Comte de Paris, History of the Civil War in America. Vol. 1.
Henry Coppee , LL.D., Ed.

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[200] had frequently to march for many long days without meeting with more than four houses together in the same clearing. Essentially expansive in its tendencies, the population of the United States, like a liquid which nothing can keep within bounds, has always spread itself over new tracts of land before it has completely settled those already occupied. Thus, in the slave States this slight sprinkling of white population represented in 1860 less than six inhabitants to every square kilometre and the proportion of cultivated lands to the entire surface of the territory was only 16.07 per cent. in the South-eastern States and 10.17 per cent. in those of the South-west. During the eighty years which followed the war of Independence, this proportion was scarcely increased, while during the same period of time, the total population of the Republic increased tenfold. Forest and swamp are yet in exclusive possession of the eight or nine-tenths still undisturbed by man—the forest, ordinarily an assemblage of lofty trees mixed with coppice; the swamp, a woody marsh where the combined action of sun and water develops a powerful vegetation, the thickness of which interposes serious obstacles to the movements of armies.

To the natural difficulties which a too scanty population has not yet been able to overcome, there was added in the South the enervating influence of slavery. This fatal institution paralyzes that spirit of enterprise which, in the North, produces a striking contrast between the triumphs of industry and the splendors of a yet rebellious Nature only half conquered by civilization. Turnpikes are few and poorly kept. The roads, laid out at random from clearing to clearing, over a rich soil easily softened, become impassable at the first rainfall. Magnificent rivers roll their unexplored waters through the great shadows of the virgin forest, as in the days when the canoe of the Indian was gently wafted upon their currents. There were no maps, or at least bad maps, which is even worse yet for the purposes of war. It appears that the drawings made by Washington during the leisure hours of his youth still constitute the best topographical charts of Virginia, and the only States which possess correct drawings of land-surveys are those most recently admitted into the Union, which, as Territories, were for some time under the jurisdiction of the Federal government and surveyed by Federal officers.