them.  They were said to be lazy, lying, impudent, and cowardly wretches, driven by the whip alone to the tasks needful to their own support and the functions of civilization.  They were said to be dangerous, bloodthirsty, liable to insurrection; but four years of tumultuous distress and war have rolled across the area inhabited by them, and I have yet to hear of one authentic instance of the misconduct of a colored man.  They have been patient and gentle and docile, and full of faith and hope and piety; and, when summoned to freedom, they have emerged with all the signs and tokens that freedom will be to them what it was to us, the swaddling-band that shall bring them to manhood.  And after the government, honoring them as men summoned them to the field, when once they were disciplined, and had learned the arts of war, they have proved themselves to be not second to their white brethren in arms.  And when the roll of men that have shed their blood is called in the other land, many and many a dusky face will rise, dark no more when the light of eternal glory shall shine upon it from the throne of God! 5.  The industry of the Southern States is regenerated, and now rests upon a basis that never fails to bring prosperity.  Just now industry is collapsed; but it is not dead; it sleepeth.  It is vital yet.  It will spring like mown grass from the roots that need but showers and heat and time to bring them forth.  Though in many districts not a generation will see wanton wastes of self-invoked war repaired, and many portions may lapse again to wilderness, yet, in our lifetime, we shall see States, as a whole, raised to a prosperity, vital, wholesome, and immovable, 6.  The destruction of class interests, working with a religion which tends toward true democracy, in proportion as it is pure and free, will create a new era of prosperity for the common laboring people of the South, Upon them have come the labor, the toil, and the loss of this war.  They have fought blindfolded.  They have fought for a class that sought their degradation, while they were made to believe that it was for their own homes and altars.  Their leaders meant a supremacy which would not long have left them political liberty, save in name.  But their leaders are swept away.  The sword has been hungry for the ruling classes.  It has sought them out with remorseless zeal.  New men are to rise up; new ideas are to bud and blossom; and there will be men with different ambition and altered policy. 7, Meanwhile, the South, no longer a land of plantations, but of farms; no longer tilled by slaves, but by freedmen, will find no hindrance to the spread of education.  Schools will multiply.  Books and papers will spread.  Churches will bless every hamlet.  There is a good day coming for the South.  Through darkness and tears and blood she has sought it.  It has been an unconscious via dolorosa.  But in the end it will be worth all that it has cost.  Her institutions