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greater than that which grew out of the war itself. There is no reason 

 why our vast agricultural productions should not again enter into the com- 

 merce of the world, whenever the necessity for the present large supply at 

 home shall cease, and labor shall return to its accustomed channels. The 

 application of energetic labor to the cotton plantations of the South, and 

 the restoration of that great staple to the list of our productions, for home 

 consumption and export, will constitute a branch of industry which will 

 open immense wealth to our people. The West will once more feel the 

 effect of that opening market upon her grain crops. The stimulus given 

 to eastern manufactures will furnish the New England farmer with local 

 markets for all the products of his field, and orchard and garden, and dairy. 

 And when that time shall arrive, my friends, you will find that the highest 

 Northern civilization will have penetrated this whole land, that the light 

 of New England schools will have been shed into its darkest places, that 

 through the trials of war conflicting social institutions will have been har- 

 monized, that the labor of this country will have been brought to the stand- 

 ard of free institutions, that the way will have been opened for the indi- 

 vidual exercise of the best and highest human faculties, and that that 

 American agriculture which has heretofore flourished in spite of sectional 

 rivalries and jealousies, will receive new strength from the energies of one 

 people united in the common object of enriching and cultivating and civil- 

 izing this whole land, as a home for themselves and their children, and a 

 refuge for the oppressed of all nations. 



We of New England have a right to contemplate this opening prospect 

 of American agriculture with peculiar gratification. We live in a section 

 of the country where the most careful cultivation is especially necessary 

 and important. The wholesale farming of the West and South docs not 

 apply to our hard climate and narrow valleys. There is no section in 

 which the highest skill is so necessary ; and none in which the farmer is so 

 much stimulated to exercise all his best faculties. We have already done 

 much, and we may do still more. And when we look around us and see 

 that the minds of our people are directed once more to the land, we may 

 anticipate a new era in which intelligence and capital will be devoted to 

 the work of restoring the rural homes of our ancestors. In travelling 

 through the New England States, I am always struck with the increasing 

 air of thrift manifested in the farm houses and fields of our people ; and I 

 am always gratified by the drafts which the merchant and manufacturer 

 are ready to make upon their incomes for the improvement of their farms. 

 In what points then may we progress ? 



