is a paradox, for I deny that there can be any labor which skill cannot elevate and improve. Another effect, and one still more serious, was that labor, in a great degree, became degraded to the condition of the laborer. The real supporter of all society, the producer and true author of all comfortable appliances and physical improvementsthe mechanic, the machinist, and the artisan-felt the weight which thus pressed him from the front seats of social consideration, and assigned him a kind of half-way position between the gentleman and the slave. A large proportion of our white population, not born to fortune nor blessed with first-class educational advantages, struggled, by all practicable means, to avoid the kinds of labor performed by slaves, and even labor itself if possible. They would resent as an insult to their respectability all invitations to occupy the same useful positions in our society which the same class of population in all other countries were glad to fill. "Thank you, sir; I am not a slave," was the ever ready answer of starving pride to the most courteous offers for service by opulence.

The educated minds of the South sought, almost exclusively, the professional fields for employment. Our social fabric was built, in great measure, upon the distinctions thus created. Even intellectual and professional labors were avoided, if the number of slaves doing vicarious service would permit the enjoyment of those things more generally desired of all positions in society-elegant leisure, luxurious abandon, and hospitable idleness. Even the business of teaching-the calling of Plato did not obtain, save, perhaps, in our first-class universities, the position of estimation to which it is always so justly entitled, because its followers were either, in some sense, laborers, or were supposed not to possess the number of slaves deemed necessary to an easy dependence.

Thus it was that, in a world whose greatest necessity was labor, we of the Southern States were earnestly defending and maintaining a system of labor whose legal status was ignorance, and whose social impression was that labor was the badge of a slave, entailing a sort of social degradation, while idleness was the lucky fate of a gentleman, entitled to social excellence. Many of our "best society" would have deemed it a scandal to have

been suspected of being capable of discharging the simplest functions of many necessary labors.

So, again, our politics became absorbed, passionately absorbed, with issues involving slavery; and those theories of our government, with the maintenance of which the existence and protection of slavery were supposed to be intertwined, became the specialty of our statesmanship. Here, indeed, we produced long, learned, and able disquisitions, combined with logical power and exhibitions of oratory such as no people ever surpassed, and thus most abundantly demonstrated that Southern intellectual capabilities were equal to any task. But what real permanent progress have these made for us? Take our most distinguished statesmen of this generation; exclude from their works those portions devoted to slavery and the theory of government alluded to, and pray tell me what is left?

Where are our Bacons, our Newtons, or Blackstones, or Burkes, who, by labors long and vigils many, have wrought out theories of government, codes of law, and revelations of science, applicable alike to all people and blessing all conditions of mankind? Nay, where are even our Storeys, Bancrofts, and our Noah Websters? There are many whom the ghost of our dead civilization may justly call champions, her champions; but how many have we whom living, growing civilizations will honor as victors in the world's field of thought? Then, turning our attention to those fields of thought and of progress which I have described, as peculiarly distinguishing the civilizations of other peoples, and where are our trophies—any trophies for us?

It has been said the South was intended by nature to be only an agricultural country. This is one of the sickening excuses of slavery. But concede it, and the question recurs with terrible force, What have we done in agriculture save to wear away our soils by the application of ignorant muscle? Do the millions of acres of land originally fertile, now deserted, as barren, given up to sedgegrass and clump-pines, attest the skill of ignorant slave. labor in this its chosen field? If this were the only field for slave labor-and it was certainly a rich gift from nature-how vigorously has slavery been destroying it.

But why did God pile up our mountains and fill them

with coal and iron and all metals and minerals if He did not intend us to be a mining and mechanical people? Why did He send through every neighborhood the finest of earth's streams with inexhaustible water powers, if he did not intend us to be a manufacturing people? Why did He dig along our shores such magnificent harbors, and give us productions which exceed all others in commercial value, if He did not intend us to be a commercial people? Nay, God has given us every element of progress possessed by any other people, and to none has He given them in greater profusion. But they all lie unimproved, because labor, by which alone they can be utilized, has been degraded as a thing of muscle, meet to belong to the slave, and not honored as the God-intended means by which educated genius and skill should convert everything into power.

