Up From the Depths With the Civil War

Editor’s note: This story from 1929 contains dated language that is no longer used today. In the interest of keeping a historical record, it appears here as it was originally published.

This is the first of the 1929 Series of Princeton lectures by Members of the University Faculty.

In the Princeton Alumni Weekly for October 14, 1927, appeared an article entitled, “The Rise and Fall of the Old Southern Illusion.” It was written by James Boyd ’10, author of Drums and of Marching On. This distinguished novelist calls attention to a point of vital importance in American history, which has escaped even our historians. Slavery, he says, was more deadly to the mass of Southern whites than to the negroes themselves. The Old South was falsely pictured as the land of “gaiety, graciousness and charm.” The slave-holders, no doubt, were gracious and charming, but this group constituted a small portion of the population. The hundreds of thousands who owned no slaves, the “poor whites,” were thrown into competition with slave labor, and had to sell their little crops in the same market as slave-made cotton and tobacco. So “the manhood of the country, crushed under an economic system that excluded it from chance of betterment, deprived of knowledge, of pleasure and of hope, and exposed to the contumely of planters and slaves alike, sank to a sullen, listless, and half-barbarous state.”

           Mr. Boyd does not give the sequel to this depressing picture. But he does hint at better things for the poor whites of the present, when he says that few Southerners “would wish ever to see the sorrowful land of slaves and outcaste whites again.” In truth, the rise of this despised class has been one of the most inspiring developments of recent years. The Civil War brought not only emancipation for the slaves, but emancipation for the poor whites from the incubus of slavery. After Appomattox the defeated Confederate trudged back to his little farm, with bowed head and heavy heart, visaging a future of humiliation and hardship. But could he have read aright the meaning of his defeat, he would have taken up the work of reconstruction with a song in his heart. Upon the wreckage of the Old South, a New South was to arise, a prosperous, progressive South, in which he was to play a vital part.

Industrial Revolution Reaches the South

The nightmare of Reconstruction postponed the day of regeneration for a decade. But in the spring of 1877, when the last of the Federal troops entrained for the North, the South found itself free to work out its own destiny. True, the scars of the Civil War had to be healed, the damage done by carpetbaggers and scalawags repaired. But slaver, the mill stone which had hung about the neck of the Old South, was gone forever. Without slavery it was possible to apply intensive methods to agriculture, to make use of the South’s idle water-power, to open mines, to build up manufactures, to multiply railway mileage and develop commerce. It was to be the Southern Industrial Revolution, not less important than the Northern Industrial Revolution because of coming three-quarters of a century later.

           In agriculture the South is still backward as compared with the North and the West. Lack of capital, antiquated methods of farming, and the hookworm continue to cast a cloud over the cotton and tobacco fields. But the signs of progress are multiplying. Agricultural colleges, experiment stations and government bulletins are teaching the farmers the latest methods of cultivation — how to rotate crops, how to fight the boll-weevil, what fertilizers to use, how to conduct farming as a business. Tractors are now replacing mules and horses at the plow, automobiles are seen everywhere on the new concrete roads, electric power draws the farmer’s water, makes his ice, lights his home; the gas engine runs his sheller and wood-saw; the radio is breaking down his isolation. From Maryland to Texas the old system of agriculture, in which the planter based his hopes upon the lavish expenditure of fertile soil and cheap labor, is giving way before the use of machinery and scientific methods. This movement, although far from completed, has already worked wonders. In the years from 1900 to 1926 the value of farm land in the South increased from $3,250,000,000 to $10,500,000,000, of farm products from one and a half billion to over five billions, of farm acreage from 77,000,000 to 132,000,000 of bales of cotton from 9,400,000 to 18,283,000.

           Important as are these advances in agriculture, they are overshadowed by the remarkable development of Southern manufactures. The Old South was not an industrial section. It devoted itself to cotton and tobacco, turning to the North for its manufactured goods, and to the West for its grain. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, however, cotton mills began to appear here and there upon the western uplands of the Carolinas. Stock was subscribed from the little savings of the people, machinery was imported from the North, mountaineers and poor whites employed as factory hands. These new concerns prospered. They were close to the supply of raw cotton; water-power was abundant; fuel, wages, and taxes were low, building costs small, strikes rare. From 600,000 in 1880 the number of spindles in the South grew to 1,750,000 in 1890, to 4,500,000 in 1900, to 11,000,000 in 1910, and to 17,600,000 in 1926. The Northern spinners awoke with a start to the realization that the Civil War, in destroying slavery, had created a rival with which they would find it increasingly difficult to compete.

