Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1869-03-12
From the Glasgow Herald.
HOW THINGS ARE In AMERICA.
BY DAVID MACRAE,
Acdhor Of" George Harrington" dc.
SOUTHERN POVERTY AND SOUTHERN
KINDNESS

Travelling through the Carolinas, I began
to see the terrible effects Of war on wider
scale. Along the broad track of Sherman s
army the devastation was fearful-fences
laid waste, fences burned, bridges destroy
ed, houses left in ruins, plantations in
some cases turned into wildernesses again,
the owners unable either to work the land
themselves or get it sold. I was offered
land over and over again for so cents an
acre-eighteen pence of our money; and
felt strongly tempted more than once to
empty my pockets on the spot, and see
how it felt to be a landed proprietor. Some
of the planters were SO poor that they were
trying to sell part of their land to get
money enough to pay the tax upon the
rest. One of them declared to me that if
ten Scotch families went out he would
give them twenty or thirty acres apiece
for nothing, merely to have them settle on
his land, and introduce the Scotch method
of farming. His property, in the mean
time, was lying waste, and the war had
left him powerless to do anything with it.
The Same ruin and prostration, though
gradually, and in some cases rapidly, dis
appearing, was visible in many of the CEN
tres of population. found the once beau
tiful city of Columbia still city of ruins
Charleston I found with still valley of
desolation right through the heart of it,
made by the great confagration of '61.-
There stood the blackened streets
and gutted houses as if the disaster
had been thing of yesterday.
Even Wilmington, although it had es-
capped the fire either of battle or conhagra-
ton, showed too plainly the prostrating
effects Of war. The once busy wharves
had lonely and detected look about them
oo%r mt 1fr in
clock, remember, which had got out of
order in the war time, still indicated with
disconsolate finger the hour ct which it
had stopt five long years before. The
people too!-men who had held high posi-
tons before the war, poor now, and hardly
able to earn O livelihood-ladies who had
been reared in atfiuence living in half
furnished houses, and Though too proud
to utter q word of complaint) bearing about
with them the too evident marks not only
of hardship but of absolute want. Mr..
Sprunt (the British Vice .Consul told me
that he knew of Southern ladies in Will
mington who before the war had never
known what it was to have want unsup-
piled, now SO destitute that they could
scarcely keep themselves decently clad,
and did not know, when they had eaten
their scanty meal one day, how they were
to find food for the next.
No poverty, however, takes the kind
ness out of the Southern heart. Though
a mere stranger in the place, had come
to visit the South and meet the Southern
people; and wherever turned land no.
where more than in that warm-hearted
State of North Carolina) the hand of well
come and hospitality awaited me. I could
give many illustrations of this, that to NE
were very touching, considering the i'm
poverished condition Of the people.
CAPTAIN MAFFITT AND THE CONFEDERATE
NAVY.
Amongst the many interesting men [
met at Wilmington was the well-known
Captain Mafitt, whose wild and adventur-
Gus career upon the high seas as comman-
der of the Florida excited SO much atten-
ton at the time
I had heard good deal about Maffitt in
the North, where he was regarded by many
as perhaps the ablest naval officer who had
lent his sword to the Cenfederacy. It was