The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-09-23
The Attractions of the South.


From the N. Y. Times '| .
No man who has travelled through the
Southern States of this UniOn--and especially
the great belt stretching from the Potomac by
Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia, Macon, Mont
gomery, and Jackson, onward to the Missis-
sippi-will be unwilling to admit that he has
passed over region of country whose natural
attractions and charms could not be surpassed
in any part of the world. - srr#
Whether the traveller be enamored of q
soft. genial. and equable climate--of region
that lies high and dry, and is exceedingly
healthy-of fruit trees and forest trees, plants
and flowers, rich, varied, and perennial-of a
soil that is fertile in the highest degree, and
productive of the greatest diversity of useful,
wholesome, and profitable articles of consump-
tion and commerce-he will admit that In no
respect could even his imagination rise higher
than the actual facts that have come under his
experience and observation. --.a4
Yet the whole of this supremely attractive
region Of country is merely settled by a
thinly-scattered population of whites and
blacks.
Until the present time it could not be other
wise. 1a- i'f 'r.l '4 y
1t has been in the possession and under the
control ofgrand landholders, owning great herds
of slaves, supplemented by their depeniauts,
and by those who ministered to their necessi-
ties, and by those who were the agents for
transactipg their business with the world. The
men who might desire to settle as freeholders
of the soil were repelled-ths classes who
might seek to build up manufacturing and
industrial activities found 1t impossible under
the existing tenure of land and labor--the
ree-handed, independent emigrants who were
ready to move southwark, as they have moved
westward, by the million, learned that they
were practically debarred from entering the
most inviting region Of the globe by obstruc-
tions Of law, custom, society, industry, and
opinion, that neither perseverance nor energy
could surmount. .uI.r 100,
This state of things is all changed now-or,
at all events, is all open to be- changed by the
powers that have heretofore been compelled to
recoil before it. ts s--f
Those who have heretofore been the great
landholders Of the South have been reduced
in such way that they can neither hold or
cultivate the soil, nor make 1t in any way
available or profitable; and they are every
where willing and anxious to dispose of 1t on
conditions that are neither hard nor trouble
some. Their slaves are gone; their agencies
of productive industry have passed out of
their control; their inducements to continue
their peculiar mode of life, OF other times,
have gone with the peculiar institution on
which they were based. They have found
that, with the downfall of the "patriarchal"
social order which they formerly possessed,
all possibility of maintaining patriarchal or
aiistocIa'lC pIeteuSlOub Oi any KIM nave us
appeared. And as old things have passed
away without their consent, they are preparing
to accept as best they may the new things
that are destined to replace the old. In brief,
and in plain English, the vast unoccupied
surfaces of the Southern States are open for
settlement. Land, by freehold, can be obtained
in abundance, and there is no obstacle, in law
or public economy, to hinder its possessor in
the enjoyment of the attractions that nature
has lavished upon the "Sunny South"
So far as people may find, or fancy, any dis
advantage in local custom, social sentiment,
or public opinion, these will not count much,
or stand long, before the volumes OF immigra-
tion that must soon sweep over these inviting
regions. r r..r
Since the occurrence Of the radical changes
in the South that were brought about by the
war-since the disappearance of slavery,
slave-labor, slavery customs, and slavery
necessities and conditions-since the arrival
of the time which furnished opportunity for
emigration, settlement, and free labor, there
has been no such emigration to the Southern
States as was looked for three years ago. II
was thought that great numbers of our
soldiers would settle there-that crowds OF
Northerners would go down prospecting"