The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1878-01-03
OUR OLD FIELDS.

landscape and imprlnts itself upon
the memory of the observer. The
trim hedges of England are insepa-
rablv associated with rural beauty
and prosperous husbandry. The
broad fields of France, undivided
bv hedge or ditch. and cOlored with
the tints of different crops, are
spread before the eye like an endless
carpet Of e~ver-varying hues !; and
the plains of Italy, with the same
beauties as the fields of France, are
additionally adorned with long lines
of trees gracefully festooned with
the luXuriant vine, attractive as
well to the eve as to the palate. All
this betokens taste, thrift, industry
and prosperity. 1t remains to the
Southern States to add its mite Of
peculiarly in the shape Of a fear
full anti-climax-in a form where
deformity displaces beauty, where
negligence antagonizes thrift, where
Incidence overcomes industry, and
where poverty shrouds itself in the
ruins Of prosperity-the Southern
States spreads out her old fields to
the gaze Of the world and whether
proudly or otherwise, they challenge
attention.
1t is a wonderful feature in a
country SO lately in a state of ma
ture IN a country, within the
memory of living men, unbroken
almost in its forest sanctuary, and
go lately the abode Of the savage
that the memory of his fearful
cruelties still carries terror In its
recital III a country SO lately
opened up to cultivation that the
wonderful exuberance of its virgin
soil gave wealth to the generations
just gone by, by only the applica-
ton of the rudest form of labor
and in Il country yet SO new as still
to be held out as lure to the over
crowded peoples Of the old world as
the happy refuge against want and
the very hot-bed Of agricultural
richness; but a country, IN fact, so
SCARED. so scanned, 80 blotched, so
stripped, that many portions of it
might seem to have been transport
ed bodily from those fated regions
beyond the seas, where time and
war, and blighting tyranny and a
fierce sun had turned the land to
irretrievable desert.
These old fields stretch from the
Potomac to the Gulf of Mexico
from the Atlantic to the Mississippi
pi, and are the the distinct results
of lands too cheap and labor too
unskilled !; to which may be added
as corrollaries to the other two, sta
pie crops imperative In their de-
mands for rich soils to produce them,
and %rapacious in their exactions on
forest lands to procure them.
1t may very well be doubted
whether the cotton gin was, after all,
a real benefit to the South, since it
over stimulated its industry at a
time when the instrument of that
industry was the unskilled labor of
the negro slave. And it certainly
does not admit Of a doubt, that
apart from the question Of proper
ty, negro slavery was the heaviest
weight that was ever hung upon
the neck of agriculture. 1t was
animal power, nothing more, and
only a little more intelligent in
comprehension than the mules it
used, not a particle more interested
IN results than the brutes them
selves. 1t was this labor and no
other that was at the command of
the cotton and tobacco planter, and
under the impulse given to cotton
cultivation by Whitney's invention,
the forests IN the older Southern
States fell before the axe as if a tor
nado had swept through them, COM
polling that forward movement to
newer regions, ending in encroach-
ment upon the reservations of the
prosecuted Indian. in violation of