The soil of the country, for many miles in all directions, is poor, but prices of land in the immediate vicinity were run up to fabulous rates. The people were infected with the mania of city building; and landholders gravely explained to you how well their plantations, miles distant, would cut up into corner lots. Cotton is, of course, the only staple. It ought to be raised in abundance, for the soil will produce nothing else, but he would be a skillful cultivator who should get an average of a third of a bale each from many acres. Ten or twelve bushels of corn to the acre would be a great crop. Indeed, throughout wide stretches in the interior of the cotton-growing States, so worthless was the soil for any other purpose, that the planters used to buy their corn and pork for the mules and negroes, and thus reserve all their arable land for the undivided growth of cotton. * * * * * A few Union men are to be found in the region to which Atlanta is the natural center. All complained that it was worse for them, under the progressing reconstruction, than for the original Rebels. “We are in no sense upheld or encouraged by the Government; public sentiment is against us because we opposed the war; or, as they said, because we were tories; but, when the Government triumphed, we were secure because we were on the winning side. But you pardon Howell Cobb and every other leading secessionist; they at once become the natural leaders in an overwhelmingly secessionist community; and we, through mistaken kindness of our own Government, are worse ostracized to-day, in the new order of things, than we ever were during the war.” The feeling among the Rebel portion of the community against the course of the Convention was strong. “They have repudiated the debt they incurred themselves. If that Confederate debt isn’t honestly due, no debt in the world ever was. If we’ve got to repudiate that, we may as well help the Democrats repudiate the debt on the other side too. What’s fair for one is fair for the other.”[52] In spite of their new-found love for President Johnson, they could not help grumbling a good deal at “this Presidential interference with the rights of a State.” They seemed utterly unable to comprehend that, after they had once submitted, they could possibly labor under any disabilities on account of their effort to overthrow the Government. “Treason is a crime, and the greatest of crimes,” vociferated the President. His Southern friends seemed to regard this as only a little joke. To interfere, for a moment, with the free action of their Conventions and Legislatures, half made up as yet of unpardoned Rebels, was monstrous. “What’s the use o’ callin’ it a free country, ef you can’t do as you please in your own Legislater?” asked one indignant Georgian. “It’s a pretty note ef we’ve got to take men as went agin the State through the wah to make laws for it now. For my part, I hain’t got no use for sich.”