THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



357 



whole frame and structure are new, unfamiliar 

 and distasteful to liim. 



Those of us, gentlemen, who have witnessed 

 the scene can never forget, how year after year 

 we beheld the anxious struggling crowd, press- 

 ing forward through sunshine and through 

 storm, over mountains and valleys, in long 

 continuous crowds of carriages and waggons, 

 rich and poor, young and old, white and black, 

 master and slave, hastening with impetuous 

 ardor and zeal to this fancied El Dorado and 

 Elysium of the West, till we seemed, as we 

 beheld the stream, to be left desolate and alone, 

 amid the depopulated and abandoned scenes of 

 our youth. 



The drama has ended ! 'Tis but an occa- 

 sional emigrant we meet. Now and then a 

 solitary family may be seen on their pathway 

 to the West. And wherefore ? It is, gentle- 

 men, that experience and observation have 

 taught our people that the high advantages, 

 the great benefits, the prospects of immediate 

 wealth and fortune that filled the imaginations 

 and inspired the hopes of those who have gone 

 from among us, have not been realized. They 

 now begin to see and realize what was not ap- 

 preciated or understood before — that in the 

 progress of society, in the march of time, the 

 Atlantic slope of our continent possessed ad- 

 vantages, that in many essential respects sur- 

 passed all other portions of our country for the 

 residence and habitation of man — that its cli- 

 mate, its soil, its bays, its rivers, its moun- 

 tains, its proximity to the sea, placed it in 

 stronger and closer connexion with the true 

 elements of human productiveness, than any 

 inland or central portion of the continent what- 

 ever. They see the commerce of the country, 

 the products of the soil, of the mine, of the 

 forest, of the rivers, of human industry in 

 every form in which it produces values, are 

 pouring themselves from the centre, and accu- 

 mulating their treasures on the Atlantic cir- 

 cumference everywhere — that manufacturers 

 are establishing themselves on those streams 

 which most directly and rapidly discharge them- 

 selves into the waters of the ocean — that arti- 

 ficial lines are superseding natural ones — that 

 by the nearest and most direct route they may 

 also carry their tribute to the sea — that agri- 

 culture is springing into new life and vigor along 

 its once sterile and depopulated shores — that 

 natural fertility and cheapness of soil do not 

 counterbalance the advantages possessed by 

 this Atlantic region. 



The very emigration that weakened us for a 

 season and concentrated large numbers in the 

 West, with its rich soils and powerful energies 

 in agricultural productions, is strengthening us 



by being thrown back on the Atlantic States 

 for a market. In their emigration to the West, 

 our people found a point of doubtful, and at 

 most, of temporary superiority. The more rapid 

 and greater the productiveness of that region, 

 the sooner would the reaction occur, and the 

 clearer and more obvious the superiority we 

 possess, be disclosed. 



This natural superiority had long since been 

 understood by the great intellects of that time 

 with George Washington at their head. They 

 perceived, that the natural outlet of the valley 

 of the Mississippi was not in many respects an 

 adequate, or the most advantageous channel 

 through which these boundless productions were 

 destined to reach a market. 



These advantages in our position are now 

 fully disclosing themselves every where, and 

 hence the impulse given to the Atlantic States 

 since the census of 1840. 



They, gentlemen, are wise, who seeing these 

 things, reach out their hands and grasp them, 

 and hold them, and appropriate them to the 

 great purposes for which they were designed — 

 to the purposes of wealth, and strength, and 

 numbers, and security; and they are unwise 

 who permit them to be appropriated by others, 

 to impoverish, to embarrass, to control our 

 people. 



The Western emigant in his pursuit of for- 

 tune, finds, as if by magic, his face turned to 

 the East. His exertions are now employed to 

 make cheap and direct means of transportation 

 for his products to the true point of profit, and 

 a market, in the very land he had left behind. 

 It is not the East struggling to bring back the 

 West. It is the emigrant and the descendant 

 of the emigrant struggling to reach the point 

 from which they or their fathers had departed, 

 for they too have discovered that these are the 

 great points of agricultural and commercial 

 wealth. Every means of communication with 

 the interior and the West is but another chan- 

 nel and conduit through which the refluent 

 wave of production and wealth is rolled back 

 upon its source, and this is the current, the 

 strongest force of emigration cannot stem. 



From the strength and velocity of the tide 

 of emigration fifteen years ago, we would have 

 inferred that the roads and canals which pass 

 to the West from the Atlantic States, would 

 have reduced all to absolute exhaustion, in 

 their important elements of numbers, capital 

 and strength. 



But how small the number of those found 

 passing along them as emigrants in the South- 

 ern States. Northwardly they are crowded- 

 principally, however, with the foreign popula- 



