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THE NEW SOUTH. 
 
I 
 
HENRY W. GRADY 
 
 [From a Photograph by C. W. IMotes.] 
 
THE 
 
 NEW SOUTH 
 
 HENRY W.- GRADY, 
 
 WITH A CHARACTER SKETCH OF HENRY W. 
 GRADY 
 
 By OLIVER DYER, 
 Author op " Great Senators." 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ROBERT BONNER'S SONS. 
 
 1890. 
 
 ^' 
 
 Ayvw\3. 
 
Copyright, 1890, 
 By ROBERT BONNER'S SONS. 
 
 (AU rights reserved.) 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 THE NEW YORK LEDGER 
 
 NCW YORK. 
 
 
Contents. 
 
 Character Sketch of Henry W. Grady . pages 9-140 
 
 CHAPTER L ^ 
 
 The people of the South— Recuperative poaver 
 
 AND PATIENCE IN ADVERSITY GrOWTH IN ' 
 
 "WEALTH AND RESOURCES ThE GREAT PROBLEM 
 
 PRESENTED BY THE TWO RACES ThE OBLIGA- 
 TIONS CF CIVILIZATION — ThE NEW SoUTH IS 
 SIMPLY THE OLD SoUTH UNDER NEW CONDITIONS 
 
 The SLAVE-OWNING ERA IN THE SoUTH — 
 
 The MIRACLE OF THE SLAVE IN LOYALTY TO 
 HIS MASTER— The RELATIONS OF THE RACES IN 
 
 SLAVERY— The code duello — The ante-bel- 
 lum SOCIETY — The promise of her great 
 destiny pages 141-163 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Atlanta after the War— The city rises from 
 its ashes— Strenuous exertions of a ruined 
 people — The volume of depreciated cur- 
 rency—The ERA of speculation — INDE- 
 SCRIBABLE ACTIVITY — Feverish tumult in 
 
iv Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 ALL TRADING CENTERS — UNIVERSAL DEMAND 
 
 FOR LAND — Cotton once more king — Reac- 
 tions FROM reckless LAND AND COTTON SPEC- 
 ULATION — The burden of usury — The crea- 
 tors OF the new South — The South rebuilt 
 BY Southern brains and energy — The 
 South American and religions — Immigrants 
 welcomed pages 164-187 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The lesson of a burial —Development of the 
 Georgia marble quarries — Iron becomes 
 KING — Industrial growth of the South — 
 Iron furnaces in the Birmingham district 
 — Progress represented by figures — Mar- 
 velous growth of a Southern city — Roll- 
 ing mills follow iron furnaces — Atlanta 
 sends plows to Mexico— The cotton-seed 
 oil industry — Fertilizers and soap fac- 
 tories pages 188-207 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 What cotton does for the South — The great 
 commercial chess-board — The cotton- 
 planter INDEPENDENT OF COMPETITION — ThE 
 PEACH GROWERS OF THE SoUTH — CANNING 
 AND PRESERVING FACTORIES — SOUTHERN AGRI- 
 CULTURE BROADENING— The Farmers' Alli- 
 
Conteiits. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AXCE — The hen-coop and the dairy — The 
 
 GRAIN AND GRASS CROPS ThE GRAZING RE- 
 SOURCES OF Southern farms— Good schools 
 AND churches— Growing cities and good 
 markets — Railroad system of the South . . 
 
 pages 208-230 
 
 CHAPTER V. _ 
 
 The race problem — Conditions of harmony 
 between tayo races— Southern beliefs re- 
 garding RACE troubles —Intimidation of 
 the colored yote in the South — Proportion 
 of taxes paid by negroes — The Methodist 
 Episcopal church and the negroes — Solu- 
 tion of the race problem — Interference 
 irritates and outside opinion misjudges. .. 
 
 pages 231-252 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The old men of the South — The fathers and 
 the sons — Thrift succeeding the careless 
 
 LIBERALITY OF THE OLDEN TIME — ThE SEA 
 
 islands attracting northern -millionaires 
 — The wealth of pine timber of the South 
 — The cotton field — The Southern Com- 
 stock lode — industrial forces at work — 
 Southern good feeling, loyalty and sin- 
 cerity PAGES 253-273 
 
A CHARACTER SKETCH 
 
 OF 
 
 Henry Woodfin Grady. 
 
 By OLIVER DYER. 
 
 Author op "Great Senators." 
 
 Henry Woodfin Grady was born in 
 Athens, Ga., May 17, 185 1. He was the 
 eldest of three children. His father was 
 a prosperous merchant in x\thens before 
 the war, and his mother (whose maiden 
 name was Gartrell) was an intelligent 
 lady, of deep religious convictions, in 
 whom sweetness of disposition and force 
 of character were happily blended. Mr. 
 Grady's biographers tell us that he was a 
 
lo The New South. 
 
 boy of unusual promise from his earliest 
 3'ears, and it is recorded that his youth 
 and early manhood amply fulfilled all the 
 promises of his boyhood. His father lost 
 his life in the Confederate service when 
 Henry was in his fourteenth year. This 
 tragic event profoundly affected the gen- 
 erous and high-spirited boy, who revered 
 his father and loved him with passionate 
 devotion. The maintenance and guid- 
 ance of the family, including Henry and 
 his younger brother and sister, William 
 and Martha, devolving upon the widowed 
 mother, she developed all the mental and 
 spiritual resources necessary for the suc- 
 cessful discharge of her onerous duties. 
 Henry continued his studies, and was 
 graduated from the University of 
 
The Nczu Soitth. 1 1 
 
 Georgia in 1868, at the age of seventeen. 
 He then entered the University of Vir- 
 ginia, and took his degree in that institu- 
 tion before he was twenty years old. He 
 was married soon afterwards, and then 
 began his struggle for bread and fame. 
 Choosing journalism as his vocation, he 
 made his first venture, as editor of the 
 Rome (Ga.) Commercial. Failing in this 
 he next embarked his fortunes in the 
 Atlanta Herald which had a brilliant but 
 short-lived career. He then started the 
 Atlanta Capital, 2l weekly paper which 
 soon went the way of its unfortunate pre- 
 decessors. These repeated failures in- 
 volved Mr. Grady in such financial em- 
 barrassments that, as one of his biograph- 
 ers touchingly says, '' He stood in At- 
 
12 TJie Ahw South. 
 
 lanta bankrupt and almost broken- 
 hearted. Everything behind him was 
 blotted with failure, and nothing ahead 
 of him was lighted with promise." 
 
 But he rose superior to his misfortunes 
 and began to make reputation and friends. 
 One of the latter (Cyrus W. Field) loaned 
 him twenty thousand dollars with which 
 to buy a quarter interest in the Atlanta 
 Constitution, and he became permanently 
 associated in the management of that 
 prosperous newspaper. From that time 
 he showed a genius for journalism, and 
 his success Avas sufiBcient to gratify the 
 highest professional ambition. As he 
 grew in years and ripened in experience, 
 his sympathies widely and rapidly ex- 
 panded until they touched almost every 
 
The Nczu South. 13 
 
 public interest that could stimulate ele- 
 vated intelligence and appeal to enlight- 
 ened patriotism. 
 
 He became intensely interested in the 
 development of the South and in the 
 eradication of the lingering sentiments of 
 hostility between the South and the 
 North, in order that the two sections 
 might harmoniously coalesce and become 
 blended in a perfectly unified nation. His 
 magnificent efforts in this noble and pa- 
 triotic mission brought him conspicuously 
 before his countrymen ; and Avhen his 
 brilliant and beneficent career was cut 
 short by his sudden death at Atlanta, on 
 December 23, 1889, the heart of the 
 nation was pierced with sorrow. The 
 whole country had become interested in 
 
14 The Nezu South. 
 
 the work in which he was so devotedly 
 engaged. One of the crowning portions 
 of that work was done in the New York 
 Ledger, It consisted of a series of 
 articles, under the title of The New 
 South, on the subjects nearest Mr. 
 Grady's heart. These articles were 
 among the latest productions that came 
 from his affluent pen, the last of the series 
 being published in the Ledger only two 
 days before Mr. Grady died. Those re- 
 markable productions excited such deep 
 and general interest when they were 
 issued in the Ledger that there has been 
 constant pressure for their publication in 
 book form. This desire has been 
 acceded to ; the articles are to be issued 
 in 9, volume bearing the title — The New 
 
The New South, 15 
 
 South — selected by Mr. Grady himself ; 
 and it having devolved upon the writer 
 hereof to furnish an introduction to The 
 New South, he diffidently submits the 
 following sketch and estimate of Mr. 
 Grady's character and work. 
 
1 6 The New South, 
 
 Mr. Grady's Character and Work. 
 
 A great many babies — boy babies — 
 were born in Georgia in the year 1851, 
 and myriads of others were born during 
 the same year throughout the United 
 States. These myriads of boy babies 
 have gone their myriad ways ; tens of 
 thousands of them, let us hope, reached 
 man's estate, and doubtless many thous- 
 ands of them are still extant on this 
 globe ; and of all those myriads how 
 many of them made the figure in the 
 world that Henry Woodlin Grady made ? 
 how many of them achieved the distinc- 
 tion, or gained the admiration, or won the 
 
The New South. 17 
 
 afifection, or wielded the influence which 
 he achieved and gained and won and 
 wielded ? This question brings us face 
 to face with the fact that Mr. Grady 
 was an extraordinary man ; a man who, 
 among tens of thousands, stands out 
 perspicuous, distinguished, picturesque, 
 whose like is not discoverable among the 
 myriads who were born in the United 
 States during his natal year, or have come 
 into being since that year. 
 
 In order to understand the character 
 and career of such a man, we must per- 
 ceive with clear vision what the central 
 attribute of his nature was; what the 
 inmost heart of him was ; what his fore- 
 most purpose was; what was the propel- 
 ling power within him that could so push 
 
1 8 The New SoiUh. 
 
 him on to the front over all obstacles and 
 through all hinderances ; what exalted 
 motive governed him, sustained him, and 
 in defeat and failure inspired him with 
 unconquerable determination to begin 
 anew and compel fortune to crown him 
 with victory. Happily, it is not difficult 
 to perceive what the central attribute of 
 Mr. Grady's nature was, or what was the 
 pivotal purpose of his life. They shine 
 out with such radiance all through his 
 career that they may be seen and known 
 of all men. The central attribute of 
 Mr. Grady's nature was unselfishness, 
 disinterestedness, love — ■ all-embracing 
 love ; the pivotal purpose of his life was 
 to serve his country — every part of his 
 country (his patriotism being as bound- 
 
The New Sottth. 19 
 
 less as his love) — with absolute, uncalcu- 
 lating devotion. 
 
 In considering the love which was the 
 central attribute of Mr. Grady's nature, 
 the reader should not imagine it to be 
 that vague, unembodied sentiment which 
 usually passes for love, and is exhausted 
 in that diffusive yearning over mankind 
 which never focalizes itself sufficiently to 
 bring comfort or render practical aid to 
 any needy member of the human race. 
 Mr. Grady's love was an organic force, 
 with eyes to see and brain to plan and 
 hands to execute. While, like the sun, 
 it shed its cheering beams on every side, 
 it was so individualized and focalized 
 that it specially touched and inspired 
 everybody within its range, shining alike 
 
20 The New South. 
 
 on the evil and on the good, and distil- 
 ling its beneficent dews upon the just and 
 the unjust. 
 
 Mr. Grady's patriotism partook of the 
 quality of his love ; although romantic 
 and general, it was also practical and 
 local. It was not that kind of patriotism 
 which expends itself in eulogizing the 
 American eagle. It took hold of the 
 practical condition and interests of the 
 country — of its diversified industries, its 
 agriculture, its manufactures, its com- 
 merce, its internal development, its exter- 
 nal relations, its education and its relig- 
 ion. In these respects Mr. Grady more 
 nearly resembled Henry Clay than any 
 one with whose character and life I am 
 acquainted. Henry Grady, like Henry 
 
The New South. 21 
 
 Clay, loved his country with intense 
 devotion. He loved all parts of his 
 country, and everybody in it, and took a 
 deep and personal interest in the voca- 
 tions of his countrymen, and in every- 
 thing which in the least contributed to 
 the national welfare or the national 
 glory. 
 
 And yet this man was a Southerner, a 
 native of Georgia, whose father fell fight- 
 ing under the flag of the Confederacy, and 
 who never for an instant ceased to honor 
 his father's conduct or to sympathize with 
 his father's comrades. For, while patri- 
 otically accepting the result of the civil 
 war and reverently recognizing the hand 
 of an overruling Providence in the pre- 
 servation of the American Union, Mr. 
 
22 The New South, 
 
 Grady never would admit that his father 
 and his father's friends did wrong in 
 fighting for what they believed to be a 
 sacred cause. But while thus standing 
 loyally by his father's memory, he hadn't 
 the least bitterness of spirit against those 
 who were for a time his father's foes. He 
 recognized the civil war as a terrible 
 episode in his country's history, and the 
 vicissitudes and the lessons of the episode 
 only made his country all the more dear 
 to him. He was so widely and so thor- 
 oughly informed as to American history, 
 and took such pride in the country's past 
 career, in its present status and its future 
 promise, that, while holding in lasting 
 respect the banner under which his father 
 died, his intelligent and geninne patriot- 
 
The New South, 23 
 
 ism led him to give the supreme devotion 
 of his heart to the flag under which 
 Washington and Marion and Sumter 
 fought ; the flag which floated over Lee 
 in Mexico ; the flag for which Jefferson 
 Davis fought so gallantly and was so 
 terribly wounded at Buena Vista; the 
 flag on which victory perched at Appom- 
 attox, the Star-Spangled Banner which has 
 streamed upon the wind of every sea as 
 the ensign of freedom, and circled the 
 earth with its glory. 
 
 Let Mr. Grady himself be heard on 
 this subject, in the eloquent words which 
 were greeted with vehement applause at 
 the New England dinner in 1886: 
 
 " The South has nothing for which to 
 apologize. She believes that the late 
 
24 The Nezv South. 
 
 struggle between the States was war and 
 not rebellion, revolution and not conspir- 
 acy, and that her convictions were as 
 honest as yours. I should be unjust to 
 the dauntless spirit of the South and to 
 my own convictions if I did not make 
 this plain in this presence. The South 
 has nothing to take back. In my native 
 town of Athens is a monument that 
 crowns its central hills — a plain, white 
 shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is 
 a name dear to me above the names of 
 men, that of a brave and simple man 
 [Mr. Grady's father] who died in brave 
 and simple faith. Not for all the glories 
 of New England — from Plymouth Rock 
 all the way — would I exchange the heri- 
 tage he left me in his soldier's death. 
 
The New South. 25 
 
 To the foot of that shaft I shall send my 
 children's children to reverence him who 
 ennobled their name with his heroic 
 blood. But, sir, speaking from the sha- 
 dow of that memory, which I honor as 
 I do nothing else on earth, I say that the 
 cause in which he suffered and for which 
 he gave his life, was adjudged by higher 
 and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and 
 I am glad that the omniscient God held 
 the balance of battle in His Almighty 
 Hand, and that human slavery was swept 
 forever from American soil — the Ameri- 
 can Union saved from the wreck of war." 
 No wonder that the sons of New 
 England to whom this manly and touch- 
 ing eloquence was addressed cheered it 
 to the echo ; no wonder that such a man 
 
26 ^ The New South. 
 
 as he who uttered it should have gained 
 a commanding influence in every part of 
 the country. It was Mr. Grady's singu- 
 larly good fortune that everything con- 
 nected with him, and especially his birth- 
 place, conspired to render him popular 
 and to augment his influence. If he had 
 been born in the North, with precisely 
 the same character, genius and purpose, 
 it is not probable that he could have 
 gained any power in the South, or that 
 he could have exerted a pacificating 
 influence in either section of the Union. 
 But having been born, reared and edu- 
 cated in the South, and being imbued 
 with its noblest spirit and possessing its 
 affectionate confidence, he could say any- 
 where in the Southern States, and say 
 
The New South. 27 
 
 without offense, what would not have 
 been tolerated in a Northern man. And 
 when he came North, and spoke in his 
 frank, genial, eloquent way about the 
 condition of affairs in the South and the 
 aspirations of its inhabitants, his utter- 
 ances were received not only as authori- 
 tative so far as the South was concerned, 
 but as in many respects satisfactory to 
 the North, which responded to his fer- 
 vent but dignified tender of the olive 
 branch with noble spontaneity ; and so 
 his eloquence became the medium 
 whereby sectional discords were hap- 
 pily resolved and the sentiments of 
 a previously distrustful, divided and 
 antagonistic people were set flowing in 
 currents of conciliation. 
 
28 The New South. 
 
 One secret of Mr. Grady's success 
 with Northern audiences was the direct- 
 ness, the frankness, the pathos, the almost 
 boyish simplicity with which he pre- 
 sented his case. Here is a passage from 
 his speech in Boston (whence he went 
 home to die) which will serve as an 
 example of his manner and method in 
 this respect. He had come to the dis- 
 cussion of the " Race Problem " — the 
 question as to what shall be the future 
 status of the negroes in the South, and 
 this is the way he introduced it to the 
 critical Bostonians, who he had just 
 reason to believe were hostile to his 
 views and his sentiments : 
 
 " Never, sir, has such a task been given 
 to mortal stewardship. Never before in 
 
The New Soiit/i. 29 
 
 this republic has the white race divided 
 on the rights of an alien race. The red 
 man was cut down as a weed, because he 
 hindered the way of the American 
 citizen. The yellow man was shut out 
 of this republic, because he is an alien 
 and inferior. The red man was the 
 owner of the land— the yellow man 
 highly civilized and assimilable — but 
 they hindered both sections and are 
 gone ! But the black man, affecting but 
 one section, is clothed with every privi- 
 lege of government and pinned to the 
 soil, and my people commanded to make 
 good at any hazard, and at any cost, his 
 full and equal heirship of American privi- 
 lege and prosperity. It matters not that 
 every other race has been routed or 
 
30 The New South. 
 
 excluded, without rhyme or reason. It 
 matters not that wherever the whites and 
 blacks have touched, in any era or in any 
 clime, there has been irreconcilable vio- 
 lence. It matters not that no two races, 
 however similar, have lived anywhere, at 
 any time, on the same soil, with equal 
 right, in peace ! In spite of these things 
 we are commanded to make good this 
 change of American policy which has 
 not, perhaps, changed American preju- 
 dice — to make certain here what has else- 
 where been impossible between whites 
 and blacks — and to reverse, under the 
 very worst conditions, the universal ver- 
 dict of racial history. 
 
 " And driven, sir, to this superhuman 
 task with an impatience that brooks no 
 
The Nczv South, 31 
 
 delay — a rigor that accepts no excuse — 
 and a suspicion that discourages frank- 
 ness and sincerity, we do not shrink from 
 this trial. It is so interwoven with our 
 industrial fabric that we cannot disen- 
 tangle it if we would — so bound up in our 
 honorable obligation to the world that 
 we would not if we could. Can we solve 
 it? The God who gave it into our 
 hands, He alone can know. But this the 
 weakest and the wisest of us do know ; 
 we cannot solve it with less than your 
 tolerant and patient sympathy — with less 
 than the knowledge that the blood that 
 runs in your veins is our blood — and that 
 when we have done our best, whether 
 the issue be lost or won, we shall feel 
 
32 The New South. 
 
 your strong arms about us and hear the 
 beating of your approving hearts. 
 
 " The resolute, clear-headed, broad- 
 minded men of the South, the men 
 whose genius made glorious every page 
 of the first seventy years of American 
 history, whose courage and fortitude you 
 tested in five years of the fiercest war, 
 whose energy has made bricks without 
 straw and spread splendor amid the ashes 
 of their war-wasted homes ; these men 
 wear this problem in their hearts and 
 their brains, by day and by night. They 
 realize, as you cannot, what this problem 
 means ; what they owe to this kindly and 
 dependent race ; the measure of their 
 debts to the world in whose despite they 
 defended and maintained slavery. And 
 
The New South. 33 
 
 though their feet are hindered in its 
 undergrowth, and their march encum- 
 bered with its burdens, they have lost 
 neither the patience from which comes 
 clearness, nor the faith from which comes 
 courage. Nor, sir, when in passionate 
 moments is disclosed to them that vague 
 and awful shadow, with its lurid abysses 
 and its crimson stains, into Avhich I pray 
 God they may never go, are they struck 
 with more of apprehension than is 
 needed to complete their consecration ! 
 
 " Such is the temper of my people. 
 But what of the problem itself ? Mr. 
 President, we need not go one step 
 further unless you concede right here 
 that the people I speak for are as honest, 
 as sensible and as just as your people, 
 
34 TJi^ New South. 
 
 seeking as earnestly as you would in 
 their place, to rightly solve the problem 
 that touches them at every vital point. 
 If you insist that they are ruffians, blindly 
 striving with bludgeon and shotgun to 
 plunder and oppress a race, then I shall 
 sacrifice my self-respect and tax your 
 patience in vain. But admit that they are 
 men of common sense and common hon- 
 esty, wisely modifying an environment 
 they cannot wholly disregard, guiding 
 and controlling as best they can the 
 vicious and irresponsible of either race, 
 compensating error with frankness, and 
 retrieving in patience what they lose in 
 passion, and conscious all the time that 
 wrong means ruin, admit this, and we 
 
The New South. 35 
 
 may reach an understanding to-night." 
 [Great applause, and cheers.] 
 
 It was characteristic of the Bostonians 
 that they responded to such a touching, 
 straightforward, manly appeal as that, 
 with applause and cheers. Whatever 
 may have been their mental reservations, 
 there was no reservation of their hearts. 
 In truth, such eloquence is irresistible 
 when addressed to a high-toned and 
 intelligent audience. 
 
 Any one who has read the foregoing 
 extracts from Mr. Grady's speeches must 
 have observed, or at least have felt, that 
 a pleasing unexpectedness is one of the 
 charms of his style. Nor is the unexpec- 
 tedness a mere play of words, an effort to 
 startle or to amuse ; it is often the utter- 
 
36 The New South. 
 
 ance of a great but thitherto unobserved 
 truth which is thrown out by an emotion 
 born in the depths of the speaker's soul. 
 Mr. Grady's reference to Abraham Lin- 
 coln in his New England Dinner speech 
 was a flash of that kind. He had referred 
 to the Puritan colonists of New England 
 and to the Cavalier colonists of the 
 South, and argued that the union of the 
 two strains of blood had produced a bet- 
 ter type than either of them. A previous 
 speaker having remarked that ^' the typi- 
 cal American was yet to come," Mr. 
 Grady, in response to that statement, 
 said : 
 
 '' Let me tell you that he has already 
 come. Great types, like valuable plants, 
 are slow to flower and fruit. But from 
 
The Neiu South. 37 
 
 the union of these colonist Puritans and 
 Cavaliers, from the straightening- of their 
 purposes and the crossing of their blood, 
 slow perfecting through a century, came 
 he who stands as the first typical Ameri- 
 can, the first who comprehended within 
 himself all the strength and gentleness, 
 all the majesty and grace of this republic 
 — Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of 
 Puritan and Cavalier ; for in his ardent 
 nature were fused the virtues of both, and 
 in the depths of his great soul the faults 
 of both were lost. He was greater than 
 Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he 
 was American, and that in his homely 
 form Avere first gathered the vast and 
 thrilling forces of his ideal government, 
 charging it with such tremendous mean- 
 
38 The JVew South. 
 
 ing, and so elevating it above human suf- 
 fering, that martry dom, though infamously 
 aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life 
 consecrated from the cradle to human lib- 
 erty. Let us, each cherishing the tradi- 
 tions and honoring his fathers, build with 
 reverent hands to the type of his simple 
 but sublime life, in which all types are hon- 
 ored ; and in our common glory as Ameri- 
 cans there will be plenty and some to 
 spare for your forefathers and for mine." 
 While this eloquent outburst took the 
 North by surprise, it fairly stunned the 
 South. In some quarters, a murmur of 
 Southern dissatisfaction was at first 
 heard, but it was immediately hushed, 
 and the South, on recovering from its 
 surprise, applauded its favorite orator's 
 
The New South. 39 
 
 unexpected tribute to Abraham Lincoln 
 as zealously as did the North. Indeed, 
 so deep was the impression which the 
 gifted young Southerner's appreciation 
 of Lincoln made upon the South, that, 
 at the great memorial meeting held in 
 honor of Mr. Grady, at Atlanta, Ga., on 
 December 26, 1890 (three days after his 
 death), one of the orators (Walter B. 
 Hill, of Macon, Ga.) used the following 
 language : 
 
 "What was he to the nation? Com- 
 pelled by the limitations of the hour to 
 answer in one word, I choose this : He it 
 ivas ivJw first taught the rising generation of 
 the SoutJi to bind the name of Lincoln zuith 
 that of Washington ' as a sign upon their 
 hand and a frontlet on their brow.' " 
 
40 The New South. 
 
 Who can adequately estimate the con- 
 ciliating influence upon the South of such 
 a truth, proclaimed on such an occasion, 
 in honor of the most admired and best 
 loved Southern man of this generation ? 
 
