When These People
Return To Their Homes In Maine Or Massachusetts
(As Did The Representatives Of The Granges Of The
Northern States After They Had Visited South
Carolina In 1875) A New Light, Derived From Contact
With Facts, Dawns Upon Them, While Their
Surprised And Untravelled Neighbors Say:
"So you
have become Southern in your views.
I never
would have thought that of you."
The railroad has become one of the great
mediums of enlightenment to mankind, and joins in
a social fraternity the disunited elements of a
country. God grant that the resources of the
great South may soon be developed by the
capital and free labor of the North. Our sister states
of the South, exhausted by the struggles of the
late war which resulted in consolidating more
firmly than ever the great Union, are now ready
to receive every honest effort to develop their
wealth or cultivate their territory. Let every
national patriot give up narrowness of views and
sectional selfishness and become acquainted with
(not the politicians) the people of the New
South, and a harmony of feeling will soon
possess the hearts of all true lovers of a government
of the people.
The swamp tributaries were swelling the river
into a very rapid torrent as I paddled away from
the ferry on Monday, January 18. A warmer
latitude having been reached, I could dispense
with one blanket, and this I had presented to my
kind host, who had refused to accept payment
for his hospitality. He was very proud of his
present, and said, feelingly, "No one shall touch
this but me." His good wife had baked some
of a rich and very nice variety of sweet-potatoes,
unlike those we get in New Jersey or the other
Middle States-which potatoes she kindly added
to my stores. They are not dry or mealy when
cooked, but seem saturated with honey. The
poor woman's gift now occupied the space
formerly taken up by the blanket I had given her
husband.
From this day, as latitude after latitude was
crossed on my way southward, I distributed
every article I could spare, among these poor,
kind-hearted people. Mr. McGreggor went in
his Rob Roy canoe over the rivers of Europe,
"diffusing cheerfulness and distributing
Evangelical tracts." I had no room for tracts, and if I
had followed the example of my well-
intentioned predecessor in canoeing, it would have
served the cause of truth or creed but little.
The Crackers could not read, and but few of
the grown negroes had been taught letters.
They did not want books, but tobacco. Men
and women hailed me from the banks as I glided
along in my canoe, with, "Say, captain, hab you
eny 'bacca or snuff for dis chile?" Poor
humanity! The Cracker and the freedman fill
alike their places according to the light they
possess. Do we, who have been taught from
our youth sacred things, do more than this?
Do we love our neighbor as ourself?
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