           In other industries, too, the South has made great gains. The hills of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky are honeycombed with coal pits; Virginia, West Virginia and Tennessee produce large quantities of pig-iron; Birmingham has become a city of steel works, rolling mills, and blast furnaces; Newport News resounds to the rattle and clank of a giant ship-building plant; Norfolk is the nation’s largest coal exporting port; North Carolina is developing the manufacture of furniture; Winston-Salem and Durham are cities of tobacco factories; in some sections the lumber industry is of great importance; in others the production of cotton-seed oil. Since 1900 the output of manufactures south of the Mason and Dixon Line has increased 687 per cent, and now totals $10,000,000,000.

Slovenly Shack is Left Behind

This vast agricultural and industrial development has opened a new world for the poor whites. They are no longer degraded and impoverished by competition with slave labor. For the mountaineer, who perhaps has never before left his lonely cove, the community life which centers around the mill is a revelation. The cottages are marvels of neatness and comfort compared with the slovenly shack he left behind; the school, the church, the meeting house stimulate in him new ambitions and open new vistas to his mind; the teacher, the minister, the welfare worker, the doctor lay down for him new principles of correct living. He becomes a broader, a more healthy, a more vigorous being. He does not complain because work hours are longer than in the North, and wages lower; but thanks God for the transformation in his life which the factory has made possible.

           Some of the larger companies provide reading rooms for their employees, lay out athletic fields, and construct community buildings with auditorium, public baths, swimming pool and office for a visiting nurse. Many have attempted to render the factory community outwardly attractive, by employing landscape gardeners for their grounds, training ivy over the mill, encouraging the workmen to keep their cottages attractive and clean. In 1918 Dr. Frederick L. Hoffman, of the Prudential Insurance Company of America, made an inspection of labor conditions in the Tennessee Company in the Birmingham district. “Of all that concerns laborers, there is nothing so vital as the houses in which they live,” he said, “and the surroundings that go with them, and the conditions of family life that depends upon them. The company has taken hold of this question with a thoroughness rarely met with in this country. (I am) delighted with what is being done for the children, the admirable playgrounds provided for them, the excellent school facilities, the wholesome atmosphere surrounding the school houses, the insistence upon personal hygiene.” The increased self-respect and well-being of the worker have tended to encourage thrift. Thousands of families are saving money. Some buy homes, others farms; many invest their money in shares of the company which employs them.

           The poor whites, whether factory hands or farmers, have benefited greatly by the upbuilding of an excellent school system in the South. In 1867 George Peabody of Baltimore gave $3,500,000, which aided in the erection of schools in every Southern state. But this was only the beginning. In 1900 the expenditures for public schools in the South had mounted to $35,000,000; in 1920 to $200,000,000, in 1925 to $350,000,000. High schools have multiplied. In 1905 there were less than 60,000 white children entered in high schools in fourteen Southern states, or five pupils to each 1,000 whites; twenty years later the enrollment was 450,000 or 25 pupils to each 1,000 whites. Today there are 844 accredited high schools in this region, with better teachers, longer terms, and better buildings and equipment than ever before. Illiteracy is declining rapidly. The slovenly, ignorant, hopeless poor whites of former days are receiving a new mental equipment to match their bettered material welfare.

North Makes Fatal Errors of Judgment Concerning Poor Whites

In the days before the war the poor whites were almost devoid of political leaders. In the mountain districts, it is true, men of the stamp of Andrew Johnson and “Parson” Brownslow acquired a large following, and led the fight against slavery and the slave-holders. But elsewhere the poor farmers were dominated by the old aristocracy, — their worst enemies. Kept in ignorance, their opinions were formed by their wealthy neighbors; lacking men of vision and force, they voted usually for the candidate of the same group. When Helper, in his Impending Crisis, explained clearly the ruinous effect of slavery upon the poor whites, few could read what he had to say, and still fewer understood. With the outbreak of the Civil War the poor whites went blindly into the struggle, giving their blood freely for the system which was their undoing.

           Had the abolitionists understood the situation, it is possible that they could have freed the slaves without fanning the nation into civil war. The energy which they expended denouncing the slave-holders and creating sentiment in the North, might, with better results, have been directed to the Southern poor whites. Such a campaign of enlightenment might have brought the whole structure of slavery crumbling to the ground. Certainly secession and war would have been impossible, had there been organized resistance to the will of the aristocratic minority in every southern State and county.

           After Appomattox the North again misjudged the situation. The Southern poor whites, since they had supported the Confederacy, were grouped with the former slave-holders as the enemies of the Union. Instead of turning to them as the foundation of a free, democratic, loyal South, the Republican leaders sought to perpetuate the ruin of the old system, by entrusting power to the negroes. How inconceivably stupid this was, events at once showed. It drove the poor whites once more into the arms of the old ante-bellum leaders. With negro majorities controlling many of the State legislatures, with carpetbaggers and scalawags looting the treasuries, with misgovernment and corruption rampant, there could be no division among the whites. It was Wade Hampton, Matthew C. Butler, John B. Gordon, and men of like stamp — the so-called Confederate brigadiers — who put an end to Reconstruction and launched the South upon its new career.