 Mr. Grady's entire career seems to 
 have been strewn with peace-making 
 incidents. I mean peace-making between 
 the North and the South. No matter 
 what enterprise he engaged in, or on 
 what public occasion he spoke, something 
 was done or said which tended to pro- 
 mote good feeling between the two sec- 
 tions, and which always broadened the 
 scope of Mr. Grady's influence, and 
 strengthened his hold upon the affection 
 of the nation. We can see why this was 
 so, if we recur to the fundamental truths 
 
The Nczu SoittJi, 41 
 
 that the central attribute of Mr. Grady's 
 nature was love, and that the pivotal 
 purpose of his life was to serve his coun- 
 try. The inborn and outflowing loving- 
 ness of his nature kept him perpetually 
 active in the prosecution of the main pur- 
 pose of his life, and prevented him from 
 cherishing feelings of resentment or a 
 spirit of bitterness. His entire being was 
 so dominated by love that it was easy for 
 him to exercise the grace of forgiveness. 
 He was not like the old Scotch Coven- 
 anter who, being on his death-bed, was 
 told by his minister that in order to 
 obtain God's forgiveness he must himself 
 forgive an enemy whom he had vowed 
 never to forgive. The sturdy old Coven- 
 anter at first refused to compromise the 
 
42 The Neiu South. 
 
 affair in that way ; but after his faithful 
 minister had labored with him to the 
 very verge of dissolution, he faintly 
 gasped : ** Well, I'll forgive him, but / 
 ivish I could get one good crack at him 
 
 first r 
 
 That is about the kind of forgiveness 
 which most people, whether they live in 
 the North or dwell in the South, extend 
 to their enemies. They always want to 
 get a good crack at them first. Mr. 
 Grady hadn't a jot of this petty vindic- 
 tiveness which hungers for revenge even 
 in the hour of reluctant forgiveness. In 
 fact, his nature was so loving, so sunny, 
 cheery, bright and breezy that the mala- 
 ria of malignity could not infest it, and 
 hence it is doubtful if he ever had 
 
The Nciu So7ith. 43 
 
 occasion to exercise the grace of forgive- 
 ness at all. 
 
 It is said that Mr. Grady inherited 
 these gracious qualities of his nature 
 from his mother, for whom he ever cher- 
 ished an ardent, devoted, immeasurable 
 love — a love which, after it had deepened 
 with the maturity and strength of his 
 manhood, still retained the simplicity and 
 freshness of his boyhood. In writing 
 upon this topic, Mr. Wallace P. Reed, of 
 the Atlanta Constitution, who knew Mr. 
 Grady intimately, says : 
 
 '' Twenty years ago the writer first 
 saw Henry Grady and his mother 
 together. He carried away a picture in 
 his mind, and years later when he saw 
 them together again it was the same. 
 
44 The Nezu Sotcth. 
 
 The brilliant idol of his people never 
 drifted entirely beyond the range of that 
 mother-heart. 
 
 " * It will please my mother !' 
 " Many and many a time this tired and 
 overworked man of affairs said this when 
 some work of charity — some enterprise 
 for the public good — some work for his 
 beloved South was suggested. The 
 thought was enough. I believe that hun- 
 dreds of times, when the orator looked 
 upon the smiling faces of his hearers 
 amidst their hearty plaudits, he was look- 
 ing beyond them to his mother's face, 
 and listening in anticipation to her words 
 of encouragement. 
 
 " Stern, rugged men were softened by 
 the womanly tenderness of Henr}- Grady. 
 
The New South. 45 
 
 They wondered how he could be so 
 hopeful, sympathetic and forgiving — so 
 slow to speak words of bitterness and 
 resentment — so ready to cheer and help 
 the sad-hearted, the unfortunate and the 
 erring. It was the mother speaking and 
 working through the son !" 
 
 Other good and brilliant men have 
 loved their mothers with undying affec- 
 tion, but no one has come within the 
 scope of my observation who loved the 
 humble, the poor, the outcast, as Henry 
 Grady loved them. In the beginning of 
 his career he enriched literature with a 
 number of sketches and stories. A care- 
 ful study of these productions reveals 
 that attractive quality of Mr. Grady's 
 nature to which reference has just been 
 
46 The New South, 
 
 made. His heroes and heroines are 
 never taken from the higher walks of 
 life, but always from the ranks of the 
 poor and the unfortunate. He loves to 
 throw the glamour of romantic prosper- 
 ity and happiness over the squalid lives 
 of the miserable and the wretched. It is 
 evident that in some cases his characters 
 walked the streets of Atlanta a_nd took 
 hold of his purse as well as of his imag- 
 ination ; and that while his sympathetic 
 genius glorified their ideal possibilities, 
 his practical benevolence relieved their 
 sordid sufferings. To him, some 
 wretched creature who had been worsted 
 in life's battle and had perhaps come un- 
 der the dominion of strong drink, presented 
 a more interesting study than any of 
 
The New South, 47 
 
 earth's potentates. This truth is attrac- 
 tively illustrated in one of his sketches, 
 where after dilating- upon the sad fate of 
 certain unfortunate creatures, he goes on 
 in this charming fashion : 
 
 " I don't know how it is, but I have a 
 mania for looking into cases of this sort. 
 It is not philanthropy with me ; it is a 
 disease. 
 
 " At the editorial desk, I sit opposite a 
 young man of a high order of mind. 
 
 " He makes it a point to compass the 
 problems of nations. I dodge them. He 
 has settled, to his own agreement, every 
 European problem of the past decade. 
 Those problems have settled me. He 
 soars — I plod. Once in a while, when he 
 yearns for a listener, he reaches down for 
 
48 The Xcil' South. 
 
 my scalp, and lifts me up to his altitude, 
 where I shiver and blink, until his 
 talented fingers relax and I drop home. 
 It delights him to adjust his powerful 
 mind to the contemplation of contending 
 armies, — I swash around with the swarm 
 that hangs about me. 
 
 " His hero is Bismarck, that phleg- 
 matic miracle that has yoked impulse to 
 an ox, and ha\'ing made a chess-board of 
 Europe, plays a quiet game with the 
 Pope. My hero is a blear-eyed sot, that 
 having for four years waged a gigantic 
 battle with drink, and alternated between 
 watery Reform and positive Tremens, is 
 now plaving a vague and losing game 
 with Spontaneous Combustion. My 
 friend discusses Bismarck's projects with 
 
The Xcik.^ South. 49 
 
 a vastness of mind that actually makes 
 his discourse dim, and I slip off to try my 
 hero's temper, and see whether I shall 
 have him wind his intoxicated arms about 
 my neck and envelope me in an atmo- 
 spher of whisky and reform, or fall re- 
 cumbent in the gutter, his weak but 
 honest face upturned to the skv, and his 
 moist, white hand working vaguelv up- 
 \vard from his placid breast, in token of 
 abject surrender. 
 
 ** Bismarck is a bigger man than Bob. 
 
 " But I can't help thinking that Bob is 
 engaged in the most thrilling and desper- 
 ate conflict. Anyhow, I had rather see 
 his waterv eves grow clear and his par- 
 oxvsmal arms grow steadfast, than to see 
 Bismarck wipe out everv potentate in 
 
50 The New South. 
 
 Europe. It's a grave thing to watch the 
 conflicts of kings, and see nations embat- 
 tled rushing against each other. But 
 there are greater and deeper conflicts 
 waged in our midst every day, when the 
 legions of Despair swarm against stout 
 hearts, and Hunger and Suffering storm 
 the citadel of human lives." 
 
 In sketching a motherless little girl, 
 nine years old, who (with her baby sister, 
 Mary) had been left to the neglect of a 
 drunken father, Mr. Grady exhibits some 
 of his most engaging characteristics. 
 The forlorn child, whose name was Jane, 
 did her poor little best to earn food and 
 clothing for her baby sister and herself, 
 but of course she was perpetually 
 worsted in the struggle, and in her direst 
 
The New South. 51 
 
 need she seldom failed to apply to Mrs. 
 Grady for help, which she never failed to 
 receive. 
 
 " One day," Mr. Grady writes, " I was 
 sitting- behind a window looking at Jane, 
 who stood in the kitchen door. Her 
 oldish-looking, chipper little face was 
 turned straight to me. It was a pretty 
 face. The brown eyes were softened 
 with suffering, and fear and anxiety had 
 driven all color from her thin cheeks. I 
 Qoticed that her mouth was never still. 
 Though she was alone and silent, her lips 
 quivered and trembled all the time. At 
 times they would break into a dumb sob. 
 Then she would draw them firmly 
 together. Again they would twitch con- 
 vulsively in the terrible semblance of a 
 
52 The New South. 
 
 smile. Then in that pretty, feminine way 
 she would pucker them together. 
 
 " Long suffering had racked the child 
 until she was all awry, and her nerves 
 were plunging through her tender frame 
 like devils. 
 
 " ' Jane, were you ever hungry?' 
 " ' Sir !' and she started painfully, while 
 her starved heart managed to send a thin 
 coating of scarlet into her cheeks. She 
 was a proud little body, and never talked 
 of her sorrows. 
 
 '' May the Lord forgive me for repeat- 
 ing the question ! 
 
 " ' Sometimes, sir, when I couldn't sell 
 anything. Last Saturday we had only 
 some bread for dinner. We never had 
 anything else until Sunday night. I 
 
The New South. 53 
 
 wouldn't have minded it then ; but 
 Mary cried so lor bread that I went out, 
 and a lady that I knew gave me some 
 things.' 
 
 " Now, think of that. From a crust at 
 Saturday noon, on nothing till Sunday 
 night. Of all the abundant marketing of 
 Saturday evening ; of all the luxuries of 
 Sunday breakfast and dinner, not a 
 crumb for this poor child. While we 
 were dressing our children for their trip 
 to Sunday-school, or their romp over the 
 hills, this poor child,, gnawed by hunger, 
 deserted by her drunken father, holding 
 a starving baby, sat crouched in a hovel, 
 given up to despair and hopelessness. 
 And that, too, within the sound of the 
 bells that made the church-steeples thrill 
 
54 The New South. 
 
 with music, and . called God's people to 
 church ! 
 
 *' A friend who had heard Jane's story 
 had given me three dollars for her. I 
 gave it to her, and told her that as her 
 rent was paid, she could with this lay in 
 some provisions. She was crying then, 
 but she dried her tears and hurried off. 
 
 ** * Will you please come here and 
 look ?' called a lady whose call I always 
 obey, about an hour afterward. 
 
 " I went, and there stood Jane, flushed 
 and happy. 
 
 '' ' 1 declare I am astonished at this 
 child !' said the lady. 
 
The New Soicth. 55 
 
 " And therewith she displayed Jane's 
 purchases. A little meal and meat had been 
 sent home. The rest she had with her. 
 First, there was a goblet of strained 
 honey ; then a bundle of candy ' for 
 baby,* a package of tea ' for father,' and 
 a chip straw hat, with three gayly 
 colored ribbons, ' for herself.' And that's 
 where the money had gone ! 
 
 " ' I am just put out with her,' said the 
 arbitress of my affairs, after Jane had 
 gathered up her treasures and departed. 
 * To waste her money like that ! I can 
 imagine how the poor, half-starved child 
 couldn't help buying the honey-goblet ; I 
 should die myself if 1 didn't have some- 
 thing sweet ; but how she came to buy 
 that hat and ribbons I can't see !' 
 
56 The Nezu SoiUh, 
 
 '' Ah, blue-eyed woman ! There's a 
 yearning in the feminine soul stronger 
 than hunger. There's a passion there 
 that starvation cannot conquer. The hat 
 and ribbons were bought in response to 
 that craving. The hat, I'll bet thee, was 
 bought before the honey, — aye, before the 
 meal or meat. ' Can't understand it ?' 
 Then, my spouse, I'll explain : Jane is a 
 woman ! 
 
 " I must confess that I was pleased at 
 the misdirection of Jane's funds. Have 
 you ever had a child deep in a long-con- 
 tinued stupor from fever? How 
 delighted you were then when, tempted 
 by some trifle, he gave signs of eager- 
 ness ! So I was rejoiced to see that the 
 long years of suffering had not crushed 
 
The New SoiU/i. 57 
 
 hope and emotion out of this girl's life. 
 The tea and the candy showed that 
 her affections, working up to the father 
 and drawn to the baby, were all right. 
 The honey gave evidence that the fresh 
 impulses of childhood had not been 
 nipped and chilled. The hat and ribbons 
 — best and most hopeful purchase of all — 
 proved that the womanly vanity and love 
 of prettiness still fluttered in her young 
 soul. Nothing is so charming and so 
 feminine in woman as the passion for 
 dress. Laugh at it as we may, I think 
 that men will agree that there is nothing 
 so pathetic as a young woman out of 
 whom all hope of fine appearance has 
 been pressed. A gay ribbon is the sign 
 in which woman conquers. I wager that 
 
58 The New South. 
 
 Eve made a neat, many-colored thing of 
 fig leaves." 
 
 An additional charm was imparted to 
 Mr. Grady's benevolence and gayety of 
 spirits, by his deeply reverent and reli- 
 gious nature. He was a born religionist, 
 who worshipped God with spontaneous 
 love, and believed in Him with a faith 
 which, notwithstanding his luminous 
 intelligence and manifold accomplish- 
 ments, was simple and childlike. He 
 reverenced the old religious landmarks ; 
 the Bible in which his beloved mother 
 found inspiration and consolation was the 
 Bible for him. There was nothing aus- 
 tere or gloomy or depressing in his reli- 
 gion. It was hopeful, buoyant, elastic, 
 cheerful. He loved God more than he 
 
The New South, 59 
 
 feared Him, and believed in Him with 
 that absolute faith which nothing but 
 consecrated love can inspire. Indeed, 
 we might say of Mr. Grady as Carlyle 
 says of Cromwell : " Here was a man, my 
 lords and gentlemen, who believed in 
 God, strange as that may seem to this 
 generation." 
 
 Mr. Grady not only believed in and 
 loved God, but he also believed in and 
 loved his neighbor, and he showed his 
 love for his neighbor not by boring him 
 with religious homilies and " Christian 
 advice," but by helping him in adversity, 
 •inspiring him with hope, and radiating 
 his path with the light and glow of his 
 own sunny nature. He was not a theolo- 
 gian. He cared but little for metaphysi- 
 
6o The Nezv South. 
 
 cal " schemes of salvation," because he 
 instinctively divined that no system of 
 intellectual religion, however much it 
 may minister to the gratification of sec- 
 tarian arrogance, can satisfy the spiritual 
 hunger of the human soul. 
 
 It was in dealing with children that 
 Mr. Grady's religious nature revealed its 
 most attractive qualities and seemed to 
 be nearest of kin to the divine. He was 
 a religious child himself, and from his 
 earliest days he took delight in sacred 
 things. At the age of fifteen he united 
 with the Methodist church in Athens, 
 Ga., — his native town. On the same occa- 
 sion, Miss Julia King, who had been his 
 playmate and sweetheart from childhood, 
 joined the same church. Five years 
 
The Nezu South. 6i 
 
 later, those two young lives, which had 
 been thus conjointly consecrated to God, 
 were conjoined by marriage ; and we are 
 told that the current of these united lives 
 flowed on in a stream of domestic felicity 
 and Christian beneficence which was 
 ideal in its loveliness. Mr. Grady's reli- 
 gious convictions grew with his growing 
 years, broadened with his expanding 
 intelligence, and became more fervid in 
 the glow of his deepening affections. He 
 took the growth of agnosticism and the 
 rising tide of atheism sorely to heart. In 
 1 88 1 he wrote a remarkable article for 
 the Atlanta Constitution, on '' The Atheis- 
 tic Tide Sweeping Over the Continent," 
 in which he said : 
 
 ^^ 1 do not know that this spirit of irrc- 
 
62 The New South. 
 
 ligion and unbelief has made much 
 inroad on the churches. It is as yet 
 simply eating away the material upon 
 which the churches must recruit and 
 perpetuate themselves. There is a large 
 body of men and women, the bulk prob- 
 ably of our population, that is between 
 the church and its enemies ; not mem- 
 bers of the church or open professors of 
 religion, they have yet had reverence 
 for the religious beliefs, have respected 
 the rule of conscience, and believed in 
 the existence of one Supreme Being. 
 These men and women have been useful 
 to the cause of religion, in that they 
 held all the outposts about the camp of 
 the church militant, and protected it 
 with enwrapping conservatism and sym- 
 
The New South. 63 
 
 pathy. It is this class of people that are 
 now yielding to the assaults of the infi- 
 del. Having none of the inspiration of 
 religion, and possessing neither the 
 enthusiasm of converts nor the faith of 
 veterans, they are easily bewildered and 
 overcome. It is a careless and unthink- 
 ing multitude on which the atheists are 
 working, and the very inertia of a mob 
 will carry thousands if the drift of the 
 mass once floats to the ocean. And the 
 man or woman who rides on the ebbing 
 tide goes never to return. Religious 
 beliefs once shattered are hardly 
 mended. The church may reclaim its 
 sinners, but its skeptics, never. 
 
 *' It is not surprising that this period 
 of critical investigation into all creeds 
 
64 The New South. 
 
 and beliefs has come. It is a logical 
 epoch, come in its appointed time. It is 
 one of the penalties of progress. We 
 have stripped all the earth of mystery, 
 and brought all its phenomena under the 
 square and compass, so that we might 
 have expected science to doubt the mys- 
 tery of life itself, and to plant its 
 theodolite for a measurement of the 
 Eternal, and pitched its crucible for an 
 analysis of the sovil. It was natural that 
 the Greek should be led to the worship 
 of his physical gods, for the earth itself 
 was a mystery that he could not divine — 
 a vastness and vagueness that he could 
 not comprehend. But we have fathomed 
 its uttermost secret ; felt its most secret 
 pulse, girdled it with steel, harnessed it 
 
The Nezu South. 65 
 
 and trapped it to our liking. What was 
 mystery is now demonstrated ; what was 
 vague is now apparent. Science has dis- 
 pelled illusion after illusion, struck down 
 error after error, made plain all that was 
 vague on earth, and reduced every 
 mystery to demonstration. It is little 
 wonder then that, at last having reduced 
 all the illusions of matter to an equation, 
 and anchored every theory to a fixed 
 formula, it should assail the mystery of 
 life itself, and warn the world that 
 science would yet furnish the key to the 
 problem of the soul. Fit time is this, 
 then, for science to make its last and 
 supreme assault— to challenge the last 
 and supreme mystery— defy the last and 
 supreme force. And the church may 
 
66 The New South. 
 
 gird itself for the conflict ! As the Pope 
 has said, ' It is no longer a rebel that 
 threatens the church. It is a belliger- 
 ent !' It is no longer a shading of creed. 
 It is the upsettal of all creeds that is 
 attempted. 
 
 " It is impossible to conceive the mis- 
 ery and the blindness that will come in 
 the wake of the spreading atheism. The 
 ancients witnessed the fall of a hundred 
 creeds, but still had a hundred left. The 
 vast mystery of life hung above them, 
 but was lit with religions that were 
 sprinkled as stars in its depths. From a 
 host of censers was their air made rich 
 with fragrance, and warmed from a field 
 of altars. No loss was irreparable. But 
 with us it is different. We have reached 
 
The New South, 67 
 
 the end. Destroy our one belief and we 
 are left hopeless, helpless, blind. Our 
 air will be odorless, chill, colorless. 
 
 " The aggressiveness of the atheists is 
 inexplicable to me. Why they should 
 insist on destroying a system that is pure 
 and ennobling, when they have nothing 
 to replace it with ; why they should 
 shatter a faith that colors life, only to 
 leave it colorless ; why they should rob 
 life of all that makes life worth living ; 
 why they should take away the consola- 
 tion that lifts men and women from the 
 despair of bereavement and desolation, or 
 the light that guides the feet of strug- 
 gling humanity, or the hope that robs 
 even the grave of its terror, — why they 
 should do all this, and then stand empty- 
 
68 The New South, 
 
 handed and unresponsive before the 
 yearning and supplicating people they 
 have stripped of all that is precious, is 
 more than I can understand. The best 
 atheist, to my mind, that I ever knew, 
 was one who sent his children to a con- 
 vent for their education. ' I cannot lift 
 the blight of unbelief from my own mind,* 
 he said, ' but it shall never fall upon the 
 minds of my children if I can help it. As 
 for me, I would give all I have on earth 
 for the old faith that I wore so lightly 
 and threw off so carelessly.* 
 
 *' In the conflict that is coming, the 
 church is impregnable, because the 
 church is right ; because it is founded 
 on a rock. The scientists boast that they 
 have evolved everything logically from 
 
The New South. 69 
 
 the first particles of matter ; that from 
 the crystal rock to sentient man is a 
 steady way, marked by natural grada- 
 tions. They even say that, if a new bulk 
 were thrown off from the sun to-morrow 
 it would spin into the face of the earth, 
 and the same development that has 
 crowned the earth with life would take 
 place in the new world. And yet Tyndall 
 says : ' We have exhausted physics, and 
 reached its very rim, and yet a mighty 
 mystery looms up before us.' And this 
 mystery is the kindling of the atoms of 
 the brain with the vital spark. There 
 science is baffled, for there is the supreme 
 force that is veiled eternally from the 
 vision of man. 
 
 " The church is not bound to the tech- 
 
JO The New South. 
 
 nicalities of argument in this contest. It 
 has the perfect right to say, and say logi- 
 cally, that something must rest on faith— 
 that there must be something in the heart 
 or soul before conviction can be made 
 perfect. Just as we cannot impress with 
 the ecstacies and transports of earthly 
 love a man who has never loved, or paint 
 a rainbow to a man who has never seen. 
 And yet the time has passed when reli- 
 gion can dismiss the skeptic with a shriek 
 or a sneer. I read one little book a year 
 ago, gentle, firm, decisive ; a book that 
 demonstrated the necessity and existence 
 of the Supreme Being as clearly and as 
 closely as a mathematical proposition was 
 worked out. But the strength of the 
 church is, after all, the high-minded con- 
 
The New South, 71 
 
 sistency of its members ; the warmth and 
 earnestness of its evangelism ; the purity 
 and gentleness of its apostles. If the 
 creeds are put at peace, and every man 
 who wears the Christian armor will go 
 forth to plead the cause of the meek and 
 lowly Nazarene, whose love steals into 
 the heart of man as the balm of flowers 
 into the pulses of a summer evening — 
 then we shall see the hosts of doubt and 
 skepticism put to rout." 
 
 Here, in this last paragraph, we have 
 the keynote of Mr. Grady's religious 
 belief and the controlling principle of his 
 religious life : Do not contend about 
 religious creeds, but live religious lives — 
 lives which are in accordance with the 
 precepts and the example of Christ, 
 
72 
 
 The New South. 
 
