The old South

by H. M. Hamill

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-cheeked 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 “heelers,” 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:

What are the means used by the bosses? First, corrupted judges at the primaries and bulldozing tactics there. Secondly, a brow-beating county and delegation chairman, with his attendant thugs. Thirdly, a properly managed credentials committee, with arrangements made beforehand, so that there will be 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.