AND WHERE TO FEND ONE. 275 



where, and in the absence of healing legislation, 

 time will confer title. Owners have disappeared, 

 some killed in battle, some fugitives, others outlawed. 

 Families have been scattered, while others must 

 have perished bodily. Entire States have been 

 made a desolation. Offices of record have been 

 sacked and burned, their parchment contents de 

 stroyed or scattered beyond hope of recovery. 

 Trunks full of deeds and wills have gone into the 

 camp fire, or been distributed as military trophies. 

 Fences have been demolished, corner trees cut down, 

 and boundary lines so effectually obliterated, that 

 even the fugitive owners would find it difficult to 

 retrace them, while strangers would find it impos 

 sible to do so. The future is full of embarrassment 

 to all titles thus circumstanced. No such wholesale 

 exodus of people occurred anywhere during the 

 Revolution, nor were the armies of that period large 

 enough to produce a tithe of the havoc. The South 

 will thus abound in vacant places which their ban 

 ished owners dare not return to occupy. The North 

 will rush in to fill them, converting its liberating 

 army into an army of occupation. Into the remain 

 ing masses it will infuse new life, new morals, a 

 wholesale education. The sluggards of the South 

 will rise slowly from the depths in which they have 

 been wallowing, conceding to the North, by the 

 logic of events, her true position, that of the ascend 

 ant. Subjugated by Northern arms, she will vol 

 untarily acknowledge a new subjugation to Northern 

 mind. 



Every Federal army which traverses the Southern 



