SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



ful, remarkable Lanterns on the Levee. Do not forget, 

 however, that long before his time, this system, already 

 loaded with debt, was thwarted and twisted during the 

 early years by powerful, sinister forces. After the war 

 the carpetbagger and his scalawag allies, white and 

 black, descended upon the South and for a long decade 

 picked the fragmentary assets bare, searing the proud, 

 brave spirit of Southerners with bitterness and hatred, 

 an appalling dread and a terrifying sense of injustice. 



During the half century between the surrender at 

 Appomattox and the German violation of Belgium, 

 Southern agriculture gradually recovered. But a debt- 

 ridden sharecropper system was a poor basis upon 

 which to establish a permanently flourishing crop econ- 

 omy. Exploitation of land and labor was always a ter- 

 rible temptation; often a dire necessity. The land was 

 mined and living conditions sank. Cotton followed the 

 Southwestward migration that had begun long before 

 1860, and while fertilizers helped stave off the evil day 

 of soil exhaustion, the end was eventually inevitable. 

 The foundation of the greatest agricultural area of the 

 country, the land itself, was washing away. 



The other natural resources of the South: the pine 

 forests; the coal and iron of the Birmingham district; 

 the natural gas of West Virginia, then Louisiana, finally 

 of Texas; the petroleum of Texas and Oklahoma; were 

 all developed by Northern capital. Not always, but far 

 too often, they were relentlessly exploited. No doubt 



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