A newspaper in Richmond chronicled the sale to Northern interests of a large coal field in the State, and in unconscious irony placed in juxtaposition to the notice this confident exhortation: "It is plain that a new and glorious destiny awaits the South, and beckons us onward to a career of independence. Shall we train and discipline our energies for the coming crisis, or _shall we continue the tributary and dependent vassals of Northern brokers and money-changers_? Now is the time for the South to begin in earnest the work of self-development! Now is the time to break asunder the fetters of commercial subjection, and to prepare for that more complete independence that awaits us."[100] But another and wiser paper in the same State, urging manufacturing development for Virginia towns and cities, and particularly the textile industry for Richmond, anticipated with a different mind the event invited in the excerpt above quoted, and foretold with prophecy all too good, what later was patent to everybody: "It must be plain to the South that if our relations with the North should ever be severed--and how soon they may be, none can know (may God avert it long!)--we would, in all the South, not be able to clothe ourselves. We could not fell our forests, plow our fields, nor mow our meadows. In fact, we would be reduced to a state more abject than we are willing to look at, even prospectively. And yet, with all these things staring us in the face, we shut our eyes, and go on blindfold."[101] It is thought well, in summary of the decidedly non-industrial character of the ante-bellum South, to set forth some material and some observations of a general character. In spite of its length, it is useful to give in its setting an episode related by Tompkins. It shows more aptly than almost in anything in spite of its incidental happening, just the point of preoccupation with politics to which the Southern mind came, the degree of trifling with which the most sober proposals were met, the hopelessness of change from this state of affairs by anything short of a fundamental moral awakening. "I heard of an incident, that occurred in a political contest between Mr. Gregg and Chancellor Carroll, for the place of State Senator from Edgefield District. It was the habit for candidates to appear together and speak to the people from the same platform.... On one of these occasions, Mr. Gregg spoke first. He stated that he solicited votes on the ground that he had built a factory, which gave work to poor white people. It enhanced the value of cotton by manufacturing it. He had planted peach orchards to develop new avenues of profit and advantage to the people, &c., &c. Whereas, Chancellor Carroll had never made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before.