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The Old South, a Monograph:
Electronic
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Hamill, Howard Melancthon, 1847-1915
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Academic Affairs Library, UNC-CH
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
1998.
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Call number 917.5 H21o 1904 (Davis Library, UNC-CH)
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Library of Congress
Subject Headings, 21st edition, 1998
- LC Subject Headings:
- Southern States -- Social life and customs.
- Southern States -- Intellectual life.
- Southern States -- Religious life and customs.
- Southern States -- History -- 1775-1865.
- Slavery -- United States.
- African Americans -- Southern States.
- Hamill, H. M. (Howard Melancthon), 1847-1915.
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THE
OLD SOUTH
A MONOGRAPH
BY
H.M. HAMILL, D. D.
Smith & Lamar, Agents, Publishing House of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South
Dallas, Texas Nashville, Tennessee
THE subject-matter of this little book first took form in an address before the students of Emory College, Oxford, Ga., in June, 1904. If apology be needed for putting it in type, the writer finds it in the request of an old woman, now eighty-six years of age, a true daughter of the Old South, whose lightest wish has been the law of his life for more than fifty years.
Page 5
THE OLD SOUTH.
MY theme is "The Old South." I have no apology for those who may deem it time-worn or obsolete. I am handicapped in beginning by memories of other writers and speakers who have dealt more worthily than I can hope to do with my subject. The Old South has not been wanting in men to speak and write upon it. Friend and foe alike have exploited it. It has been the burden of poetry not always inspired, and of oratory not always inspiring. Not a few have been its critics who knew it only by hearsay. Indeed, much of current literature upon the Old South is from those who were born after it had passed away. I have no fault to find with any who have thus written or spoken, however worthily or unworthily, if only it was done in kindness. If over the dust of the Old South, while discoursing upon its virtues or its vices, any one has dealt generously with the one and
Page 6
fairly with the other, I am content, though praise or blame may not always have been wisely bestowed.
I was born in and of the Old South. At sixteen, after a year under General Lee, I received my parole at Appomattox, and went home to look upon the ruin of the Old South. Whatever is good or evil in me I owe chiefly to that Old South. 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. It has not blinded me to bad or good qualities, and after the lapse of a half century and despite the tenderness for it that grows with the passing years, I think I can see and judge the Old South and give account of it more impartially than one who received it at second-hand.
The Old South, in itself and apart from all other considerations, will always be a profitable study. It is the one unique page of our national
Page 7
history. Indeed, it comprehends two hundred and fifty years of history with scarce a parallel. 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. Wherein especially was it unique?
TO begin with, it was in the South rather than the North that the seed of American liberty was first planted. Jamestown, not Plymouth Rock, was the matrix of true Americanism. Poet and orator have made much of the rock-bound coast and savage wild to which the Puritan fathers came, and have had little to say of the Cavaliers who fought their way to conquest over savage beast and man. Winthrop, Standish, and Cotton
Page 8
Mather are set forth by provincial and partisan writer and speaker as exclusive national types of pioneer courage, wisdom, and heroism. I have read more than one sneer in alleged national histories against "the gentlemen of Jamestown," of whom it was said that there were "eleven laboring men and thirty-five gentlemen." But the historians who sneer fail to note how these same gentlemen felled more trees and did more hard work than the men of the ax and pick. Long after Jamestown had become a memory, I had seen the descendants of those same derided gentlemen in the Army of Northern Virginia, possessors of inherited wealth and reared to luxury from their cradles, yet toiling in the trenches or tramping on the dusty highway or charging into the mouth of cannon with unfailing cheerfulness.
I do not disparage the stern integrity and high achievement of the Puritan sires. I gladly accord them a high place among the fathers and founders of the republic. But putting Puritan and Cavalier side by side, rating each fairly at his real worth and by what he did to fix permanently the qualities that have made us great, I am confident I could make good my proposition
Page 9
that deeper down at the foundation of our greatness as a people than all other influences are the qualities and spirit that have marked the Cavalier in the Old World or the New.
Was it not in the Old South, for instance, that the first word was spoken that fired the colonial heart and pointed the way to freedom from the tyranny of Britain? Later, when all hearts along the Atlantic seaboard were burning with hope of liberty, was it not one from the Old South who presided over the fateful Congress that finally broke with the mother country? And did not another from the Old South frame the immortal declaration of national independence? And when the hard struggle for liberty was begun, it was from the Old South that a general was called to lead the ragged Continentals to victory. Follow the progress of that war of the Revolution, and it will be seen how in its darkest days the light of hope and courage burned nowhere so bravely as in the Old South.
Seventy-two years and fifteen Presidents succeeded between the last gun of the Revolution and the first gun fired upon Sumter in 1861. Nine out of fifteen Presidents, and fifty of the seventy-
Page 10
two years, are to be credited to the statesmanship of the Old South. What Washington did with the sword for the young republic, Chief Justice Marshall, of Virginia, made permanently secure by the wisdom of the great jurist. After him came a long line of worthy successors from the Old South, in the persons of judges, vice presidents, cabinet officers, officers of the army and navy, who were called to serve in the high places of the government. The fact is that whatever unique quality of greatness and fame came to the republic for more than a half century after it was begun was largely due to the wisdom of Southern statesmanship. It is hard, I know, to credit such a statement as to the dominating influence in our early national history, now that nearly fifty years have passed since a genuine son of the South has stood by the helm of the ship of State.
As with the statesmanship, so with the military leadership of the Old South. The genius for war has been one of the gifts of the sons of the South from the beginning, not only as fighters with a dash that would have charmed the heart of Ney, but as born commanders, tacticians, and
Page 11
strategists. In the two great wars of the republic, Great Britain and Mexico were made to feel the skill and courage of Southern general and rifleman. In the Civil War - greatest of modern times, and in some respects greatest of all time - the greater generals who commanded, as well as the Presidents who commissioned them, were born on Southern soil, and carried into their high places the spirit of the Old South. In the extension of the republic from the seaboard to the great central valley, and beyond to the mountains and the Pacific, Southern generalship and statesmanship led the way. The purchase of Louisiana, the annexation of Texas and the Southwest, were conceived and executed chiefly by Southern men.
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. And I make bold to reaffirm that whatever strength or symmetry the republic had acquired at home, or reputation it had achieved abroad, in
Page 12
those earlier crucial years of its history were largely due to the patriotism and ability of Southern statesmanship. Why that scepter of leadership has passed from its keeping, or why the New South is no longer at the front of national leadership, is a question that might well give pause to one who recalls the brave days when the Old South sat at the head of the table and directed the affairs of the nation.
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.
The nonslaveholding white of the Old South was essentially sui generis. He was really a vital part of a singular semifeudal system, yet, as far
Page 13
as he could, he maintained his independence of it. He was between two social fires. His lack of culture and breeding, his rude speech and dress, barred him from the big house of the planter, except as a sort of political dependent or henchman. On the other hand, to the negro he was variously known as "poor folks," "poor white trash," and at best as "half-strainers." While there was not a little in common between him and the master of slaves, he had literally no dealings with the negro. Here and there, if one rose to ownership of land or slaves by dint of extraordinary industry or good fortune, his social position was scarcely improved. He became like the shoddy "New Riches" of our own time, in a class to himself.
There are not a few illusions as to these "cracker" whites, which fanciful magazine and dialect writers have helped to spread. A benevolently intended effort has been in progress for a generation on the part of certain sentimentalists, with more money than wisdom, to civilize and Christianize what they are pleased to call the "mountain whites." One would gather from the pleas made before religious conventions, and from the
Page 14
facile writers who have made these whites their special care, that they have dwelt continually in religious darkness and destitution, and greatly needed the alien missionary to shed the effulgence of his superior civilization and Christianity upon him. I think I am in a position to say that this forlorn and destitute Southern mountaineer, true to his ancient characteristics, has received these effusive visitors and their benevolences with one eye partly closed and with continued cheerful expectoration at knot holes in the neighboring fence. I am reminded of one of Bishop Hoss's repertoire of anecdotes, all of which have pith and point. Of such a mountaineer as I am depicting, tall, lank, sinewy, frowzy, "a bunch of steel springs and chicken hawk," a tourist satirically inquired: "May I ask, my friend, if you are a member of the human species?" "No, by gum," said the mountaineer; "I'm an East Tennesseean."
