LLiNOis Farmer. 



VOL. VII. 



SPRINGFIELD, DEC, 1862. 



XO. 13. 



December. 



Anotlier year will soon be numbered witla 

 the past — a year filled with stiring events — 

 a irreat era in the history of the country. 

 What the final result may be, is not for us 

 to know. Until the time for its fulfilment, 

 we can only speculate on the issue, and like 

 all speculators, we fancy that our vision is a 

 clear one, looking into the dark and dimly- 

 lighted future, through the fogs and mists 

 of the past. 



WHAT WE SEE. 



Looking down the next decade of years, 

 we see great changes in the rural economy 

 of the State ; belts of trees encircling the 

 farms, great commercial orchards loaded 

 with choice fruit j vineyards rich with the 

 clustering grape ; patches of tobacco on 

 nearly every homestead ; fields of cotton 

 everywhere south of the 40th parrallel; 

 the cereal grains yielding more profusely 

 and in larger breadth ; the great corn fields 

 changed to a mixed husbandry ; the great 

 stretches of prairie, now used by the herds- 

 man without charge — dotted over with 

 newly enclosed farms, and everywhere the 

 people are prosperous, because industrious, 

 and that industry repaid to a reasonable 

 extent. The great Pacific railway will then 

 be in process of building — preparing the 

 highway over which shall trundle the riches 

 of both the old world and the new. The 

 east and the west will want the products of 

 our soil. Our enormous water power and 

 vast coal mines will call hither manufactur- 

 ers, and we shall not only be a great agri- 

 cultural, but a great manufacturing State, 



The waters of the Fox, the Rock and the 

 Mississippi, will turn thousands of spindless; 

 and the music of busy wheels shall give a 

 new impulse to the industry of the State. 

 The iron and copper of Lake Superior shall 

 come by lake and river, to he melted and 

 worked into articles of use, The south will 

 have become prosperous under the rule of 

 free institutions and of paid labor, compe- 

 ting in a healthy competition with the north- 

 ern border States and other parts of the 

 world, in the supply of cotton for the worlds 

 cheap clothing, — with the north for molas- 

 ses, sugar, tobacco and hemp. At the end 

 of this decade, we see the cotton States more 

 prosperous than ever before, for a large in- 

 fusion of northern energy, of northern tact 

 and of northern skill, will be diffused 

 through the bankrupt mass, reinvigorating 

 and re-enlivening the disorded material- 

 brains will overywhere be in demand to 

 make labor intelligent and useful. The pic- 

 ture looks bright, even through the smoke 

 of battle; for beyond it rises the down- 

 trodden Saxon, crushed beneath a system 

 that has made labor degrading. He that 

 said " in sweat shall thou earn thy bread," 

 by that edict made labor honorable and im- 

 perative as well as universal. 



In the duration of the war, we have not 

 been deceived; for great changes are not 

 the result of a day ; step by step, we are 

 approaching the end; slow, yet sure — but 

 no less certain of the result. "We are no 

 politician, but look upon passing events with 

 a cool and dispassionate vision. 



The war has reached its 'culminating 

 point, and slowly it will fall back by the 



