108 
THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
Judge O’neall’S address, 
Delivered before the South Qarolina State Agri- 
cultural Society, December 29, 1842. 
Fellow Members: — -Circuinstances beyond 
my control have prevented me from bestowing 
that preparation upop the address, with which 
you charged me, whicit I desired to give it, and 
which it merited to receive. Rather, however, 
than wholly tail in the discharge ot a duty as- 
signed me, the work of a few hours, naked and 
unadorned, is presented to you. 
In approaching the consideration of agricul- 
ture, the mind naturally turns back and asks, 
what is its originl It is coeval with man him- 
self! His first position of primeval innocence 
and happiness was Jo dress and keep the garden 
of Eden. In this is ntaoifested the divine ap- 
pointment, that in tilling the earth is to be found 
man’s best and happiest employment. 
When man was tempted, fell and was banish- 
ed from the garden, the curse of God was not 
one of unmitigated severity. There was not 
only the hope of happiness beyond the grave, to 
console the erring father of men, but also an as- 
surance of an abundance to sustain this present 
life, to be obtained by labor well and properly 
applied, “la the sweat of thy face shall thou eat 
bread,''' \yas the announcement of his future des- 
tiny, and that of his matej and when it has 
been well and faithfully obeyed, by industrious 
occupadon, it has not only blessed individuals, 
but natmas. Indeed, in all ages of the world, 
national prosperity has depended upon the state 
of agriculture. Where it has flourished, eveiy 
thing else has also flourished. The palmiest 
days of the eastern world, were those when her 
soil was cultivated like a garden;, when Egypt 
could point to her whole surface,^ as a field of 
waving corn, irrigated by the waters of the 
Nile; when Syria could look upon her plains, 
teeming with luxuriance, as her terraced moun- 
tains, cro wned with the labors of man; and when 
Italy could sit down in the midst of her vine- 
yards, and her fields, and from her cornucopia 
pour their rich reward into the lap of the labor- 
ing husbandman. 
It is not, however,its only general benefit that 
it contributes to national prosperity. 1 have no 
hesitation in saying that it is the only rock on 
which a nation can build, in the hope of more 
than an ephemeral existence. Here reasoning 
is unimportant, let facts speak. 
Where are the great merchant cities of Tyre 
and Sidon? They are rocks on which fisher- 
men dry their nets! Where is Babylon? She 
has perished! Where is Palmyra? Covered, 
with all her glories, in the sands of the desert! 
Where is Thebes, with her hundred gates? She 
“was and is not,” is the answer of history. — 
Egypt, the victim of tyranny and misrule under 
her Coptic, Grecian, Roman and Mohoramodan 
rulers, still knows her “years of plenty;” and by 
her agricultural riches, has enabled her tyrant 
to breast the proud domination ol his own master. 
Syria, trodden under foot by men who are 
more merciless than the beasts of the forest, can 
still point to spots of her soil, which know the 
husbandman’s care and culture, and which 
bring forth abundantly; and to her mountain 
fastnesses for that tree spirit which was born, 
nurtured and bred in the pure air of the cultiva- 
ted fields, and which, in its manhood’s prime, 
is yet to burst, as il they were of tow, the chains 
ot Turkish slavery, and to clothe her again 
with that luxuriance which denoted her as a 
“land flowing with milk and honey.” 
China, with her millions upon millions, on 
land and water, the oldest nation of the world, 
has been alone sustained by her agriculture; for 
her commerce is only the privilege of a few, and 
has neither fed nor clothed the great body of her 
p,?ople. When, at this moment, England is 
thun^lering at her gates for the purpose of com- 
pelling her to pursue an unholy traffic, her only 
safety is in the immense masses of her people, 
and their capability of providing food for them- 
selves, and thus overcoming, by patient endu- 
rance, a cruel and unjust war. 
Continental Europe, ravaged as she has been 
by the armies of England, France, Austria, 
Rrussia and Prussia, points to her laboring 
peasantry, and in the language of Goldsmith, 
exclaims, 
“Princes lords may flourish and may fade, 
A breath can make them, and a breath has made; 
But a bold peasantry, a nation’s pride, 
When opce destroyed, can never he supplied.” 
Her agriculture has sustained her tottering 
thrones, and her people cut down and apparent- 
ly annihilated, have sprung up again, like the 
armed men of Cadmus, at her bidding. But 
her merchant cities have not been equally suc- 
cessful. Venice, stript of her gorgeous robes, 
is no longer the bride of the Adriatic! She has 
not utterly perished, like Tadmorof the wider- 
ness, or Bozrah; but her canals and her store- 
houses are no longer thronged and filled by the 
tj-^de of the world. 
England, on whose dominions the sun never 
sets, has attained hej proud eminence more by 
her agricultural resources than in any other 
way. True, her commerce has whitened every 
sea, and every breeze has borne to her untold 
treasure, still the results of almost every foot of 
her surface, tilled by experienced and skilful 
agriculturists, have lurnished the means which 
equipped and sent forth her gallant barques to 
every clime. This too, has been the case when 
her agriculture has been fettered by unwise le- 
gislation, and when that unholy principle which 
devotes the many to the few*has been enforced. 