As a matter of fact there are few people so thoroughly imbued with the religious spirit as these same "cracker" mountain whites, though it is a religion of the Old rather than of the New Testament in the crude ethics and doctrines
Page 15
which they commonly hold. Even the Kentucky feudist is after a sort an Old Testament religionist, who has not gone beyond the idea of the "blood avenger" of Mosaic permission. Rude, uncouth, ignorant of books as the poor whites of the Old South were and continue largely to be, I pay them the sincere personal tribute of admiration for the homespun virtues that have marked them as a peculiar people. For two years I lived in their wildest mountain fastnesses, went in and out of their rude cabins, taught their youth, broke bread at their tables, and worshiped God with them in their log meetinghouses. I have earned a right, therefore, by personal contact and knowledge to resent with warmth the imputations under which the cracker white, highland or lowland, is too often made to suffer. Even so distinguished an authority as the New York Advocate, in a recent article devoted to this class, permitted the usual distortion of fact in all things pertaining to Southern problems.
Of this rude figure of the Old South, it is enough to say that no hospitality of the plantation mansion ever eclipsed that of his humble home to the man who sought shelter beneath it.
Page 16
If he never forgave a wrong, he never forgot to repay a kindness. His honesty was such that a man's pocketbook was commonly as safe in the trail of a mountaineer or lowlander as in the vault of a bank. If he had not books or learning, there was something quite as good for his uses which he had the knack of inheriting or acquiring - a home-grown wit and shrewdness of judgment of men and things. Religiously, he took his code and doctrines directly from the Bible, and too often patterned after both good and evil in that book. He saw no incongruity in dispensing homemade whisky and helping on a protracted meeting at the call of his circuit rider. As to his politics, he followed leaders only as he respected them, and was always a thorn in the flesh of the political trickster. If the master of slaves was an aspirant for office, and was possessor of both manhood and money, the cracker white easily became his supporter. Usually holding the balance of power, he taught many a sharp lesson to unworthy men who sought his political favor. Generally the poor white was hostile to slavery; yet singularly enough, true to the patriotism and loyalty strangely formed in him for
Page 17
centuries in his isolated condition, when the armies of the North began their invasions of the South, these same whites by the tens and hundreds of thousands put on the gray, and fell into line under the generalship of the owners of plantation and slave. If there was ever such a proverb current among them as "the rich man's war, but the poor man's fight," I did not hear it from the lips of the brave fellows from the log cabins who became the famous fighters of the Confederacy. Over their lowly and sometimes lonely and unkept graves I would lovingly inscribe that exquisitely pathetic epitaph which one may read upon a Confederate monument in South Carolina, dedicated especially to the men who had nothing to fight for or die for but patriotism and honor:
BETWEEN the negro and his master there was ever in
general a feeling of mutual respect and confidence. If I
could gather from the Old South its most beautiful and
quaint conceits and incidents, I would find none so
full of pathos and interest as the long-continued and
ever-deepening affection that often, indeed I might say
commonly, bound together the white master and the
black slave. Neither poverty nor ruin, nor changed
conditions, nor disruption of every order, social and
political, was effectual in breaking this bond of
loyalty and love; and now, so long after the period
of enfranchisement has come, if I wanted concrete
evidence of the singular beauty of the social system
of the Old South, I should summon as my witnesses
those lingering relics of the ante-bellum order - the
"old massa" and the old negro. Before the last of that
era are gone I should be glad to contribute to some
such monument as that proposed by ex-Governor
Taylor - a trinity of figures to be carved from a single
block of Southern marble, consisting of the courtly
old planter, high-bred and gentle in face and manner;
the plantation "uncle," the counterpart in ebony of
the master so loyally served and
imitated; and the broad-bosomed black "mammy,"
with varicolored turban, spotless apron, and beaming
face, the friend and helper of every living thing in
cabin or mansion.
I would that I had the power to put before you
vividly and really the strange and beautiful social
life of the Old South. It was Arcadian in its
simplicity and well-nigh ideal in its conditions.
It was a reproduction of the palmiest days and
best features of feudalism, with little of the evil
of that system. I know I am confronted by a
host of critics and maligners of the so-called
"slaveocracy" or "oligarchy" of the Old South. I
have often read and heard of its despotism and
cruelty from those who did not know or did not
intend to be truthful or just. The war that swept
slavery and the slaveholder out of existence was
inspired and envenomed by such misrepresentation.
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a museum of barbarities
set forth as the ordinary life of the Old South, a
composite of brilliant and brutal falsehoods. I have
no defense of feudalistic subjection of the many to
the few, nor am I a friend to caste. Yet I have read
history in vain and studied human progress to small
account if
I have not, with others, discovered that a true
development of society, the stability of government,
the conservation of the rights of all classes, depend
largely upon a social system in which one class, few
in numbers, capable and conscientious, rules the
other classes. A pure democracy is the dream of the
idealist, and would be unprofitable even in the
millennium. The men who own the lands of a country,
its moneys, ships, and commerce, who maintain the
traditions of the past, and trace their blood to the
beginnings of a country's existence - these will
inevitably become the leaders and rulers of a country.
So the Old South had its aristocracy, whose leaders
laughed at the doctrine of equality as proclaimed by
sentimentalists at home and abroad.
This Old South aristocracy was of threefold
structure - it was an aristocracy of wealth, of blood,
and of honor. It was not the wealth of the shoddy
aristocracy that here and there, even in the New
South, has forced itself into notice and vulgarly
flaunts its acquisitions. It came by inheritance of
generations chiefly, as with the nobility of England
and France. Only in the aristocracy of the Old World
could there be found
a counterpart to the luxury, the ease and grace of
inherited wealth, which characterized the ruling class
of the Old South. There were no gigantic fortunes as
now, and wealth was not increased or diminished by
our latter-day methods of speculation or prodigal and
nauseating display. The ownership of a broad
plantation, stately country and city homes, of
hundreds of slaves, of accumulations of money and
bonds, passed from father to children for successive
generations. Whatever cohesiveness the law could
afford bound such great estates together, so that
prodigality or change could least affect them. Here
and there mansions of the old order of Southern
aristocracy are standing in picturesque and
melancholy ruin, as reminders of the splendor and
luxury of the ante-bellum planter. A few months ago I
looked upon the partly dismantled columns of a once
noble home of the Old South, about which there
clustered thickly the memories of a great name and
family which for generations had received the homage
of the South. As a child I had seen the spacious
mansion in the day of its pride, as the Mecca of
political leaders who came to counsel with its princely
owner, or as the
center of a hospitality that never intermitted until the
end of wealth came with the desolations of war. The
glass of fashion and the mold of form made it famous
as a social magnet. In those old days, its beautifully
kept lawns, its ample shrubbery, its primeval park of
giant oaks, its bewildering garden of flowers, its
great orchards, its long rows of whitewashed negro
cabins, its stables and flashing equipages and
blooded horses and dogs, the army of darkies in its
fields, the native melody of their songs rising and
falling in the distance, the grinding of cane or ginning
of cotton, the soft-shod corps of trained servants
about the mansion, the mingling of bright colors of
innumerable visitors, the brilliancy of cut glass and
silver, the lavishness of everything that could tempt
the eye or palate - was like a picture from the scenes
of Old-World splendor rather than of a young
Western republic. As I looked and brooded over
this ruin of a long-famous home, its glory all gone,
its light and laughter dim and silent, I paid tribute
to an aristocracy of wealth, pleasure-loving indeed,
with the inherent weaknesses of transmitted estate,
but one which, having freely received, freely
gave of its abundance in a hospitality eclipsing any
people whom the world has known.
Porte Crayon, in Harper's Magazine long before the war, and Thomas Nelson Page, in these later days,
have essayed by pencil and pen to set forth the charm
of that wonderful hospitality and home life of the Old
South. I saw the last of it. With my parole in my
pocket, returning homeward through Virginia with
other Confederates, hungry and foot-sore, we turned
aside from our army-beaten road to a spacious
plantation mansion on the crest of a hill, under whose
porch sat a lonely old man, the one living creature we
could discern. When we asked for bread, he excused
himself for a moment on the plea that family and
servants were gone, and that he must do our bidding.
In a little while he returned with a huge platter of
bread and meat, apologizing for a menu so little varied.
When we had eaten as only Confederate soldiers
could eat and were filled, we took pieces of money
from our little store and tendered him in pay. I can
never forget the big tears that welled up in the eyes of
the old-time Virginian and the flush on his cheeks, as
he said: "No, boys; it is the last morsel of food
that the enemy has left me. There is not a living
creature or an atom of food remaining, but there is not
money enough in both armies to tempt my poverty.
I've kept it up as long as I had it to give."
