The Daily Phoenix

COLUMBIA.
Wednesday Morning, Nov. 21, 1866.

Slavery and Freedom.

This is an awful term to Thad. Stevens and Wendell Phillips. If we recur to the history of the war against the South, we can trace it all fairly and squarely. In order to create enthusiasm for the doctrines of abolitionism, it was fiercely asserted that slavery was the only obstacle in the path of Southern progress. Gen. Banks predicted that, with its overthrow, 10,000,000 bales of cotton (and that the mathematicians alone know how many hogsheads of sugar) would be raised instanter. It was likewise computed that at least 1,000,000 of white freemen would swarm to our fertile fields, and make new paradises of them.

Well, the job has been done—and done effectually. Where are the results of Gen. Banks' predictions? Where are those many millions of cotton and sugar? Where are the million of white freemen? We, nor anybody else in the South, have seen them. The truth is, that emancipation has ruined the negro, both to himself and the white man, who is connected with him in the relation of employer and employee.

A few years, probably, will rectify this; but a few years, probably, will leave us very few negro laborers. Even as regards the question of white immigration and emigration, a contemporary justly remarks that, for every Northern settler in the South, we have sent twenty Southerners away. Five hundred North Carolinians left, in a solid body, last month, for the West—that great producing region of the country. What their motives were, we do not know; but the fact proves that Banks and such like prophets were greatly in error as to the results of emancipation.

Any unprejudiced observer, in our streets, on our plantations, or anywhere else—in work-shops, foundries or other places, where intelligent negro labor was heretofore desirable, discovers the vast difference between the nigger free and the nigger slave. The former lounges about the scenes of his usual labor, with no disposition to work, except to make enough for his daily sustenance; while the latter were well disciplined, industrious and economical—the effects of "the institution."

The Two Classes.

The Louisville Democrat, which thought that "the war should be vigorously prosecuted that the Union should be preserved," in a recent issue, has the following sensible view of the situation in which the men of the South are placed. It presents two pictures—“the counterfeit presentment” of two sets of people. Although, as our own people know, there is nothing new in the picture, yet, as it is presented below, it is worthy of consideration:

“There were earnest Union men in the South, who did their best against secession, but who at last went with their States into the support of the Confederacy. They could not be loyal to the Government of the United States, for they had no protection by the United States. There were others who deplored the acts of secession, and never voluntarily aided it. These latter have generally made no ado about it. They still kept the respect of their neighbors, submitting to the necessity of the times.

“We don't find this latter class cutting a figure now in the North, making harangues and abusing their neighbors, amongst whom they have lived. They have no taste for the employment.

“There are men South, however, who are of a different stripe, who are now martyrs to the loyal cause, who did what they could in behalf of secession, when their support of it was most effectual, and became converted just when Federal power became dominant again.”

We think that the above is one of the best descriptions of political hypocrites we have read. We detest a man who now tells us that he was always in favor of the Union, when we know he labored for the Confederate cause, in which he was also a hypocrite. The true secessionist of 1860 is the best Union man of 1866, and can be trusted further than the new-fledged "loyal" men of the South.

Several bodies, of Confederate soldiers, killed in the Valley, passed through Staunton last week. It was touching to notice that every coffin had a wreath of flowers on it, the tribute of the fair and gentle women of the Valley to the brave and honored dead.