itants, produced in one season 80,000 gallons. A vineyard of three to four years old yields the owner two hundred and fifty to three hundred gallons per acre, while a very favorable site has yielded 1,000. One industrious man manages five acres; and as the wine sells for $1.25 to $1.50 per gallon, five acres are sufficient to secure an ample subsistence. The climate is more favorable to vine growing than that of Germany. The German population detests slavery. Now that it has been swept from the soil of Missouri, immigrants are pouring in with every arrival, lands are rising in value, and the Homestead Law is providing thousands of them with permanent homes.

Further west, the territories contain millions of acres of the public domain, all open to settlement by whomsoever chooses to locate upon them. How vast the quantity is, and where situated, will be seen by the following table of acres :

These figures are an approximation to the true amounts, which in all cases are understated.

CHAPTER XII.

Land in the South-Effect of civil war on titles-Progress and results of Pacification-Openings in Louisiana, South Carolina, and Virginia-Great demand for Labor-Cotton GrowingSociety after the War.

WHILE the eyes of thousands have for years been directed westward, in search of homes, the slaveholders' rebellion has opened up in that region a new field for enterprising and adventurous spirits from the North and West.

It is a peculiarity of civil war to unsettle or destroy the titles to real estate. A foreign war, even when attended by invasion, produces no such result. When the British overran our northwestern frontier, destroyed Buffalo and other settlements on the Lakes, though personal property was carried off, and houses burned, yet the title to real estate was unimpaired. When they landed on the Chesapeake, sacking Washington and Havre de Grace, holding a possession that was but feebly disputed except at Baltimore, it was personal property alone that changed owners. If the people abandoned their domicils as the enemy approached, they returned to them as he retired. No interlopers having occupied them during their absence, there were none to set up claim to title by possession. The flight of loyal

people under such circumstances worked no civil disability. What they suffered was simply a misfortune of invasion. If the enemy had temporarily deprived them of their rights, holding them for the moment in abeyance, yet when he retreated they immediately revived.

But it was not so during the revolutionary contest. That was so emphatically a civil war, that in every State there were two parties in arms against each other. One party fought for American independence, the other for British supremacy, but both were composed of native-born citizens. One was aided by the presence of a British army, the other depended on itself. Had the American people been unanimous in their opposition to Great Britain, it would not have been a civil war, neither could it have been so long maintained against them. But citizen being arrayed against citizen, gave to it a mixed character-it was foreign and civil war combined. To fight for independence was held to be loyal, to oppose it was held to be disloyal.

Those who opposed it were universally known as Tories. Many of them had been office-holders under the king; many of them belonged to the highest classes of society; many were educated, talented, and wealthy; while the fact cannot be disputed, that Toryism was so prevalent that it furnished more armed men to assist in crushing independence, than the Continental army was able to muster for maintaining it. As the Whigs of the Revolution staked their all upon the issue of the contest, the Tories necessarily assumed a like hazard. Many of the

latter withdrew from the country at the beginning of the contest, carrying with them their personal effects, but abandoning their real estate. Society was already so disorganized, the future was so uncertain, and money was so universally hoarded, that more were desirous of selling than of buying. Titles had already become uncertain. As the war progressed, the condition of things became worse. Each State enacted confiscation laws designed to cripple the Tories by stripping them of their property. They abandoned lands and houses precisely as the Rebels have been abandoning theirs, and thousands of them never returned to reclaim their possessions. As the American armies advanced, the Tories fled; when the British army moved, others were induced by fear to follow it. The fugitives. had no rest. So large a quantity of their real estate was thus brought within reach of the confiscation acts that much of it was overlooked and escaped condemnation and sale.

As the cities and their vicinity had been crowded with Tories, so in those localities their abandoned property abounded. Some of them had been killed in battle, others had fled the country, and dare not return to reclaim what they had left. The few who ventured to do so were again compelled to fly. In multitudes of cases even the voluntary absentees failed to return and resume possession. Titles thus became unsettled. Their properties were entered on by squatters, who eventually gained good titles by long possession. Property of this description is found in all our seaboard cities. Some of it has

been thus taken out of its neutral status within a very few years. There are also ground rents which have not been demanded since the first outbreak of the Revolution. Other estates, liable to confiscation, but overlooked at the time, have been squatted on and held until title came of possession. So valuable had some of these become, and so numerous were they in some localities, that sharp lawyers, who devoted themselves to unearthing the secrets of a past era, have grown rich by levying contributions from those who held them in possession, as the price of undisturbed ownership.

These are invariable incidents of civil war. The rich traitor knows beforehand that confiscation of his wealth will be the penalty of his treason. When our population was barely three millions, of whom say only half were hostile to the Government, if civil war resulted so to disloyal owners of real property, what will be the uncertainty and misery among a population nearly six times as large, whose defiant boast has been that they are all traitors? Thousands of them are now passing through the same furnace which consumed the Tories. Like them, having staked all, they have lost all, and are now fugitives in the earth. Others will unquestionably enter into their possessions, the loyal succeeding the disloyal precisely as they did in the last century. The old uncertainties of title may be cured by the action of a Government which seems alive to the necessities of the case. This, if done promptly, will hurry on pacification.

As aforetime, squatting will be practiced every