building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

destroyed during the Civil War, because the soldiers saw them as an easy source of
firewood and a means to destroy the property borders of the large landowners 48 .
At the end of the Civil War nothing would go back to what he had been.
During the spring and summer of 1875, Charles Nordhoff described in his letters to
the newspaper, the New York Herald, the changes which had taken place in the
Southern States and the attempts at economic reconstruction and reorganization.
While visiting Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, and
Georgia, he lists the results of his observations. As regards the state of Arkansas,
“Arkansas, as viewed from a railroad car, is not a charming country to a Northern
eye. It seems to contain a good deal of thin and worthless land, and where you
meet with cultivation the farms have a ragged and uncombed look, the farm
buildings are usually of a poor character, and very high fences show that stock is
allowed to run wild. Fields are oftenest full of stumps; and in the cotton region
"deadenings", or fields with girdled and decaying trees standing upon them, give
the landscape a melancholy aspect.” 49
Similar observations were made by Nordhoff concerning Louisiana, a State for
which, as for the others, he highlights the lack of skills of the new politicians:
“Unfortunately the reconstructors of Louisiana have utterly failed in this. It was not
only murder and personal outrage they should have punished and repressed, but
malversation in office, public robbery, bribery, fraud” 50 . Furthermore, Nordhoff
lingers over numerous evaluations of the rice and cotton plantation system, the
landscapes linked with water and over the agricultural changes. He mentions, for
instance, the systematic adoption of the cultivation of orange trees, which
guaranteed good earnings.
The years after the Civil War should, however, deserve a separate discussion. It is
first of all important to note that a different logic was applied to the reconstruction
of the towns and to the re‐opening of the estates after the destruction and neglect.
48 An accurate description of the fences is in: JACKSON, John Brinckerhoff, American Space: the
Centennial Years, 1865‐1876, New York, W.W. Norton, 1972, pp. 64‐67 and 138‐19
49 NORDHOFF, Charles, The Cotton States, in the Spring and Summer of 1875, New York, D. Appleton
& Company, 1876, p. 37
50 Ibid. p. 50
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