The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1877-11-29


each State of this great copmonwealth,
imposing check on the concentration
of capital, can our nation attain its high.
est possible destiny. When the general
government, under the specious prete1t
of retaining the insubordination of your
citizens, established military encamp-
ment of armed soldiery upon the campus
of your State capitol, every other State
must have recoiled beneath the stigma
and humiliation of the outrage.
Already indications are clearly discern
able that brighter era of industrial pro-
gress will eventually dispel the stagna'
ton and financial gloom that, like the
shadows of dark eclipse, seems to have
settled down upon your honored State.
The change in your political system,
forced upon you by the reconstruction
measures, afforded some compensation in
the change that became necessity in
your industrial system. Before the war,
the lands of the cotton States belonged
almost exclusively to an aristocracy. OF
wealth. One reservation after another
was cultivated, until the last elements OF
fertility were exhausted in the production
of cotton, which was exchanged for for
eign gold. The ambition of planters to
cultivate large estates, under which
method impoverishment of the soil with
out restitution was continually occurring,
placed them in circumstances that they
had only time to SOW and gather up the
harvest. That system of agriculture,
then so prevalent, growing out of the
possession of large estates, and conse-
quently hurried industry, Ignored every
principle of agricultural economy. The
land is as honest a thing as there is in
nature. If you keep it hungry, then
poverty and desti.ution, like famished
wolves, will be in wait at your own doors.
The highest eulogy that could be posi-
bly, sculptured in marble, in commemo-
ration of the labors of the husbandman,
is "He has left his farm better than ne
found it." 1t was Virgil, whose classic
genius in the conception of the Eneid il
Illuminated the reign of Augustus, who
uttered this impoverished maxim:
"Praise large farms, but cultivate small
ones"
1t was grand old Homer who sang OF
the gardens of Alconious
"Four acres was the allotted piece OF ground,
Hemmed by green enclosure all around"
We have no right to cultivate more
land than we can preserve in its original
fertility. We are imposing heavy bur-
den on posterity in the impoverishment
of our rich alluvial lands, in the removal
of their most available elements by q
system of surface culture, making them
articles of commerce, while We return
nothing in exchange.
Citizens of South Carolina-In the di-
versifcation of your industries, in the in
crease of your commerce, in the more
equal distribution of your landed estates,
instituting a more thorough system of
culture, aud securing greater diffusion
of capital, lie the possibilities OF your
future progress and prosperity. i,
You belong to a proud and honored
lineage. The people who originally fixed
their habitations in the warm latitudes of
the sunny South possessed more culture
and greater chivalry and nobility OF
character than the Puritans, who sought
an asylum on the barren and Storm beaten
coast of New England. Those noble and
hospita 9 traits of character, ever fos.
tered by an aristocracy of wealth and
transmitted from an aristocracy of genius,
are conspicuous in the Southern charac-
ter to-day. If the memory of my school
DAYS has not failed me, think it was
that gallant knight, Sir Walter Raleigh,
who first navigated your shores and
awakened the solitudes of your wilder
nesses with the quiet accents of our
mother tongue. He WAS succeeded by
that heroic adventurer, James Edward
Oglethorpe, clothed with the powers to
exercise the functions of q Governor, who
sailed into Charleston harbor in the good
ship Anne, with COLONY of ia persons,
in January, 1873.
The address of Lomochichi, one of the
principal orators of the Creeks, upon the
conclusion of the treaty with Oglethorpe
I regard as one of the finest passages of
aboriginal eloquence.
"Here i. n present." said the chief; II
give you bufalo's skin adorned on the
inside with the head and feathers of an
eagle, which desire you to accept, be-
cause the eagle is an emblem of speed
and the buffalo of strength. The Eng
lish are swift as the bird and strong as
the beast; since like the former, they
flew over vast seas to the uttcrmost parts
of the earth, and like the latter, they are
so strong nothing can withstand them.
The feathers of the eagle are soft and
signify love; the bufalo's skin is warm
and signifies protection; therefore, l
hope the English will protect their little
families"
I wish more of that untutored savage's
benevolent temper and magnanimity
might pervade the radical sentiment Of
the North. Recently perusing the fol-
lowing vivid and picturesque description
of your State, written by the poet Waller,
full century and half ago, q migratory
feeling came over me. and | concluded to
join the flight of our Northern birds to
test the beauty of your scenery and the
salubrity of your climate:
"Thc spring which but salutcs us here
Inhabits there AID courts them all the year.
Riuc fruits and blossoms OH the same tree livci
AT once they promise what at once they give;
So sweet tho air, so moderate the cline,
None sickly lives or dies before his time.
Heaven sure has kept this spot of earth uncursed
To show how all things were created first"
From that primitive period the history
of South Carolina is illuminated by as
bright galaxy of orators and statesmen
who have reflected honor upon their
country as any other State can boast.
Her Calhouns, her Haynes, her McDuf-
fies, her Marions and her Hamptons, en-
dowed with the highest gifts of states
manship, have justly earned their i'm
mortality. In the annals of our country,
their public services and private virtues
will be commemorated until time shall
be no longer. There are other charac-
teristics which have ever distinguished
the citizens of your State, upon which no
imputation of reproach has ever rested,
and those are your honor, your heroism
and your hospitality. 1t is my highest
aspiration that South Carolina may yet
rise from the Gethsemane of her sorrows
and her sacrifices more fair and beautiful