Various - The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, April, 1862

Farther in the interior the land is principally of a sandy formation, most of it underlaid with clay. Very little effort is, however, made by planters to cultivate it, although it is very easily worked, and with a little manuring yields fair crops of corn and sweet potatoes. The cereal grains are seldom cultivated, but no doubt they would yield well. A large portion of the main-land is composed of swamps, of which only enough have been reclaimed to make it certain that here is a mine of wealth to those gifted with the energy to improve it. The soil is as fertile as the banks of the Nile, and nowhere could agricultural enterprise meet with such certainly profitable returns. Recurring again to the agricultural capacity of the islands, it is certain that good crops of sugar-cane can be grown on them. During the war of 1812, the planters turned their attention to it, and succeeded well, since which time many of them have continued to plant enough for their own use; but this plant soon exhausts such a soil, unless some fertilizer is used, and they therefore prefer cotton, which draws a large part of its sustenance from the atmosphere alone. The sweet and wild orange grows here, and some extensive groves are to be seen. Figs are produced in abundance from September till Christmas. Gardens furnish abundant vegetables, yielding green peas in March and Irish potatoes in May, while numerous tribes of beautiful flowers hold high carnival for more than half the year.

This seems to be the true home of the rose, which is found blooming from March until Christmas. Many of the rare climbing varieties of this flower, which we see at the North only as small specimens in green-houses, grow here in wild profusion. The grape is represented by many species indigenous to this State alone, and could, no doubt, be cultivated and produced in greater variety and perfection than elsewhere on this continent, as the climate is more equable. A species of Indian corn, called 'white flint corn,' and which when cooked is very nutritious and white as snow, seems indigenous to these islands. It is much superior to the common varieties.

Of the sylva we will only say, it is equal in value and variety to that of any section of our country. Here is the home of the palmetto 4 4 The palmetto is a straight, tall tree, with a tuft of branches and palm leaves at its top. The new growth is the centre as it first expands somewhat resembles a cabbage. It is often used for boiling and pickling. The wood of the tree is spongy, and is used for building wharves, as it is impervious to the sea-worm. It is said that a cannon ball will not penetrate it. It is a paltry emblem for a State flag, as its characteristics accurately indicate pride and poverty. When used for wharves, it, however, becomes a veritable ' Mudsill .' or cabbage tree, the only palm in our wide country. The live oak, once so abundant, has, however, been largely cut off, mostly to supply our navy-yards, and some of the ships built from it are now blockading the very harbors from which it was carried. The pitch pine is the common growth of the interior, and under a new system would form a valuable article of commerce as lumber, and as yielding the now so much required turpentine. Of wild animals and birds, here are to be found a large variety. The Hunting Islands and others are well stocked with deer. During the winter wild, geese and ducks abound, and a variety of fish, with fine oysters, can be had at all seasons.

We now come to consider the present inhabitants of this district. The whites are almost entirely the descendants of the earliest settlers of this State, who were English, 5 5 Before 1700 a colony from Dorchester, Mass., made a settlement on Ashley River, and named it for their native town; afterwards, they sent an offshoot and planted the town of Midway, in Georgia. For more than a century they kept up their Congregational Church, with many of their New England institutions. Their descendants in both States have been famed for their enterprise, industry, and moral qualities down to the present day. Scotch, and Protestant Irish, with a slight infusion of the Huguenot and Swiss elements. A century and a half has rendered them homogeneous. As there has never been any interest here other than agriculture, and as every man may be said to own the plantation he cultivates, there has been as little change of property or condition as possible, and therefore the same land and system of cultivation has passed from father to son through four or five generations. Had there been any emigration or change of population, some alterations, and most likely new enterprise and vigor, would have been infused, and more modern and national feeling have been instituted for their narrow and sectional prejudices. No doubt our national character has been much influenced by the division of land. Where this has been nearly equal, as in our New England towns, a republican form of government has been almost a necessity. But at the South an entirely different arrangement has prevailed. Land was at first distributed in large bodies fitted to accommodate a state of slavery; and the consequence was that a feudal system was inaugurated from the settlement, which has continued with increasing power. This has been one of the permanent causes of Southern pride and exclusiveness.

