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heat are greatly tempered on the north
by the extensive body of water which
bounds it in that direction, and its
southern part has the advantage of the
soft breezes from the Gulf. Taken as
a whole, it is probably not excelled, if it
is equaled, in the healthfulness of its
climate by any sister state. Its position
among the states would seem to give it
a better title to be called the Keystone
State than Pennsylvania; for it holds a
middle ground between the north-east
and north-west; and should Canada be-
come an integral part of this country,
Ohio will be more central than any other
state. Before that time arrives, she bids
fair to have more natural and artificial
ways of intercourse, connecting her with
the north and south, the east and west,
to the farthest bounds of the nation, than
any other of the confederacy. The Ohio
river gives her southern border cheap
intercourse with all the states of the
Mississippi basin, extending westward
to the foot of the Rocky Mountains,
southward to the Gulf, and north to the
Falls of St. Anthony. Lake Erie fur-
nishes to her northern counties still su-
perior facilities for intercourse with the
north-west to the 49th degree of latitude,
and towards the north-east to the ocean,
and by means of the Erie canal to the
eastern states. Her artificial ways to
connect these natural highroads, and to
give all portions of her people easy access
to them, are honorable to her industry
and enterprise. The Ohio canal, begun
in 1825 and completed in 1832, is 309
miles long, 40 feet wide at the water sur-
face, and 4 feet deep. Its branches, be-
ginning at the south, are: 1st, the Co-
lumbus feeder, 9 miles long; 2nd, the
Hocking canal, 56 miles; 3rd, the Mus-
kingum improvement, 91 miles; 4th,
the Walhonding canal, 25 miles; 5th,
the Canton side-cut, 19 miles; and the
Mahoning canal, 87 miles-making in
all 596 miles of artificial navigation in
eastern Ohio, terminating in Cleveland,
and touching the Ohio river at Ports-
mouth and Marietta. The Mahoning
canal is connected with the Pennsyl-
vania improvements, and with them
makes a continuous line of artificial
highway to Philadelphia. The Wabash
and Erie canal, from its eastern termi-
nation to its junction with the Miami,
68 miles, is more than double the size of
the Ohio; and thence to the state line,
20 miles, it is fifty feet wide and five

feet deep, where it is met by the Indiana portion of the same size to Fort Wayne. The Wabash and Erie canal in Ohio, with its side-cuts, is 91 miles long. The Miami canal, which joins it 81⁄2 miles above Defiance, is 170 miles in length, and has navigable feeders: 1st, the Sidney feeder, 13 miles; 2nd, the Warren county canal, 22 miles; and the Whitewater canal, 25 miles,-in all, 321 miles of navigable canal within the western part of the state, and terminating at the western extremity of Lake Erie.

From the above it appears that Ohio has within her borders, including the three-mile Milan canal, 920 miles of navigable canals, built at an expense of seventeen millions of dollars."

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Tolls-Rail-roads-Coal-Agricultural Productions, &c. 311

gress.

The following tables are from the cen

82 sus report of 1850:

AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIONS OF OHIO.

Springfield, Mt. Vernon, & Pittsburgh

110

Acres of land improved.

9,730,650

Dayton and Michigan ..

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Hudson and Akron branch..

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$12,716,153

Cincinnati and Dayton.

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Number of bushels of wheat..

46

14,967,056

Tuscarawas branch

20.

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38....

Pounds of tobacco......

10,480,967

10,089,607

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Wheeling and Wellsville..

Total...

COAL. "Rich as Ohio is in her arable lands and in their vast product of grain, she is not more so in that than in her mineral resources. It is almost impossible to estimate the amount of coal in the state. It is nearly incredible when we come to estimate it in a single county. Take, for example, the county of Tuscarawas, on the Ohio canal. This county has 550 square miles, and coal may be obtained on every mile of it. In Professor Mather's valuable Report on Geology, it is estimated that this county has imbedded in it more than eighty thousand millions of bushels of coal!-enough to supply the state, should its population be quadrupled for centuries to come. So the county of Muskingum can furnish ten thousand millions of bushels. These are interior counties, which at present supply almost nothing compared with the counties of Meigs, Athens, and Summit. Coal may be found in twenty counties-comprising a belt, commencing on the Ohio river, from the Scioto to the Hockhocking, and stretching a little east of north to the Lake. The principal mines are those of Pomeroy in Meigs county, Nelsonville, in Athens, and Tallmadge, in Summit; but coal is mined in small quantities in various other places in the coal region."

The following tabular view of the increased product of coal, compiled from statistical documents, is very nearly

correct:

Pounds of wool.
Wine (gallons).
Butter (pounds).
Cheese (pounds).
Hay (tons)..
Dew-rotted hemp (tons).
Water-rotted hemp (tons).
Maple sugar (pounds).
Flaxseed (bushels)
Value of home-made manufactures.

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628

464

185,598

4,521,643

$1,696,601

35

....130 Wrought iron....... 11 .183

COTTON GOODS.

