June 13, 1863, The New York Herald
The first summer after the rebellion broke out was rather a dismal one for the Northern watering places. The best paying visitors at the hotels there had been Southerner; for they made their money fly freely, and spent more in expensive wines and carriages – those two great sources of profit to landlords – than the more calculating and abstemious Northerners. Suddenly cut off from Southern patronage, and also from a considerable portion of that which they were accustomed to receive from the Northern cities, the proprietors of the large hotels in many instances gave up their establishments, despairing of the revival of their business. Those that did so made a great mistake, as the results of the following season proved. To the old visitors succeeded a crowd of new ones – the nouveaux riches of Wall Street speculations and government contracts. These, big with the consciousness of their moneyed importance, vied with each other in profuseness of expenditure, and amply made up to the watering places for the loss of their Southern visitors.
It might equally be anticipated that between the ruin that has fallen upon most of the large proprietors of the South and the demands made upon its whole male population by the military service, the hotels at the Southern watering places would not be in a condition to profit by the barrier that has been raised between the two sections. That such is not the fact we gather from the following advertisement in one of the Richmond papers: –
YELLOW SULPHUR SPRINGS. – This pleasant watering place will be ready to receive visitors on the first day of June. Terms: $8 per day, $50 per week, children under twelve years of age and servants $5 per day, $30 per week. Visitors will find coaches and hackmen at the Christiansburg depot to convey them four miles to the Springs.
This shows that the rich families of the South are not all ruined, and that no more there than here has the war cast a damper upon social and other enjoyments. Indeed, it is probable that so far from the Southern watering place experiencing any falling off in the number of their visitors this season, they will, like our own exhibit a considerable increase. We base this anticipation on the fact that the Southerners have fewer places to go to – some of their favorite resorts, such as Old Point Comfort, being in our possession – and also upon the probability that the speculators and contractors who have made money out of the Confederate government will crowd to these places to make ostentatious show of their newly acquired riches.