There is a higher power than any established by man.
"God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform."
In days of old he arraigned nations before his august court, and they lived or perished at his will. The day is not far distant when the South, at his command and in his own way, will arise from their down-trodden condition, to the surprise of their oppressors. Her fields will blossom as the rose, the busy hum of industry will be heard in the land, and the commercial sails of the world will ride on the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, plying to South America and the Orient through the canal that will connect the two great oceans. What position then will the New England States hold in the general prosperity of the States? Then it will be seen, "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." And even now along the Atlantic seaboard great steamers go North mainly laden with articles made from wood, lumber, pig iron, cotton goods, fruit, and the great metropolitan hotels and the people generally depend on the fields and gardens of the South for their vegetables half the year; and so it goes on in arithmetical progression of increase.
Leaving out the negroes, the South has a homogeneous population; the solidarity of the nation will rest on her. In 1861 there was less than one foreigner to the hundred in the population of North Carolina, while in the West it ranged from thirty to sixty per cent. (See census reports.) The cities of Chicago and New York contain a population which will be found to be a conglomeration of all the peoples on the face of the earth—with their political ideas, their morality, their vices, their language, and their religion—and on no question will they agree unless purchased for a price, as a business transaction, for money, and "the love of money is the root of all evil," and the history of Rome will be repeated.
Historians estimate the number of slaves carried from Africa to the Americas and the West Indies Islands to have been from eight to twelve millions, out of which number about five hundred thousand died or were killed at sea, and their bodies were thrown overboard. And now let the sin of slavery rest on the North or the South, as it will finally be declared by the consensus of public opinion, when investigation discloses and proclaims the horrible cruelty of the Northern slave owners who brought them here, and contrast it with the amelioration of their condition and their advancement in intelligence and morality acquired by the teaching of the best men and women in the South. This opinion will be recorded.
The negro, as sold by his first owner, was a stupid animal speaking a jabbering lingo; he was now taught and trained in civilization until he was adjudged by the North, when set free, capable to perform all the duties pertaining to the high official positions to which the United States government did appoint him or his brother negroes elected him. Yes, under the teachings and training of their owners on the plantations and in the cities, while slaves, they were converted from fetichism to Christianity, and from cannibalism to gentility of living, and their beastly nature curbed by moral surroundings and force of example; and now, to humiliate the Southern people, who were disfranchised, political plans were arranged to have negro Senators elected instead of whites, and from Mississippi two negroes were occupying at different periods seats in the United States Senate chamber. Their names were Revels and Bruce. The latter I have seen riding through my plantation. From Senator he became Register of the Treasury of the United States, a position long held by my friend, Gen. W. S. Rosecrans, United States army.
Out of the three million soldiers that were in the United States army, there were not as many discharged soldiers holding office in the South in 1869 as there were ex-slaves out of the four hundred thousand negro men eligible to office. This indicates either the soldiers' unfitness for office, or that the selection of negroes was made to humiliate the people of the South.
It may be asked: Whence came Christianity among the slaves? Did it come by nature? No, nature is uniform in her laws, and developed no Christianity among the negroes in Africa, or elsewhere when left to themselves; hence it came by teaching, for on Sundays the master and mistress, nurse and children, in the carriage were always escorted to church by the young men on horseback, dressed in their clean and best attire, where all worshiped together in the Lord's house. Also, on many plantations, clergymen were maintained with ample compensation by two or three neighboring planters to preach the gospel to their people.
Whence came qualifications for business, unless taught by their owners? Reading, writing, and arithmetic do not come by birth, and the peasant and the prince alike have to study to comprehend even "the rule of three."