SPEECH

DELIVERED AT THE CHARLOTTE CENTENNIAL, MAY 20, 1875.

By Hon. T. L. CLINGMAN.

After General Cox, Hon. Thos. L. Clingman was called for and spoke as follows:

GENTLEMEN-You have been truthfully told by the eloquent speakers who have preceded me to-day, that North Carolina was the first of the colonies to appeal to arms against Great Britain, and the first to declare independence. There is nothing left for me to add on this point. Even if I had been the first speaker, I doubt if I should have deemed it necessary to argue the last of these questions, for I have never seen or heard of but three North Carolinians who professed to have doubts on the subject, and for the sake of contrast I am quite willing that they should go in a set by themselves.

During the discussions of the day, one consideration presented itself to my mind which ought to be gratifying to us all. When the war of the Revolution began, the free white population of the colonies was very nearly two millions and a half, and yet General Washington's army sometimes was allowed to dwindle down to two or three thousand men. Why was this? The people of these colonies had been acccustomed only to live under a monarchy, and practically knew no other government. There were intelligent, high-toned, brave men who led in. the movement, and to whose efforts its success was chiefly due, but the masses were, in the main, so slow, careless, indifferent, or divided, that Lord Cornwallis was surprised when he found a community like that of Mecklenburg all arrayed against him.

A century has passed by, and what has been the result? Has the enjoyment of constitutional government and free institutions caused us to degenerate? Why, in our late civil war, our whole population, whatever might be the side they espoused, seemed ready to embark in the

contest.

North Carolina alone, with a white population of little more than six hundred thousand, or only one-fourth of that of all the colonies, if you compute the length of the service of her men, placed in the field more troops than all the old thirteen States did, nor have I a doubt but that she had twice as many men killed in battle as all those that were slain on the American side during the entire revolutionary struggle. Why one of our North Carolina brigades would probably have arrested the march of Cornwallis across the State. I have little doubt but that the brigade I commanded so long, many surviving members of which I have seen here assembled to-day, would, if present at Guilford Court House, by

one of its charges, have relieved Lord Cornwallis of the necessity of marching all the way up to Yorktown to find some one to capture him. The difference between our people of revolutionary times and those of the present day, is to be attributed partly to our experience of the advantages of free institutions, and also to that general diffusion of intelligence and public spirit, which the great material progress around us has produced by means of such instrumentalities as railroads, telegraphs and a widely extended press.

Our civil war, too, has strikingly presented the contrast between the United States and European nations. In the year 1859 I was in Italy during a great war waged by France and Italy against Austria, and two battles, which occurred in the same month, decided the contest. A few years later, the power of the Austrian empire, with seven or eight hundred thousand men, was broken in a single battle at Sadowa. In the more recent war between France and Germany, the French Emperor, at Sedan, surrendered in the open field one hundred and thirty thousand men. Just think of one hundred and thirty thousand men surrendered in the open field. Why, I doubt if General Grant, even, ever had as large a number of men as that present in a single engagement under his eye, while General Lee never had half that number present at one time. How striking the difference between Europe and the United States. Men who fight for a king fight feebly, with little heart, and are easily subdued, but in a republic each citizen feels that he is fighting for himself and for his own country. It thus happens that the entire strength of the country is called into action. Nor does any other condition so greatly develop material progress. When in London, I happened, during a conversation with Lord Macaulay, one of the best informed men in Europe, to say that the United States had as many miles of railroad as all the rest of the world, and he seemed surprised to learn the fact.

Our late war developed all that was most striking in ancient or modern warfare. When at sunrise on the field of Waterloo, Napoleon saw that Wellington's army, instead of having retreated, as he had apprehended it would do, was in position before him, he exclaimed, "We have them, these English!" Marshal Soult, who had been fighting them for years in Portugal and Spain, said, "Sire, the infantry of England in battle is the devil." Napoleon, at the close of the day, found this to be true, and at St. Helena, referring to their steady resistance under attack, said, "There is no moving them." But nothing that England's soldiers ever did, surpassed the unshaken courage of our North Carolina Confederates under the most formidable assaults. On more than one occasion, when attacked again and again, at the same time in front and flank, by more than ten times its numbers, one of its brigades remained unbroken.

But the most striking feature of the late war was the Confederate charge. The student will remember that at Marathon the Athenians for the first time made a wild dash against the mass of their enemies. Julius Cæsar said that Pompey, at Pharsalia, made a great mistake in not allowing his men to go into the battle with a running charge. This mode of fighting had, however, gone into disuse in the world for centuries, and was revived only in our day by the Confederate soldiers. When after the seven days' fight at Richmond, the Orleans Princes returned to Europe, to account for McClellan's defeat they referred to this feature,

and said that people in Europe could have no idea of the effect of a charge extending over a length of three miles. Our friend, General D. H. Hill, if present, could tell us all about this. Often as I witnessed this charge, I never saw it fail to break and carry down the force against which it was directed.

If we wish our country to be the greatest in war and in peace, the first in material progress and the grandest in public spirit and patriotism, we must preserve a free system of constitutional government. I say to gentlemen of the North here present, as well as those of the South, that this is our highest duty to our country and to humanity. In such a cause, we here present are fully prepared to co-operate with them.

