Newspaper Page Text
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VOLUME XL1Y.];
MILLED SEVILLE, GEORGIA, SEPTEMBER 21, 1873.
NUMBER!),
extracts from
piiEMILM LIST
—FOR—
GBOKGXik
STATE FAIR!
COMMENCING
INVITED SPEECH
OX A
NEW S Y S T E M
OK
LAND AND LABOR FOR THE SOUTH
BEFORE TIIE
Georgia State Agricultural Society,
In the University Chapel, at Athens,
August Uni, 1S73.
By WILLIAM McKINLEY, of MilledcTeville.
OCTOBER 27th, 1873!
-A 1 —
CENTRAL CITY PARK,
MAC OH, HA.
$ 50
50
50
on acre,
200
For best aero of clover hay
For best acre lucerne hay
For best acie of native grass
For best acre pea-vine bay
For best acre of corn forage
For largest yiei.i of Southern cane,
For best and largest display garden vegetables..
For largest yield upland, one neve
For best crop lot upland short staple cotton, not
less than five bales —... 500
Fur best one bale upland short staple cotton 100
(and 25 cents per pound, for the bale)
For best bale upland long staple cotton 100
(and 25 cents per pound paid for the hale)
Fnrtho best oil painting, by a Georgia lady 100
For the best display of paintings, drawings., etc.,
by the pupils of one school or college 100
Fur tne best made silk, dress, done by a lady of
Georgia not a dress-maker 50
For best made home spun dress, done by a iudy
of Georgia .ml a dress-maker 50
For best piece of te.pestry in worsted and tljs.s, l,y
a iady o! Georgia 50
For best furnished baby basket and complete set
of infant clothes, by u iudy of Georgia 50
For handsomest set of Mouchoir-case, glove box
and pin cushion, made by a lady of Georgia, 50
For best half dozen pairs of cotton socks, knit by
a lady over fifty years of age, (in gold) 25
For best half dozen pairs of cotton socks, knit by
a girl under ten years of age {in gold) 25
For the finest and largest display of female band-
ierafi, embracing needlework, embroidery,
knitting, crocheting, raised work, etc., by one
lady
For the best combination horse
For the best saddle horse
For the best style harness hor
For the finest an 1 best matched double team. 100
For the best stallion, with ten of his colts by his
side 250
Fur the best gelding 250
For the best six-mulo team - 250
For the best single mule 100
For the best milch cow 100
For the best bill 100
For the best ox team 100
For the best sow with pigs 50
For the largest and finest collection of domestic
fowls 100
Far the best bushel of corn... 25
For the best bushel of peas 25
For the best bushel of wheat 25
Fertile best bushel of sweet potatoes 25
Forthe best bushel ot Irish potatoes.. 25
For the heat fifty stalks of sugar cane 50
For the best result mi one acre in auy forage crop. 150
... 100
100
ltiO
100
100
For tlielargest yield of corn on one acre.....
For tlie largest yield of wheat oil one acre-.
For the largest yield of oats on one acre
For the largest yield of rye on one acre --
For the best result on one acre, ia any cereal crop
For the best, display made on tile grounds, by any
dry goods merchant
For the best display made by any grocery mer
chant .
For the largest and best di.-play of green house
plants, by one person or firm...
for the best brass hand, nut less than ten per
formed
(and $50 extra per day for their music.)
Fur the best Georgia pldw stock
For the best Georgia made wagon (two horse)..
for the best Georgia made cart
for the best stailion four years old or more
Ku the best preserved lioi
For best Alderney bull
For best Devon bull 50
for best collection of table apples grown in North
Georgia 50
r or best collection of table apples grown in Mid
dle Georgia 7 50
50
50
50
100
100
100
100
250
: over 20 years old
Mr. President—You invite me to address this Convention
0 Landholders on a “New System of Land and Labor” for
the South. Time forbids digression, and I proceed straight
to my work. But I speak only for the cotton country; the
great abode of Free Negroes, in which my own lot'and my
children s lot is cast, and of whose past and present state
1 am a witness. It is the cotton country alone, that needs
any new system. That of the mountains, founded on white
labor and small farms, remains as it was before the war, and
ever will be, unchanged. But our cotton country is over
turned and in confusion, and in its brief history has already
outlived two different labor systems: one free white, otic
(dark slave.
