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

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 Alabama with his tools, and then started North. In Tennessee he got out of money, and stopped to work at his trade, was suspected, brought before a court, his papers examined and pronounced genuine, and he passed on to Canada or elsewhere. Surely this man did not know how to take care of