So, too, while our native labor was thus kept by law, by ignorance, and by consequent social distinctions, incapable of developing our physical resources, the educated skill of other countries, in great measure, declined to abide among and work for a people with whom labor was the fate of the slave and the aversion of a gentleman. For every one of these who was willing to make his home among us, and work up our raw material on the spot, there were ten who preferred hastily to gather up that raw material and freight it away, and then freight back a portion of the manufactured result for our use, with all charges added. Thus, our inexhaustible natural resources seem to exhibit the more glaringly our inability, under our system of labor, to convert them into things of wealth, use, and power.

When controversy over slavery lately culminated in war, our enemies had only to shut up the South from the outside world most effectually to exclude her from all modern facilities for conducting that war. In this condition, thrown upon our own strength, we found ourselves unable to manufacture those facilities. Every raw material we possessed in abundance, but we had neither the machinery to make that material available, nor the skilled labor to make or operate that machinery, save only in the persons of a few who were educated in other countries and consented to cast in their lots with us. We were reduced to the necessity of trusting to the skill and daring of bold

adventurers, stimulated with promises of great rewards, to elude the wary sentinels of wrath in the darkness, to bring in a scant supply of munitions of war, and of even clothing to hide the nakedness of our troops. One of the most remarkable features of our struggle, without a parallel in historic civilized annals, was that our soldiers often resorted to the most courageous strategy to capture enemies, desiring less the enemy than their improved weapons of war; and often did it happen that our brave sons threw away the inferior arms in which they began the fight, and rearmed themselves, in the raging midst thereof, with the better arms taken from the foe.

If, before the war, the Southern States had kept pace with the world in physical progress and scientific schools, they would have been invincible by any foe which the enemy could have sent against them.

We failed, but not for want of skilled leaders. These we had, and human annals never furnished their superiors. Not for the want of courageous armies; for these, too, we had, and human conflicts never marshalled braver for battle. We had learned counselors, able generals, gallant soldiers, and an earnest people, all stimulated with the belief that independence, liberty, and hope hung upon the issue of the struggle; but we had not these physical elements of power which modern sciences and skilled labor have fashioned, and without which it is now vain to make war, and therefore we failed. In the right for which we fought was the weakness by which we fell.

In fine, it is no extravagance of thought nor straining of language to affirm that for two generations Southern progress, Southern development, and Southern power have been in bondage to the negro, and Southern failure, Southern dependence, and Southern sorrow are the heavy penalties we suffer for that bondage. For more than thirty years Southern genius, with all its glorious natural pride of Promethean daring and venture, has been chained by some offended god of jealous vengeance to this solid rock of slavery, and vultures have preyed upon it.

'Tis loosed! We inquire not how, whether by fate or by folly; whether in right or in hate; nor whether the human agency was wicked in purpose and cruel in manner; we thank thee, God, for the fact-'Tis loosed.

Understanding now the causes of our shortcomings hitherto, the next question is, by what means shall our situation be improved? Suddenly and without remedy slavery has been abolished. The peculiar civilization wrought by slavery must perish with it, and a great proportion of the labors of the South, being mere supports and results of that civilization, must perish too. But does it follow that Southern genius, Southern prosperity and the Southern people must perish also? Are we to admit that our deficiencies were attributable to the governing race of the South rather than to the want of skill and efficiency in our system of labor? The attempt to locate the cause of our failure to advance in population, wealth, and power, in the laws of immigration, by parallels of latitude, and in the exclusive adaptedness of the South to agriculture, will not convince. The truth is, immigrants coming from free countries did not follow parallels, but followed systems, habits, and feelings, and avoided slavery; and negro slave labor was chiefly confined to agriculture, because it did not possess the skill and intelligence needed for educated industries. Let us see plainly the cause, and let us apply vigorously the remedy. If this generation bestir themselves, we shall soon find that only our fetters have been broken, and the day of unequaled greatness and prosperity will dawn and brighten to glorious and lasting noon in the South.

All our natural advantages, damaged only by a worn soil, ignorantly worked, remain in all their freshness and plenty. We must utilize them. And that we may utilize them we must honor, elevate, and educate labor. And to this end we must establish schools of science, and train our children to business and callings other than law, medicine, and theology.

If our own people shall not be educated, and thus enabled to appropriate and convert into power and wealth the natural resources we possess, other educated peoples will now come in and appropriate them, and the original Southern population and their descendants will indeed perish with slavery, or will sink into a condition of inferiority and dependence more galling and ignoble than death or exile.

The first step of upward progress is to build up our