•While convinced of the value of the system which I ad
vocate, yet I know men see the matter from so many dif
ferent stand-points, and have such diversified experience,
that we cannot all agree at once, and it will require time
for public opinion to mature itself. We are as men in a
dark place, groping about for a way of escape. I bring in
my little light; I think 1 see the way and point it out; but
all cannot yet see it. Let each man then bring his light,
and help to illumine our darkness ; thus, after awhile, we
will have a bright light, and all can see the way of safety.
1 here is a way ; let us resolve to find it. The cotton coun
try must have a better Labor-system than the present, either
white or black. ]j we resolve on Black labor, then we have no
time to lose, fl’hat we do must be done rjuickli/ now ; for going
as they are, the free negroes will soon be ruined forever
and worthless.
At present uur labor system fluctuates, and is much
nioic capricious than the price of cotton. Such a. system
will ruin ns. We want and must have a Labor-System,
steadfast as the ground it ploughs ; a system like ballast in a
ship, that lies steady down below, no matter what trouble
may be on deck; no matter how the ship may dance upon
tile billow, or careen before the storm. We must have,
and can have a Labor-System, which will be uniform under
all changes oj the State : a system which has little or nothing to
do with the State; a labor system like the palm trees of Arabia,
yielding food and commerce and joy in days of peace, yet
sacred and undisturbed amidst the madness of war.
Slavery was otic form of such a system, but it is not the
only form. Italy lias such a system to-day, without slave
ry* Englaud has such a system to-day, without slaver}'.
So has all Germany. We too, can have sucli a system
to-morrow, without slavery. Yet our difficulties are so
complex that no simple proposition can reach the whole
case. Many remedies must co-operate, and he is too san
guine who thinks any one plan will do all our work.
But we must now make a beginning. Wisdom reminds
us, however, that “nothing but God’s work is perfect
at the beginning,” and therefore we must not be hin
dered or paralyzed by seeing some defects in our first
work. It will get better as we go further.
Before venturing on anything new, let us understand well
our present situation, see clearly things as they are, and
get a defined ideal of what vve mean they shall be, and of
what we mean they shall not be. Then having a fixed ob
ject to aim at, we cau all work directly to our chosen end
otherwise we will grope as blind men, and drift at chance,
into some wild form of depraved society, a wonder for trav
ellers, and a wood-cut picture for school books and maga
zines ; and worse still, a pretext for despotism.
I plead with my countrymen, let us drift no longer at
chance, but shape our own course. Let vs choose the form
of our future South, and go to work intelligently, as wise
men, with a purpose, ktioicing what we aim at ; and from year
too; but though white, and descended from soldiers—old
prisoners of war—he was not made either voter or ruler;
nor even juror, except in the petty 40 shilling suits of his
fellows in the Court Baron—the Plantation Court
But our African slave has acquired them all; and at our
expense, is now a favorite of the United States. He is a
pet of the modern Constitution ; a pet of the Civil Rights
Bill; a pet of the enforcement Act; a juror in the United
States Courts. Is there anything of value left in him for us?
That is the great question ot the South to*day. Cra
zy with sudden freedom ; instigated to all evil by the Re
publican party of the North, is it possible for us to recall
him to his senses ; and build him up again into the frame
work of industrial society? Will he conform to our kind
arrangements and allow us to provide him home and happi
ness and safety ? or, victim of that discord and folly, which
the legislation of Congress promotes, will he weary us out,
and harass us past endurance, as a worthless, homeless, in
corrigible, criminal vagabond, until our own necessity
compel us to find repose by sweeping him off the earth
with Canaanitish extinction ? I know the dillioulty of our
case. I kiu)w T the infirmities of free negro character. I know
that in all other counties where were large populations of
free negroes, and small ones of white people, except per
haps, Barbadoes, they have gone to destruction and ruined
the countries they lived in. I know the Government of our
so-called” country, the United States, is against us, and
that its sword, like the sword of Brennus; the sword of
an enemy decides our balance for the negro. I know its
horrible, insane laws pervert and spoil the negro, and op
press us and obstruct our progress. Still I do not yet des
pair altogether of the free negro. If his now homeless,
untrained, outcast, wild children can be brought into training
I will still have hope of good to come : hope that, settled
among our people, influenced by our example, controlled
by our presence and power, our free negroes will be better
than those of other countries ; hope that sense and goodness
may return to their crazy millions ; hope, of wiser coun
sels in our now wicked Government at Washington ; hope
that even there, Tiberius may some time or other be fol
lowed by Vespasian ; hope, that the several States may yet
resume their right to regulate home affairs; and I exhort,
our people not to think they see “ a lion in the path.” To
morrow is a long day. Awake to the care of making it
happy! Our work must be accomplished. TVc must make
something good of the free negro dial his childien, or we
lose a country. Negro slavery is gone, and white labor in
the cotton and rice region was tried in Georgia and failed one
hundred and thirty years ago.
