Master-mechanic, master-farmer, you are right.  These people are your inferiors; with all their boasts and brags of ‘culture,’ you could teach them, by your shrewder intelligence, at a glance, the short cut to almost any thing at which their intellects might be employed; and you indulge in a very natural feeling, when, as conquerors, in glancing over their Canaan, you involuntarily plan what you will do some day, if a farm should by chance be your share of the bounty-money, when the war is over.  For it is absurd to suppose that such a country will continue forever a prey to the wasting and exhaustive disease of the plantation-system, or that the black will always, as at present, inefficiently and awkwardly fulfill those mechanic labors which a keen white workman can better manage.  Wherever the hand of the Northman touches, in these times, it shows a superior touch, whether in improvising a six-action cotton-gin, in repairing locomotives, or in sarcastically seizing a ‘Secesh’ newspaper and reediting it with a storm of fun and piquancy such as its doleful columns never witnessed of old.  In this and in a thousand ways, the Northern soldier realizes that he is in a land of inferiors, and a very rich land at that.  At this point, his speculations on manifest destiny may very appropriately begin.  There is no harm in suffering this idea to take firm hold.  Like ultimate emancipation, it may be assumed as a fact, all to be determined in due time, according to the progress of events, as wisely laid down by President Lincoln, without hurry, without feverish haste, simply guided by the firm determination that eventually it must be.

We can not insist too strongly on this great truth, that when a nation makes up its mind that a certain event must take place, and acts calmly in the spirit of perfect persuasion, very little is really needed to hasten the wished-for consummation.  Events suddenly spring up to aid, and in due time all is accomplished.  Those who strive to hurry it retard it, those who work to drag it back hasten it.  Never yet on earth was a real conviction crushed or prematurely realized.  So it is, so it will be with this ‘Northing’ of the South.  Let the country simply familiarize itself with the idea, and the idea will advance as rapidly as need be.  In it lies the only solution of the great problem of reconciling the South and the North; the sooner we make up our minds to the fact, the better; and, on the other hand, the more deliberately and calmly we proceed to the work, the more certain will its accomplishment be.  Events are now working to aid us with tremendous power and rapidity—­faith, a judicious guiding of the current as it runs, is all that is at present required to insure a happy fulfillment.

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