintained their political in
fuence, has been thinned by the war; and
those of them whom disease and the sword
have spared have been taught something as
to the guidance which they so blindly follow
ed The elements of disatfection have been,
to very great degree, burned out by the
war. The class which enthusiastically
stronger than it ever was before, and proper.
tionally far more numerous-uever had any
quarrel with the free States, and is not now,
so far as we can judge, i'll affected to the
Union.


But even if the entire population of the
South were animated by the bitterest hos
tility to their Northern fellow citizens, and to
the Federal Government, and transmit
ted this feeling to the next generation, the
difficulties con jured up in the way of peaceful
reunion. on the basis of equal rights and free
institutions would be by no means insuper-
able 1t has often been shown that the di-
rect descendants of the Americans of the
Revolutionary period form an exceedingly
small element in the present population of
the United States. That consists chiefly of
emigrants from Europe, whose course has
been directed exclusively to the States of the
North and Northwest. The moral plague
of slavery has kept free industry outside the
regions which are cursed by human bondage.
The South is still largely an unoccupied ter
ritory. Land once cultivated is now waste
and deserted. Land which elsewhere would
have been reclaimed generations ago is still
virgin forest. In Virginia the free popula-
rian numbers only fifteen persons to the
square mile In the adjoining free States of
the Atlantic coasts, in themselves far less
inviting to settlers, the population, over an
equal area, is eighty-two persons to the square
mile. Slavery, and slavery alone, has made
this difference. 1t has defrauded not mere
ly the negro Of his birthright, but the super
abundant population of Europe of a land of
unequal promise. The wrong done by it TO
millions of the Old World is only less than
that inflicted on the bondsmen of the New.
When once it is removed and peace is restor
ed, there will be rush of emigrants from
Europe and the Northern State to the South.
A new population will arise, which not only
will have no quarrel with the North and
Union, but will owe everything to them, and
which. together with its descendants, will,
in the course of a generation, form the great
bulk of the population Of the South. In
this human deluge the relics of the older
society will be submerged and loss. A
Homestead Act for the South would bring to
Virginia the prosperity of New York and
enable Florida and Alabama to count wealth
aud men with Ohio and Illinois. To effect this
end there will be no need of confiscation. In
the unrecaimed or abandoned soil of the
slave States there are farms for millions of
freemen. By small grants of lands to the
laudless whites, who are. or were, the
strength of the rebellion and the hope OF
those who count on future disafection and
troubles, they may probably be converted in
to peaceful and industrious citizens, thus
helping TO confirm the new order on the basis
of the old one, in the overthrow of which
they have been blind instruments.


The bugbear of tropical mate needs not
weigh much with US in thus forecasting the
future. No part of the United States is with
in the tropics; and Texas, the State which
most nearly approaches them, is the seat of
German settlers, employed to that form of
industry-the cultivation of cotton-in which
We are asked to believe that no European
can engage and live. In this instance, and
In almost every other, the facts which are
alleged to disapprove the possibility of'the
reconstruction of the Union on the basis of n
homogeneous society. North and South, have
no existence out of the Imagination of those
OF whose wishes shape their thoughts
Northern Belfast Whie.