Humanity, society, and property, all have claims and acknowledged rights; let them all be considered.  It is well known that the slaves on these islands have always been kept in a state of greater ignorance of the world and all practical matters than those inhabiting the border States, or where there is a larger proportion of whites, with whom they often labor and associate.  To emancipate them at once would be to do a great wrong to the white man, to the property, in whatever hands it might be, and a still greater injury to the slave.  There can be but one way of disposing of this question which will satisfy the nation, and quiet the fears of the conservative, and preserve the hopes of the radical, which is, to pursue a middle course—­a policy which shall as nearly as possible equalize the question to all parties.  Let the slave be retained on the plantation where he is found; and, as no race are so much attached to their own locality, so let them remain, place them under a proper system of APPRENTICESHIP, with a mild code of laws, where every right shall be protected, where suitable instruction, civil and religious, shall be given, and where the marriage rite shall be administered and respected.  Under such laws and beneficent institutions, this territory would soon be settled by men from the West, the North, and from Europe, intelligent, enterprising, and industrious, who would retrieve its worn-out fields, and introduce new systems of culture, with all the modern labor-saving utensils.  With kind treatment and new hopes, the simple sons of Africa would have inducements to labor and to await with patient hope the future and its rewards.  Then would Beaufort District become what the Giver of all good designed it to be—­the abode of an industrious, peaceful, and prosperous community.  The production of its great staple, ‘Sea-Island cotton,’ would be immensely increased, and its quality improved, till it rivaled the silks of the Old World.  The yield of rice would be doubled, and its gardens and orchards would supply the North with fruits now known only to the tropics.

So soon as the new government was fairly inaugurated, and the condition of the land and its future cultivation settled, a movement would of necessity be made to found here a city which would be the great commercial metropolis of the South.

Charleston was ‘located’ at the wrong place, simply with the object of being as distant as possible from the Spanish settlements, and has always suffered from an insufficient depth of water on its bars to accommodate the largest class of merchant ships.  It has barely sixteen feet of water at high tide, and ships loaded as lightly as possible have often been obliged to wait for weeks to enter or leave the port.  A decrease of one or two feet in its main channel would, in its palmiest days, have been fatal to its prosperity.  The sinking of a dozen ships loaded with stone has no doubt placed a permanent barrier to the entrance of all but a small class of vessels.  The ships themselves may soon be displaced or destroyed by the sea-worm, but the New England granite will prove a lasting monument to the folly and madness of the rebellion.  The destruction of the best part of the city by fire seems also to show that Providence has designed it to be ranked only with the cities of the past.