The Southern South

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Southern South, by Albert Bushnell Hart
THE SOUTHERN SOUTH
BY ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D. PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
NEW YORK AND LONDON D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1910
Copyright, 1910, by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Published April, 1910

THE SOUTHERN SOUTH
The keynote to which intelligent spirits respond most quickly in the United States is Americanism; no nation is more conscious of its own existence and its importance in the universe, more interested in the greatness, the strength, the pride, the influence, and the future of the common country. Nevertheless, any observer passing through all the parts of the United States would discover that the Union is made up not only of many states but of several sections—an East, a Middle West, a Far West, and a South. Of these four regions the three which adhere most strongly to each other and have least consciousness of rivalry among themselves are often classed together as “The North,” and they are set in rivalry against “The South,” because of a tradition of opposing interests, commercial and political, which culminated in the Civil War of 1861, and is still felt on both sides of the line.
That the South is now an integral and inseparable part of the Union is proved by a sense of a common blood, a common heritage, and a common purpose, which is as lively in the Southern as in the Northern part of the Union. The dominant English race stock is the same in both sections: in religion, in laws, in traditions, in expectation of the future, all sections of the United States are closer together than, for instance, the three components of the kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Whatever the divergence between Southerners and Northerners at home, once outside the limits of their common country they are alike; the Frenchman may see more difference between a Bavarian and a Prussian than between a Georgian and a Vermonter.
It is not to the purpose of this book to describe those numerous common traits which belong to people in all sections of the United States, but to bring into relief some of the characteristics of the South which are not shared by the North. For it is certain that the physical and climatic conditions of the South are different from those of the North; and equally sure that as a community the South has certain temperamental peculiarities which affect its views of the world in general and also of its own problems. Slavery, which had little permanent effect on the society or institutions of those parts of the North in which it existed up to the Revolution, was for two centuries a large factor in Southern life, and has left many marks upon both white and negro races. The existence of a formerly servile race now ten millions strong still influences the whole development of the South.