Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1867-03-13
Gbt frttman,
MONTPELIER, VI:
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1867.
New England and the South.

new England anu Tile SOutns
There is much truth, more perhaps than
the writer thought of-in the following from
southern paper
TO THE PEOPLE OF NEW ENGLAND.
The telegram informs us, your Southern
brethren, that you are having a decidedly
cold spell of weather in your country We
that your railroads are blocked up with
snow, your rivers unnavigable on account of
ice. and many people have been frozen to
death in your midst.
We do not know how you like such
state of things-you may have got used to
it-but we of the South think you are
lucky in Your choice of a clmate-that you
have, in fact, been dreadfully swindled in
the purchase. You may say that your energy
and ingenuity have enabled you to conquer
the rigors of your winter well as most 9TH
er things that come in your way-that with
your houses compactly built, and heated
with steam, petroleum or coal, you can sit
within, eat apples, peg away on your shoe
soles, and snap your fingers at the destroying
hosts of Jack Frost. All very we'll for such
as have houses like those referred to above
But what proportion of your population are
so comfortably housed? II we mistake not,
n great many of your number shiver them
selves to death through these long winter
of the frightful cold they have to endure
that they would take tickets at once for the
lower regions if they had not ceased to be-
lieve there is fire there
And there is YOUR wretched soil Your
farmers really deserve much credit for the
onions and potatoes they wiring from it by
such herculean efforts. 1t is hardly possible
that they have selected the sites o many of
their farms from choice and not necessity
They have had so many essays written for
them by lazy drones on the dignity of labor,
that it is quite credible they like a Ger
tain amnnnt Of IT bat NOT at all SO That
thew have anv particular love for the savage
rocks that year by year they have TO dig up
and roll aside, springing out like the hydra,
and refusing to stay laid. Then TO think Of
the muck and the guano to be gathered to-
gether at SO great a cost and matchmaking
and doing every thing where niggard nature
has done nothing. Look at these things
without prejudice, and you will see that you
waste annually vast amount of labor. You
who pride yourselves ON your labor-saving
genius, really waste more of it than any 9th
people in the world You who would
run a man out of your community, put
him in mad-hOuse, were he to make ma
chinery by actual horsepower, with water.
coal and iron within his reach, are guilty OF
doing by the wholesale, something equally
behind the age of which you consider your
selves the greatest Misunderstanding
your labor on the sterile soil and in the bleak
climate of New England, when the South
invites you with her fertile soil and bound
less mineral wealth.
You fond of calculating, so work out
this question in the rule of three.
If by raising potatoes and onions among
the barren rocks of New England, | have
made a living, sent my children to a free
school and subscribed to a newspaper, what
would the amount of labor | have expended
there have brought me had it been applied to
the fertile soil of the South =?
The answer will come out quite large, but
larger still if a new condition be added, which
il, that YOU can work much longer during
the day in the South than you can at home
LIT the answer comes out III satisfactory
manner. as we doubt not it will. why not
quit the wretched country you live in, and
come to this Southern land which nature has
been partial to d? Look at one of your
own school biographies, and you can find out
much concerning It's soil and climate-little,
unfortunately, concerning it's inhabitants.
- We are afraid of being murdered, skin
ned, Quilted, boiled and eaten by rebels
You are afraid of no such thing. We give
you credit for too much intelligence to believe
it. Many of You have relations who have
lived for years in the South, and among
her leading citizens. But come, people OF
New England, and see for yourselves. You
have sworn great oath that the 50 stars and
stripes = shall fly from the St. Lawrence to
the Rio Grande. They are flying now, but
VINO knows for how long in the present rot
ten condition of the country? We have no
intention|nOt the remotest-of disturbing
them, but with revolution at the North, who
Will take the pains to keep them flying? We
have no time to guard them-too busy work
ing for bread and meat. Homogeneity of
the people in the United States will keep
them flying, and that alone. Come then, the
most radical of you. There must be more
commingling, or dissolution is at hand. In
the loaf that will be baked by the friction
caused BY your influx in our midst, we feel
quite confident there will be a strong South
ern taste Once citizens of the South, and
we have no fear of your radicalism.
There is no doubt that the natural advan-
tages of the South are superior,-in some re-
epect almost beyond comparison to those
of New England. Our soil is more sterile,
winters longer, than in the rich and - Sunny
S)uth.'' Where nature has given one
blessing, she has given the South from two
to score. Where she has visited us with
hundred discouragements, she has visited
the South with none. But when we go be-
yond the gifts of Nature, and ask what use
man has made of his gifts and opportunities,
under the Northern or under the Southern
sky, how stands the account? As we write
there is before us an appeal in behalf of the
- Southern Famine Relief Association - of
New York, which says % the starring ,conaen
and children of the Sputh are much in need
of all sorts of supplies and urges the peo-
pie of the North to give literally 50 for the
purpose of alternating the distress now I'M
fortunately prevailing in various Southern
States" Churches called upon to aid
by contribution their 50 distressed Southern
sum, if it be only a mite, toward purchasing
food and clothing for the hungry and the
naked whom the winter is pinching and
freezing in their miserable Southern homes.
If we in New England, freeze or starve, we
can lay the blame to our inclement climate,
which cheats in purchase of summer,
giving us only half We bargained for, or to
our rugged fields which give most grudging-
ly in answer to the labors of the husbandmen
But what excuse have the South? If their
land is tickled with hoe it laughs with a
harvest. The grains and the fruits of every
zone grow luxuriantly in their broad plant
tions. Rice, cotton-once king-and sugar,
are crops easily transmutable into gold.
Their rivers furnish the finest water-powers
in the world. Their mineral wea It'll is in
.xhaustible Navigable streams penetrate