Southern United States

“ Nobody gets into Congress from the South but by their direction; nobody speaks at Washington for any Southern interest except theirs. Yet there is, at the South, quite another interest than theirs; embracing from two to three times as many white people ”

“ The Southern States have great advantages over the Northern in soil, climate, and situation; they have a monopoly of the tropical productions so greatly sought by all northern nations; they have superior facilities for the acquisition of wealth, and through that for the rapid increase of population. In some countries the advance of both is retarded by oppressive legislation. Of this the South cannot complain, as it will by and by appear. ”

“ Have we not at the South, as well as the North, grown great, prosperous, and happy under its operations? Has any part of the World ever shown such rapid progress in the development of wealth, and all the material resources of national power and greatness, as the Southern States have under the General Government, notwithstanding all its defects? ”

“ The Southern states are reconstructed and back now in their place in the Union, and will not be much longer represented by Northern adventurers, or men of little ability and less character, but very soon by genuine Southern men, who, while strictly loyal to the Union, will speak the genuine sentiments of the Southern people. ”

“ If the South had been a place of intelligent farmers on small farms, we could imagine a development which would have been the wonder of the world; but because the fathers of the United States were so busy with large questions that they forgot larger ones, so busy settling matters of commerce and representation and politics that they forgot matters of work and justice and human rights—because of this we have in the South one of those curious back eddies of human progress that twist and puzzle advance and thought. ”

“ The North is not the whole nation; New England is not the only type of the people. There are other States differing widely from this. In the southern States you find a soil more fertile under skies more genial. Through what beautiful rivers the Alleghanies pour their tribute to the sea! What streams beautify the land in Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi! There genial skies rain beauty on the soil. Nature is wanton of her gifts. ”

“ It has been my privilege to study the condition of our people in nearly every part of America; and I say without hesitation that, with some exceptional cases, the Negro is at his best in the Southern states. While he enjoys certain privileges in the North that he does not have in the South, when it comes to the matter of securing property, enjoying business advantages and employment, the South presents a far better opportunity than the North. ”

“ The men of the South who are ready for this are to be recognized as the loyal citizens, the New South—precisely what ought to be done. The machinery of the old State Governments is to remain intact, but to be turned over to this regenerated Southern party for administration. ”

“ South, as will result in convulsing us so far that the ills to which we fly, cannot, in our judgment, exceed those we bear; and thus will be put upon the people of the South the necessity, the painful, hard necessity, of a dissolution, a final separation. Now, sir, why do I take this view? In the first place, the meeting of the Nashville Convention is, upon its face, a step towards a separate and distinct organization of the Southern States. The very movement separates them for a time, in purposes and intent, from the great mass of the population of the country. ”

“ Later in the year the Southern Commercial Congress, representing ten States, assembled in Washington, and I was asked to preside at the opening session in the large ballroom of the New Willard Hotel. There were three or four hundred people present. I devoted my address to a comparison between the old agricultural South and the new industrial South, pointing out that as the economic interests of the South were no longer sectional but national, it must follow that politically there is no longer a reason for "the solid South." ”

“ Since political power, amid such social distinctions and inequalities as have existed in the Southern States, necessarily has been confined to the small class, the Southern people have always been ruled by a few political leaders,--more influential and perhaps more accomplished than any corresponding class at the North. ”

“ The South heartily welcomes the investment of outside capital and the immigration of all good people, regardless of their political predilections, but it insists that it shall receive from the world the measure of credit to which it is entitled for the accomplishments of its own people. In the rehabilitation of the South after the war Southern men led the way. Out of the darkness that enveloped this section until 1876 they blazed the path to prosperity. ”

“ The already huge colored quarters in some Northern cities were widely expanded, as whole counties in the South were stripped of their colored laborers. The race question, in its political and economic aspects, became less and less sectional, more and more national. The South was drawn into the main stream of national life. ”

“ Intelligent people in the East are studying, not ridiculing the West.
The recuperative energy displayed by the Southern people has been even more wonderful and admirable than that exhibited by France after the German conquest. France was not denuded, as the South was denuded of all that represents wealth save a fertile soil and the resolution to rise from the ashes of the past. And the South has risen. I passed through North Carolina and Virginia just before the close of the war. Recently I visited the same States, and South Carolina and Georgia for the first time since the war. ”

“ The South itself feels the strength of its position so well that its ambition is to separate the valley of the Mississippi from the Eastern States, and to unite itself to the West, consigning the Yankees of New England to a solitude which would ruin them. ”

“ On the other hand, it is beyond doubt that the Northern States of the great American Confederation derive much of their prosperity from the South. As merchants, as brokers, as bankers, as holders of railway shares, as ship-owners, their wealth is inseparably bound up with the tranquillity and well-being of the Southern neighbours. ”

