The New South: A Chronicle of Social and Industrial Evolution

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ficial discussion. Men have written as if the phrase indicated a new land and a new civilization, utterly unlike anything that had existed before and involving a sharp break with the histor

rnment. The Civil War changed the whole organization of Southern society, it is true, but it did not modify its essential attributes, to quote the ablest of the carpetbaggers, Albion W. Tourgée. Reconstruction strengthened existing pre

ed in any essential point the beliefs of the South. Left to itself, the South would not, after the War, have given the vote to the negro. When left to itself still later, it took the ballot away. The South would not normally have accepted the negro as a social equal. The attempt to force the barrier between the rac

x, by Walter Lynwood Fleming

South never had a chance to win, so long as the will to conquer was firm in the North. As soon as the War was over, the demand for greater industrial development made itself felt and gained in strength when Reconstruction came; but during that period the people had to devote all their energies to living day by day, hoping for strength to endure. When property was being confiscated under the forms of law, only to be squandered by irresponsible legislators, there was little incentive to remake the industrial system, and the ventures of the Reconstruction government int

, but little effective work was done to secure such capital. Many men feared the new problems which such development might bring in its train, while others, more numerous, were merely indifferent or lukewarm. Many of

West Virginia are included in the South, and so is Kentucky. Missouri is excluded, but a place is made for the new State of Oklahoma. As to Delaware and Maryland, there may be a difference of opinion, though it is difficult to justify the inclusion of the former. West Virginia is certainly not Southern, socially, politically, or economically. Kentucky is doubtful, and it is difficult to see why Missouri should be excluded from any list which includes Kentucky. Oklahoma is difficult to classify. But,

a. The lowlander of South Carolina and the hill men of Arkansas differed in more than economic condition. Even in the same State, different sections were not in entire a

onomic and social order, and by acting in harmony with it found that progress was not so impossible as they had supposed. White planters found that the net returns from their farms on which they themselves had labored were greater than when a larger force of negroes had been em

c or social conditions which they had discovered. The first man to use the expression in a way which sent it vibrating through the whole nation was Henry W. Grady, the gifted editor of the Atlanta Constitution. In a speech made in 1886 by invitation of the New England Society of New York City, he took for his theme "the New South" and delivered an oration which, judged by its effects, had so

g to the old ideas. In the hearts of thousands of men and women the Old South is enshrined, and there is no room for the new; but the South as a whole is a New South, marked by a spirit of hopeful