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 -i860] The stationary South. 415 1846 and 1847 were the years of the terrible famine in Ireland ; 1848 was the year of universal political disturbance in Europe, the year of revolution which made refugees of so many thousands and unsettled the peoples of the Continent, bringing discontent, restlessness, and even a touch of despair. And the movement did not stop with the end of revolution and famine. It was but the beginning of a new era of immigration. The stream of new comers grew rather than diminished from year to year, and steadily augmented the forces of change which inevitably crossed the sea with these swarming bands of strangers. Their distribution within the Union proved easier and more immediate every year by reason of the rapid extension of the railway system of the country. More than six thousand miles of railway were constructed between 1840 and 1850, an increase of more than two hundred per cent, over the preceding decade ; and the electric telegraph was added just in the nick of time to facilitate the safe operation of long lines of transportation. Morse's invention came into actual use in 1844, and promised that the most widely separated regions of the great continent which was thus filling up with restless hosts of settlers would presently be near neighbours to one another. It was but yesterday that steam navigation had become an assured success upon the ocean (1838). The McCormick reaper was no older than 1834. The world was but just beginning to feel the full impulse towards that diversification of industry which was to transform it. The South of course felt these forces at work within herself as well as upon her northern neighbours and out upon the broad new-tenanted fields of the West, where everything was new. She had railways among the first ; the earliest inventions of the new age had been those which made the production and manufacture of cotton easy and exceedingly profitable, and from these she had reaped a great increase of wealth. There had been a day when she had hoped for as great a development as should come to any section or any region in the world. But she had long since been disillusioned of that hope. While population grew elsewhere by leaps and bounds, hers did not sensibly increase. While new sources of wealth and power were added every year, as it seemed, to the resources of the rest of the country, none that were new were vouchsafed to her. Even her own native white population drifted away from her into the West, into the North, into the newer portions of the South itself. The census of 1860 was to show that there were in South Carolina only 277,000 white persons born within her borders, while 193,000 born within the State were living in other parts of the country. North Carolina had kept only 634,000 out of 906,000 ; and Virginia only 1,000,000 out of 1,400,000. Immigrants did not come down into those fertile valleys; and the great plantations, with their crowding, docile slaves, thrust out even those of native stock whose homes had been there. The race was towards the West. If Southerners could carry their CH. XIII.