southern seaboard, with the difference that it was deeply touched by
influences characteristically western. Because of the traits of her
leaders, and the rude, aggressive policy of her people, Georgia
belonged at least as much to the west as to the south. From colonial
times the Georgia settlers had been engaged in an almost incessant
struggle against the savages on her border, and had the instincts of
a frontier society. [Footnote: Ibid., II., 88; Longstreet, Georgia
Scenes; Gilmer, Sketches; Miss. Hist. Soc., Publications, VIII.,
443.]

From 1800 to 1830, throughout the tidewater region, there were clear
evidences of decline. As the movement of capital and population
towards the interior went on, wealth was drained from the coast;
and, as time passed, the competition of the fertile and low-priced
lands of the Gulf basin proved too strong for the outworn lands even
of the interior of the south. Under the wasteful system of tobacco
and cotton culture, without replenishment of the soil, the staple
areas would, in any case, have declined in value. Even the corn and
wheat lands were exhausted by unscientific farming. [Footnote:
Gooch, Prize Essay on Agriculture in Va., in Lynchburg Virginian,
July 4, 1833; Martin, Gazetteer of Va., 99, 100.] Writing in 1814 to
Josiah Quincy, [Footnote: E Quincy, Josiah Quincy, 353.] John
Randolph of Roanoke lamented the decline of the seaboard planters.
He declared that the region was now sunk in obscurity: what
enterprise or capital there was in the country had retired westward;
deer and wild turkeys were not so plentiful anywhere in Kentucky as
near the site of the ancient Virginia capital, Williamsburg. In the
Virginia convention of 1829, Mr. Mercer estimated that in 1817 land
values in Virginia aggregated two hundred and six million dollars,
and Negroes averaged three hundred dollars, while in 1829 the land