In America, the forest, the soil, and the luxu- 
riant productions which a little labor can se- 
cure, all unite in recommending agriculture to 
us as our first, greatest and best pursuit; yet 
how little heed has heretofore been paid to skil- 
ful husbandry? Of late, it is true, so much 
has been said, and so well said, to recommend 
it to the respectful consideration of every one, 
that little remains, which can be considered new 
or interesting. Still, notwithstanding this, ag- 
riculture, with us in South Carolina, is a ne- 
glected science, with few real followers, and 
with scarcely one capable of teaching its sim- 
plest elements. Other sciences are crowded and 
traced out and pursued to their most legitimate 
results. The earth, in the mean time, like an 
indulgent mother, is treated with constant ne- 
glect. She flings her treasures into the laps of 
improvident husbandry, which in return leaves 
her bosom to be furrowed deeper and deeper, by 
the rains and frosts and snows of winter. In a 
few years, she is clothed with the sere and yel- 
low garments of sterility, and the occupant 
seeks some other genial spot on which he can 
plant, and from which he can gather abundance, 
until exhausted nature sinks into repose and 
barrenness. This is no fancy sketch, it is the 
result of practical husbandry, as carried out in 
the cotton planting States, and especially in 
South Carolina. Is this the necessary result? 
Science, knowledge, practical skill, enlightened 
as it should be, answer no! The cultivation of 
the earth, with rotations of crops, and intervals 
of rest, is just as practicable in the cotton grow- 
ing States, as it is elsewhere. Let us restrain 
ourselves and recollect, that less land, well plant- 
ed, well manured, and well cultivated, will make 
larger results, than larger quantities, badly plant- 
ed, unaided by manure, andimperfectly cultivated. 
Cotton land, as level as can be selected, can be 
more easily preserved. If none other than roll- 
ing land can be procured, then horizontal plow- 
ing and ditching will do much to save it. — 
But that policy, which leaves the cotton beds 
and furrows to stand during the winter, will 
soon prove how disastrous it is, by precipitating 
the rich loam of the hill sides into the valleys 
below. How much wisdom would there be in 
ploughing against and around the whole surface 
of a cotton field, as soon as the crop was gath- 
ered. The soil would thus be saved, and the 
land would be in better heart for the succeeding 
crop. Some of the formerly rich hills of the 
Catawba and Broad River, are now seamed 
with gullies, and surmounted with irremediable 
barrenness. The traveller would ask how has 
this happened? The answer is before us, in the 
cultivation which our ancestors followed, and 
which we are still pursuing. 
In the level lands of the middle and lower 
country, there is no excuse for the sterility 
which abounds. Nature has here lavishly pro- 
vided for the wants of man, in the teeming lux- 
uriance which greets his efforts, but he forgets 
that the earth, like man, may become worn out, 
by being over-tasked. The remedy is at hand, 
manure; and in most sections, marl abounds; it 
is only necessary to seek and apply it, and the 
earth exchanges old age and sterility for youth 
and abundance. In the upper districts, this last 
advantage, so far as we have been able to- ex- 
amine, does not exist; still, in many parts of 
the country, inexhaustible beds of limestone are 
found. In Laurens district, on Rabun’s Creek, 
nine miles southwest of Laurens C. H. on the 
plantation of John S. James, Esq., is a most 
extensive quarry of fine limestone, of very 
much the same character with that at the Lime- 
stone Springs, in Spartanburg district. It is in 
a fine section for agriculture. The lands are 
rich loam or red clay. The lime in their very 
midst vdll make them richer and more produc- 
tive than they ever w’ere. For wheat, the land 
of that neighborhood is as well, if not better, 
adapted than any with which I am acquainted, 
and if the lime, which is so accessible to their 
owners, w'as well applied, it weruld make them 
produce some thirty, some sixty, and some an 
hundred fold. The same vein running from 
norlheast to southwest, is found at the Lime- 
stone Springs, and through the whole region 
from Broad River to King’s Mountain. What 
fertility might be given 1o the thin and compara- 
tively barren soils of this whole region by the 
judicious application of the mineral treasure in 
her bosom! In the hands of New England en- 
terprize, it would be as a garden. Why not so 
in ours? Simply because necessity has not, as 
yet, taught us the value of assisting nature in 
her attempts to bless us. 
That there is a better prospect ahead, is evi- 
denced by the great interest beginning to be felt 
by farmers in Agricultural Societies. They 
are no longer left to be managed by lawyers, 
doctors, clergymen and educated men alc ^. — 
The tillers of the earth, that noble yeomanry, who 
earn their daily bread by the sweat of their 
brows, are members, and are bringing to theory 
and book farming all the aids of practical hus- 
bandry. The two united are w’hat we want. — 
In the exchange of ideas thus with one another 
and the correction of faults by experience, we 
may hope that every year is doing something to 
benefit the State. 
One great object to be attained is, to arrest 
and prevent that disastrous spirit of migration 
which, in twelve years, has carried from us one 
third of our wealth and population. Like the 
discoverers of America, “gold, more gold,” has 
been the unceasing demand of our people. — 
When South Carolina yielded nearly SSOO for 
every laborer, still it was not enough; and like 
the Indian, pointing his Spemish conquerors to 
the interior for the richer mines, so cupidity 
pointed our people to the richer fields and prai- 
ries of the southwest, as more and more pro- 
ductive. There they expected to find the el do- 
rado, but the chase has been in vain; and the 
conviction is beginning to roll back upon us,that 
we need no better country than our own cher- 
ished home, our own, our native State, South 
Carolina, if we will bring to her service all the 
aids of enterprize, industry and intelligence 
which we possess. Contemplate the scene 
around us, and we may well ask, is there, in 
these times of disaster, trial and difliculty, any 
portion of the world better off than South Car- 
olina? None! Here distress is partial; and in 
the other States of , the Union, (except North 
Carolina,) it is universal and overwhelming. — 
How is it so? South Carolina has neglected 
her agricultural resources; crippled herself in 
many vain and visionary undertakings; still she 
had but “to arise and shake herself as she was 
wont,” and all was well. Whence this com- 
parative prosperity? The answer is, our faith 