Free negro labor is now to be tested. Eight years of mis
erable freedom, have consumed by death one-fourth, at
least, of the old trained slaves, and their places are not sup
plied by their untrained, wild, homeless children. But ij
free negro labor jail us, then the cotton and rice country of
the South will change vocation and change character, and the
free negro will perish aud be swept away, and his place be
filled with herds and flocks and swine. We cannot stand
still now, with 500,000 free negroes in Georgia. Th
would be destruction. The present systtm will ruin us alb
black and white. Forward we must go, into some new system.
I propose a policy founded on hope; hope that the emanci
pated, trained slave, and his wild, idle, homeless, untrained
free children, will yet listen to reason; will consent to be
settled in good homes, and gird themselves for a life of inno
cence and faithful labor, in return for home, safety and pro
tection. If they will do so, then I propose a policy, which
will be a better corner stone for us than slavery ever teas, and
on it the house wc build will never fall; will be no air-
castle, nor any pretext for despotism, but will be a refuge
and a deliverance for the free negroes, and a stronghold
of power, and a solid glory and joy for our children forever.
And now, what shall we do'/ What is our best next
step?
Friends and enemies both press their counsels on us, and
cry “ Lo here !” “ Lo there is the way !” Be not deceived.
Decide as wise men, and remember if we blunder now at
the outstart, or if we let things drift as they are too long, all
will be lost.
1st. In 1805 the President of the United States, Mr. An
drew Johnson, replied to a deputation of South Carolina
negroes that “ he desired to break up the large plantations
of the cotton country and divide them out in small farms.
Normandy to Queen Elizabeth; in Jamaica it took one hun
dred millions of dollars; even in San Domingo, the Red
Republican madmen of Paris at first gave it a process of
five years; but in the United States, a Proclamation and a
newspaper did it in one morning !
General Gleason represents a great party—a school of
covetous thinkers, who support their opinions by arms, j
They are American Goths, who meditate a future descent
upon us, in search of a home for their landless poor men.
Bye and bye, when vve again get lich enough to rob. our
sons may look for them. But my business now with Gen.
Gleason’s portion ot the Abolition party is only to fix your
attention on their motive for emancipation', “a wish to have
the free negroes perish aud pass away like the Red man ;
anJ I dismiss them by asking, is it our interest to let even free
negroes perish? Cun we afford to let nearly live millions of
such laborers, already present on our ground, suited to our
climate, suited to us and our usages, suited to our food aud
cabin-life, distinct in color and separate in association, and
trained to our field work, can we afford to let them destroy
themselves ? Once lost, where in all the world can vve find
laborers so good for us to carry on our accustomed cotton
culture? If none, then are we ready to give uj> cotton cul
ture? Having the best cotton country in the world, shall
wc waive our advantus'cs, and change our calling, and enquire
, O 9 o O' O O
in some new business, less suited than cotton to our soil and
climate? In grain and grass, and cattle, in which all the
world is our rival, and nobody our customer? If not ready
for this, then vve must if we can, save the free negroes from
destruction. Our cotton work runs through every month ;
our lands lie under a blazing sun, and our cotton-picking
season of August, September and October, like the summer
God, they start life in a cheap land market, and can soon
get homes.
But what is our plan ? What has the cotton country to
propose for itself as a jxrmancnt institution now f
This question brings us face to face with our work. Wc
are laying now the foundations of a new South. Aud we
come to our work with an unfriendly government over us.
The United States create our difficulties and obstruct our
best purposes. We are not free to do what is best. The
first cornerstone of Georgia was free white English and Ger
man labor. It was laid by our first government; it failed.
The next corner stone was negro slavery, laid by the people,
and for one hundred and ten years it was in soimyespects a
great success; in others, it too, was a failure. The Con
federate Government was professedly made to perpetuate
it. But it is now destroyed, and the negroes made free,
are left on our hands. What then ; are we too thereby
destroyed / Is there no more good for us? Are the years
to come nil evil ? Have we no hope on earth but slavery ?
