character has been much influenced by the division of land.  Where this has been nearly equal, as in our New England towns, a republican form of government has been almost a necessity.  But at the South an entirely different arrangement has prevailed.  Land was at first distributed in large bodies fitted to accommodate a state of slavery; and the consequence was that a feudal system was inaugurated from the settlement, which has continued with increasing power.  This has been one of the permanent causes of Southern pride and exclusiveness.

The inhabitants of South Carolina and Virginia previous to the Revolution were very supercilious towards the North, and even to their less opulent neighbors of Georgia and North Carolina; a feeling which was often the cause of much antagonism among the officers and soldiers during the war.  Charleston and Williamsburg gave the tone to good society, and it was haughty and aristocratic in the extreme.  While Virginia has for the last half century been in a state of comparative decay, South Carolina has, by its culture of cotton and rice, just been able to hold its own; but the pride and exclusiveness of its people have increased much faster than its material interests.  Although the Constitution of the United States guarantees to every State a republican form of government, no thinking person who has resided for a single week within the limits of South Carolina can have failed to see and feel that a tyranny equal to that of Austria exists there.  The freedom of opinion and its expression were not permitted.  Strangers were always under espionage, and public opinion, controlled by an oligarchy of slave-holders, overruled laws and private rights.  Nowhere, even in South Carolina, was this feeling of hauteur so strong as in that portion of the State which we are describing.  On the large plantations the owners ruled with power unlimited over life and property, and could a faithful record be found it would prove one of vindictive oppression, productive oftentimes of misery and bloodshed.  Most of the wealthier planters in the district have residences at Beaufort, to which they remove during the summer months to escape the malaria arising from the soil around their inland houses.  This place may be considered the home of the aristocracy.  Here reside the Barnwells,[F] Heywards, Rhetts[G](formerly called Smiths,) Stuarts, Means, Sams, Fullers,[H] Elliots,[I] Draytons and others, altogether numbering about fifty families, but bearing not more than twenty different names, who rule and control the country for forty miles around.  This is the most complete and exclusive approach to ‘nobility’ of blood and feeling on our continent.  Nowhere else is family pride carried to such an extent.  They look with supercilious disdain on every useful employment, save only the planting of cotton and rice.  Nothing in any of our large cities can equal the display of equipages, with their profusion of servants in livery, exhibited