 " What doth it profit thee to dispute 
 deeply about the Trinity if thou be want- 
 ing in humility, and so be displeasing to 
 the Trinity ? In truth, sublime words 
 make not a saint and a just man ; but it is 
 a virtuous life that maketh one dear to 
 God." 
 
 Regret has been expressed in certain 
 quarters that Mr. Grady did not choose 
 the pulpit, instead of the sanctum, as the 
 arena in which to display his genius. 
 This is a pardonable regret. It is natural 
 for Mr. Grady's devout friends to wish 
 that they could have heard him preach ; 
 and it is easy for them to believe that, as 
 a preacher, he would have been a Brooks 
 and a Beecher fused into one, and that he 
 
The New South, 73 
 
 mig-ht have set the heart of the world 
 aflame. 
 
 It is said that in Mr. Grady's boyhood 
 the wish of his father was that he should 
 become a lawyer, and it is added that at 
 first the boy himself had a preference for 
 the law ; but, as time went on, he was 
 gradually drawn into journalism, and dis- 
 covering- his aptitude for that profession, 
 he conceived a passion for it. The result 
 justified his course. No young- man ever 
 ascended the ladder of journalistic suc- 
 cess, from the bottom rung to the top, 
 more rapidly than this young Georgian 
 did. But, nothwithstanding his brilliant 
 success as a journalist, and his great use- 
 fulness in that vocation, some of his 
 friends think that he made a mistake in 
 
74 ^-^^^ New South. 
 
 abandoning his original intention to enter 
 the profession of the law. They believe 
 that as an advocate he would have won a 
 reputation equal to that of any forensic 
 orator of modern times. I am inclined to 
 unite with his friends in this opinion. 
 Mr. Grady possessed the gift for legal 
 contention in the trial and argument of 
 causes which Henry Ward Beecher called 
 '' the hell-fired ability to think on one's 
 legs." 
 
 In his prohibition speech, delivered at 
 Atlanta, on the evening of November 17, 
 1887, he exhibited consummate forensic 
 ability, and displayed in profusion those 
 powers and qualities which convince 
 courts and captivate juries. Although 
 this prohibition speech, owing to its sub- 
 
The New South. 75 
 
 ject matter, is not so copiously enriched 
 with that eloquence which takes the 
 heart captive as some of his other 
 speeches are, I consider it the most log- 
 ical and lawyer-like speech which Mr. 
 Grady ever delivered. The ease with 
 which he handles masses of statistics ; 
 the clear and attractive manner in which 
 he marshals his vast array of facts ; the 
 witty, humorous by-play with which he 
 refreshes his auditors and prevents them 
 from tiring under the necessaril}^ pro- 
 longed development of his case ; the 
 bursts of pathetic eloquence with which 
 he appeals to their sensibilities and 
 arouses their indignation, and the brief, 
 touching 'peroration with which he 
 clinches the whole masterly performance, 
 
76 The New South. 
 
 signalize " the great prohibition speech " 
 as an oratorical effort of remarkable 
 brilliancy and power. 
 
 Although it is natural and pleasing to 
 speculate upon the probabilities of Mr. 
 Grady's success as a lawyer or a preacher, 
 such speculations are of course vain. He 
 was not a lawyer ; he was not a preacher : 
 he was a journalist, and as a journalist he 
 will be remembered and honored. Nay, 
 more ; he was a public speaker of such 
 obvious genius, it is not improbable 
 that his fame as an orator will outlive 
 his reputation as a journalist. 
 
 The work in which this gifted, many- 
 sided man took the deepest and most 
 intense interest — a work which has 
 already been characterized as constitut- 
 
TJie Nczu Soictli. yy 
 
 ing the pivotal purpose of his life, was the 
 complete reconciliation and unification of 
 the North and the South, and the fusing 
 of all sections of the Union into one 
 homogeneous and fraternal nationality. 
 In order that this great work might be 
 accomplished, Mr. Grady conceived that 
 two things were necessary — the settle- 
 ment of the race problem and the devel- 
 opment of the material resources of the 
 South. He believed that these two 
 movements must go on together ; that 
 the acquisition of wealth and population 
 by the South was necessary in order that 
 she might have power to deal success- 
 fwUy with the race problem ; and that the 
 race problem must be settled on an en- 
 during basis of wisdom and justice, in 
 
yS The New So7itk. 
 
 order that the South might have peace 
 within her borders and enjoy her rightful 
 position in the Union and in the estima- 
 tion of mankind. The phenomenal en- 
 ergy and assiduity with which Mr. Grady 
 addressed himself to this colossal and 
 beneficent work are so well known that I 
 refer to them here merely to remind the 
 reader that Mr. Grady was by far the 
 most potent factor in the revival of the 
 prosperity of the South and the inaugura- 
 tion of an era of mutual understanding 
 and goodwill between the people of the 
 previously estranged sections. His influ- 
 ence in exciting hope and inspiring confi- 
 dence in the ability of the South to cope 
 successfully with her difficulties was im- 
 measurable. To quote the somewhat 
 
The New South, 79 
 
 undisciplined language of one of his 
 admiring eulogists: ^' He did not 
 tamely promote enterprise and encourage 
 industry ; he vehemently fomented enter- 
 prise and provoked industry until they 
 stalked through the land like armed con- 
 querors." 
 
 Mr. Grady loved to descant upon the 
 natural beauties, the material resources, 
 the glorious possibilities of the South. 
 His brief but vivid reference to the 
 Southern domain, in his Boston speech, 
 is a specimen of the descriptive passages 
 with which he often adorned his ad- 
 dresses : 
 
 '' Far to the South, Mr. President, sep- 
 arated from this section by a line— once 
 defined in irrepressible difference, once 
 
8o The New Sotitk. 
 
 traced in fratricidal blood, and now, 
 thank God, but a vanishing shadow — lies 
 the fairest and richest domain of this 
 earth. It is the home of a brave and hos- 
 pitable people. There is centred all that 
 can please and prosper humankind. A 
 perfect climate above a fertile soil yields 
 to the husbandman every product of the 
 temperate zone. There by night the cot- 
 ton whitens beneath the stars, and by day 
 the wheat locks the sunshine in its 
 bearded sheaf. In the same field the 
 clover steals the fragrance of the wind, 
 and the tobacco catches the quick aroma 
 of the rains. There are mountains stored 
 with exhaustless treasures ; forests, vast 
 and primeval ; and rivers that, tumbling 
 or loitering, run wanton to the sea. Of 
 
The New Sotcth. 8i 
 
 the three essential items of all industries 
 —-cotton, iron and wood— that region has 
 easy control. In cotton, a fixed monopoly 
 —in iron, proven supremacy— in timber, 
 the reserve supply of the republic. 
 From this assured and permanent advan- 
 tage, against which artificial conditions 
 cannot much longer prevail, has grown 
 an amazing system of industries. Not 
 maintained by human contrivance of tar- 
 iff or capital, afar off from the fullest and 
 cheapest source of supply, but resting in 
 divine assurance, within touch of field 
 and mine and forest— not set amid costly 
 farms from which competition has driven 
 the farmer in despair, but amid cheap 
 and sunny lands, rich with agriculture, to 
 which neither season nor soil has set a 
 
82 The New South. 
 
 limit— this system of industries is mount- 
 ing to a splendor that shall dazzle and 
 illumine the world. 
 
 " That, sir, is the picture and the prom- 
 ise of my home— a land better and fairer 
 than I have told you, and yet but fit set- 
 ting, in its material excellence, for the 
 loyal and gentle quality of its citizen- 
 ship." 
 
 Mr. Grady had the art of adapting his 
 speech to his audience so as to fit the 
 special needs of the hour and all the cir- 
 cumstances of the occasion. He was 
 adroit in exciting local pride in a way 
 that at the same time stimulated love of 
 country, and was skillful in making selfish 
 instincts and personal ambition minister 
 to the development of sentiments of 
 
The New South. 83 
 
 patriotism and the promotion of public 
 enterprises. In his address to the 
 students of the Virginia University (his 
 Alma Mater) at Charlottesville, on June 
 24, 1889, he exhibited his superlative tact 
 in. these respects. In his exordium, 
 which won the affection and confidence 
 of every heart, he said : 
 
 '' Will you allow me to say that the 
 anxiety which always possesses me when 
 I address my young- countrymen is 
 to-day quickened to the point of con- 
 secration. For the first time in man's 
 responsibility I speak in Virginia to 
 Virginia. Beyond its ancient glories 
 that made it matchless among States, its 
 later martyrdom has made it the Mecca 
 of my people. It was on these hills that 
 
84 The New South. 
 
 our fathers gave new and deeper mean- 
 ing to heroism and advanced the world 
 in honor ! It is in these valleys that our 
 dead lie sleeping. Out there is Appo- 
 mattox, where on every ragged gray cap 
 the Lord God Almighty laid the sword of 
 His imperishable knighthood. Beyond 
 is Petersburg, where he, whose name I 
 bear, and who was prince to me among 
 men, dropped his stainless sword and 
 yielded up his stainless life. Dear to me, 
 sir, are the people among whom my 
 father died — sacred to me, sir, the soil 
 that drank his precious blood. From a 
 heart stirred by these emotions and 
 sobered by these memories, let me speak 
 to you to-day, my countrymen — and God 
 give me wisdom to speak aright and the 
 
The New SoiUh. 85 
 
 words wherewithal to challenge and hold 
 your attention." 
 
 It can readily be imagined how, after 
 such an exordium, the young men before 
 him received the instruction which the 
 orator gave them in the following 
 words : 
 
 " The germ of the best patriotism is in 
 the love that a man has for the home he 
 inhabits, for the soil he tills, for the trees 
 that give him shade, and the hills that 
 stand in his pathway. I teach my son to 
 love Georgia ; to love the soil that he 
 stands on ; the body of my old mother ; 
 the mountains that are her springing 
 breasts, the broad acres that hold her 
 substance, the dimpling valleys in which 
 her beauty rests, the forests that sing her 
 
86 The New South, 
 
 songs of lullaby and of praise, and the 
 brooks that run with her rippling laugh- 
 ter. The love of home, deep-rooted and 
 abiding, that blurs the eyes of the dying 
 soldier with the vision of an old home- 
 stead amid green fields and clustering 
 trees ; that follows the busy man through 
 the clamoring world, persistent, though 
 put aside, and at last draws his tired feet 
 from the highway and leads him through 
 shady lanes and well-remembered paths 
 until, amid the scenes of his boyhood, he 
 gathers up the broken threads of his life 
 and owns the soil his conqueror — this 
 — this lodged in the heart of the citizen, 
 is the saving principle of our govern- 
 ment. We note the barracks of our 
 standing army with its rolling drum and 
 
The New South. ^'j 
 
 its fluttering flag as points of strength 
 and protection. But the citizen standing 
 in the door-way of his home, contented 
 on his threshold, his family gathered 
 about his hearthstone, while the evening 
 of a well-spent day closes in scenes and 
 sounds that are dearest — he shall save 
 the republic when the drum tap is futile 
 and the barracks are exhausted. 
 
 " This love should not be pent up or 
 provincial. The home should be conse- 
 crated to humanity, and from its roof 
 tree should fly the flag of the republic. 
 Every simple fruit gathered there ; every 
 sacrifice endured, and every victory won, 
 should bring better joy and inspiration 
 in the knowledge that it will deepen the 
 
88 The New South. 
 
 glory of our republic and widen the 
 harvest of humanity ! 
 
 " Exalt the citizen. As the StauC is the 
 unit of government he is the unit of the 
 State. Teach him that his home is his 
 castle, and his sovereignty rests beneath 
 his hat. Make himself self-respecting, 
 self-reliant and responsible. Let him 
 lean on the State for nothing that his 
 own arms can do and on the government 
 for nothing that his State can do. Let 
 him cultivate independence to the point 
 of sacrifice, and learn that humble things 
 with unbartered liberty are better than 
 splendors bought with its price. Let 
 him neither surrender his individuality 
 to government nor merge it with the 
 mob. Let him stand upright and fearless 
 
The New South, 89 
 
 — a freeman born of freemen, sturdy in 
 his own strength, dowering his family in 
 the sweat of his brow, loving to his State, 
 loyal to his Republic, earnest in his allegi- 
 ance wherever it rests, but building his 
 altar in the midst of his household gods 
 and shrining in his own heart the utter- 
 most temple of its liberty." 
 
 Among the oratorical accomplishments 
 which gave Mr. Grady his power over an 
 audience was that of being able to season 
 the discussion of industrial topics, involv- 
 ing the presentation of masses of statistics 
 and the elaboration of matters which are 
 usually wearysome, with eloquent ap- 
 peals to their love of home and their 
 social interests, and to the noblest instincts 
 and aspirations of patriotism. In these 
 
90 The New South. 
 
 eloquent outbursts he always kept the 
 balance between love of the South and 
 love of the Union skillfully poised, as in 
 the peroration of his speech at Dallas, 
 Texas, in October, 1888: 
 
 " Every man within the sound of my 
 voice, under the deeper consecration he 
 offers to the Union, will consecrate himself 
 to the South. Have no ambition but to be 
 first at her feet and last at her service 
 no hope, but, after a long life of devotion, 
 to sink to sleep in her bosom, as a little 
 child sleeps at his mother's breast and 
 rests untroubled in the light of her smile. 
 
 " With such consecrated service, what 
 could we not accomplish ; what riches 
 we should gather for her ; what glory 
 and prosperity we should render to the 
 
The New Soitth. 91 
 
 Union ; what blessings we should gather 
 unto the universal harvest of humanity ! 
 As I think ot \\, a vision of surpassing 
 beauty unfolds to my eyes. I see a South 
 the home of fifty millions of people ; her 
 cities vast hives of industry ; her coun- 
 try-sides the treasures from which their 
 resources are drawn ; her streams vocal 
 with whirring spindles ; her valleys tran- 
 quil in the white and gold of the harvest ; 
 her mountains showering down the 
 music of bells, as her slow-moving flocks 
 and herds go forth from their folds ; her 
 rulers honest and her people loving, and 
 her homes happy and her hearthstones 
 bright, and their waters still, and their 
 pastures green, and her conscience clear ; 
 her wealth diffused and poor-houses 
 
92 The New South, 
 
 empty, her churches earnest and all 
 creeds lost in the gospel. Peace and 
 sobriety walking hand in hand through 
 her borders ; honor in her homes ; up- 
 rightness in her midst, plenty in her fields, 
 straight and simple faith in the hearts of 
 her sons and daughters ; her two races 
 walking together in peace and content- 
 ment ; sunshine everywhere and all the 
 time, and night falling on her gently as 
 from the wings of the unseen dove. 
 
 " All this, my country, and more can 
 we do for you. As I look, the vision 
 grows, the splendor deepens, the horizon 
 falls back, the skies open their everlasting 
 gates, and the glory of the Almighty 
 God streams through as He looks down 
 on His people, who have given them- 
 
The New South, 93 
 
 selves unto Him and leads them from 
 one triumph to another until they have 
 reached a glory unspeakable, and the 
 whirling stars in their courses shall not 
 look down on a better people or a happier 
 land." 
 
 The most difficult problem which Mr. 
 Grady undertook to solve was the race 
 problem. To the solution of this ques- 
 tion he addressed himself — to use his 
 own words, many times repeated — '' with 
 a sense of consecration." It enlisted the 
 deepest sympathies of his heart ; it over- 
 shadowed him with awful portentous- 
 ness. But his sense of the vast, the over- 
 whelming importance of this problem is 
 best stated by himself : 
 *' The future holds a problem, in solv- 
 
94 The Nezu South. 
 
 ing which the South must stand alone ; 
 in dealing with which, she must come 
 closer together than ambition or despair 
 has driven her, and on the outcome of 
 which her very existence depends. This 
 problem is to carry within her body poli- 
 tic two separate races, equal in civil and 
 political rights, and nearly equal in num- 
 bers. She must carry these races in 
 peace ; for discord means ruin. She 
 must carry them separately ; for assimila- 
 tion means debasement. She must carry 
 them in equal justice ; for to this she is 
 pledged in honor and in gratitude. She 
 must carry them even unto the end ; for 
 in human probability she will never be 
 quit of either. 
 
 '' This burden no other people bears 
 
The New South, 95 
 
 to-day— on none hath it ever rested. 
 Without precedent or companionship the 
 South must bear this problem— the awful 
 responsibility of which should win the 
 sympathy of all human kind, and the pro- 
 tecting watchfulness of God— alone, even 
 unto the end. Set by this problem apart 
 from all other peoples of the earth, and 
 her unique position emphasized rather 
 than relieved, as I shall show hereafter, 
 by her material conditions, it is not only 
 fit but it is essential that she should hold 
 her brotherhood unimpaired, quicken 
 her sympathies, and in the light or in the 
 shadows of this surpassing problem, 
 work out her own salvation in the fear of 
 God— but of God alone. 
 
 '' What shall the South do to be saved ? 
 
96 The New South. 
 
 Through what paths shall she reach the 
 end? Through what travail or what 
 splendors shall she give to the Union 
 this section, its wealth garnered, its 
 resources utilized, and its rehabilitation 
 complete, and restore to the world this 
 problem, solved in such justice as the 
 finite mind can measure, or finite hands 
 can administer?" 
 
 In order that this problem might be 
 rightly solved, Mr. Grady thought it was 
 necessary for the Southern people to 
 have clear and just ideas of the negro 
 character and of the negro situation. He 
 expressed his own views on this subject 
 with frankness and eloquence, saying : 
 
 '' 1 approach this discussion with a 
 sense of consecration. I beg your patient 
 
The New South. 97 
 
 and cordial sympathy. And I invoke the 
 Almighty God that, having showered on 
 this people His fullest riches, He has put 
 their hands to this task. He will draw 
 near unto us, as He drew near to troubled 
 Israel, and lead us in the ways of honor 
 and uprightness, even through a pillar of 
 cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by 
 night. 
 
 " What of the negro ? This of him. I 
 want no better friend than the black boy 
 who was raised by my side, and who is 
 now trudging patiently, with downcast 
 eyes and shambling figure, through his 
 lowly way in life. I want no sweeter 
 music than the crooning of my old 
 ' mammy,' now dead and gone to rest, as 
 I heard it when she held me in her loving 
 
98 The New South. 
 
 arms, and bending her old black face 
 above me stole the cares from my brain, 
 and led me smiling into sleep. I want no 
 truer soul than that which moved the 
 trusty slave, who for four years, while 
 my father fought with the armies that 
 barred his freedom, slept every night at 
 my mother's chamber door, holding her 
 and her children as safe as if her husband 
 stood guard, and ready to lay down his 
 humble life on her threshold. History 
 has no parallel to the faith kept by the 
 negro in the South during the war. 
 Often five hundred negroes to a single 
 white man, and yet through these dusky 
 throngs the women and children walked 
 in safety, and the unprotected homes 
 rested in peace. Unmarshalled, the black 
 
The New South. 99 
 
 battalions moved patiently to the fields in 
 the morning to feed the armies their idle- 
 ness would have starved, and at night 
 gathered anxiously at the big house to 
 * hear the news from marster,' though 
 conscious that his victory made their 
 chains enduring. Everywhere humble 
 and kindly. The body guard of the help- 
 less. The rough companion of the little 
 ones. The observant friend. The silent 
 sentry in his lowly cabin. The shrewd 
 counsellor. And when the dead came 
 home, a mourner at the open grave. A 
 thousand torches would have disbanded 
 every Southern army, but not one was 
 lighted. When the master, going to a 
 war in which slavery was involved, said 
 to his slave, * I leave my home and loved 
 
lOO The New South. 
 
 ones in your charge/ the tenderness 
 between man and master stood disclosed. 
 And when the slave held that charge 
 sacred through storm and temptation, he 
 gave new meaning to faith and loyalty. 
 I rejoice that when freedom came to him 
 after years of waiting, it was all the 
 sweeter, because the black hands from 
 which the shackles fell were stainless of 
 a single crime against the helpless ones 
 confided to his care. 
 
 " From this root imbedded in a cen- 
 tury of kind and constant companionship 
 has sprung some foliage. As no race 
 had ever lived in such unresisting bon- 
 dage, none was ever hurried with such 
 swiftness through freedom into power. 
 Into hands still trembling from the blow 
 
The Nezu Sottth. 
 
 lOI 
 
 that broke the shackles, was thrust the 
 ballot. In less than twelve months from 
 the day he walked down the furrow a 
 slave, the negro dictated in legislative 
 halls, from which Davis and Calhoun had 
 gone forth, the policy of twelve com- 
 aionwealths. When his late master pro- 
 tested against his misrule, the federal 
 drum-beat rolled around his strongholds, 
 and from a hedge of federal bayonets he' 
 grinned in good-natured insolence. 
 From the proven incapacity of that day 
 has he far advanced? Simple, credu- 
 lous, impulsive-easily led, and too often 
 easily bought, is he a safer, more intelli- 
 gent citizen now than then? Is this 
 mass of votes, loosed from old re- 
 straints, inviting alliance or awaiting 
 
I02 The Nczu South. 
 
 opportunity, less menacing than when 
 its purpose was plain and its way di- 
 rect r 
 
 Mr. Grady took generous and com- 
 mendable pride in setting forth how 
 rapid has been the advancement of the 
 negroes in industry, education and 
 wealth ; how millions of dollars a year 
 are expended by the Southern States for 
 negro schools, and how the possessions 
 of the blacks have increased until their 
 taxable property amounts to tens of mil- 
 lions of dollars. In short, Mr. Grady 
 maintained that, all things considered, 
 the advancement of the negroes of the 
 South in wealth, worth and intelligence 
 during the last fifteen years is unpar- 
 alleled. And now comes the crucial 
 
The New South. 103 
 
 problem, What social position shall 
 this vast colored population — which is so 
 prosperous, and so rapidly rising in the 
 human scale — what social position shall 
 this race which is so affectionate, so 
 loyal and so trustworthy occupy in the 
 South ; what portion of political influence 
 — if any portion at all — shall it be per- 
 mitted to wield ? On these points Mr. 
 Grady speaks in trumpet tones. I quote 
 from his Dallas speech : 
 
 " The men who coming from afar off 
 view this subject through the cold eye 
 of speculation or see it distorted through 
 partisan glasses, insist that, directly or 
 indirectly, the negro race shall be in con- 
 trol of the affairs of the South. We have 
 no fears of this ; already we are attaching 
 
I04 The New South. 
 
 to us the best elements of that race, and 
 as we proceed our alliance will broaden. 
 External pressure but irritates and 
 impedes those who would put the negro 
 race in supremacy, who would work 
 against infallible decree, for the white 
 race can never submit to its domination, 
 because the white race is the superior 
 race. But the supremacy of the white 
 race of the South must be maintained 
 forever, and the domination of the negro 
 race resisted at all points and at all 
 hazards, because the white race is the 
 superior race. This is the declaration of 
 no new truth ; it has abided forever in 
 the marrow of our bones and shall run 
 forever with the blood that feeds Anglo- 
 Saxon hearts. 
 
The New South. 105 
 
 " In political compliance the South has 
 evaded the truth, and men have drifted 
 from their convictions. But we cannot 
 escape this issue. It faces us wherever 
 we turn. It is an issue that has been, and 
 will be. The races and tribes of earth 
 are of Divine origin. Behind the laws of 
 man and the decrees of war stands the 
 law of God. What God hath separated 
 let no man join together. The Indian, 
 the Malay, the Negro, the Caucasian, 
 these types stand as markers of God's 
 will. Let not man tinker with the work 
 of the Almighty. Unity of civilization, 
 no more than unity of faith, will never be 
 witnessed on earth. No race has risen 
 or will rise above its ordained place. 
 Here is the pivotal fact of this great 
 
io6 The New South. 
 
 matter — two races are made equal in law, 
 and in political rights, between whom 
 the caste of race has set an impassable 
 gulf. This gulf is bridged by a statute, 
 and the races are urged to cross thereon. 
 This cannot be. The fiat of the 
 Almighty has gone forth, and in eighteen 
 centuries of history it is written. We 
 would escape this issue if we could. 
 From the depths of its soul the South 
 invokes from heaven ' peace on earth 
 and good will to man.' She would not 
 if she could cast this race back into the 
 condition from which it was righteously 
 raised. She would not deny its smallest 
 or abridge its fullest privilege. Not to 
 lift this burden forever from her people, 
 would she do the least of these things. 
 