The inhabitants of South Carolina and Virginia previous to the Revolution were very supercilious towards the North, and even to their less opulent neighbors of Georgia and North Carolina; a feeling which was often the cause of much antagonism among the officers and soldiers during the war. Charleston and Williamsburg gave the tone to good society, and it was haughty and aristocratic in the extreme. While Virginia has for the last half century been in a state of comparative decay, South Carolina has, by its culture of cotton and rice, just been able to hold its own; but the pride and exclusiveness of its people have increased much faster than its material interests. Although the Constitution of the United States guarantees to every State a republican form of government, no thinking person who has resided for a single week within the limits of South Carolina can have failed to see and feel that a tyranny equal to that of Austria exists there. The freedom of opinion and its expression were not permitted. Strangers were always under espionage, and public opinion, controlled by an oligarchy of slave-holders, overruled laws and private rights. Nowhere, even in South Carolina, was this feeling of hauteur so strong as in that portion of the State which we are describing. On the large plantations the owners ruled with power unlimited over life and property, and could a faithful record be found it would prove one of vindictive oppression, productive oftentimes of misery and bloodshed. Most of the wealthier planters in the district have residences at Beaufort, to which they remove during the summer months to escape the malaria arising from the soil around their inland houses. This place may be considered the home of the aristocracy. Here reside the Barnwells, 6 6 The Barnwells can trace their pedigree back about one hundred and fifty years to a Col. Barnwell who commanded in an Indian war. Subsequently the name appears on the right side in the Revolution. This is a long period to trace ancestry in Carolina; for while nearly all New England families can trace back to the Puritans, more than two hundred years, the lordly Carolinians generally get among the 'mudsills' in three or four generations at the farthest. Heywards, Rhetts 7 7 Some thirty years ago, R. Barnwell Smith made a figure in Congress by his ultra nullification speeches, and was then considered the greatest fire-eater of them all. He was not 'to the manor born,' but was the son of a Gen. Smith, who founded and resided in the small and poverty-stricken town of Smithville, N.C., at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. As his paternal fortune was small, and some family connection existed with the Barnwells, he emigrated to Beaufort, and there practiced as a lawyer. He was followed by two brothers, who had the same profession. He was the first who openly advocated secession in Congress. They have all been leading politicians and managers of the Charleston Mercury , which, by its mendacity and constant abuse of the North, and its everlasting laudations of Southern wealth and power, has done much to bring on the present war. Desirous to stand better with the aristocracy, some years ago the family sunk the plebeian patronymic of Smith and adopted that of Rhett, a name known in South Carolina a century previous. (formerly called Smiths,) Stuarts, Means, Sams, Fullers, 8 8 During Nullification times the Fullers were Union men. Doctor Thomas Fuller, who, a short time since, set fire to his buildings and cotton crop to prevent their falling into Yankee hands, is well known as a kind-hearted physician, and better things might have been expected of him. His brother is a celebrated Baptist clergyman in Baltimore. He was formerly a lawyer, and afterwards preached to an immense congregation, mainly of slaves, in his native place. Elliots, 9 9 Many years ago the Elliots were staunch Union men, and Stephen Elliot, a gentleman of talent, wrote many very able arguments against nullification and in favor of the Union. He always thought that Port Royal must some day be the great naval and commercial depot of the South. He may yet live to see his former anticipations realized, though not in the way he desired. Draytons and others, altogether numbering about fifty families, but bearing not more than twenty different names, who rule and control the country for forty miles around. This is the most complete and exclusive approach to 'nobility' of blood and feeling on our continent. Nowhere else is family pride carried to such an extent. They look with supercilious disdain on every useful employment, save only the planting of cotton and rice. Nothing in any of our large cities can equal the display of equipages, with their profusion of servants in livery, exhibited on pleasant afternoons, when the mothers and daughters of these cotton lords take their accustomed airing. So powerfully has this feeling of exclusiveness prevailed that no son or daughter dares marry out of their circle. For a long series of years has this custom prevailed, and the consequence is that the families above named are nearly of a common blood; and it needs no physiologist to tell us the invariable effect arising from this transgression of natural laws, on the physical and mental faculties of both sexes. In such a state of society is it strange that the present generation should have grown up with ideas better suited to the castes of India than to those of republican America? As a consequence they consider their condition more elevated than that of their neighbors in the adjoining States, and of almost imperial consideration. But no language can express their bitter contempt for the people of the North, more particularly for those of New England birth.