Value of raw material.. Number of hands employed Average wages per month

value of entire product. Yards of sheeting, &c... Pounds of yarn..

Tons of coal..

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WOOLEN GOODS.

Capital invested.
Pounds of wool used
Value of raw material.
Number of hands employed

Average wages per month
Value of entire products...
Yards of cloth manufactured
Pounds of yarn...

Capital invested.. Tons of ore used.. Tons of mineral coal.

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males females... males females..

903

298

$20 14

PIG IRON.

Bushels of coke and charcoal. Value of raw material, fuel, &c.

Number of hands employed.

Tons of pig iron made.
Value of entire products..

Average wages per month..

In the above-mentioned number of Capital invested. counties:

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CASTINGS.

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Bushels of coke and charcoal.
Value of raw material, fuel, &c.
Number of hands employed..
Average wages per month.
Tons of castings made...

24 per ct. Value of other products.

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.65

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" of entire products..

By the year 1860, the coal production Capital invested.

of Ohio will probably exceed twenty millions of bushels per annum.

Tons of pig metal.

2,000

30,006

355,120 $1,199,790

2,758 $27 32

37,399 $208,700 $3,069,350

WROUGHT IRON.

$620,800

13,675.

2,900

22,755

66 of blooms used.

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ART. II.-FLORIDA-ITS POSITION, RESOURCES, AND DESTINY.

THERE is not perhaps any state of the confederacy that can be more benefited by the construction of judicious works of internal improvement, and by the improvement of its harbors, than Florida.— Thirty-one years have elapsed, since the provinces of East and West Florida were taken possession of by the United States under the treaty of cession concluded in 1819. No works of internal improvement, except the "King's road" in East Florida, and a short and small canal, (never completed,) near Lake Okechoke; and De Brahme's surveys in 1765, &c., were commenced by the British or Spanish governments, whilst the provinces were under the control of either of those powers; and since their transfer to the

United States, various circumstances have combined to retard the development of their valuable commercial, agricultural, and other resources.

The fortifications then near Pensacola, that at St. Mark's, the fort at St. Augustine, and an old defence called Fort George, near the mouth of the river St. John's, were all the military defences worth mentioning existing in the provinces at the cession. The United States have since established a navy yard, and works for the repair of vessels of war, and erected other forts, and built a naval and marine hospital near Pensacola; are building fortifications at the Tortugas and at Key West; and near the mouth of the St.Mary's River; and have

Military Defences-Land Titles-Removal of the Indians. 313

placed the fort at St. Augustine in good condition; but no other part of the extensive and exposed gulf and sea coast of the state is in any degree fortified; nor are there proper preparations made for the construction, at an early period, of such defences. The entire Atlantic and gulf coast of the United States, from Passamaquoddy to the Rio del Norte, is about 3,500 miles, and of this extent the coast and reefs of Florida, from St. Mary's around the Tortugas to the Perdido, comprise upwards of 1,200 miles, extending over 8 deg. of latitude and 74 deg, of longitude, being more than one third of the whole coast.

public records of Congress, and of the federal departments, will verify the declaration, that scores of Floridians have been refused payment of just claims, or postponed on the most frivolous pretexts and discreditable suspicions.

If attempts have been made in any instance, by individuals claiming to belong to Florida, to obtain from the federal treasury claims not founded in strict justice; such dishonorable exceptions do not excuse wholesale imputations against the citizens of the state generally, nor justify the excitement of prejudices against them, and the withholding payment of just demands.

Within a few years past, our "coast Both of the provinces, when acquired survey" has been commenced; but with by the United States, (excepting only a meagre and inadequate appropriations; small portion of country around the city not at all in just proportion either to the of Pensacola, at the western extremity, necessities of the work, or to the amounts and the region contiguous to the city of yielded for such surveys in other sec- St. Augustine, and to the lower part of tions, less important to the whole country. the river St. John's, in East Florida,) No canal or rail-road has been construct- were in the possession of warlike and ed by the federal government in Florida, hostile bands of savages. The territobut the expenditure of a few thousands ries, when ceded, were covered with of dollars, (whilst Florida was a territory,) for the removal of obstructions in some of the rivers and harbors, and for two or three partial surveys of important routes of a national character, has given rise to allegations, that profuse grants have been made for her benefit. She has, too, been unjustly reproached as being the cause of the immense expenditures so profitlessly made in the Seminole war; and by some she is held responsible for all the folly, waste, extravagance, impositions, peculations and frauds, committed in that war by the employés of the federal government, though not citizens of the state. A similar class have had the infamous audacity to impute to her people the purposed origination of the war, and a desire for its protraction, as a source of pecuniary gain. A devastated frontier of several hundred miles, and the butchery by the savages of hundreds of men, women and children, throughout the state, and the utter ruin brought upon many of her citizens by that war, ought to be sufficient to prove the falsity of this accusation. Those who have propagated, or countenanced such unscrupulous slanders against the people of Florida, have not, when challenged, exposed a single case in which any citizen of the state has obtained payment of any demand against the United States, founded on fraud; and the

