The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1877-1885, 1879-07-17

(CoNTINUATIoN.)- As the Southern stu
dents at these institutions were commonly
su. posed to be very rich, not beyond forty
second cousins Of King Cr9sus, or at any
rate heirs to princely plantations, and accus-
toned to squandering money like Nabobs,
they had to pay dearly the price of promi
hence among their classmates, being expect
ed to shell out on all occasions, foral man
ner of school-boy schemes, giving dollars or
more where others gave dimes or less. How
ever, of course, any high-spirited Southern
youngster, five hundred miles from home,
and having a character to sustain, i. e.-for
being a Nabob's ~son-would sustain it at all
hazards, no matter If he sacrificed the pro-
duct of paternal industry, in the cotton
field, aided by a rheumatic old negro (hired)
and a blind mule, the whole year round.
Here, be it remarked, no better ~illustra-
ton is needed of the ignorance and miscon-
ception of the Northern masses in regard to
the South, and slavery, than this absurd no
ton that nearly all Southerners were veal
thy, owning slaves by hundreds, and heredi-
tary acres by thousands, leading lives of
aristocratic ease and luxury, ~verging upon
effeminacy, only varied by occasional indul-
gence in the manly sport of chasing negroes
with blood hounds, or Bowie-knifing some
body III revenge for suppOsltlous Sights
offered some great-great-grand mother Sis
ter 5 auntS cousin, nine or ten generations
dead Strange to say many OF these ideas
survive the dreadful d~is-illusioning of the
~war-period. At this day, among the i'm
migrants seeking Southern homes, not a
few come with a vague intention OF acquir-
ing a big plantation, and an old Barunial
Manor-house, surrounded by villages of Re
%tainer's cottages, and overlooking several
square miles of cotton, rice, tobacco, and
sugar, growing side by side, and yielding one
or two millions of Revenue, after the style
Of the 'Lordly Domain as pictured by the
average sweet simpleton of the Mrs. South
worth school.
We might smile at these, and similar,
misconceptions long prevalent ut the North
did we not know how much they aided the
Abolition aggitators III stirring civil strife
as well as IN keeping alive the baletul fires OF
sectional discord since the war. Thousands
and tens of thousands Of sturdy Northern
mechanics and laboring men We're made to
believe their hard-earned taxes went to sup
lDTl At 8ON A hocS oiIOS' ~ hho
nopolized by the indolent and pampered
Southern Chivalry," who regarded all
Northerners as scum" and usedthe Union
merely as a machine for building Southern
forts, and catching fugitive slaves. Many
intelligent Northerners, III other respects
fair minded, to-day hate the South, and all
things Southern, with intense bitterness, as
if smarting under a sense of personal injury,
vet who if pressed would be obliged to adj
init they have no real ground for the pre-
iudices, except that all their lives they have
been taught to regard the Southerners as
proud, naughty and hot-hcaded arbitrary
and overwhelming; cruel to their slaves and
contemptuous towards their poorer neigh
bors; treating all who were not rich as mere
amud-sills," or trash" unworthy Of no
tice. Great would be the astonishment OF
such persons to hear hat even in the days
Of slavery fully one half of the Southern
whites, including a large proportion of land