Down under all this wealth of fertile field and dusky
laborer and palatial home, there was something in
which the old-time Southerner took a pride beyond
that which he felt in material wealth. His aristocracy
of wealth was as nothing compared to his aristocracy
of blood. An old family name that had held its place
in the social and political annals of his State for
generations was a heritage vastly dearer to him than
wealth. Back to the gentle-blooded Cavaliers who
came to found this Western world, he delighted to
trace his ancestry. There could be no higher honor
to him than to link his name with the men who had
planted the tree of liberty and made possible a great
republic. Whatever honors his forbears had won in
field or forum, whatever positions of public
importance they had graced, he had at his fingers'
ends, and never grew weary of rehearsing. I have
nothing but tenderness for this old-time weakness of
the Southerner, if weakness
it can be called. To glory in one's blood for
centuries past, if only kept pure, to take pride
in the linking of one's name and fame with the
history of one's country, to grow gentler and truer
and more self-respecting because of the virtues
of a long line of ancestors who have lifted
a family name to deserved eminence, has to the
writer seemed a noble sentiment. I know how
fools have made mock of it, and how silly people
in the South have sometimes brought it into
contempt; but I set forth in pride and gratitude
for the Old South as one of its distinguishing
characteristics this devotion to the memory and
traditions of its ancestry. If here and there the
course of transmitted blood lapsed into habit or
deed of shame, it happened so rarely that it set
the bolder in contrast the aristocracy of gentle
blood. "Blood will tell." I remember as a boy
watching admiringly and yet a little enviously
the graceful and sometimes reckless military
evolutions of a hundred or more young bloods,
who were making holiday of the art of war. Trim,
natty, elegant youngsters they were, in scarlet
and gold, the scions of great families. I can
remember wondering, as I watched them, if the
same dash and brilliancy that marked them as gala day
soldiery would be maintained by them in the storm of
battle which was making ready to break upon us. I
had my answer. One day in Virginia the fortunes of
war threw my regiment at elbows with theirs. Glitter
and gold and scarlet were all bedimmed; but the gay
laugh, the Cavalier dash, the courage that never
quailed, were with them still as they swung into a
desperate charge, singing one of their old cadet
songs as lightly as a mocking bird's trill.
If any one should seek for the secret of that
singular bravery, that supreme contempt of pain and
privation and indifference to death that distinguished
our Southern soldiery and won the admiration of its
enemies, I think it will be found largely in the ambition
of the younger generation to walk worthily after the
steps of their fathers. Homogeneous in its citizenship,
changing its customs little with passing years, slow to
imbibe the spirit of other countries and of other
sections of our own country, constant to its own
ideals, and always a law unto itself, in no country on
the face of the earth was a good name and family
distinction more prized and potent than in the Old
South.
Linked indissolubly with this aristocracy of wealth
and of blood was one which, in my judgment, was
stronger than either, and which extended beyond the
lines of those who were born to the purple of wealth
or the pride of a great name. I do not know better how
to denominate it than this - the aristocracy of honor.
Proud of their great homes and positions of
leadership, and boastful of their high descent, the
aristocrats of the Old South, true to the Cavalier
traditions, erected an ethical system that defined and
regulated personal and public matters and became the
inflexible code of every Southern gentleman. Its
foundation was laid in a man's "honor," and the honor
of a gentleman was the supreme test and standard of
every relation, public and private. The extremes of this
old Southern ethical code were illustrated, on the one
part, by the maxim that "a man's word is his bond,"
which meant that, the word of honor once passed
between men, it must be as inviolable as life itself.
Practically, it came to mean, as the present generation
little knows or appreciates, that nine-tenths
of the business of the Old South was a mere
promise to pay, and that its millions rested from
year to year upon the faith and honor that underlay
its vast credit system. A gentleman of the Old South
might be guilty of not a few peccadillos. He might
sin easily and often against himself, but woe to the
man who sinned against other men by withholding
what was due and had been promised "on honor."
Personally I have known men of large business
affairs whose whole fortunes depended on the
passing of a word, and who on the instant would have
surrendered their last dollar to make good that "word
of honor." Nor was this exceptional. It was bred in the
bone and flesh of every old-time Southern boy that
upon this word of personal faith the gentleman must
take his stand, and at whatever cost of comfort or
convenience or self-denial or sacrifice, even to the
death, he must make it good. Such was the code of
honor upon its business side.
There was another illustration of the code of a
more somber kind, now many years obsolete. It
was by the crack of pistol and flash of sword
that in the old time not infrequently were
determined the fine points of honor. Long ago this
"code duello," with its Hotspur partisans, passed
away, and I thank God for the gentler spirit that has
come in its stead. With all of its blood and brutality,
however, it had one merit which I am frank to allow it.
It compelled one to circumspection in what he said
and did, or it made him pay instant price for his
wrongdoing. It differentiated the man of courage from
the bully and the sneak, and it set in bold relief the
marks of the gentleman. I am glad to say, too, that
during the long and evil reign of the code duello
satisfaction in money and by damage suits at law
was not as popular as now. The Kentuckian whose
bloody face provoked the inquiry, "What ails you?"
answered by the code and card when he replied, "I
called a gentleman a liar." The kind of gentleman
who would salve the wounded honor of his person
or family by a check was unknown or unrecognized
before the war.
If one wishes to see the old-time planter at his
best, he will find him as the pencils of Page,
Harris, and Hopkinson Smith have drawn him -
courtly, genial, warm-hearted, gracious, proud
of his family, boastful of his ancestral line, a
lover of gun and dog and horse and mint julep,
an incomparable mixer in the society of well-
bred ladies and gentlemen, as unique and
distinguished a figure as ever graced the ball or
banquet room, the political forum, or the field of
honor. His race will soon be extinct, and only the
kindly voice and pen of those who knew him and
loved him in spite of his weaknesses will truly
perpetuate his memory. For two hundred years
and more his was the conspicuous and unrivaled
figure upon the social and political stage of our
history. The good that he did lives after him; may
the evil be interred with his bones!
SIDE by side with the aristocrat, waiting
deferentially to do his bidding, with a grace and
courtliness hardly surpassed by his master, I
place the negro servant of the Old South. If one
figure was unique, the other is not less so. Either
figure in the passing throng would quickly arrest
your attention. I am frank to confess to a tender
feeling for those faithful black servitors of the
Old South - the "Uncle Remuses"
and "Aunt Chloes" of picture and poetry. On
the great plantations, in their picturesque colors,
in constant laughter and good nature, well
fed and clothed and generally well-kept and
moderately worked, the negro of slavery lived his
careless, heart-free life. The specter of hunger
and want never disquieted him. His cabin, clothing,
food, garden, pocket money, and holidays
came without his concern. I think I state the truth
when I say that for the millions of slaves of the
Old South there were fewer heartaches than
ever troubled a race of people. Freedom may
be an inestimable boon. I know that poet and
orator have so declared. But when I look upon
the care-worn faces of the remnant of old-time
negroes who have been testing freedom for
a generation and have found it full of heartache
and worry, I take exception to the much-vaunted
doctrine of liberty as the panacea for all human
ills. An old darky, with white head and shuffling
feet and haunted look in his eyes, stopped
the other day at the door of my office, and, after
the manner of the old days, his cap in hand,
asked "if massa could give the old nigger a
dime?" Something in my voice or manner must
have intimated to him that, like him, I belonged
to the old order, as he said: "It's all right for
some folks, dis thing they calls freedom; but
God knows I'd be glad to see the old days once
more before I die." Freedom to him, and to
others like him, had proven a cheat and a snare.
I have no word of apology or defense for
slavery. Long ago I thanked God that it was no
longer lawful for one human being to hold
another in enforced servitude. But a generation
or more of free negroes has been our most
familiar object-lesson, and the outcome is painful
at best. The negro who commands respect in
the South to-day, as a rule, is the negro who
was born and trained under slavery. The new
generation, those who have known nothing but
freedom, it is charity to say, are an unsatisfactory
body of people generally. Whenever you find a
negro whose education comes not from books
and college only, but from the example and home
teaching and training of his white master and
mistress, you will generally find one who speaks
the truth, is honest, self-respecting and
self-restraining, docile and reverent, and always the
friend of the Southern white gentleman and lady.
Here and there in the homes of the New South these
graduates from the school of slavery are to be found
in the service of old families and their descendants,
and the relationship is one of peculiar confidence and
affection; and this old-time darky, wherever you find
him in his integrity, pride, and industry, is in bold
contrast with the post-bellum negro, despite his
educational opportunity. Living as I do in a city
famed for its negro schools, I have tried to observe
fairly, and indeed with strong predilection in their
favor, the processes and results of negro education.