Or have vve some other foundation ?
If wc act before the free negroes are mined, I think our
brightest day is just beginning. I think vve have a chance
now—vve never had it before—to lay a better corner stone
than we ever had ; better than the white German labor of
Georgia as a colony; better than negro slavery ever was ;
especially better than negro slavery, if perpetuated, ever would
hare been. We can now lay a foundation which will stand
the test of ages, and the test of war, like the labor systems
of Italy and of England; and yet better than Italy, better
than England, will retain Jbr us the negro—the best laborer
in the world for a cotton and rice country. The Home
stead law has settled and fixed most of uur landholders.
months of Italy in the Maremma district just described, is J But land must have labor. Land is immovable, and a fixed
quantity ; so should labor be, fixed, certain, plentiful.
I say then, slavery gone, but the negro present, the old
labor system overthrown, bat the free uegroes remaining
on our soil; the greatest and most pressing business of the
South to-day is to settle the negroes, and thus bring their chil
dren into training Jbr field work; settle these fire millions of peo
ple, now homeless and poor and disappointed, and hopeless
and going to destruction. Piovide homes for them. Set
tle them. They cannot settle themselves, for we own all the
lands; and if we do nothing; ij we let things run on as they
are too long, the negroes and their children will become so
disorganized and so depraved as to be not worth settling.
Many of them are already ruined; the whole mass will be
soon worthless unless vve do something effectual to give
them new motives, more hopes, more interest in our agriculture.
Mere wages does not suffice. We must give them fixed
homes, and control them ; we must thus encourage their
formation of families, and thus use the negro parents to train
the negro children to our cotton-field work. It will be a
great blunder on our part if we lose the cotton-field work
of five millions of negroes—even free negroes. Look not
then to Europe for help; she has none for us. Dream no
longer that Germans or Danes, or Swedes will ever toil in
your blazing cotton fieids for you. A better help is at our
door. Let the free negroes be settled at once, and let their
children, now wild and going to ruin, be brought into train
ing for our work by their parents. Emancipation turned
them out of doors in 1865, and so they yet remain. Let us
turn to them again as friends. Our greatest interest is to
save the negro.
HOW TO SETTLE THE NEGROES.
Iu trying to settle the free negroes, I advise our people
not to part with the fee simple title of their lands. They will
repent its loss bye and bye.- Except miscegenation, nothing
else will so badly derange our future society and all our
good plans. Let us hold to our fee-simple title forever.
It is the legal means and secret of our perpetual suprema
cy, and already ours, it must never change hands from the
white people, no matter what law has to be altered or
repealed to save it.
The Southern white people must remain absolute owners
of the ultimate title of the entire lands of the South. “Pure
blood, and supreme land title," are the first maxims of our
Southern public policy, and must be impressed upon all our
laws and all our courts.
loaded with bad air, with fever and congestive chill and
death for white laborers. Our cotton and rice crops must
be made by negro labor, or never be made at all, and ne
groes flourish and are happy in this cotton climate. Then
vve must not stand by idly and see the negro perish by his
own freedom. Give him freedom, but save him from him
self if vve can. I think we can. Speaking only for the
cotton country, I contemplate black labor alone for the
main crop of cotton. All the cotton crop produced by
white labor is and ever will be a mere “drop in the buck
et.” Fill your shops aud towns aud mountains, if you
please, with white labor ; I t on sent to that ; hut I am one
of those who believe that white labor will never do for our
landholders to depend on, iu our climate, for culture of
cotton, rice and sugar.
The matter was thoroughly tested in Georgia a hundred
and thirty years ago, when General Oglethorpe and the
Colonial Trustees ruined Georgia and reduced her down by
death and desertion to 109 men, merely by excluding ne
groes and compelling the landholders to use only free white
English and German laborers. The State was settled as a
free while colony, and that purpose was steadily persisted in
until about.the year 1750; but the climate was found so
hot, and in summer time and autumn so malarial, that Eng
lish and German laborers withered under it like grass, and
cither runaway or died. Then African negroes were
brought in, and immediately Georgia revived. Under white
men as directors, the negroes cleared our woods, drainep
our rice swamps and established our agriculture, and
made Georgia the “ Empire State” of the South. Let us
save our Empire by “ not forsaking our own friend and our
lather’s friend.”
