man's mind is to make money. That this apparent prosperity is real no outsider can believe. That business is planted on sure foundations no merchant pretends. That there will come a pause and then a crash, a few prudent men prophesy.

Meantime Atlanta is doing more than Macon and Augusta combined. The railroad from here to Chattanooga clears over one hundred thousand dollars per month, and could add fifty thousand more to that enormous sum if it had plenty of engines and rolling stock. The trade of the city is already thirty per cent greater than it was before the war, and it is limited only by the accommodations afforded, and has even now spread its wings far out on streets heretofore sacred to the privacy of home.

Wonderful as is the new growth of the city, its original existence is still more wonderful. It is two hundred and fifty miles from the sea-coast, in the midst of a country but moderately productive, not in the vicinity of any navigable river, and without facilities of any kind for manufacturing purposes; yet it was founded less than twenty years ago, is now the fourth place in population in the State, and bids fair to be the second in less than five years.

It can never be a handsome city, but its surrounding hills and slopes offer beautiful sites for elegant residences. Many of the buildings now going up are of frail and fire-tempting character, but in several instances owners are putting in solid one or two-story brick blocks, — intending at some future time to add two or three stories more. Few of the present merchants were here before the war, - few of them are yet to be considered as permanent residents of the city. The streets never were either neat or tasty; now, what with the piles of building material and the greater piles of débris and rubbish, and the vast amount of teaming and hauling over them, they are simply horrible. The former residents are coming home, and in the private portions, as

no one

well as the business section, there is great activity of repair and refurnishing. The place has no decent hotel, has yet found time to build a large house. Of small and wretched fifth-rate hotels there are half a dozen; but better than any of these are several of the very numerous socalled private boarding-houses, which send their porters and runners to every train, receive all classes of transient guests, charge the usual four dollars per day, and are hotels in everything but name. The city handsomely supports two of the largest daily newspapers in the State, has five or six churches, a medical college, two or three select schools, and is talking about an academy.

These northwestern counties were all strongly opposed to secession in 1860–61, and this Congressional district furnished several hundred soldiers to our armies. Its disposition toward the government is now, as a whole, probably better than that of any other district in the State. Its slaves constituted less than one fourth of its aggregate population before the war, and in general there is much less complaint here than elsewhere as to the disposition of the freedman. The people pretty generally quietly accept the decision of the sword, and the men who prate of State supremacy are far less in number than in the district below.

The social condition of affairs is deplorable in the extreme. It results mainly from the bitter feud between the two classes of people, those who "went with the State," and those who remained true to the Union. While the country was under the control of Johnston and Hood, the Union men suffered almost every conceivable wrong and outrage. Their families were turned out of doors, their wives were abused and insulted, their daughters were maltreated and ruined, their farms were pillaged and desolated, their houses were sacked and burned, and they themselves were imprisoned and tortured; nay, many of them were

hunted down like wild beasts, and shot like dogs when at the point of death by starvation. That the Union men now seek to strike a balance for the indignities and barbarities of other days is only most natural. Whence a constant turmoil in all sections, which results in the sudden death of not a few persons and the arrest and imprisonment of large numbers. The leading delegate of this section went so far as to say, in the late State Convention, that three fifths of the men in all Cherokee Georgia are now under indictment. I hope this is an exaggeration; but my own observations convince me that the truth is at least so bad as to present a picture of civil commotion only less painful than the commotion of war itself.

The people of this section are generally hardy and industrious, and in many respects are so much unlike those of some other sections of the State, that "Cherokee Georgia is a term of contempt and reproach with the aristocrats and land monopolists of the southern and southeastern parts. I found the delegates from this quarter lacking in something of the polish of those from the cities, but no class of men in the late Convention showed a wider range of general information. I find the common people no more ignorant than elsewhere in the State, and it is certainly to be said in their favor that they are not sitting in sullen indifference nor idling in helpless poverty. Poor they are, having little left but lean bodies and homespun garments; but I judge that the whites of these twenty counties in the northwest have done more work since the close of the war than the whites of any fifty counties below the middle line of the State.

I am very certain that the President's course in granting pardons so freely to leading Rebels in this State has not strengthened the faith nor upheld the hands nor encouraged the hearts of these mountain men who were always our friends. They should receive such favors as government has to give; but I am everywhere told that the golden apples

are cast into the laps of men not yet cleansed of love for the Rebellion, while the original Unionists, who kept the faith unto the end, are generally cuffed and sent away emptyhanded. As I have already said, hundreds of these men suffered every possible outrage at the hands of the Rebels. You need n't undertake to tell them who is to blame for their treatment, for they know that Joe Brown and Howell Cobb could have prevented it by a word.

Scores of women, whose husbands were abused or imprisoned, went to Brown or Cobb for protection or relief, only to be insulted or coldly turned away. Now when these men and women see Joe Brown put forward and accepted as Presidential adviser for this State, and see Howell Cobb restored to all his rights of person and property, is it any wonder that they manifest little love for the government, nay, any wonder that some of these men swear roundly, and exclaim, “D—n your government, if it has no favors for anybody but black-hearted Rebels!" When I talked with one of them, he cut me short with, "Treason a crime? D-n it, loyalty's the only crime, I think!"

FINA

XXXIX.

MATTERS IN CENTRAL GEORGIA.

GREENSBORO, November 25, 1865.

INALLY I have found what I began to fear I should not see in this Southern trip, evidence that it is possible for at least some persons in this section of the country to know and appreciate order and beauty and taste and neatness and home-like comfort.

Greensboro is the only place of thirty or forty in which

I have stopped that may challenge comparison with Northern towns on the score of general appearance. It is the shire town of Greene County, has a population of sixteen hundred to two thousand persons, and is often mentioned in the State as the place where Mr. Secretary Seward once taught school. It is situated on the Georgia Railroad, about midway between Atlanta and Augusta, in the heart of a high, rolling, productive country, in which there are many good farms under fair cultivation. It formerly had a cotton factory, which is now used as barracks for the one hundred and fifty soldiers stationed here; a handsome brick college in grounds luxuriant with vines and flowers and evergreens, in which an academy is now kept; and two or three small hotels, which are now all closed. It has half a dozen substantial brick stores, and is doing a moderate trade with the well-peopled surrounding country. Its court-house is the best I have anywhere seen in the State; and two of its half-dozen churches are buildings both tasteful and costly. Its beautiful yards and gardens are not so numerous as in some other towns I have visited, but there is everywhere a noticeable absence of that glaring showiness so common in the South. In general, the little town has a very Northern appearance, looking not indeed so much like a New England town as like a quiet county seat of Northern New Jersey or Central New York.

Finally, I have also found what I began to fear I should not see in this Southern trip,- evidence that it is possible for at least some Southern women to know and appreciate the dignity of domestic life, and to comprehend the subtile mysteries of thrifty and orderly and cleanly housekeeping.

The house of this widow lady, in which I am domiciled for a day or two, is the one house of all in which I have stopped that may challenge comparison with the house of any New England dame under the sun. It is a small cor