Frederic Bancroft's Unpublished Manuscript

This delighted me so much yesterday reading along in the unpublished yet complete book, I laughed out loud in the Archives' workroom -- the tart conclusion with which Bancroft ends Book Two's Chap. 8: “Longings for Manufactures & Commerce”

“…. In comparison with the constant enthusiasm for planting, the enthusiasm for diversified industries could only be ephemeral. The South was comparatively indifferent, rather than actually so, as Gregg charged, in regard to the very things she had so loudly called for.” ((29 De Bow, 624. ))

[C.'s notation -- here he means DeBow's Southern Review, published, starting in 1847 (or 1846, depending on how you classify the earliest volumes) through 1863, the leading statistical and commercial journal in the south, indeed the only one. DeBow moved north after the War, and continued publishing a version of the Review from there, with more or less success.  He died in New Jersey. Throughout the citations, Bancroft spells his name sometimes with and sometimes without a space between De and Bow, though in general usage there is no space.]

F. Bancroft's dry commentary on that cited passage is what made me laugh:

“The real contrast in interest was apparently increased tenfold by the fondness of planters and lawyer-politicians for conventions and their still greater fondness for highly-colored speeches."