Rev. George Whitfield, the famous English Preacher,
lived at Savannah while General Oglethorpe and the Trus
tees were keeping negroes out of Georgia and forcing land
holders to use English and German white labor, and stood
it as long as be could, but having a charitable enterprise on
hand, which was about to perish too, like everything else
in Georgia, at last friends helped him to buy land and eight
negroes on the South Carolina side ; whereupon this great
English preacher writes : “Blessed be God! this plantation
has succeeded, and will raise more in one year, and with a quar
ter the expense, tiian has been produced at Bethesda in sever
al years”—with English and German white labor. And
all Georgia repeats “Blessed be God for a plantation and
eight negro hands!”
I stand on that testimony, and very much more besides,
and maintain that if we abandon black labor wc abandon cotton
culture; that white labor will never produce large cotton
to year ; from Legislature to Legislature, stick close to our He did not venture to say how small, and we are left in i crops ; that it is no better suited to our climate and crops
Reserving theftjAis title to ourselves, we can effectually
cfhc 1
first intention. Let us understand ourselves, and all work J doubt as to his idea of the right size of a farm. In Tusca-
together with steady aim, or else the form of future South- • ny, where they grow grapes and beans and leghorn straw,
25 i eru life will be shaped for us, either by chance or by our } and where one pair of oxen does all the plowing for twelve
5U enemies. Are you willing for that ? I farms, five acres is considered enough. In Lombardy,
The present distress is bad, but is nothing to what willj where they grow wheat and clover and milk-cows and
be, unless we arouse to refit our wreck, and control our fu- j cheese, sixty acres is a farm. In New York, where they
lure. Our trusting children appeal to us, to so manage our grow wheat, grass and turnips, ninety-three acres is the
REGATTA.
Race one mile down ttream on Ocmulgee River, un
der tbe rules ot the Regatta Association of Macon.
Fur the fastest four-oared shell boat, race open to
the world.. $150
for the fastest double-scull shell boat, race open
to the world 50
r ot the fastest single-scull shell boat, race open
to the world 50
tor the fastest four-oared cauoe boat, race open
to the world 50
(By canoe is meant a boat hewn from a log,
without wash boards or other additions.)
The usual entry lee oi ten per cent, will be charg
ed iorthe Regatta premiums.
MILITARY COMPANY.
For the best drilled
volunteer military company
present troubles, as to transmit to them peace if we can,
but at least good order and honor, and supreme ownership of
this sunny South.
The free negro population and the hostile laws of Con
gress are the great difficulties of our day. Our Slave-
Labor system is .gone. Nearly five millions of free
negroes now wander among us, poor, homeless, unsettled,
crowding the chain-gang anJ the jail with criminals, having
not the slightest interest in the country—terrible fof evil—
with a vote ; irregular in their labor, and armed with dead
ly weapons, which most of them carry even at their work.
I have seen the cotton planter, conquered by the United
average farm. President Johnson was not particular, but
whatever was his idea of the right size of a farm, he meant
his subdivision for a great break down of the cotton plant
ers, and for a great setting up of the new voters—the free
negroes. That was his way of promising the famous
“ forty acres and a mule.”
Accustomed to the agriculture of the Alleghanies, where
nature prevents large farms and confines men to small ones,
and where cotton culture is impossible, the President vain
ly dreamed he could defy the laws of climate and apply to
the great plain country: the hot, malarial, cotton country,
where white labor in cotton culture is a failure, the same
States, worried, forbearing, trying to pack cotton with 1 rule of land-division which prevails among the clover and
eight free negiocs, who kept eight loaded muskets and ri- 1 grain •fields, and orchards and potato patches of his own
open to the world- $750
At least live entries required.
RACES.
PURSE ONE—*500.
For Trotting' Horses—Georgia raised, xnile lieals, best
two in three.
1st linrso to receive $200
2,i horse to receive. "o
W hyrre to receive 25
PURSE TWO—$ 150,
lor Trotting Horses that have never beaten 2:40,
mile heats, best two in three.
PURSE THREE—$650.
K»r Trotting Horses—open to the world;
best three in live.
1st horse to receive -
horse to receive
mile heat,
$50<>
100
PURSE FOUR—$350.