Son of an abolitionist of the Henry Clay school, I
have sincerely wanted to see the negro succeed
educationally and take his place with other men in
skill and service. If any city of the South should be
the first to confirm the negro's fitness for an
education and his increase in value and in character
as the subject of it, I thought it but fair to expect it of
a city famous for its colored universities. But, with
honorable exceptions to the rule, the negro of
post-bellum birth and education in this city is
usually a thorn in the flesh to one who seeks or
uses his service, no matter what that service may
be. "We don't have to work
any more," said one recently; "we are getting
educated." Yet when one of the darky patriarchs
of the Old South died the other day, a leading
daily paper, in a tender and beautiful editorial,
noted how this colored gentleman of the old
school, after a long life of honor and trust, with
hundreds of thousands of dollars passing through
his hands as confidential messenger, had won the
respect of all men by the sheer nobility of his life.
Perhaps the education of hand and foot and
eye - the manual training schemes of Booker
Washington and other like negro educators -
may suffice to avert the degeneracy of the
younger negro race. The trouble, however, is that
many of these are not enamored of hard work
and constant labor. They turn their backs upon ax
and saw and plow which the white man offers
them along with ample wages, and prefer the
negro barroom and the crap table. After forty
years have gone, and millions of money have
been expended by both Northern and Southern
whites in an effort to educate and train him for
profitable service, the negro is found practically
in two classes - the larger class massed in the
cities and towns, too often despising and shirking
work except as compelled to it by sheer
necessity; the other class consisting of those
who are not ashamed of any kind of work in
field, factory, or shop, the significant thing being
that those who want work and are doing it are
commonly the negroes with little or no education,
while those who are shunning work are usually
of the so-called educated class.
I am not surprised at the failure of the negro's
secular education to make him a good and
profitable citizen. It is only another illustration of
the folly of trying to sharpen the intellect and
leave untrained the heart and conscience. The
Old South, by contact, example, and precept,
put a conscience and a sense of right and
honorable living into its slaves. The New South
is largely filling them with books. The negro
of the Old South was religious, genuinely so,
though by reason of his emotional nature his
religion was often a matter of feeling. But such
religion as he had he got from white teachers
and preachers, and it was real and scriptural.
It bound him to tell the truth, to lie not, to be
sober and honest, and to do no man wrong.
How well the negro learned and practiced this
old-fashioned religion of slavery, let two facts
attest. First, few negroes thus trained in the Old
South, so far as the speaker knows, have
suffered by rope or fagot for the unnamable
crime that so often has marked the negro of the
New South. If there be exceptions to this rule,
certainly they are exceedingly rare. Secondly, at
a time when every white man and even white
boys were at the front fighting the battles of the
Confederacy, the wives and mothers and
children of the soldiers were cared for loyally
and devotedly by the negro slaves to an extent
unmatched in the history of the world. Such was
the honor and conscience of the negro slave that
they watched over the helpless women and
children of those who were engaged in a conflict
involving their own slavery.
What the negro needs more than books and
college curriculum is a conscience. He needs
religion of the genuine, transforming kind that
will stop his petty thieving, his street corner
loafing, and his tendencies toward the barbarism
from which in the Old South religion wrested
his fathers. I think the time has come when our
Southern white churches should turn again
toward the negro and help him as far as possible
to a knowledge of pure and undefiled religion,
after the example of such ministry as that
of Capers and Andrew to the slaves. If I find
any fault with ourselves in our relationships
with the negro, it is that we too easily conceded
that the negro's moral and religious interests
should be taken out of our hands since the war
by sentimentalists, or by those whose labors
among the negroes were inspired by political
rather than by genuinely benevolent motives.
Once politics is no longer an ally to the negro,
and White House favors are not permitted to
turn his head, I have some hope that the Southern
white and the negro may come together in
peace and mutual affection under the power of
the gospel of Jesus Christ, and after an alienation
of more than a generation may take up
again the old order of religious instruction and
training, which the white fathers of the Old
South were so zealous to give and which the
black servants were so eager to receive. When
a young pastor came to me a few weeks ago
asking an opinion upon the fact that, in response
to a request from a score or more of families of
negroes on his charge who were without church
and other religious facilities, he and his wife had
formed their children into a Sunday school and
the teachers of his white school were giving
them faithful and intelligent instruction every
Sabbath, I saw in the incident an intimation of
what the New South must do if it would restore
the lost negro conscience of the Old South.
I cannot dismiss this passing glance at the
social life of the Old South without a sense of
abiding regret that it is gone forever. My last
personal contact with it was the Christmas just
preceding the war. Though the air was thick with
rumors of impending strife, no gun as yet had
broken the quiet of a land so full of peace and
prosperity. I think the merriment of those last
holidays of '61 was greater than ever before. I
recall it all the more vividly because it was the
last old-fashioned Christmas that came to my
boyhood, as it was the last that came to the Old
South. For weeks preceding it everything on the
old plantation was full of stir and preparation.
Holly and mistletoe and cedar were being put
about the rooms of the big house
to welcome home the boys and girls from school.
Secret councils were being held as to the
Christmas gifts that were to be given religiously
to every one, white and black. The back yard
was piled up with loads of oak and hickory to
make bright and warm the Christmas nights. The
negro seamstresses were busy making new suits
and dresses for all the servants. The master of
the plantation was figuring up the accounts of
the year and making ready for generous drafts
upon his ready money. There was an increasing
rustle of excitement and happiness that ran from
the gray-haired grandfather and mother down to
the smallest pickaninny in the remotest negro
cabin. The peace and goodness of God seemed
to brood over it all. The stately plantation home,
with its lofty white columns, its big rooms, its
great fireplaces, opened wide to all sons and
daughters and grandchildren, uncles and aunts,
nephews and nieces. We poured into it; and if
ever heaven came close to earth and mingled
with it, I think it was that Christmas Eve when
the last wanderer and exile had come and the
grace was said at the great table by a gray-
haired patriarch of the Old South. There was
little sleep for small boys and girls, and long
before daylight of Christmas shone in upon us
we were scurrying from room to room crying,
"Christmas gift!" to which, whenever first spoken
by child or dependent, there could be but the one
gracious response. Out on the back porches the
negroes were waiting in grinning rows to follow
our example, and many were the dusky faces
that beamed with delight over their never-failing
Christmas remembrances. Down in the cabins
and up in the big halls of the mansion the lights
and fires burned the entire week, and there was
nothing that could eat that was not surfeited with
the world of eatables made ready. I must beg
pardon of the W. C. T. U., which had not then
begun its beneficent prohibitory career, if I recall
the big flowing bowl of eggnog, renewed daily
and served generously to all. I know that this
old-time Christmas beverage is growing into
disrepute, for which I am sincerely glad, but I
confess to a sort of carnal delight of memory
when I recall how good it tasted to the average
small boy on an early Christmas morning.
THE Old South intellectually was a fitting
complement to its unique social system. The
charge has often been made against it that it
produced few if any great writers and left no
lasting impress upon the literature of the times.
If this were true, it could be answered that the
Old South was true to its distinctive mission. It
needed to produce great thinkers, and it produced
them, as the half-century of its dominating
leadership attests. An Elizabethan age, with its
coterie of great writers, comes to any nation only
at long intervals, and under conditions which are
of providential rather than of human ordering.
The Southern man, by tradition, inheritance, and
choice, and by virtue of a certain philosophic
temper which seemed to inhere in his race, was
trained to think and to speak clearly, and
especially upon grave matters of public import.
He was a born politician in the best sense of that
much-abused term. Like Hannibal, he was led
early in life to the altars of his country and
dedicated to its service. He coveted the power
and the authority of the rostrum rather than the
pen. In the beauty of field and forest, of bright
stream and blossoming flower,
of song and sunshine, or in the historic incidents
of the Old South, he had ample inspiration and
material for his pen, if he had cared to use it. But
it was ever his ambition and delight to stand
before his countrymen on some great public day,
and set forth the length and breadth of some
great argument, patiently studied and thought out
in his library and now made luminous and
inspiring to the listening multitude. If it were true
that the South had no great writers, I could even
content myself by recalling how, when one of its
brilliant thinkers and orators cast his spell upon
the culture of old Boston, the finest editorial
writer of that city of writers placed over his
leading editorial the next morning the question,
"What could be finer?"
