The pride of this society preserved itself in a certain high, chivalrous state. If any of its members were poor, as most of them became after the war, they took a certain pride in their poverty. They were too proud to enter into a vulgar struggle to be otherwise, and they were too old to learn the habit of labor. No such thing was known in it as scandal. If any breach of morals occurred, it was apt to be acknowledged with a Spartan regard for truth, and defiantly published by the families affected, who announced that they accepted the humiliation of it. Scandal there should be none. In that caste the character of women was not even to be the subject of talk in private gossip and innuendo. No breach of social caste was possible. The overseer, for instance, and the descendants of the overseer, however rich, or well educated, or accomplished they might become, could never marry into the select class. An alliance of this sort doomed the offender to an absolute and permanent loss of social position. This was the rule. Beauty could no more gain entrance there than wealth.
This plantation life, of which so much has been written, was repeated with variations all over the South. In Louisiana and lower Mississippi it was more prodigal than in Virginia. To a great extent its tone was determined by a relaxing climate, and it must be confessed that it had in it an element of the irresponsible—of the “after us the deluge.” The whole system wanted thrift and, to an English or Northern visitor, certain conditions of comfort. Yet everybody acknowledged its fascination; for there was nowhere else such a display of open-hearted hospitality. An invitation to visit meant an invitation to stay indefinitely. The longer the visit lasted, if it ran into months, the better were the entertainers pleased. It was an uncalculating hospitality, and possibly it went along with littleness and meanness, in some directions, that were no more creditable than the alleged meanness of the New England farmer. At any rate, it was not a systematized generosity. The hospitality had somewhat the character of a new country and of a society not crowded. Company was welcome on the vast, isolated plantations. Society also was really small, composed of a few families, and intercourse by long visits and profuse entertainments was natural and even necessary.
This social aristocracy had the faults as well as the virtues of an aristocracy so formed. One fault was an undue sense of superiority, a sense nurtured by isolation from the intellectual contests and the illusion-destroying tests of modern life. And this sense of superiority diffused itself downward through the mass of the Southern population. The slave of a great family was proud; he held himself very much above the poor white, and he would not associate with the slave of the small farmer; and the poor white never doubted his own superiority to the Northern “mudsill”—as the phrase of the day was. The whole life was somehow pitched to a romantic key, and often there was a queer contrast between the Gascon-like pretension and the reality—all the more because of a certain sincerity and single-mindedness that was unable to see the anachronism of trying to live in the spirit of Scott’s romances in our day and generation.
But with all allowance for this, there was a real basis for romance in the impulsive, sun-nurtured people, in the conflict between the two distinct races, and in the system of labor that was an anomaly in modern life. With the downfall of this system it was inevitable that the social state should radically change, and especially as this downfall was sudden and by violence, and in a struggle that left the South impoverished, and reduced to the rank of bread-winners those who had always regarded labor as a thing impossible for themselves.
As a necessary effect of this change, the dignity of the agricultural interest was lowered, and trade and industrial pursuits were elevated. Labor itself was perforce dignified. To earn one’s living by actual work, in the shop, with the needle, by the pen, in the counting-house or school, in any honorable way, was a lot accepted with cheerful courage. And it is to the credit of all concerned that reduced circumstances and the necessity of work for daily bread have not thus far cost men and women in Southern society their social position. Work was a necessity of the situation, and the spirit in which the new life was taken up brought out the solid qualities of the race. In a few trying years they had to reverse the habits and traditions of a century. I think the honest observer will acknowledge that they have accomplished this without loss of that social elasticity and charm which were heretofore supposed to depend very much upon the artificial state of slave labor. And they have gained much. They have gained in losing a kind of suspicion that was inevitable in the isolation of their peculiar institution. They have gained freedom of thought and action in all the fields of modern endeavor, in the industrial arts, in science, in literature. And the fruits of this enlargement must add greatly to the industrial and intellectual wealth of the world.
Society itself in the new South has cut loose from its old moorings, but it is still in a transition state, and offers the most interesting study of tendencies and possibilities. Its danger, of course, is that of the North—a drift into materialism, into a mere struggle for wealth, undue importance attached to money, and a loss of public spirit in the selfish accumulation of property. Unfortunately, in the transition of twenty years the higher education has been neglected. The young men of this generation have not given even as much attention to intellectual pursuits as their fathers gave. Neither in polite letters nor in politics and political history have they had the same training. They have been too busy in the hard struggle for a living. It is true at the North that the young men in business are not so well educated, not so well read, as the young women of their own rank in society. And I suspect that this is still more true in the South. It is not uncommon to find in this generation Southern young women who add to sincerity, openness and frankness of manner; to the charm born of the wish to please, the graces of cultivation; who know French like their native tongue, who are well acquainted with the French and German literatures, who are well read in the English classics—though perhaps guiltless of much familiarity with our modern American literature. But taking the South at large, the schools for either sex are far behind those of the North both in discipline and range. And this is especially to be regretted, since the higher education is an absolute necessity to counteract the intellectual demoralization of the newly come industrial spirit.
We have yet to study the compensations left to the South in their century of isolation from this industrial spirit, and from the absolutely free inquiry of our modern life. Shall we find something sweet and sound there, that will yet be a powerful conservative influence in the republic? Will it not be strange, said a distinguished biblical scholar and an old-time antislavery radical, if we have to depend, after all, upon the orthodox conservatism of the South? For it is to be noted that the Southern pulpit holds still the traditions of the old theology, and the mass of Southern Christians are still undisturbed by doubts. They are no more troubled by agnosticism in religion than by altruism in sociology. There remains a great mass of sound and simple faith. We are not discussing either the advantage or the danger of disturbing thought, or any question of morality or of the conduct of life, nor the shield or the peril of ignorance—it is simply a matter of fact that the South is comparatively free from what is called modern doubt.
Another fact is noticeable. The South is not and never has been disturbed by “isms” of any sort. “Spiritualism” or “Spiritism” has absolutely no lodgement there. It has not even appealed in any way to the excitable and superstitious colored race. Inquiry failed to discover to the writer any trace of this delusion among whites or blacks. Society has never been agitated on the important subjects of graham-bread or of the divided skirt. The temperance question has forced itself upon the attention of deeply drinking communities here and there. Usually it has been treated in a very common-sense way, and not as a matter of politics. Fanaticism may sometimes be a necessity against an overwhelming evil; but the writer knows of communities in the South that have effected a practical reform in liquor selling and drinking without fanatical excitement. Bar-room drinking is a fearful curse in Southern cities, as it is in Northern; it is an evil that the colored people fall into easily, but it is beginning to be met in some Southern localities in a resolute and sensible manner.
The students of what we like to call “progress,” especially if they are disciples of Mr. Ruskin, have an admirable field of investigation in the contrast of the social, economic, and educational structure of the North and the South at