354 



FARMERS' REGISTER— SEA ISLAND COTTON. 



culty of separating the wool from the seed, but 

 has no other injurious effect. Whetlier this change 

 is in obedience to some slow, moving, but irresisti- 

 ble law of nature, applying as well to the vegeta- 

 ble as to the animal world, or arises from the in- 

 termingling of the farina of cottons of different 

 varieties having in some districts been carelessly 

 brought together, must be left to time and careful 

 observation to determine. 



The Sea Island Cotton of Georgia, and of 

 course of Carolina, is deiived from the jburth and 

 last variety of cotton in the above classification. 

 It would be perennial if the climate would permit 

 it, and is so when the lands are new, and the soils 

 warm and favorable. I have known it in new and 

 warm alluvial soils to survive for five years; and 

 have olten seen it vindicate its claim to its charac- 

 ter of arboreum or tree cotton, in the height to 

 which it grew, tori have measured plants that 

 were eighteen feet high, and that put on the cJia- 

 racter rather of trees than shrubs. But when the 

 cotton grows so large it yields no return to the cul- 

 tivator. The winter finds it still covered with 

 blossoms or unripe fruit, and a single night of freez- 

 ing weather, which may be expected by the first 

 of November, blights at once, as well the fruit as 

 the flowers and stems. 



When this fourth variety of cotton was first in- 

 troduced, this was the case, and I do not remem- 

 ber, (for I remember the time well,) that a single 

 pod rewarded the attempts in giving promise to 

 the future. But the winter of 1785 and 1786 were 

 fortunately mild, the cotton under experiment had 

 generally been planted in new, and warm, and 

 fruitful soils — frost rarely penetrates far into the 

 earth in such situations in Georgia. The roots of 

 the cotton had been sheltered and protected by the 

 earth from the cold, and that life which had slum- 

 bered in the roots of the plants during winter, was 

 awakened into activity in the spring. The cotton 

 stalks which had been killed in the winter were 

 cut down to the surface of the ground. The shoots 

 that grew up from the roots of the previous year 

 were earlier in their growth, did not rise so high, 

 sooner blossomed, and sooner bore fruit. The se- 

 cond year the cotton bore and ripened its fruit, the 

 seed was in some degree acclimated, and the first 

 steps taken which were to end in a few years in 

 making the United States emphatically the cotton 

 country. This great revolution in tfie commerce 

 and manufactures of nations was effected by a few 

 thousand people, scattered through the two South- 

 ern States of the American Union, not cheered on 

 upon their labors by the bounties of one nation or 

 the diminished duties of another; but rather li\'ing 

 and laboring under the law of two great empires, 

 who alternately sent increased duties and commer- 

 cial restrictions, long embargoes, and war, and na- 

 tional tariffs, to oppress, and restrain, and control 

 their labors — those labors which were to 2:ive to 

 ten thousand ships their freight — to millions of 

 men, Avomen and children labor and the bread 

 which it brought, and to n)illions more a cheaper 

 covering than they ever wore. 



But we will proceed to the objects of your in- 

 quiry and leave bad and blundering statesmen to 

 the wrath of him, who visits the sins of the fathers 

 upon the children to the third and fourth genera- 

 tion. 



The provinces from Virginia to Georgia had 

 been planted by the mother country for her OAvn 



purposes. The persons who had emigrated to 

 these plantations had gone to them with the hope 

 of repairing or improving their condition; neither 

 laws or religion had driven them there. Their in- 

 terests still united them, and these feelings bound 

 them to their own, or to their fathers' ancient 

 home. When thereJore the war of the American 

 Revolution overtook them, the abstractions Avhich 

 were to break to pieces a great nation, and which 

 for the first time perhaps in modern ages, had 

 originated with the rulers and not with the ruled. 

 These abstractions divided the southern colonists 

 as thev had divided the people of England; and 

 ahhough none telt that it was right that the de- 

 scendants of Anglo-Saxon men should be taxed 

 without being represented in the Parliament that 

 taxed them, yet many thought tlie distant evils that 

 would result from this course was to be borne 

 rather than the immediate evil of civil war and its 

 many consequences. Friends weretherctbre alie- 

 nated from each other, and families broken asun- 

 der in their tenderest relations — but when peace 

 came and individuals found themselves scattered 

 that were once near each other — earlier remem- 

 brances were recalled — messages and letters began 

 to be interchanged, and the position in which the 

 revolutionary war had severally left them became 

 known to each other. England rather remember- 

 ing the past than looking to the future, seemed to 

 be desirous of placing faithtul sentinels at the two 

 extremes of the American Republic. She there- 

 fore from her many colonies, selected Nova Scotia 

 and the Bahama islands as the only colonics where 

 a provision in land was to be made for the loyal 

 men who had clung to her fortune through blood 

 and in ruin. These provinces offered no induce- 

 ments to the agriculturist at the time, but Provi- 

 dence more kind than jiovernment, was about to 

 produce a great change in human affairs. Ark- 

 riixht had designed and perfected his spinning ma- 

 chine, between 1783 and 1785, and when the 

 southern colonists were landed with their faithfiil 

 slaves upon the rocks of the Bahama islands, in 

 looking around for something upon which they 

 might em])loy themselves, the new interest which 

 cotton had awakened, in consequence of Ark- 

 right's machinerv", reached them. Probably the 

 Board of Trade invited, and may have aided them 

 upon this subject, but at least they obtained the 

 best cotton seed that was any where to be found, 

 to commence their labors with. There is a small 

 island in the Caribbean sea called Anguilla, which 

 had been long known to produce the best cotton of 

 the West Indies. The new settlers in the Baha- 

 ma islands procured cotton seed to commence the 

 culture with fi'om Anguilla. They had in the year 

 1785 introduced the culture of cotton u[)on several 

 of the Bahama islands successllilly, particularly 

 upon Long Island and Exuma. The father of 

 the writer of this paper, in the winter of 1785 re- 

 ceived from Col. Kellsall, then a planter upon Ex- 

 uma, a bag of cotton seed. Several other persons 

 in Georgia received about the same time cotton 

 seed from their old associates or friends. Wishing 

 to be particular, the writer will state what he re- 

 members: among the persons who did receive cot- 

 ton seed was Josiah Tattnall of Savannah, from 

 his father then Surveyor General of the Bahama 

 islands. From the cotton seed transmitted that 

 winter in ^all parcels from the Bahama islands, 

 has grown up the sea island cotton of Georgia and 



