The tri-weekly standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1866-1868, 1867-06-27

school room, or from Cne PuDlAo P'1 ~
that the whole people will soon regard I'LL
terrible war through which we have JUS
passed, as the throes and agony OF the olrIi
of a new. higher holier, and more blessee
nation than the world has yet known. (drea
applause) .,
/ saw during my trip country upon which
the Almighty has with most lavish hant
bestowed His richest material gifts. 1T Il
oorped with every mineral. 1 have scarcely
been in State that does nOtabound III coal
iron, copper and lead, and have travelled to
days over region of country us richly un
derlaid with gold-bearing quartz as tine
mountains of Colorado or California. Lei
me speak specially of North Carolina, be-
cause, as it is equally true of Virginia, pow
erty has driven hundreds of thousands OF her
native citizens into exile My friends, North
Carolina is the most beautiful and richest
port on of Gods earth upon which my VS.
ion or feet have ever rested. You know that
she produces cotton, rice, indigo, tar, pitch,
turpentine and superior timber You know
that her soil and climate are adapted to the
cereals, wheat, corn, rye, buckwheat and oats.
But you probably do not know what that
State long known as the Rip Van Wrinkle OF
the Union, from which more than fifty thou
sand free white people have fled to the two
States of Indiana and Illinois, is the land OF
wine and honey, the apple and peach OF
the fig and pomegranate, all OF which saw
prospecting in open field and under the most
artless culture Its native vines made the
fortune of Longworth, who carried cuttings
thence. The wine producing vineyards of
Western Pennsylvania, around the base and
on the Islands of Lake Erie, and scattered
through Missouri, are from the cuttings
taken from the native vines of North Caro-
lima.
The Catawba, the Lincoln, the Isabella,
and richer than all the Scuppernong, of
which as it has not yet been successfully,
transplanted, eastern North-Carolina has the
monopoly. There it grows spontaneously
as a weed.
The woods and hill sides TEEN with the
richest honey-bearing flowers, and the bees
invite you to put up but rude box, that
they may reward your kindness with the
sweetest treasure. There is not vegetable
we produce that will not thrive in North
Carolina, and under these Astounding stores
of agricultural wealth, belt, ranging from
forty to one hundred miles wide across the
entire State, is so richly underlaid with gold,
that a person with common fryingpan,
may wash the sands of many of the rivulets,
and make from one to three dollars per day.
L
through this native wealth and beauty 1
saw how sin had driven man out of Paradise;
for never had seen such poverty as found
in North Carolina save in South Carolina,
Alabama and Mississippi, where people are
starving in the midst of natures richest
bounties.
You cannot comprehend and credit this
statement. I tell you it is true. 1 could not
credit it myself 1t was long before observa-
ton enabled me fully to comprehend it. Go
with me to Mississippi. l will take you to
fernando. Once fernando was an import
ant railroad town and station. There are
scattered around it few large old mansions,
abandoned and going to ruin. 1t was once
the centre of great cotton growing region,
but now, as far as the eye could range from
the platform of the Car, we saw nothing but
sedge grass, q weed that is valueless, or the
red, glazing subsoil, washed and cut by
countless gullies, till under the bright sun it
looked like million flames of red fire, blaz-
ing up from the earth.
The owners of that once rich land had
planted it each successive year with cotton,
till they extracted from it every agricultural
element and those fibrous roots with which
nature mats the soil and protects it from
washing In response to a question as to
the extent of the desolation we beheld,
fellow traveller, Mississippian, said " it is
pretty wide. There was not plantation
within some miles of the station, on which
family could make living" and added,
1.-THE soil was always light, and when the
rain began to wash it, it made quick work
of it." Skillful culture would not only have
saved that wide region from desolation, but
added to its wealth producing power.
Come with me again, my friends, to South
Carolina, and behold a mother who, having
"roped" herself to a pillow, is striving to
drag it through the earth, while her son, APP
parently about eleven years old, endeavors
to guide it that they may open a furrow in
which to deposit the few seeds Northern
charity has sent them. You cannot imagine
such a scene. But I assure you that could
detain you for hours by illustrations but
little less striking than those of the terrible
results OF devoting an entire people to the
production of a few bulky agricultural pro-
ducts. 1 wish you to remark that have
not spoken OF the negroes of the South, but
OF the poor non-saveholding whites, 1.-THE
low DOWNS" as I often heard them called.
What would we in Pennsylvania, with
our manifold Investigation of pursuits,
think if the owner of a farm of one hundred
acres should apply to the government for
rations to support his family Yet it is not
a novel or unnatural sight at the South
Lieutenant-ColonelJ J. r. Edie, of the Eighth
Infantry, is Post Commandment at Salisbury,
n. g., and administers the affairs of the
Bureau of Refugees and Freedmen within
his command. 1 recognized in him not only
gallant son of Pennsylvania, but an old
personal friend. 1t happened to be ration
day, which occurs, l believe, once a fort
night, and with my companions 1 gladly
accepted his invitation to his office, that we
might observe the character and necessities
of the applicants. They must have number
ed hundreds, a large preponderance of whom
were whites. Many of them had walked
more than fifteen miles to procure little
corn and bacon.
AS one lean, pale woman advanced and
gave her name the Colonel said -" You
have been here before, and think you own
land" Eyes, sir" said she, az own lit
tle.'' How much ?'' asked he. About a
hundred acres" Chow much of it is clear
ed ?" "The butt end of it." "Well, then,
why did you not plant it 2" GAIL that's
cleared is planted" "What, then, brings
you for rations ?' "Want Colonel. Unjust
have something for the children to eat till
the corn ripens. 1 can't make it ripen till
the season comes" A voice-(They are too
lazy to work. No, my friend, they are not
too lazy to work. They are Willino TO work