“ The promise of this bright, heroic beginning in poetry was not realized; and scarcely another voice was heard in verse in the South before the Revolution. The type of civilization developed in the South prior to the Civil War, admirable as it was in many other particulars, was hardly favorable to literature. The energies of the most intelligent portion of the population were directed to agriculture or to politics; and many of the foremost statesmen of our country—men like Washington, Jefferson, Marshall, Calhoun, Benton—were from the Southern states. ”

“ It did not lie between the large & small States: It lay between the Northern & Southern. ”

“ There is entire and cordial attachment to the Union in the Southern States, satisfaction with the disappearance of slavery, a very positive amelioration of feeling in regard to State sovereignty, a healthful revival of trade, a greater general disposition to industry, and an easier and much more hopeful relation of the two races. ”

“ What is it that sets the South apart and takes from the Southern people the responsibilities which the members of a republic ought to share in respect to the conduct of the National Government? Why is it that what is done at Washington seems to be the work of the North and the West, and not of the South? ”

“ Is it the fact that the peculiar domestic institutions of the Southern States possess relatively so much of vigor that wheresoever an avenue is freely opened to all the world they will penetrate to the exclusion of those of the Northern States? ”

“ No doubt this great change has caused serious disturbance to our Southern communities. This is to be deplored, though it was perhaps unavoidable. But those who resisted the change should remember that under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen. ”

“ The South was then essentially a plantation region, producing one or two great staples that found a ready market in the world, but dependent for its implements of industry and domestic utensils upon the States of the North Mississippi Valley. ”

“ The West is now turning a little back toward the East, and I have found some people, who probably had some ancestral connection with New England, but whose birth, early residence, and business life were in the West, who have come back to the old home. All this is pleasant, all this is surety of the future of our country. It is pleasant to know that the South is being obliterated, that all that made it distinctive in the sense of separation or alienation is being gradually wiped out. ”

“ Last came the Civil war, fought among ourselves, certainly not undertaken for any purpose of foreign conquest, yet attended by the uniform result of all our wars. It closed in 1865, and was followed in 1867 by the acquisition of Alaska.
In this policy of territorial expansion, the South was the leading factor. It is one of the contributions which the South as a section of the Union, and as a factor in its upbuilding, has given to the United States. Historians have not chosen to emphasize this fact. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the North all was life, enterprise, industry, mechanical skill. In the South there was dependence on black labour, and an idle extravagance which was mistaken for elegant luxury—tumble-down old hackney-coaches, such as had not been seen north of the Potomac for half a century, harness never cleaned, ungroomed horses, worked at the mill one day and sent to town the next, badly furnished houses, bad cookery, imperfect education. No parallel could be drawn between them and the Northern States at all. ”

“ Still, on any basis of comparison with the least wealthy states and sections of the North—whether it be made between the total population of equivalent groups or between the white populations only, leaving out of account the productivity of the Negroes, the South is below the national standard of wealth and progress; it grows constantly in accumulations and in productivity, but its yearly additions are less than those of the Northwestern states, and much less than those of the Northeastern states. ”

“ In the broken and all but disheartened condition of the South after enduring the war, radical rule and defeat of political hopes, this conception of another economic future, once it burst upon the consciousness of the Southern people, amounted to nothing less than a religion. ”

“ If we were to take the rich Eastern and Northwestern states, with their immense population, enormous manufactures (New York City contains over twenty thousand factories) , and vast transportation lines, the fact that the South is far behind the North in things both material and intellectual would stand out even more clearly. ”

“ The Old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The New South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement—a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface but stronger at the core—a hundred farms for every plantation,192 fifty homes for every palace, and diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age. ”

“ Irritation in the South.—This plan of government was naturally very offensive to the South, for it made the negroes practically rulers over their former owners. In June, 1868, the representatives of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina were elected under the new conditions and readmitted to Congress. Those of Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia were not admitted before 1870. During the first period of reconstruction the freedmen in the South were generally in control ”

“ Then, I think the Southern people are too easily swayed by an apparent public sentiment, the broader and higher conscience of the people gives way too readily to a tin-pan clamor, the depth and real force of which they are not disposed to question.... Again, ... the South as a section, does not seem fully to appreciate the importance of the inevitables in civilization—the fixed and unalterable laws of progress. ”

“ Under such calamitous teachings as it has inflicted, can we longer conclude that it can, from its aptitudes and nature, be converted into an element of national strength? There is a South, and a great South, and would continue to be, were there not a negro or slaveholder sojourning there. The seven millions non-slaveholding population in the Southern States have rights, social and political, based on the motive to maintain republican government. ”

“ Yet New England is reproached with cowardice and ingratitude to her Southern benefactors! If one man were to knock another down with a broad axe, in the attempt to brush a fly from his face, and then blame him for not being sufficiently thankful, it would exactly illustrate the relation between the North and the South on this subject. ”

“ The South, with her natural resources and advantages of climate and soil, feels that she is perfectly able to take care of herself and her affairs, and all she wants is that the legislation of the country, both Federal and State, should be that which will mete out justice to all her citizens, colored as well as white. ”