Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.

Extracts from “Alabama As It Is, or, the Immigrants’ and Capitalists’ Guide Book to Alabama.”

Florence, Alabama: The Southern Emigration Co., May 20th, 1889. 8vo, printed pink wrappers, map on back wrapper. [3], 20 pp.

A promotional pamphlet extolling Alabama’s “inexhaustible resources of soil and mine, of field and forest, her balmy climate, her wonderful healthfulness, and her sweeps of extended beauty.” Includes sections on Soils (ranging from the “thinnest sandy land to the richest alluvial”); Climate; The Cereal Belt (comprising eight counties); the Tennessee Valley (“the most charming region in all the State”); Lauderdale County (its population, tilled land, and cotton production); transportation facilities, and more. The latter portion provides an overview of the city Florence (which excels “all other places for beauty of location”), covering its churches, education, railroad connections, natural resources; and giving facts about iron, limestone, coalfields, forests, marble, clay, etc. Several dozen enterprises in Florence are listed with their total capital.

Northerners are assured that in Alabama “people are hospitable and kind. Northern people will meet with no jealousies or indignities. The animosities of the war are all buried and nearly forgotten. Very little of politics is ever mentioned, and no man is ostracized because of his political sentiments.” Those seeking to reach Florence from Chicago and the Northwest are instructed to see the back-cover, which features a map extending from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico—showing the Evansville Route in black leading from Chicago to Florence. A train schedule appears on the inside of the front wrapper.

Scarce. OCLC records only two copies, at Auburn University and the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center.

CONDITION: Wrapper detached (but still integral to each other), vertical crease throughout, staples rusted.

Item #5745

Sold