m THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. [AtratrsT 



admitted; individuals may acquire wealth 

 hj this system of impoverishing culture, 

 though the amount of accumulation is still 

 much abated by the attendant waste of fer- 

 tility. But with the impoverishment of its 

 soil, a country, a people, must necessarily 

 and equally be impoverished. Individual 

 planters may desert the fields they have ex- 

 hausted in South Carolina, and find new 

 and fertile lands to exhaust in Alabama. 

 And when the like work of waste and deso- 

 lation is completed in Alabama, the spoil- 

 ers, (whether with or without retaining a 

 portion of the spoils,) may still proceed to 

 Texas or to California. But South Caro- 

 lina and Alabama, must nevertheless, suf- 

 fer and pay the full penalty of all the im- 

 poverishment so produced. The people 

 who remain to constitute these States re- 

 spectively, as communities, are not spared 

 one tittle of the enormous evils produced— 

 not only those of their own destructive la- 

 bours, but of all the like and previous la- 

 bours of their fellow citizens and predeces- 

 sors who had flod from the ruin which 

 they had helped to produce. And these 

 evils to the community and to posterity, 

 greater than could be eifected by the most 

 powerful and malignant foreign enemies of 

 any country, are the regular and deliberate 

 work of benevolent and intelligent men, of 

 worthy citizens, and true lovers of their 

 country. 



I will not pursue this uninviting theme 

 to its end — that lowest depression which 

 surely awaits every country and people sub- 

 jected to the efiects of the " land-killing" 

 policy. The actual extent of the progress 

 toward that end, throughout the Southern 

 States, ought to be sufficiently .appalling, 

 to induce a thorough change of procediare 

 and reformation of the agricultural system 

 of the South. 



In addition to all increase of the other 

 benefits of agricultural improvement which 

 have been cited — pecuniary, social, intellec- 

 tual and moral — there would be an equal 

 increase of political power, both at home 

 and abroad, which at this and the near ap- 

 proaching time, would be especially impor- 

 tant to the well being and the defence of 

 the Southern States, and the presen-ation 

 of their yet remaining rights, and always 

 vital interests. If Virginia, South Caro- 

 lina, and the other older slave-holding 

 States, had never been reduced in produc. 



tiveness, but, on the contrary, had been im- 

 proved according to their capacity, they 

 would have retained nearly all the popula- 

 tion they have lost by emigration, and that 

 retained population, with its increase, would 

 have given them more than a doubled num- 

 ber of representatives in the Congress of 

 the United States. This greater strength 

 would have afibrded abundant legislative 

 safeguards against the plunderings and op- 

 pressions of tariffs to protect Northern in- 

 terests — -compromises (so-called) to swell 

 Northern power— pension and bounty laws 

 for the same purposes— and all such acta 

 to the injury of the South, effected by the 

 greater legislative strength of the now more 

 powerful, and to ug, the hostile and predatory 

 States of the confederacy. Even after Vir- 

 ginia, with more than Esau-like fatuity, had 

 sacrificed her magnificent north-western ter- 

 ritory, which now constitutes five great and 

 fertile States, (and a surplus to make, by 

 legislative fraud, a large part of tue sixth 

 State, '^) and all of which are ftow among 

 the most hostile to the rights of the people^ 

 of the South — if Virginia had merely re- 

 tained and improved the fertility of her 

 present reduced surface, her people would 

 not have removed. Their descendants 

 would now be south of the Ohio, ready and 

 able to maintain the rights of the Southern 

 States, instead of a large proportion, as 

 now, serving to swell the numbers, and give 

 efficient power to our most malignant ene- 

 mies. The loss of both political and mili- 

 tary strength, to Virgiiiia and South Caro- 

 lina, are not less than all othet losses, the 



* A condition made by t!)e Government of 

 Virginia, in the act of cession, to the United 

 Stages of all her north- western territory, was 

 that this territory sbonAld afterwards be divided 

 into not more titan live new States* Five have 

 already been carved ont of this great doman, 

 Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wiscon- 

 sin, and a space of 22,336 square miles re* 

 mains, in the new territory of Minnesota, which 

 will hereafter constitnte so mach of anotbet 

 State, in violation of the act of cession by Vir- 

 ginia, and of the faith of the present Federal 

 Government, and in which space, with all ther 

 north-vv^estern territory, slavery was interdicted 

 by the ordinance of 1787, of the Confederation. 

 This space of 22,336 s/juare miles,- which ought 

 to have been included in the five anti-slavery 

 States already formed, but which will go to con- 

 stitute a sixth, is nearly as large as South Caro- 

 lina, and larger, by nearly 1000 square miles, 

 than the united surfaces of New Hampshire^ 

 Massachusetts and Connecticut. 



