From the Charleston Daily News

The recent change in the labor system of this State must of necessity induce important changes in pursuits, and what those changes may be is now the question of most absorbing interest. That pursuits will become more varied, and that much of our labor will be withdrawn to employment in the arts and enterprises collateral to agriculture, is reasonably certain; but what, then, will be the effect upon existing interests, and particularly upon investments in plantation culture, is a most important question.

These interests, in the seaboard sections of the State at least, are vast, and it is of vast concern whether under present circumstances we can sustain them. Plantations are peculiar forms of agriculture. They are seldom seen except in slave or densely crowded countries. They are exclusively devoted to a single product, and through such devotion raise it at a range of prices quite too [low to be sustained by free labour].

“The recent change in the labor system of this State” is how a Charleston paper referred to the abolition of slavery in August 1865. The sentence worth stopping on is the plain one in the middle: plantations “are seldom seen except in slave or densely crowded countries.” The paper is not making a moral argument; it is doing arithmetic, and the arithmetic tells it that the low-country plantation cannot be paid for out of free wages. Everything that followed in South Carolina — the Black Codes that autumn, the contract system, the long fight over land — is an attempt to answer the question this paragraph asks.

The war which has just closed has brought to a level the rich and the needy — the proud and the humble — and has taken in its relentless grasp from the coffers of the charitable those means which they had of blessing the widow, educating the orphan, and bestowing happiness upon the unfortunate generally. In its wide-spread devastation, like the raging fire on the plain, nothing has been spared; the mite of the poor and the wealth of the opulent has been licked up by its flaming tongue, leaving behind nothing but ruin and desolation.

Associated bodies whose benevolent kindness sustained the bereaved widow, and pointed the way of honesty and virtue to the child of many a deceased member, have, with the rest, been pecuniarily struck down; and no one has felt more forcibly the harshness of the blow than the [society] whose name heads this article, and whose charities were of the most extensive kind.

The South Carolina Society, founded in 1737 by Huguenot settlers and long one of the great charitable bodies of the city, ran a free school and supported widows and orphans of its members. Its endowment had been in Confederate paper and in Southern bank stock, and in August 1865 it was worth nothing. The Society's hall still stands at 72 Meeting Street.

As native Carolinians, the publishers will naturally look to the interests of their own State, and to that of the South; and as citizens of the United States, they will not be wanting in the proper amount of devotion and respect for the General Government. Every effort shall be made to make the DAILY NEWS a first class newspaper, and in every way worthy of the patronage of the public.

Our terms for the present will be at the rate of ten dollars per annum. Subscriptions received for three, six and twelve months, payable in advance.

Postmasters and others throughout the country, who may interest themselves in procuring subscriptions, will be allowed the usual percentage.

CATHCART, McMILLAN & MORTON, Proprietors, No. 18 Hayne-street, Charleston, S. C.

The prospectus of the paper that came after. Read the first sentence slowly: native Carolinians, looking to their own State and to the South — and then, in the same breath, “as citizens of the United States, they will not be wanting in the proper amount of devotion and respect for the General Government.” Six months after the surrender, that is a Charleston newspaper working out exactly how much it is now allowed to say, and saying precisely that much. The Mercury, when it came back the following year, refused to do it: “We shall neither spread a lie, upon our past conduct, by avouching repentance that we do not feel.” Both papers are answering the same question.

The British bark Exchange, Capt. Churchill, will be cleared this day for Liverpool, by Messrs. Willis & Chisolm. This is the first vessel that has taken cargo from here for a foreign port since the blockade has been relieved. Her cargo consists of one hundred and seventy-nine (179) bales of Sea Island, and eight hundred and forty-two (842) bales of Upland Cotton, valued at about two hundred thousand ($200,000) dollars. The same house are also loading the British bark Irma, which vessel will be ready with dispatch; and they are momentarily expecting a third vessel, which will be placed on the berth to load for Liverpool as soon as she arrives. They intend to keep up a line from this port to the great English cotton mart.

The first cargo to leave Charleston for a foreign port since the blockade closed the harbour — 2 September 1865, a thousand and twenty-one bales for Liverpool, worth two hundred thousand dollars. Four and a half years of the war had been about exactly this: whether Charleston cotton could reach the English mills. It went out in a British bark, consigned by a Charleston house, five months after the surrender.

This Board met yesterday afternoon at Masonic Hall, a majority being present. The subject of their decision made at the last meeting being brought forward, it was elaborately discussed, and the views of many distinguished gentlemen, “learned in the law,” were mentioned. After an interchange of opinions among them, the Board agreed that their former decisions should be annulled, and that all should be allowed to vote at the forthcoming election who possessed the qualifications of a voter which the law required in 1860.

Four sentences of committee minutes, and the whole shape of the next twelve years is in the last one. The Board of Managers of Elections met at Masonic Hall, reversed itself, and settled that the franchise for the autumn 1865 election would be the franchise of 1860 — which is to say, white men. Six weeks later the South Carolina Leader began publishing a few streets away, and this is the settlement it was arguing against.

We take great pleasure in announcing to the public generally that an Omnibus Line will be placed upon our streets at once, by Messrs. Loring & Co., proprietors of the Merchants' Hotel.

This accommodation is greatly needed by the citizens of our city, and we trust will be fully sustained. The Line will commence running on Monday next, September 4th, and will be called the King and Meeting-street Line. It will commence on King at Spring-street, and run down Hasel to Meeting-street.

SOUTH CAROLINA RAILROAD. — By a dispatch to the General Superintendent of this Road (Mr. H. T. Peake), we learn that the bridge over the Congaree River was completed at twenty minutes of five o'clock on Thursday last. There are now only a few gaps to be repaired on the road, when full communication will be had with Columbia.

Public transport returning to Charleston's streets on Monday 4 September 1865, and the railroad to Columbia within a few gaps of reopening — the Congaree bridge finished, to the minute, at twenty minutes to five on a Thursday afternoon. Both lines had been destroyed by the retreating army seven months earlier. The paper reports their repair the way it reports the weather.

THE RISING SUN, SEPTEMBER 2. — The sun rises this morning, at 5.37 o'clock, and precisely at this hour will the “Rising Sun,” at the Southwest corner of King and Broad-streets, reopen for the convenience and accommodation of the public. The many friends of J. H. Bredenberg, the proprietor — and their name is legion — will be pleased to read this paragraph, and report as heretofore at the old post. As was always usual at the Rising Sun, a most choice selection of beverages has been selected for this occasion.

CENTRAL ICE CREAM GARDEN. — We perceive, by an advertisement in another column, that this popular resort will shortly be closed. A Promenade Concert will, however, be given on Monday evening next, which will be as attractive as usual.

A saloon at King and Broad opening its doors at sunrise, timed to the minute, and its regulars invited to “report as heretofore at the old post.” The corner had been within the shelled district for eighteen months. Beneath it, an ice cream garden closing for the season with a promenade concert. This is what a city coming back to life actually looks like in the paper: not proclamations, but a bar reopening at 5.37 in the morning.