South

“ Of old Kentucky Home.
The New South wakes! the New South shakes
The dew-drops from her mane,
For idle grief brings no relief,
The past comes not again;
To manly hearts and patient souls
Heaven sanctifies each loss;
Two angels, Toil and Patience, bear
To Heaven the Southern Cross.
New South! New South! unseal thy mouth,
Thy golden age is come—
Invention’s soaring harmony
And labor’s busy hum.
The Old South dies; with beaming eyes
The New South hastens in;
So boyhood’s toys are cast aside
When manhood’s deeds begin. ”

“ The North is rich, never so rich; the South is poor, never before so poor. The population of the North is nearly double that of the South. The industry of the North, in diversity, in forwardness and productiveness, in all the machinery and education required for manufacturing, is half a century in advance of the South. Churches in the North crown every hill, and schools swarm in every neighborhood; while the South has but scattered lights, at long distances, like light-houses twinkling along the edge of a continent of darkness. ”

“ To the North He gave short summers, bleak skies, the rocks of New England hills, the thin soil of New York, the sand dunes of Michigan. To the South He gave sunny Virginia, the riches of the Gulf States, the fruitful skies, the abundant rains, the treasures of the cotton, the sugar and the rice. Above all, God sifted all the nations of the Old World to find blood rich enough to people the Southern States. The men who laid the foundations of the great South were people of a heroic type, giants and heroes of fortitude. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I’ll help you build here a new South on all that’s good and noble in the old, until its dead fields blossom again, its harbours bristle with ships, and the hum of a thousand industries make music in every valley. ”

“ In the twinkling of an eye we have come into the kingdom of the South. With a deep breath of the sharp-scented sunny air, we inhale the beauty of it, and{170} understand—how intimately!—that horror of high mountains which has distinguished every race capable of appreciating beauty. Our recollection of the black gorge, the barren peaks, the swirling torrent, renders still keener our feeling for the fertile plain where the blood-red boughs of the Judas-tree make their deep southern blots of colour against the blue of the delicate, serrated hills behind. ”

“ Calculations and conjectures—what may the East do without the South, and what may the South do without the East?—sneers, menaces, reproaches, and recriminations—all tend to the same fatal end. What can the East do without the South? What can the South do without the East? They may do much; they may exhibit to the curiosity of political anatomists, and the pity and wonder of the world, the disjecta membra—the sundered, bleeding limbs of a once gigantic body instinct with life, and strength, and vigor. ”

“ For many years we of the South have been dwelling amicably with those of the North—this is as it should be. We are, united, the greatest country on the face of God’s footstool. And to both the North and the South belongs the credit. ”

“ Hurrah for the South, the gallant South, with her great heart proudly beating;
She takes her stand at Freedom’s hand, and dreams not of retreating;
Oh! Southern boys, for fireside joys, with their hearts so brave and tender,
Will relentlessly fight, and to death’s dark night alone will they surrender.
Chorus.
No Northern band shall rule this land—to the breeze give Freedom’s banner,
As its glowing folds o’er our land unroll, from mountain and savannah;
[Pg 115] O’er river and lake the sound shall break, and swell with thundering glory;
Hurrah for the South! the noble South! ”

“ 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? ”

“ In the innermost hearts, in the still, quick memories of the South, the Gray will always live, but it should live as in a shrine, hallowed and hidden from pomp and display. As citizens of a common country, we of the South offer our hands to citizens of the North in peace and fellowship, but we do not mingle the Gray with the Blue. ”

“ THE NEW SOUTH.1
1 Copyright, H. C. Hudgins, publisher of “Life of Grady.”
HERE was a South of secession and slavery—that South is dead. There is a South of Union and freedom—that South is living, breathing, growing every hour.
I accept the term, “The New South,” as in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people. There is a New South, not through protest against the Old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, new ideas and aspirations. ”

“ To the South all is soft and delicious; the eye reposes upon a few rich pastures, a moderate reach of the river, sufficiently tranquil to form a mirror to the sun, and the bounding hills beyond, neither too near nor too lofty to exclude, even in winter, any portion of his rays. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Who has forgotten the late doleful convictions of the dough-faces that the South would hold together to the last in spite of wind or weather, concluding invariably with the old refrain,—'Suppose we conquer them—what then?' Had the country at large known in detail, as it should have known from a common-school education, what the South really is,—or from experience of life what human nature really is,—it would never have believed that this boasted unanimity was based on aught save ignorance or falsehood. ”

