changes are taking place, so sound and conservative are the instincts of the people as a whole that the ideals of personal honor and the traditions of loyalty to home and state abide to enrich present forces in Southern life.

This book is not put forth as final. It is designed only as an exponent of the expanding energies and ideals of this section. It is conceived in response to the call of the present, and is vibrant with the forces of the future. If our fathers in 1861 were willing to die for the South, it behooves us, their sons, to live for it.

I wish to thank for their kindly coöperation the writers of the following papers. Their courtesy and patience have smoothed many difficulties.

S. C. M.

INTRODUCTION TO VOLUME X.

HERE are several Souths. This is true geographically, historically and socially. In climate, soil and products there are wide dif

ferences between the Upper and Lower South, while the Appalachian region presents a sharp contrast to the Coastal Plain. On the alluvial lands of Mississippi cotton is virtually the sole crop; in portions of Virginia the tobacco plant still engages chief attention; around Charleston, S. C., rice and tea flourish; and in the coves of the mountains of east Tennessee are ensconced a hardy folk who wrest a scant livelihood from the rocky soil, while beside them have recently sprung up mining camps that have tapped unexplored mineral resources. Despite the current impression as to the solidarity of the South, geographical unity is lacking. Nature offers no reason for uniformity in thought and social custom in this section. On the contrary, suggestive variety is presented on every hand by physical conditions which should normally cause cleavages in society, break up hardening customs, and develop local individuality and political independence. Monotony is by no means the dictate of nature as to the trend of Southern life and ideals.

Historically, the same contrasts appear in economic tendencies, social habits and political thought in the successive periods of the South's experience, extending over three hundred years. Four eras may be easily distinguished. First was the precotton period, dating from the settlement upon the

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James in 1607 down to the invention of Whitney's cotton gin in 1793. From that hour the mere growing of the cotton plant by the labor of black slaves absorbed almost all energies and laid the basis for the dominance of the Lower South in the racial and political issues of the time, which clustered more and more about the defence of the slave system in contrast to the free and trained labor of the North. The War between the States and Reconstruction constitute another well-marked epoch, when the display of heroic energy in battle was followed quickly by prostration and sorrow so deep as to have overwhelmed a less self-reliant and insistent brood of men. The last two decades have ushered in a new age, in which industrialism has made its advent, placing the factory adjacent to the farm, so that both profit by the coöperative union. The present South is surging with all the complex forces of American industrial democracy, while the survivals of the old social order lend interest and perplexity to these engrossing problems.

The changes in the trend of social and political forces in the South answer to these four economic periods, as effects are related to causes. Prior to the ascendency of the cotton plant, many of the leaders, particularly in Virginia, were ardently national and eager for the emancipation of the slaves. When the colonial patriots met for the first time in the Continental Congress of 1774, Patrick Henry, voicing the sentiments of his fellowVirginians, declared: "The distinctions between New Yorkers, New Englanders and Pennsylvanians are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." In 1784, Jefferson in his draft of an ordinance for the government of the national domain west of the Alleghanies, forbade the existence of

slavery after the year 1800, a provision which was defeated, however, by the votes of the Southern states. When Madison set out for the convention of 1787, he carried with him an outline of the constitution in which the word "National" was written nineteen times with a capital N. To the same effect was the inspiring example of Washington and Marshall.

The reaction against these progressive views, which is registered in the debates upon the Missouri Compromise, Nullification, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the Dred Scott Decision, and Secession, coincides with the sole supremacy of the cotton plant. The industrial progress of the present day discloses new forces at work in Southern life and a return to the national outlook of the creative period in American history. Nationality in the present South is not an innovation, but a revival of pristine loyalty to the flag of our fathers. Thus there are layers of experience in Southern history that show as distinct cleavages as the strata of rocks in the Blue Ridge. Each period in the long and varied course of the South's career must be studied separately and judged according to the impelling factors in the environment of that particular time. The evolution of the South has been not without abrupt breaks, owing chiefly to radical economic changes and crucial racial conditions. It is therefore important for a right understanding of the advancing forces in this section to keep clearly distinct the content of each period and the interplay of its vital forces.

Socially the ante-bellum South resembled a house with three stories. Upon the basement floor stood the Negro slaves. Upon the next floor lived the plain white people, while upon the top story dwelt the aristocratic planters. The peculiarity of the

social structure was that no stairway led from the basement to the story above, while the passage from the middle to the highest story was rendered purposely difficult and infrequent. Power-educational, social and political-rested with the slave-holding planters, who moulded public opinion at home and figured largely in the affairs of the nation. The mass of plain white people were shut out from opportunity, led dull lives, feeding upon unnourishing sentiments, both as to the master class above and the black slaves below. Scarcely anywhere have appeared such contrasts in light and shadow socially as in the old South. The charm of chivalry, the mellowness of classic culture, the exaltation of womanhood, a delicate sense of personal honor, intense love of home, devotion to church, and withal the refinements of feudal society characterized the planters who dwelt side by side with millions of unprivileged white folk, while African slavery formed the background of the scene in which these two sharply contrasted figures of lord and client stood forth to view. Rich in human interest, instructive in political lore, picturesque in details of life, romantic in the rapid shifts of prestige, sorrow and heroic recovery, the South makes a powerful appeal to the sympathies and thought of every student who has the ability to detach himself from his environment sufficiently to enter into the chastened experiences of a great people wrestling with strange and adverse conditions.

Thus variety is the prevailing characteristic of the South, when correctly interpreted, whether you consider its physical features, its history, or its social structure. It is for this reason that the plan of the present work must commend itself to seekers after truth regarding the social life of this section,