tion of
the federal compact. The South is now fully convinced of the benefits
and blessings it is conferring upon the negro race. It is beginning to
catch a glimpse of the true nature and extent of its mission in relation
to this vast and growing institution. The government of the South is to
protect it; the Church of the South is to christianize it; the people of
the South are to love it, and improve it and perfect it. God has
lightened our task and secured its execution by making our interests
happily coincide with our duty.

We anticipate no terminus to the institution of slavery. It is the means
whereby the white man is to subdue the tropics all around the globe to
order and beauty, and to the wants and interests of an ever-expanding
civilization. What may happen afar off in the periods of a millenial
Christianity we cannot foresee. No doubt the Almighty in his wisdom and
mercy has blessings in store for the poor negro, so that he will no
longer envy the earlier and more imposing development and fortunes of
his brethren. Some shining Utopia will beckon him also with beautiful
illusion into the shadowy future. But with those remote possibilities we
need not trouble ourselves. His present duty is evidently "to labor and
to wait."

The Southern view of the matter, destined to revolutionize opinion
throughout the civilized world, is briefly this: African slavery is no
retrograde movement, no discord in the harmony of nature, no violation
of elemental justice, no infraction of immutable laws, human or
divine--but an integral link in the grand progressive evolution of human
society as an indissoluble whole.

The doctrine that there exists an "irrepressible conflict" between free
labor and slave labor is as false as it is mischievous. Their true
relation is one of beautiful interchange and eternal harmony. When each
is restricted to the sphere for which God and nature designed it, they
both contribute their full quotas to the physical happiness, material
interests, and social and spiritual progress of the race. They will
prove to be not antagonistic but complementary to each other in the
great work of human civilization. From this time forth, the subjugation
of tropical nature to man; the elevation and christianization of the
dark races, the feeding and clothing of the world, the diminution of
toil and the amelioration of all the asperities of life, the industrial
prosperity and the peace of nations, and the further glo