he blacks are to do all the labor, raise
all the food, perform all the menial labor, and, in fact, literally
support all the white men. The aristocracy are to govern and fill all
higher civil and military functions; the 'mean whites' are to be
incorporated in the army. Year by year they will, it is hoped, become
more and more identified with their cause and their calling, and firmer
in their hatred of the North. Long ago this programme was published,
this scheme of a great negro-supported military nation, and it is not
difficult to see that recent events have rendered the leaders of the
Confederacy sanguine of its success. The whole South is full of crops
raised by the slaves--and the Virginia press triumphantly proclaims the
success of the first part of the great experiment, a success well worth
to them far greater sacrifices than they have already undergone. The
negro, it seems, as a slave, _can_ support the Southern
Confederacy--feed and clothe it. One year of war has proved this.

'One year ago we might have prevented this,' some furious 'radical' may
urge. Let such men be silent. On every hand there are cries for their
blood, and it is boldly commended in conservative journals and meetings
that they be hanged. However, the question is not now, what might have
been done a year ago. It is, what the enemy hope for and what they are
yet capable of doing.

By proving, undisturbed, the fact that the slaves can support them, the
Confederates have gained a greater victory than the North dreams of. By
forming a permanently military nation, they go a step further, and
relieve their communities from the weight of a non-productive, idle,
dangerous class of poor whites. When every 'bush-whacker,'
'sand-hiller,' 'Arab,' and other hanger-on shall have become a soldier,
with his settled place in society, a few new troubles may be incurred,
but much greater ones can not fail to be avoided. The leaders in a
military government may preserve that unity which could never be hoped
for under other conditions. We already know what unanimity prevails
among them; we may imagine what this would become when further
experience shall have still more coordinated and consolidated them.

It is not proposed in the South that other than military manufactures
shall be encouraged. European goods are to flow in untaxed, and the
'military nation' proposes to do all in its power to smuggle them over
the Northern frontier. To effect this darling scheme