Year: 1875




Ex-Governor Robert NJ Patton, of Ala
bama, member of the Board of Finance Of
the Centennial Exhibition, and Mr.. Robert
Tyler have issued an address to the people
of Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana
and Tennessee, urging them to take an active
part in the Centennial Exhibition next year,
and to help the project by State and individual
subscriptions. Messrs. Patton and Tyler
say very justly, that the success of the Exhi-
bition is no longer a question, and represent
to their constituents the great Importance to
the South of being adequately represented
by fine show of its peculiar products. No
such opportunity to make known the great
natural wealth, the remarkable, but for the
most part undeveloped, resources of that
part of our country, will offer again for years.
1t is the opinion of all careful observers who
have lately visited the Southern States that
their future is uncommonly promising.
With free labor their natural resources will
within the next fifteen or twenty years expe-
rience a very remarkable development
Hitherto the South has been almost entirely
an agricultural region; but even its agricul-
ture has been but very imperfectly devel-
oped. The Southwestern States, in
cluding Mississippi, parts of Alabama
and Georgia and Arkansas, Louisiana
and Texas contain at this time the greatest
body of unopened fertile soil on this conti-
nent-millions of acres which, when they
are brought into subjection, will produce
sugar, cotton and tobacco enough to make
the South the wealthiest region in the world
But, besides this, the Southern States have
very great deposits of the best iron ore in the
world, immense undeveloped coal fields and
much other mineral wealth Moreover, a fair
exhibition of the results of the cotton manu-
facture alone in Georgia, South Carolina and
Mississippi at the Centennial could not fail
to surprise capitalists in the North and
Europe and draw their attention to the re-
markably steady success Of this branch of
manufacturing.


But while the material advantages to the
South of the Centennial will be great, Gov
ernor Patton is quite right in considering the
political advantages as still more important.
1t is quite evident that the Centennial is to
be the occasion for general Misunderstanding
between the sections. At Philadelphia next
year the North and South will meet face to
face, and nothing should be omitted which can
help to bring the greatest possible number of
Northern and Southern men together there.
1t is the interest of the whole country
that the Centennial shall be in this respect
very great success. Its chief importance is,
as truly national assemblage, gathering of
the people from all the States, grand COM
vention of all the sections-not only to see
what each produces and makes, but to look
in each others faces, to talk over the future,
to discuss and compare notes, to put aside
old and useless grievances, just as the children
of family meet at Christmas, at Thanksgiv-
ing around one board, and there compare re-
suits of past efforts and revive old affections
and old recollections. That is the true use
of the Centennial, and we are glad to hear
that in this view it excites more and more
general interest all over the South, as it GER
tainly does in the North and West.