While it was true of the Old South that members
of its learned professions commonly dallied
with the Muses, there was no distinctive
profession of letters. The professional poet,
historian, and maker of fiction, and publisher
and seller of books, were scarcely known. A rural
people, a relatively sparse population of readers,
the absence of great cities, the concentration of
thought and learning upon politics and plans of
government, the entire lack of commercialism
as a motive to literary production, were reasons
why the Old South contributed comparatively
little per se to the stock of permanent literature.
There was another hindrance in the fact, which I
do not like to recall, that the South, in mistaken
largeness of heart or short-sightedness of vision,
fell upon two ways that lowered its own
self-respect and dwarfed the good it might have
attained. It set up a fashion, on the one hand,
of reading and patronizing alien books, and
accounted these foreign literary products as
better than its own. And along with this same
mistaken fondness for foreign literary wares, it
began to slight its own struggling colleges and
schools, and to send its sons and daughters
elsewhere for a culture not superior to that
procurable at its own doors.
Yet with such admitted weaknesses, let no one
suppose for an instant that the ability to write or
think or speak worthy of the finest culture was
in any wise wanting to the gentleman of the Old
South. Enter his library, and you would find
what is becoming rare in the New South, but
which was the mark of the gentleman of the Old
South - the finest and completest array of costly
books upon all subjects, ranging through science, art,
literature, theology, biography, history, and politics.
Nothing that money could buy or trained scholarship
select was omitted. A man's books were his most
intimate friends and comrades, and such was the wide
range and patient study of the average gentleman of
the Old South that wits and savants vied in paying
tribute to his varied and scholarly attainments. In
singular contrast, the other day one of our literary
leaders, discussing the scanty sale of really valuable
books, bemoaned the fact that the Southern
gentleman's library is fast becoming extinct.
One feature of scholarship that was peculiar to the
Old South was the general and thorough devotion to,
and mastery of, the classics. I doubt if ever the youth
of any country were so well grounded in the literature
of Greek and Latin poet and historian, or caught so
fully and finely the beauty of the old philosophies
and mythologies. It was not an uncommon feat for a
boy of fourteen, upon entrance as a freshman to a
college of the old order, to read Virgil and
Horace ore rotundo, with a grace and finish that
would do credit to a post-bellum alumnus. Latin,
Greek, and the higher mathematics, with a modicum
of the physical sciences, constituted the favored
curriculum of the old-time academy and college. How
much some of us owe to that ancient academy and
that small college can never be rightly estimated. The
standard of study was severe and thorough. The
discipline was often rigorous and exacting. What, for
instance, would our latter-day college boys think of a
rule compelling their attendance, if within a mile of the
chapel, upon sunrise prayer the year round? Or how
would a shudder run through their ranks if I paused to
tell them of how in our old Academy two score of us
classical students, ranging in age from fifteen to thirty
years, having been discovered demolishing the
business signs of town merchants in an effort to fulfill
the Scriptures which declared that they should seek a
sign and none should be given unto them, were
soundly thrashed with exceeding roughness and
dispatch by the man who for many years has held the
superintendency of public schools in the foremost
city of the South! Alas
for the disappearance of those good old days and
customs, of which the survivors have feeling and
pathetic remembrance! For one, I am glad that
free public education has come to the children,
white and black, of the New South. Whether the
hopes of the statesman and philanthropist shall be
realized or not, I am also glad of the millions of
money the New South has expended in the past
generation upon the education of the masses. But
the day of the ancient academy and college, as
source and inspiration of an incomparable culture,
will never be surpassed by latter-day educational
systems, however widely extended and beneficent
these may be. There was something intensely
stimulating in the spirit and method of the old
classical school; a sharp yet generous competition
and rivalry of scholarship; a thoroughness that
reached the foundation of every subject traversed;
and above and through it all there was the sure
development of a sense of honor and a pride of
scholarship that lifted even the dull student into
an ambition to succeed. Mixed with all was the
example and influence of high-bred Christian
gentlemen as professors and teachers, whose lives
reenforced their teachings and molded us into the
image of the gentleman of the Old South. The
utilitarian in education was not yet in evidence.
The bread-and-butter argument was reserved
to a later generation. The cheap and tawdry
"business college," recruited from guileless
country youth ambitious to become merchant
princes and railroad managers by a six months'
course in double entry and lightning arithmetic,
had not then entered upon its dazzling career.
Boys were trained to read extensively, to think
clearly, to analyze patiently, to judge critically,
to debate accurately and fluently, and in short to
master whatever subject one might come upon.
Over that old-time educational method might
be written the aphorism of Quintilian, that "not
what one may remember constitutes knowledge,
but what one cannot forget."
WE were not without noble intellectual
exemplars in our Old South. The great thoughts
of our home-born leaders, from Patrick Henry
to Calhoun and Clay, were ever before us.
Our college debates, our commencement orations,
were fashioned after the severely classical models
these men had left us. From the rostrum, the party
platform, the pulpit, whenever a man spoke
in those days it was expected and demanded that
his speech be chaste, his thought elevated, his
purpose ennobling. We were old-fashioned, I
admit, in theme and method. We did not aim
so much to please and entertain as to convince
and inspire. The forum was as sacred as in the
palmiest days of Athens and Demosthenes.
About it centered our chief ambitions. We
had not come upon a degenerate age when
a much-exploited college graduate, lyceum
lecturer, and "D. D." - as I heard him before a
great audience of university young gentlemen
and ladies the other day - could descend to a
contemptible buffoonery of delineation of the
"American Girl" as his theme, and include in his
printed repertoire such subjects as "The Tune the
Old Cow Died of," which confirmed some of us
who heard him in the conviction that Balaam's ass
is yet lineally represented in ways of public speech
and action.
Of the great writers and
orators who left their
impress upon us in the last years of the Old
South, I can speak from personal contact and
experience, and with thankfulness that as a boy I
was given to see most of them face to face and
to touch, in spirit, the hem of their garments. The
spell of the genius of Edgar Allan Poe, though
the fitful fever of his life had ended, was upon
the literature and literary men of the time.
The weird beauty of the lines of this prince of
the powers of harmony, contrasting so
wonderfully with a strange analytical power that
made him at once a foremost prose and poetical
writer of his century, had set before us the
measure of beauty and the test of genius. Then,
in our own day, came Paul Hamilton Hayne,
Henry Timrod, and Sidney Lanier. I cannot
describe to you the feeling of ownership that
we of the Old South felt in this trinity of noble
singers; nor can I express the sense of tenderness
that comes to me as I recall the pain and poverty
that haunted them most of their days until the end
came, to two of them at least, in utter destitution.
It was my privilege early in life to fall under the
spell of the minstrelsy of these three men. As
long as the red hills of Georgia stand, and its
over-hanging pines are stirred by the south wind's
sighing, let it recall to the honorable and grateful
remembrance of Georgians the gentle yet proud-
spirited poet who, having lost all but honor and
genius in his native sea-girt city, came to his rude
cabin home at Copse Hill as the weary pilgrim of
whom he so tenderly sings:
With
broken staff and tattered shoon,
I know what a fashion
it is to worship at the
shrines of the "Lake poets," and how Wordsworth
and Burns and Shelley and like singers of the
Old World, with Longfellow, Whittier, and
Lowell of the New, are set on high as the
greater masters of poesy. But if genius is a thing
of quality rather than quantity, I go back to the
dark days and memories of battle and take my
stand lovingly beside the new-made grave of
Timrod, the poet laureate of the Confederacy,
and call to mind what I believe to be a poem that
the greatest of English and American poets
would be glad to claim as their own. Remember,
as you read it, how in his dire want the poet
wrote of the little book of which it is a part: "I
would consign every line of it to oblivion for one
hundred dollars in hand."
Spring,
with that nameless pathos in the air
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Still
there's a sense of blossoms yet unborn
Sidney Lanier was of the Old South, though
fame came to him from the New. It was fitting
that the latest of the progeny of genius of the
Old South should become the foremost of those
who were to gild it with a fame imperishable.
Born in Georgia, less than a score of years
before the tragedy of the Old South began,
writing his earliest poems as a boy in
Confederate camp and Federal prison, his music
tinged with the somberness of the time, Lanier's
genius was like the last of the Southern flowers
that burst into bloom just before the coming of
chilling frost and wintry wind. It was like the
bright-red flower of war which he describes:
"The early spring of 1861 brought to bloom,
besides innumerable violets and jessamines, a
strange, enormous, and terrible flower, the
blood-red flower of war, which grows amid the
thunders." Why it is that the price of genius must
always be paid in blood, I do not know; but not
all the transmitted genius and culture and spirit of
the Old South, which crystallized in this last and
greatest of her literary children, could absolve
Lanier from the pangs which Southern genius
seems peculiarly called upon to suffer. As the
holiest and
bravest lives spring out of darkness and storm
and sorrow, it may be that only such baptism of
tears and blood which we as a people have
received could fit our sons and daughters for
their high vocation.
