Evidently the most difficult lesson, and yet that most needed by all the former inhabitants of the southern states is reverence for, trust in, and submission to law. The old habit of irresponsible authority, of domination instead of true democracy—the idea that the sovereign citizen may be superior to the law enacted by the popular will, is hard to eradicate.
Like the writhing beheaded serpent, which responds with slow-dying malice to the glow of the sun that does not make night because its green eyes are sightless, beheaded slaveocratic feudalism blindly ejects its spite at inevitable oncoming civilization.
Through the philanthropic movements which have been indicated, an entirely new ingredient was injected among the heterogeneous elements of southern society which were seeking a new basis, and a few northern soldiers, enamored of the delicious climate and naturally productive soil to which war and conquest had introduced them, and from which slavery had formerly excluded them, brought their families from Northern homes, or married daughters of this sunny land, and became permanent residents. Then followed capitalists, allured by the numerous apparently good investments the almost universal bankruptcy afforded.
With these came money, and such industry, enterprise, skill and public spirit as was before unknown in that slavery-cursed land; and the pecuniary results of which the Southerner can only account for by supposed political corruption or downright stealing from the public funds—the most familiar means.
Still the formerly favored class, true to its arrogance, and not ignored by those accustomed to worship at its shrine, ranks the possessor of one of its patronymics, especially if garnished by military title won or sustained in confederate service, among the most enviable of men; for “The Lost Cause” is as dear to South Carolinians as ever—an ideal worshiped all the more devoutly because of its unreality, and with demonstration necessarily somewhat restrained.
CHAPTER X.
THE ATTACK.
“Shepherd—Name of mercy, when was this, boy?
Clo.—Now, now; I have not winked since I saw these sights; the men are not yet cold under water, nor the bear half dined on the gentleman; he’s at it now.