The Brothers' War

by John C. Reed

The southern people have learned much wisdom in the last ten years. Their heavy vote in 1872 for Horace Greeley—a man to whom a foreigner would have supposed them unappeasably hostile—if there was nothing else, would alone suffice to show that they are rapidly laying aside all hindrances to progress. And now that slavery is gone and she has so quickly conquered the animosities of the war, the south may be likened to a capable and energetic young man, who, having failed, as the result of inevitable misfortune, in a wrongly-chosen business, has been relieved of all embarrassments and has entered upon his proper calling. More may reasonably be expected of such a man than of one more prosperous who has not had the like discipline.

As her nationalizing tendency has been destroyed by the removal of slavery, and as her future must necessarily be shaped by union influences, she will heartily embrace the political creed of the union. The doctrine of the sovereignty of the States, which was advocated with very great ability by many of the southern statesmen—notably by Calhoun, in his speeches in congress, and in his “Discourse on the Constitution of the United States,” and with still more taking effect by Mr. Stephens in his “Constitutional View of the War between the States,”—has now no disciples at the south. General Logan gave expression to the prevailing creed of the present, when he said, at a recent reunion of former confederate companions:

“In considering, then, the future of the south, there is one fact suggested at the outset which has been demonstrated to us by the logic of events. It is, that under the operation of causes, which, although unseen at the time, appear now to have been inevitable in their results, a vast social organism has been developed, and is now so far advanced in its growth as a national body politic, and no longer a mere aggregation of States, that unity is a necessity of its further development. In reviewing the past, we can now clearly see that this national organism has been gradually developed; and, while many seek by various theories to account for the failure of the confederacy, the result may be regarded as the necessary consequence of those laws of development under which this social organism—the United States—was being evolved.”

And the south is pleased to observe that there are no genuine signs of too much centralization. On the contrary, the town system is destined to spread fast and far; and the increase of local option laws; the splitting of larger into smaller counties; the strengthening tendency to submit constitutions and many legislative acts to voters; the greater disposition often to amend the State constitutions in the interests of progress; the vigorous growth in each State of its own body of laws; the rapid multiplication of towns and cities, with governments peculiar to each, are some of the many convincing proofs that local self-government is increasing and flourishing. Of the last particular Judge Dillon says:

“We have popularized and made use of municipal institutions to such an extent as to constitute one of the most striking features of our government. It owes to them, indeed, in a great degree, its decentralized character. When the English Municipal Corporations Reform Act of 1835, was passed, there were, in England and Wales, excluding London, only two hundred and forty-six places exercising municipal functions; and their aggregate population did not exceed two millions of people. In this country, our municipal corporations are numbered by thousands, and the inhabitants subjected to their rule, by millions.”

Reflecting southerners see, in the present condition of the southern States, the very strongest possible guaranty that the true balance between national cohesion and local freedom is to be preserved. They see that the happy equilibrium is of a character so permanent and stable as to have survived the convulsion of civil war. The southern States are not held as conquered provinces. On the contrary, aside from the abolition of slavery and the fundamental legislation securing to the old slaves the full fruition of their freedom, there has been no perceptible change in the relations of these States to the United States.

Surely, to the student of history, wherein vae victis! is written on every page, this fact has wonderful significance. It recommends the American form of government to the rest of the world as the incoming of the new stage of civilization, wherein oppression and war shall become unknown. However long contending armies may devour populations and paralyze industry elsewhere, we are assured that war-sick America will fight with herself no more. This assurance repays the south a thousand fold for all that she has lost and endured.

