CHAPTER XLIII. OUR PROSPECTS. IN the year 1861 fifty-seven newspapers were published in our State. Of these, twenty-six ceased to exist during the war. There are now at least one hundred and fifty, dailies, weeklies, and monthlies, some being of a higher literary and scientific character than have ever before been encouraged to exist among us. Newspapers indicate very clearly the condition of society. Ours show that public taste has improved, that our wants are more refined, that our charities are enlarged, and that business and commerce are prospering. Our colored citizens have a respectable weekly paper edited and supported by themselves. They have also established an annual industrial fair which shows them to advantage as ambitious and successful farmers. They have, as a whole, done well since their freedom. They have had every assistance from the white people North and South. Northerners have given money lavishly to establish high schools for them in Raleigh, Fayetteville, and Wilmington. Southerners have framed their constitutions to protect them in their rights as freemen, and have cheerfully paid the taxes that support their normal and common schools. All parties are ready to aid them in Church and State. As usual with North Carolina, her move forward has embraced all classes rather than any privileged one. It may still be said of us that here are few very rich and few very poor, but that all have enough, and that our doors still fly open at the "knock of the stranger or the tale of disaster." North Carolinians, white and colored alike, are a religious people. They like the services of the Church, are interested in Church operations at home and abroad, and would prefer a good rousing camp-meeting to any other public gathering. But camp-meetings are no longer held, though our country churches still enjoy protracted meetings and lengthened revivals. The colored people especially make a point of these: they have organized their churches separate and independent of the whites. The Methodist and Baptist churches are by far the most numerous of all; the Presbyterians are next; the Episcopalians have the fewest members of the four principal denominations. The influence and power that a Church may possess cannot always be measured merely by the numbers of its followers. The Quakers and Moravians are still found deep-rooted where their settlements were first made in our colonial days, and are now, as then, excellent citizens. They do not spread as other denominations have done, but they are strong and steadfast, and their influence is felt. War is not an unmixed evil. One of its good effects was the bringing of all the churches together as in the days of the Revolution. All men seemed moved by a common feeling in those days of trouble, and when people pray and weep together they are sure to be more brotherly. Another good result of such a general uprooting of old things is the awakened thought, the greater activity of intellect apparent. More books have been bought and read in North Carolina in the last fifteen or twenty years than in any fifty years previously. As a natural consequence of this, more books have been written; another twenty years will no doubt see many by North Carolina authors worthy to take their place in any first-class library. Our historians have been few, and the efforts of these few have been incomplete. Dr. Francis L. Hawks, a native of New Bern, but for the best years of his life a popular minister of the Episcopal Church in New York City, retained to the day of his death (1866) that enthusiastic love for North Carolina which distinguishes her exiled children. Wherever they roam they turn their eyes with unabated fondness and interest to this good land. He wrote a history of the State thirty-five years ago, the only one yet written which in accuracy, and in force and elegance of style can compare with the higher models in this kind of composition. But his delightful narrative goes not beyond the colonial days, and further researches since he wrote have thrown a light on many points that were to him obscure. Williamson, Martin, and Jones were our chief historians before Hawks wrote, but their works are fragmentary and inaccurate. Colonel Wheeler's history was but a sketch as a history, but as a county record is invaluable, and has preserved a great amount of important material that would have long since been lost. His nephew, J. Wheeler Moore, has followed in the same good work within a few years, and, besides other literary essays, has the distinguished honor of being the first man who has given us a continued history of the State from Sir Walter Raleigh's time down to the election of Governor Jarvis. We have many admirable essays, sketches, addresses on special points, and a few books by local annalists which the future historian will find inestimable. But the most important work by far, on the history of North Carolina, has been done within the last few years by our Secretary of State, Colonel W. L. Saunders, who has devoted himself to the editing of our Colonial Records, now first obtained in full by the State government from the state papers of the British government. These folio volumes present a vast amount of interesting matter carefully edited and arranged, each volume prefaced by an admirable commentary. Nothing so good had yet appeared among us, and nothing so likely to stimulate the building up of our history. Colonel Saunders has laid the corner-stone well and truly, and of the best material. The best proof given that the South is once more heartily joined with the North was in the universal sympathy and indignation felt and expressed at the assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881. Succeeding R. B. Hayes in March, he was shot in July by a disappointed office-seeker of his own party. He lingered a few months in prolonged suffering, and the whole united country mourned over the tragical story. Garfield was succeeded by the Vice-President, C. A. Arthur. When his term ended the Democrats had succeeded for the first time in twenty-five years in electing a Democratic President. In 1885, Grover Cleveland of New York was inaugurated at Washington City. This year, 1889, Cleveland will be succeeded by a Republican, Benjamin Harrison of Indiana. Whether Republicans or Democrats hold the reins of government, we believe that our country will go on safely, all good men having now but one aim; and that is its continued prosperity. United in that, we will see in the future, as we have in the past, all political disputes gradually adjusted or gradually disappearing: and, though new ones must continually arise, yet all things will work together finally for the good of the whole. And North Carolina may ever be depended upon to do her share toward the maintenance of truth, justice, and religion. RECITATION. NORTH CAROLINA. OUR Fatherland! Blest be the star |