For Running Horses—open to tlie worlt
; two-mile
ties arouud the cotton screw, day by day, and week by
week, through the whole cotton season, ready to kill him
upon a word or a trifle. Since then the muskets and rifles,
the open visible arms of the militia soldier, as meant by
the Constitution and the Insolvent law, are kept mostly in
their houses, aud the negroes are very generally armed se
cretly, with the pistol of the assassin. In all the world the
like is not found. But with such laborers is cotton plant
ing now carried on. Having no abiding place, their labors
are uncertain ; the gang which work a crop this year will
probably all disperse themselves in December, and except
near towns, their places are tilled with much difficulty.
Those without family, wander from county to county, and
often when they die, no Ordinary can decide what County-
Treasury is bound to pay for the coffins and the graves.
mountains in East Tennessee, where white labor is not a
failure.
In truth, the size of farms depends sometimes entirely on
climate, in spite of political theories. It is so in a very large
portion of our cotton country. Health is the criterion, not
politics. In Java is a valley which no man, nor beast nor
bird can cross ; the bad air kills them. On top of the island
of Ceylon, over 2,000 feet above the sea, as the wife of Bish
op Ileber writes, is t beautiful mountain river and rich land,
but the bad air, the malaria issuing from the soil, is so dead
ly, that it killed and broke up an engiueer party of the Brit
ish army, before the commander could go down the moun
tain to the sea side and return to camp. In Italy, the rich
clover and wheat lands of Lombardy are held in 60 acre
farms; and the vine and olive and bean grounds of the
Thus are our fields partly deserted ; our crops are altered ; mountain sides are divided into little five acre farms; yet in
heats best two in three.
yt torse to receive
-o torse to receive
... .$250
11)0
PURSE FIVE—$300.
F° r Uuuiiiug Ilorscs-open to the world; two mile heats,
. best two iu three.
nt horse to reciive $300
PURSE SIX—$500.
For Running Horses—open to tho world; three mile
. . . heats, best two in three.
1st hum to receive $500
J he above Premiums will be contested for under
he rules of tile Turt. The usual entry lee of 10 per
ecut on the amount of the purse will be charged.
COUNTY EXHIBITIONS.
'•^“Ihe county which (through its Society or
Ulubs) shall furnish the largest and finest dis-
l>lav, in merit uud variety, of stock, products
and results of home mduatries, all raised, pro*
'iueedor manufactured iu the county $1000
- Second best do 500
I' *‘urd best do 300
1 Fourth best do * 200
Athens* 8 wai ^ u a ^ FFie August Coiiveution iu
Articles contributed to the County Exhibitions can
For specific premiums in the Premium
hibiihm '", 8ta " ue a farmer may contribute to the Ex-
then "" “ “
F«gUdt 27 tii, 187X
some abandoned, aud our entire agriculture is decayed
Such is the Free Negro in his agricultural aspect.
But to judge rightly of our difficult task we must look at
him in another view.
Turn then to our Southern Convention of February, 1S6I,
at Montgomery, Alabama. Hear again the Vice-President
of the Confederate States, as he there accepts his high of
fice before the world, announce: “ The foundations of the
New Government are laid. Its corner-stone rests on the
great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man :
that slavery—subordination to the superior race, is his na
tural, normal condition.”
We founded a government, and its corner stone was endless
shivery.
Now see! Our corner stone is taken away; and the
Negro, our Confederate Vice-President’s “natural slave,”
is free; and not only free, but clothed with power in the
State ; exalted to office, and wanton with command.
Negro jurors, six to six, at Savannah and Atlanta now
try Georgia white men, for property, liberty or life, in the
Courts of the United States ; and under their verdicts,
Georgia citizens this day languish in jail. Before such a
jury, Mr. Presideut, will you aud the men of this Conven
tion be tried, if negro, or carpet-bagger accuse you in those
Courts. Negro grand-jurors will indict you ; negro tra
verse jurors wiil be put upon you as your peers, to try you ;
and justice Bradley of the United States Supreme Court
has just declared at Savannah, such a jury to be “emi
nently judicious and proper.”
After such changes, amidst such overthrow, between
such opposites, “ the natural slave” of the CoLfederacy on
one hand, and the uplifted negro ruler over white men of
the United States on the other, have we now to adopt
some new system of “ Land and Labor.” The work needs all
our wisdom. The old English white slave was emancipated
sight of these five acre farms, the great plain called “ Ma
reimna” between the mountain and the sea coast, from Pisa
to Terracina, twenty miles wide by two hundred miles long,
belongs to only eighty owners, whose estates are 10,0o0 to
40,000 acres. The reason for this difference, is climate.
