The Continental Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 3, March 1862 | Page 6

of their being
unhealthy.
Two statements will be made to disprove this latter assertion, and we
will then admit it to be true, and prove it to be of no consequence.
The cotton planters, deserting the rolling land, are fast pouring in upon
the 'swamp.' Indeed, the impression of the sickliness of the South
generally has been rapidly losing ground (i.e. among the whites of the
South), and that blessing, health, is now sought with as much
confidence on the swamp lands of the Yazoo and the Mississippi, as
among the hills and plains of Carolina and Virginia.--De Bow's
Resources of the South and West.

Dr. Barton, of New Orleans, in a paper read before the Academy of
Science, says:
The class of diseases most fatal at the South are mainly those of a
preventable nature. In another place I have shown that the direct
temperature of the sun is not near so great in the South during the
summer as in the North. In fact, the climate is much more endurable, all
the year round, with our refreshing breezes, and particularly in some of
the more elevated parts of it, or within one hundred miles of the coast.
Dr. Barton had forgotten that white men can not perform field labor in
the South.
But admit that white men had better work upon uplands,--the crop is
surer, owing to the less liability to frost and overflow; and good
cultivation will give an equal crop. Intelligent Northern men have taken
up exhausted plantations upon the uplands of North Carolina, and, by
the application of moderate quantities of guano, phosphate of lime, etc.,
have carried the crop from two hundred up to eight hundred pounds of
clean cotton per acre; and for the last three years the writer has been in
the habit of selecting the North Carolina guano-grown cotton, in the
New York market, where it has been shipped via Wilmington or
Norfolk, on account of its good staple, good color, and extra strength.
There is nothing in the cultivation of cotton involving harder work than
that of corn. In the early stages of its growth it is more tender than corn,
and requires more care,--which it does not get, since we find Southern
writers deploring that the cut-worm and the louse are charged with
many sins which are caused by careless cultivation and the bruises
inflicted by the clumsy negro hoes. The soil is very light, and most of
the work might be done by the plow and cultivator. Except upon very
poor soil there is only one plant allowed to eight and even ten square
feet. By the admission of Texas planters themselves, in the accounts of
their country which they have written to induce emigration and sell
their surplus land, there is very little work to be done during the hottest
part of the summer; the cultivation taking place in the spring, and the
picking in the fall and winter. Dr. J.S. Wilson, of Columbus, Ga.,
writing upon the diseases of negroes, says there is no article of clothing

so needful to them, and so seldom supplied, as an overcoat. Should
some shrewd Yankee, starting South to go into the business of raising
cotton, lay in a large supply of flannel shirts, thick Guernsey frocks,
and woolen stockings, for his field hands, how many of his neighbors
would remind him of Lord Timothy Dexter's noted shipment to the
West Indies, and ask him why he did not take some warming-pans; and
yet, for his supply of thick, warm clothing he would have the authority
of all Southern physicians.
Examine the directions given for the cultivation of cotton, and see how
much labor could be saved, provided slaves could be induced to use
good tools; planting the seed and covering it requiring one horse or
mule and four hands,--one to smooth the ground, one to open the
furrow, one to plant, and one to cover. All of these operations can be
performed by one man with a planting machine. But the negro can not
be trusted with one; for the moment you begin to teach him the reasons
for using it, you begin to teach him the benefit of using another
complicated machine, which he has not before known much about--his
own head and arms, and, worse than all, his own legs, all of which you
have stolen from him; and then he will misapply his knowledge, as an
old fugitive once told me he had done: 'I took my own legs for security,
and walked off.'
I know a fugitive slave who was taught the trade of a blacksmith, and
who stole the art of writing; and a sad use he made of his
accomplishments; he forged free papers with his pen, and the sacred
seal of the State of