Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER 2. Active Forces and Decisive Events. 1840. Mr. Yancey came to Alabama to make agriculture the fixed avocation of his life. His estate in slaves was as great as planters, just arrived at manhood, usually possessed. One hundred bales of cotton was the anticipated yield from his capital and cotton was worth fifteen cents the pound. He was a good judge of live stock and entertained plans of wider direction than the production of cotton, only, in the use of his resources. " Twelve years of my life spent among New England farms were not thrown away," he said to a friend; " come and see what a Yankee I am around my cattle sheds." Hazlitt speaks of the military turn as essential to the orator — a disposition to overcome difficulties and an aptitude for details. It is sufficient to say of Mr. Yancey as an agriculturist, that he rose early, was singularly methodical in his management and was scrupulous in meeting his debts. Mr. and Mrs. Yancey arrived in Dallas county in the winter of 1836-37 with their slaves. William E. Bird, his mother's brother, was the county judge, and Jesse Beene, a lawyer and member of the Legislature, who had married his mother's sister, resided on his estate, " Oakland," on the Alabama river, near Cahawba, the county seat. The time was unpropitious for the purchase of land. Prices were extravagant and prudent men saw the wave of prosperity, known as " flush times,"had attained its possible height and soon must break. Mr. Yancey, accordingly, rented a plantation near " Oakland," and took up his abode upon it with his family, accompanied by Miss Earle, his wife's sister, who had come as her associate in a fresh country. Cahawba, on the west bank of the Alabama, the abandoned capital of the State, was a village of a single hotel of long front ...