The New South. 107 
 
 She must walk through the valley of the 
 shadow, for God has so ordained. But He 
 has ordained that she shall walk in that 
 integrity of race that created in His wis- 
 dom, has been perpetuated in His 
 strength. Standing in the presence of 
 this multitude, sobered with the respon- 
 sibility of the message I deliver to the 
 young men of the South, I declare that 
 the truth above all others to be worn 
 unsullied and sacred in your hearts, to be 
 surrendered to no force, sold for no price, 
 compromised in no necessity, but 
 cherished and defended as the covenant 
 of your prosperity, and the pledge of 
 peace to your children, is, that the white 
 race must dominate forever in the South, 
 because it is the white race, and superior 
 
io8 The New Sotcth. 
 
 to that race with which its supremacy 
 is threatened. 
 
 " It is a race issue. Let us come to this 
 point, and stand here. Here the air is 
 pure and the light is clear, and here honor 
 and peace abide. Juggling and evasion 
 deceive not a man. Compromise and sub- 
 servience have carried not a point. 
 There is not a white man North or South 
 who does not feel it stir in the gray mat- 
 ter of his brain and throb in his heart. 
 Not a negro who does not feel its power. 
 It is not a sectional issue. It speaks in 
 Ohio, and in Georgia. It speaks wher- 
 ever the Anglo-Saxon touches an alien 
 race. It has just spoken in universally 
 approved legislation in excluding the 
 Chinaman from our gates, not for his 
 
The Nezu Soitt/i. jog 
 
 ignorance or corruption, but because he 
 sought to establish an inferior race in a 
 republic fashioned in the wisdom and 
 defended by the blood of a homogeneous 
 people. 
 
 " The Anglo-Saxon blood has dominated 
 always and everywhere. It fed Alfred 
 when he wrote the charter of English 
 liberty ; it gathered about Hampden as 
 as he stood beneath the oak ; it thundered 
 in Cromwell's veins as he fought his 
 king; it humbled Napoleon at Waterloo; 
 it has touched the desert and jungle with 
 undying glory ; it carried the drum-beat 
 of England around the world and spread 
 on every continent the gospel of liberty 
 and of God ; it established this republic, 
 carved it from the wilderness, conquered 
 
I lo The New South. 
 
 it from the Indians, wrested it from 
 England, and at last, stilling its own 
 tumult, consecrated it forever as the 
 home of the Anglo-Saxon, and the theatre 
 of his transcending achievement. Never 
 one foot of it can be surrendered, while 
 that blood lives in American veins and 
 feeds American hearts, to the domination 
 of an alien and inferior race.' 
 
 Mr. Grady seeks to fortify his position 
 and reinforce his argument by introduc- 
 ing considerations which he believed, and 
 had good reason to believe, would be 
 received with approbation by thousands 
 of his fellow-countrymen in all parts of 
 the Union. He says : 
 
 '* This problem is not only enduring, 
 but it is widening. The exclusion oi the 
 
The Neiv Sotith. 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 Chinese is the first step in the revolution 
 that shall save liberty and law and relig- 
 ion to this land, and in peace and order, 
 not enforced on the gallows or at the 
 bayonet's end, but proceeding from the 
 heart of an harmonious people, shall 
 secure in the enjoyment of these rights, 
 and the control of this republic, the 
 homogeneous people that established and 
 has maintained it. The next step will be 
 taken when some brave statesman, look- 
 ing Demagogy in the face, shall move to 
 call to the stranger at our gates, * Who 
 comes here ?' admitting every man who 
 seeks a home, or honors our institutions, 
 and whose habit and blood will run with 
 the native current ; but excluding all who 
 seek to plant anarchy or to establish alien 
 
112 The New South. 
 
 men or measures on our soil ; and will 
 then demand that the standard of our 
 citizenship be lifted and the right of 
 acquiring our suffrage be abridged. 
 When that day comes, and God speed its 
 coming, the position of the South will be 
 fully understood, and everywhere 
 approved. Until then, let us— giving the 
 negro every right, civil and political, 
 measured in that fullness the strong should 
 always accord the weak— holding him in 
 closer friendship and sympathy than he is 
 held by those who would crucify us for 
 his sake— realizing that on his prosperity 
 ours depends— let us resolve that never 
 by external pressure or internal division 
 shall he establish domination, directly or 
 indirectly, over that race that every where 
 
The New South. 
 
 has maintained its supremacy. Let this 
 resolution be cast on the lines of equity 
 and justice. Let it be the pledge of hon- 
 est, safe and impartial administration, and 
 we shall command the support of the 
 colored race itself, more dependent than 
 any other on the bounty and protection 
 of government. Let us be wise and 
 patient, and we shall secure through its 
 acquiescence what otherwise we should 
 win through conflict, and hold in inse- 
 curity. 
 
 " All this is no unkindness to the negro 
 — but rather that he may be led in equal 
 rights, and in peace to his uttermost 
 goodo Not in sectionalism — for my 
 heart beats true to the Union, to the 
 glory of which your life and heart are 
 
TI4 The New South. 
 
 pledged. Not in disregard of the 
 world's opinion — for to render back this 
 problem in the world's approval is the 
 sum of my ambition, and the height of 
 human achievement. Not in reactionary 
 spirit — but rather to make clear that new 
 and grander way up which the South is 
 marching to higher destiny, and on which 
 I would not halt her for all the spoils 
 that have been gathered unto parties 
 since Catiline conspired, and Cassar 
 fought. Not in passion, my country- 
 men, but in reason — not in narrowness, 
 but in breadth — that we may solve this 
 problem in calmness, and in truth, and 
 lifting its shadows let perpetual sunshine 
 pour down on two races, walking to- 
 gether in peace and contentmento Then 
 
The Nezu South. 1 1 5 
 
 shall this problem have proved our bles- 
 sing, and the race that threatened our 
 ruin work our salvation as it fills our 
 fields with the best peasantry the world 
 has ever seen. Then the South — putting 
 behind her all the achievements of her 
 past — and in war and in peace they 
 beggar eulogy — may stand upright 
 among the nations and challenge the 
 judgment of man and the approval of 
 God, in having worked out in their sym- 
 pathy and in His guidance, this last and 
 surpassing miracle of human govern- 
 ment." 
 
 In a speech delivered before a great 
 multitude at Augusta, Ga., in November, 
 1888, Mn Grady presented his case in 
 
ii6 The Nezv South. 
 
 a manner peculiarly interesting to the 
 Northern mind : 
 
 " Let us send to-day a few words to the 
 fair-minded Republicans of the North. 
 Here is a fundamental assertion — the 
 negroes of the South can never be kept 
 in antagonism with their white neighbors 
 — for the intimacy and friendliness of 
 the relation forbids. This friendliness, 
 the most important factor of the prob- 
 lem, the saving factor now as always, 
 the North has never, and it appears will 
 never, take account of. It explains that 
 otherwise inexplicable thing — the fidelity 
 and loyalty of the negro during the war 
 to the women and children left in his 
 care. Had ' Uncle Tom's Cabin ' por- 
 trayed the habit rather than the excep- 
 
The New South. 
 
 tion of slavery, the return of the Confed- 
 erate armies could not have stayed the 
 horrors of arson and murder their 
 departure would have invited. Instead 
 of that, witness the miracle of the slave 
 in loyalty closing the fetters about his 
 own limbs, maintaining- the families of 
 those who fought against his freedom, 
 and at night on the far-off battle-field 
 searching among the carnage for his 
 young master, that he might lift the 
 dying head to his humble breast and 
 with rough hands wipe the blood away 
 and bend his tender ear to catch the last 
 words for the old ones at home, wres- 
 tling meanwhile in agony and love, that 
 in vicarious sacrifice he would have laid 
 down his life in his master's stead. 
 
ii8 The New South, 
 
 This friendliness, thank God, has sur- 
 vived the lapse of years, the interruption 
 of factions and the violence of campaigns 
 in which the bayonet fortified and the 
 drum-beat inspired. Though unsus- 
 pected in slavery, it explains the miracle 
 of '64 ; though not yet confessed, it must 
 explain the miracle of 1888. 
 
 *' Can a Northern man dealing with 
 casual servants, querulous, sensitive and 
 lodged for a day in a sphere they resent, 
 understand the close relationship of the 
 races of the South ? Can he comprehend 
 the open-hearted, sympathetic negro, 
 contented in his place, full of gossip and 
 comradeship, the companion of the hunt, 
 the frolic, the furrow and the home,, 
 standing in kindly dependence that is the 
 
The New South. 119 
 
 habit of his blood, and lifting not his eyes 
 beyond the narrow horizon that shuts 
 him in with his neighbors? This rela- 
 tion may be interrupted, but permanent 
 estrangement can never come between 
 these two races. It is upon this that the 
 South depends. By fair dealing and by 
 sympathy to deepen this friendship and 
 add thereto the moral effect of the better 
 elements compacted, with the wealth and 
 intelligence and influence lodged therein 
 — it is this upon which the South has 
 relied for years, and upon which she will 
 rest in future. Against this no outside 
 power can prevail. That there has been 
 violence, is admitted. There has also 
 been brutality in the North. But I do 
 not believe there was a negro voter in the 
 
I20 The New South, 
 
 South kept away from the polls by fear 
 of violence in the late election. I believe 
 there were fewer votes miscounted in the 
 South than in the North. Even in those 
 localities where violence once occurred, 
 wiser counsels have prevailed, and reli- 
 ance is placed on those higher and legiti- 
 mate and inexorable methods, by which 
 the superior race always dominates, and 
 by which intelligence and integrity 
 always resist the domination of ignorance 
 and corruption. If the honest Republi- 
 cans of the North permit a scheme of 
 federal supervision, based on the assump- 
 tion of intimidated voters and a false 
 count, they will blunder from the start, 
 for, beginning in error, they will end in 
 worse. This whole matter should be 
 
The New South. 121 
 
 left now with the people with whom it 
 must be left at last — that people most 
 interested in its honorable settlement. 
 External pressure but irritates and 
 delays. The South has voluntarily laid 
 down the certainty of power which divid- 
 ing her States would bring, that she 
 might solve this problem in the delibera- 
 tion and the calmness it demands. She 
 turns away from spoils, knowing that to 
 struggle for them would bring irritation 
 to endanger greater things. She post- 
 pones reforms and surrenders economic 
 convictions, that unembarrassed she may 
 deal with this great issue. And she 
 pledges her sacred honor — by all that 
 she has won, and all that she has suffered 
 —that she will settle this problem in such 
 
122 The New South. 
 
 full and exact justice as the finite 
 mind can measure, or finite hands admin- 
 ister. On this pledge she asks the 
 patience and waiting judgment of the 
 world, and especially of the people — her 
 brothers and her kindred — that in passion 
 forced this problem into the keeping of 
 her helpless hands." 
 
 However strongly Mr. Grady's passion- 
 ate appeals may take hold of the sympathy 
 of Northern men it is not probable that his 
 arguments will much affect their judgment. 
 Indeed, Mr. Grady's proposed solution 
 of the race problem has not escaped dissi- 
 dent criticism in the South. To some 
 minds in that section it seems to be lacking 
 in practicalness, to others it seems to be 
 wanting in coherency. Mr. Grady says 
 
The New South. 123 
 
 that the South must settle this question ; 
 but these dissidents ask : " Who is the 
 South? What is the South? Are not 
 the eight million negroes, with their in- 
 numerable schools and churches, their 
 millions upon millions of property, their 
 rapidly growing worth and intelligence, 
 their affectionate dispositions, their 
 loyalty and trustworthiness, a part of the 
 South ? No one will deny that they are 
 a part of the South, and a very important 
 part. Are they, then, not to have any 
 voice at all in the settlement of this 
 momentous question ? If they are not, 
 then it is not the South in its entirety, 
 but only the white people of the South 
 who are to solve and settle the racial 
 problem." 
 
124 "^^^^ New South. 
 
 That is just what Mr. Grady says in 
 plain words, and he repeats it over and 
 over again in express terms. When he 
 varies the expression and says that the 
 South must settle the race problem, he 
 means that the white people of the South 
 must settle it. Notwithstanding Mr. 
 Grady's exuberant affection for the 
 negroes, notwithstanding his surpassingly 
 eloquent tributes to their loyalty and trust- 
 worthiness, notwithstanding his genuine 
 appreciation of the best traits of their 
 character, notwithstanding his ardent 
 desire that they should enjoy all the 
 blessings which are compatible with their 
 racial relations, when it comes to the set- 
 tlement of the race problem by the 
 South, the negroes, according to his 
 
The New South. 125 
 
 views, are no part whatever of that South 
 which is to settle it. His language, pre- 
 viously quoted, is : 
 
 • '' The supremacy of the white race of 
 the South must be maintained for ever, 
 and the domination of the negro race 
 resisted at all points and at all hazards, 
 because the white race is the superior 
 race. This is the declaration of no new 
 truth ; it has abided forever in the 
 marrow of our bones and shall run for- 
 ever with the blood that feeds Anglo- 
 Saxon hearts." 
 
 In his speech at Augusta, Mr. Grady 
 stated his position on this point in still 
 stronger terms. After referring to some 
 severe Northern utterances on the sub- 
 ject, he said : 
 
126 The New South. 
 
 " No answer can be made in passion to 
 these men. If the temper of the North 
 is expressed in their words the South can 
 do nothing but rally her sons for their 
 last defence and await in silence what the 
 future may bring. This much should be 
 said. The negro can never be established 
 in dominion over the white race of the 
 South. The sword of Grant and the 
 bayonets of his army could not maintain 
 them in the supremacy they had won 
 from the helplessness of our people. No 
 sword drawn by mortal man, no army 
 martialed by mortal hand, can replace 
 them in the supremacy from which they 
 were cast down by our people, for the 
 Lord God Almighty decreed otherwise 
 when He created these races, and the 
 
The New South. 127 
 
 flawnting sword of His archangel will 
 enforce His decree and work out His 
 plan of unchangeable wisdom." 
 
 The plain logic of this is that the 
 negroes of the South must accept the 
 domination of the whites, or there will 
 be a racial war, with all the horrors 
 which would attend such a strife. No 
 wonder Mr. Grady invoked Divine aid 
 when he attempted to present a solution 
 of this problem, and sought to bring him- 
 self and his fellow-citizens to the 
 discussion of it in a spirit of consecration. 
 
 It is to be regretted that in certain 
 quarters there is a disposition to ridicule 
 and censure Mr. Grady for what is called 
 his fanciful treatment of the race prob- 
 lem. It is easy to ridicule, it is easy to 
 
128 The New South. 
 
 censure ; but it is not easy to originate a 
 working theory or to formulate a practi- 
 cal scheme for the settlement of such a 
 stupendous question as the race problem 
 in the South. I can readily understand 
 how Northern men will, in the nature of 
 things, disagree with Mr. Grady and 
 reject his doctrines ; but I cannot see 
 how they can have the heart to say one 
 unkind word of him. He had the vivid 
 imagination of a poet and the romantic 
 enthusiasm of a knight-errant. These 
 qualities entered largely into his elo- 
 quence and sometimes gave a fanciful 
 style to his rhetoric and too soft an edge 
 to his logic, but they never lessened his 
 sincerity nor chilled his generosity. No 
 matter how we of the North may differ 
 
The New South. 129 
 
 from him on the disintegrating question 
 under consideration, his chivalric frank- 
 ness, his boundless charity, his exuberant 
 genius, his fervid patriotism, should com- 
 mand our affectionate respect and arouse 
 in us on his behalf the gracious qualities 
 which he possessed in such generous 
 fullness. 
 
 As to the settlement of the race prob- 
 lem in the near future, I, for one, give it 
 up. It will be the remote future that 
 will witness its settlement ; nor can we 
 of the North do much to hasten that con- 
 summation. I was in New Ulm, Minne- 
 sota, early in the sixties, and there 1 
 learned a lesson which is useful to me in 
 this exigency. New Ulm was then on 
 the confines of civilization, and there had 
 
30 The New South, 
 
 recently been an Indian war in which the 
 white settlers had suffered terribly. 
 They took such bloody vengeance on 
 their Indian foes that the inhabitants of 
 the Eastern portion of the republic were 
 horrified, and called on the government 
 to interfere in behalf of the savages. 
 The government did interfere, and much 
 ill feeling was thereby caused among the 
 whites. I chancing to be at New Ulm, 
 and fervently cherishing the cultivated 
 sentiments of the East on the Indian 
 question, I thought I would look into the 
 matter, and give those rude men on the 
 frontier the benefit of my cultured East- 
 ern opinion. It was unfortunate that my 
 effort in behalf of humanity was made in 
 a company of excited men, every one of 
 
The New So7tth. 131 
 
 whom had suffered from Indian atroci- 
 ties. The scene which followed, 
 although it was somewhat trying to my 
 nerves at the time, has been to me a source 
 of solemn amusement ever since. Before 
 I had had a fair chance to develop, in all 
 its cultured attractiveness, my Eastern 
 theory as to the proper settlement of the 
 red-race problem, a very wild Western 
 man sprang at me with a most uncul- 
 tured yell, and wanted to know what in 
 h — I meant by such talk. His ungentle- 
 manly movement seemed to be epidemic, 
 for it spread to every man in the com- 
 pany. They all gathered around me, 
 and in sulphurous terms hurled at me the 
 same infernal adjuration. They were 
 convulsed with rage, and their threaten- 
 
The New South, 
 
 ing conduct was distasteful to one Avho 
 had passed his life in polite society. One 
 brawny fellow cried : 
 
 " What would you say if you came 
 home some night, and found your cabin 
 burnt, and your wife and children scalped, 
 and their throats cut, and their bodies half- 
 burnt in the ruins, and your baby — your 
 poor, little baby nailed up on a tree 
 alive? Ali-i-ive I Do you hear me, you 
 Down-East skunk ?" 
 
 I should not have tolerated such lan- 
 guage in an Eastern drawing-room, but 
 in the street of a wild Western town, 
 and surrounded by men Avho were 
 obviously indisposed to recognize the 
 usages of cultured society, I could only 
 maintain a dignified reserve. When I 
 
The New Soicth, 133 
 
 learned, as I soon did, that the man who 
 thus addressed me had actually come 
 home to the scene he had asked my 
 opinion of, my heart melted at the 
 thought of his agony, and I forgave his 
 uncultured manner. In fact, as one man 
 after another told the story of his wrongs 
 and sufferings, my sympathy made me 
 akin with them, and we came to a friendly 
 understanding. I afterwards looked into 
 the red-race problem, and became con- 
 vinced, and I am still convinced that it is 
 impossible for us Eastern people to 
 settle that problem in a way that 
 would be satisfactory to frontiermen 
 whose cabins Indians have burned, whose 
 families Indians have massacred, and 
 
134 ^^^^ New South. 
 
 whose live babies Indians have nailed to 
 trees. 
 
 And as it with the red-race problem 
 so, in a measure, is it with the black-race 
 problem. Those who are not in it and of 
 it can do but little towards its settlement. 
 The red-race problem is being rapidly 
 settled by the extinction of the red men, 
 but the black-race problem cannot be 
 settled in that way. It will abide ; how 
 long, no man can tell ; but, as Mr. Grady 
 so .often said, '' the South must carry it to 
 the end." 
 
 The Scandinavian god Thor was once 
 ordered to lift a cat clear of the earth. 
 Supposing the feat to be an easy one he 
 took hold of the cat and lifted her at 
 arms' length, but she did not leave the 
 
The New Soicth, 135 
 
 earth. He lifted her to the tree tops ; 
 still she touched the earth. He lifted 
 her to the clouds ; she yet rested on the 
 earth. He rubbed her back against the 
 sky ; she still touched the earth, and 
 Thor was then permitted to see that the 
 cat was only a part of the great serpent 
 that stretches around all the world, and 
 so could not be lifted from the earth. 
 The race problem of the South may be 
 likened to that mythological cat ; it is an 
 integral part of the great serpent of self- 
 ishness which coils itself in every human 
 heart and runs through all human 
 society ; and not even a god can now 
 lift the problem high enough to see the 
 daylight of solution beneath it. The 
 good old orthodox doctrine of total 
 
136 The Nciu SoittJi, 
 
 depravity teaches us that selfishness is 
 native to every human heart and at 
 bottom shapes and controls the action of 
 every human community. Fortunately, 
 this crude selfishness is capable of becom- 
 ing refined and elevated, and is in fact 
 constantly becoming refined and elevated 
 into enlightened self-interest. Then it 
 begins to yield to Christian influences ; 
 then it ameliorates the social status, works 
 along lines of human progress, and in 
 conjunction with increasing intelligence 
 and spiritual forces it dissipates religious 
 superstitions, abolishes national evils, 
 rectifies gigantic wrongs, and raises soci- 
 ety to the plane of Christian brother- 
 hood. 
 
 It is this grand, broad, deep sweep of 
 
The Nezv South. 137 
 
 things which Avill eventually settle the 
 great Southern problem. It cannot be 
 settled off-hand, nor by this generation. 
 Time will take care of it. Time will 
 teach the South how to solve it — is, in 
 truth, now rapidly teaching her. Her 
 resources will in time be developed 
 beyond even Mr. Grady's most roseate 
 hopes ; unimaginable riches will be hers ; 
 her vast territory will teem with myriads 
 ol intelligent citizens, and the enlight- 
 ened self-interest of these myriads will, 
 in the long run, and under the provi- 
 dence of God, and possibly through 
 great tribulation, enable them com- 
 pletely to solve this seemingly unsolv- 
 able Southern problem. Mr. Grady him- 
 self seems to have had a prevision that 
 
138 The New Soicth. 
 
 this would be the ultimate outcome of 
 the question, as appears by the following 
 extract (a few lines of which I italicise) 
 from his speech at Augusta : 
 
 " In her industrial growth the South is 
 daily making new friends. Every dollar 
 of Northern money invested in the South 
 gives us a new friend in that section. 
 Every settler among us raises up new 
 witnesses to our fairness, sincerity and 
 loyalty. We shall secure from the North 
 more friendliness and sympathy, more 
 champions and friends, through the influ- 
 ence of our industrial growth, than 
 through political aspiration or achieve- 
 ment. Few men can comprehend — 
 would that I had the time to dwell on 
 this point to-day — how vast has been the 
 
The Nczu SotttJi. 139 
 
 development, how swift the growth, and 
 how deep and enduring is laid the basis 
 of even greater growth in the future. 
 Companies of immigrants sent down from 
 the sturdy settlers of the North will solve 
 the Southern problem, and bring this sec- 
 tion into full and harmonious relations 
 with the North quicker than all the bat- 
 talions that could be armed and martialed 
 could do." 
 
 In his letters to the New York Ledger 
 on The New South, Mr. Grady gave 
 to the world the gist and essence of all 
 that he had been inspired to write on that 
 subject b}^ his love for the land of his 
 birth, by his pride in her worth and by 
 his hope in her destiny. These letters 
 evidently came hot from his heart ; they 
 
140 The New South, 
 
 are freighted with information, are pic- 
 turesque in description, fervid and elo- 
 quent in style, honest in purpose and 
 noble in spirit. They will long be 
 treasured as the latest and ripest utter- 
 ances of the remarkable man who wrote 
 them, upon the theme which was nearest 
 his heart, which inspired his genius, and 
 which will be forever associated with his 
 memory. 
 
