The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1865-08-10
The Richmond Times and Vfr-
ginia.

The Richmond Times and Vir-
ginia.
Virginian, and especially Richmond jour
mails, spent years before the rebellion in
preaching up the divinity of slavery and de-
nouncing Abolitionism and then spent the
wears of the rebellion in trying to make the
JEFF. Davis Confederacy a success The tyr
amy of the peculiar institution was upon
them, and they were the feryent champions
of the despotism. Slave labor had fastened
reproduction and poverty upon q people
and a State that possessed most fertile soil
and an equable climate. First in the ranks of
States, it had retrograded while younger sis
ters that were wild and unpopulated in the
days of her supremacy, entered the lists and
came up to her standard and passed her in
the race of State progress. And still the +.
+. VS. clung to their idols and sounded the
praises of the institution that was impoyerish-
ing them. Articles founded in true system of
political economics, would have been better
products of editorial labor than the fire. eat
ing and revolutionary appeals that were made
to passions and sectional prejudces. Those
appeals were made, however, and bore their
legitimate fruits in an internecine strife which
added the horrors and destructiveness of war
to already existing poverty. Passion has
run its race. The war has been an educator.
Sound sense and wise economical foresight
d ctated the following leader in the Richmond
Times of the I'd instant We publish it as
giving the condition and true policy for not
only Virginia. but the entire South:
Virginia presents to the enterprise of the
world the mos. inviting field ever held out to
tempt its industrial efforts. Not in its primi-
tive DAYS, when its forests had never rung
with the echoes of the woodnan's AK, when
its virgin soil had not been violated by the
hoe or the spade, when its waters had never
felt the pressure of mighty ships, did it pre-
sent such inducements to enterprise as it now
does.
Four years of recent deadly strife have thin
ned her population ruined, either by vio-
lence or waste, many of her residences
emancipated four millions OF slaves, the labor
ers of the South impoverished the people,
destroyed their hocks and herds, their farm
ing implements, their fences and farm wag-
ons, and have left thousands upon thousands
uneutivated. The farmer who heretofore
tiled and tended hundreds of acres cannot
now command the labor to cultivate a haa-
dred acres. Many great plantations are lying
wild and waste. Those who heretofore took
pride in keeping up their ancestral estates
and in adding to them by purchase, and who
would as soon have parted with their heart s
blood as with fragment Of these lands, will
now be compelled to sell portion of them in
order to be enabled to cultivate the remain
der. They are all now like beginners in ag-
riculture. They are without horses, cattle.
farmns implements and groceries. These
indispensable necessaries cannot be purchased
without money, and money, however abun-
dant In the North, Is scarce IN the South, and
cannot be begged or borrowed. The farmers
will have TO subdivide their lands and sell
them out in order to raise the money necessa-
ry to carry on their operations. The future
agricultural policy of Virginia is small farms
thoroughly cultIvated-that policy which ha,
built up New York. Pennsylvania, and other
Northern States, and made them succession
of garden spots.
The soil of Virginia, under this system o
cultivation, can be readily made to yield one
hundred dollars where it now yields ten dol
lars. The capacities OF her soil haye neve
been halt developed. The slovenly system
bringing out Its fertility. A great surface wa
scratched over. and seed died in the groun,
or grew up only to wither and die. that wouIs
have yielded great crops had "a smaller surfac,
been properly TILED and tended. There will
b. lands enough IN the market in Virginia tC
sustain the well-directed industry of hundred
of thousands of new settlers. Emigrans car
nowhere upon earth find soil and eliinat,
better adapted to agriculture. Than the sol
Of Virginia few are richer and the salubrit,
of lis climate is beyond all question. Land
will be cheap at first, which. acting as an IL
ducement to purchasers, should not operat
discouragingly upon the sellers, as the farmer
who have large plantations will utimate
find that, like the books of the Sybil, thei
very reduction viii enhance their value. The
may sell Oft half aud before long the moiet
will be of more value than the whole was. A
population pours in and the country settle
up, and intelligent labor becomes organized
there will be such an enhancement of tn
value of the lands as will astonish those VIII
have been accustomed to purchase at five am
ten dollars an acre.
Nor are the lands of Virginia her only treas
ures. She abounds in undeveloped mines an
minerals of every description, which, unde
proper management, will yield untold wealth
She possesses q water power that at some day
not very ulstdut We uopt, VIII pIftpei inlii
and manufactures that will rival, if not sur
yass anything in the world. All that is need
ed to develop her vast resources and max
them useful to the world and profitable t
herself is capital, labor and enterprise. Thes
she can get by the sale of lands not needle
by their owners, and by the influx OF enter
prising and intelligent agriculturists, stoc
farmers, artizans and mechanics. There
room within her borders for all who are as
simulated, or can become assimilated to US i
character, language, and literature. Let then
come.
readers will find on. the inside Of GU
paper, a,letter of Henry S. Foote to Senate
Nicholson, of Tennessee. Its length vii
not prevent it's being read. The South ca
throw aside s,rehl1iice md snctianal ,,aSsinn