Exodus from the South [pp. 352-356]

EXODUS FROM THE SOUTH.
conservative reaction, the result of which will be that the negroes will be set to work, instead of to voting.
To make the people labor is the first and paramount duty of
every government, for government is bound to provide for all,
and can only do so from the labor of all.
"Where there is'a will, there is a way," is a favorite maxim
at the North; and no people in the world have so much ingenuity, contrivance and administrative talent as they. The whole
evil of the times consists in this, that the negro wont work, and
that Government has to expend thirty millions a year in feeding, physicking, clothing, teaching, burying and keeping them
quiet and orderly. Yankee ingenuity, set earnestly to work,
will readily devise means to cure these evils; or, if it can't, it
need only turn the negroes over to the people of the South, and
we will govern them as well as before the war; when they were
certainly the best governed, best supplied, most happy, and coinmfortable laboring class in the world. Yet we believe, that if the
Freedmen's Bureau will set about making them work, they would
get more labor out of them as freemen, than we ever did out
of them as slaves.
Northern people are intolerant of idleness, laziness and waste,
and are altogether better managers than we. Let the Bureau
rent lands, put the negroes to work at moderate hire, supervise
them rigidly, and keep them constantly at work, and the negro
would cease to be a nuisance, and become a valuable citizen.
To make them work, is not only the right, but the incumbent
duty of Government, and it may rightfully and properly employ
all the means necessary to attain that end. If they will only do
their proper share of work as slaves, then it is the right and
duty of Government to return them to slavery. Let, however,
the experiment of liberty be first fairly and fully tried, and if
when so tried, it fails, no alternative will be left except to restore them to slavery, or to permit them to return to the savage
state, and probably to set up a separate Negro Republic somewhere in the South.
We believe some means will be devised by the democrats and
conservatives of the North to arrest the exodus of the whites
from the South, and to induce immigration to that section, as
well offoreigners as of Northerners. Without such immigration,
giving a decided preponderance to the white element in society,
the South will continue to be a heavy charge, nuisance and burden to the nation. The long and tedious process of proposed
reconstruction, will afford time for larger experience, more matered thought, cooler temper and wiser counsels. The North
is eminently practical, on sober second thought, and she will
ha~,e time and opportunity for such thought.
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