Lanier was easily the greatest of the poets of
the South. Perhaps his final place is yet to be
fixed among the greater singers of America, but
it is comforting to know that the clear light of
dispassionate judgment of the receding years
dispels the first-formed prejudices, and lifts the
singer into nobler and yet nobler place.
Broken with pain and poverty, yearning
unutterably for the peace and quiet of an
opportunity to pour out his divine genius in great
and holy song, could anything be more utterly
pitiful than this passionate cry for help, which lay
among his papers after his death?
O
Lord, if thou wert needy as I,
"A thousand songs
are singing in my heart," he
declares, "that will certainly kill me if I do not
utter them soon."
Lanier's genius was many-sided, and there is
not a line he wrote of poetry or prose that one
would care to blot. He had the exquisite sense
of melody of Poe, but he had what Poe did not
in the spirit of the maxim of his art which he
often expressed in the words: "The beauty of
holiness and the holiness of beauty." He had,
too, the tenderness and pathos and lyrical beauty
of Timrod and Haynes, yet the characteristic of
his poems is that they call one to worship God.
They usher us with bowed head and chastened
spirit into the holy of holies. "A holy tune was
in my soul when I fell asleep," he writes; "it was
going when I awoke."
Just as in the ancient mythology, while one of
divine descent might hold converse for a time
with sons and daughters of men unmarked or
unrecognized, yet by glance of eye or grace of
motion would inevitably betray himself as of the
progeny of the gods, so if ever for a moment I
were in doubt as to the genius of Lanier my
doubt would vanish as in the darkness, with
bowed head and pitying heart of love, I sang
to myself his "Ballad of the Trees and the
Master:"
Into
the woods my Master went,
Out
of the woods my Master went,
ONE of the aphorisms
of my youth was, "Poeta
nascitur, orator fit." That the poet is "born," and
ever bears upon himself the marks of his divine
enduement, I do not doubt; but that the orator
"becomes" or happens so by chance or labor, I
must strongly deny. A certain fluency
of speech, a certain gloss of oratory, may
possibly be achieved by dint of elocutionary drill
and practice. If one is minded, like orators of an
elegant postprandial type, to stand before a
mirror and practice the tricks of gesture and
speech, he may hope to attain applause from
those whose blood is kept well cooled by the ices
of the banquet room. I have described it fittingly
as "postprandial" oratory, for the reason that it is
most appreciated when the stomach and not the
brain is chiefly in operation.
But if any one as a boy had ever sat under the
matchless spell of the real masters of the forum,
those who were as fully "born" unto it as was
Lanier to poetry or Blind Tom to music; if within
a half score of years he had been permitted to
hear in their prime Jefferson Davis, Robert
Toombs, Ben Hill, Alexander Stephens, Judge
Lamar, and William L. Yancey, the after-dinner
elegancies of oratory of the class I have named
would be tame and dispiriting. I would not
underrate the men of later fame, but I am sure
that it is not time and distance only that lend
enchantment to the names of that galaxy of
famous orators who closed the succession
of platform princes of the Old South. I would not
detract an iota from whatever claim the New
South may have to oratory, but I stand firmly
upon the proposition, self-evident to survivors of
the Old South, that the golden age of Southern
oratory ended a generation ago. Compared with
Yancey, the incarnate genius of oratory, any
oration of that superb master of assemblies by
the side of the best post-bellum oratory (always
excepting Henry W. Grady) is as Hyperion to a
satyr.
On a day that no one who was present will
ever forget, while the war clouds were gathering
and old political issues were giving place to the
one dominant and terrible question of the hour, in
a little Southern city, within the compass of
twelve hours I heard the greatest of the orators
of the last tragic era of the Old South. Whig and
Democrat were words to conjure with, and the
old-fashioned custom of joint debate was yet in
honor. The crux of an intense and hard-fought
campaign was at hand, and only the platform
giants of the contending parties were in demand
for the occasion. From fifty to a hundred miles
around, towns, without railroad communication
as now, poured their delegations in upon the
crucial day of the campaign. For two days
and nights in advance, processions with fife
and drum and bands, cannon and cavalry, had
held rival parade. The fires of a great barbecue,
with its long lines of parallel trenches in which
under the unbroken vigilance of expert negro
cooks, whole beeves and sheep and hogs and
innumerable turkeys were roasting, sent forth
a savor that would have tempted the dainty
palate of an Epicurus. Floats were formed, and
fair young women and rosy-checked children
expressed in symbol the doctrines of their sires,
and sang to us until our hearts were all aglow.
To the small boy there were meat and drink,
sights and sounds illimitable, and a tenseness of
excitement that thrilled him with a thousand thrills,
for in the presence and sound of the great men
of his country the boy's heart must expand and
his ambition take fire.
Not in a hundred years could I forget the
speeches and speakers of that eventful day.
Whole passages linger in memory now, fifty years
after they were spoken. I recall the jubilant
ring of Ben Hill as, lifting an old placard on
which was inscribed, "Buck, Breck, and Kansas,"
he said: "You got your Buck, you got your
Breck, but where's your Kansas?" Or Brownlow,
with the heavy thump of his fist on the
table, declaring, "I would rather vote for the
old clothes of Henry Clay, stuffed with straw,
than for any man living." Or Toombs, with
massive head and lordly pose, denouncing in
blistering speech the unholy alliance of certain
men of the Old South with the enemies of its
most vital institution. Or Stephens, small and
weazened, sallow and unkempt, with cigar stump
in hand, his thin, metallic voice penetrating with
strange power to the remotest part of the great
open-air assemblage. All day, back and forth,
the battle of the giants raged. Toward nightfall
the Democrats were in dire distress over the
seeming victory of the opposition. Yancey lay
sick at home, sixty miles away, and the wires
were kept hot with pleadings to bring him at any
cost, if possible, to the scene. At nine o'clock
that night I saw a strange tribute to the power
of that orator, who, I doubt not, will stand
unrivaled in the future as in the past. Pale and
emaciated, taken from his sick room and
hurried by special train, upborne upon the
shoulders of men whose idol he had been for
twenty years, he was carried to the platform at
the close of a day's great victory by the opposing
party. With singularly musical voice and an
indefinable magnetism which fell upon all of us,
he began a speech of two hours' length. Within
an hour, such was the magic of the man, he had
turned the tide of defeat, rallied his party, and
filled them with hope and courage. Within
another hour he was receiving the tremendous
applause of even his political enemies, and had
undone all the mighty work of the giants of the
opposition and sent them home with a chill at
heart.
With such political leaders as these men, and
with the finest intellect and character of the Old
South devoted for generations to the study and
exposition of the purest party politics, I am not
surprised at the higher level of parties and
platforms of the Old South. Politics was not a
"graft," as the present-day political ringster
defines it. The political and personal conscience
were one and the same, and a man's politics was
no small part of his religion. I am not saying
that all political leaders were incorruptible
statesmen, or that an unselfish patriotism
was the invariable mark of its party politics.
The demagogue was not unknown, and the fine
Italian hand of the mercenary was sometimes
in evidence. But of one fact I am abundantly
assured - the spoilsman and the grafter held no
recognized and official standing in that old-time
democracy. Men of ability and character
might aspire to political place and honor. They
might even go beyond the personal desire and
become open candidates for party favor. But
the service of the paid political manager, the
conciliation of the party "boss," the subsidizing
of the party "healers," the utilization of the party
press in flaming, self-laudatory columns and even
pages of paid advertising matter, ad nauseam
and ad infinitum, as in recent Southern political
contests - all these latter-day importations and
inventions of "peanut" politics would have merited
and received the unmeasured contempt of the
politicians of the Old South. There were certain
old-fashioned political maxims that constituted
the code of every man who would become a
candidate for office, as, for instance, "The office
should seek the man, not the man the office."
I cannot find heart to censure the politician of the
New South for his smile at the verdancy and
guilelessness of such a maxim, but that which
provokes a smile was in my own remembered
years the working motto of the old-time Southern
leaders of high rank. Another maxim was that
"the patriot may impoverish but not enrich
himself by office-holding." As a commentary
upon this maxim, it affords me infinite
satisfaction, in a retrospect of the long line of
men who led the great political campaigns of the
Old South and held its positions of highest trust,
that most of them died poor, that none of them
within my knowledge were charged with
converting public office into private gain, and that
the highest ambition of the old-time politician
was to serve his country by some great deed of
unselfish patriotism, to live like a gentleman, and
then to die with uncorrupted heart and hands, and
with money enough to insure a decent burial. If
he left a few debts here and there, they were
gratefully cherished as souvenirs by his host of
friends.
