LECTURE ON THE NORTH AND THE SOUTH, DELIVERED BEFORE THE YOUNG MEN'S MERCANTILE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, OF CINCINNATI, OHIO, JANUARY 16, 1849.
Washington: Towers, 1849. 32pp, spine reinforced, clean text. Very Good. In this piece first printed in Charleston earlier in 1849, Fisher rebuts the conventional wisdom that the South is falling behind the North in population, manufactures, the arts, and trade. "The harbors of Norfolk, of Richmond, of Charleston, and Savannah, have been deserted for those of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston; and New Orleans is the only Southern city that pretends to rival its Northern competitors. The grass is growing in the streets of those cities of the South, which originally monopolized our colonial commerce, and maintained their ascendancy in the earlier years of the Union. Manufactures and the arts have also gone to take up their abode in the North. Cities have been expanded and multiplied in the same favored region." In fact, however, in the production of food, housing, and other indicia of wealth, despite southerners' oft-expressed fears of their decline, the South is prospering. Slavery and an agricultural way of life have enhanced the South's prospects. By contrast, the proliferation of cities in the north brings "inequality of condition, great depravity of morals, great increase of want and of crime..." The Library Company notes five different printings of this pamphlet in Howes F150. Sabin 24458. LCP 3670. Item #24084
Price: $100.00