How the People have Lived.--An Agricultural Community.--Mineral and other Wealth of Virginia.--Slave-Breeding in Former Times.--The Auriferous Region of North Carolina.--Agricultural Advantages.--Varieties of Soil in South Carolina.--Sea-Island Cotton.--Georgia and her Railways.--Probable Decline of the Rice Culture.--The Everglade State.--The Lower Mississippi Valley.--The Red River.--Arkansas and its Advantages.--A Hint for Tragedians.--Mining in Tennessee.--The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky.--Texas and its Attractions.--Difference between Southern and Western Emigration.--The End.
Compared with the North, the Southern States have been strictly an agricultural region. Their few manufactures were conducted on a small scale, and could not compete with those of the colder latitudes. They gave some attention to stock-raising in a few localities, but did not attach to it any great importance. Cotton was the product which fed, clothed, sheltered, and regaled the people. Even with the immense profits they received from its culture, they did not appear to understand the art of enjoyment. They generally lived on large and comfortless tracts of land, and had very few cities away from the sea-coast. They thought less of personal comfort than of the acquisition of more land, mules, and negroes.
In the greatest portion of the South, the people lived poorer than many Northern mechanics have lived in the past twenty years. The property in slaves, to the extent of four hundred millions of dollars, was their heaviest item of wealth, but they seemed unable to turn this wealth to the greatest advantage. With the climate and soil in their favor, they paid little attention to the cheaper luxuries of rational living, but surrounded themselves with much that was expensive, though utterly useless. On plantations where the owners resided, a visiter would find the women adorned with diamonds and laces that cost many thousand dollars, and feast his eyes upon parlor furniture and ornaments of the most elaborate character. But the dinner-table would present a repast far below that of a New England farmer or mechanic in ordinary circumstances, and the sleeping-rooms would give evidence that genuine comfort was a secondary consideration. Outside of New Orleans and Charleston, where they are conducted by foreigners, the South has no such market gardens, or such abundance and variety of wholesome fruits and vegetables, as the more sterile North can boast of everywhere. So of a thousand other marks of advancing civilization.
Virginia, "the mother of Presidents," is rich in minerals of the more useful sort, and some of the precious metals. Her list of mineral treasures includes gold, copper, iron, lead, plumbago, coal, and salt. The gold mines are not available except to capitalists, and it is not yet fully settled whether the yield is sufficient to warrant large investments. The gold is extracted from an auriferous region, extending from the Rappahannock to the Coosa River, in Alabama. The coal-beds in the State are easy of access, and said to be inexhaustible. The Kanawha salt-works are well known, and the petroleum regions of West Virginia are attracting much attention.
Virginia presents many varieties of soil, and, with a better system of cultivation, her productions can be greatly increased. (The same may be said of all the Southern States, from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande.) Her soil is favorable to all the products of the Northern States. The wheat and corn of Virginia have a high reputation. In the culture of tobacco she has always surpassed every other State of the Union, and was also the first State in which it was practiced by civilized man to any extent. Washington pronounced the central counties of Virginia the finest agricultural district in the United States, as he knew them. Daniel Webster declared, in a public speech in the Shenandoah Valley, that he had seen no finer farming land in his European travel than in that valley.
Until 1860, the people of Virginia paid considerable attention to the raising of negroes for the Southern market. For some reason this trade has greatly declined within the past five years, the stock becoming unsalable, and its production being interrupted. I would advise no person to contemplate moving to Virginia with a view to raising negroes for sale. The business was formerly conducted by the "First Families," and if it should be revived, they will doubtless claim an exclusive privilege.
North Carolina abounds in minerals, especially in gold, copper, iron, and coal. The fields of the latter are very extensive. The gold mines of North Carolina have been profitably worked for many years. A correspondent of The World, in a recent letter from Charlotte, North Carolina, says:
In these times of mining excitement it should he more widely known that North Carolina is a competitor with California, Idaho, and Nebraska. Gold is found in paying quantities in the State, and in the northern parts of South Carolina and Georgia. For a hundred miles west and southwest of Charlotte, all the streams contain more or less gold-dust. Nuggets of a few ounces have been frequently found, and there is one well-authenticated case of a solid nugget weighing twenty-eight pounds, which was purchased from its ignorant owner for three dollars, and afterward sold at the Mint. Report says a still larger lump was found and cut up by the guard at one of the mines. Both at Greensboro, Salisbury, and here, the most reliable residents concur in pointing to certain farms where the owners procure large sums of gold. One German is said to have taken more than a million of dollars from his farm, and refuses to sell his land for any price. Negroes are and have been accustomed to go out to the creeks and wash on Saturdays, frequently bringing in two or three dollars' worth, and not unfrequently negroes come to town with little nuggets of the pure ore to trade.
The iron and copper mines were developed only to a limited extent before the war. The necessities of the case led the Southern authorities, however, after the outbreak, to turn their attention to them, and considerable quantities of the ore were secured. This was more especially true of iron.
North Carolina is adapted to all the agricultural products of both North and South, with the exception of cane sugar. The marshes on the coast make excellent rice plantations, and, when drained, are very fertile in cotton. Much of the low, sandy section, extending sixty miles from the coast, is covered with extensive forests of pitch-pine, that furnish large quantities of lumber, tar, turpentine, and resin, for export to Northern cities. When cleared and cultivated, this region proves quite fertile, but Southern energy has thus far been content to give it very little improvement. Much of the land in the interior is very rich and productive. With the exception of Missouri, North Carolina is foremost, since the close of the war, in encouraging immigration. As soon as the first steps were taken toward reconstruction, the "North Carolina Land Agency" was opened at Raleigh, under the recommendation of the Governor of the State. This agency is under the management of Messrs. Heck, Battle & Co., citizens of Raleigh, and is now (August, 1865) establishing offices in the Northern cities for the purpose of representing the advantages that North Carolina possesses.
The auriferous region of North Carolina extends into South Carolina and Georgia. In South Carolina the agricultural facilities are extensive. According to Ruffin and Tuomey (the agricultural surveyors of the State), there are six varieties of soil: 1. Tide swamp, devoted to the culture of rice. 2. Inland swamp, devoted to rice, cotton, corn, wheat, etc. 3. Salt marsh, devoted to long cotton. 4. Oak and pine regions, devoted to long cotton, corn, and wheat. 5. Oak and hickory regions, where cotton and corn flourish. 6. Pine barrens, adapted to fruit and vegetables.