This great level, clay plain is so unhealthy : the bad air ; the
“ Mal’Aria” is so deadly in summer time, that men cannot
live in it. It is a land without inhabitant, except in win
ter. Its agriculture is confiued to wheat which is sown in
November and December, after the “ bad air” has been laid
by frost; and half the harvest hands who venture down
from the mountains in harvest die; and besides these wheat
fields, the whole plain is given up to raising hogs, cattle
and horses.—llow much like this great sickly plain of Italy
are parts of our cotton and all our lice country! The
size of fari/is in both, is regulated by climate, and climate de
fies the vain thoughts of ignorant reformers, even though
they be Presidents.
2d. When Sherman’s army of 1S64 was at Milledgeville,
one of his subalterns, General Gleason, of Maine, command
ing a brigade from Ohio (as he introduced himself) appar
ently a man of the better sort, a gentleman, intelligent,
agreeable, polite, announced at my house his plan as an
abolitionist about us: “You planters, said he, take too
good care of the negroes, and if we let you alone, slavery
will never come to an end. But we mean it shall end, for
we see that the slaves live on all the good lands of the
South, and we mean to have those lands for our poor white
men. We will free the negroes and break them up,
for we know free negroes canuot take care of themselves,
but will perish, and we wish them to perish and pass away
like the Red man. We will make them free, not to benefit
them, but to destroy them.” And sure enough, they did
set them free with a veugeance. In England emancipation
took up five hundred years; all the time from William ot
to-day than it was a hundred and thirty years ago, and that
our five millions of negroes, even free negroes, if taken in
time, before they arc ruined, is a labor force of countless value
to the cotton country. And yeti know, that if Iejhto
themselves much longer iu their present state, under the
ill-conceived, foolish, lamentable laws of the United States,
they will go on, as they are already going, down to swift
destruction. But when they go, cotton goes with them.
3d. The Emigration party too, has its project, and gives
us its advice. Say they: “ We can do without the negro.”
“A South without a negro;” “ a South all white, and all
equal;” “ divide the South with Germans, without money
and without price ; send for them ; win them to your
shores, at your own expense, and give them half your
lands.” This is their policy in our present distress.
They seem to forget our own history as Georgians. Ex
ample on our own soil, is lost upon them. They revive
the old condemned, abandoned project of General Ogle
thorpe and the Georgia Trustees. Their theory has been
already well tried in Georgia, by earnest, faithful, able men,
of our first Government, who had plenty of money to work
with; yet in sujh hands it failed, and Georgia was so
ruined by the stubborn experiment, that the inhabitants—
landholders and German laborers—all died, or all fled from
the State until only 109 men were left. Shall we forget
this lesson, and at our own expense repeat the tedious,
languishing experiment ?
As to their theory : “ We can do without the negro”—
“ away with the negro!”—“a South without a negro”—
Are you ready for that ? Do you believe that the Emigra
tion party can bring Georgia 500,000 free Germans, who
wili work our cotton fields lor us, better than our 500,000
free negroes, now present on the ground ? I do not believe
it. I believe the very opposite ; and having the best cot
ton country in tbe world, I say, let us secure for it the best
cotton-field labor in the world—the negroes.
The last move of the Emigration party deserves our no
tice. “ The Commissioners of Emigration of New York
have just meddled iu our business by sending “an address
to all the Governors of the Southern States,” aud this ad
dress (of contents yet unknown) is warmly supported by
that very able newspaper in New York, '•The Nation’—un
derstood to be under foreign intellect, which lately an
nounced that “It sees no cure for Southern evils but the
infusion of new blood, in large quantities.”—After this we
will better understand the Emigration party.
4th. In one poiut all these advisers and schemes agree,
viz : a jesire to get our lands away from us and our children.
Insidious means and false pretences are to be used first;
if they fail, then force comes next. Slumber not, nor ieel
at ease, landholders of Georgia and the South, because the
force aud the enemy are now remote! Flatter not your
selves with the thought, that peace has at last come to the
South. A truce; a truce only is all we have. Landless
millions ot distant States and nations are hungering for
your pleasant fields; and their plan is to destroy the negro
first, and then conquer us. We are equally in their way.
