12 DR. spofford's address. 



land more fertile than your granite hills offers its abundance ol 

 cotton, sugar, rice and corn, but among these rich plantations, 

 the malaria sweeps with the besoni of destruction, and hundreds 

 of our enterprising young men go annually to gain property, and 

 take the fearful chance of laying their dust, where even a grave 

 cannot be prepared but fills with water before it receives its 

 tenant. 



A clergyman of this State,* who was seized with this spirit 

 of emigration, some years ago, aud has Indulged it to his heart's 

 content. Informs us that the villages on the Arkansas and Red 

 rivers are uninhabitable during summer, and the people leave 

 them and build camps in the woods, and on higher grounds, to 

 escape certain death. He spent one summer in one of these 

 encampments, battling with the mpsquitoes, and resolving to im- 

 prove the first moment of escape to a more northern climate. 



Over all this southern region of the United States you might 

 search in vain for an assembly like this. An industrious yeo- 

 manry is there unknown. There the taskmaster brandishes his 

 lasli, and the slaves labor beneath a burning sun, curse the race 

 that fatten and luxuriate upon their toil, and whet the appetite 

 of revenge and the scythe of death for a day of future retribution. 



Fathers and mothers of New England ! Could all the gold of 

 IMexico Induce you to fix your domlcil, and leave your children, 

 where their only chance of safety was the prospect of holding a 

 population of two and a half millions, and their rapidly increasing 

 posterity in a state of perpetual bondage ? with an equal chance 

 that thirty years will turn the scale, deluge the country in blood, 

 and give the white population only the desperate alternailves of 

 death, slavery, or exile ? 



Comparing the higher regions of the great valley of the Mis- 

 sissippi with our own State, we shall also find its advantages so 

 nearly overbalanced by disadvantages, that a wise man will feel 

 reconciled to the soil and climate of New England. 



The immense vegetation which annually decays in a rich 

 alluvial soil, saturated with water, is sure in a warm or new 

 cOJntry, to render the air unhealthy, and produce bilious ^nd 



*Mr. FUrV 