THE 
 
 NEW SOUTH 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY W. GRADY. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ROBERT BONNER'S SONS. 
 
 1890. 
 
Copyright, 1889. 
 By ROBERT BONNER'S SONS. 
 
 (AU rights reserved.) - 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 THE NEW YORK LEDGER 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
THE NEW SOUTH 
 
 By henry W. GRADY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 In this letter, and those that foHow, I 
 shaH discuss one of the most interesting 
 regions of the civiHzed world — the theater 
 of the most gigantic war of history — the 
 residence of 5,000,000 manumitted slaves 
 now grown to be 8,000,000 enfranchised 
 freemen — the source, practically, of the 
 supply of the most important staple 
 of the soil — the richest treasury of miner- 
 
142 The New South. 
 
 als and woods — the home of a people 
 that in swift and amazing recuperation 
 have discounted the miracle wrought by 
 the French people after the Franco-Prus- 
 sian war, and have given new glory. to 
 the American name, and a new meaning 
 to energy — that section of our country 
 known as '■' The South." 
 
 We shall see how the people of this 
 section, reduced to poverty by a war, the 
 causes, progress and result of which are 
 beyond this purview, have found honor- 
 able way to Avealth and prosperity. We 
 shall see how they bestirred themselves 
 cheerfully, amid the ashes and waste of 
 their homes ; how they met new and 
 adverse conditions with unquailing cour- 
 age ; how they gave themselves cordially 
 
The New South. 143 
 
 to unaccustomed work ; with what 
 patience they bore misfortune, and 
 endured wrongs put upon them through 
 the surviving passions of the war, empha- 
 sized by partisan appeals. How, having 
 worn the enforced yoke of their late 
 slaves until it became insupportable, they 
 rallied amid the graves of the dead and 
 the wrecks of their fortunes for the last 
 defense of their liberty and credit. And 
 how, at last controlling with their own 
 hands their local affairs, they began, in 
 ragged and torn battalions, that march of 
 restoration and development that has 
 challenged universal admiration. We 
 shall see how the war-horses went to the 
 furrow. How the waste places were 
 clothed. How the earth smiled at their 
 
144 ^^^ New South, 
 
 rude and questioning touch. How the 
 mountains opened and disclosed treasures 
 not dreamed of before. How, from chaos 
 and desolation, the currents of trade 
 trickled and swelled and took orderly 
 way. How rivers were spanned and the 
 wildernesses pierced with iron rail. How 
 things despised in the old days of pros- 
 perity, in adversity won unexpected 
 value. How frugality came with mis- 
 fortune, fortitude with sorrow, and with 
 necessity invention. And how, above 
 all, an AU-Avise Hand, disclosing new 
 resources by little less than miracles, led 
 this God-fearing and God-loving people, 
 whom He had chastened, into the ways of 
 peace and prosperity. 
 
 No people ever held larger stewardship 
 
The New South. 145 
 
 than the people of the South. It is theirs 
 to settle the problem of the two races, 
 vastly the most important matter with 
 which the Republic has to deal. It is 
 theirs to produce and enlarge the crop of 
 that staple that largely clothes the world. 
 It is theirs to conserve and develop the 
 final and fullest supply of coal and iron, 
 and to furnish from their enormous for- 
 ests the lumber and hard woods to meet 
 the world's demand until exhausted areas 
 can be recovered. It is theirs to bring 
 the matchless domain that is their home 
 up to the full requirements of its duty to 
 the world at large, until every debt is 
 discharged, every right relation estab- 
 lished, every obligation met, and industry 
 
46 The New South, 
 
 and civilization find no obstruction from 
 one of its limits to the other. 
 
 The new South is simply the old South 
 under new conditions. It rejoices that 
 slavery has been swept forever from 
 American soil. It rejoices that the 
 American Union was saved from the 
 storm of Avar. Not one in a thousand ol 
 its sons would reverse if they could the 
 results of the war into which they threw 
 without stint their lives and their prop- 
 erty. They are thankful that the issues 
 at stake in the great civil war were ad- 
 judged by higher wisdom than their own. 
 And the Republic has no better citizens in 
 peace and would have no braver soldiers 
 in war than the men who twenty-five 
 
The New Soicth, 147 
 
 years ago wore the gray and followed 
 the Confederate flag. 
 
 The courage in which the new South 
 makes these declarations, and the sincer- 
 ity in which it maintains them, are a herit- 
 age of the old South. If it involved the 
 surrender of perfect love and reverence 
 for that civilization that produced Wash- 
 ington and Jefferson, and Clay and Cal- 
 houn — or for the memory of those who 
 fought with Lee and Jackson and Johns- 
 ton — the new South would be dumb and 
 motionless. It is from the foot of the 
 monuments, illumined with the names of 
 her dead, that she makes her fullest re- 
 nunciation of the past and her best pledge 
 for the future. Always she will honor 
 above all men the men who sleep beneath 
 
148 The New South, 
 
 those towering shafts. The sign of nobil- 
 ity in her families for generations to 
 come will be the gray cap or the stained 
 coat, on which, in the ebb of losing battle, 
 God laid the sword of His imperishable 
 knighthood. Those, who ask her to turn 
 away from the memory of her heroes 
 who died hopeless but unfearing in de- 
 feat, ask her to sacrifice that without 
 which no people can be steadfast or 
 great. 
 
 Hardly less dear to the new South 
 than this is the memory of the old regime^ 
 its traditions and its history. Perhaps no 
 period of human history has been more 
 misjudged and less understood than the 
 slave-holding era in the South. Slavery 
 as an institution cannot be defended — but 
 
The Nczu South. 149 
 
 its administi ation was so nearly perfect 
 among our forefathers as to challenge and 
 hold our loving respect. It is doubtful 
 if the world has seen a peasantry so 
 happy and so well-to-do as the negro 
 slaves in America. The world was 
 amazed at the fidelity with which these 
 slaves guarded, from 1861 to 1865, the 
 homes and families of the masters who 
 were fighting with the army that barred 
 their way to freedom. If '' Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin " had portrayed the rule of slavery 
 rather than the rarest exception, not all the 
 armies that went to the field could have 
 stayed the flood of rapine and arson and 
 .pillage that would have started with the 
 first gun of the civil war. Instead of that, 
 
150 The New South. 
 
 witness the miracle of the slave in loyalty 
 to his master, closing the fetters upon 
 his own limbs — maintaining and defending 
 the families of those who fought against 
 his freedom — and at night on the far-off 
 battle-field searching among the carnage 
 for his young master, that he might lift 
 the dying head to his breast and bend to 
 catch the last words to the old folks at 
 home, so wrestling the meantime in 
 agony and love that he would lay down 
 his life in his master's stead. 
 
 History has no parallel to the faith 
 kept by the negro in the South during the 
 war. Often five hundred negroes to a 
 single white man, and yet through these 
 dusky throngs the women and children 
 walked in safety, and the unprotected 
 
The New South. 151 
 
 homes rested in peace. Unmarshaled, 
 the black battalions moved patiently to 
 the fields in the morning to feed the 
 armies their idleness would have starved, 
 and at night gathered anxiously at the 
 big house to " hear the news from mars- 
 ter," though conscious that his victory 
 made their chains enduring. Every- 
 where humble and kindly. The body- 
 guard of the helpless. The rough com- 
 panion of the little ones. The observant 
 friend. The silent sentry in his lowly 
 cabin. The shrewd counselor. And 
 when the dead came home, a mourner at 
 the open grave. A thousand torches 
 would have disbanded every Southern 
 army, but not one was lighted. When 
 the master, going to a war in which 
 
152 The New South, 
 
 slavery was involved, said to his slave, 
 " I leave my home and loved ones in 
 your charge," the tenderness between 
 man and master stood disclosed. 
 
 The Northern man, dealing with casual 
 servants, querulous, sensitive, and lodged 
 for a day in a sphere they resent, can 
 hardly comprehend the friendliness and 
 sympathy that existed between the mas- 
 ter and the slave. He cannot understand 
 how the negro stood in slavery days, 
 open-hearted and sympathetic, full of 
 gossip and comradeship, the companion 
 of the hunt, frolic, furrow and home, 
 contented in the kindly, dependence that 
 has been a habit of his blood, and never 
 lifting his eyes beyond the narrow hori- 
 zon that shut him in with his neighbors 
 
The New South, 153 
 
 and friends. But this relation did exist 
 in the days of slavery. It was the rule of 
 that regime. It has survived war, and 
 strife, and political campaigns in which 
 the drum-beat inspired and Federal bay- 
 onets fortified. It will never die until 
 the last slave-holder and slave have been 
 gathered to rest. It is the glory of our 
 past in the South. It is the answer to 
 abuse and slander. It is the hope of 
 our future 
 
 The relations of the races in slavery 
 must be clearly understood to under- 
 stand what has followed, and to judge of 
 what is yet to come. Not less important 
 is it to have some clear idea of the civil- 
 ization of that period. 
 
 That was a peculiar society. Almost 
 
154 The New South. 
 
 feudal in its splendor, it was almost 
 patriarchal in its simplicity. Leisure and 
 wealth gave it exquisite culture. Its 
 wives and mothers, exempt from drudg- 
 ery, and almost from care, gave to their 
 sons, through patient and constant train- 
 ing, something of their own grace and 
 gentleness, and to their homes beauty 
 and light. Its people, homogeneous by 
 necessity, held straight and simple faith, 
 and were religious to a marked degree 
 along the old lines of Christian belief. 
 This same homogeneity bred a hospitality 
 that was as kinsmen to kinsmen, and that 
 wasted at the threshold of every home 
 what the more frugal people of the 
 North conserved and invested in public 
 charities. The code duello furnished the 
 
The Neiu South. 155 
 
 highest appeal in dispute. An affront to 
 a lad was answered at the pistol's mouth. 
 The sense of quick responsibility tem- 
 pered the tongues of even the most violent, 
 and the newspapers of South Carolina for 
 eight years, it is said, did not contain one 
 abusive word. The ownership of slaves, 
 even more than of realty, held families 
 steadfast on their estates, and everywhere 
 prevailed the sociability of established 
 neighborhoods. Money counted least in 
 making the social status, and constantly 
 ambitious and brilliant youngsters from 
 no estate married into the families oi 
 planter princes. Meanwhile the one 
 character utterly condemned and ostra- 
 cized was the man who was mean to his 
 slaves. Even the coward was pitied and 
 
156 The New Sotith, 
 
 might have been liked. For the cruel 
 master there was no toleration. 
 
 The ante-belliun society had immense 
 force. Working under the slavery which 
 brought the suspicion or hostility of the 
 world, and which practically beleaguered 
 it within walls, it yet accomplished good 
 things. For the first sixty-four years ot 
 the republic it furnished the president 
 for fifty-two years. Its statesmen 
 demanded the war of 1812, opened it 
 with but five Northern senators support- 
 ing it, and its general, Jackson, won the 
 decisive battle of New Orleans. It was 
 a Southern statesman who added the 
 Louisiana territory of more than 1,000,- 
 000 square miles to our domain. Under 
 a Southern statesman, Florida was' 
 
The Nezu South. 157 
 
 acquired from Spain. Against the oppo- 
 sition of the free States, the Southern 
 influence forced the war with Mexico, 
 and annexed the superb empire of Texas, 
 brought in New Mexico, and opened the 
 gates of the Republic to the Pacific. 
 Scott and Taylor, the heroes of the Mex- 
 ican war, were Southern men. In 
 material, as in political affairs, the old 
 South was masterful. The first import- 
 ant railroad operated in America trav- 
 ersed Carolina. The first steamer that 
 crossed the ocean cleared from Savannah. 
 The first college established for girls was 
 opened in Georgia. No naturalist has 
 surpassed Audubon ; no geographer 
 equaled Maury ; and Sims and McDon- 
 ald led the world of surgery in their 
 
158 The New Sotith. 
 
 respective lines. It was Crawford Long, 
 of Georgia, who gave to the world the 
 priceless blessing of ansesthesia. The 
 wealth accumulated by the people was 
 marvelous. And, though it is held that 
 slavery enriched the poor at the general 
 expense, Georgia and Carolina were the 
 richest States, per capita, in the Union in 
 i860, saving Rhode Island.^ Some idea 
 of the desolation of war may be had 
 from the fact that, in spite of their late 
 remarkable recuperation, they are now, 
 excepting Idaho, the poorest States, 
 per capita, in the Union. So rich was 
 the South in i860, that Mr. Lincoln spoke 
 but common sentiment when he said : 
 *' If Ave let the South go, where shall we 
 get our revenues ?" 
 
The Nezv South. 159 
 
 In its engaging grace — in the chivalry 
 that tempered even Quixotism with dig- 
 nity — in the piety that saved master and 
 slave alike — in the charity that boasted 
 not — in the honor, held above estate — in 
 the hospitality that neither condescended 
 nor cringed — in frankness and heartiness 
 and wholesome comradeship — in the rev- 
 erence paid to womanhood and the 
 inviolable respect in which woman's 
 name was held — the civilization of the 
 old slave regime in the South has not 
 been surpassed, and perhaps will not be 
 equaled, among men. 
 
 And as the fidelity of the slave during 
 the war bespoke the kindness of the mas- 
 ter before the war, so the unquestioning 
 reverence with which the young men of 
 
i6o The Nezv Sotit/i, 
 
 the South accepted, in 1865, their heri- 
 tage of poverty and defeat, proved the 
 strength and excellence of the civilization 
 from which that heritage had come. In 
 cheerfulness they bestirred themselves 
 amid the ashes and the Avrecks, and, hold- 
 ing the inspiration of their past to be bet- 
 ter than their rich acres and garnered 
 wealth, went out to rebuild their fallen 
 fortunes, with never a word of complaint, 
 nor the thought of criticism ! 
 
 So much for the past of the South — 
 and only in so much as it must affect the 
 future. The South is still held by a 
 homogeneous people, and its salvation 
 must be wrought by the descendants of 
 
The New South. i6i 
 
 those who have made its history. There 
 is no appreciable infusion of new blood. 
 And the old blood in its descending- 
 strains will scarcely mount higher, run 
 more clearly or resolutely, flow more 
 freely at duty's call or stain less where it 
 touches, than in the turbulent and strenu- 
 ous days that are gone. In devotion, in 
 courage, in earnestness, in ability, the 
 sons shall not surpass their fathers. 
 Happy will it be for them and for theirs 
 if in these cardinal virtues they equal 
 them ! 
 
 But the sons fight under new condi- 
 tions, for greater ends, in broader fields. 
 The blight of slavery is lifted from above 
 and about them. The wall that shut 
 them in is leveled, and the South stands 
 
162 The Nezu So2Uh. 
 
 in unhindered comradeship with the 
 world. Doubt or aversion does not 
 withhold, nor does ostracism repel the 
 uttermost stranger from her gates. The 
 promise of her great destiny, written in 
 her fields, her quarries, her mines, her 
 forests, and her rivers, is no longer 
 blurred or indistinct, and the world 
 draws near to read. 
 
 How rapidly she has adapted herself 
 to these new conditions — how she has 
 grown to the requirements of her larger 
 duty — how she has builded from pitiful 
 resources a great and expanding empire, 
 these letters shall now proceed to tell. 
 And the writer will find a keener pleas- 
 ure in relating, as his people have found 
 in amassing, in the knowledge that every 
 
The New South. 163 
 
 blow struck for the South and every 
 sheaf gathered to her harvest have also 
 deepened the glory and prosperity of 
 this Republic, that, conceived in Ameri- 
 can wisdom, won by American valor, 
 sustained in American hearts, is at last 
 indissolubly cemented with the best of 
 American blood. 
 
164 The New South. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 When my business partner came home 
 from the war, in which he had gallantly 
 commanded a battery, he had neither 
 breeches, home nor money. His wife 
 cut up a woolen dress she had worn for 
 years, and made him a pair of breeches. 
 Gathering odds and ends from the ruins 
 of Atlanta, he built a shanty, of which 
 love made a home. His father gave him 
 a five-dollar gold piece, of which ingenu- 
 ity made capital. In three years he had 
 built a $1,500 *home — in eight years a 
 $6,000 home. He now has a $60,000 
 suburban home and is worth well over 
 
The Nezu SoictJi. 165 
 
 a quarter of a million dollars. His life is 
 an epitome of the South in 1865— its 
 swift energy— its cheerful heroism— its 
 shrewd knack of turning something from 
 nothing— its stages of growth— and its 
 present prosperity. 
 
 The people of Atlanta in 1864 crept 
 out of the diagonal holes cut, like 
 swallows' nests, in the hillsides, in 
 which they had abided the siege, to find 
 their city in ruins. Old citizens could 
 scarcely thread the course of familiar 
 streets through ashes and debris. As 
 the refugees straggled back, and the 
 soldiers, afoot from Virginia, found 
 once more their dismantled homes, the 
 ruined city trembled with the energy 
 of a camp. Strenuous as life had been in 
 
1 66 The New South, 
 
 the South for four years, its most desper- 
 ate struggle had but begun. The for- 
 ittude of the march, the courage of 
 the charge, the heroism of the retreat, 
 the touching sacrifices of the ill-paid 
 and ill-equipped soldier-life — these were 
 to be emphasized and prolonged, when 
 the tattered flag no longer flew, the quick 
 roll of the drum had ceased, and the com- 
 radeship of the camp and march was dis- 
 solved. From defeat and utter poverty 
 were to be wrought victory and plenty. 
 There was no faltering — no repining — but 
 Atlanta worked as she had fought, for all 
 that was in her. Five hundred shanties 
 were made of the iron roofing of de- 
 stroyed buildings. Four posts were 
 driven up — iron sheeting tacked about 
 
The New South. 167 
 
 them, a cover laid, a door cut, and in 
 these, with pitiful huckstering, was estab- 
 lished the commercial system that now 
 boasts its palatial stores, its merchant 
 princes, and is known and honored the 
 Republic over. In 1866, there were but 
 four men in Atlanta worth $10,000. In 
 1889, there are six millionaires whose 
 wealth aggregates $10,000,000; nine 
 others assessed at more than $750,000 
 each ; fourteen others worth over $500,000 
 each ; and twenty -one worth from $250,000 
 to $500,000 each. These fifty citizens, 
 now worth over $30,000,000, were not 
 worth $250,000 in 1865. Back of them is 
 a prosperous city filled with well-to-do 
 people and capital of a prosperous State. 
 How was this progress wrought? 
 
1 68 The New South. 
 
 HIGH PRICES AND DESTITUTION. 
 
 In 1864, a cavalryman was saluted by a 
 citizen with : " I will give you $20,000 
 for that horse." " The devil you will ! I 
 just paid a nigger $1,000 for currying 
 him !" About that time I paid $1,200 for 
 two wool hats, such as now retail for ^Z- 
 teen cents, the dealer having knocked off 
 $300 in consideration of my taking the two. 
 Enormous quantities of depreciated cur- 
 rency were afloat, unsettling values and 
 provoking reckless and desperate trading. 
 So vast was the issue that Gen. Toombs 
 charged that *' the treasury department 
 ran the money presses all day and let the 
 niggers run 'em all night to work their 
 
The New South. 169 
 
 wages off." The depreciation of the cur- 
 rency, however, did not hinder or w^arn 
 the people who had staked all on the suc- 
 cess of the Confederacy. No matter 
 what a man bought, it would bring 
 more money than he paid for it. The 
 story is told of a speculator who bought 
 several hogsheads of sugar at ten cents a 
 pound, and sold at twenty cents. Shortly 
 after, he invested his fortune in sugar at 
 twenty-five cents, and sold it at forty, and 
 so on to the end. Each time he made more 
 money, but it would buy less sugar. He 
 kept at it, adding to his increasing profit 
 and decreasing quantity until he found 
 himself, in 1865, with $2,000,000 clear 
 profit on sugar, which would not buy 
 enough to sweeten his parched-pea coffee. 
 
170 The New South, 
 
 The day after Lee surrendered, a friend 
 of mine sold for $110,000 in Confederate 
 money a comfortable home. Notes given 
 for slaves, which were free in a week, 
 were sued, and pronounced valid by the 
 supreme court. 
 
 From this era of inflation, the Southern 
 people dropped to complete destitution. 
 The currency they had accumulated was 
 valueless. The bonds they had stored 
 for emergency were worthless. Their 
 slaves were freed. Their governments 
 destroyed. Their farms stripped by the 
 foraging of two armies and the demands 
 of two governments. Guerrillas of both 
 sides plundered under cover of law. The 
 swamps were ransacked for hidden 
 stores or crops. The torch, carelessly 
 
The New South. 171 
 
 and revengefully handled, completed the 
 desolation. To meet this awful crisis and 
 to rebuild from these pitiful resources, 
 was a people stunned by defeat— with 
 ranks decimated by war, partnerships sun- 
 dered, every family circle broken, and 
 those relations that had knit together 
 families and neighborhoods forever shat- 
 tered. There was dislocation every- 
 where. And everywhere the weeds of 
 the widowed and the cries of the father- 
 less. In every country grave-yard there 
 were new-made graves, and the Virginia 
 valleys were red with the best blood of 
 the South. Miriam and her hand-maidens 
 were yet in the depths of the flood ! 
 
72 The New South. 
 
 THE ERA OF SPECULATION. 
 
 In the midst of this desolation, small 
 eddies of trade whirled this way and that. 
 A few men, shrewder than patriotic, had 
 steadily bought gold for the past two 
 years. They had traded Confederate 
 bonds for diamonds or silver. Others 
 had hidden cotton and tobacco in swamps 
 or cellars, and found it good as gold when 
 hauled from its hiding-place. There 
 were garrisons of Federal troops in 
 almost every town, paid off in green- 
 backs, which went rapidly into circula- 
 tion. The abnormal lack of money, and 
 the pressing demand for it, tempted 
 many sutlers to invest, and brought some 
 
The New Sotctk. 173 
 
 money from the North. The city of 
 Atlanta issued scrip, redeemable for 
 taxes, and it passed current. Trading 
 was fast and furious. Almost indescrib- 
 able activity ensued, and, strangely 
 enough, '' flush times " were on us before 
 the ashes had been carted from the buried 
 streets, and the lamentation of the 
 bereaved had ceased. The recklessness 
 of war was carried into the conservative 
 ways of peace. The provisional and 
 republican administration issued bonds 
 and scattered money lavishly. The 
 enforced abstinence of four years took its 
 revenge in full gratification, and the sales 
 of coffee, cheese, sardines, and like arti- 
 cles, were astonishing. There was fever- 
 ish tumult in all trading centers, great or 
 
I 74 The Nezv South. 
 
 small, and there was neither time nor 
 inclination to think of the past or future. 
 In the country, excitement and specu- 
 lation ran even higher. The few bales of 
 cotton exhumed after the war readily 
 brought sixty-five cents a pound, and the 
 demand was eager and unsatisfied. At 
 such prices, there was a fortune in every 
 acre. The negroes, cat-like in their local 
 attachment, had been jostled out of place 
 but little, even by the passing armies. 
 They were still ready to work, and 
 appeared to think that freedom was justi- 
 fied when they left their master's slave 
 quarters and hired out to his neighbor. 
 And so cotton became king. It had 
 always been king, and the slave had been 
 his prophet. These two the planter 
 
The New South. 175 
 
 never surrendered to sentiment or law. 
 An intelligent man would himself volun- 
 teer, and call his sons, even to the 
 mother's boy, to his side in the ranks, 
 but would resist to the uttermost when 
 his sorely pressed government attempted 
 to levy one of his slaves. General 
 Toombs, more responsible for the war 
 than perhaps any other man, and pledg- 
 ing to the Confederacy his life and his 
 honor, openly rebelled when it proposed, 
 that its starving armies might be fed, to 
 limit by law the acreage each man 
 should plant in cotton. And in '65, 
 though its prophet was gone, cotton was 
 king again. 
 
