ABSTRACT
Apparently it was Brace who pushed his friend Frederick Olmsted the last step toward going on the journey. He already knew Henry J. Raymond, the vigorous, politically liberal editor of the New York Daily-Times, and he intro duced Frederick Olmsted to him. Raymond and Olmsted came to an agree ment; the ambitious editor engaged the young man to do a series of letters which he would display prominently on the first inside page of the newspaper on the “production, industry and resources of the Slave States.” Editor and correspondent agreed that the series was to be sensible, unemotional report ing, quite different in tone from recent writing about the South, which had been often either moonshine about cavaliers or impassioned abolitionist rhet oric. (Mrs. Stowe's book was published earlier the same year.) In any case, more news from the South was welcome. Mrs. Stowe and the general political struggle had ensured an audience for almost any writing from the South. Raymond, with a large view of what his new newspaper should accomplish, and Olmsted, ambitious for his reputation as a writer, were both determined to do the kind of objective job of reporting which had not so far been done in the North on the ever-teasing, ever-worrying subject of one's fellow Ameri cans to the southward.
