LONGWOOD, WEALTH AND THE END

Flicker

A few years ago my wife and I went down to Natchez, Mississippi. We visited the home above, a place called Longwood. It was built to be the residence of Dr. Haller Nutt and his family. Had it been completed, at 30,000 square feet it would have been the largest home of the antebellum period. It was designed to be the very definition of opulence at the zenith of the wealthy Southern agricultural class.


For all of its beauty and size, Longwood stands as a stark parable for today. In the blink of an eye, it was over. When word of war came to Natchez the German carpenters, all brought from the North to build the house, put down their tools to return home. The expectation was that the war would be short and that everything would return to normal after a brief disruption. Because of this, the carpenters left their tools, fully expecting to return to resume their work. Today, 150 years after the minor disruption, the tools sit where they were left, gathering dust, many of their owners dead on the battlefield.


Only the basement was completed. The Nutt family, once wealthy enough to contemplate the construction of a palace, spent generations living below the ground. The economy that supported their wealth was destroyed, never to rise again. Everything that people like the Nutts  had assumed was the normal and fixed way of living had disappeared. In one day.


For those that believe the economic woes we suffer today are just a brief disruption, and that soon everything will return to normal, remember Longwood. It stands as a stark message and reminder. Power and wealth, whether of a personal nature or of the national sort, are transient. Everything can change in the blink of an eye.