Thomas North

“ We landed at New Orleans on the 21st of the month, which was the day before the vote on Secession was to be taken in the State of Louisiana. When time is not an important consideration with the traveler, we know of no more delightful voyage than by a first-class steamboat down the "Father of Waters" to the Crescent City—a palace on the waters, in a delicious climate, through a magnificent country in the "Sunny South," sweeping from thirty-seven to thirty degrees north latitude, but ten hundred and forty miles by the meandering river. ”

“ You and I both hail from adjoining counties in the old Empire State as our fatherland, and are now citizens of the Empire State of the great Northwest. The one gave us birth, and nursed us to the years of early manhood. The other is our adopted State, where we have reached the strength and vigor of intellectual manhood. There we knew and enjoyed the blessings of freedom—freedom of opinion and of speech. Here the same, and not one degree north or south of the same latitude. ”

“ He speaks not to his enemy except with the fiery tongue of his revolver. The man of the North hates with a mental reservation, leaving room for reconciliation; but the man of the South is as hospitable and warm-hearted to a friend or guest as he is terrible in hate of an enemy. It was when we met his Memphis majesty that we began to appreciate the power of sectional prejudices, based on sectional differences—differences in institutions, customs, habits, climate and ways of thinking. ”

“ Martin P. Sweet is dead. We shall not again hear from his lips the burning eloquence that in times past has thrilled the court and the bar, as he held up to view the enormities of crimes which he had been called upon to prosecute; or the melting pathos with which he captivated the sympathies of jury and people, while defending those he regarded innocent. Few men ever possessed that magnetic power which chains an audience in a greater degree than did our departed friend.
"It is not alone at the bar that he has left his impress as a leading mind. ”

“ The gardens in and around San Antonio, and along the river for miles and miles, are irrigated from its waters, by little ditches running in all directions, from a big ditch or canal, that was originally built by the Spanish government when its various missions were established along the San Antonio valley. But if nothing of the kind should be done in the future, that country will forever remain the finest stock-raising section in the United States—the paradise of horses, sheep and cattle. There is little doubt that the tame cattle herds of to-day outnumber the wild ones of half a century ago. ”

“ Some of you laugh to scorn the idea of bloodshed as a result of secession, and jocularly propose to drink all the blood that will ever flow in consequence of it! But let me tell you what is coming on the heels of secession. The time will come when your fathers and husbands, your sons and brothers, will be herded together like sheep and cattle at the point of the bayonet ”

“ My regard for [12] the personal welfare of yourself and yours is too warm and deep, not to regret seeing you float to the Southern extreme of American society at the present juncture of our National affairs.
"The loud blast of secession is already heard in the South, and I am impressed that the Southern sisterhood of States will unite in a desperate effort to dissolve this Union and destroy the General Government. And that no renewal of compromise effort can save the tremendous shock of war, between the North and South, that portends in the political heavens. ”

“ The heaviest vessels can lie there and ride at anchor in perfect safety, as they are protected from the heavy "trade winds" from the southeast, and others from the south, by these reefs. Nature has furnished the surface of the island with a few inches of light sandy soil, warm and quick-producing, growing corn, the largest and sweetest sweet potatoes, the largest and most delicious melons of all kinds one ever saw or ate, with garden sauce of every name and nature; even Irish potatoes, if grown from seed imported from the north each year. ”

“ One of the driving wheels of the great commercial wagon of the United States stands at Galveston, and the steam of progress is driving the mighty vehicle westward, keeping pace with the "star of empire."
When that network of railroads which but for secession would now have been thrown over all Texas, east, west, north and south, tapping the wheat regions of Northern Texas, the lumber regions of Eastern Texas, the stock regions of Western Texas, and the cotton and sugar regions of Southern Texas ”

“ And now, Lew, I want you and your sister Emma to accompany me with the ambulance and the nice white carriage mules, and be my companions in exile. Do, my dears, and don't say no, for how can I go alone, and leave my adopted darling brother and sister. We can do something for a livelihood if the purse gets low, and we'll fill it as we go. ”

“ A third party believed in preserving the Union at almost all hazards; even with the loss of the peculiar rights of the South. They argued and urged that Southern rights could be maintained by fighting for them, if need be "in the Union and under the old flag." This party was quite numerous.
A fourth party said, but dare not say it very loud, "Let slavery slide, if need be it is not worth shedding blood over, but let us have the Union. Besides, the sentiment of all mankind is against our servile system, and history will dig its grave at last." ”

