My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field

e silver threads become a brook, which widens to a river rolling to the far-off ocean. So is it with the ever-flowing stream of time. The things which were of small account a hun

and one of the gentleman attendants of the Queen. He was so courteous and gallant that he once threw his gold-laced scarlet cloak upon the ground for a mat, that the Queen might not step her royal foot in the

ving with corn and a broad-leaved plant with purple flowers, which the Indians smoked i

ere amazed, and wondered if the sailors were on fire. So tobacco began to be used in England. That was in 1584. We shall s

bad habits. These young fellows thought it degrading to work. In those Western woods across the ocean, along the great rivers and upon the blue mountains, they saw in imagination a wild, roving, reckless life. Th

d wealth was not to be had on the fertile plains without labor. Not knowing how to cultivate the soil, and hating work, they had a hard time. They suffered for want of food. Many died from starvation. Yet more of the same indolent clas

r poor laboring men, who were apprenticed to their sons. Thus the idle cavaliers were kept from starva

silks and satins, all took to this habit of the North American Indians. Tobacco was in demand. Every ship from America was freighted with it. Th

ent over to England and bought themselves wives, paying a hun

ads to Virginia, where they were sold to the planters as servants and laborers. Thus it came to pass that there were distinct classes in the colony,-men having rights

he planters purchased them, not as apprentices, but as slaves. The captain, having made a profitable voyage, sailed for Africa t

, snuff, and chew tobacco, and across the English Channel the Dutch burghers, housewives, and farmers were learning to puff their pipes. A pound of tobacco was worth three shillings. The planters grew richer, purchased more land

allowed to have a voice in the management of public affairs. They only could hold office. A poor man could

to keep them always in debt, and consequently dependent. Out of this number are chosen the Counci

. They were able to perpetuate their power, to hand these

y proud, and call themselves noble-born. They look with contempt upon a man who works for a living. I saw a great estate, which was once owned by one of these proud families, near the Antietam battle-field, but spendthrift sons have squandered it, and there is but little left. The land is worn out, but t

lor to society throughout the South. There were great estates, privileged classe

d their spoils to the people of Charleston, South Carolina. There, for several years, the freebooters refitted their ships, and

g the development and growth of the colonies, which b

igious doctrine. Those who went to hear him, and who believed what he preached, soon came to be called Puritans. Most of them were poor, hard-working English farmers and villagers. There was much discussion, controversy, bigotry, and bitterness in religion at that time, and these poor men were driven from county to county, t

religious worship on the Sabbath. They respected law, loved order, and knew that it would be necessary to have a form of government in the colony. They assembled in the cabin of the ship, and, after prayer, signed their names to an agreement to obey all the rules, regulations, and laws which migh

not look upon labor as degrading, but as ennobling. They passed laws, that men able to work should not be idle. They were not rich enough to own great estates, but each man had his own little farm. There was, therefore, no landed aristocracy, such as was growing into power in Virginia. The

ery child might become an intelligent citizen and member of society, they established common schools and foun

his negroes for tobacco,-fifty years from the election of the first governor by the people in the cabin of the Mayflower,-the King appointed Commissioners of Education, who addressed letters to the governors of the colonies upon the subject. The Governor of Connecticut re

r printing in this colony, and I hope we

when they became States, gave but little attention to education, and consequently the children became more ignorant than their fathers. Thus it has come t

write, while the State of North Carolina, with a white population of 553,000, had ei

ixty-two thousand, over twenty years of age, unable to read a word! In the Northern States educational facilities are rapidly increasing, while in the South they are fast diminishing. In 1857 there were 96,000 school-children in Vermont, and all but six thou

re, neighbors are miles apart. There are vast tracts of land where the solitude is unbroken by the sounds of labor. Schools and newspapers cannot flourish. Information is given by word of mouth. Men are influenced to political action by the arguments and stories of stump-speakers, and not by reading newspapers. They vote as they are told, or

vate the plant. In 1748 ten bags of cotton were shipped to Liverpool, but cotton-spinning had not then begun in England. In 1784 the custom-house officers at Liverpool seized eight bags which a planter had sent over, on the ground that it was not possible to raise so much in America.

ed in the roadside brooks, and windmills, which whirled upon his father's barn. He made violins, which were the wonder and admiration of all musicians. He set up a shop, and made nails by machinery, and thus earned money through the Revolutionary

machine for cleaning cotton. He thought the matter over, went to work, and in a short time had a machine which, with some improvements, now does the work of a thousand neg

s arranged. At times he was almost discouraged, but his patient, cheerful, loving wife encouraged him, and he succeeded at last in making a machine which would do the work of a thousand

stolen from Africa. In the North, along the mill-streams, there was the click and clatter of machinery. A great many ships were needed to transport the cotton from the agricultural South to the manufactorie

race was dependent upon them, and that by withholding their cotton a single year they could compel the whole world to acknowledge their power. They were few in number,-about three hundred thousand in thirty millions of people. They used every means possible to extend and perp

had grown to be men, who had gone into the far West to build them homes, could not consent to see their children deprived of that which had made them men. They saw that if slavery came in, schools must go out. They saw that where slavery existed there were three distinct classes in society,-the few rich, unscrupulous

ry honorable way of getting a living to raise pigs, mules, and negroes,-to sell them to the more southern States,

abbath, said it was a Christian occupation. They expounded the Bible, and showed the benevolent designs of God in

a law by Congress enabling them to catch their runaway slaves. They demanded that the Constitution should be changed to favor the growth and extension of slavery. For many years they plotted against the government,-threatening to destroy it if they could not have what they demanded. They looked with utter contempt upon the hard-working men of the North. They determined to rule or ruin. Every Northern man living at the South was looked upon with suspicion. Some were tarred and feathered, others hung, and many were

stry have made the North different from the South;

he North elected a President who declared himself opposed to the extension of slavery, they began the war. They stole forts, arsenals, money, steamboats,-everyt

y its cornerstone. They talked of conquering the North. They declared that the time would come when they would muster their sl

rt and captured it. To save their country, their government, all that was dear to th