 The demand for land was universal. 
 Great plantations brought astonishing 
 
176 The New Sotith. 
 
 prices. It was believed that cotton 
 could be raised only scantily by free 
 labor and that high prices would con- 
 tinue. This delusion was fatal. It 
 started the South wrong. It gave the 
 local merchant credit at the North — and 
 he in turn gave credit to the cotton 
 grower. The planter would pledge his 
 land to cotton — and put a lien on his 
 crop. On this the merchant would 
 advance him cash and supplies. This 
 money, coming before it was earned, was 
 easily spent ; and it is said that Atlanta 
 sold more pianos at $600 apiece than 
 were sold ten years later at $250. Under 
 the stimulus of high prices for cotton, 
 the Southern people loaded up with 
 land at fancy figures, and then went 
 
The New Sotct/i. 177 
 
 under lien to the merchant for cash and 
 supplies. 
 
 COTTON ONCE MORE KING. 
 
 Cotton worth sixty -five cents in 1866 
 brought only forty cents in 1867. This 
 was still high enough to tempt reckless 
 land-buying and reckless planting. In 
 1868, it declined to eleven and one-quarter 
 cents, but ran up in a few weeks to 
 thirty-six cents. After this, it went down 
 steadily, involving thousands in ruin. 
 The Hon. B. H. Hill bought several 
 plantations and stocked them lavishl}- on 
 credit. He lost over $250,000 in his 
 planting operations, and, although he 
 coined more than a million dollars from 
 his brain, was for years hampered with 
 
178 The New South. 
 
 his losses. Land had practically no sell- 
 ing value. Superb estates that had 
 brought $200,000 dragged at $10,000, and 
 estates that had sold for $65,000 went 
 unhindered to the sheriff's hammer for 
 taxes. Broader than these personal 
 losses was the oppressive system 
 entailed on the planting class. Having 
 once mortgaged his crop for supplies to 
 his merchant, the farmer was practically 
 the slave of that merchant. Under the 
 declining price of cotton his crop would 
 barely pay his lien. He was thus left 
 dependent for the next year's supplies 
 on his merchant, who charged him what 
 he pleased. The official report of the 
 Commissioner of Agriculture of Georgia 
 shows that an average of 54 per cent. 
 
The New South. 1 79 
 
 usury was charged on all supplies sold 
 to the farmer on credit, and that he 
 bought his meat, bread, hay, stock, and 
 often his butter and eggs, devoting his 
 land entirely to cotton. When he saw 
 the wisdom of raising his own corn, 
 bacon, grasses and stock, he was notified 
 that reducing his cotton acreage was 
 reducing his line of credit. He was thus 
 helpless. Carrying this burden of usury, 
 and buying everything he needed, and 
 having stocked his farm on credit, he 
 made slow progress. How he pro- 
 gressed shall be shown hereafter. Suffice 
 it to say here that he gradually diversi- 
 fied his agriculture, slowly paid his 
 debts, and this year — for the first time 
 
i8o The New South, 
 
 since 1859 — raised in Georgia all the 
 corn that Georgia needs. 
 
 The Southern merchants began busi- 
 ness with an interest rate of five per 
 cent, a month. It dropped rapidly to 
 one and a half to two per cent, a month, 
 and halted there stubbornly. As late as 
 '78 Georgia issued a ten per cent. bond. 
 She has since floated a four per cent., 
 and money rules in Atlanta at from five 
 to seven per cent. From its speculative 
 beginning business steadied wonderfully 
 quick in the South. The old soldiers 
 traded as resolutely as they fought. 
 There is a smaller percentage of failures 
 in the South than in the West. Every 
 city has its board of trade building, and 
 well-equipped exchanges for its different 
 
The New South. ^ i8i 
 
 departments of business. Commercial 
 ethics are high, and business integrity is 
 valued and respected among a people 
 who for years had nothing but integrity 
 as capital and credit. There are slightly 
 more than fifty millionaires in the South, 
 and of this number more than three- 
 fourths made their fortunes in the legiti- 
 mate buying and selling of goods. From 
 Maryland through Texas the merchants 
 are prosperous, public-spirited and able. 
 In everything that has adorned the 
 South they have been foremost and 
 constant. 
 
 THE CREATORS OF THE NEW SOUTH. 
 
 Let me close this article with one 
 point that may be carried through the 
 
1 82 The New South, 
 
 series. The South has been re-built by 
 the Southern people. I shall often use 
 Atlanta as an example, for it is a typical 
 Southern city. None is more generally 
 thought to be so largely the result of 
 Northern capital and enterprise. And 
 yet the census of 1880 shows that of 
 47,588 people in Fulton county (of 
 which Atlanta is the capital), less than 
 1,000 were of Northern birth. This will 
 astound those Northern men who, 
 amazed at Atlanta's simple and compre- 
 hensive growth, have declared the South 
 never had built and never could build 
 such a city, but that it was a " Yankee 
 city " in the South. Let me particular- 
 ize. The census shows that of the 47,588 
 people in Fulton county, 38,648 were 
 
The New South, 183 
 
 born in Georgia. Of the rest, 2,102 were 
 born in South Carolina, 752 in North 
 Carolina, 1,464 in Alabama, 1,200 in Vir- 
 ginia, 795. in Tennessee, and 472 in other 
 Southern States. This gives us 44,951 
 Southern born. To this add 1,391 for- 
 eigners, and we have 46,814. Deduct 
 this from the total, 47,588, and we have 
 774 as the total of Northern-born citizens 
 of Atlanta. This is the city that is often- 
 est cited as a '' Northern city in the 
 South." Since i860 the South has lost 
 nearly one-fourth of its foreign born pop- 
 ulation in spite of the tremendous tide of 
 foreign immigration that flows in at 
 Northern ports. Further — the South 
 had less Northern-born citizens in 1880 
 than in i860. In the eight South Atlan- 
 
184 The New South. 
 
 tic States there were even fewer 
 Northerners in 1880 than in 1870. In 
 Georgia in 1870 there were 6,613 citi- 
 zens of foreign birth; in 1880 only 
 5,848 — this in a total population of 
 1,542,180. In 1880 there were 139,971 
 more Southern people living North 
 than Northern people living South. 
 
 The South has been rebuilt by South- 
 ern brains and energy. 
 
 THE SOUTH IS AMERICAN AND RELIGIOUS. 
 
 We regret that our brothers from the 
 North have not taken larger part with us 
 in this work. We have also watched 
 with regret the great current of immi- 
 gration sweeping westward, giving us 
 nothing and even absorbing into its 
 
The New Sottth, 185 
 
 mighty volume one-fourth of what for- 
 eigners we already had. But our status 
 has its compensations. It has given us a 
 homogeneous people — compact, earnest, 
 sympathetic, and united when unity 
 means more of safety than it ever meant 
 to any people before. It has left us the 
 straight and simple faith of our fathers, 
 untainted by heresy and unweakened by 
 speculation. The spirit of Americanism 
 —•of popular liberty, of love for demo- 
 cratic principles and institutions — burns 
 steadily and unobstructedly here. An- 
 archy, socialism — that leveling spirit that 
 defies government and denies God — has 
 no hold in the South. Here the old 
 churches are the best churches, and the 
 old creeds still living and saving. Here 
 
1 86 The New South. 
 
 law and order reign. Here government 
 is supreme, and if we love well that gov- 
 ernment which touches us most closely, 
 we love none the less that government 
 which, above all, blesses all. 
 
 It may be — it may well be, unless some 
 brave statesman shall challenge the incom 
 ing hosts at our ports, and demand that 
 they shall be worthy of citizenship before 
 it is bestowed upon them — that in the 
 South, here amid this homogeneous and 
 God-fearing people, may be lodged the 
 last hope of saving the old fashion in our 
 religious and political government. 
 While, therefore, we welcome immi- 
 grants to our matchless domain, we pre- 
 fer that they shall come in beseeming 
 order rather than pell-mell — as friends and 
 
The New South. 187 
 
 neighbors, to mingle their blood with 
 ours, to build their homes in our fields, 
 honoring our Constitution, reverencing 
 our God. Until such immigrants come 
 we prefer to work out our own salvation, 
 as we have largely done for twenty-five 
 long and strenuous years. 
 
 How well we have done this in the 
 line of agriculture and manufacturing 
 the succeeding article will tell. 
 
1 88 The New South. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A few years ago I told, in a speech, of 
 a burial in Pickens county, Georgia. 
 The grave was dug through solid marble, 
 but the marble headstone came from 
 Vermont. It was in a pine wilderness, 
 but the pine cofFm came from Cincinnati. 
 An iron mountain overshadowed it, but 
 the cofhn nails and screws and the shovels 
 came from Pittsburg. With hard woods 
 and metals abounding, the corpse was 
 hauled on a wagon from South Bend, 
 Indiana. A hickory grove grew near by, 
 but the pick and shovel handles came 
 from New York. The cotton shirt on the 
 
The New SotctJi. 189 
 
 dead man came from Cincinnati, the coat 
 and breeches from Chicago, the shoes 
 from Boston ; the folded hands were 
 encased in white gloves from New York, 
 and round the poor neck, that had worn 
 all its living days the bondage of lost 
 opportunity, was twisted a cheap cravat 
 from Philadelphia. That country, so 
 rich in undeveloped resources, furnished 
 nothing for the funeral except the corpse 
 and the hole in the ground, and would 
 probably have imported both of those if 
 it could have done so. And as the poor 
 fellow was lowered to his rest, on coffin 
 bands from Lowell, he carried nothing 
 into the next world as a reminder of his 
 home in this, save the halted blood in his 
 veins, the chilled marrow in liis bones. 
 
IQO The New South. 
 
 and the echo of the dull clods that fell on 
 his coffin lid. 
 
 There are now more than $3,000,000 
 invested in marble quarries and machin- 
 ery around that grave. Its pitiful loneli- 
 ness is broken with the rumble of ponder- 
 ous machines, and a strange tumult per- 
 vades the wilderness. Twenty miles 
 away, the largest marble-cutting works in 
 the world put to shame in a thousand 
 "shapes its modest headstone. Forty 
 miles away four coffin factories, with 
 their exquisite work, tempt the world to 
 die. The iron hills are gashed and 
 swarm with workmen. Forty cotton 
 mills in a near radius weave infinite 
 cloth that neighboring shops make into 
 countless shirts. There are shoe fac- 
 
The New South. 191 
 
 tories, nail factories, shovel and pick fac- 
 tories, and carriage factories, to supply 
 the other wants. And that country can 
 now get up as nice a funeral, native and 
 home-made, as you would wish to have. 
 
 IRON BECOMING KING. 
 
 The industrial growth of the South in 
 the past ten years has been without pre- 
 cedent or parallel. It has been a great 
 revolution, effected in peace. How, from 
 poverty, such progress has been wrought 
 can be told only in figures. Words can- 
 not compass it. Let us then to figures ! 
 We start with iron, which is the base of 
 all industrial progress. In 1880 the South 
 made 212,000 tons of iron. In 1887 she 
 made 845,000 tons — thus quadrupling her 
 
192 The New South. 
 
 output in seven years. But this is small 
 compared to the future. The South is 
 now building, or has already finished since 
 1887, thirty-two iron furnaces with a capac- 
 ity of 3,400 tons per day or over 900,000 
 tons a year. In 1890 her output will be 
 about 1,800,000 tons, although it was but 
 212,000 tons in 1880. In 1889 the Bir 
 mingham district alone will produce more 
 iron than the entire South produced in 
 1 887. This growth is not remarkable when 
 we consider that iron can be made in the 
 South from one to three dollars a ton 
 cheaper than in the North. Mr. R. P. Roth- 
 well, editor of the Mining and Engineering 
 Journal of New York, saw pig iron made 
 in the South at an actual cost of $7.30 a 
 ton, to which he added, for '' renewals 
 
The Nezv South. 193 
 
 and incidentals," one dollar, making- the 
 cost $8.30 a ton. An English expert of 
 the highest character says : 
 
 "The South will not only control the 
 iron market of the North, but of Eng- 
 land." 
 
 Mr. Abram S. Hewitt, who has just 
 invested largely in Southern furnaces, 
 said, referring to Alabama : 
 
 " This will be a region of coke-made 
 iron on a grander scale than has ever 
 been witnessed on the habitable globe." 
 
 Mr. Lowthian Bell, of England, after 
 investigating for a year, reported to the 
 Iron and Steel Institute of England : 
 
 " Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama will 
 prove a match for any part of the world 
 in iron-makinof. Iron can be made there 
 
'194 'I^^^^ Nczu Sotith. 
 
 at little more than half the cost of the 
 North." 
 
 Mr. Samuel Thomas, of the Lehigh 
 Valley furnaces, has just finished at Bir- 
 mingham the finest two furnaces in the 
 world, and says iron can be made much 
 cheaper there than in the North. The 
 South is already naming the price for 
 iron in the North. Had General Toombs 
 said, when he was reported to have said 
 he would call the roll of his slaves at 
 Bunker Hill, instead, he would bring 
 iron from the slave States, through Pitts- 
 burg, and undersell Pennsylvania at 
 Bunker Hill, he would have made quite 
 as surprising and a much more truthful 
 remark. For just that thing has been 
 done ! The magnitude of the iron busi- 
 
The New South. 195 
 
 ness in the South is shown in the opera- 
 tions of the Tennessee Coal and Iron 
 Company. It has a capital of $10,000,000. 
 From its five furnaces, in blast in 1887, it 
 turned out more iron than the Thomas 
 Iron Company, of Pennsylvania, with 
 twelve furnaces. And it is now adding, 
 or has since then added, five more fur- 
 naces and steel works. It ships its pro- 
 duct to Canada, California, and every 
 intervening State and Territory. 
 
 It is an axiom in our new iron region 
 that " An iron furnace is like godliness. 
 Have that, and all the rest shall be added 
 unto you !" From this theory the 
 " magic cities " of the South have sprung. 
 Of the growth of these, let the story of 
 
196 The New South. 
 
 Birmingham give proof. That city was 
 founded in about '72. 
 
 MARVELOUS GROWTH OF A SOUTHERN 
 CITY. 
 
 With $12,000 the Ely ton Land Com- 
 pany, composed of about twelve South- 
 ern men, bought 5,000 acres of land, and 
 laid off a city. There were mountains of 
 iron and acres of coal adjoining ; and this 
 was the basis for the city. When the 
 first sale of lots occurred, the auctioneer 
 got lost in the Avilderness about dusk, and 
 discovered by his own placards, which he 
 accidentally stumbled over, that he was on 
 the corner of Sixty-fifth street and Fifth 
 Avenue. The $12,000 of paid-in capital 
 was converted into $200,000 of stock, 
 
lite New Sotcth. 197 
 
 making 2,000 shares of $100 each. On 
 this capital $5,500,000 in cash dividends 
 have been paid. Every dollar invested 
 was once worth $4,000 in open market, 
 and every dollar is now worth $2,500, and 
 more than $5,000 in cash dividends have 
 been paid on each dollar invested. In 
 one year the taxable value of Jefferson 
 county, in which Birmingham is located, 
 rose $14,000,000. Land has sold at $3,000 
 a front foot. A man worth $4,000 started 
 a home to cost $1,500. Before he had fin- 
 ished it he was worth $500,000, enlarged 
 his plans for his home, and paid $18,000 
 for the hard-wood finish of its facings and 
 staircases. Such a tremendous hive of 
 industry as Birmingham is can hardly be 
 found elsewhere in America. It is nota- 
 
198 The New South. 
 
 ble that the projectors — the men who 
 have made fortunes in this city — are 
 Southern men, without an exception. 
 
 The iron furnaces, better than building 
 cities, have opened the way to collateral 
 industries. In 1870 the South mined but 
 3,193,100 tons of coal; in 1880, 6,049,471 
 tons. In 1887 she mined 14,620,000 tons. 
 In 1880 her production of coke was 299,- 
 430 tons ; in 1885 (the last figures I have 
 in mind) 603,105 tons. Not less, certainly, 
 than this development of coal and coke 
 have the iron furnaces given stimulus to 
 smaller iron industries. The cost of 
 shipping so heavy a thing as iron to the 
 North, to be made into gins, plows, 
 stoves, and like heavy goods, and the 
 cost of shipping them back, tempted cap- 
 
The Nezo South. 199 
 
 ital into shops and factories. Mr. Perry, 
 a large stove-maker of Albany, N. Y., 
 who lately established immense stove 
 works in Tennessee, stated in print that 
 he saved $20 a ton on freight by supply- 
 ing his Southern trade from Southern 
 works. Many factories have found the 
 freight-saving the fullest percentage of 
 profit they needed. Rolling mills were 
 the first industries that followed the fur- 
 naces. Gins and cotton presses were 
 close to these. Plows and cotton plant- 
 ers followed. Then came stoves, hollow- 
 ware, nails, piping, and sash stuff. After 
 these came bridge works, engine and 
 boiler factories, chain works, car works 
 and locomotive works. Excellent saws 
 are now made in the South. The logical 
 
200 The New South, 
 
 movement of supplying the local market 
 with goods made at home, of home-made 
 iron, rather than paying these heavy 
 freights, gave the local factories such suc- 
 cess that they rapidly extended their 
 field. Atlanta now sends plows into 
 Mexico, and ships agricultural imple- 
 ments to Central America. She is even 
 competing Avith the North in nearer 
 markets, and we have our eyes on the 
 Pan-American delegates now traveling 
 over the continent. They shall not 
 escape to their homes without being told 
 in indifferent Spanish that the South is 
 their nearest and their best market. 
 
 The growth of the iron industries pro- 
 voked other ventures. In Atlanta the 
 best gold watches are now made, the 
 
The New South. 201 
 
 finest pianos, double concave razors and 
 sewing-machines. In Birmingham pins, 
 in Gainesville matches. It is curious to 
 note how the industries of the South 
 have been built up, step by step, and how 
 the system has grown of its own growth. 
 A few years ago a firm in Atlanta began 
 making paper bags. It sold these all 
 over America, having a branch* depot in 
 Chicago. It then added cloth bags. It 
 then built a cotton factory to supply the 
 cloth for its bags. Later it doubled the 
 factory. And now it has just added a 
 bleachery at a cost of $100,000 to prepare 
 the cloth. A number of men established 
 successful proprietary medicines in 
 Atlanta. Two box factories followed — 
 and now a glass and bottle factory, with 
 
202 The Nezv South. 
 
 $90,000 capital, supplies them with 
 bottles. Each item grows out of another. 
 And so vast and varied are our 
 resources that the system is a miracle of 
 success and expansion. The last census 
 shows that Atlanta stands third in the 
 list of American cities in the proportion 
 of actual workers to entire population. 
 Lawrence, Mass., is first ; Lowell, Mass., 
 second ; and Fall River, Mass., and 
 Atlanta, Ga., tie at third place ! 
 
 UNPARALLELED DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 Here is a wider instance of how one 
 industry in the South has brought others 
 into being : Cotton seed on the old plan- 
 tation was burned, or dumped into rivers 
 as worthless. It was after slavery was 
 
The New So2ith. 203 
 
 abolished that some one discovered the 
 seed was a good fertilizer, and it was 
 then covered into the worn cotton fields. 
 Then it was found it made a good food 
 for cattle and sheep. After awhile some 
 one pressed thirty-five gallons of oil out 
 of a ton of seed, and sold the oil for 
 thirty-five cents a gallon. He found that 
 the seed, stripped of the oil, was better 
 food and fertilizer than when it was so 
 rich and heavy. Experiments with the 
 oil developed that it could be refined up 
 to $1 a gallon, at which figure it is sent 
 to Italy and shipped back as olive oil. 
 The hulls, first used as fuel and their 
 residue sold as potash, now prove to be 
 excellent food for cattle. The refuse 
 makes the best and cheapest soap stock. 
 
204 The New South, 
 
 To treat this pregnant seed and adapt its 
 riches, a vast and complicated system of 
 factories was needed. Over one hundred 
 and eighty immense cotton-seed-oil mills, 
 costing $100,000 each, grind the seed, 
 and over fifty refineries, costing half as 
 much, clarify and improve it. An enor- 
 mous system of acid chambers and fer- 
 tilizer mills have followed, to work the 
 cotton-seed meal of the oil mills into 
 fertilizers. In Georgia alone $1,826,000 
 have been invested in ten years in fertil- 
 izer factories that work up mainly Caro- 
 lina phosphates, Georgia cotton meal, 
 and native iron pyrites for sulphur. 
 Ten years ago Georgia imported every 
 ton of her fertilizers, usually high-priced 
 guanos. Last year 202,000 tons, of fer- 
 
The New SoutL 20; 
 
 tilizers, worth $5,500,cxxd, were sold in 
 Georgia, and the Georgia factories pro- 
 duced 165,000 tons, worth over $4,000,- 
 000. Then there are soap factories to 
 convert the refuse of the oil mills into 
 soap. And now, near each mill, are 
 immense pens, in which thousands of cat- 
 tle are fattened on the hulls. These, in 
 turn, will lead to packing factories, and 
 increase the fertilizer factories. The oil 
 output of the cotton seed, fifteen years 
 ago thrown away, represents $60,000,000 
 a year, and the value of the meal and 
 hulls for fertilizing or fattening stock, is 
 $40,000,000 more. More than $40,000,000 
 are invested in plants for the manufacture 
 of its various products. Surely, God 
 has led the people of the South into this 
 
2o6 The Nciu South, 
 
 unexpected way of progress and pros- 
 perity. 
 
 From 1880 to 1887 there were invested 
 in the South $260,000,000 in manufactur- 
 ing. This put 225,000 mechanics to work 
 that had hitherto been idle or at work 
 elsewhere. As has been shown, each of 
 these new industries is reason for another. 
 The industrial system of the South re- 
 sponds, grows, thrills with new life, and 
 it is based on sure and certain founda- 
 tions. For it is built at the field, by the 
 mine, in the field — from which come the 
 cheapest and best and fullest supply of 
 cotton, iron and wood ! 
 
 The industries of other sections — dis- 
 tant from the source of supply — may be 
 based on artificial conditions that in time 
 
The New Soiith. 
 
 may be broken. But the industrial 
 system of the South is built on a rock — 
 and it cannot be shaken ! It is in the 
 heart of the source of supply of iron, coal 
 and wood — the great elements of all in- 
 dustries ! 
 
 In the next article will be treated the 
 agriculture of the South and its growth, 
 no less amazing than the story told above. 
 
2o8 The New SoictJi. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I was once riding through Lancaster 
 county, Pa. — shown by the census of 1880 
 to be the richest agricultural county in 
 America. I was anxious to know by 
 what means Lancaster had wrested from 
 Duchess county, N. Y., this distinction. 
 '* What's the secret of your supremacy ?" 
 I asked a farmer. '' Tobacco," he re- 
 plied. 
 
 Shortly after, I was riding through a 
 scorched and stricken strip of North 
 Carolina — now happily reclaimed. T 
 wondered what was the cause of the un- 
 
The Nezv South. 209 
 
 thriftiness, and inquired. ''Tobacco/' 
 was the reply. 
 
 The difference was that in Carolina, 
 tobacco was made the sole crop. In 
 Lancaster it is made the crown and 
 money crop of a diversified agriculture. 
 The one crop system never made any 
 people prosperous. It very nearly ruined 
 the farmers of the South. I have shown 
 in a former letter how the high price of 
 cotton in 1866-9, put every available acre 
 in the South in cotton— how the merchant 
 advanced money and supplies, taking lien 
 on the crop not yet planted. See how 
 this worked. The farmer started with 
 nothing, the war having robbed him. 
 He bought on credit the bread and meat 
 his labor consumed while it made his cot- 
 
2IO The Nezv South, 
 
 ton, and borrowed money with which to 
 pay the laborers' wages. He was thus in 
 bondage to the money-lenders of the East 
 and to the corn raisers and hay growers 
 of the West. In this mad race between a 
 money crop and a mortgage, the smaller 
 industries of the farm were utterly 
 neglected — the farmer bought his hams, 
 his lard, his bacon, and often his butter 
 and his fruit from the merchant. Cotton 
 was king — and then a despot. 
 
