of Baltimore. Here every February the planters gathered from their
plantations, thirty to one hundred and fifty miles away, for a month
in their town houses. At this season, races, social gayeties, and
political conferences vied with one another in engaging the
attention of the planters. Returning to their plantations in the
early spring, they remained until June, when considerations of
health compelled them either again to return to the city, to visit
the mountains, or to go to such watering-places as Saratoga in New
York. Here again they talked politics and mingled with political
leaders of the north. It was not until the fall that they were able
to return again to their estates. [Footnote: Hodgson, Letters from
North America, I.,50.] Thus South Carolina, affording a combination
of plantation life with the social intercourse of the city, gave
peculiar opportunities for exchanging ideas and consolidating the
sentiment of her leaders.

The condition of South Carolina was doubtless exaggerated by Hayne,
in his speech in the Senate in 1832, when he characterized it as
"not merely one of unexampled depression, but of great and all-
pervading distress," with "the mournful evidence of premature
decay," "merchants bankrupt or driven away--their capital sunk or
transferred to other pursuits--our shipyards broken up--our ships
all sold!" "If," said he, "we fly from the city to the country, what
do we there behold? Fields abandoned; the hospitable mansions of our
fathers deserted; agriculture drooping; our slaves, like their
masters, working harder, and faring worse; the planter striving with
unavailing efforts to avert the ruin which is before him." He drew a
sad picture of the once thriving planter, reduced to despair,
gathering up the small remnants of his broken fortune, and, with his
wife and little ones, tearing himself from the scenes of his