American Agriculture [pp. 249-264]

THE PRINCETON RE VIEW.
had become lazy, worthless, and vicious. Perhaps we shall find
that the poor whites have been suppressed rather than degraded,
and that beneath the hunting-fishing-lounging habit which slavery
generated and maintained lies a native shrewdness almost passing Yankee wit, an indomitable pluck, such as has made the
fights of Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg memorable forever in the history of mankind, and an energy which,
when turned from horse-races, street-fights, cocking mains, hunting and fishing, to breaking up the ground, felling the forest, running the mill, exploiting the mine, and driving trade, may yet
realize all the possibilities of that fair land.
Third. To ascertain what are the adaptations of any piece of
ground to the cultivation of any single crop, and what variety
and order of crops will best bring out the capabilities of soil and
climate in the production of wealth, may seem a simple thing,
but it is not. It is so far from being a simple thing that a race
of men, not barbarous, but, as we call them, civilized, may inhabit
a region for an indefinite period and this thing not be done at
all. Such may be the lack of enterprise, such the force of tradition, that crops may be cultivated from generation to generation, and from century to century, while yet the question has
never been fairly determined whether the agriculture of the dis
trict might not advantageously be reinforced, and the soil be
relieved, by the introduction of new crops, or even by throwing
out the traditionary crops altogether.
Gonzales in his "Tour of England" (I730) wrote: "And my
tutor told me that a good author of their own made this remark
of Wiltshire,'that an ox left to himself would, of all England,
choose to live in the north of this county, a sheep in the south
part of it, and a man in the middle of both, as partaking of the
pleasure of the plain and the plenty of the deep country.'"
The remark does not exaggerate the nicety of those distinctions
which determine the range of the profitable cultivation whether
of an animal or a vegetable species. A certain rough canvass
of the agricultural capabilities of any district is easily made, and
a process of elimination early takes place by which certain crops
are discarded, for once and for all, as hopeless. But among the
great variety of crops which may be cultivated in any region,
justly to discriminate between the good and the very good, and
254