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These people have heretofore subsisted by the culture of small farms, and the raising of stock; the cattle grazing upon the coarse indigenous grass of the country, and requiring but little care or attention, except during two or three of the winter months.  It was in these poorer counties that the largest white population was to be found, the wealthy slave holders owning the great body of rich lands in the cotton growing portions of the State and the fertile valleys in the mountain region.  These poor but populous counties contributed largely to swell the rank and file of the armies in the late bloody contest, the wholesale conscriptions literally stripping them of their able bodied male population leaving only men over fifty and boys under seventeen.  Thousands of these men went out never to return, and the fortunes of war have in many instances left whole neighborhoods of widows and orphan children.

During the protracted struggle just ended, these families have lost or consumed not only their stock but