“ All our sympathies are for the North, but they in no way diminish our admiration for the South.... How not to admire the Southerners, while regretting that such rare and high qualities had not been dedicated to an irreproachable cause! What men, and also, and especially, what women! Daughters, wives, mothers, those women of the South have revived, in the midst of the nineteenth century, the patriotism, devotion, abnegation of the Roman ones in the heyday of the republic. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here is a view of life at the South. As a traveller accidentally catches a sight of a family around their table, and domestic life gleams upon him for a moment; as the opening door of a church suffers a few notes of the psalm to reach the ear of one at a distance, this letter, written evidently amidst household duties and cares, discloses, in a touching manner, the domestic relations of Southern families and their servants wherever Christianity prevails. ”

“ By taking a sort of inventory of the agricultural products of the free and slave States in 1850, we now propose to correct a most extraordinary and mischievous error into which the people of the South have unconsciously fallen. Agriculture, it is well known, is the sole boast of the South; and, strange to say, many pro-slavery Southerners, who, in our latitude, pass for intelligent men, are so puffed up with the idea of our importance in this respect, that they speak of the North as a sterile region, unfit for cultivation, and quite dependent on the South for the necessaries of life! ”

“ Southern man or woman to maintain the traditional courtesy and hospitality of the South toward the stranger within its gates. It is only semi-occasionally that one finds in some sour-natured relic of other days any other attitude than that of smiling welcome, and even with the thermometer ranging close to the zero mark I have learned why the Southland is in spirit anyhow the "Land of Roses." ”

“ North and South shows us the struggle not only between master and men, as representing capital and labour, but also between ancient and modern civilizations. The South is agricultural, easy-going, idyllic; the North is stern, rude, and full of a consuming energy and passion for work. ”

“ When you, on the one hand, unnecessarily press an offensive and unnecessary measure on the south, the south repels it from the highest of all human motives of action, the security of property and life, and every thing else interesting and valuable in life. ”

“ If I could fly, I would away to those realms of light and warmth—far, far away in the southern clime, where the wants of the body should [486] be few, and where the vigour of life should be great. The glorious south is, like the joyous time of youth, full of hope and promise: all is sunny and bright: there, flowers bloom and birds sing merrily. ”

“ The moment the bar of absolute separation is thrown down in the South, that moment the bloom of her spirit is blighted forever, the promise of her destiny is annulled, the proud fabric of her future slips into dust and ashes. No other conceivable disaster that might befall the South could, for an instant, compare with such miscegenation within her borders. Flood and fire, fever and famine and the sword—even ignorance, indolence, and carpet-baggery—she may endure and conquer while her blood remains pure; but once taint the well-spring of her life, and all is lost—even honour itself. ”

“ And yet, the north prospers in every sense, while the south,—what is the future of the South? The west, noble, generous, and free from the traits which mark a nation of mere traffickers, is just what the south would be, were it free from the Black Race. Think of that, friend Randolph! You may glean a bit of solid truth from the disconnected remarks of an old traveler. ”

“ The Old South was soon a great camp of shifting, drilling soldiery. Every departing train bore to the front the raw and ungainly troops of the country, the trim city companies of State guards, and the gayly dressed cadets of the military schools. ”

“ Shake the air where our banner floats;
Io triumphe! still we see
The land of the South is the home of the free!
[Pg 48]
CONFEDERATE LAND. By H. H. Strawbridge.
States of the South! Confederate Land!
Our foe has come—the hour is nigh;
His bale-fires rise on every hand—
Rise as one man, to do or die!
From mountain, vale, and prairie wide,
From forest vast, and field, and glen,
And crowded city, pour thy tide,
Oh fervid South! Oh patriot men!
Chorus—Up! old and young; the weak, be strong! ”

“ To me the South presents a touching but heroic picture as she struggles nobly, but somewhat uncertainly, toward the light, still the victim of her cavalier training, still held back by the poor black and the poor white, the products of her accursed institution. ”

“ As I travel through the South and become acquainted with its magnificent resources and opportunities, and know better and love more the admirable qualities of its people, I cannot but muse in a fond prophecy upon the brilliant part it is to play in the diversified life and the great future of the American Republic. But, North and South, we have a hard fight with materializing tendencies. ”

“ As we find that it was the South that first marched westward, and a Southern man who first planned a great highway of iron into the West, we may state with equal pleasure and confidence that it was the East, and an Eastern man, that made the South a portion of the West, and both a part of a united America. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the short sentence which declared that there should always exist, in every community, one ever-sunken and permanently degraded class, the great point of difference between the South and North was set forth in a form intelligible to the humblest capacity, and it was understood—how well has been shown in many a bloody field. ”

“ 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. ”