Earlier in these pages I raised the question as
to why the South, once so potent in national
council and leadership, was now become the
mere servant of the national Democratic party,
so much so that the recognized Sir Oracle of
Republicanism and mouthpiece of his excellency
the President is led to remind us, while a guest
on Southern soil, of our pristine place and power,
and to admonish us, in the frankness of an
open and worthy foeman, to quit playing the
role of lackey in national politics, and to put
forth as of yore our own home-grown statesmen
for national positions of highest honor and service,
and to do all in our might again to restore the
lost political prestige of the South. Come from
whomsoever it may, Republican or Democrat,
Grosvenor or Grant - for the latter before
his death held like view with the former - the
advice is well given and the point well taken.
But when once the renaissance begins,- I think
the Augean stable of latter-day politics, even in
the New South, will need another Hercules to
purify it. Take, for instance, this statement from
a recent issue of a great Southern newspaper:
"The four candidates for railroad commissioner
expended a total of $14,940.80 on their campaign
expenses, Mr. --, who was nominated,
leading with $10,522.80 The twelve candidates
for the Supreme Court paid out $7,133.34. Sixteen
Congressional candidates expended $15,965.88."
In the Independent of recent date a leading
Democratic manufacturer of New Jersey,
under manifestly strong grievance, recites
his experiences as a delegate in the State
Democratic Convention, in which a vigorous
effort was made, as in other Democratic
Conventions, to force the indorsement of an
unclean aspirant to the highest office of the
republic. The article I cite is an evident instance
of pot and kettle, but it sets in bold relief the
straits and methods to which the dominating
wing of the party of Jefferson and Jackson has
been reduced, certainly in some of the Northern
if not of the Southern States. I quote the closing
paragraph of the article as a faithful picture of
recent political happenings:
contests and the contests decided their way. Fourthly,
a tactful chairman, who will have fine presence, be
a hypocrite and pretend to fairness, but never
recognize any but machine men. Fifthly, the presence
of the boss, with his ever-ready check book and a fine
knowledge of men to know what he must do to win
his way with them.
In so far as this is a true picture of the
dominant spirit and method of no small part of
the Northern Democracy, and I firmly believe
it so to be, I think it time for the South to first
purge itself of the contamination that has
come from thirty years of subserviency and
emasculation, and then to assert and maintain the
integrity and high principles of the Democracy of
the fathers. If ever thieves and money changers
were scourged from the ancient temple, it is high
time that the lash of public scorn shall be laid
upon the backs of all men, North or South, who
have helped to disrupt and dishonor a once noble
and victorious national party. When I remember,
as a Confederate soldier, that William McKinley
- peace to his dust - in the city of Atlanta, as
Republican President, pleaded for equal recognition
of Confederate with Federal dead; and that
one who has been honored by the Democratic
party as standard bearer and occupant of a great
office declined to vote for an ex-Confederate
candidate in fear of the disfavor of his Western
constituency; and when within recent months, in
great cities of the South, I have personally seen
the cunning handiwork of paid henchmen of a
millionaire saffron newsmonger seeking most
insistently and offensively to buy exalted position
for their master, I am ready once more to
secede, except that the second act of secession
would be the sundering of all bonds that bind my
party to corrupting methods and leadership, and
the setting up again in the New South of the lofty
political ideals and independency of the
Democracy of the Old South.
THUS far I have tried to portray, in frankly
admitted partiality, the social, intellectual, and
political characteristics of the Old South. But I
should be seriously derelict in my portraiture if
I left unnoted that which was more to it than
wealth or culture or learning or party. If the
Old South had one characteristic more than
another, I think it was the reverent and religious
life and atmosphere which diffused themselves
among all classes of its people, whether cracker
white or plantation prince or dusky slave. If
I were asked to explain this atmosphere of
religion, I should hardly know where to begin.
Perhaps its largely rural population and its
peaceful agricultural pursuits predisposed to
religion the simple-minded people who made up
the Old South. More than this, however, must
have been due to the religious strain in the blood
of the Cavalier, Huguenot, and God-fearing
Scotch-Irish ancestry from which they sprang.
Most of all, I think that the high examples of a
godly profession and practice in the leaders of
the Old South made it easy for each succeeding
generation to learn the first and noblest of all
lessons - reverence for God, his Word, and His
Church. And until this day the reverence of the
Old South is constant in the New South. While
New England, once the citadel of an orthodox
Bible and Church and Sabbath, is now the prey
of isms and innovations innumerable, and while
the great West is marked by the painful contrast
between its big secular enterprises and its
diminutive churches and congregations, the
South has continued largely to be not only
the acknowledged home of the only pure
Americanism, but the center also of
conservatism and reverence in the worship
of God and the maintenance of Christian
institutions.
In no section of our country has the Christian
Sabbath been so highly honored, Canada
alone, with her reverently ordered day of rest,
exceeding us in Sabbath observance. Here and
there, however, is needed the cautionary signal
of danger against the greed of railroad and other
law-defying corporations, and the loose morality
of aliens who come to us with money but without
religious raising or conviction. In no other section
is there such widely diffused catholicity of spirit
and tolerance of differences among opposing
religious beliefs. If the Roman Catholic has
been freer from assault upon his religion in
any country or time than in the South, I have
failed to find it. If the Jew has as kindly
treatment elsewhere under the sun, I should be
glad to know it. And if there is as fine a courtesy
and fraternity anywhere as among our Southern
Protestant bodies, I have yet to discover it. A
few months ago, though of another denomination,
I was called to their platform by the great
Southern Baptist Assembly. A month before
that I was summoned by the Cumberland
Presbyterian Seminary, of Lebanon, to instruct
its young men. A month before that I was
writing articles for the chief religious organ of
the Southern Presbyterians. I have lived long
enough and am familiar enough with other
parts of the world to know that such practical
catholicity chiefly obtains in the South.
Nowhere as in the South do men so generally
honor the house of God by their attendance and
support. I make bold to say that upon any
Sabbath day by count more men may be found
in churches in Richmond and Atlanta than in
Chicago and New York, though the combined
population of the latter cities is ten times that of
the former. These same churchgoing men of the
South, following in the footsteps of their God-
fearing fathers, are the members and supporters
of Southern Churches, and are quick to resent
innovation or disturbance of the old order. No
man is so reverent and courteous toward men
of the cloth as the men of the South, and
wherever a minister of the gospel walks down
the street of a Southern city or village, if worthy
to wear the cloth of his sacred calling, he is the
foremost man of his community in standing and
influence.
Why this relative respect to the minister and
the Church, and this clinging to religious forms
and traditions, those of us who came up out of
the Old South understand. Any reverent spirit of
the New South in matters of religion is another of
the heritages from the Old South. Then as now,
even more than now, with our leaders and great
men it was religion first, politics second, and
money, or whatever money stood for, last and
least. From my earliest recollection and reading,
the governors, senators, congressmen, judges,
great lawyers, physicians, merchants, and
planters were commonly Christian men, both by
profession and practice; and the man who was
hostile or even indifferent to the Church and
religion, however distinguished and brilliant he
might be, was under ban of public opinion. As
a commentary upon this significant religious
affiliation of Southern leadership I
carefully noted a few years ago, in two
contrasting lists taken at random of governors
and congressmen, that while one list had five
men out of twenty-five who were members of
Christian Churches, the Southern list of twenty-
five contained eighteen. While I share in the
widespread regret that our Southern young men
are not as reverent as were those of a generation
ago, and are often conspicuous by absence upon
Sabbath worship, yet in view of such facts as I
am recounting I am more hopeful of the solution
of the vexed problem of Christian young
manhood in the South than in any other part of
the land.
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
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. The last time
I heard this greatest of all the orators of the Old
South was not far from the time of his death.