Political Power Among Rewards of Abolition

But Reconstruction merely postponed the revolt of the poor whites. Once freed of negro domination, the South began to reap the rewards of abolition, not the least of which, as we have seen, was the bettered material welfare of the poor man. And the poor man made use of his increased income, and his widened mental horizon, to seize political power. Had not Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner chosen to make the Republican party in the South the negro party, no doubt the lower classes of whites would have turned to it as the instrument of their revolt. Their logical allies, the mountaineers, had long ago rallied to the Republican standard, because the Democratic party in the South was the traditional party of the aristocracy — the party of Calhoun, and Yancey, and Jefferson Davis. But Reconstruction had made this impossible. The poor whites had learned to fear the Republicans. The attempts to make the negro superior to the white man aroused his bitter resentment, for their hatred of the slave was not lessened now that the slave had become a free negro. It is this which explains why Andrew Johnson, himself a Southerner of the lower group, so unceremoniously deserted the radical Republicans upon succeeding to the Presidency. He had supported them grimly in their determination to punish the Southern aristocracy, but he turned against them when he discovered that the contemplated also giving civil rights and the franchise to the negro. So the revolt of the poor whites became an intra-party matter, a struggle for control within the Democratic organization.

           South Carolina was one of the first battle-grounds. In that State a small group of prominent families, centering around Charleston, exercised a domination influence in party and government. In their protest against this injustice the poor whites were led by Benjamin R. Tillman. Although himself neither illiterate nor poor, Tillman frankly preached the doctrine of class war. On stump and platform, from one end of the State to the other, he raved against the “silk hats” and the “kid gloves,” and demanded the rule of the masses. In September 1890, after a campaign of extreme bitterness, “Pitchfork Ben,” as he came to be known, was nominated at the Democratic candidate for Governor. When the old group, unwilling to accept this verdict, ran an independent candidate, Tillman was elected by a large majority. Once in power, the Tillmanites forced through the legislature a program of class legislation. The liquor traffic was made a State monopoly by the dispensary system, partly in order to shift the burden of taxation upon the rich; an agricultural and mechanical college was founded at Clemson; appropriations to the “aristocratic” state university was reduced.

           Similar revolts followed in other States until the rule of the aristocrats in the South became a thing of the past. Today the common man usually elects governors and senators of his own class, men who have known the plow and the hoe, and who run the government in his interest. Some of these men possess high ability and character, some are mediocre, others are blatant demagogues. But their appearance in public life is the manifestation of a wholesome development, for they represent the awakening of a submerged class, the assumption of power by a group who for centuries had been the victims of an unwholesome economic and social system.

           One cannot understand the New South unless he knows the plain white group, and he cannot know this group unless he has studied its history. Still mindful of Reconstruction days, still fearful of negro competition on farm and in the factory, they refuse the vote to the black, and hold him in social and economic subjection; profoundly religious and responsive to the leadership of their ministers, they enact laws against the violation of the Sabbath or the teaching of evolution in the public schools, and vote solidly to uphold the Volstead Act. But they vote also ever increasing expenditures for public schools, agricultural colleges, normal colleges, and even for the long neglected state universities; they vote for networks of concrete highways, for improved state discal systems, for parks and public buildings, for harbors and docks, for water-power developments, for public sanitation.

Break of Solid South in Recent Election Traced to Rise of Middle Class

It is the rise of the middle class which gives the key to the breaking up of the Solid South in the recent election. The farmer, the factory hand, the small storekeeper are ardent supporters of the Eighteenth Amendment, they have been taught to distrust Tammany, they are Fundamentalist Protestants. Having little in common with the Eastern Democrats, they were bitterly hostile to the nomination of Governor Smith. This hostility manifested itself in the long-drawn-out struggle in the convention of 1924 at New York, when the Georgia and other Southern delegations held out to the last against him. At Houston the Southerners were whipped into line because Smith seemed the only available candidate, with the result that hundreds of thousands of voters, who formerly would have considered it little short of treason to desert the Democratic party, cast their ballots for Herbert Hoover.

           The returns make it obvious that the split in the South was largely along the lines of class division. It was the new middle class, not the remnant of the old aristocracy, who turned the tide against the Democratic organization. And the old aristocracy is extremely bitter over their desertion. At the University of Virginia, after the election, a group of students draped in mourning the statue of Thomas Jefferson, while a member of the Mississippi Legislature proposed that the bodies of Lee and Jackson be moved to Mississippi, where they would lie under Democratic soil. In other words, the old battle between the classes, formerly an intra-party affair, is now shaping itself along party lines. That the cotton States, despite greatly increased Republican votes, remained in the Democratic column, is to be ascribed chiefly to their large negro populations. There the middle-class citizen, as he went to the polls, said to himself: “This is not so much a vote for Smith as for white supremacy in this section.”

