51 
, 
[ Rep. Ko. 564. ] 
States in corn and wheat, by cultivating the vine and the mulberry, and 
that, hence, many are forced to become manufacturers and mariners; but, 
it is very certain that the planters of the warm Southern Atlantic States 
can more than compensate themselves for the superior productiveness of 
the Southwestern States in rice, tobacco, and cotton, by cultivating the 
cassave Jatropha, the cochineal Cactus, and the henequen Agave ; and that 
the sugar palm, on the poorest soils of Georgia, will be more profitable 
than the sugar cane on the richest loams of Louisiana. As we possess all 
the soils and climate, with the best people and institutions, of the world, 
we have neither the necessity nor the desire, nor the power of European 
agriculturists, to force the production of similar plants in inferior climates 
and on inferior soils. On the contrary, an American cultivator must select 
the naturally most productive soil and climate for a given plant, or the nat¬ 
urally most productive plant for a given climate and soil. Hitherto our 
agriculturists have preferred changing the place of location to varying the 
object of cultivation ; and hence, the fertile valley of the Ohio and Missis¬ 
sippi furnishes the cheapest and most abundant kipply of our present sta¬ 
ples, both for the domestic and foreign market; Although the only form¬ 
idable rivals of our Western and Southwestern cultivators are themselves, 
they have already reached the extreme of over-production for foreign con¬ 
sumption. Our Southern planters, on their inferior soils, cannot, hence, 
any longer continue the profitable production of similar staples; and, by 
augmenting the number and capital of Southwestern planters, they only 
injure the latter without benefiting themselves. They must, therefore, 
seek new staples of cultivation in the naturally most productive plants 
for their reputed barren soils. Rich and poor, fertile and steril, are only 
relative epithets in their application to agriculture; and hence, the poorest 
soils for rice and cotton may be the richest soils for cassave and henequen, 
and the most steril soils for the tobacco plant and the sugar cane may be 
the most fertile soils for the cochineal cactus and the sugar palm. “ Palm 
sugar (not cane sugar) sujtplies the great consumption of the people of the 
East Indies, in the poorer and more mountainous countries’^—“as the palms 
are the produce of poor soils, and the labor is so small and the quantity 
of saccharine matter from them so great, that palm sugar is produced at 
about half the cost of cane sugar, of the same degree of purity, that is, for 
something less than one penny per pound.” 
Our present tropical staples require a costly, troublesome cultivation; 
demand a thick vegetable mould ; and impoverish the richest soils in which 
they are planted. , 
But the future tropical staples of the South will need only a cheap, sim¬ 
ple cultivation, will cpntent themselves with bare sandy earth, and will 
actually enrich the poorest surfaces on which they spontaneously grow* 
And as our tropical rice, tobacco, and cotton, on equal soils, are absolutely 
more productive than in their native climates, we may confidently antici¬ 
pate that our Southern States will enjoy an equal superiority in the culture 
of tropical cassave, cochineal, and henequen. 
Reciprocal prosperity being thus restored, our Southern brethren will 
cease to calculate the value of the Union. 
The possibility of employing the voluntary labor of our white citizens 
in tropical agriculture, becomes especially important from the considera¬ 
tion that the United States embrace the only portion of the world in which 
the best laborers and the best institutions can be combined in the cultiva¬ 
tion of tropical productions. 
