224: 



A friend has furnished me with an illustration as 

 to these lands. In the autumn of 1854 he had oc 

 casion to visit a gentleman named Seely, living 

 about two miles from Perryville, on the Susque- 

 hanna, in Maryland. He there owned and occupied 

 a farm of 200 acres, on which was a stone house 

 standing on a knoll some distance from the main 

 road, and approached by a broad and handsome 

 carnage way. In conversation with Mr. Seely, he 

 stated that he formerly resided in Philadelphia, 

 where he had been engaged in business. He had 

 bought the land five years previously for $15 per 

 acre, or $3,000 for the whole farm. 



The buildings, consisting of house, barn, cow 

 house, wagon-house, &c., were in tolerably good 

 condition at the time of purchase, but the fencing 

 was poor, and the soil almost entirely exhausted by 

 slave labor. The former owner was the possessor 

 of thirty slaves, of various ages and conditions, 

 whose labor had been employed in the cultivation 

 of this farm ; but both they and their master had 

 become literally starved out for want of proper 

 management. When the owner sold, he took his 

 slaves and purchase money with him, to seek an 

 other locality, there to repeat the same exhausting 

 operation. 



At the time of my friend s visit, the whole ap 

 pearance of the farm had undergone a great and 

 favorable change. Everywhere the fences were in 

 good order, the land had been resuscitated by care 

 ful cultivation, and the crops of all kinds were 

 abundant. Mr. Seely stated that his wheat crop 



