The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1885-10-21
And Some Impressions Form
ed and Incidents Picked
Up
In the Land of the Cotton and
the Cane.
The Subjects ImpOrtanCe-The Growth
OF the South Since the War-In-
creased IndUStry-A Social Com
parisOn- Manufactures and
Agriculture,
81 MAnoog. TaEAs. OoL. lOLh. Iss5.

SAN MARCOS, TEXAS, Oct. 10th, 1885.
Mn. ED1ToR The subject I tackle to-
day is less threadbare than that Of the
Cinnamon and Indian, but presume Cand
regret to do SOY that it will not awaken the
interest of the reader as did either Of my
previous humble efforts, and yet it's impor-
tance must not be for moment doubted,
and IT, from the standpoint occupy, I
eau be of any service in making any small
part Of the one great section better under
stand the other great section, shall feel
that have not written in vain.
Being born in the North 1, as is natural,
inherited the radical views Of the mass Of
the Northern people in regard to the people
and institutions Of the South, and as such
party first set foot within the land Of
the cotton and the cane. In common with
too many Of our Northern cousins, 1
blamed the many for the faults of the few,
and it seemed scarcely possible that south
of Mason and Dixop's line should find
warm supporters of the Government, and
men who wore the grey who could yet
realize that they were Americans, and feel
the same pride in gazing upon the stars
and stripes that I can feel myself.
War is always demoralzing, and if the
accounts we read of how the devasting
hand of Mars had swept industry, labor,
capital and hope from q section in four
years of terror be true, then over and over
again should the South be lauded Within
the last three years, and since have been
big enough to see it myself, can fairly
see the industrial South grow. From the
smoldering ruins left by the victorious
armies of the Federal Government, have
! grown up factories, workshops, foundries,
and cotton congresses. Machine building,
almost an unknown industry in the South
in ante-bellum times, is growing every day.
The lordly plantations have been divided
up into small farms and each year the
cotton plant sprouts and grows, blossoms
and ripens as in those other days when
slave labor alone titled it and gathered its
snowy bolls. People who have lived all
their lives in the South say her industrial
growth has been more rapid during the
past four or FIVE years than at any time
since the war, and the people Of the South
are encouraged and stimulated to new
efforts and increased enterprise. When We
consider the disadvantages under which
she has labored since her conquered sons
turned sadly homeward from the AppOmat
tox, we can not fail to feel that to her be-
longs great credit, and no party or sectional
feeling should prevent we Of the Nortl
from Offering her every encouragement il
our power.
Northern people expect too much of the
South. We must not expect them to de-
preoiate a cause for which they barred theil
breasts to the balls and bayonets to the
brave and determined legions Of the North
We should remember that when any mar
takes his life in his hand to sustain his sid,
of an argument he must be deeply con
vinced that he is right. I feel that car
blame any southern man for continued hos
tility to the Union, and failure to accep
the situation in a way that common senst
would prompt, but 1 have learned tha
time alone will remove the remembrance,
of that great strife, and that death alone
will remove from the participants therein
the honest belief that they were doing thei
duty. Man is but a creature Of circum
stances. I have lived, slept and eater
among the southern people Of the presen
day, and fatter myself know something
about them. The old Southern chiValry'
that lived once in name and not in reality
now lives not in name alone but in realit,
also. Their hearts are warm and thei
ways are hospitable and sociable to a degree
the people of Ohio can not imagine. TIT
hollow, matter-of-form shoddy aristocrac,
of the North is unknown in the South, ant
the stranger within the gates Of any south
ern city will be treated with the respec
due a gentleman if his intelligence and be
havior indicate him to be SUCH
In the North every stranger is considere,
a villain until he is proven otherwise. il
the South he is treated as a gentleman unit
he proves himself a villain. For my par
(and am deeply ashamed to own iD
would feel much more at home to-day il
Vicksburg, Miss, than 1 would In Hillr
boro, Ohio, and doubt not but that if
should drop into some town l. never say
, before-say Mobile, Ala would fee
mcuh more at home there in a weeks tim
than would under similar circumstance
In Cleveland or Buffalo.
When a strange young man makes hi