The great economical interest of the south is her agriculture; and in this industry, as well as among those who conduct it, a constant transition has been taking place during the ten years since emancipation. There is a melancholy change in the homes of landholders from the case and comfort of ante bellum days. The neat inclosures have fallen; the pleasant grounds and the flower-gardens, once so trim and flourishing, are a waste; all the old smiles and adornments are gone. Change at home is accompanied by still greater change without. The negroes—and they constitute the great bulk of the laboring population—tend to become a tenantry, cultivating the land, in some instances, for a part of the produce, but oftener for a fixed sum of money. Many of these realize from their labors little more than enough to pay a moderate rent. Others work for wages, either in money or in some portion of the crop made by their labor. As the negroes are scarce, and their labor so important, they have often, directly or indirectly, a voice in the area of land cultivated, the mode of cultivation, and the kind of crop raised. The result, in many places, is retrogression. The face of the country is much altered. Only a small part of the land, as compared with that tilled before the war, is under cultivation, the remainder becomes wild. Could the fallen confederates return they would not in many places recognize their old homes. Nearly every man of average business ability could control his slaves, before the war, with little trouble; but it now requires far more than ordinary capacity to find and keep good tenants, to employ laborers amid the present scarcity, and to retain and make them remunerative when employed. The freedman is a different character from his former slave self, and is to be governed by different methods; and the true art of managing him is cabalism to many who were prosperous planters before the war. Multitudes of these show great despondency, for there have been thousands of failures among them.

But when we examine into this depression, we find that it is but the result of the transition from the former régime, and not a deep-seated and fatal decay of the vitals. These are some of the symptoms of assured recovery, noted within the last three or four years: a steady contraction of credit, and widening prevalency of the cash system; growing conviction that the whites must depend upon their own labor more, and less on that of the negroes; augmenting number of land-owners who decline to secure the merchants advancing supplies to their tenants and laborers; a greater acreage devoted to food crops; general advocacy of diversified planting; spreading dissatisfaction with the laws giving large exemptions to debtors. Southern economical affairs, in their sinking, “touched bottom” (to use the forcible expression now in vogue) about the end of 1874.[199] There has been a probable increase since of the mass of distress, as the heat of a summer day increases, by accumulation, for a while after noon, though the sun is imparting less and less. Steady amelioration will soon be general. A new system is slowly developing, and can be plainly discerned among the rubbish of the old. The change from former days most noticeable now is the multiplication, increased energy, and continually, growing trade of the smaller towns. This is due to the decay of planting, which was a wholesale system, and the coming-in of farming, which is a small trading system using much less concentrated capital. The large moneyed man, for evident economical reasons, buys in commercial centres—in cities—but the small purchaser must needs buy in the nearest market. Allowing for the great increase of farmers, and the control by the negroes of their earnings, there are many thousands more of small buyers in the south than there were before the war, and towns build up to sell to them.

There is another fact, not so noticeable as the rapidly growing local trade, but still more important. A class of new planters, consisting mainly of men too young to have become fixed in the methods and habits of former days, is springing up. They are new yet; but there is, in many parts of the south, at least one who is teaching many watching idlers by deeds and silence. They have remodelled their domestic economy, accommodating it to their smaller incomes and to the uncertainty of household help. They have discarded the outside kitchen, have substituted the cooking stove for the old voracious fireplace, and have brought the well with a pump in it, instead of the old windlass and bucket, under the roof of the dwelling, so that the household duties may be more easily despatched by their wives and children. And they have also remodelled their planting. They diversify their crops and products, raising more grain, and introducing clover and new forage plants. Some abandon entirely the cultivation of the old slave crops, and supply the nearest towns with feed and provisions. These planters of the New south till less land, and strive to improve it; they study the superiority and economy of machinery; they provide themselves with better cotton-gins, often using steam to work them; they have presses which require fewer hands than the old packing-screw; better plows are used; and harrows, reapers, and mowers, which, in many parts of the south, were seldom known before the war, are now common. This little band keeps pace with agricultural progress, as recorded in the journals; they seek for and find many new sources of profit; they prepare the people for laws fostering the interest of the planter in many particulars; they mold the opinion of their neighborhood; and their ability, skill, and wealth slowly increase. They struggle with a new order of things, having to think for themselves at every turn, and often misstep and fall in the dark, but they pick themselves up, and find the way again. The light of the new experience which they are kindling grows brighter each year, and is beginning to draw some of their neighbors to travel in it.