Antebellum South

“ My own hope rests still, however, as before in the nobler South; my earnest wish is that it may take the emancipation question into its own hand. It alone—and not England, nor yet the Northern States of America, can enter into the greatness of the question. The South alone knows the burden, the danger, the responsibility, all the great difficulties; it alone has the labour and the sorrows. If it succeed in unloosing the fetters of the slave, and freeing its glorious, grand country from slavery, it will achieve for itself unfading glory! ”

“ In every discussion of Southern affairs an important thing to reckon with is a fixed belief that the South is the most prosperous part of the country, which fits in with the conviction that it has long surpassed all other parts of the world in civilization, in military ardor, and in the power to rise out of the sufferings of a conquered people. This belief is hard to reconcile with the grim fact that the South under slavery was the poorest section of the country. ”

“ The North has twenty race problems; the South has but one, which for that very reason is twenty times as serious. In every field of Southern life, social, political, economic, intellectual, the presence of two races divides and weakens. The blacks and the Whites in the South are the two members of a pair of shears, so clumsily put together that they gnash against each other continually. ”

“ I think one will search in vain history, ancient or modern, to find a likeness to the Old South, socially, intellectually, politically, or religiously. I do not wonder that romancer, poet, historian, and philosopher have gathered from it material and inspiration. As a matter of fact, the past decade has brought forth more literature concerning the Old South than the entire generation which preceded it. Its body lies moldering in the ground, but its soul goes marching on. ”

“ Socially, the Old South, like “all Gaul,” was divided into three parts—the slaveholding planters, the aristocrats of the social system, few relatively in numbers but mighty in wealth and authority; the negro slaves, who by the millions plowed and sowed its fields and reaped its harvests, and who for hundreds of years, both in slavery and freedom, have found contented homes in the South; and lastly the nonslaveholding whites, a distinctly third estate. ”

“ Habit, motive, ideal, ambition, passion and prejudice, love and hatred, were formed in it and by it. My life work as a man has been wrought under what is called the New South, but inspiration and aspiration to it came out of the Old South. The spell it cast upon my boyhood is strong upon me after more than a generation has gone. It is not the spell of enchantment. ”

“ Nature has been kind to us in all things. The strata and substrata of the South are profusely enriched with gold and silver, and precious stones, and from the natural orifices and aqueducts in Virginia and North Carolina, flow the purest healing waters in the world. But of what avail is all this latent wealth? Of what avail will it ever be, so long as slavery is permitted to play the dog in the manger? To these queries there can be but one reply. Slavery must be suppressed; the South, so great and so glorious by nature, must be reclaimed from her infamy and degradation ”

“ Borne down by colonial subjugation, monopoly, and bigotry, these vast regions of the South were hardly visible above the horizon. But in our day there has been, as it were, a new creation. The southern hemisphere emerges from the sea. Its lofty mountains begin to lift themselves into the light of heaven; its broad and fertile plains stretch out, in beauty, to the eye of civilized man, and at the mighty bidding of the voice of political liberty the waters of darkness retire. ”

“ In a word, the colonial condition of
things to a great extent persisted in the South down to the very days of
the war. There was every reason why Alabama or North Carolina should,
more than Connecticut, feel like a separate nation.
This intense state consciousness might gradually have subsided but for
the deep prejudices and passions begotten of slavery and of the
opposition it encountered from the North. Their resolution, against
emancipation led Southerners to cherish a view which made it seem
possible for them as a last resort to sever their alliance with the
North. ”

“ Did it not argue the consciousness of a purpose to drive the South to those extremities? What else could the South do but separate, if possible, from the majority which ruled the government, and were animated by such feelings? Mr. Webster, the great apostle of Union in 1851, had said: "I do not hesitate to say and repeat, that if the Northern States refuse wilfully or deliberately to carry into effect that part of the constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, the South would no longer be bound to keep the compact. A bargain broken on one side is broken on all sides." ”

“ For the education of the people's children, everywhere the most pressing of common concerns, and the most perplexing in the transition from old to new ideas and methods—bears with especial weight and importunity upon the South. Its thinly-spread population, its still limited resources of finance, the presence of the two races with their separate and common needs,—all set a gigantic task to the South, and one that calls for sympathy and aid from the nation at large. ”

“ Shall the blood of the old South—the best strain that ever uplifted human endeavor—that ran like water at duty’s call and never stained where it touched—shall this blood that pours into our veins through 117a century luminous with achievement, for the first time falter and be driven back from irresolute heat, when the old South, that left us a better heritage in manliness and courage than in broad and rich acres, calls us to settle problems? ”

“ Professor Smith’s answer to his own question is: “The South cares nothing, in themselves, for the personal friendships or appreciations of high-placed dignitaries and men of light and leading.” He does not speak for his section; for most intelligent Southern people, however extreme their views, desire to be understood; they want their position to seem humane and logical to their neighbors; they are sure that they are the only people who can be on the right road; but they do not feel that they are approaching a permanent adjustment of race relations. ”

“ But the South and the North belong together, not held apart by politics, but held together in brotherhood. In the name of all justice, let us hope that the South shall not be asked to pay the bitterest of all prices, the misunderstanding and the alienation of those whom she loves and would embrace as her brothers. Let us hope, in the name of mercy, if not of justice, that the South shall be understood as a region having a problem, a problem which is national, and not sectional, and not political. ”