           But in Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, the middle class joined hands with the mountaineers, who for decades have been Republican, to give their States to Hoover. Whether this alignment will be permanent, remains to be seen. Should the Democratic party immediately shift its ground in regard to prohibition and certain other issues, it is possible that it may regain its hold upon the middle class of the South. Otherwise the day may be not far distant when this section will become as solidly Republican as formerly it was Democratic. The South is no longer then land of the aristocrat. The aristocrat still exists, he still sips his mint-julep despite the Eighteenth Amendment if he can afford the price, he derides the anti-evolution laws, denounces the interference of the preachers in politics, and glorifies the part of Jefferson and Jackson. But it is the great new middle class, the heirs to the vigorous, prosperous, advancing New South, who now decide the elections.

Rise From Depths Receiving No Impetus From Without

The Southern masses have been compelled to work out their own destiny, slowly, painfully, in the face of manifold difficulties. There has been little understanding in other sections of their history, their problems, their character, their ambitions. As, before the Civil War the North failed to grasp the fact that they were the true victims of the slave system and included them in their general condemnation of everything Southern, so it has given scant encouragement and sympathy in their recent rise from the depths. The Northern press is quick to criticize. It devotes many columns to the Scopes trial and the lynching of negroes, bitterly assails the Ku Klux Klan, condemns the interference of ministers in politics. But the awakening of millions of white men and women from a condition little short of serfdom, and their transformation into useful, intelligent, industrious citizens excites no more than passing comment. 

           Generous Northerners have done much to aid the Southern negro, but comparatively few have interested themselves in the uplift of the poor whites. True, certain noble individuals have devoted themselves to the mountain schools; true, the Rockefeller Institute has done splendid work in eradicating the hookworm; true there have been gifts to Southern colleges by Northern philanthropists. But the work of regeneration has been done almost entirely by Southerners themselves. It was Governor Aycock of North Carolina, President Edwin A. Aldermen of the University of Virginia, Chancellor Kirkland of Vanderbilt, who launched the chief offensive against ignorance and darkness; it was Walter H. Page and Edwin Mims who did so much to awaken a desire for better things among the lower class; it was D. A. Tompkins, C. H. Herty, and George G. Crawford who led the industrial revolution.

           The work is far from complete. In the South there are in places still illiteracy, still antiquated agricultural methods, poverty, prejudice. But “conditions are rapidly changing; the tide has turned. Poverty, ignorance, stagnation, conservatism,” are gradually giving way. “Freed from the limitations that have so long hampered it, and buoyant with the energy of a new life coursing through its veins, the South will press forward to a great destiny.” Certain it is that the poor whites of antebellum days, “poor white trash,” as the negroes called them, are rapidly passing into history. In their place is arising a vigorous middle class, intelligent, progressive, prosperous. Nor is the day distant when this class will be able so to interpret the meaning of their own history as to rise up and bless the name Abraham Lincoln, the man who struck the shackles from around their necks, and gave “a new birth of freedom” to the white man of the South.

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The Lecturer

Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, on February 6, 1879. Much of his education was obtained near his birthplace at the University of Virginia, where he was granted the degrees of B.A. and M.A. in 1902 and the degree of Ph.D. in 1910. Shortly after his graduation he entered journalism, serving as an editor on the staff of the Baltimore News in 1905 and 1906. In 1907 he began his career as an educator, at that time entering upon a two-year membership on the faculty of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas as an Associate Professor of Economics. In 1909 he returned to the University of Virginia for a year as an Instructor in American History and in 1910 joined the Faculty Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor of American History. In addition to his academic duties he found time from 1918 to 1923 to act also as an editor on the staff of the New York Evening Sun. Professor Wertenbaker is a member of the American Historical Association and the American Association of University Professors, as well as of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He is the author of Patrician and Plebeian in Virginia (1910), Virginia Under the Stuarts (1914), Planters of Colonial Virginia (1922), The American People – A History (1926), and The First Americans (1927).

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Bibliography

The following titles are recommended to those wishing to delve more extensively into the subjects dealt with by Professor Wertenbaker in the foregoing lecture:

The Rebuilding of Old Commonwealths, by Walter H. Page

The Present South, by Edgar Gardner Murphy

From Cotton Field to Cotton Mill, by Holland Thompson (Macmillan)

The New South, by Holland Thompson (Yale University Press)

The Advancing South, by Edwin Mims (Doubleday, Doran, 1927)

“Some Southern Industrialists,” by Broadus Mitchel. Virginia Quarterly Review, July 1928

“Breaking the Solid South,” by James Southall Wilson, Virginia Quarterly Review, January 1929

“King Cotton Moves South,” Review of Reviews, August 1928

This was originally published in the January 18, 1929 issue of PAW.