Marvin, fittingly called the "St. John of Methodism,"
sat in the pulpit behind him. To most of his
audience Pierce and his preaching were known
only by hearsay, and their firm belief was that
Marvin was the real prince of the pulpit. I
remember how Pierce battled against his bodily
weakness and weariness, and how there came
to his eye that wondrous flash as his old-time
eloquence lifted him into heights and visions
celestial. He was preaching of the pure faith once
delivered unto the saints, and pleading for the old
order of simple gospel truth and living. He had
something to say of the new order of ministers
who were substituting doubts and denials for the
long-cherished doctrines of the Church. His
opening sentence was: "A single meteor flashing
athwart the heavens will arrest a larger measure
of attention than the serene shining of a
thousand planets." I think I know who the old
man eloquent meant. A little while before, a
dapper preacher, consumed by itch for popularity,
had been dispensing a perfumed and smokeless
theology that drew great crowds and tickled
the ears of the groundlings. The theology of
the Old South was too crude and barbarous and
unscientific for such as he. Genesis was an
allegory, creation an evolution, man was
pre-Adamic, the deluge was only a local shower,
the Pentateuch was polychromatic, Moses was
largely mythical, there were two Isaiahs, all the
ante-exilian history and writings were concocted
by pious post-exilian experts, the incarnation and
resurrection were touching legends but "quite
unscientific," hell was "hades," and hades was a
tolerably comfortable winter resort, and Bible
inspiration, as a matter of fact, seldom inspired.
Many times, in sight and sound of such dainty
apostles of an emasculate Bible, have I longed
for the ghosts of the stalwart preachers of my
childhood - the Pierces, Thomas Sanford,
Jefferson Hamilton, A. L. P. Green, P. P. Neely,
Jesse Boring, McTyeire, Wightman, Summers,
and the like - to rise up in their godly wrath and
shake them over the flaming pit of a real old-time,
unabridged "hades" long enough to bring them
to silence and repentance.
Down in the straw, at the mourners' bench of
an Old South camp meeting, some of us got our
theology and our religion. The Bible, in miracle
and prophecy, was handled by reverent hands,
and made most real to us as the infallible word
of Almighty God. The law of Sinai, with
unexpurgated cursings and blessings, was read
to us amid the groanings of our troubled
consciences. No ear so polite, no position so
exalted, but a living and burning hell was
denounced against its meannesses. As deep as the
virus of sin in our souls sank the flashing, two-
edged sword of the Spirit. The wound was made
purposely deep and wide that the balm of Gilead
might enter and heal the utmost roots of sin. By
and by, when John the Baptists, like Boring and
Lovick Pierce, had cut to the quick and laid
bare the wounded spirit, some gentler wooing
ministry, like that of Hamilton or Neely came
pointing the way to the cross. There was no
lifting of the finger tip, daintily gloved and
decorous, in token of a desire sometime or
other to become a Christian. Cards, in colors,
bearing name and rates of the evangelist, agreeing
to meet everybody in heaven, were not passed
around for signatures. I never hear the old
hymn of invitation, that lured many a hardened
sinner of the Old South, as they sung it under
the leafy arbor to flickering lights, after a weird,
unearthly stirring of our hearts by the man in
the pulpit, but I think of a great criminal lawyer,
who for many years had led the bar of his
State, and had made mock of God's Book and
Church and ministers. He owned an old
carriage driver who was one of God's saints in
black, gray-haired and patient "Uncle Aleck,"
who had mourned and prayed over his unbelieving
master. "Uncle Aleck," he said to him one
day, "why do you believe in a book you can't
read, and in a God you never saw? I have thousands
of books in my library, yet I care nothing
for religion." Uncle Aleck's only reply was to
put his hand on his heart and say: "Marse John,
I've been true and faithful to you all these years,
ain't I, marster?" "Yes." "And I never lied
to you or disobeyed you, has I, Marse John?"
"No." "Then, marster, it's my religion that has
made me what I am. I can't read, I can't see
God, but I know the Lord Jesus Christ here in
my heart."
Drawn by some spell he could not resist, the
great lawyer came to the old camp ground and
heard the awfully solemn message of the
preacher with bowed head and heart full of
trouble. When the hymn was sung,
"Come,
humble sinner, in whose breast
I shall never forget
the startled look of preacher
and people as straight to the mourners' bench
sped the lawyer, crying in agony as he fell to the
ground: "Send for Uncle Aleck!" And down
in the straw white-haired old Aleck wrestled
with God for Marse John, until a great shout
went up from mourner and congregation as the
master hugged the old darky and the darky
hugged his master, saying: "I knew it was
coming, Marse John." You will pardon a man
whose head is growing gray if at times the heart
grows hungry to turn back and see and hear the
old sights and sounds of God's presence and
power as revealed especially at the ancient and
now nearly extinct camp meeting.
ON a bright April day, 1861, books were closed
in the old academy, there was the blare of bugle
and roll of drum on the streets, people were
hurrying together, and soon the roar of a cannon
shook the building, as they told us of the
bombardment of Sumter by the batteries of the
young Confederacy. For months the very air had
been vibrant with sound of drum and fife, of
rattling musket and martial command. 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.
There were tender partings and long good-bys,
so long to many of them that not yet has word of
home greeting come. It seemed a great thing to
be a soldier in those brave days when the girls
decked the parting ones in flowers and sang to
them "The Girl I Left Behind Me," "Bonnie Blue
Flag," and "Maryland, My Maryland." The scarlet
and gold and gray, the flashing sword and
burnished musket, the gay flowers and parting
song, marked the beginning of that mighty death
struggle of the Old South. Soon the gay song
deepened into the hush before a great battle, or
rose into the cry of the stricken heart over the
long lists of wounded and slain. War grew grim
and fierce and relentless. There were hunger and
wounds, pale faces in hospital and sharp death
of men at the front; and sleeplessness and
heartache and holy privation and unfailing
courage and comfort of Southern womanhood at
home. Fiercer and hotter came the storm of
battle, as the thin gray lines of Lee and Johnston
confronted the soldiery and the resources of the
world. Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg,
Seven Pines, Chancellorsville, Vicksburg,
Gettysburg, the Wilderness, Cold Harbor,
Petersburg, Appomattox! - how these names, that
wreathed with crepe their thousands of hearts
and homes, and marked the rise and fall of the
battle tide, recall to us the passing of the Old
South!
On another April day in 1865, as a boy in
Mahone's Division, I looked my last into the face
of the Old South and its great commander, who
came riding down the line of our stacked guns,
and, halting his old gray war horse Traveler, tried
to comfort our hearts by saying: "It's all over.
Never mind, men; you have done your best. Go
to your homes and be as brave and true as you
have been with me."
In the great day of national assize, when
empire, kingdom, and republic of earth shall be
gathered to judgment, and the Muse of history
shall unroll the record of their good and evil, the
Old South, the "uncrowned queen" of the
centuries, will be in their midst, her white
vestment stained by the blood of her sons, her
eyes dimmed by sorrow and suffering. No
chaplet of laurel shall encircle her brow, and no
noisy trump of fame shall hail her coming; but
round her fair, proud head, as of yore, shall shine
a halo of love, and Fame shall hang her head
rebuked, and the trumpet fall from her nerveless
hand, as the spirit of the Old South is passing by.
Return to Menu Page for The Old South, a Monograph by H. H. Return to First-Person Narratives of the American South, Beginnings to
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I
wander slow from dawn to noon -
From
arid noon till, dew-impearled,
Pale
twilight steals across the world.
Yet
sometimes through dim evening calms
I
catch the gleam of distant palms;
And
hear, far off, a mystic sea,
Divine
as waves on Galilee.
Perchance
through paths unknown, forlorn,
I
still may reach an Orient morn;
To
rest where Easter breezes stir
Around
the sacred sepulcher.
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Which
dwells with all things fair;
Spring,
with her golden suns and silver rains,
Is
with us once again.
In
the sweet airs of morn;
One
almost looks to see the very street
Grow
purple at his feet.
At
times a fragrant breeze comes floating by,
And
brings - you know not why -
A
feeling as when eager crowds await
Before
a palace gate
Some
wondrous pageant; and you scarce would start,
If
from a beech's heart
A
blue-eyed Dryad, stepping forth, should say:
"Behold
me! I am May!"
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If
thou shouldst come to my door as I to thine;
If
thou hungered so much as I
For
that which belongs to the spirit,
For
that which is fine and good,
Ah,
friend, for that which is fine and good,
I
would give it to thee if I had power.
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Clean
forspent, forspent.
Into
the woods my Master came,
Forspent
with love and shame.
But
the olives they were not blind to him,
The
little gray leaves were kind to him,
The
thorn tree had a mind to him,
When
into the woods he came.
And
he was well content.
Out
of the woods my Master came,
Content
with death and shame.
When
death and shame would woo him last,
From
under the trees they drew him - last;
'Twas
on a tree they slew him - last,
When
out of the woods he came.
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A
thousand thoughts revolve;
Come,
with your guilt and fear oppressed,
And
make this last resolve,"
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