Germany is moving her tribes along your border; Goth,
Vandal and Visi-Goth; Lombard and Hun, are silently
gathering on your frontier from Illyricum to the mouth of the
Rhine; from Pennsylvania to Nebraska, and our sons will
have them to tight in the fullness ot time. For the present
their approach is stealthy and deceitful. But I warn you,
beware how you take the Grecian horse into tbe walls of
Troy. It is not our policy to invite either Saxon or Dane,
or any other people to divide our lands. This pleasant
South is our country and our children’s, and we will neither
sell it to the negro, nor divide it with the stranger. It is
tbe home and birthright of our children, and of tbe little
orphan girls and boys of our dead soldiers; and by no blind
act of ours shall they lose their heritage, or ever be hire
lings for a stranger's wages in their father’s land. Thank
and happily settle the negroes by adopting a general system
of Leasehold, a new system of “ Copyho'd Tenure.” By this
the free negroes can have homes Jbr a term of years—five,
ten, fourteen years, or for life, with families, gardens, or
chards, milk cows, males, pastures, &c., on prudent condi
tions of rent, fines, good behavior, &c., lo suit each landholder’s
own mind, and by this the landholders will have a fixed, abun
dant supply of jybor always at borne. On the present plan,
generally followed so far since the war, of one year contracts,
either of lease or hire, the planters never can have a sure
supply of labor, for the one simple reason, that the negroes
are unsettled, working my land this year, my neighbor’s
next, or wandering perhaps from county to county, having
no home, and feeling no interest in any place. What can
such a people, under such circumstances promise us but
crime and disorder and endless poverty, ruinous alike to
ourselves as well as to them? What can the children of
such people be, but miserable, terrible criminals ? The
present plan of one year contracts must be abandoned, or the
country, black and white, will be ruined. But if cotton
planting need black labor, and we have none but free ne
groes, then we must take care oj the free negroes, and for this
end some system or other of Long Leases is the only means.
Until the French revolution of 1789 broke up the Land
Tenures of France, all Europe, where not worked by serfs,
(slaves) was worked by former slaves, turned into “ Copy-
hold,” or some other kind of Long Lease-hold Tenants. In
Italy it is done to-day without writing, but the terms and
conditions are immemorial, derived from the feudal system,
unchanged by war or by time, well known to all parties,
and the house and little farm—five acres in the mountains
ol Tuscany—sixty acres in the plains of Lombardy—go
down from father to son in perpetual succession. The la
borer is a “ Long lease tenant,’’ pitying half his crop as rent,
and has a fixed, certain Home, where he may lay his bead
in weariness or sleep, and where he may shelter his wife
and children, and lear no change with the closing year;
and thus the landholder has a fixed, supply of lab>r. In Eng
land the same thing is done by the system of “ Copy-hold
Tenure,” whereby the lands are generally leased for three
lives, as it is called, but which iu Copy-hold law, means
eight, four aud two years (fourteen years). These long
leases i>ass no estate ; they cannot be sold by tbe tenant nor
by the^Sheriff. They grant only “ a right to possess and
enjoy the use” of the home and grounds, exactly as the
law of Georgia now provides for landlords and tenants.
Very similar to this “Copy-hold” system, whereby
nine-tenths of England is cultivated in farms, by “ Copy-
hold Tenants” is another called the “Allotment system”
which perhaps is better for us to begin with than even the “ Copy-
hold." Copy-hold tenants in England at first were poor
slaves, but now they are always men ot capital, with
money—a working fund of 840 to S100 per acre on deposit
in bank ; but the “Allotment tenants” are still poor labor
ers, called there “Cottagers,” and the leases to them are
confined to the cottage and a half acre of land. On one of his
farms Lord Sondes, in 1860, had 160 such “Allotment cot
tagers” who were mere hired laborers, paying S3 a year
rent for the garden, and $15 for the cottage. I append a
copy of his contracts as a practical suggestion.
Let slavery go ; here is something better tbau slavery—
better than emigrant German labor. Here is the corner
stone for us to build on. The English Copy hold Land Ten
ure, or “ Cottage Allotment Tenure,” or both, modified a
little to fit our facts and to fit our laws, adopted by the entire
cotton and rice country, and applied to free negro tenants.
This system applied to the former white slaves of
England, as free tenants, stands before our faces, already
matured and perfected by tbe English Landholders, who have
used it constantly for nearly eight hundred years. Nearly
the whole kingdom; nine-tenths thereof, say the law-books,
is w’orked to-day on this plan.
At the time of the Norman Conquest, about A. D. 1066,
more than half of the inhabitants of England—just as in
our cotton country—were slaves, white slaves, and the old
[Concluded on the 4/A page.]