 WHAT COTTON DOES FOR THE SOUTH. 
 
 Cotton is a plant worthy of homage. 
 The soil has not yet given to the hand of 
 man its equal. Let us see. This year's 
 crop, 7,500,000 bales, will furnish 3,000,- 
 000,000 pounds of lint, which would clothe 
 
The New South. 211 
 
 in a cotton suit every human being on 
 earth, and yield to Southern farmers $350,- 
 000,000 in cash. The lint sold, there will 
 be left 3,750,000 tons of seed. This will 
 supply 150,000,000 gallons of oil, which, 
 sold at forty cents a gallon, will bring $60,- 
 000,000. Or it may be reduced to lard, 
 when it will produce 1,125,000,000 pounds 
 of edible fat. This grease, healthful and 
 nutritious, is equal in pounds to 5,625,000 
 hogs of 200 pounds each. Allow 200 
 pounds of edible fat to one person per 
 annum, and this would keep in meat 
 5,625,000 citizens. But this wonderful 
 plant is not exhausted. After the seeds 
 are stripped of lint, and the oil pressed 
 from the seeds, there remain the hulls 
 and the meal. Of each ton, the oil takes 
 
212 
 
 The New South, 
 
 only 250 pounds, leaving 1,000 pounds of 
 hull and 750 pounds of cake or meal. 
 This is unequaled as a fertilizer, of which 
 we should have left 3,000,000 tons. But 
 it is also the very best food for cattle or 
 sheep. Fed to either, it will first make 
 meat or wool, and then, as animal 
 manure, go back to enrich the soil. Of 
 stock food, it will furnish 6,568,500,000 
 pounds, enough to stall-feed 1,175,000 
 beeves for one year. These in turn 
 would furnish meat for 6,000,000 more of 
 people. Such are some of the possibili- 
 ties of this royal plant. 
 
 Those who read these stunning figures 
 will hear with astonishment that the 
 farmers who grow this plant are not the 
 richest farmers in the world. And yet 
 
The New South. 
 
 even more is to be said of its advantage. 
 It gives to those who grow it a monop- 
 oly that is beyond the reach of competi- 
 tion. How important this is in these 
 days when steam and electricity have 
 annihilated distance, can be seen from a 
 study of the situation. What other pro- 
 duct does the American farmer grow, in 
 growing which he is not thrown in direct 
 competition with the cheap labor or 
 boundless area of other countries } 
 
 THE GREAT COMMERCIAL CHESSBOARD. 
 
 Steam has made of the earth a chess- 
 board, on which men play for markets. 
 Our Western wheat grower competes in 
 London with the Russian and the East 
 India. The Ohio wool grower watches 
 
2 14 The New South. 
 
 the Australian shepherd, and the bleat of 
 the now historic sheep of Vermont is 
 answered from the steppes of Asia. The 
 herds that emerge from the dust of prairies 
 might hear in their pauses the hoof-beats 
 of antipodean herds marching to meet 
 them. Under Holland's dykes, the 
 cheese and butter makers fight American 
 dairies. The hen cackles around the 
 world. California challenges vine-clad 
 France. The Dark Continent is dis- 
 closed through meshes of light. There 
 is competition everywhere. The hus- 
 bandman driven from his market balances 
 price against starvation, and undercuts 
 his rival. This conflict often runs to 
 panic, and profit vanishes. The Iowa 
 farmer burning his corn for fuel is not an 
 
The New South, 215 
 
 unusual type. Of all the American 
 farmers the cotton grower is the one who 
 is not driven almost to despair by com- 
 petition. The mortgage-laden farms of 
 the West, the deserted farms of New 
 England — these tell the story of foreign 
 competition. Even in our own land the 
 occupation of new areas increases con- 
 stantly the wheat and corn and grass 
 acreage. It is estimated that the Powell 
 survey of irrigable land makes an area 
 eight times as large as Indiana. Add 
 this to wheat and corn-producing lands, 
 and at the same time withdraw the 
 Southern States, now raising their own 
 grain, from the list of purchasers, and 
 what is the prospect ahead of the Ameri- 
 can grain grower ? 
 
2i6 The Nczu SoittJi. 
 
 But it may be urged that the cotton 
 grower in the South has competition in 
 Egypt, India, Brazil and Russia. Let 
 the record answer. In 1872 the Ameri- 
 can supply of cotton was 3,241,000 bales. 
 The foreign supply, 3,036,000 bales. At 
 that time the world had been for twelve 
 years seeking a substitute for American 
 cotton. For five years the Southern 
 ports had been shut by war, and all that 
 ingenuity could do had been done to pro- 
 mote cotton culture in foreign countries. 
 The result was that America made 
 hardly 200,000 bales in excess of her for- 
 eign rivals. That was in 1872. In the 
 year 1888 the American supply was 
 8,000,000 bales ; the foreign supply, 
 2,100,000 bales; both expressed in 
 
The New South. 217 
 
 English bales. So that, in spite of new 
 areas opened elsewhere, of fuller experi- 
 ence, of spreading civilization, of better 
 transportation, of unlimited money spent 
 in experiment, the foreign supply of cot- 
 ton has decreased since 1872 nearly 
 1,000,000 bales, while the Southern sup- 
 ply has increased nearly 5,000,000 bales. 
 That shows that the monopoly of the 
 South is not only fixed, but deepening. 
 Cotton is yearly becoming more popular 
 Since 1872 the population in Europe has 
 increased 13 percent.; cotton consump- 
 tion has increased 50 per cent. Cotton is 
 steadily driving out wool and flax. 
 Since 1880 cotton consumption in Europe 
 has increased 28 per cent., the consump- 
 tion of wool only 4 per cent., while the 
 
2i8 The Nezu South, 
 
 consumption of flax has decreased 1 1 per 
 cent. As for new areas, the uttermost 
 missionary wooes the heathen with a cot- 
 ton shirt in one hand and the Bible in the 
 other, and no savage, I believe, has ever 
 been converted to one without having 
 first put on the other. Not only is the 
 Southern monopoly in cotton fixed, but 
 it is broadening. In the past three years 
 the crop has increased 1,400,000 bales, 
 and yet the fixed supply of cotton has 
 grown less each year. The present 
 year's crop of 7,500,000 bales will be 
 taken and consumed, and 8,000,000 bales 
 will be needed next year. Within five 
 years the South will sell 10,000,000 bales 
 of cotton in a single crop, and will 
 receive from lint and seed not less than 
 
The New Soict/i, 219 
 
 $6c)0,ocx),ooo. This stupendous income 
 is not doled out to each farmer at starva- 
 tion prices to meet driving- competition 
 elsewhere, but it is paid to farmers who 
 control a monopoly, and who, practically, 
 fix their own prices. This enormous 
 stream of money flowing into the South 
 every year — the result of a monopoly 
 that can neither be destroyed nor dimin- 
 ished — must in the near future make the 
 South exceedingly rich. 
 
 A SOUTHERN TEST. 
 
 The Atlanta Constitution, which has a 
 weekly circulation of 130,000, has 
 preached for ten years from this text : 
 '' If the South can keep at home the 
 $400,000,000 it gets annually for its cot- 
 
2 20 The New South. 
 
 ton crop, it will soon be rich beyond 
 competition. As long as she sends it out 
 for the supplies that make the crop, she 
 will remain poor." Slow but tremen- 
 dous changes have come. In one year 
 the oat crop of Georgia went up from 
 2,200,000 bushels to 9,000,000. The 
 South, in 1888, raised 393,000,000 bushels 
 of grain in excess of what was raised in 
 1872, and added 182,000,000 head to her 
 herds and flocks. This was accomplished 
 by pulling slowly out of debt, and plant- 
 ing a patch of corn or wheat here and 
 there, as the obligation with the mer- 
 chant permitted. This immense increase 
 in food crops and stock has not dimin- 
 ished the cotton crop, which, as I have 
 shown, has been increased by 5,000,000 
 
IJie New South. 221 
 
 bales. This year, it is agreed, the South 
 has grown such crops as her soil never 
 before produced. The seasons have been 
 perfect, and the land has simply pro- 
 duced all it could carry. Back of this 
 bountiful crop is the fact that it was 
 made at least 25 per cent, cheaper than 
 any crop since the War. The Farmers' 
 Alliance, with 120,000 members in Geor- 
 gia alone, pledged its members to closest 
 economy, effected co-operative buying 
 which reduced prices, and used co-opera- 
 tive credit which abolished usury. The 
 farmer, therefore, bought less and 
 bought cheaper. 
 
 The result is not only instant but gen- 
 eral elation. It means practical clearing 
 up of the current debts of the Southern 
 
222 The Nciv South. 
 
 farmer, and hereafter that he will plant 
 as a free man. This, in turn, means wiser 
 and better agriculture. 
 
 Naturally, the grain and grass crops 
 have brought to the South the smaller 
 husbandries of the farm. The hen-coop 
 and the dairy follow wheat and clover. 
 How bare the Southern farms have been 
 of these small industries can hardly be 
 understood. I have studied the com- 
 mission houses of Atlanta, only to find 
 poultry from Ohio, onions from St. 
 Louis, eggs from Indiana, butter from 
 New York, potatoes from Illinois, apples 
 from Michigan, hams from Louisville, 
 canned goods from Maine or California. 
 Not one item from Georgia. 
 
 The reasons for this were manifest. 
 
The New South. 223 
 
 Cotton absorbed eveiything. Without 
 barns and granaries there was no barn- 
 yard. Nor was there much inducement 
 to raise truck or poultry. There were 
 few and insufficient markets. There 
 were no canning or preserving factories in 
 which the surplus could be marketed. 
 Facilities for transportation were scant, 
 schedules slow, and prices high. With 
 increase in urban population — with shops 
 and factories and artisans — with great 
 systems of railroads and consequent re- 
 duction of time and freights — with can- 
 ning factories and evaporators — came 
 farm husbandry in its true sense to the 
 South. Georgia now realizes more than 
 $1,000,000 a year from melons alone. 
 From Chattanooga berry trains run solid 
 
2 24 ^-^^ New South. 
 
 to the North. Poultry trains traverse 
 East Tennessee, three or four a day. 
 Ships are loaded at Charleston and Sav- 
 annah with early vegetables and fruits 
 for the East. The largest peach orchard 
 in the world is in Georgia, owned by a 
 brother of Charles Stewart Parnell. One 
 peach-grower at Marshallville, Ga., de- 
 posited in bank $64,000 this year as pro- 
 fits from peaches. In Mississippi cream- 
 eries are established successfully. From 
 Putnam county, Georgia, the express 
 company took, last year, 90,000 pounds of 
 Jersey butter, and six years ago that 
 county imported all its butter. The ad- 
 vantage of the South in these petty indus- 
 tries of the farm is manifold. The season 
 is five or six weeks earlier than in the 
 
The New South, 225 
 
 North, and the South thus gets first and 
 best prices in the Northern market. 
 Lands and labor are cheaper here, the 
 seasons are longer, two or three crops 
 being grown from the same land. These 
 advantages have set out orchards, vine- 
 yards, patches from one end of the South 
 to the other. 
 
 SOUTHERN AGRICULTURE BROADENING. 
 
 An excursion of Georgia farmers went 
 to Ohio this fall on a special train, to 
 study the dairies and the cheese factories 
 of that State. They came back with this 
 declaration : " If Ohio farmers find but- 
 ter and cheese-making profitable on land 
 worth $300 an acre, with a grazing sea- 
 son of six months, we can certainly find 
 
2 26 The New South, 
 
 it profitable with equally good lands at 
 $5 to $io an acre and a grazing season of 
 ten months." In addition to this, the 
 cattle need very little shelter in winter. 
 The result will be an immediate impetus 
 in the South to grass and cattle. 
 
 Every step in the South has been made 
 through slow and costly experiment. 
 The value of cotton seed was discovered 
 after millions of dollars had been wasted. 
 Irish potatoes were grown for ten )^ears 
 before a variety was found that would 
 stand shipping. For six years the farm- 
 ers shipped culls and imperfect melons 
 before they found that it paid best to ship 
 fine melons. The curse of the farm be- 
 fore the war was Bermuda grass. There 
 was no way to kill it, and when it got 
 
The New South, 227 
 
 hold of a piece of land it was abandoned 
 as hopeless. It is now found that Ber- 
 muda grass gives the best pasturage for 
 cattle and the best results in hay, and a 
 farm set in Bermuda will bring $20 an 
 acre, while the same land without it will 
 sell for $5. From six to eight tons of 
 sweet, nutritious hay, commanding $20 
 per ton, can be taken from an acre of 
 Bermuda. It is estimated that 50,000 
 acres will be set in Bermuda grass in 
 Georgia this year. 
 
 Grass means more cattle, and more 
 cattle means better cattle. Mr. Edward 
 Atkinson, of Boston, says : 
 
 " The farmers of no section on earth 
 have ever had such opportunity as the 
 Southern farmers who adopt this plan. 
 
2 28 The New South, 
 
 Plant alternate lots of grass and cotton ; 
 run cattle and sheep on the grass lots; 
 feed them in the winter with cotton seed 
 hulls and meal. Put back the soil in 
 animal manure the fertilizing qualities of 
 cotton seed cake and hulls. Every year or 
 two alternate cotton lots with grass. By 
 these lots have orchards, corn, wheat, and 
 truck patches. The cotton lint, the oil, 
 the wool, mutton and beef, and the sur- 
 plus fruit, furnish money crops not 
 equaled on earth. The grass, cotton 
 seed hulls and cake keep the stock, 
 while the wheat and corn and truck 
 patches support the family." 
 
 I know that this combination is not sur- 
 passed elsewhere on earth. Add to it 
 perfect climate, cheap and abundant lands 
 
The Nezu South. 229 
 
 and labor, good schools and churches, 
 a hospitable people, and you have con 
 ditions of advantage that ought to fill 
 the South with thrifty farmers from 
 the North. The one difficulty, the 
 inadequacy of the home market, is 
 rapidly disappearing. As I showed you, 
 in eight years the South increased the 
 number of its artisans 242,000. Cities 
 are growing as if by magic, and good 
 markets are being built up in every 
 county. The other difficulty of poor 
 and high transportation has been sur- 
 mounted. The railroad systems of the 
 South are equal to those of any other 
 section and are under control of State 
 commission law. 
 
The New South. 
 
 Such, in a hurried sense, is an out- 
 line of the growth of agriculture at the 
 South in the past ten years, and its 
 possibilities for the future. 
 
The New South, 231 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The race problem casts the only shad- 
 ow that rests on the South. Truly 
 the negro avenges the wrongs put upon 
 him by the New England traders who 
 brought him from Africa, and the South- 
 ern slave-holders who held him in bond- 
 age. For fifty years he estranged the 
 sections of this Republic. For five years 
 he was a central figure, if not the direct 
 cause of desolating war. And for twenty- 
 six years of freedom he has presented 
 a problem that perplexes the wisest 
 minds, again estranges the sections, 
 touches with doubt all Southern enter- 
 
The New South. 
 
 prise, and that problem deepens, it is to 
 be feared, as the years go by. Shall we 
 ever see the end of the trouble that came 
 with the slave traffic and slave-holding ? 
 Let us see precisely what the problem 
 is. It is to carry in peace and honor and 
 prosperity two dissimilar races with 
 equal civil and political rights and nearly 
 equal in number, on the same soil. No 
 two races have ever lived in peace in the 
 same fields, save when one was in com- 
 plete subjection to the other. Wherever 
 whites and blacks have met, in any age 
 or country, save in the South, there have 
 been collision and violence — inexpressible 
 and irreconcilable. Thomas Jefferson, 
 who predicted sixty years ago that the 
 slaves would be freed, also predicted that 
 
The New South, 
 
 the two races could live together in 
 peace. Mr. Everett held that coloniza- 
 tion alone could save the freedman. Mr. 
 Clay and . Mr. Webster were of like opin- 
 ion. They did not dream, perhaps, when 
 considering the difficulties of peaceful 
 and gradual emancipation, of the added 
 difficulties that would come from the 
 sudden striking off of the shackles with a 
 bloody sword, and the instant enfranchise- 
 ment of the whole race of freedmen. 
 They simply declared, in the light of past 
 history, that no two races could be car- 
 ried on the same soil, in peace, if they 
 had equal political rights. 
 
234 ^^^ New South. 
 
 CONDITIONS OF HARMONY BETWEEN TWO 
 RACES. 
 
 If a statesman were asked what condi- 
 tions he would require to reverse the 
 universal verdict of the history of 
 races, and to carry two races on the same 
 soil in peace, he would probably say : 
 
 1. That the races shall be as nearly 
 alike as possible ; so that the race antipa- 
 thies would not be strong, nor the race 
 differences marked. 
 
 2. That the two races should be as 
 nearly equal in intelligence and property 
 as possible, so that neither could easily 
 oppress or tyrannize over the other. 
 
 3. That each race should earnestly de- 
 
The New Soicth. 235 
 
 sire a fusion of blood in which all differ- 
 ences would be lost. 
 
 4. That there should be no long-stand- 
 ing cause of suspicion or hostility be- 
 tween the races, so that frankness and 
 sincerity might have their full weight. 
 
 5. That the experiment should be vol- 
 untary on both sides, so that both races 
 shall come to it cheerfully and without 
 sullenness or restraint. 
 
 6. That there should be no outside 
 interference to irritate and excite, but 
 that the problem should be left with the 
 two races at interest. 
 
 Those are the conditions that any wise 
 man would consider prerequisite to a 
 settlement of the racial problem. They 
 make the basis for a very interesting 
 
2^6 The New South. 
 
 book, '' An Appeal to Pharaoh," published 
 anonymously. Now let us see the actual 
 conditions under which the white and 
 black people of the South are set to solve 
 their problem. 
 
 1. The races are not only not " as near 
 alike as possible," but they are the two 
 most dissimilar types of the human race. 
 At every point the racial difference is 
 positive and striking-. The two colors — 
 white and black — are hardly more 
 extreme than the differences that follow. 
 
 2. The races are not only not " nearly 
 equal in intelligence or property," but 
 more unequal than any two races that are 
 in juxtaposition to-day. Nineteen-twen- 
 tieths of the property in the South, and 
 almost the same percentage of intelli- 
 
The New South. 237 
 
 gence, is with the white race, leaving the 
 other race ignorant and irresponsible. 
 
 3. Not only do the two races not 
 *' earnestly desire fusion," but both races 
 are pledged against it as the one impossi- 
 ble thing. 
 
 4. Not only is there not " no long- 
 standing professed cause of hostility," but 
 there is the deepest cause of hostility 
 that can exist — in that one race has been 
 in servitude to the other for a century. 
 
 5. Not only is the experiment not " a 
 voluntary one on both sides," but it was 
 forced on the two races after a long and 
 fierce war, in Avhich one race was stunned 
 and crippled, and the other thrown into 
 dazzling freedom. 
 
 6. Not only is there not *' no interfer- 
 
238 The New South. 
 
 ence from outside sources," but the 
 most irritating and partisan interference 
 is exercised all the time. The North 
 persistently misjudges and misunder- 
 stands the race problem in the South, 
 and interferes unwisely and unjustly. 
 
 In spite of these difficulties — which 
 must appear insuperable to impartial 
 minds — the South hopes and believes she 
 can solve this problem. Her best and 
 wisest men give it their best and wisest 
 thought. Certain lines of action have 
 been laid down and are unchangeable. 
 Among these are two principles that are 
 essential. 
 
The New South. 239 
 
 SOUTHERN BELIEFS REGARDING RACE 
 TROUBLES. 
 
 First — That the whites shall have 
 clear and unmistakable control of public 
 affairs. They own the property. They 
 have the intelligence. Theirs is the re- 
 ponsibility. For these reasons they are 
 entitled to control. Beyond these 
 reasons is a racial one. They are the 
 superior race, and will not and cannot sub- 
 mit to the domination of an inferior race. 
 Never has a white race been long 
 subordinated to a colored race. Less 
 than any white race, will the English- 
 speaking people submit to the domination 
 of a colored race. Less than any colored 
 race, can the African race, forever in 
 
240 The New Son til. 
 
 servitude, Avin or maintain such su- 
 premacy. 
 
 It may be asked, then : '' Why do the 
 Southern whites fear the political dom? 
 ination of the blacks ?" They do not fear 
 that directly. But the blacks are ignor- 
 ant, and therefore easily deluded ; im- 
 pulsive, and therefore easily led ; strong 
 of race instinct, and therefore clannish ; 
 without information, and therefore with- 
 out strong political convictions ; passion- 
 ate, and therefore easily excited; poor, 
 irresponsible, and with no idea of the in- 
 tegrity of the suffrage, and therefore 
 easily bought. The fear is that this vast 
 swarm of ignorant, purchasable, and 
 credulous voters will be compacted and 
 controlled by desperate and unscrupulous 
 
The New Soitfh. 241 
 
 white men, and made to hold the balance 
 of power wherever the whites are 
 divided. This fear has kept, and will 
 keep, the whites '' solid." It would keep 
 the intelligence and responsibility of any 
 community. North or South, solid. 
 
 The Southern whites remember the 
 shameless villainies of negro supremacy, 
 under carpet-bag leaderships. The world 
 will never hear, or hearing, believe, the 
 excesses of those days. Deep as was the 
 degradation to which these sovereign 
 States were carried, and heavy as is the 
 burden they left on this impoverished 
 people, it was only when the white race, 
 rallying from the graves of its dead and 
 the ashes of its homes, closed its deci- 
 mated ranks, and fronting federal bav- 
 
242 The Nczv South. 
 
 onets, and defying federal power, stood 
 like a stone wall before the uttermost 
 temples of its liberty and credit, and the 
 hideous drama closed — that the miserable 
 assault was checked. 
 
 The whites understand that the slight- 
 est division on their part will revive those 
 desperate days. In Virginia there was 
 disagreement on the debt question, and 
 Mahone, taking the demagogue side of 
 that issue, rallied the negroes and cap- 
 tured the State. In North Carolina a 
 division on prohibition promised to lead 
 to the same result. So that the whites 
 have agreed everywhere to sink their 
 differences on moral and economic issues, 
 and present solid and unbroken ranks to 
 this alien and dangerous element. This 
 
The New South. 243 
 
 once done, the rest is easy. Banded in- 
 telligence and responsibility will win 
 everywhere and all the time. Against it 
 numbers cannot prevail. 
 
 We hear much of the intimidation of 
 the colored vote in the South. There is 
 intimidation, but it is the menace of the 
 compact and solid wealth and intelligence 
 of a great social system. Against this 
 menace, peaceful and majestic, counter- 
 organization cannot stand. That is why 
 the negro fails to vote in the South. He 
 will not vote except under persistent and 
 systematic and inspiring organization, 
 This organization cannot be effected or 
 maintained against a powerful and united 
 social system that embraces the wealth 
 and intelligence of the community. 
 
244 ^The New South. 
 
 Without organization, no party can be 
 carried at the polls — less than all, the 
 Republican party of the South, made up 
 almost entirely of negroes. Did the 
 hope of spoils inspire, then they might 
 organize, but they themselves have 
 learned that Republican victory brings 
 them nothing but the sorriest of crumbs. 
 The negro as a political force has 
 dropped out of serious consideration, and 
 will there remain until he is so uplifted 
 and educated and led into steadfast 
 ways, that the whites will dare to open 
 or divide the phalanx that now holds un- 
 challenged control of political affairs in 
 the South. 
 
 Second — That the whites and blacks 
 must walk in separate paths in the South. 
 
The New South. 
 
