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 The Old South. 427

plain. It was not a race difference between the two peoples, for they were of the same blood and the same speech. The ambition of each section as to the avenues in which it should seek its own self-aggran- dizement was determined by its surroundings. The Northern States of the Old Thirteen had magnificent bays and harbors, but a bleak, inhospitable climate, in which African slaves could not thrive, and a soil not adapted to producing the things which the world specially needed. The people of that region then freed or sold into the South the negroes whom they had brought from Africa and whom they found to be unprofitable slaves in their latitude. Naturally, these Northerners turned away from unremunerative agriculture to the wealth-giving sea and became the boldest and hardiest navigators the world had ever seen ; but with all their courage, pluck and energy they were averse to war and personal conflicts as interfering with the peaceful gains of trade. They were too busy to be turbulent. They put thousands of ships upon the ocean as fishing-smacks, whalers and merchantmen. Their shipping interests called for great centres of trade and for foundries and machine shops. They built great cities and huge dock-yards; they opened vast mines and estab- lished rich factories. They became money-getting from the situation in which their surroundings had placed them. Anglo-Saxon energy and indomitable will had made them masters of whatever was at first unfavorable in their situation.

The South had but few ports, and these were in unhealthy places , it had a climate well suited to the African and a soil well adapted to produce those things which the world most needed. Hence the peo- ple of the Old South maintained slavery and devoted themselves almost exclusively to agriculture. They built no great cities, for they had no trade ; they developed no mines and erected no factories, for their laborers were better at field work than at anything else. The Southern men of property went to the country and became feudal lords of black retainers, the best fed, the best clothed, the gayest, happiest, healthiest, strongest serfs the world had ever seen. The towns and villages at the South were shackly, mostly with unpaved and unlighted streets. The rural mansions were spacious and com- fortable, seldom grand or elegant. An agricultural people are seldom rich, and the profuse hospitality of the Southern planter kept him generally straitened in his means. The Old South labored under a more serious disadvantage ; there were few literary and scientific men among them. History shows that the great men of the world have been born chiefly in the country, and that they gained distinction,