“ Logical in argument, terrible in invective, and quick in repartee, he carried the judgments of the jury or an audience. Or failing here his quick sympathies and deep pathos led them along against the convictions of judgment. Such was Martin P. Sweet as an orator and advocate. A self-made man, he surmounted difficulties which would discourage and defeat others, and reached a position at the bar second to none, and established a reputation as an orator of which any man among us might well feel proud. ”

“ In such a flock the one that has killed his [105] man or more is hero and leader. This class of desperadoes were tools of the more accomplished, genteel, oily-tongued, respectable scoundrels in society, who sat behind the screens in the green-room of iniquity, and were the wire-pulling prompters of crime—such as intimidation, robbery, assassination, and so on. Especially was this the case during the war. It is impossible to understand, without experience, the situation of unmitigated horror created by such surroundings. ”

“ The reader will please mark that we do not say the white man can not do it, but simply that he has not, does not, and hence probably will not. Not that the maximum heat of those latitudes is greater or more oppressive than of the more northern latitude, or as much so, where grateful winds come in and compensate, but the heated term instead of closing at the end of one, two, or four weeks, at the most, as in the North, continues four to six months in the South, and brings upon the human system at last an enervation of body and spirit inevitable, and in the end almost constitutional. ”

“ EFFECT OF CLIMATE ON TASTES AND APPETITES.
It is worthy of note and may be remarked that one's tastes and appetites undergo great changes in passing from a high northern clime to a southern; so much so that to his own surprise one finds himself literally accomplishing the experience of "loving what he once hated, and hating what he once loved." For example, buttermilk and clabber are delicious to the taste there; but few people ever think of them in the North except in association with food for swine. ”

“ Sheep can be grown with high profit for domestic uses on the moderately elevated dry sound lands of all parts of the State. But the sheep region proper—that where the pasturage is best adapted to them, [202] both in summer and winter, where with safety and health they can be herded in great flocks, and where the land is cheap, and wool can be most cheaply grown for exportation—lies in Western Texas. It is bounded on the east and west by the Guadalupe and Nueces Rivers, and so far as yet experimented, north by the Colorado River, say from Bastrop upward. ”

“ I feel her drawing me the hardest, and the orthodox people say there can be but one true love, and I suppose it must be so, either because they say so, or because it is true in fact, in nature, that is, one's experience will accord with the sentiment. But is it true in my experience? I am afraid not; therefore I am a miserable sinner. It is true, I am more or less involved in feelings toward Miss Emma, warmer than common friendship between a single lady and gentleman, and it is more than less. ”

“ It is now conceded and agreed by practical men in the business of grape-growing there, that the soil and climate of Texas are admirably adapted to grape culture; and though in the past cotton has engrossed the attention of the people to the exclusion almost of every product except corn, now the cultivation of grapes is assuming prominent and tangible shape, and commanding the practical attention of the citizens of the State. Besides, the next few years will probably bring into the State thousands of vine-growers from the South of France and Germany, who will make this their principal business. ”

“ To the northwest of Austin, a hundred miles away, we heard the report that a serious fight had occurred between the State Militia and two or three hundred Indians, who had come down [193] from the mountains to steal horses and cattle. That the Indians fought in ambush, and made many of the whites bite the dust. But when the lying spirit of the war was over, the truth came out that these Indians were a colony of German refugees fleeing from Texas persecution to Mexico. ”

“ It is a fact, patent to the intelligent traveler, that the temper of a people partakes largely and inevitably of the isothermal character of the [36] climate they live in. This is seen in the Southern States; and the further south one penetrates the more conspicuous the fact. Like the climate the temper of the people is hot, fiery, impetuous, and, on occasions, will burst out in volcanic eruption, submerging in utter ruin what has become obnoxious to its vengeful wrath. In the Northern States the temper of the people is like the climate, temperate, platonic, philosophical ”

“ To me, this is no chimera of an overwrought imagination, but the serious, sober tone of destiny that comes thundering along the pathway of nations, and having shattered many nations, and buried them in the dust of the sepulchral past, no better fate may await ours. ”

