South, the people of Georgia have taken the lead of their late brethren in arms in all the arts of peace and the measures of progress. The arbitrament of the sword has been accepted, in good faith, as final and conclusive of the unfortunate issues that estranged the sections, and Georgia is foremost in proving, by her deeds as well as by speech, that she is determined to forget "the things that are past," and to push on to the goal in the effort to redeem lost time and capital, build up her waste places, and rehabilitate the country with the mantle of peace, prosperity, contentment, and happiness. Georgians are noted for open hospitality, their kindly welcome to strangers, their chivalric devotion to the weaker sex, and their love of law and order. They also manifest a somewhat peculiar independence and conservatism of thought and action. There has been but little of bossism in her politics, fanaticism in her religion and morals, or communism among her laboring classes. Georgians may be led, so long as the course of leadership commends itself to their reserved judgment, but not driven. They are prompt to recognize eminent abilities; they are ardent admirers of high qualities of eloquence and statesmanship, but prompt to denounce sophistry, demagogism, and error. Woe to the political leader who attempts to conduct them into the camp of the enemy! The various isms that sorely afflict other States and countries find no encouragement or foothold in Georgia. Not that any restrictions of law are thrown around them, except the law of a conservative public sentiment. Free-love-ism, religious fanaticism, free-thought-ism, communism, labor-strikes, etc., find few adherents or exponents. THE NEGRO RACE. The negro population of Georgia is almost wholly made up of descendants of slaves brought from Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas, especially from Virginia. The number directly imported into the State from Africa was very small, and their descendants are chiefly to be found in the southeastern part, or coast region of the State, including the sea islands. While the originals of the better type of American negroes, as they still exist in Africa, are much inferior to some of the interior tribes of Africa in moral and intellectual capacity, they were not of the lowest tribes. The seacoast negroes of South Carolina and Georgia-"rice plantation negroes," as they are sometimes called-have evidently sprung from a tribe, or tribes, that were lower in the scale of humanity than were the ancestors of the negroes of Middle Georgia-the "old Virginia stock." The lower physical and cranial development of the former sufficiently attest the above statement, were there not other differences less strongly marked. The peculiar "lingo," or barbarous admixture of remains of the native speech of the low country negro, the apparent difficulty they experience in mastering the sounds of the English language, would itself indicate a diverse origin, amounting almost to a difference in the formation of the organs of speech. These differences, however, are of small importance with reference to the purpose of this chapter; nor is it within the purview of this book to discuss, in detail, the mooted question of the relative mental temperament of the whites and blacks. This inquiry has been much complicated by feelings of prejudice on the one hand and interested partisanship on the other. Physical and structural differences--differences, too, in those organs which are universally admitted to be indicative of differences in intellectual and moral strength, are too manifest to be disputed. It would be but reasonable to expect the mental differences to be as great as the physical. This conclusion would probably be readily reached by a close and unprejudiced observer. Such an observer would doubtless declare that the advocates on both sides of the question have been extravagant, if not intemperate, in their expressed views of the capacity of the negro mind for development. While the history of the race, back to the undiscoverable past, has noted no clear and undisputed instances of distinguished success in science, philosophy, poetry, or art, yet the capacity of the very young negro children for acquiring knowledge through the ordinary methods of the schools must be admitted as pretty nearly, if not quite, equal to that of white children. But as they advance in physical growth towards puberty, their intellectual development does not keep pace with, the physical. What shall we say of the moral capacity of negroes? Some writer has said that the negro is rather non-moral than immoral, which is to say that the moral crimes he commits, in the gratification of his desires, are attributable more to his dullness of moral perception than to his deliberate disregard of moral principle. No people are more religious, yet the lives of none are more inconsistent with the professions of godliness. In some of the relations of life, the negro is a law unto himself, holding that certain acts are no wrong if no detection follows commission. In a state of slavery it was a wide-spread belief among them that stealing from the master was not a crime, "if not found out." These, and some other peculiarities, may be justly considered as inherent in the race, and may probably be referred to the teachings and practices of their progenitors for thousands of years, which teachings have resulted in fixing these singularly oblique perceptions as race characteristics. It must not be understood that every individual is the subject of these peculiarities. There are those who affirm that all negroes are dishonest-all negro women are unchaste; but such intemperate assertions must be set down to the score of blind partisan prejudice, hardly believed by their authors. On the contrary, there are many bright exceptions, and have been all through their bondage as a race. There has been much wholesale, undiscriminating, and consequently unjust aspersions upon the moral and intellectual character and habits of the negro race, on the one hand, and equally as extravagant assertions of equality of natural endowments on the other. The truth lies between these extremes. The negro is certainly inferior to the white race-how far we shall not undertake to say-in the chief natural requisites that underlie the highest achievements in moral, intellectual, social and political excellence. In justice, it should be said of them that during the late fratricidal war between the States, the slaves exhibited a wonderful degree of fidelity to the trust reposed in them, of necessity, by their absent masters and owners. The expectations on the one hand and apprehensions on the other, that servile insurrections, rapine and pillage would desolate the interior of the Confederacy, were alike disappointed. So far from being an element of weakness on the side of the struggling South, it is difficult to conceive how the great struggle could have been so prolonged, if it had not been for the productive power of the negroes on the farms and plantations. Many instances occurred during the war of unswerving devotion to the master and his family, in the very presence of the liberating forces, that testified to the strong feeling of personal attachment of the untutored slave to his life-long protector, friend and master. The forced disruption of the ties that had so long bound the inferior to the ruling race was not the least of the sad results of the war. CHAPTER II. POPULATION, WEALTH AND OCCUPATIONS. POPULATION BY SECTIONS. Georgia is a large State, and embraces within its borders a very considerable range of elevation, latitude and geological formation. As a necessary consequence, we find a great diversity of climate, soils, forestry and productions. The capabilities of the several sections differ so greatly, the crops and methods of culture are so diverse, that it has been found desirable, if not indispensable, to divide the 137 counties of the State into sections, grouping them together with reference to geographical location, and, to some extent, according to geological formations. This division was made in 1878 by the then Commissioner of Agriculture, and has been adhered to in all subsequent publications of crop statistics. The arrangement divided the State into five somewhat unequal sections. For the purposes of this work, North Georgia has been subdivided into North Georgia-East, and North Georgia-West, and Middle Georgia into Middle Georgia-East, and Middle Georgia-West. The following table shows the counties composing each section and sub-section : |