"Knowest Thou The Land?"

Two adjoining counties in Mississippi, Washington and Isqueena [sic], situate between the Yazoo and Mississippi rivers, have, by the census of 1860, an aggregate of 21,711 slaves to 1,799 free persons, or about 92 per cent. slaves.  This must be the very garden of Eden, in the view of the advocates of that system.  There is scope for a poet in imagination in the conception of a society thus constituted – more than ten negro slaves to every white person throughout two large counties.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 31, 1862, p. 2