“ If we look at the progress made with the vine in Ohio and other Northern States, with a less favored soil and climate, increasing from four thousand acres, ten or twelve years ago, to two millions of acres now devoted to wine-growing, yielding large profits and immense fortunes for those engaged in the business, how much greater success may be expected to accrue [62] from an equal outlay of money and effort in the warm loamy soils of Texas.
The change in the labor system, resulting from the late war, is bringing the subject into more public notice. ”

“ S. picture things on the Southern sky, in vividness of eloquent speech, which the writer rarely ever heard equaled—not more than half a dozen times in his life, at most. His soul caught the true image, and his language made it seem to one present and real.
As compared with other men he excelled in most of the qualities that constitute a successful public speaker, or private conversationalist. But comparing him with himself, it is difficult to determine in which he was the more excellent. His nature was spontaneous to an exceeding degree in every capacity and relation of life. ”

“ They enter, and there find the doomed one at rest with the loved ones, in the unconscious bliss of sleep, while the moonlight shimmers from the light breeze-waving trees, through the open lattice, in fantastic shapes of light and shade, upon the chamber wall, just o'er their pillowed heads, so soft and so silvery. ”

“ But such are the issues of life and death in Texas, and a man is a little nearer death there all the while than in any other country we wot of.
As an example of the jeopardy of human life, and how crime against society maybe committed with impunity in that country, we will give the case of a leading business man in one of the cities of Texas, and a prominent member of a leading religious body (whose name we withhold) , who, some years before the war, had a personal difficulty with a citizen, who had threatened him with personal violence. ”

“ The soil is equally favorable to all the other cereals that are produced in the Northern States. The soil on and near the Upper Brazos is reddish, and is now considered the best for wheat on account of the solution of gypsum that it holds, and which is regarded as an important quality in a wheat-producing soil. It wears better and longer than other soils.
The southeastern and southern-central counties are the best cotton-growing region, the most fertile of all lands in the State, and for any thing, like an equal area, the best for cotton that can be found in the world. ”

“ The writer found that long familiarity with such scenes resulted in a demoralization of noble sentiment and refined feelings; so that at last one came to regard human life not much above the level of brutes, and to feel that there is no virtue except in name, and that the distinction of right and wrong is only relative and conventional, having no absolute and universal foundation in truth and equity. ”

“ This was the element which, during the late war, found an opportunity for the gratification of its native instincts, and dominated everything, and inaugurated and kept alive a perfect reign of terror in the absence of the better class of citizens at the seat of war. Half a dozen of these desperadoes could intimidate and plunder a town without let or hindrance; and if any one objected or offered resistance he was shot down like a dog, and nothing said or done about it. ”

“ Doubtless the standard of moral sentiment with the public in gross is lower in Texas than elsewhere in the South, because, forsooth, it is a newer country; and in this respect partakes of the free and easy characteristics common to all new countries in their pioneer life. Besides, it was originally settled by an Anglo-American element, called in the expressive parlance of those days "renegade Americans," from the "States," "refugees from justice" many of them, smart, shrewd and unscrupulous, whose sons are now on the stage of action. ”

“ Every variety of soil is found in Texas, and all kinds of grain and fruit can be produced there, with sugar, and cotton one to four bales to the acre.
[59]
Texas is a country of great extremes and contradictions. It is the hottest and coldest; the driest and wettest; it has the most streams and the least water, some wet and some dry, and mostly dry at that; the best soil and the poorest, very little of the latter; the most cattle and the least milk, and butter, and cheese, and beef; the most salubrious climate and most sudden changes of weather; the least rain and heaviest rain-storms ”

“ And I now feel bound to say to you, though in confidence, what for wise political reasons I have not dared to utter to any political friend, that I more than fear—I believe—this Government is going to ruin! Presaging wrath is borne on every breeze, and tells of the coming woe! ”

“ We noticed several times the very men applauding the speech who had opposed the speaker and the speaking in the morning. The power of General Houston over a Texas audience was magical to the last degree, and doubtless well understood by himself; hence he feared no mobs.
During the first year of the war Colonel Moore had organized a splendid regiment of eleven hundred young men, volunteers mostly from Galveston, finely equipped, of which Sam Houston, Jr., was a member. They were on dress parade daily, and presented a charming appearance. ”