The Daily Dispatch: October 21, 1864., [Electronic resource]

The Scriptures tell us not to do evil that good may come of it. It often happens that when wicked men do evil that ceil (not good) may come of it, Providence takes the matter in its own hands and evolves good from the intended evil.

The cereal, sorghum, was introduced into this country from China with the design to destroy the value of one of the industrial pursuits of the South. It was supposed by those who introduced it, and recommended its cultivation, that it would entirely supplant the sugar-cane of Louisiana, and thereby render the cultivation of sugar unprofitable, and slavery a burden. Philosopher Greeley, the humane and Christian gentleman, who thinks all the white inhabitants of the South should be murdered, that the negroes may enjoy their inheritance, was the great promoter of the sorghum scheme. The Tribune was so full of it for several months that room could be scarcely found for anything else. It was to be planted everywhere, for it would grow everywhere. The great Northwest was to be a sorghum bed from the Lakes to the junction of the Mississippi and Ohio. In Missouri, it was to supplant the cane; and there were to be sorghum brakes in place of cane brakes. In Iowa, Wisconsin, and all the unnamed States made out of the Indian territories since we left the old concern, men, horses, cattle and sheep were to live on sorghum bread; to sweeten their tea with sorghum sugar; to feed their children on sorghum molasses; to sleep on mattresses made of sorghum fodder; to carry sorghum walking-canes to church on Sunday; and, finally, to have sorghum planted on their graves when they were buried. As the quaint old English philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne, could see nothing but a quincunx in all the arrangements of Nature for the growth of the primeval forests, so the modern Yankee philosopher believed that the whole earth was made for the growth of sorghum and nothing else. He regarded it as an instrument placed in Yankee hands for the express purpose of enabling them to punish those whom they thought fit to regard as their enemies. He had another scheme, at the same time, for making hemp a substitute for cotton; and when the two should have gone into full operation, he hoped to sever, by their instrumentality, the connection between the virtuous North and the odious and wicked cotton and sugar makers of the South. That connection, by the way, has risen in value in his eyes within a short period, for he is now willing to spill any quantity of blood in order to re-establish it.

The connection in question is dissolved, and the sugar cultivation is, for the time, destroyed. In the meantime, the introduction of the sorghum culture has proved of infinite benefit to the whole Southern country. Its culture is almost as universal as that of Indian corn. It has taken a position as a standing cereal with the other crops. It will never be dispensed with hereafter.--Every farmer plants it — it grows everywhere — it needs little attention — its stalk affords excellent molasses and, we hear, sugar too; its fodder is most nutritious for horses, hogs and cattle; it makes excellent bread; it keeps everything fat on a plantation; and is, upon the whole, the most invaluable present ever made to man since the days of the fabulous Ceres. The design and the hopes of those who introduced it have been completely defeated. Instead of being a curse, it has turned out to be a blessing.