In place of five millions of bales, worth at former
prices two hundred millions of dollars, and at present rates at least
eight hundred millions, the South, in its folly, to the injury of the
world, and the ruin of most of its planters, is now producing, in place
of its cotton, less corn than could be furnished in Illinois in ordinary
seasons for twenty millions of dollars. But even this is inadequate to
the wants of its people and its stock. Its small farmers are diverted
from the cultivation of the soil. The conscript-law is drafting all the
able-bodied white men into the army.
The States from Tennessee and North Carolina to Texas have neither
pasture nor mowing; their feeble stock gains but a precarious livelihood
from the cane-brakes or weeds of the forests and Northern hay. Corn and
grain were transported by railway more than three hundred miles into the
interior. The writer has stood beside a yoke of Georgia oxen in Atlanta
so small that they might well pass for calves at the North. Two Illinois
steers would weigh down a half-dozen such animals. But, diminutive as
they are, they, as well as the people of the South, require Northern
supplies. And at this moment their last dependence is placed upon the
valley of Virginia and the valleys of East Tennessee. Let us hope that
the Union armies which now possess Nashville, Memphis, and Cumberland
Gap may soon occupy Knoxville.
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