British and Spanish titles to lands, some
for tracts of several thousands of acres.
The "Forbes Grant," extending from the
St. Mark's to the west side of the Apala-
chicola river, and including also the site
of the city of Apalachicola and several
thousands of acres contiguous thereto,
further west, and the adjacent islands of
St. George and St. Vincent, and Dog
Island, and reaching upwards of sixty
miles from the coast into the interior,
covered an area of upwards of one mil-
lion two hundred thousand acres. Most
of the lands which had not been previ-
ously granted were included in the con-
cessions by the king of Spain to the duke
of Alagon, the Chevalier de Vargas, and
the count
of Punon Rostros, clandestinely
made, whilst the treaty of cession was
being negotiated, and which, though an-
nulled by a codicil to the treaty, are still
claimed by the grantees, and those to
whom the grants have been assigned, to
be valid and in force. A decision has
recently been given by the United States
Court in Florida, in a suit brought upon
the Alagon or "Hackley grant," against
its validity. The procrastination, since
1821, of the definitive ascertainment and
confirmation or rejection of alleged
Spanish titles, have been a serious evil
to the state, and aided to retard its set-
tlement and progress.

The removal of many of the Indians

occurred, owing it is alleged, by the citizens, to the depredations of the Indians outside of the country reserved for them; and, on the other hand, asserted by those inimical to the people of Florida, to be occasioned by the encroachments of the frontier population upon the Indian reservation. The officers of the federal government have not restrained the Indians to the limits of the "reservation;" and while this duty is neglected, collisions and conflicts between the savages and the settlers near to the lines are inevitable. Means are now being adopted to effect the removal of the few hundred warriors and women and children yet remaining, (and it is said in a state of destitution,) on the lower end of the peninsula, and which efforts, it is hoped, may be successful; but if they fail, prompt and efficient measures will certainly be taken by the state government to abate this evil, so blighting to the prosperity of Florida.

from the upper and middle sections to below 28 deg. north lat., on the Peninsula, was effected about 1825, under the treaty made with the chiefs at Camp Moultrie, in 1823. Though this measure opened a large portion of the country to settlement, and, when adopted, was generally commended, experience has proved that it was injudicious policy. It has been the prolific cause of subsequent troubles and of great sacrifice of life and property by the people of Florida, and of immense expenditures by the federal government the responsibility for which, as before stated, has been most unjustly attributed to the inhabitants of the state. The measure referred to has put back the state at least the fifth of a century. Four large bands or towns of Indians, located on the Apalachicola, remained there till 1834, when they were removed peaceably, in conformity with treaty stipulations, to the Indian territory west of the Arkansas. In 1835 the Seminoles, Miccossukies and other tribes concentrated, as above stated, near the fastnesses of the peninsula, in resistance to the enforcement of treaties stipulating for their emigration west of the Arkansas, commenced predatory hostilities that soon ripened into open war, which lasted for seven years, and was attended with but limited and partial creditable success to the federal government, or to its officers, either in arms or diplomacy, The best measure adopted by the United States during the war, was the "armed occupation" act of 1842; though the policy pursued by the federal government, in the execution of the law, until the act of the 1st July, 1848, was passed, decreased its benefits. The contest was abandoned by the United States in 1842, an "arrangement" with the yet unsubdued Indians then being made (similar to two others after 1835, which they had violated.) by the general officer commanding the United States regular forces in Florida; and which last "arrangement," in disregard of the previous treaties, stipulated that those Indians, headed by the chiefs Arpiarka and Bowlegs, might remain on the peninsula! Their whole number, it is estimated, cannot of the "faith bonds" and "guaranties" exceed eight hundred, and they are on paper restricted to prescribed limits, embracing many hundreds of square miles in area. Since that" arrangement," repeated disturbances, attended by bloodshed and destruction of property, have

It is a striking fact in the history of the provinces of Florida, that since their first discovery by the Spaniards, nearly three centuries and a half ago, they have never enjoyed twenty successive years of peace and tranquillity undisturbed by domestic warlike conflicts or foreign hostile invasion. They have changed owners and masters several times. The late disturbances with the Seminoles brought destruction and ruin upon many Floridians, and the insecurity to life and property since 1835, not only deterred emigration to Florida, but hundreds of worthy and valuable citizens abandoned their plantations, and with their families went to other southern states, where they would not be daily liable to massacre and devastation, owing to the neglect by the federal government of the duty of protection.

The creation by the territorial legislature of some ten or a dozen banks, to three of which were given territorial bonds or guaranties to raise their capital, and the failure of all these corporations prior to, or in 1837; the inability of any of them to retrieve their credit, and the liability imputed by the foreign holders

to the state of Florida, since organized, for several millions of dollars, has been a serious drawback to the settlement and growth of the state. The state constitution expressly inhibits the state legislature from levying any tax for the re

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