 245 
 
 As near as may be, these paths should be 
 made equal — but separate they must be 
 now and always. This means separate 
 schools, separate churches, separate ac- 
 commodation everywhere — but equal ac- 
 commodation where the same money is 
 charged, or where the State provides for 
 the citizen. Georgia gives her State 
 University $8,000 a year ; precisely the 
 same sum to her colored university. 
 When the colored university insisted on 
 educating whites and blacks together, the 
 Legislature withheld its appropriation, 
 but the money was held in the treasury 
 for two years, sacred to the uses of a col- 
 ored university, and has just been voted 
 in bulk to Morris-Brown College, which 
 
246 The New South, 
 
 agreed to admit no white students, but to 
 stand on separate education. 
 
 The negroes of Georgia pay but one- 
 fortieth of the taxes, and yet they take 
 forty-nine per cent, of the school fund. 
 Railroads in Georgia provide separate 
 but equal cars for whites and blacks, and 
 a white man is not permitted to occupy a 
 colored car. This separation is not offen- 
 sive to either race, but is accepted by 
 both races as the best conducive to the 
 common peace and prosperity. There 
 are fanatics and doctrinaires who hold 
 that separation is discrimination, and that 
 discrimination is offensive. Conclusive 
 reply to this objection is found in the his- 
 tory of the churches in the South. 
 
The New South. 247 
 
 THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 
 known in the South as the Northern 
 Methodist church, sent its missionaries to 
 the South to establish churches. White 
 and black preachers met in the same con- 
 ference, and white and black parishioners 
 worshiped in the same churches. Here 
 everything- favored union. The North- 
 ern Methodists were in full sympathy 
 with the negroes, and most of them were 
 abolitionists. The negroes trusted and 
 loved the Northern Methodists, for it was 
 the North that had given them freedom, 
 and it was the Methodists that gave them 
 churches. But the union did not last ; 
 the congregation separated, and finally 
 the white and black preachers, finding 
 
248 The New South, 
 
 that they could not remain in the same 
 conference, established for each State a 
 white and colored conference for their 
 church. Back of this, the great body of 
 negro Methodists joined the African 
 Methodist church, into which no white 
 man is admitted, the preachers, elders, 
 and bishops being black. This is very 
 much the strongest church among the 
 negroes in the South. The negro Bap- 
 tists are also separately organized. Fra- 
 ternal delegates are sent to the colored 
 and white conferences of all the churches, 
 and the utmost harmony prevails. But 
 there is no desire on either side for union. 
 In temporal as in spiritual affairs the in- 
 terests of both races are best served by 
 separate but equal paths. The attempt 
 
The New South. 249 
 
 to force commingling of the races, where 
 the habits and instincts of both races ob- 
 ject, would produce irritation and lead to 
 hopeless conflict. 
 
 It must not be imagined that the 
 negro is outlawed in the South. He has 
 ten avenues of employment in this sec- 
 tion to where he has one in the North. 
 White and black carpenters and masons 
 work together on the same buildings. 
 White and black shoemakers and 
 mechanics in the same shops. White 
 and black hackmen drive on the same 
 streets. White and black farmers work 
 in the same field. Whatever the negro 
 is fitted to do, he has abundant chance to 
 do. All this, too, in the South, where 
 the negro is in such numbers that he 
 
250 The New South. 
 
 seriously competes for work and lowers 
 wages. All this is done, too, without 
 protest or without friction. But the 
 white and black carpenters, working 
 together on the same building, go to sepa- 
 rate homes at night, to separate churches 
 on Sunday. White and black mechanics 
 in the same shop send their children to 
 separate schools. White and black 
 farmers in the same field ride to market 
 in separate cars. This distinction may 
 seem trifling, but it is natural. It re- 
 sponds to an instinct planted by the 
 Almighty in the two races. It is the 
 wisest and the best course. 
 
 On these two lines of action, political 
 and social, the South has moved rapidly 
 towards the solution of the race problem. 
 
The N'e^v South. 251 
 
 If left alone, it can solve it. Interference 
 simply irritates, and outside opinion 
 simply misjudges. The negroes are pros- 
 pering and are contented. Malignant 
 agitators who seek office from the gov- 
 ernment, or notoriety, or bribes, inveigh 
 against the status, and magnify the 
 occasional disorders. Happily the re- 
 cords show that the negro is prospering. 
 In Georgia he has amassed property 
 taxed at $10,000,000 and worth twice as 
 much. In every Southern State he owns 
 farms and city property. His children 
 have good schools. He has his churches, 
 his societies, and his sports. And he is 
 prospering faster than the same number 
 of people, just released from a century of 
 slavery, without property or education, 
 
252 The New South. 
 
 could prosper in any community on this 
 earth. If the negroes of Alabama had 
 been carried to Iowa twenty years ago, 
 displacing an equal number of white 
 men, misled and wrongly advised as they 
 have been at home, and passing through 
 the same periods of political irritation, 
 they would not have had to-day one-half 
 the property or prosperity they now 
 have in Alabama. The American Re- 
 public has achieved great things, but it 
 will have nothing better to render into 
 the keeping of universal history than the 
 progress made by the two races in the 
 South in the past twenty-five years 
 towards the adjustment of their relations 
 and the solution of the problem that is 
 theirs. 
 
The Nezv South. 253 
 
 CHAPTER VT. 
 
 Some one, wittier than kind, has said : 
 " The old men of the South, sitting amid 
 their ruins and looking for better days, 
 remind me of the Spanish hidalgos sitting 
 on the porches of the Alhambra and 
 looking for the return of the Spanish 
 Armada." 
 
 There is pathos, but little fun, in that, 
 to me. These old men, for the most 
 part, lived stainless lives. The curse of 
 fallen humanity, slavery, under their 
 wisdom and kindness, largely lost its 
 horrors and lived by the excellence of 
 its administration when it had been con- 
 
254 The New So7ith. 
 
 demned by the Avorld. About it they 
 built a civilization that in tender and 
 engaging- grace has not, perhaps, been 
 equaled. The scenes amid which they 
 moved, as princes among men, have van- 
 ished forever. A grosser and more 
 material day has come in which their 
 gentle hands could garner but scantily, 
 and their simple hearts beat but feebly. 
 And so, without a murmur, they pass 
 quietly from the stage — never to give 
 place to princelier and better gentlemen. 
 As they sit in the porches of their dis- 
 mantled homes, into which dishonor 
 never entered, and to which discourtesy 
 is a stranger, and gaze out to the horizon 
 beyond which their Armada has drifted 
 forever — though the sea shall not yield 
 
The New SoictJi. 255 
 
 them from the argosies that went down 
 with their ships — yet their sons, rendered 
 back in God's mercy, shall find them 
 richer and broader prosperity than that 
 they have lost. 
 
 Years ago I was a chum of one of these 
 old gentlemen. That is, I would sit at 
 his side and listen for hours to his quaint 
 and courtly talk. I can see him now as I 
 write — his kingly figure, his ruddy face, 
 his white hair, his lisle thread gloves, his 
 closely buttoned coat — hiding poverty 
 and pain. And with his memory comes 
 the picture of old Colonel Newcome, as 
 he used to stand in his black gown, with 
 the order of the Bath on his breast, and 
 answer *' Adsum " with the pensioners in 
 Gre) friar's hospital. For my old friend, 
 
256 The New South. 
 
 too, leaned in his old age on a charity he 
 might have bought a thousand times over 
 in his youth. One day he said to me : 
 '' Do you know, it appears to me that 
 turkeys have lost their flavor?" I 
 avowed that, to me, the great bird was 
 still toothsome. *' On my island," — for 
 he was one of those sea-island kings — 
 " they fed largely on mast, which gave a 
 nutty richness to their meat. I had 
 thousands every year — the finest birds 
 imaginable." I suggested that from these 
 great droves of turkeys he must have had 
 quite an income. " Income !" he replied, 
 " why, my young friend, no Southern 
 gentleman ever sold poultry !" 
 
 I happen to know the old man's son — a 
 strong, upright, manly fellow. He came 
 
TJie New South. 257 
 
 home from the war a bullet or two 
 heavier than when he left college, and 
 throwing off his gray jacket — hung up, 
 however, for his children to revere — he 
 went to work. Sell poultry ? Well, 1 
 should say so ! He sells the eggs, then 
 he sells the meat, then he sells the feathers, 
 then he has the soil of his poultry-house 
 scraped up and sold. From these once 
 despised resources — sold with huckster- 
 like exactness, though in larger spirit — he 
 has rebuilt the fortunes of his family, and 
 restored his father to independence. I 
 see them often — the old man, trembling 
 and aged, but happy in the heart and 
 home of his son — the young man, con- 
 firmed in his new life, and holding it to 
 be, though more strenuous, vet broader 
 
258 The New Soutk 
 
 and better than the old life ever could 
 have been. And as they walk out to- 
 gether — and they often do — each honor- 
 ing- and respecting the other, though 
 their lives are wide apart, I notice that 
 the old man's hand seeks lovingly the 
 young man's shoulder, and rests there, 
 ennobling it with the knighthood of the 
 fifth commandment, as it lays there the 
 unspeakable blessing of an honored and 
 grateful father ! 
 
 Along the line of the gulf coast, near 
 where ex-President Davis lately lay dy- 
 ing, and on the South Atlantic coast, from 
 Darien to Charleston, there is where our 
 Ilium fuit is yet written. There the bat 
 yet flits through deserted mansions where 
 once beauty and chivalr}^ gathered amid 
 
The New South. 259 
 
 scenes of splendor. Immense rose-gar- 
 dens burst upon the traveler in the midst 
 of a deserted wilderness. Through mag- 
 nolia groves gleam the white pillars of 
 palaces, empty and desolate. Avenues of 
 orange trees lead the curious to heaps of 
 ruins that tell of the torch, dead thirty 
 years ago. On parterres where once pea- 
 cocks swept in royal beauty, ill-omened 
 birds now lope and hover. Rabbits gam- 
 bol by the light of the moon in superb 
 gardens where once in splendid fetes the 
 moon itself was shamed. Swarms of 
 negroes, seeking the coast by instinct, 
 hold almost undisputed possession. Al- 
 ways the country homes of the rich — 
 points of luxury and pleasure — the busy 
 
26o The New Sotcth, 
 
 South has not yet found time to reclaim 
 and rehabilitate these homes. 
 
 Royal homes were these old " sea is- 
 lands " — principalities in area, dukedoms 
 in revenue. The main product was the 
 long staple cotton, which commanded 
 three times the price of ordinary cotton, 
 and of which they had a monopoly. 
 Often a thousand slaves were owned by 
 one islander, and on the mainland, tended 
 his rice plantations. Every species of 
 game thronged the forest of the island, 
 and the tropical fruits flourished. All 
 that art and wealth could do to make 
 these islands enchanting was done. 
 Guests from both sides of the ocean 
 found there hospitality that the best 
 homes of England could not surpass. 
 
The New Soitth, 261 
 
 Pleasure vessels opened the sea to the 
 planter and his friends, and his own ships 
 carried his cargoes to and fro. On the 
 mainland was clustered the oldest and 
 best society of the States. In Liberty 
 county (Georgia) is the home of Lyman 
 Hall, one of the signers of the Declara- 
 tion. It is now occupied by an illiterate 
 negro. A mile away is the old Medway 
 church-yard, in which lie buried four of 
 Georgia's governors. Near that church, 
 that cradle of liberty in Georgia, a few 
 months ago, a man claiming to be Christ 
 harangued thousands of negroes. They 
 deserted home, fields, everything, and 
 lived with their new Messiah. The most 
 horrible rites and orgies ensued. Ne- 
 groes of both sexes, perfectly naked, 
 
262 The New South, 
 
 galloped on all fours around the false 
 Christ, grunting like hogs, until they fell 
 exhausted. When he was arrested they 
 ran naked in troops for miles, following 
 the sheriff's buggy. They then set up a 
 black Queen of Sheba, and worshiped 
 her. Despoiled of their queen, they ral- 
 lied about a dusky exhorter, who claimed 
 to be King Solomon — the obstinacy of 
 their superstition literally paralyzing the 
 industry of the county. This, too, a 
 county that for half a century was the 
 ruling center of wealth and intellect in 
 Georgia. 
 
 The exceeding beauty and richness of 
 the islands along the Georgia coasts 
 have attracted Northern millionaires. 
 Mr. Carnegie bought " Dungeness," the 
 
The New Soicth. 263 
 
 old home of General Nathaniel Greene. 
 It was here that Eli Whitney, a tutor in 
 General Greene's family, invented the 
 cotton gin. At the first test of the gin 
 the cotton packed on the roller. Mrs. 
 Nightingale, General Greene's daughter, 
 observing Whitney's annoyance when the 
 cotton clogged the machine, took her 
 tortoise-shell comb from her hair, and 
 holding it firmly against the roller, solved 
 the problem. It is at " Dungeness " that 
 Light Horse Harry Lee, the father of 
 General Robert E. Lee, is buried. '' Dun- 
 geness " was famous for its rose-gardens, 
 covering acres and acres, and for the 
 beauty of its old mansion. Mr. Carnegie 
 restored the gardens, avenues and man- 
 sion, and no prince has a finer estate. 
 
264 The Nciv South. 
 
 Jekyll's Island, near by, has been bought 
 by a club of Northern men, who have 
 already spent over half a million dollars, 
 and have but begun. Jekyll's is thick 
 with game. All manner of ducks fill its 
 bogs and ponds. Quails make its thick- 
 ets musical. There are over two hun- 
 dred deer in one drove. Wild turkeys, 
 squirrels and opossums abound. English 
 pheasants were introduced and have mul- 
 tiplied amazingly. The owners are de- 
 lighted with Jekyll's, and intend to make 
 it the rival of Tuxedo. 
 
 The beauty of Southern scenery, and 
 the tenderness of Southern skies, have 
 caught the attention of many of the very 
 rich men of the North. Mr. H. M. Flag- 
 ler, of the Standard Oil Company, has 
 
TJlc Nezv South. 26 
 
 spent over $7,000,000 in hotels and im- 
 provements, and his Ponce de Leon and 
 Alcazar are not equaled in the old world 
 or the new. Mr. George Vanderbilt pur- 
 chased a mountain near Ashville, in the 
 famous '' land of the sky," and has out- 
 lined improvements that will cost over 
 $3,000,000. In Florida a number of mill- 
 ionaires — including- a foreign prince and 
 duke or so — have made superb winter 
 homes. By the way, Florida has recov- 
 ered what she lost to California two years 
 ago. The tide of travel is turning again, 
 and Florida is not only confirmed as the 
 winter garden of the Republic, but its san- 
 itarium. The air and the sunshine of the 
 South make life delightful, which recalls 
 a little story. A Northern lady and a 
 
266 The New South, 
 
 Southern one were thrown together for a 
 day or two. The Northern lady had 
 criticised the railroads, the hotels, the 
 homes, the towns, the farms of the South. 
 At last she said : 
 
 '' I tell you, though, I do enjoy your 
 balmy air, and your genial sunshine." 
 
 " I am so ,glad," replied her Southern 
 neighbor, '' for that's about all the Yan- 
 kees left us." 
 
 In i860, Georgia, Alabama, and South 
 Carolina were, with the exception of 
 Rhode Island, the three richest States in 
 the Union. In 1880, they were, with the 
 exception of Idaho, the three poorest. 
 In the above comparison wealth is meas- 
 
The New SoiUh. 267 
 
 ured by the holdings per capita of the 
 citizens of each State. After twenty -five 
 years of peace and of unusual prosperity, 
 Georgia has just reached again the total 
 of her tax books in i860, minus her prop- 
 erty in slaves. 
 
 What a pull it has been ! Through the 
 ashes and desolation of war — up the hill, 
 a step at a time, nothing certain — not 
 even the way ! Hindered, misled, and 
 yet always moving up a little, until — 
 shall we say it?— the top has been 
 reached, and the rest is easy ! The des- 
 perate days of starvation — the doubtful 
 days of experiment — these are over. 
 And now the world will witness a change 
 in the South, little less than magical. 
 The ground has been prepared — the seed 
 
268 The New SotUJi, 
 
 put in — the tiny shoots tended past the 
 danger-point — and the day of the mighty' 
 harvest is here ! 
 
 The Comstock lode is, perhaps, the 
 richest spot of the earth. And yet, all 
 about it is bleakness and miser}^ Its 
 teeming riches have gone to build up dis- 
 tant cities and carry great currents, of 
 which the miners, gasping in its depths, 
 hear but dim report. The cotton field is 
 a new Comstock lode. And for years the 
 farmers fought in destitution, as the 
 miners fight, while the bales of cotton, as 
 of silver, went to enrich the cities beyond 
 their horizon. At last they have learned 
 how to catch the ebbing sea at the edge 
 of the patch, and throw its enriching 
 flood back on their own fields. 
 
The New South. 269 
 
 The long-leafed pine, now standing in 
 Southern forests, would yield, at $10 a 
 thousand feet — the crudest form in which 
 it can be rendered — $500,000,000 in excess 
 of the total taxable value of the South, 
 including cities, railroads, farms, personal 
 property, everything. That is an enor 
 mous possession ! But that does not 
 satisfy the New South. Made into fur- 
 niture, that pine would bring $50 instead 
 of $10 a thousand feet. And so, in some- 
 thing over four hundred and fifty factor- 
 ies, she is turning it into furniture. 
 
 Nobody imagines that the somewhat 
 comical revolution in Brazil — in which 
 the people said to the emperor : '* If you 
 please, sir," and the emperor, good soul, 
 said to the people : '' With pleasure," — 
 
270 The New Soitth. 
 
 was the off-hand affair it looks to be. 
 Under the surface for years and years the 
 republican forces have been at work, 
 advancing, retreating, trying, failing, 
 patiently learning, testing, strengthening, 
 until at last everything was ready, and it 
 was just — '' Presto ! change !" 
 
 For twenty-five years the industrial 
 forces of the South have been at work 
 under the surface. Making little show, 
 experimenting, working out new waj's, 
 blocking up old wa3's, peering about 
 with the lamp of experience barely lit, 
 digging, delving, struggling, until at last 
 the day has come, and independence is 
 proclaimed. Now watch the change take 
 place with almost comical swiftness ! 
 
 I cannot, of course, attempt to answer, 
 
The Nczu Soiith. 271 
 
 here or elsewhere, the inquiries these 
 articles have brought and will bring. 
 However, there is one, from a lady in 
 Maine, that may very well be answered. 
 She asks : " Do you people of the South 
 acknowledge that the cause your fathers 
 fought for was wicked and wrong?" 
 
 We do not. We would not be worthy 
 of those fathers if we did. Nor of 
 national fellowship. We accept as final 
 the arbitrament of the sword, to which 
 our fathers appealed. In perfect loyalty 
 and sincerity we have taken up the new 
 work that comes to our hands, hoping 
 for nothing better than to do that work 
 well. This is as far as generous men 
 should ask us to go. It is as far as brave 
 and self-respecting men can go. 
 
272 The New South, 
 
 Lately a number of Georgians went to 
 Ohio. At a public reception one of the 
 Georgians stated he had fought at Get- 
 tysburg. Shortly afterwards an elderly 
 lady in black asked for the Georgian who 
 had fought at Gettysburg. He was 
 pointed out. She said to him : 
 
 " Did you fight with the rebels at Get- 
 tysburg ?" 
 
 ** I had that honor, madam !** 
 
 " My husband was killed in that battle.*' 
 
 ** It brought sorrows to many noble 
 and innocent hearts, madam !" 
 
 ** I wanted to tell you, sir, that, at last 
 I — " The voice faltered ; the eyes filled ; 
 the head was bowed — and, in silence, the 
 widow caught the hand of the Georgian, 
 
The New South. 
 
 27, 
 
 and held it in loving and forgiving 
 grasp ! 
 
 Why cannot the lady from Maine rest 
 her case — why cannot we all rest ours — 
 where the lady from Ohio rested hers ? 
 
WILL BE PUBLISHED OCTOBER 15th: 
 
 FIVE YEARS 
 
 WITH THE 
 
 CONGO CANNIBALS. 
 
 By HERBERT WARD. 
 
 Magmificently lUustrated With Many Full-Pagre Engrav- 
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 Herbert Ward's book is the record of five years spent 
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 It contains many facts, hitherto unknown, concerning the 
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 risks and dangers encountered in strange places, and 
 among wild and hostile people, is one of fascinating in- 
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 cruelties existing among the millions of Central Africa. 
 
 Mr Ward's travels in Africa commenced in 1884, when 
 he received an appointment in the service of the Congo 
 Free State. He was a member of the Emin Bey Relief 
 Expedition, and while in the service of Mr. H. M. Stanley, 
 he made his memorable canoe journey of eleven hundred 
 miles on the Congo. 
 
 ^ His book contains entirely new matter about the tribes 
 of Central Africa, will have permanent interest and value, 
 and will be the standard work on that subject. 
 
AN INTERESTING VOLUME ON THE GREAT AFRICAN 
 TRAVELLER, 
 
 HENRY M. STANLEY. 
 
 His Life and his Explorations, witli a full account of his Latest 
 Achievement, 
 
 THE RESCUE OF EMIN BEY. 
 
 By Henry Frederic Redd all. 12mo. 416 Pages. 
 
 Paper Cover, 50 Cents. Boxmd Volume, $1.00. 
 
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 eager desire of all who have read of his last great exploit for 
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Edda's Birthright 
 
 By MRS. HARRIET LEWIS. 
 
 With Seven Illustrations. 
 
 Paper Cover, 50 Cents. Boiind Volume, $1.00. 
 
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WILL BE PUBLISHED OCTOBER ist: 
 
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WILL BE PUBLISHED OCTOBER ist: 
 
 A Matter of Millions. 
 
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WILL BE ISSUED OCTOBER ist: 
 
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 THE FORSAKEN INN 
 
 By ANNA KATHARINE GREEN. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY VICTOR FERARD. 
 
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 reader until he has reached the last line of the last chap- 
 ter. The scene of the story is the Hudson, between 
 Albany and Poughkeepsie, and the time is the close of 
 the eighteenth century. In writing her previous books, 
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 pen to paper, but this story was written in a white heat, 
 and under the spur of a moment of inspiration. 
 
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The Baroness Blank. 
 
 A NOVEL OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE. 
 
 By AUGUST NIEMANN. 
 
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 of incident and thrilling and passionate feeling. 
 
Ottilie Aster's Silence. 
 
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CESAR BIROTTEAU 
 
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 HONORE DE BALZAC. 
 
 WITH FOURTEEN CHOICE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 By HARRY G. EDWARDS. 
 
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 1' 
 
 Vi. 
 
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 the multiform phases of human life than the works of any 
 other novelist is claimed for him by some of the foremost 
 critics of the world. ''Cesar Birotteau " is one of his 
 most beautiful and characteristic novels. 
 
A NEW EDITION. 
 
 THE HIDDEN HAND. 
 
 By MRS. E. D. E. N. SOUTH^^STORTH, 
 
 Author of " Unknoivn," "For Woman's Love,'" *' A Leap in 
 
 the Dark," ** Nearest and Dearest," "* The Lost Lady 
 
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 cap Capitola in exciting the admiration of readers, or in 
 winning and keeping their hearts. She is so bright, so 
 spirited, so beautiful, so sagacious, so dauntless, and yet 
 so innocent and childlike, that she at once takes all 
 readers captive and holds them enchained by her fascina- 
 tions clear to the last page of the story. 
 
 The way in which Capitola outwits, overcomes and cap- 
 tures the gigantic and brutal robber Black Donald, when 
 he had concealed himself in her lonely room at the dead 
 of night, and chuckled with fiendish glee to think he had 
 the bewitching girl in his power, is one of the most thrill- 
 ing chapters in the entire range of romantic literature. 
 
 '*The most valuable and popular story ever published 
 in the New York Ledger was Mrs. Southworth's ' Hidden 
 Hand.' So great was the demand for it that it was re- 
 published in the Ledge? three times ! The cry came 
 from everywhere : ' Publish this great story in book form P 
 And now it is published in book form, and is eagerly read 
 by tens of thousands of admirers." — Passaic City Herald, 
 
, ^