the army, and of course
from it in all the homes of the whole country, a fixed impression that
the South is inevitably destined to be 'Northed' or 'free-labored,' as
the result of this war. The intelligent farmer in the ranks, who has
learned his superiority to 'Secesh,' as a soldier, and who _knows_
himself to be superior to any Southern in all matters of information and
practical creative _power_, looks with scorn at the worn-out fields,
wasteful agriculture, and general shiftlessness of the natives, and
says, with a contemptuous laugh: 'We will get better crops out of the
land, and manage it in another fashion, when _we_ settle down here.' Not
less scornfully does the mechanic look down on the clumsy, labor-wasting
contrivances of the negro or negro-stupified white man, and agree with
his mate that 'these people will never be of much account until we take
them in hand.'

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 feveris