FREE-SOIL GERMANS IN VIRGINIA. 367 



factory system would not be removed, nor could northern 

 intelligence and energy be prevented from lending itself 

 to the extension of these newer branches of industry, 

 through the more abundant and obedient labour of the 

 south. Still the public opinion of the northern States, 

 and the annual discussions and legislation of Congress, 

 would operate as powerful salutary restraints, and would 

 check the evils of a bad system as much, probably, as any 

 other we can now contemplate, 



There is one interesting and encouraging circumstance 

 in connection with this subject of slavery, however, to 

 which I advert with the greater pleasure, as it serves to 

 illustrate, at the same time, the relations which geological 

 structure bears to agricultural capabilities, and to the 

 social state. In Pennsylvania, as I have already 

 observed, there are many Germans. These long ago 

 settled themselves on the wheat-growing lands in Chester, 

 and the adjoining counties along the western slopes of the 

 Blue Ridge in that State. Constantly receiving acces 

 sions, both by natural increase and by yearly immigra 

 tion, they have spread themselves extensively down the 

 same great valley towards the south-west. 



The grain country occupied by these settlers forms a 

 sloping valley of mixed limestone and clay rocks the 

 Trenton limestone, lower Silurian, and the overlying 

 Utica slates which stretches in a south-west direction 

 through Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and, 

 still farther south, behind the Carolinas, into Tennessee. 

 Situated between opposing ridges of the Alleghanies, or 

 rather between the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies pro 

 per, this long valley is somewhat difficult of access from 

 certain parts of the Atlantic coast ; but the Germans 

 having first settled upon it, in the more accessible latitude 

 of Philadelphia, became familiar with and attached to 

 the soil. And, as is so often the case in agricultural 

 communities, in regard to soils they know and are skilled 