“ So for more than fifty formative years of our history the Old South was the dominating power in the nation, as it had been in the foundation of the colonies out of which came the republic, and later in fighting its battles of independence and in framing its policies of government. ”

“ Sometimes I question whether Providence is not permitting the antagonism of the North and South to continue just to compel the South to hold these colored people in connection with themselves for their good, until God's purposes of mercy for them are accomplished, and "the time, times and half a time" of their captivity is fulfilled. If Northern resistance to slavery had ceased, perhaps the South would have rid herself of the blacks sooner than would have been for their good. ”

“ No patriotic Southerner can become conversant with the facts without experiencing a feeling of alarm and indignation. Until the North abolished slavery, she had no advantage of us whatever; the South was more than her equal in every respect. But no sooner had she got rid of that hampering and pernicious institution than she began to absorb our wealth, and now it is confidently believed that the merchants and negro-driving pleasure-seekers of the South annually pour one hundred and twenty million of dollars into her coffers! ”

“ The Coming South.—For forty years the oppressed South has been under a cloud groping its way in the wilderness, a part of the time without even a feint hope of reaching the promised land, but the clouds are breaking and through the dense darkness can be traced at least the outline of a silver lining. To the most obscure vision a light appears, and the dullest prophet can forecast the sunshine soon to burst forth in magnificent splendor. ”

“ See the wide-spreading ruin which the avarice of our ancestral government has produced in the South, as witnessed in a sparse population of freemen, deserted habitations, and fields without culture! Strange to tell, even the wolf, driven back long since by the approach of man, now returns, after the lapse of a hundred years, to howl over the desolations of slavery. ”

“ No doubt the sense of high breeding, which was common in the South, went beyond mere manners; it played its part in making the struggle of the Southern population, including the "mean whites," in the Civil War one of the most heroic, if one of the most mistaken, in which a whole population has ever been engaged; it went along with integrity and a high average of governing capacity among public men; and it fitted the gentry of the South to contribute, when they should choose, an element of great value to the common life of America. ”

“ The broad and beautiful Southland is peopled by about thirty million human beings (26,000,000 in 1900) , who constitute the “South” as a community conscious of a life separate in many respects from that of the North. What is there in these thirty millions which sets them apart? First of all is the sharp division into two races—two thirds of the people Whites and one third Negroes, which in uncounted open and obscure ways makes the South unlike any other country in the world. ”

“ So queried 'the South;' and, if any answer were possible, that answer would not be heard. 'Love slavery or quit the South,' was the inexorable rule; and the resulting hypocrisy has wrought deep injury to the Northern character. As manufacturers, as traders, as teachers, as clerks, as political aspirants, most of our active, enterprising, leading classes have been suitors in some form for Southern favor, and the consequence has been a prevalent deference to Southern ideas and a constant sacrifice of moral convictions to hopes of material advantage. ”

“ In the modern Southern cities may be found classes of wholesale jobbers, attorneys of great corporations, national bank officers, manufacturers, agents of life insurance and investment companies, engineers, and promoters, who were hardly known in the old South. In the social world these people still have to take their chance, for the foundation stones of society in every Southern state are the descendants of the leaders of the old régime, including many people whose former back-country farm with its half-dozen slaves has become magnified into a tradition of an old plantation. ”

“ The plight of the South in these respects would be perilous at any time. In a period when political currents are deeper and swifter than ever before, with more violent whirlpools, more dangerous rocks and shoals, our is truly a perilous position. Changes which used to be decades in the making now sweep over us almost before we know they are in contemplation. It is true everywhere. ”

“ When philanthropy with regard to the colored race among us falls into its natural channel, we shall see the South and the North opening wide the doors of usefulness in every department for which the colored people shall, any of them, manifest an aptitude. The idea that this race is to be debarred from any and every development of which it is capable, is not entertained by any respectable people at the South. The negro at the South is not doomed, by the Christian people, to an inexorable fate. ”

“ I have paid tribute to the great political orators of the Old South. Let me pay higher tribute to its great preachers and pulpit orators, to whom, under God, more than to any other class or leadership, is due what the South has ever cherished as its best. There were giants in those days. If Yancey or Stephens could cast a spell upon a great political gathering, and play upon its [Pg 72] emotions as the harper plays upon the harp, George F. Pierce in his prime could stir men’s hearts in a way that put to shame even the eloquence of the political rostrum. ”

“ This settlement contributed a new element to our national development and raised new national problems. It took a long time for the seaboard South to assimilate the upland section. We cannot think of the South as a unit through much of its ante-bellum history without doing violence to the facts. The struggle between the men of the up-country and the men of the tide-water, made a large part of the domestic history of the "Old South." Nevertheless, the Upland South, as slavery and cotton cultivation extended westward from the coast, gradually merged in the East. ”

“ And now let us ask, and we would put the question particularly to Southern merchants, what do we so much need as a great Southern metropolis? Merchants of the South, slaveholders! you are the avaricious assassinators of your country! You are the channels through which more than one hundred and twenty millions of dollars—$120,000,000—are annually drained from the South and conveyed to the North. You are daily engaged in the unmanly and unpatriotic work of impoverishing the land of your birth. ”