On this point I speak as a Confederate who did not abandon the contest till its close. That they may understand what sort of a Confederate I was, I may, perhaps, repeat without impropriety a conversation with General Joseph E. Johnston, which not long since he well remembered. Just before the surrender at Greensboro, I said to him, "General, much has been said about dying in the last ditch; you have still left with you here fourteen thousand of as brave men as the sun ever shone upon; let us stand here and fight the two armies of Grant and Sherman, and thus show to the world how far we can surpass the Thermopyla of the Greeks." He remained in silent thought for some moments, as if hesitating, and thus answered, "General, if they were all like you, I would do it, but there are many young men here who have a future, and I ought not to sacrifice their lives." I then, and sometimes since, have felt, as doubtless many other Confederates have done, a regret that I had not fallen in the last battle. I say to gentlemen from the North, that since the day of that surrender, I have not met one North Carolinian who expressed a desire to renew the war against the United States. We have regarded the contest as finally settled, as after a Presidential election the party beaten acquiesce in the result and stand by the govern ment of their country administered by one against whom they had voted. It never was pretended that men were disloyal to the country because they might have voted for Greely, or Seymour, or Scott, or Clay, unless they would come forward and declare that they had been wrong and were sorry for what they had done. While, as far as I know, our citizens are satisfied that they did right in the late war; but having been beaten, they are willing now to join cordially with those to whom they were once opposed, in all honest and fair efforts to maintain sound constitutional government and the true principles of American liberty.

As the hour is late, gentlemen, I conclude these remarks with an expression of my thanks to the citizens of Charlotte for the generous hospitality they have extended to those whose presence they have invited.

ARTICLES RELATING TO THE MOUNTAIN REGION OF NORTH CAROLINA.

[Having occasionally, for more than thirty years in the past, written articles in relation to the mountain region of North Carolina, owing to the intervals of time which had elapsed between the successive publications, and also because I had sometimes to reply to similar questions of different persons, there are repetitions in some instances, perhaps, of the statements.

In making the selections which follow, however, I have sought only to present such publications as might convey the leading facts of interest, with as little repetition as possible.]

To J. S. Skinner, Esq.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, February 3, 1844. DEAR SIR: Your favor of the 30th ultimo was received a day or two since, and I now avail myself of the very first opportunity to answer it. I do so most cheerfully, because, in the first place, I am happy to have it in my power to gratify in any manner one who has done so much as yourself to diffuse correct information on subjects most important to the agriculture of the country; and, secondly, because I feel a deep interest in the subject to which your inquiries are directed. You state that you have directed some attention to the sheep husbandry of the United States, in the course of which it has occurred to you that the people of the mountain regions of North Carolina, and some of the other Southern States, have not availed themselves sufficiently of their natural advantages for the production of sheep. Being myself well acquainted with the western section of North Carolina, I may perhaps be able to give you most of the information you desire. As you have directed several of your inquiries to the county of Yancey, (I presume from the fact, well known to you, that it contains the highest mountains in any of the United States,) I will, in the first place, turn my attention to that county. First, as to its elevation. Dr. Mitchell, of our University, ascertained that the bed of Tow river, the largest stream in the county, and at a ford near its centre, was about twenty-two hundred feet above the level of the ocean. Burnsville, the seat of the court-house, he found to be between 2,800 and 2,900 feet above it. The general level of the county is, of course, much above this elevation. In fact, a number of the mountain summits rise above the height of six thousand feet. The climate is delightfully cool during the summer: there being very few places in the county where the thermometer rises above eighty degrees on the hottest day. An intelligent gentleman who passed a summer in the northern part of the county (rather the more elevated portion of it) informed me

that the thermometer did not rise on the hottest days above seventy degrees.

You ask, in the next place, if the surface of the ground is so much covered with rocks as to render it unfit for pasture? The reverse is the fact; no portion of the county that I have passed over is too rocky for cultivation, and in many sections of the county one may travel miles without seeing a single stone. It is only about the tops of the highest mountains that rocky precipices are to be found. A large portion of the surface of the county is a sort of elevated table-land, undulating, but seldom too broken for cultivation. Even as one ascends the higher mountains, he will find occasionally on their sides flats of level land containing several hundred acres in a body. The top of the Roan, the highest mountain in the county except the Black, is covered by a prairie for ten miles, which affords a rich pasture during the greater part of the year. The ascent to it is so gradual, that persons ride to the top on horseback from almost any direction. The same may be said of many of the other mountains. The soil of the county generally is uncommonly fertile, producing with tolerable cultivation abundant crops. What seems extraordinary to a stranger is the fact that the soil becomes richer as he ascends the mountains. The sides. of the Roan, the Black, the Bald, and others, at an elevation of even five or six thousand feet above the sea, are covered with a rich deep vegetable mould, so soft that a horse in dry weather often sinks to the fetlocks. The fact that the soil is frequently more fertile as one ascends, is, I presume, attributable to the circumstance that the higher portions are more commonly covered with clouds, and the vegetable matter being thus kept in a cool, moist state while decaying, is incorporated to a greater degree with the surface of the earth, just as it is usually found that the north side of a hill is richer than the portion most exposed to the action of the sun's rays. The sides of the mountains, the timber being generally large, with little undergrowth and brushwood, are peculiarly fitted for pasture grounds, and the vegetation is in many places as luxuriant as it is in the rich savanna of the low country.

The soil of every part of the county is not only favorable to the production of grain, but is peculiarly fitted for grasses. Timothy is supposed to make the largest yield, two tons of hay being easily produced on an acre, but herds-grass, or red-top, and clover, succeed equally well; blue-grass has not been much tried, but is said to do remarkably well. A friend showed me several spears, which he informed me were produced in the northern part of the county, and which, by measurement, were found to exceed seventy inches in length; oats, rye, potatoes, turnips, &c., are produced in the greatest abundance.

With respect to the prices of land, I can assure you that large bodies of uncleared rich land, most of which might be cultivated, have been sold at prices varying from twenty-five cents to fifty cents per acre. Any quantity of land favorable for sheep-walks might be procured in any section of the county, at prices varying from one to ten dollars per acre.