Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1869-03-26
From the New York Tribune


j. Hardly Southern paper reaches us but
has editorial comment of some sort on the.
prospective crop of 1869 II is generally
conceded thatit will be large ii the season
is at all favorable. Some editors have the
sagacity to see that saying so much about
a great crop this year will have a bad effect
On that part of the crop of 1868 which re-
mains unsold. - sL'Ea s#aE5 l~s aEgt
Now, friends at the South, before your
double plows have thrown all the laud into
ridges for cotton rows, take time and give
this whole business of agriculture sober
second thought. You have just come ont
of great war in which you were worsted.
The weakest thing in the Southern mill
tary service during that war was its com
missafiat. A strictly agricultural people,
having as much pride of acres as any land
ed aristocracy IN the world, were from tie
first, and ia all stages of four years
strife, weakened, hampered, thwarted
demoralized, and finally defeated, for want
of beef, corn, wheat, hay, aud oats -
A great war Is like Il severe illness it
tries the constitution and nDmasks the
weakness Of the system. The agricultural
system OF the South has been proved de-
tectlve, because III q prOtraeted fight the
breach appea red there first Now What is
the great characteristic of planting? Ie is,
and from the first has been the deriving
of large Income in clear money from ..
broad surface. by the sale of vegetable
products. A small planter is one whose
account sales of cotton or tobacco, rice or
sugar, do not figure up more than $5, 900.
The sales OF the large planters range all the
way from S.. 600 to 500, 600 A few, a
very few, Southern proprietors received
over 100000 from a single crop. That
mn 40 Of 1cr -, L
connected with the character and status of
the laborer, but such connection was not
inseparable. slave could cradle wheat
or fatten hogs if ordered to, just as we'll as
he could pick cotton or sucker tobacco. =
Slavery had inherent sins enough without
charging 1t with blunders that were not, in
the nature OF things, lnseparable from un-
paid labor. From the time of Pocahontas
the Southern domain was divided into
large estates. Those who surveyed and
plotted it felt as Brutus did about Caesars
body.
Lot carve him rs Z dish fiji for the gods
not hew him like carcass for the hounds
These broad areas were cleared and
cropped by sport-loviDg men, for whose
ears the baying of a pack of fox hounds
was sweetest music. Put a man with these
tastes at the centre of a 1000 acre tract,
and what will he do ? He will have as few
inside fences as possible !; he will make his
money on crop that Will cost him the
least time, or plannidg or worry. He will
say, dunn oictnauS, ricdapuS-'' after us the
deluge" Talk to him of rotation, fertili-
zers, bone dust, the foot of the sheep
having gold beneath it; he answers You
by blast on his hunting horn. my
niggels know how to make cotton" These
10 4 &c
gressive agriculture south Of Mason and
Dixon.
The inducements that draw the southern
agricul.nralist toward cotton-felds are very
great. He is in debt. He wants carriage
horses to replace those which Bragg, or
Johnson, or Lee broke down dragging
He is living in q cabin and would
like to do something with those ghostly
and blackened chimney stacks. The saws
Of his gin stand are bent and rusty. His
press is rude and slow. His mules are stiff,
and his plows worn his tobacco sheds
went for camp fires. We admit that it
would be help Oh your place if you could
sell 800 bales next December st two bits a
pound. But let us reason about it. You
do not propose to move West. You know
of no good cotton or tobacco land that is
cheaper than your Cwn plantation. Be-
sides, you have no money to go on. If
you leave your children anything, it must
be in the acres over which you walk. If
you drain those acres of the last tun of pot
ash and phosphorus they contain, you
leave to those who come after you wide
waste Of broom sedge and stunted pines
q heritage of briars, and gullies, and rot
ten fences. No, gentlemen; you will be
wiser and mere provident than that. You
will see that while there is some money in
cotton and tobacco, there is in it little true
wealth and power, little of thatwhich makes
nations great and keeps them so. The
The south has never been sufficiently devo-
ted to the produ ction of articles of prime
necessity. Mankind would be better off if
frost Or worms should destroy every tobac-
co plant that sprouts this spring. Cotton
is very important textile but nations
were clad, and we'll clad, before Eli Whit
ney was born. Agriculture means the c,I-
ture of the fields; not skimming and desola-
ting them. Enjoying the best climate and
blowing the best soil on tbs continent. the
southron ate imported bread, drank i'm
ported wine, gave his hands imported
pork, shod them with imported leather,
and buckled an imported saddle on the
back of horse that had travelled thou
sand miles southwark to find a purchaser.
When such a people went to war With
States that fed and clothed them, the re-
suit was inevitable. julius Caesar with his
tenth legion could have delayed that ex-
change of notes at Appomattox Court
House, bnt he could NOT have made it
In profound peace, with strong, silent,
vigilant man at the wheel, the country is
entering upon :. decade of material pros
perity and development that will be more
smazing than the magnitude aud the OBJ
stinacy of the recent strife. What the
South wants above all other things, is not
or acknowledgements, or a
O. man in the Cabinet, nor even high
ice for good Iniddling, but an agricultn
al system that is true, just and lasting Her
land has had no Sabbath there has been
no restoration. The balance between the
living and the dead products of farming
was destroyed and must be regained. No
lands that are not often renewed by the
mud of inundations can survive such an
exhaustive succession as the planter has
reonira1 Of his cotton and tobacco fields